Now That We Are Poor
By David Glenn Cox
http://theservantsofpilate.com“Now that we are poor, we are free. No white man controls our footsteps.”
(Tatanka-Iyotanka/ Sitting Bull)
Warren Buffet was asked if GM should be allowed to go into bankruptcy. “I’d like to see them build cars in the existing environment; they are building cars under a business model that no longer exists.”
That is a euphemistic way of saying the middle class no longer exists. It is the modern-day equivalent of the final solution. But if we look deeper, we should ask, why does that business model no longer exist?
Ford and GM cars are competitively priced and comparable to the foreign competition. It's not that the cars are too expensive, it is that the people no longer have the money to purchase them. The Oracle of Omaha’s answer is to cut/ gut wages even further; it is the wages, he argues, that makes the US companies non-competitive. It is the high cost of health care that makes American autos non-competitive, yet no one talks about changing America’s health care business model.
When we were naked we created clothes; when it rained we created shelter. So it would stand to reason that if our countrymen are struggling we would create a business model that would benefit both worker and employer. To create any other system would be, in fact, a death sentence.
“The white man knows how to make everything, but he does not know how to distribute it.” (Tatanka Iyotake) Sitting Bull
“The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.” (Franklin Deleno Roosevelt)
“The historic function of fascism is to smash the working class, destroy its organizations, and stifle political liberties when the capitalists find themselves unable to govern and dominate with the help of democratic machinery.”
(Leon Trotsky)
It was this same Warren Buffet who said, “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” Slowly, ever so slowly, they begin to admit the truth, the truth that you and I and millions of others have known for a year or longer.
March 9 (Bloomberg) -- "The U.S. economy’s vital signs may not confirm a diagnosis of depression. The symptoms increasingly point to one. As in the Great Depression, world trade is collapsing, wealth is evaporating and the banking system is broken. Deflation is a growing threat as companies slash production, pay and prices. And leaders worldwide are having difficulty making headway in halting the self-perpetuating decline."
“We are tracking 1929-1930,” says Barry Eichengreen, a professor of economics and political science at the University of California, Berkeley.
The solutions offered by our government mirror the ideas of Buffet. "The best thing that could probably happen to General Motors, in my view, is they go into Chapter 11," John McCain said on Sunday. "A bankruptcy filing is the best way for the company to restructure its labor agreements and other commitments."
"That's where they belong," said Alabama Republican Sen. Richard Shelby, the top Republican on the Senate Banking Committee. "Short of (bankruptcy), the UAW will run those companies and run them into the ground." This has to be one of the most flagrant cases of blaming the victim in the history of the world. Who destroyed the business model of prosperity? Who was in charge of the automakers and the government?
The Chinese have a proverb, “May you live in interesting times.” It is appropriate for us in that we, the current generation and the generation rising, will either create a new world or destroy the existing one. The path ahead is fraught with peril, but at the same time it glitters with opportunity. Both the New Deal and the Third Reich started with the same purpose, to restore prosperity to the people. As the economy gets worse the public will become more radicalized. Their jobs, incomes, and retirement plans gone, they will likely become more accepting of radical solutions.
John McCain has proposed selling off the assets of failing banks, and while he has admitted that shareholders would in his words, “take a beating,” he said that "it is useless to prop up banks whose overall value continues to plummet.
“Some of these banks have to fail,” he said, adding that he has advocated for insurer AIG’s failure since last year’s $700 billion bailout bill.
“AIG, back, I believe, when we started bailing them out, I said we’ve got to let it fail. You can’t have zombie banks.”
Sen. Richard Shelby (Ala.), ranking Republican on the Senate Banking committee, also advocated for the collapse of the banks this Sunday. “Close them down, get them out of business,” he said.
AIG has 2.7 trillion dollars in insurance liabilities, corporate liabilities, government bonds, and even Grandma and Grampa’s retirement. So when these two ranking Republicans say, “take a beating,” they are advocating for an economic Armageddon. The beating they advocate is nothing less than dropping Zyklon B into America’s retirement system.
McCain and Shelby are proof positive that the system is nearing collapse. They are displaying a fanatical willingness to destroy millions in a vain attempt to rescue the investor class. The stock market mavens declare that the market needs clarity from President Obama, but when the President expresses with clarity, the market panics further. The market only wants clarity in the form of good news. They cling to Warren Buffet’s pronouncements that, “American business is strong.” They cling to faith and not to reality. They close their eyes and repeat, "there's no place like home," and the market rises one hundred and fifty points. Then they open their eyes and face the facts and it drops two hundred.
There is that feeling we have all felt riding a roller coaster, when they put the bar over your knees. You are locked in; the opportunity to change your mind is gone. You are going for a ride, like it or not. Either we change this world through debate, rock, club, gun, knife or ballot, or the world will change us for the worse. You can’t save enough money or hoard enough rice and beans. You can’t hide in the woods or run to the mountains. This is a war; it is an economic war for class survival. One side advocates that you take a beating while the other side argues that you take less of a beating. Less of a beating so long as it doesn’t interfere with the profits or taxes of the investor class. Neither side advocates returning to the model of prosperity.
“If a man loses something, and goes back to look for it, he will find it.”
(Tatanka-Iyotanka/ Sitting Bull)
“I did not know then how much was ended. When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young. And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people’s dream died there. It was a beautiful dream. . . the nation’s hoop is broken and scattered. There is no center any longer, and the sacred tree is dead." (Black Elk)
Life is not an easy matter... You cannot live through it without falling into frustration and cynicism unless you have before you a great idea which raises you above personal misery, above weakness, above all kinds of perfidy and baseness.
(Leon Trotsky)
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