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Octafish

(55,745 posts)
Fri Mar 4, 2016, 10:51 AM Mar 2016

Economics -- New Democratic Style



Warfare via Banking



Milton Friedman and the Rise of Monetary Fascism

The Dark Age of Money


by JAMES C. KENNEDY
CounterPunch Oct. 24, 2012

EXCERPT...

Monetary Fascism was created and propagated through the Chicago School of Economics. Milton Friedman’s collective works constitute the foundation of Monetary Fascism. Knowing that the term ’Fascism’ was universally unpopular; Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics masquerade these works as ‘Capitalism’ and ’Free Market’ economics.

SNIP...

The fundamental difference between Adam Smith’s free market capitalism and Friedman’s ‘free market capitalism’ is that Friedman’s is a hyper extractive model, the kind that creates and maintains Third-World-Countries and Banana-Republics, without geo-political borders.

If you say that this is nothing new, you miss the point. Friedman does not differentiate between some third world country and his own. The ultimate difference is that Friedman has created a model that sanctions and promotes the exploitation of his own country, in fact every country, for the benefit of the investor, money the uber-wealthy. He dressed up this noxious ideology as ‘free market capitalism’ and then convinced most of the world to embrace it as their economic salvation.

SNIP...

Monetary Fascism, as conceived by Friedman, uses the powers of the state to put the interest of money and the financial class above and beyond all other forms of industry (and other stake holders) and the state itself.

SNIP...

Money has become the state and the traditional state is forced to serve money’s interests. Everywhere the Financial Class is openly lording over sovereign nations. Ireland, Greece and Spain are subject to ultimatums and remember Hank Paulson’s $700 billion extortion from the U.S. Congress. The $700 billion was just the wedge. Thanks to unlimited access to the Discount Window, Quantitative Easing and other taxpayer funded debt-swap bailouts the total transfers to the financial industry exceeded $16 trillion as of July 2010 according to a Federal Reserve Audit. All of this was dumped on the taxpayer and it is still growing.

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/10/24/the-dark-age-of-money/



Think this is history or something in far-off Faroffia? Think again.



President Clinton and the Chilean Model.

By José Piñera

Midnight at the House of Good and Evil

"It is 12:30 at night, and Bill Clinton asks me and Dottie: 'What do you know about the Chilean social-security system?'” recounted Richard Lamm, the three-term former governor of Colorado. It was March 1995, and Lamm and his wife were staying that weekend in the Lincoln Bedroom of the White House.

I read about this surprising midnight conversation in an article by Jonathan Alter (Newsweek, May 13, 1996), as I was waiting at Dulles International Airport for a flight to Europe. The article also said that early the next morning, before he left to go jogging, President Bill Clinton arranged for a special report about the Chilean reform produced by his staff to be slipped under Lamm's door.

That news piqued my interest, so as soon as I came back to the United States, I went to visit Richard Lamm. I wanted to know the exact circumstances in which the president of the world’s superpower engages a fellow former governor in a Saturday night exchange about the system I had implemented 15 years earlier.

Lamn and I shared a coffee on the terrace of his house in Denver. He not only was the most genial host to this curious Chilean, but he also proved to be deeply motivated by the issues surrounding aging and the future of America. So we had an engaging conversation. At the conclusion, I ventured to ask him for a copy of the report that Clinton had given him. He agreed to give it to me on the condition that I do not make it public while Clinton was president. He also gave me a copy of the handwritten note on White House stationery, dated 3-21-95, which accompanied the report slipped under his door. It read:

Dick,
Sorry I missed you this morning.
It was great to have you and Dottie here.
Here's the stuff on Chile I mentioned.
Best,
Bill.


Three months before that Clinton-Lamm conversation about the Chilean system, I had a long lunch in Santiago with journalist Joe Klein of Newsweek magazine. A few weeks afterwards, he wrote a compelling article entitled,[font color="green"] "If Chile can do it...couldn´t North America privatize its social-security system?" [/font color]He concluded by stating that "the Chilean system is perhaps the first significant social-policy idea to emanate from the Southern Hemisphere." (Newsweek, December 12, 1994).

I have reasons to think that probably this piece got Clinton’s attention and, given his passion for policy issues, he became a quasi expert on Chile’s Social Security reform. Clinton was familiar with Klein, as the journalist covered the 1992 presidential race and went on anonymously to write the bestseller Primary Colors, a thinly-veiled account of Clinton’s campaign.

“The mother of all reforms”

While studying for a Masters and a Ph.D. in economics at Harvard University, I became enamored with America’s unique experiment in liberty and limited government. In 1835 Alexis de Tocqueville wrote the first volume of Democracy in America hoping that many of the salutary aspects of American society might be exported to his native France. I dreamed with exporting them to my native Chile.

