The Decline and Fall of the American Empire

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Albert Einstein said: "the men who possess real power in this country have no intention of ending the cold war." It is one of the most incredible 'coincidences' in history that as the Berlin Wall fell and communism ceased to be the global threat we had been told it was, a new 'bogey man' would arise, as if on cue, to take its place. World terrorism', like a good steward, is now on the job, keeping the crooks on K-street and the Pentagon in firm control of one of the largest, most dangerous empires since Rome.

Like the U.S. today, the Roman economy was 'militarized', the empire over-extended, the battles fought by mercenaries. The currency might get you into the Coliseum for the 'games' but little else. Thus --bread and circuses were popular. When the Praetorian Guard auctioned the Roman Empire to Didius Julianus the sale was completed in Greek Drachmas --not worthless Roman Sesterces.

Some two decades ago, it was decided by the global financial elites that the framework for the global economy shall consist of:

1) A global derivative-based financial system, controlled by the US Federal Reserve Bank and its associate global banks in the developed countries.

2) The re-location from the West to the East in the production of goods, principally to China and India to “feed” the developed economies.

The entire system was built on a simple principle, that of a FED-controlled global reserve currency which will be the engine for growth for the global economy. It is essentially an imperialist economic principle.

Once we grasp this fundamental truth, Bernanke’s boast that the “US can produce as many US dollars as it wishes at no cost” takes on a different dimension.

I have talked to so many economists and when asked what is the crux of the present financial problem, they all respond in unison, “it is the global imbalances… the West consumes too much while the East saves too much and consumes not enough”. This is exemplified by the huge US trade deficits on the one part and China’s massive surpluses on the other.

--Red Alert: The Second Wave of The Financial Tsunami

The U. S. is routinely pimped on K-Street and, like Rome's sesterces and denarius, the dollar is all but worthless; China boasts the Worlds largest POSITIVE current account balance; the US the largest trade deficit. China props up the US dollar but only because it has to. This Faustian bargain was first cut by Bush Sr who paved the way for Nixon's famous trip to China's Forbidden City.

In December 2008 Lawrence Summers, soon to become the administration’s highest-ranking economist, called for decisive action. “Many experts,” he warned, “believe that unemployment could reach 10 percent by the end of next year.” In the face of that prospect, he continued, “doing too little poses a greater threat than doing too much.”

Ten months later unemployment reached 10.2 percent, suggesting that despite his warning the administration hadn’t done enough to create jobs. You might have expected, then, a determination to do more.

--Paul Krugman, The Phantom Menace

Some have said that the stiumli were not enough, in other words, 'too small'. It was not that the stimuli were too small but that those getting the stimuli were the banksters who had created this mess to begin with. Alas --nothing is learned from the lessons of history.

Most economists agree: the West consumes too much and the East, primarily China does not consume enough. Compounding the problem --China props up the dollar but only because it had to dump cheap product upon the American market via Wal-Mart, it's retail 'arm' in the U.S.

Rome

The Rise and Fall of an Empire

Why I moderate comments

• SPAM: 'comments' that link to junk, 'get rich' schemes, scams, and nonsense! These are the worst offenders.
• Ad hominem attacks: 'name calling' and 'labeling'. That includes the ad hominem: 'truther' or variations!

---

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How the GOP, Reagan, Bush Sr, Bush Jr Betrayed, Pillaged, then Sold the U.S.

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

George W. Bush's war of naked aggression against Iraq --a war crime --has not only bankrupted the US, it has brought the entire world to the brink of economic ruin. It is also an ignominious defeat and may one day be compared to Valens' loss to barbarians at Adrianople. One wonders: what sound is made by collapsing empires? Do they go boom or 'suck'?

As the most dominant empire since Roman times, America has helped to bring great wealth and prosperity to the world..

--Pat Robertson

Amid Robertson's 'celebration' of American empire, his death threats against Hugo Chavez or Americans daring to oppose his idiocy, Robertson forgot the rest of the story: Rome fell.

The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful.

--Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Chapter 2

Rome fell for the same reasons the US will have lost empire and world influence. Like Rome, the US has despoiled the land, waged war upon both the small farmer and the laborer, outsourced it's industry, devalued the dollar and subverted the products of labor --the sole source of 'value' in any economy. That the US 'current account balance' --as officially recorded by the CIA --is the highest in the world proves that US is bankrupt and has been for years. It also proves that GOP economics have made the US less productive vis a vis the rest of the world.

Indeed, it is the rest of the world which keeps the US afloat. As long as the rest of the world can extend us credit, it can continue to sell to the US consumer. When the plug is pulled, China and Japan will vie for second place down the chute. Like short sellers on Wall Street, 'last man out' loses!

As Gibbon reminds us, Rome --like the United States of late --was full of 'Pat Robertson' types eager to invoke the power of 'God' on their side, eager to bring down God's wrath on those daring to dissent.

It was the fashion of the times to attribute every remarkable event to the particular will of the Deity; the alterations of nature were connected, by an invisible chain, with the moral and metaphysical opinions of the human mind; and the most sagacious divines could distinguish, according to the colour of their respective prejudices, that the establishment of heresy tended to produce an earthquake, or that a deluge was the inevitable consequence of the progress of sin and error.

--Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Chapter 26

Gibbon is famous for attributing Rome's fall to a 'loss of civil virtue' and, elsewhere states that, under the Empire of Rome, the 'labour of an industrious and ingenious people was variously, but incessantly employed in the service of the rich'. Gibbon correctly states that agriculture was for Rome, as it is for every culture today, the foundation of manufacturing.

Elsewhere, Gibbon described what we would call 'supply side economics' but fails to hold it responsible for Rome's fall.

But in the present imperfect condition of society, luxury, though it may proceed from vice or folly, seems to be the only means that can correct the unequal distribution of property. The diligent mechanic, and the skilful artist, who have obtained no share in the division of the earth, receive a voluntary tax from the possessors of land; and the latter are prompted, by a sense of interest, to improve those estates, with whose produce they may purchase additional pleasures. This operation, the particular effects of which are felt in every society, acted with much more diffusive energy in the Roman world.

Gibbon, op cit

Thus, Gibbon avoids the issue of how the wealthy obtained wealth initially that they might employ the 'diligent mechanic and the skilful artist'. In other passages, however, Gibbon clearly traces the origins of all wealth to 'land' and the human 'labor' expended making it fruitful. This is consistent with the 'Labor Theory of Value', espoused by almost every major economist from the conservative Adam Smith to the 'left leaning' Karl Marx. Rome's fall, therefore, may be traced to the rise of 'supply-side economics' or, as it is often called, 'trickle down theory'.

Rome fell because it became economically impossible. Wars of conquest ravaged the class of 'freeborn farmers' whose lands were seized whilst they were away at war. Slaves brought back to Rome permanently depressed, perhaps destroyed, the job market.

Eventually, the free-born farmer was forced by policy and circumstance to compete with slaves for jobs. Rome had forgotten or never knew the source of wealth itself: labor! It is among the many 'evils' of slavery that in addition to being cruel, it subverts the very value of labor and deprives society of it.

A slave was but a machine in which the 'elite' had made an investment. The elite landowners literally worked their slaves to death and replaced them with 'new models'. A 'slave', however, is an economic dead end.

Many free-born farmers tried to compete in the contracting market --sowing, planting, harvesting, taking crops to market. Because the large landowners (what we might call the corporate farmer today) worked their lands with slaves, they were able to underbid the free-born farmer. Many abandoned their farms when they became unprofitable. They swelled the ranks of the permanently unemployed in Rome. Slaves, arguably, were better off. There were, at least, employed.

That public virtue which among the ancients was denominated patriotism, is derived from a strong sense of our own interest in the preservation and prosperity of the free government of which we are members. Such a sentiment, which had rendered the legions of the republic almost invincible, could make but a very feeble impression on the mercenary servants of a despotic prince; and it became necessary to supply that defect by other motives, of a different, but not less forcible nature; honour and religion.

--Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Chapter 1

It is fashionable but flat wrong to say that Democrats are equally guilty. Trouble was in evidence even before World War I, the era of robber barons. The Great Depression resulted from a 'fever' --the idea that speculative riches were easy. It was thought that the bubble would last forever. The 'bubble' burst and a great depression ensued.

World War II put people back to work but it was also --as a result of fair, progressive taxation --the most egalitarian period in American history. As GOP policies eventually dominated following WWII, the rich were taxed less and less, and as a result, productivity fell.

Income disparities increased exponentially. In other words, the rich got rich and the poor, much, much poorer. Until Bush Jr, the most dramatic demonstration of those facts had been the administration of Ronald Reagan which doubled the Federal Bureaucracy and tripled the national deficit. Federal spending under Reagan was completely out of control; the budget ballooned. If any net wealth had been created, none of it trickled down: productivity declined, unemployment rose, job growth declined well below the Carter levels. [See: Bureau of Labor Statistics]

As recently as 2006, many blogs, newspapers and electronic media were reporting a 'global economic boom'. Bands might well have played 'The Charleston' or 'Varsity Drag', the newsreel soundtrack to heady days of fast bucks and faster women, rowdy days in which the belief that anyone could get rich was encouraged by the GOP. What was in it for them? Votes! The GOP was living in a past best remembered for the Stutz Bearcat and Racoon Coats soon to be followed by "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?". [See video below]

A scheme in which the rest of the world would keep the US afloat so that it might buy their products might have worked, for a while, but for the ruinous, the disastrous effects of the US war of aggression against Iraq. America's 'unquenchable materialistic appetite' drove the world economy. The economies of several nations, including Japan, possibly China, will collapse when the US consumer is not employed sufficiently to buy their product. When the US consumer goes belly up, so too will the nations that depend upon those billions of US dollars.

The parallels with the crash of 1929 are as valid as are analogies to Rome. US debt now tops the total debts of all the nations of the world at about 4.3 trillion dollars. Another nation might be bailed out by a bigger, richer nation. In this case, however, the entire world is not rich enough to bail out America. In 1929, the debt ratio in relation to the Gross National Product stood at a healthy 16%. In 1990, at the end of the ruinous and disastrous Reagan administration, the national debt had increased to 60% of the GDP. Insatiable America ran up a tab that is now due but there is no nation on earth capable or willing to pick up the tab. Wherever and whenever Rome 'pulled out' its legions because it could no longer support them in situ the Dark Age would begin.

