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Random Musings On The End Of The American Experiment
Bob O'Brien's Sanity Check Blog
Posted by: bobo
3/6/2009 9:31 AM
I think that the defining moment for me was when Bernanke responded to the question from Congress, as to whether the American people (and their elected representatives in Congress) would be told to whom all their tax dollars have been given or lent.
That single word summed it up perfectly for me: No.
Any illusions that the money trust in the US, that collection of bankers and hedge fund managers and industrialists who are the beneficiaries of the systematic looting of the Treasury under the current "emergency" measures, is going to do anything other than precisely what they like, or is going to report to those it is looting, was dispelled at that moment. Likewise, nobody has been able to articulate why the massive swindle at AIG continues to be subsidized by our tax dollars - but again, no reporting on where those dollars are going will be forthcoming.
Basically, the gloves are off and the banking establishment - the for-profit cartel of private bankers that is the Federal Reserve - refuses the most basic explanations of where our, and the next several generations' retirements, are going.
Just won't talk. Nope. Shhhhh. It's a secret.
So AIG sells insurance for which it has no collateral, thinly disguising it as credit default swaps, to those with no financial interest in that being insured (which is illegal if insurance), and you and I get to pay those who bought the swaps and are now collecting big on the destruction of the market and the American way of life. Not a mention of simply making those illegal and calling it what it is - illegal insurance which should be null and void. Nope. Instead, we get to pay out hundreds of billions, to Goldman and the Saudis and whomever else is fortunate enough to be a counterparty - but we can't know to whom the billions are being paid. Again. That's a secret.
I was thinking about how casual the disregard for the rule of law has become on Wall Street, and how confident the money trust is in our apathy and our absence of the will or the means to interfere with their schemes. And well they should be. As nothing has, and likely nothing will.
When I started writing about the naked short selling scam, and the underlying larceny that drove it, I predicted that it would ultimately destroy the engine of prosperity that is the US market system. My reasoning was simple - if you allow crooks to run the system, and to take money without requiring that they deliver what they were paid for, you don't have a market, you have a giant fraud. And a system built upon a foundation of fraud isn't sustainable; eventually there are no more rubes to fleece. I also was vocal that while this started out as a penny stock fraud, it had grown to include small-cap companies, and that left unchecked, it would ultimately destroy the IBMs of the world just as surely as it has the TASRs and OSTKs. And here we are - the other day, the CFO of GE was forced to acknowledge that their stock is being deliberately manipulated down, however they had no choice but to simply ignore it and focus on the long term, as nobody was going to do anything to stop it. How remarkable is that? We've gone from where this was a penny stock issue, to where one of the largest multi-nationals in the world is being played...and there's nothing anyone is going to do about it.
So what is the endgame? Is it to depress the markets to the point that all the naked short shares are coverable at a profit? A decade's worth of fraud, nicely solved by taking the Dow to 4000? Or is it simply that the jig is up on the larger scam, the fiat money game, and this is the final landgrab before the currency goes the way of used Charmin?
At this point, it's hard to know. There is no joy in being right. Nobody is calling to congratulate me, or Patrick, or Patch, for a job well done. There are no full page articles in the WSJ, as there were about speculations as to my identity, saying, "GD it, he was right! The full page ad in the Washington Post was right! This is destroying the system, and the same miscreants who are doing it are doing it to the global system using equally fraudulent tactics while the politicians pretend to have more pressing items on their agenda!" Nope. Because the money trust is particularly good at revisionist history, and spin, and controlling the information flow. And because they know that you won't remember accurately what the hell happened 5 years from now, thus whatever a Nocera or a Greenberg says in print, no matter how obviously false, will become your accepted truth.
Their contempt for you is manifest in every action now, every day, as the looting moves out into the open. Oh, sure, there is plenty of hand wringing and table pounding by concerned politicians and the occasional journalist, however the point is that your money is being systematically stolen, and you can't do anything to stop it. Game over.
I used to believe that it was an information gap. That if I only articulated the problem with the right words, in the right forum, that exposure would be sufficient to drive those entrusted with protecting us to do their job. For a while I believed that inaction was a function of ignorance of the true issues, and that if only the correct explanation was put forth, that then a lightbulb would go off in the collective congressional head, and the problem would be corrected.
Now I know better. Patrick's site, DeepCapture.com, is read by every major news outlet on a regular basis, as is this site. It's not that the info isn't knowable or known. It is that nothing will ever be done to change it, not by those with that power. Because even that power is an illusion. As evidenced by the single word response to a demand for the most basic and obvious form of transparency in the largest landgrab of national wealth in history:
"No."
I suppose "Bite Me" or "Fat Chance" are more inefficient uses of language. Why increase the number of words when a single monosyllable will readily convey the entire idea?
So as you watch the value of your home decline by 60%, and your portfolio decline by at least that amount, and watch as we move from recession into depression (the jobless rate, BTW, is a joke, as it is far above 10% - the difference between now, and the depression, is that now we conveniently drop all those who have been unemployed for a longer time - thus no longer qualifying for unemployment - off the stat, whereas back in the old days we counted them, as they WERE OBVIOUSLY ALSO UNEMPLOYED), consider that there have been plenty of voices calling this as it is. All along. It's simply that it isn't in the money trust's interests that those voices be heard, or remembered.
A system predicated upon fraud isn't sustainable. A clearing and settlement system that allows counterfeiting and fraud, and which answers to nobody, isn't a clearing and settlement system. A media that only touts the party line isn't a free press. A private cartel of banks, writing trillions of dollars of taxpayer-funded checks while refusing to tell anyone who is receiving the loot isn't a sustainable banking system. A government that allows all the above to become the status quo, and which twists statistics in order to lie to its own citizenry as well as the rest of the world, isn't a sustainable government.
So many were divided over a black President being elected, and liberal ideas taking the day over conservative ones, but doesn't everyone understand that it is all theater, designed to take your mind off the obvious looting of the nation? Who really cares what color or religion or ideology the guy who slips the icepick into your spine is? Why would it even matter?
Rome is on fire. The government is pouring gasoline through the fire hoses, and the only ones benefitting are the recipients of the trillions and trillions of dollars of your money. Fairly soon, I think it will be safe to say that the formerly prosperous middle class will become the working poor, in a land filled with half vacant strip malls selling shoddily made crap to a populace so numb and dazed it doesn't know the difference and can't remember anything better. Just as 50 years ago seems like a fairy-tale time, when a gas station attendant could support a wife, kids, a car or two, and a home on his salary, a few years ago will sound surreal to our children; imagine a time when two working parents could afford a home and a car! Imagine when there was enough work for both of them to even work steadily! Imagine owning a car! Or a home! That's crazy talk, and we can't change things, so why dwell on it...
That's where we are headed. I was roundly criticized by many of my readers for being a pessimist back at Dow 12K+ for saying that anyone with a dime in the market was an idiot - that you had better-regulated odds of prevailing at the blackjack table in Vegas than in the markets. I guess that too was a bit prescient, no? Still not getting it? Still think you can play in the rigged casino and win? You can't. Only about 300 rich white guys ultimately win, and you aren't one of them if you are reading this blog. Trust me on that.
And that's what's been on my mind lately, as I watch the last vestiges of the illusion crumble, and the rapacious character of the beast emerge from its lair to strip the final bits of flesh from the already rotting carcass.
Last one out turn off the lights.
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