So, upon finishing my Ph.D. in 1974 and while fully enjoying my position as a Teaching Fellow at Harvard University and a professor at Boston University, I took on the most difficult decision in my life: to go back to help my country rebuild its destroyed economy and democracy along the lines of the principles and institutions created in America by the Founding Fathers. Soon after I became Secretary of Labor and Social Security, and in 1980 I was able to create a fully funded system of personal retirement accounts. Historian Niall Ferguson has stated that this reform was “the most profound challenge to the welfare state in a generation. Thatcher and Reagan came later. The backlash against welfare started in Chile.”

But while de Tocqueville’s 1835 treatment contained largely effusive praise of American government, the second volume of Democracy in America, published five years later, strikes a more cautionary tone. He warned that “the American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money.” In fact at some point during the 20th century, the culture of self reliance and individual responsibility that had made America a great and free nation was diluted by the creation of [font color="green"] “an Entitlement State,”[/font color] reminiscent of the increasingly failed European welfare state. What America needed was a return to basics, to the founding tenets of limited government and personal responsibility.

[font color="green"]In a way, the principles America helped export so successfully to Chile through a group of free market economists needed to be reaffirmed through an emblematic reform. I felt that the Chilean solution to the impending Social Security crisis could be applied in the USA.[/font color]

CONTINUED...

http://www.josepinera.org/articles/articles_clinton_chilean_model.htm



The Future holds more of the Same, unless We the People can dosumpinaboudid.



5 WikiLeaks Revelations Exposing the Rapidly Growing Corporatism Dominating American Diplomacy Abroad

One of WikiLeaks' greatest achievements has been to expose the exorbitant amount of influence that multinational corporations have over Washington's diplomacy.


By Rania Khalek / AlterNet June 21, 2011

One of the most significant scourges paralyzing our democracy is the merger of corporate power with elected and appointed government officials at the highest levels of office. Influence has a steep price-tag in American politics where politicians are bought and paid for with ever increasing campaign contributions from big business, essentially drowning out any and all voices advocating on behalf of the public interest.

Millions of dollars in campaign funding flooding Washington's halls of power combined with tens of thousands of high-paid corporate lobbyists and a never-ending revolving door that allows corporate executives to shuffle between the public and private sectors has blurred the line between government agencies and private corporations.

This corporate dominance over government affairs helps to explain why we are plagued by a health-care system that lines the pockets of industry executives to the detriment of the sick; a war industry that causes insurmountable death and destruction to enrich weapons-makers and defense contractors; and a financial sector that violates the working class and poor to dole out billions of dollars in bonuses to Wall Street CEO's.

The implications of this rapidly growing corporatism reach far beyond our borders and into the realm of American diplomacy, as in one case where efforts by US diplomats forced the minimum wage for beleaguered Haitian workers to remain below sweatshop levels.

In this context of corporate government corruption, one of WikiLeaks' greatest achievements has been to expose the exorbitant amount of influence that multinational corporations have over Washington's diplomacy. Many of the WikiLeaks US embassy cables reveal the naked intervention by our ambassadorial staff in the business of foreign countries on behalf of US corporations. From mining companies in Peru to pharmaceutical companies in Ecuador, one WikiLeaks embassy cable after the next illuminates a pattern of US diplomats shilling for corporate interests abroad in the most underhanded and sleazy ways imaginable.

While the merger of corporate and government power isn't exactly breaking news, it is one of the most critical yet under-reported issues of our time. And WikiLeaks has given us an inside look at the inner-workings of this corporate-government collusion, often operating at the highest levels of power. It is crystal clear that it's standard operating procedure for US government officials to moonlight as corporate stooges. Thanks to WikiLeaks, here are five instances that display the lengths to which Washington is willing to go to protect and promote US corporations around the world.

CONTINUED...

http://www.alternet.org/story/151370/5_wikileaks_revelations_exposing_the_rapidly_growing_corporatism_dominating_american_diplomacy_abroad



Explains why rightwing asswipes hate DU. Also gives us a heads-up on why we need Libaral, Progressive Democratic Action.