The Republican Great Depression began in 1929, not 1932, and it was the direct result of 9 years of unrelenting trickle-down economics delivered under three Republican Presidents (Harding, Coolidge and Hoover) and their treasury Secretary, the anti-tax, anti-regulation corporate titan, Andrew Mellon.

As I write in the introduction of my new book, Yeah, Right: "This Economy Is Strong and Other Tall Tales:

Hoover came to the presidency in March 1929 after a campaign in which he insisted that a "continuation of the policies of the Republican party is fundamentally necessary to the future advancement of this progress and to the further building up of this prosperity."

When the market crashed in October 1929, the true cost of the Republicans' get-rich-today-and-don't-worry-about-tomorrow policies became all too apparent. Years of corporate deregulation, Wall Street manipulation, rampant speculation, cuts in taxation for the wealthy, and easy-credit expansion for consumers had fueled an unsustainable bubble of artificial wealth that popped with devastating effect.

But Hoover refused to acknowledge the collapse. The "fundamental business of the country," he insisted, was "on a sound and prosperous basis."

Compare those pre- and post- crash Hoover statements to these pre- and post-crash McCain statements:

He should be judged very, very well as far as the economy is concerned. We're in a long sustained period of economic growth.

- John McCain on George W. Bush, March 5, 2007

I still believe the fundamentals of our economy are strong.

- August 2008

Based on that record, there are few people in America who could more rightly claim to be the heir of Herbert Hoover than John McCain (if you're thinking Bush, you're close, but he's actually Calvin Coolidge's heir).

--Jim Oleske, Memo to McCain: Hoover was a REPUBLICAN, Daily Kos

I blame the GOP for this debacle, specifically the incompetent and venal administrations of Ronald Reagan and Bush Sr and, most recently, that of George W. Bush, the lesser idiot.

Let's take a look at the history before it gets re-written:

• Any Democratic President has presided over greater economic growth and job creation than any Republican President since World War II.
• When Bush Jr took office, job creation was worst under a Republican, Bush Sr, at 0.6% per year and best under a Democrat, Johnson, at 3.8% per year.
• Economic growth under President Carter was far greater than under Reagan or Bush Sr. In fact, economic growth in general was greater under Johnson, Kennedy, Carter, and Clinton than under Reagan or Bush. Democrats always outperform a failed party: the GOP!
  
• The job creation rate under Clinton was 2.4% significantly higher than Ronald Reagan's 2.1% per year.
• The "top performing Presidents" by this standard, in order from best down, were Johnson, Carter, Clinton, and Kennedy. The "worst" (in descending order) were Nixon, Reagan, Bush.
• Half of jobs created under Reagan were in the public sector--some 2 million jobs added to the Federal Bureaucracy. Hadn't he promised to reduce that bureaucracy?
• Reagan, though promising to reduce government and spending, tripled the national debt and left huge deficits to his successor. Bush Jr's record will be even worse.
• By contrast, most of the jobs created on Clinton's watch were in the private sector.
• Put another way: any Democratic President beats any Republican President since World War II.

Everything posted above is based upon official, government stats from the Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, CBO, and BEA among others. They are 'official' and irrefutable unless someone wants to make the outlandish case that the Federal Bureaucracy, the numerous agencies which keep these stats, is somehow biased. That argument is absurd in light of the fact that of those 20 years from the election of Ronald Reagan to the stolen election of 2000, Democrats had the Presidency in only eight of them.

Following are just some of the 'accomplishments' of the GOP as they come to me. With any effort at all, you will find hundreds more. The following I dashed 'off the top of my head".

1. Total and humiliating defeat for the US in Iraq
2. The utter collapse of the US economy
3. The export of American jobs to China and anywhere BUT the US.
4. Selling out the American consumer to Wal- Mart; most Americans no longer earn enough to shop anywhere else. Wal-Mart depresses local economies, has forced employees to work 'off the clock', in other words, 'work for free'. Wal-Mart has destroyed the 'downtown' areas of small towns. You can still see them. But only in Norman Rockwell prints.
   
5. Dividing the US into those who have and those who have not where those who have not make up over 90 percent of the population and those have are but a about one percent and own MORE than 90 percent combined.
6. The dumbing down of America with 'faith-based' initiatives'; what had been needed was fact-based initiatives that encouraged intelligence --rather than gullibility and the belief in economic voodoo. Like 'trickle down theory' and other GOP 'economic voodoo', 'faith-based inititives' was a callous fraud exemplified by the "Houston Miracle" often attributed to Bush protoge Rod Paige. It was a fraud. The test scores were phony baloney. Like Enron, they cooked the books.
   
