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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: skinowski who wrote (623837)	1/29/2017 6:29:56 PM
From: frankw1900	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 794367

The "borrowing" that govts do by issuing bonds was an 18th century modification of the timeless tradition of rulers/nobility/gentry taxing the peasantry. Yes, except that now they are taxing the future. And the future WILL pay the price, in one way or another. Bearing in mind that since the great tension in our capitalist society is between creditors and borrowers, (as in who's winning and who's losing, and workers and small businesses are losing and big businesses are spectators), a low level of inflation seems a good idea to me: Weakening the currency, which many hope will solve the problem, is just another form of default. Really? Given that easily half of government borrowing is a racket to allow the rich not to pay for their protection against the poor, what's wrong with trimming the bastards' return? Workers and non-financial businesses can easily overcome low level inflation if there's a 3 or 4% growth rate because they make real stuff and provide real services. And their rate of compounding is better than that of their creditors because they pay interest on declining balance. All banks do is create money, which is fine. But despite the fine buildings and the rather religious mystique around money all they actually do to create it is make a couple of bookkeeping entries. And don't forget bankers always, always, always, I say it again, always screw up. They can't help themselves, especially money center banks. After a financial crash financial company lobbying reaches frenetic proportions. To protect their mystique and to keep the racket going financial folk invest lots of money in politicians. Remember $200,000 went to HRC for a twenty minute talk and there was the huge amount they laid on Clay in his fight against Jackson in 1828. I don't know how much was laid on the pols after the 1908 crash in the fight about establishing the Fed but I'm sure it was enormous. It's a con shot that's been going on for two hundred years. Turn things upside down: Anytime someone starts laying huge $$$ on politicians it's because they're ultimately afraid of their power. The corollary is they want to buy the power. Screw 'em. They're getting off easy with a bit of inflation and financial repression. Gotta restart. Browsers acting up.

To: skinowski who wrote (623837)	1/30/2017 2:13:12 AM
From: frankw1900	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 794367

To continue I don't think the deplorables own the central banks. The "deep state" owns them. The deep state made itself "necessary" to the population by means of programs like, for example, social security, which is a transgenerational wealth redistribution scheme. Nice way of making sure everyone is vested in government. The "deep state" doesn't own any part of the government. It hijacks or makes parts of it unlegislated homesteads. It has always existed. It existed in the ancient Roman republic, in Elizabethan England, in the Vatican for nearly 2000 years, in China for 4000 years. But it's only people. Every once in a while the ruler, usually a new one, or a parliament in the form of its new executive has a clear out in the deep state because its become too corrupt, too large, too obstructive, too proud, too destructive, too stupid.... Stalin, who was a sadistic megalomaniac, did it literally as a blood sport. Erdogan is replacing Turkish deep state with his own because he wants a security force supporting his islamist designs for the country to destroy secularism, (plus freedom to kill Kurds since there are no Armenians left there). The American deep state has little to do with social security programs and everything to do the metastasized US security apparatus and its connection to the financial industry equally metastasized by revenues generated by the US trade deficit caused by the hollowing out of US industrial sector. Everybody has always been vested in government since beginning of history, if for no other reason for protection against marauders and criminals. It's social consensus or social contract that makes modern governments take up welfare programs. Deep state could care less. Reading your post, it seems you're just as suspicious of government as any of the libertarians on this board. How come you still believe in government solutions? That government is owned by the deplorables? About forty years ago I worked for a consulting firm that did program evaluation for governments. I became a cynic but nonetheless a realist. Government solutions are often better than alternative such as starving old people, and mad folk wandering the streets, and poor folk shut out of secondary and post secondary education; or ten years of depression and deflation and a generation of lost opportunity. I personally think conservatives are better at it than liberals because they're not so much into thought policing and making the new modern metrosexual and so forth. Deplorables got the vote. They want to break some china for reasons I've mentioned. They elected Trump. They voted Brexit. Is the deep state gonna call out the army against them? When all's said and done deep state is just a bunch of functionaries who've got too big for their britches. And they got there by talking BS and doubling down when their resulting actions failed, then more BS, resulting in more failure. What do you call it when you keep doing over, and over, what fails?