33 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight: NoneDon't highlight anything 5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies
Economics -- New Democratic Style (Original Post) Octafish Mar 2016 OP
Seems like I've been battling the Friedman disciples forever now. mmonk Mar 2016 #1
Buy Partisan Answer: Swiss Banking at UBS Octafish Mar 2016 #3
Again Octafish, you outdo yourself. It's why you are mmonk Mar 2016 #4
Thank you, mmonk! You know what they say is crazy, doing the same thing over and over for nought. Octafish Mar 2016 #7
and Malaysia, thanks to Hillary: amborin Mar 2016 #5
Taking the M out of the BRICS works. (What a speech to G-S sounds like) Octafish Mar 2016 #25
Kicked and recommended. Uncle Joe Mar 2016 #2
What our government does ''Over There,'' they bring back to do in the Homeland. Octafish Mar 2016 #6
Yes, what we did to others, we're now doing to the US. mmonk Mar 2016 #10
People aren't CURIOUS anymore. Octafish Mar 2016 #26
You've got that right. mmonk Mar 2016 #31
David Pion-Berlin says that every time, from Pinochet to Martinez de Hoz, monetarism MisterP Mar 2016 #8
Helps explain the wall-to-wall surveillance of a Free People™ Octafish Mar 2016 #9
TPTB globally want the rest of US to obediently HEEL, STFU, or DISAPPEAR. That's for sure. K&R#15 bobthedrummer Mar 2016 #11
''Looking Forward'' not only cleared war criminals Bush and Cheney, but the Banksters, as well. Octafish Mar 2016 #13
. mmonk Mar 2016 #12
The Rich Get Richer Octafish Mar 2016 #14
As it was designed. mmonk Mar 2016 #16
Precisely what Goldman would think. Octafish Mar 2016 #20
K&R The most defining act for a liberal of our age is detachment from Wall St. raouldukelives Mar 2016 #15
And they made us jump off the cliff so they could land on something softer than the rocks. Octafish Mar 2016 #18
^^^ bobthedrummer Mar 2016 #17
For NAFTA Octafish Mar 2016 #19
Kick and Highly Recommend kristopher Mar 2016 #21
Hillary Clinton was a Wal-Mart Director for 6 Years Octafish Mar 2016 #22
It's the kind of information the media is specifically tasked with obscuring. kristopher Mar 2016 #23
NYT held story of Bush spying on USA in October 2004. Octafish Mar 2016 #24
K&R !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! SamKnause Mar 2016 #27
we do not need any more of this! K and R bbgrunt Mar 2016 #28
Those "RW asswipes" may like the "new DU" highprincipleswork Mar 2016 #29
K&R vintx Mar 2016 #30
The comfort of the rich depends on an abundant supply of the poor. Voltaire Tierra_y_Libertad Mar 2016 #32
Bookmarking this excellent read. Betty Karlson Mar 2016 #33

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
3. Buy Partisan Answer: Swiss Banking at UBS
Fri Mar 4, 2016, 11:44 AM
Mar 2016

Swiss bank UBS is enjoying good times, thanks to the US taxpayer and a number of key US political leaders.





Hillary Helps a Bank—and Then It Funnels Millions to the Clintons

The Wall Street Journal’s eyebrow-raising story of how the presidential candidate and her husband accepted cash from UBS without any regard for the appearance of impropriety that it created.


by CONOR FRIEDERSDORF, The Atlantic, JUL 31, 2015

The Swiss bank UBS is one of the biggest, most powerful financial institutions in the world. As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton intervened to help it out with the IRS. And after that, the Swiss bank paid Bill Clinton $1.5 million for speaking gigs. The Wall Street Journal reported all that and more Thursday in an article that highlights huge conflicts of interest that the Clintons have created in the recent past.

The piece begins by detailing how Clinton helped the global bank.

“A few weeks after Hillary Clinton was sworn in as secretary of state in early 2009, she was summoned to Geneva by her Swiss counterpart to discuss an urgent matter. The Internal Revenue Service was suing UBS AG to get the identities of Americans with secret accounts,” the newspaper reports. “If the case proceeded, Switzerland’s largest bank would face an impossible choice: Violate Swiss secrecy laws by handing over the names, or refuse and face criminal charges in U.S. federal court. Within months, Mrs. Clinton announced a tentative legal settlement—an unusual intervention by the top U.S. diplomat. UBS ultimately turned over information on 4,450 accounts, a fraction of the 52,000 sought by the IRS.”

Then reporters James V. Grimaldi and Rebecca Ballhaus lay out how UBS helped the Clintons. “Total donations by UBS to the Clinton Foundation grew from less than $60,000 through 2008 to a cumulative total of about $600,000 by the end of 2014, according to the foundation and the bank,” they report. “The bank also joined the Clinton Foundation to launch entrepreneurship and inner-city loan programs, through which it lent $32 million. And it paid former president Bill Clinton $1.5 million to participate in a series of question-and-answer sessions with UBS Wealth Management Chief Executive Bob McCann, making UBS his biggest single corporate source of speech income disclosed since he left the White House.”

The article adds that “there is no evidence of any link between Mrs. Clinton’s involvement in the case and the bank’s donations to the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, or its hiring of Mr. Clinton.” Maybe it’s all a mere coincidence, and when UBS agreed to pay Bill Clinton $1.5 million the relevant decision-maker wasn’t even aware of the vast sum his wife may have saved the bank or the power that she will potentially wield after the 2016 presidential election.

SNIP...