7. The destruction of New Orleans because black folk dared to live there. Recently it has been learned that residents of the white suburb of Algiers Point murdered black residents trying to escape rising flood waters in New Orleans. As New Orleans tried to recover, Bush infamously said: "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job"
   
8. The subversion of American jurisprudence by packing SCOTUS with ideologues and idiots who clearly thought that it was their job to re-write the Constitution --not apply it. Clue: Antonin Scallia cannot carry James Madison's shit! Scalia had all but admitted his bias even before the debacle in Florida was taken to the high court. Scalia himself admitted that his aim was to prevent Bush from falling behind in the recount. He would try to undo the laws of common-sense and logic to do it: "Count first and rule upon the legality afterward is not a recipe for producing election results that have the public acceptance that democratic stability requires!" Excuse me, Antonin! The guy getting the fewer number of votes is SUPPOSED to lose, you idiot! Fact is, Antonin never had a stupid idea that he could not intellectualize with big words and bullshit! But --as Scallia himself opined: "I'm too smart for this court!" Of late, that may be true. And that is enough to give one night terrors.
   
9. The destruction of the US environment.
10. Presiding over US descent into third world, possibly fourth world status.
11. Turning American cities into sprawling out-of-control carbuncles the purpose of which was to inspire car sales and increased oil consumption. This is especially stupid as 'car making' was essemtially 'outsourced' to Japanese plants paying MUCH LOWER wages inside the US. Toyata was allowed to build cars in the US and pay much less than autoworkers would have made in Detroit. Workers who make less money, spend less mony --unless they are extended credit. Credit seems like FREE MONEY UNTIL THE BILL COMES DUE!
12. Gerrymandering congressional districts such that the GOP might get majorities in both houses of Congress.
13. Openly deriding the Constitution --as George W. Bush had done numerous times in various ways.
14. Encouraging stupidity, rewarding incompetence, elevating ideology above intelligence.
15. Turning American cities into ugly carbuncles in which robber baron corporations brainwash a captive audience in Potemkin villages called 'suburbs' or --worse --'planned communities' which come with an implicit guarantee that you will not see a 'negro'.
16. Becoming a blood-sucking parasite that killed its host.

In simpler times, goppers would have been denounced as being possessed by demons and subject to the 'trial by water'. Certainly --by defining their opposition as 'terrorist' in nature, the GOP had hoped to subject them to trial by water boarding.

Political dissent is one thing --but the outright subversion of the rule of law as institutionalized by the GOP is nothing less than high treason.

The GOP is not a political party. It's a crime syndicate and a kooky, malevolent cult.

---

Chavez and Ahmadinejad Pow-wow Amid Fears of US 'Economic Armageddon'

One is tempted to conclude that Chavez and Ahmadinejad are meeting to plan the death of the US dollar. Certainly, an oil bourse trading in Euros, might do the trick. Both men at the head of countries that still produce significant amounts of oil may have this power.

It is no coincidence that most recent dollar falls have occurred during the regime of George W. Bush, who walks a tight rope by keeping the dollar low but not collapsed. That, instead of building up a real economy, is how Bush floats his bubble upon the backs of US poor, US elderly and people in developing nations all over the world

Otherwise, the jobless rate would be even worse and Bush's failed regime would be seen for what it is: a house of cards. Chavez and Ahmadinejad have the power to collapse the house or break the bank. They have the power to expose the fraud Bush perpetrates at home and abroad.

Bush must surely be haunted by Iranian threats --not nuclear but monetary. I will leave it to economists to predict what might happen to the US economy if Iran should follow through with plans to establish an oil bourse trading in Euros, not dollars.

Ahmadinejad has Bush by the cajones. Unless Bush is prepared to utterly wipe out Iran, there is really very little Bush can do about it. Just this morning Ahmadinejad is in Venezuela for talks with Hugo Chavez. Both men have defied US imperialism. Both men lead oil producing countries. Both men detest Bush. Both men have a common interest --trading oil in currency other than the US dollar. If Bush were a responsible and legitimate President, the prospects might keep him awake at night.

It was about a year ago, as you may recall, that Hugo Chavez stirred the UN General Assembly and the world, calling Bush "the Devil". Bush had been there, Chavez said at the time. You could still smell the sulphur. These days its not sulphur but dollars going up in smoke as US currency continues its long slide into oblivion.

Current geopolitical tensions between the United States and Iran extend beyond the publicly stated concerns regarding Iran's nuclear intentions, and likely include a proposed Iranian "petroEuro " system for oil trade. Similar to the Iraq war, military operations against Iran relate to the macroeconomics of 'petrodollar recycling' and the un-publicized but real challenge to US dollar supremacy from the Euro as an alternative oil transaction currency.

It is now obvious the invasion of Iraq had less to do with any threat from Saddam's long-gone WMD program and certainly less to do to do with fighting International terrorism than it has to do with gaining strategic control over Iraq's hydrocarbon reserves and in doing so maintain the US dollar as the monopoly currency for the critical international oil market. Throughout 2004 information provided by former administration insiders revealed the Bush/Cheney administration entered into office with the intention of toppling Saddam.[1][2] Candidly stated, 'Operation Iraqi Freedom' was a war designed to install a pro-US government in Iraq, establish multiple US military bases before the onset of global Peak Oil, and to reconvert Iraq back to petrodollars while hoping to thwart further OPEC momentum towards the Euro as an alternative oil transaction currency

--Petrodollar Warfare & The Euro

Coppes is no crank. He's chief economicst for Morgan-Stanley and predicted a 90% chance of a US "economic armageddon".