As McClatchy noted last month in a more broadly focused article that also mentions UBS, “Ten of the world’s biggest financial institutions––including UBS, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup and Goldman Sachs––have hired Bill Clinton numerous times since 2004 to speak for fees totaling more than $6.4 million. Hillary Clinton also has accepted speaking fees from at least one bank. And along with an 11th bank, the French giant BNP Paribas, the financial goliaths also donated as much as $24.9 million to the Clinton Foundation––the family’s global charity set up to tackle causes from the AIDS epidemic in Africa to climate change.”

CONTINUED...

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/07/hillary-helps-a-bankand-then-it-pays-bill-15-million-in-speaking-fees/400067/



About UBS Wealth Management

It's Buy Partisan

After his exit from the US Senate, Phil Gramm found a job at Swiss bank UBS as vice chairman. He later brought on former President Bill Clinton. What a coincidence, they are the two key figures in repealing Glass-Steagal. Since the New Deal it was the financial regulation that protected the US taxpayer from the Wall Street casino. Oh well, what's a $16 trillion bailout among friends?



It's a Buy-Partisan Who's Who:

President William J. Clinton
President George W. Bush Heh heh heh.
Robert J. McCann
James Carville
John V. Miller
Paula D. Polito
Anthony Roth
Mike Ryan
John Savercool

SOURCE: http://financialservicesinc.ubs.com/revitalizingamerica/SenatorPhilGramm.html

One of my attorney chums doesn't like to see his name on any committees, event letterhead or political campaign literature. These folks, it seems to me, are past caring.

Some of why DUers and ALL voters should care about Phil Gramm.



DUers should know what nation's "news media" aren't reporting: the Buy Partisan connections between what's best for the few and what's best for the many.

Surprised I didn't blame Greenspan. Thanks, mmonk!

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
7. Thank you, mmonk! You know what they say is crazy, doing the same thing over and over for nought.
Fri Mar 4, 2016, 02:36 PM
Mar 2016

Your friendship means the world to me. Whether our fellows know it or not, the USA needs to approach things a little differently if we want to get some different results:



Bill Clinton’s Dubious Economic Legacies

by Jack Rasmus, March 1, 2016

With every televised U.S. presidential debate, listeners are fed a line of bull by candidates about how great previous United States presidents were and how the country needs to return to their policies in order to “make America great again!”

All that’s needed, the Republican candidates say, is to resurrect Reagan policies and today’s U.S. problems will be solved. “Vote for me, and I’ll return to Reagan and restore U.S. greatness,” we’re told.

With the Democrats, it’s a bit more subtle but the underlying message is the same. Under Hillary’s hubby, Bill Clinton in the 1990s, the U.S. created a record number of jobs, incomes were rising, the healthcare crisis was contained, and the U.S. had achieved a “new economy” of prosperity that would only improve further in the 21st century. Under Bill, we were on the right track. George W. Bush screwed it up by reversing course. All we need then is to get back to that “Clinton track” and good times will return again.

But what are the facts? Were Clinton policies a diversion from Reagan? A continuation? Worse?

SNIP...

The Clinton campaign’s frequent claims today that Bill’s two terms in office were days of exceptional economic good times for U.S. workers is just plain false. On several policy fronts, Bill Clinton was actually worse than Reagan — especially with regard to free trade and benefits like health care and pensions. At best, Bill Clinton’s presidency and legacy therefore represents a continuation of Reagan’s — not a shift from his predecessor.

CONTINUED...

https://jackrasmus.com/2016/03/01/bill-clintons-dubious-economic-legacies/



Otherwise, we'll be doing the very definition of insanity ascribed to everybody this side of a Bartlett's.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
25. Taking the M out of the BRICS works. (What a speech to G-S sounds like)
Tue Mar 22, 2016, 10:55 AM
Mar 2016

The Almighty Dollar trumps Democracy, which seems to be the problem.

Like an opaque miasma of conflicting interests and individuals, all helping each other keep their heads-up above what looks like oily water.



Bill Clinton Speech in Malaysia Irks Investors

By DON VAN NATTA Jr. (From The New York Times of December 05, 2008)

Mr. Clinton spoke before nearly 3,000 people in Kuala Lumpur at the invitation of Vinod Sekhar, a Malaysian businessman whose foundation paid Mr. Clinton $200,000, according to several people with knowledge of the fee. The figure is on the lower end of the scale that Mr. Clinton usually commands for his speeches.

“You should be proud of this man,” Mr. Clinton told the audience, pointing at Mr. Sekhar, the 40-year-old chief executive of the Petra Group, a privately held rubber technology company.

SNIP...

Mr. Clinton often praises companies that pay him to speak. In 2001, he received $125,000 from an Illinois management consulting company called International Profit Associates. It was later revealed that the Illinois attorney general was investigating accusations of deceptive marketing tactics by the company.