It's been a slow but steady decline over decades. Gore Vidal puts a specific date on it, wrapping up our fiscal weakness with the passage of the National Security Act of 1947 [NSC-68]; then implemented in January 1950. The National Security Council was created by Public Law 80-253, approved July 26, 1947, as part of a general reorganization of the US. national security apparatus. The function of the NSC as outlined in the 1947 act was to advise the President on integration of domestic, foreign, and military policies relating to national security and to facilitate interagency cooperation. At the President's direction, the NSC could also assess and appraise risks to US national security, consider policies, and then report or make recommendations to the President.

In his retirement President Truman denied any responsibility for "cloak and dagger operations" but it was during his Presidency that covert intelligence operations in support of foreign policy objectives was undertaken on an ever broadening scale. The NSC's first action (NSC 1/1) authorized covert action in the Italian elections. The formal institutionalization of covert actions was established as NSC 4 in December 1947, and NSC 10/2 of June 1948.

I was asked to speak tonight about the National Security Act of 1947, which was enacted sixty years ago to the day. On a personal and professional level, it’s extremely significant to me—it created the two organizations I currently represent: the Air Force and CIA. Today is a double anniversary, so I’ve been invited to a lot more celebrations than usual.

--CIA Director's Remarks at the INSA Dinner

It was with the passage of this act, Vidal says, that the US began a regime of strict "governmental control of our economy coupled with the gradual erosion of our liberties" and all in the interest of "national security". Truman, in Vidal's view, thus sold us out upon the urging of GOP Senator Arthur Vandenburg, GOP, who "...told Truman that if he really wanted all those weapons and all those high taxes to pay for them, he had better 'scare the hell out of the American people."

Thus began three trends that have sealed our fate --our eventual bankruptcy as a result of empire, perpetual war ala Orwell, and --the unkindest cut of all --Democratic sell outs to the GOP! The result is the "auctioning off" of the office of President of the United States, an eventuality embodied in Mussolini's term: corporatism.

Something similar occurred on March 28th, 193 AD, when the Praetorian guards, literally, sold the Roman empire to the wealthy senator Didius Julianus for the bargain price of 6250 drachmas. I haven't tried to buy drachmas (lately) but it sounds like a bargain compared to the absurdly high prices that are paid by US corporations for control of the US Presidency, indeed, the US government. Our modern day "Didius" has fared better than Julianus.

A magnificent feast was prepared by his order, and he amused himself until a very late hour, with dice, and the performances of Pylades, a celebrated dancer. Yet it was observed that after the crowd of flatterers dispersed, and left him to darkness, solitude, and terrible reflection, he passed a sleepless night; revolving most probably in his mind his own rash folly, the fate of his virtuous predecessor, and the doubtful and dangerous tenure of an empire, which had not been acquired by merit, but purchased by money.

- Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; See also: Edward Gibbon: General Observations on the Fall of the Roman Empire in the West

An important point must be made here. Gibbon reports that Julianus paid for the Roman Empire in "drachmas". "Drachmas" denotes Greek currency. At that time, the basic unit of currency in Ancient Rome was a bronze coin called an as or aes. A sestertius, another bronze coin, was worth four asses. A silver coin, the denarius, was worth 16 asses. [I will not go there!]

If Gibbon is correct, it is an indication that Rome, by that time in decline, had suffered a catastrophic devaluation of its coinage. Even now "real" money is considered by some to be "gold" if anything at all has intrinsic value. That Didius Julianus would pay in Greek currency, not Roman, indicates to me that the smart money had already dumped the as, the asses, and the sestertius for drachmas. At last, bronze would seem to have little intrinsic value as "real" money unless you had enough of it to melt down for public statuary. I would wager that only very wealthy Roman aristocracy possessed denarius, which they might have held against the complete collapse of bronze coins.

Here's where everything begins to hit us where we live. Gibbon is remembered not only because he wrote a comprehensive nine volume history of the Roman Empire, he ventured a thesis: the Roman Empire, he claims, fell to barbarian invasions because of "a loss of civic virtue". The citizenry had become lazy. The empire had taken up the habit of "outsourcing" to barbarian mercenaries the more odious jobs, primarily the defense of the empire itself. By the time the Emperor Valens faced the "barbarians" at Adrianople, it is probably true that none of his some 40,000 legionaries were, properly, citizens of Rome. They were, perhaps, the 379 AD version of Blackwater, composed largely of Syrians and "barbarian" troops from Gaul. [I can't resist a trivia diversion. Gibbon, who devoted his life to his history of Rome, left London to complete his work in a less hectic environment: Lausanne on Lac Leman, otherwise known as Lake Geneva.]

As St. Thomas More said, our "business" now lies in escaping. He actually felt it his duty. But, alas, More was beheaded for his efforts. I still have hopes that we fare better but the road ahead is daunting. More understood how, in his own time, a privileged elite exploited the economic misfortunes of others.