After a start-up Web search site named Accoona donated $700,000 worth of stock to his foundation, Mr. Clinton praised the company at a corporate event in December 2004.

“I hope you all get rich,” he told Accoona executives, “but, remember, you are doing something good for humanity as well.”

SOURCE: http://pgoh13.com/clinton_onmalaysia.php



It feels hypocritical, pointing out what I might do were I making big bucks off the billionaire class, until I think of what's happening to the planet and my country. Thanks for the important heads-up, amborin!

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
6. What our government does ''Over There,'' they bring back to do in the Homeland.
Fri Mar 4, 2016, 11:52 AM
Mar 2016

Operating on behalf of Nixon and Wall Street, the CIA and Milton Friedman & Friends perfected the art of turning the screws through austerity in Chile.



Too bad, so sad about all the little people who didn't go along with the big plan. Oh well. "Progress."



"The Chicago Boys in Chile: Economic Freedom's Awful Toll"

Orlando Letelier
August 28, 1976

EXCERPT...

The Economic Prescription and Chile's Reality

SNIP...

These are the basic principles of the economic model offered by Friedman and his followers and adopted by the Chilean junta: that the only possible framework for economic development is one within which the private sector can freely operate; that private enterprise is the most efficient form of economic organization and that, therefore, the private sector should be the predominant factor in the economy. Prices should fluctuate freely in accordance with the laws of competition. Inflation, the worst enemy of economic progress, is the direct result of monetary expansion and can be eliminated only by a drastic reduction of government spending.

Except in present-day Chile, no government in the world gives private enterprise an absolutely free hand. That is so because every economist (except Friedman and his followers) has known for decades that, in the real life of capitalism, there is no such thing as the perfect competition described by classical liberal economists. In March 1975, in Santiago, a newsman dared suggest to Friedman that even in more advanced capitalist countries, as for example the United States, the government applies various types of controls on the economy. Mr. Friedman answered: I have always been against it, I don't approve of them. I believe we should not apply them. I am against economic intervention by the government, in my own country, as well as in Chile or anywhere else (Que Pasa, Chilean weekly, April 3, 1975).

SNIP...

A Rationale tor Power

SNIP...

Until September 11, 1973, the date of the coup, Chilean society had been characterized by the increasing participation of the working class and its political parties in economic and social decision making. Since about 1900, employing the mechanisms of representative democracy, workers had steadily gained new economic, social and political power. The election of Salvador Allende as President of Chile was the culmination of this process. For the first time in history a society attempted to build socialism by peaceful means. During Allende's time in office, there was a marked improvement in the conditions of employment, health, housing, land tenure and education of the masses. And as this occurred, the privileged domestic groups and the dominant foreign interests perceived themselves to be seriously threatened.

Despite strong financial and political pressure from abroad and efforts to manipulate the attitudes of the middle class by propaganda, popular support for the Allende government increased significantly between 1970 and 1973. In March 1973, only five months before the military coup, there were Congressional elections in Chile. The political parties of the Popular Unity increased their share of the votes by more than 7 percentage points over their totals in the Presidential election of 1970. This was the first time in Chilean history that the political parties supporting the administration in power gained votes during a midterm election. The trend convinced the national bourgeoisie and its foreign supporters that they would be unable to recoup their privileges through the democratic process. That is why they resolved to destroy the democratic system and the institutions of the state, and, through an alliance with the military, to seize power by force.

In such a context, concentration of wealth is no accident, but a rule; it is not the marginal outcome of a difficult situation -- as they would like the world to believe -- but the base for a social project; it is not an economic liability but a temporary political success. Their real failure is not their apparent inability to redistribute wealth or to generate a more even path of development (these are not their priorities) but their inability to convince the majority of Chileans that their policies are reasonable and necessary. In short, they have failed to destroy the consciousness of the Chilean people. The economic plan has had to be enforced, and in the Chilean context that could be done only by the killing of thousands, the establishment of concentration camps all over the country, the jailing of more than 100,000 persons in three years, the closing of trade unions and neighbourhood organizations, and the prohibition of all political activities and all forms of free expression.

While the Chicago boys have provided an appearance of technical respectability to the laissez-faire dreams and political greed of the old landowning oligarchy and upper bourgeoisie of monopolists and financial speculators, the military has applied the brutal force required to achieve those goals. Repression for the majorities and economic freedom for small privileged groups are in Chile two sides of the same coin.

CONTINUED...

http://www.ditext.com/letelier/chicago.html



Three weeks after this was published in The Nation (Aug. 28, 1976), Orlando Letelier was assassinated by a car bomb in Washington, D.C.





FWIW: Then-CIA Director George Herbert Walker Bush knew all about Operation Condor and didn't stop them from killing Orlando Letelier and his American companion, Ronni Moffit.