The rich men not only by private fraud, but also by common laws, do every day pluck and snatch away from the poor some part of their daily living. So whereas it seemed before unjust to recompense with unkindness their pains that have been beneficial to the public weal, now they have to this their wrong and unjust dealing given the name of justice, yea, and that by force of law. Therefore when I consider and weigh in my mind all these commonwealths, which nowadays anywhere do flourish, so God help me, I can perceive nothing but a certain conspiracy of rich men procuring their own commodities under the name and title of the commonwealth.

--Sir Thomas More, Utopia

Bush having screwed the world, the "world" seems conspicuously less inclined to come to America's aid.

The rest of the world may come to our aid when Bush is securely out of office but mere regime change will mean little. I see no stomach in either party for the reforms that might stay the hand of economic fate. As long as Bush is President, there is little upside for Europe, China, or Japan to continue shoring up a collapsing dollar.

France bailed out our failing "Revolution" --not because they loved us, but because the separation of American colonies from the British Empire was in their interests. The arrogance of American regimes and this one in particular does not help our case today. In revolutionary times, Benjamin Franklin charmed the French who adopted the "coonskin" hat and made of it the fashion statement du jour. Bush is no Franklin. In Europe, he is a cockroach, une blatte.

Bush misrule has taken its toll. Recently, in Europe, I watched a BBC documentary about happiness and the nature of governments in those nations whose people are most happy. The conclusion: happy people are more numerous in Democratic countries which respect privacy, civil liberties, and individual rights --freedom of speech and religion. People also tend to be happier in wealthier nations though wealth, in and of itself, does not correlate precisely with individual happiness.

The war on terrorism was lost when Bush became a terrorist. Bush has, thus, attacked the very source of our "happiness" --our nation's wealth, our privacy, our civil liberties and rights, our sense of security. It is difficult to be happy with the knowledge that one's own government has made of itself your enemy, militating openly against your interests and those of your neighbors.

Still, I urge everyone to make an existentialist choice. Choose to be happy in spite of Bush. It will drive him even nuttier than he already is. I suggest Victor Frankl's "Man Search for Meaning". Frankl knows what he writes about, having survived a Nazi death camp. The least we can do is survive George W. Bush.

Alan Greenspan's Role in Dollar Fall

The Trillion Dollar Bet

Additional Resources

• The End of the Western World we have known since 1945
• The coming financial collapse of the U.S. government
• Consequences of a dollar collapse
• America's Indebted Prosperity
• Chavez skips UN General Assembly
• Gore Vidal: The Decline and Fall of the American Empire
US Consumption of Foreign Products
• The Four Biggest Myths About the US War Against the People of Iraq
  
• Pentagon Wages Deadly, Silent, Toxic War on US
• The War on Terrorism, Noam Chomsky
• “Wal-Mart’s Impact Far-Reaching,” by Jeffrey Rubin.
• “Is Wal-Mart Good for America?” by PBS “Frontline.”
• Read the USCC report, US–China Trade, 1989–2003: Impact on Jobs and Industries, Nationally and State-by-State.
• Read AFL-CIO Chief International Economist Thea Lee’s statement on US–China ties before the US House of Representatives Committee on International Relations.

Discoveries

• OGM Foods-Genetically Modified Food
• L'imposture de la lune et des americains
• When It Happens
• Ah Pook

The Cowboy's Shared News Items

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War Crimes
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Billionaires For Bush Reveal How Bush Paid Off His Base and Stuck You with the Tab

If you think the astounding rise of income inequities and the rise of the GOP are just coincidental, please email me. I would like to speak with you about the many advantages and pleasures you might derive as the new, proud owner of the Brooklyn Bridge. The GOP sold Ronald Reagan's tax cut of 1982 like George W. Bush sold his war on Iraq. The benefits of both have accrued only to this nation's power elite and, in both cases, everyone else is stuck with the tab. It will be left to sons, daughters, grand-children and great grand children to retire the debt Bush has run up murdering civilians in Iraq. Yet, odds are, many of those same sons, daughters and their offspring will start life pulling up the rear having been denied pole position at the outset.

Bush stuck you in yet another way. His "elite" base got the tax cut that you didn't. Those who did not get a tax cut are considered "poor" but are getting poorer as we live and breath. His "base" was rich at the time Bush cut their taxes. They've gotten richer as a result. Where will Bush's base hide, I wonder, when the bill he has run up in Iraq comes due? They are not worried. Bush has been bought and paid for.

We have grown up with "official myths", Horatio Alger stories of rags-to-riches, stories about how down-and-out boys might achieve an American dream of wealth and success through mere hard work and fair dealing. The US, myths say, is not an aristocracy; it is a "meritocracy". On the other side of the coin is an implicit message that if the deserving poor eventually get rich, those that are not rich deserve to be poor.

The GOP are well-advised not to waste my time and their time denying it. Their progenitur is Scrooge.

"Are there no workhouses? Are there no prisons...then let them die and decrease the surplus population."

—Scrooge, A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

Still, the GOP is indicted best in their own words. Pat Buchanan is the class example.

One by one, the prophets of doom appeared at the podium. The Reagan decade, they moaned, was a terrible time in America; and the only way to prevent even worse times, they said, is to entrust our nation's fate and future to the party that gave us McGovern, Mondale, Carter and Michael Dukakis.

--Patrick J. Buchanan, 1992 Republican National Convention Speech, Houston, Texas

Buchanan targeted Democrats already tarred with the label "liberal", a GOP code word for anyone opposing GOP robber-baron economics. Any Democrat would have made a better President than any Republican chosen at random. At least one on Buchanan's hit list did. Jimmy Carter, now demonized with a GOP made-up, code word --stagflation. There is, in fact, no real word for an economic condition that only Republicans seemed to have complained about. Certainly, when another Democrat interrupts the GOP diet of government gravy and Pentagon pork, he/she will be accused of stagflation --or whatever word GOP consultants and focus groups can make-up or otherwise "pass".

The critics Buchanan so vociferously publicized were right about Reagan's disastrous presidency. Much of the rest of Buchanan's speech credits Reagan with any number of things which Reagan had nothing whatsoever to do with or things which occurred despite Reagan's worst efforts.

It was under our party that the Berlin Wall came down...

Thus it is implied that Ronald Reagan, who paid tribute to Nazi SS dead at Bitburg, had something to do with bringing down the Berlin Wall. Reagan is more accurately remembered for having "blinked" when Gorbachev put total nuclear disarmament on the table for negotiation at Rekjavik.

Buchanan's next absurdity must be read while remembering Bush v Gore:

We stand with President Bush in favor of federal judges who interpret the law as written, and against Supreme Court justices who think they have a mandate to rewrite our Constitution.

To be fair, Buchanan could not have known in 1992 that in a mere eight years a "conservative" majority on the high court would prove him wrong yet again. For all the right wing bluster about "strict constructionist" interpretations of the US Constitution, it will be forever recalled that it was the Republican majority on the Supreme Court that rewrote the Constitution in order to put into office an imperial "President" who would finish off the venerable document for good!

Wealth "trickling up" is a world wide phenomenon but the effects are stunning. In the year 2000, almost twenty years after the infamous Ronald Reagan tax cut benefiting only the richest Americans, a tiny elite, the richest 1% of adults, owned 40% of the world’s total assets. In 2000, the richest 10% of adults owned 85% of total assets. The bottom half of the world adult population owned a mere 1% of global wealth.

[See: World Institute for Development Economics Research, The World Distribution of Household Wealth, 2006]. It's gotten much worse since then.

It is well known that wealth is shared out unfairly. "People on the whole have normally distributed attributes, talents and motivations, yet we finish up with wealth distributions that are much more unequal than that," says Robin Marris, emeritus professor of economics at Birkbeck, University of London.

In 1897, a Paris-born engineer named Vilfredo Pareto showed that the distribution of wealth in Europe followed a simple power-law pattern, which essentially meant that the extremely rich hogged most of a nation's wealth (New Scientist, 19 August 2000, p22). Economists later realised that this law applied to just the very rich, and not necessarily to how wealth was distributed among the rest.

Now it seems that while the rich have Pareto's law to thank, the vast majority of people are governed by a completely different law. Physicist Victor Yakovenko of the University of Maryland in College Park and his colleagues analysed income data from the US Internal Revenue Service from 1983 to 2001. They found that while the income distribution among the super-wealthy- about 3 per cent of the population- does follow Pareto's law, incomes for the remaining 97 per cent fitted a different curve- one that also describes the spread of energies of atoms in a gas.

In the gas model, people exchange money in random interactions, much as atoms exchange energy when they collide. While economists' models traditionally regard humans as rational beings who always make intelligent decisions, econophysicists argue that in large systems the behaviour of each individual is influenced by so many factors that the net result is random, so it makes sense to treat people like atoms in a gas. The analogy also holds because money is like energy, in that it has to be conserved. "It's like a fluid that flows in interactions, it's not created or destroyed, only redistributed," says Yakovenko.

--New Scientist, There's one rule for the rich

Some essential background:

• In 1979, the top 1 per cent of the US population earned, on average, 33.1 times as much as the lowest 20 per cent. In 2000, the multiplier had grown to 88.5. Certainly, since Ronald Reagan's tax cut of 1982, US "inequality" grew steadily but for a brief respite in Clinton's second term. Bush's final record will be even worse.
  
• Surveys have also identified a small, but fast-growing global group of 70,000 super rich individuals with more than $30 million in financial assets. This group is growing even faster than "paupers" in the $1 million-plus bracket." [See: World's richest worth $29 trillion in 2003; Survey: Wealthy now back at level before dot-com bust. MSNBC.com, June 15, 2004 ]
• The top fifth of households saw their income rise 43 percent between 1977 and 1999, while the bottom fifth saw their income fall 9 percent.
  
• The top fifth now makes more than the rest of the nation combined
  
• Table 2: Share of Total Available Household Net Worth, 2001*
  
  

  Wealth Group	Share of Net Worth
  99-100th percentile	32.7%
  95-99th percentile	25.0%
  90-95th percentile	12.1%
  50th-90th percentile	27.1%
  0-50th percentile	2.8%
  Total	100.0%

  [See: Kennickell, 2003. See data from the Federal Reserve Board for details.