DCI Bush even told then-Congressman Ed Koch (D-NY), threatened anonymously for his work uncovering Operation Condor and its associated evil at the time, "Nothing I can do."

Why does this matter today? What the CIA and Big Money Boys did in Chile in 1973, they're doing to Greece and the USA now.

Something else: They know if We the People are sufficiently worried about keeping a roof over the family and food on the table, We won't have much time to worry about little stuff like Democracy.

More on the subject: from the National Security Archive at George Washington University.

PS: You are most welcome Uncle Joe! Thank you for grokking!

mmonk

(52,589 posts)
10. Yes, what we did to others, we're now doing to the US.
Fri Mar 4, 2016, 05:04 PM
Mar 2016

Unfortunately little resistance due to propaganda. When everyone wakes up, it will be too late.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
26. People aren't CURIOUS anymore.
Tue Mar 22, 2016, 11:01 AM
Mar 2016

They've taken the fun out of Education.

Explains the defunding and the rest, including why America today is owned and operated by warmongers and traitors.

First, the guy made it OK to be a racist in America, again.



Just to make sure people got the message of where he was coming from, Reagan declared his candidacy in 1980 in Philadelphia, Mississippi.



President Obama would do well to learn, if not remember, the story from Terrel Bell, Prunefaces's shocked Secretary of Education, who heard White House staff refer to Dr. King as "Martin Lucifer Coon":



After he became one of the one-percent, Pruneface didn't care much for poor people or working people.

The Trickle Down crowd still holds sway in Washington, ask David Stockman or Penny Pritzker.

Then, the Prunefaced sumbitch made some kind of deal with the Ayatollah in order to hold the hostages until after the election.

Then, after the election, and after the Ayatollah blew up the US barracks in Beirut, Reagan did another deal with the Ayatollah to free another batch of hostages and used the profits to finance an illegal war in Central America.

Of course, Poppy Bush pardoned the various conspirators on behalf of the BFEE.

Poppy sort of took charge of things after Reagan, eh, slowed after that almost-assassin's bullet got him.



[font size="1"]In happier days, Detroit, July, 1980.[/font size]

MisterP

(23,730 posts)
8. David Pion-Berlin says that every time, from Pinochet to Martinez de Hoz, monetarism
Fri Mar 4, 2016, 03:23 PM
Mar 2016

requires tremendous violence to split the workers (and even the old owners) from their businesses and to crush the unrest caused by austerity; economics and social services are taken over by the military (Argentina's intel services even had a theological division, monitoring the pulpits and confessionals)

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
9. Helps explain the wall-to-wall surveillance of a Free People™
Fri Mar 4, 2016, 04:37 PM
Mar 2016
Proof that Power, Money and Crushing Dissent Are NSA’s Real Motives for Spying

By Washington's Blog
Washington's Blog 24 October 2013

The NSA not only spied on the leaders of Germany, Brazil and Mexico, but on at least 35 world leaders.

The Guardian reports:

One unnamed US official handed over 200 numbers, including those of the 35 world leaders, none of whom is named. These were immediately “tasked” for monitoring by the NSA.


SNIP...

And even the argument that 9/11 changed everything holds no water. Spying started before 9/11 … and various excuses have been used to spy on Americans over the years. Even NSA’s industrial espionage has been going on for many decades. And the NSA was already spying on American Senators more than 40 years ago.

Governments who spy on their own population always do it to crush dissent. (Why do you think that the NSA is doing exactly the same thing which King George did to the American colonists … which led to the Revolutionary War?)

Of course, if even half of what a NSA whistleblower Russel Tice says – that the NSA is spying on – and blackmailing – top American government officials and military officers (and see this) – then things are really out of whack.

SOURCE with LINKS to details and sources:

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/10/proof-that-nsa-spying-is-not-really-focused-on-terrorism.html


Oh well. Did you that guy eat the thing on his lip during Jeopardy?

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
13. ''Looking Forward'' not only cleared war criminals Bush and Cheney, but the Banksters, as well.
Sat Mar 5, 2016, 10:34 AM
Mar 2016

Brazen! It's as if they think we're all under the influence of lead poisoning and can't notice.

"My administration ... is the only thing between you and the pitchforks." -- President Barack Obama, March 27, 2009






On 3 April 2009, Politico bannered innocuously (and deceptively, given the shocking core that was buried here - Obama's statement), "Inside Obama's Bank CEOs Meeting." Eamon Javers reported Obama telling Wall Street's CEOs, inside the White House, "My administration ... is the only thing between you and the pitchforks." (This essentially secret meeting, and the comment itself, had occurred on 27 March 2009, but Javers failed to cite the date, which was indicated only under the accompanying AP wire photo of the CEOs coming out of this publicly unannounced event.) Obama's remark was implicitly analogizing here: he implied that he was protecting these people not from prosecutions for crimes (which he actually was), but instead from angry irrational mobs outside, who were driven by blind hatred (like the lynch mobs were in the Old South). Obama was metaphorically siding here with the plantation owners, not with the slaves; with the KKK, not with their victims. This elite Black was telling them that he would protect them from prosecution. He wasn't going to protect the public - which he here analogized to simply a hate-obsessed mob of bigots.

SOURCE: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-zuesse/obama-finally-lays-his-ca_b_3025743.html

Politico article referenced above: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0409/20871.html



"We're all in this together." -- Robert Gibbs, White House Press Secretary

The thirteen bankers, as reported by The Wall Street Journal, were:

Ken Chenault, American Express
Ken Lewis, Bank of America
Robert Kelly, Bank of New York Mellon
Vikram Pandit, Citigroup
John Koskinen, Freddie Mac
Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman Sachs
Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase
John Mack, Morgan Stanley
Rick Waddell, Northern Trust
James Rohr, PNC
Ronald Logue, State Street
Richard Davis, US Bank
John Stumpf, Wells Fargo


SOURCE: http://13bankers.com/title/


Why do I have a problem with that? We the People not only made the Banks whole, we paid those who stole it bonuses -- and our ELECTED officials went along.

As a Democrat -- in every election since my first, 1976 -- I believe all people are created equal and no one is above the law, including the rich and powerful. For some reason, since Jimmy Carter left office in 1981, they get bailouts and We the People get called to pick up their tab. That's not democracy, that's tyranny.


Octafish

(55,745 posts)
14. The Rich Get Richer
Sat Mar 5, 2016, 10:40 AM
Mar 2016
La Sistema:



The Rich Get Richer

by MIKE WHITNEY
CounterPunch, May 6, 2015

EXCERPT...

More borrowing, more risk taking, more financial instability. And it’s all the Fed’s doing. If rates were neutral, then prices would normalize and CEOs would not be engaged in this reckless game of Russian roulette. Instead, it’s caution to the wind; just keep piling on the debt until the whole market comes crashing down in a heap like it did six years ago. And that’s the trajectory we’re on today, in fact, according to TrimTabs Investment Research, February saw buybacks in the amount of $104 billion, ” the largest monthly figure since these flows were first tracked 20 years ago. ”

So things are getting worse not better. Bottom line: The Fed has led the country to the cliff-edge once again where the slightest uptick in interest rates is going to send the economy into freefall.

But why? Why does the Fed keep steering the country from one financial catastrophe to the next?

That’s a question that economists Atif Mian and Amir Sufi answer persuasively with one small chart. Check it out:

“Here is the distribution of financial asset holdings across the wealth distribution. This is from the 2010 Survey of Consumer Finances:



The top 20% of the wealth distribution holds over 85% of the financial assets in the economy. So it is clear that the direct income from capital goes to the wealthiest American households.” (Capital Ownership and Inequality, House of Debt)

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/05/06/the-rich-get-richer/



Even when it fails the nation, "The System" works for those intended.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
20. Precisely what Goldman would think.
Mon Mar 14, 2016, 04:43 PM
Mar 2016
Larry Summers: Goldman Sacked

By Greg Palast
Reader Supported News, September 16, 2013

Joseph Stiglitz couldn't believe his ears. Here they were in the White House, with President Bill Clinton asking the chiefs of the US Treasury for guidance on the life and death of America's economy, when the Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers turns to his boss, Secretary Robert Rubin, and says, "What would Goldman think of that?"

Huh?

Then, at another meeting, Summers said it again: What would Goldman think?

A shocked Stiglitz, then Chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisors, told me he'd turned to Summers, and asked if Summers thought it appropriate to decide US economic policy based on "what Goldman thought." As opposed to say, the facts, or say, the needs of the American public, you know, all that stuff that we heard in Cabinet meetings on The West Wing.

Summers looked at Stiglitz like Stiglitz was some kind of naive fool who'd read too many civics books.

CONTINUED...

http://www.gregpalast.com/larry-summers-goldman-sacked/

raouldukelives

(5,178 posts)
15. K&R The most defining act for a liberal of our age is detachment from Wall St.
Sat Mar 5, 2016, 10:52 AM
Mar 2016

There is nobody in it, nobody, who isn't fundraising for republicans and straight up fascists.

Sure, talk about making things better. They are great at that. Actually making a difference? Reminds me of a Bob Dobbs line "I don't practice what I preach because I am not the kind of person I'm preaching to."

We aren't where we are by accident. There is cause and there is effect. Wars for profit, tangled blood soaked corpses, climate disasters, poisoned waters, mass extinctions, all a big yawn. The purchasing of more and more denial is what every dollar in it buys them, and by all measures, they show no signs of slowing the race to the cliff.

Which reminds me of a line my Mom would say "If all your friends jumped off a cliff, would you too?" No, Ma. No.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
18. And they made us jump off the cliff so they could land on something softer than the rocks.
Mon Mar 7, 2016, 09:53 PM
Mar 2016

Neil Barofsky, the former special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, has published a new book, “Bailout: An Inside Account of How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street.” It presents a damning indictment of the Obama administration’s execution of the TARP program generally, and of HAMP in particular.

By delaying millions of foreclosures, HAMP gave bailed-out banks more time to absorb housing-related losses while other parts of Obama’s bailout plan repaired holes in the banks’ balance sheets. [font color="green"]According to Barofsky, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner even had a term for it. HAMP borrowers would “foam the runway” for the distressed banks looking for a safe landing.[/font color] It is nice to know what Geithner really thinks of those Americans who were busy losing their homes in hard times.

CONTINUED w VIDEO and links and more letters...

http://washingtonexaminer.com/video-geithner-sacrificed-homeowners-to-foam-the-runway-for-the-banks/article/2502982

People in Detroit have foamed the runway for centuries, from volunteering to fight in the Civil War to striking for fair working conditions to busting their chops as the Arsenal of Democracy to showing the world people of all races, religions and creeds could live and work together.http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=greatest_threads

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
19. For NAFTA
Mon Mar 14, 2016, 04:31 PM
Mar 2016
Larry Summers
and the Secret "End-Game" Memo


Thursday, August 22, 2013
By Greg Palast for Vice Magazine

EXCERPT...

The year was 1997. US Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin was pushing hard to de-regulate banks. That required, first, repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act to dismantle the barrier between commercial banks and investment banks. It was like replacing bank vaults with roulette wheels.

Second, the banks wanted the right to play a new high-risk game: "derivatives trading." JP Morgan alone would soon carry $88 trillion of these pseudo-securities on its books as "assets."

Deputy Treasury Secretary Summers (soon to replace Rubin as Secretary) body-blocked any attempt to control derivatives.

But what was the use of turning US banks into derivatives casinos if money would flee to nations with safer banking laws?

[font color="green"]The answer conceived by the Big Bank Five: eliminate controls on banks in every nation on the planet – in one single move. It was as brilliant as it was insanely dangerous. [/font color]

CONTINUED...

http://www.gregpalast.com/larry-summers-and-the-secret-end-game-memo/

Wish it weren't so. I'm in Detroit. My eyes aren't that bad.


Octafish

(55,745 posts)
22. Hillary Clinton was a Wal-Mart Director for 6 Years
Mon Mar 14, 2016, 05:18 PM
Mar 2016


Hillary Clinton was a Wal-Mart Director for 6 Years

Posted by Emine Dilek
The Progressive Press on Saturday, June 20, 2015 · 5 Comments

In 1986, Sam Walton, the founder of Wal-Mart, was under pressure to appoint a woman to the company’s 15-member -all male- board of directors. So, Mr. Walton asked a young lawyer, Hillary Rodham Clinton, who just happened to be married to the governor of Arkansas at the time, where Wal-Mart is based, to be the sole female member of the board.

During six years (1986 -1992) as a member of the Wal-Mart board of directors, Hillary Clinton remained silent as the world’s largest retailer waged a major campaign against the labor unions seeking to represent store workers.

John Tate who was one of Clinton’s fellow board members, was leading Wal-Mart’s anti-union efforts. Tate was also Wal-Mart’s executive vice president and served on the board with Clinton for four of her six years. Tate favorite phrase was, as he admitted himself, “Labor unions are nothing but blood-sucking parasites living off the productive labor of people who work for a living.”

According to an ABC News report, published in 2008, Clinton appears in videotapes of the stockholder meetings where she never appears to defend the role of labor unions. On the contrary, the tapes show Clinton in the role of a loyal company woman. “I’m always proud of Wal-Mart and what we do and the way we do it better than anybody else,” she said at a June 1990 stockholders meeting.

Clinton also worked at the Law Firm which represented Walmart. A 1994 New York Times story identified Clinton as the Rose Law firm’s lead lawyer for the company.

CONTINUED...

http://www.progressivepress.net/hillary-clinton-was-a-wal-mart-director-for-6-years/

PS: Thank you, kristopher! I feel like a bad person pointing these things out, but this is the kind of thing the nation's news media should point out BEFORE the election.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
24. NYT held story of Bush spying on USA in October 2004.
Mon Mar 14, 2016, 05:33 PM
Mar 2016

The editor said he was worried it might influence the coming election, so he sat on it for over a year.

I know people who died because of the Iraq war lies told -- both by W and Poppy.

 

highprincipleswork

(3,111 posts)
29. Those "RW asswipes" may like the "new DU"
Tue Mar 22, 2016, 11:12 AM
Mar 2016

The world economy did so much better for the majority of people under earlier notions of economics.

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