The "center" itself would not be so bad were not the centers so far to the "right", in other words, skewed. Imagine a line with a tiny, ruling oligarchy on the right end and a perfectly egalitarian democracy i.e, a group sharing both power and wealth in perfect equity on the left end. The bulging bell curve in the middle of this line is not --in America --the middle at all, but far to the right. In America, the center is not in the center and may never have been.

While a tiny few, like Bill Gates, may indulge acts of philanthropy from time to time, the over all trends have not changed. A more egalitarian society is the preferred remedy to injustice --not isolated acts of charity, however kind. Moreover, with very, very few exceptions, those growing rich at the expense of others are unlikely to become more liberal as they gain riches. With few notable and statistically insignificant exceptions, the nouveau riche will continue to "...dance with the party that brung 'em." Reagan-heads called it the "Reagan Revolution" for good reason. Conditioned to think of "revolution" in terms of the French or Russian revolutions, Americans might not have grasped the significant harm "Reaganomics" have done America. It was for real.

How many people actually rule America by virtue of their great wealth, their ability to finance political campaigns, their ability to open doors with a phone call? The size of this group is variously estimated, but the fact is no one really knows. Surveys don't ask that question and political consultants like Karl Rove or Paul Caprio will most certainly not tell you. It is possible, however, to estimate the size of a group that literally owns some 99 percent of all "wealth" in the US. As this group grows both smaller and richer, the GOP declines in terms of total votes that can be counted on. This is why the GOP must, of necessity, communicate to its core base via "code words". The GOP, in other words, cannot afford to be honest even with its rank and file. It has cut a Faustian bargain with a tiny elite, Bush's base.

This tiny elite, Bush's base, must work behind the scenes. Robber barons have the money and the power to interfere with the electoral process in numerous ways. The most glaring development is the rise of super-conservative "networks" like Fox and talk shows like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. These programs are the Right Wing's propaganda machine, "faux news" programs that make no effort to tell the truth. Gullible people who have nothing in common with Rupert Murdoch will nevertheless fall for the Fox line. In more egalitarian days, opposing voices could demand and get "equal time". The Fairness Doctrine was deliberately targeted by un-American, "monied" interests for whom the open exchange of ideas is a threat.

Even Roman Emperors gave the vox populi lip service with a healthy soupcon of bread and circuses. The most successful oligarchs --real and faux --are those who succeed in tricking the "folk" into thinking them "...of the people". A regular contributor to this blog wrote recently:

Howard Dean, along with the other main stream Dem orgs. and the progressive Dem.orgs had better figure out a way to co-exist and share resources, they are going to need, if they are to over come this corrupt bunch they are about to take the field with.

Certainly, as more voters grow dis-enchanted with George W. Bush and the GOP in general, Democratic prospects will improve. But there is a downside to the political reality that even as they grow smaller in number, the GOP's natural base grows very, very rich.

Sadly, our electoral system seems designed to weed out dissent deviating past a certain "norm", a norm acceded to by a tiny, exceedingly rich, ruling cabal, a "norm" established by the Democratic and Republican wings of a single party.

An update.

Americans Now Resemble Pre-War Nazi Germans

You see them at the supermarket aggressively pushing their shopping carts around, and you get this feeling that if you do not move fast enough they might just run into you. You detect an undercurrent of suppressed rage, hostility, and detachment as if they are on some other planet.

You feel the same thing when you are driving down the road, and you see them driving with one hand on the wheel, the other hand holding up a cell phone to their ear, wheeling their SUVs around just as aggressively and at the same time detached, like those people in the supermarket pushing their shopping carts around.

No-one smiles any more. No-one wants to talk about things that matter. If you want to discuss anything other than sports, sex, or Dancing with the Stars, no-one seems interested.

What is happening? Is it something in the water, or is Invasion of the Body Snatchers actually happening for real?

I do not remember people being like this. They are hostile, impatient, full of suppressed anger, abrupt, suspicious, and some even threatening.

Not so many years ago, you couldn't walk down the street without running into your friends and neighbors wanting to talk about anything and everything, and have a good laugh. People, I remember, used to communicate -- now they just glare at you, or completely ignore you.

No-one wants to complain about anything. No-one seems to be bothered by high taxes or inflation. They just look at you and roll their eyes like you are crazy if you dare to express your dissatisfaction with the status quo. And God forbid, do not mention the wars, that topic really gets people uncomfortable. It is as if you are asking some personal question. ...

Just how much debt will Bush leave to your children to pay back --unless, your children somehow become billionaires?

As percentage of GDP, "deficit is twice as large as it's ever been"

Billionaires for Bush

Bush Restricting Travel Rights Of More Than 100,000 Americans

Monday, September 3rd, 2007 by RLR
From True Blue Liberal
By Sherwood Ross

Citizens who have done no more than criticize the president are being banned from airline flights, harassed at airports’, strip searched, roughed up and even imprisoned, feminist author and political activist Naomi Wolf reports in her new book, “The End of America.”(Chelsea Green Publishing)

“Making it more difficult for people out of favor with the state to travel back and forth across borders is a classic part of the fascist playbook,” Wolf says. She noticed starting in 2002 that “almost every time I sought to board a domestic airline flight, I was called aside by the Transportation Security Administration(TSA) and given a more thorough search.”During one preboarding search, a TSA agent told her “You’re on the list” and Wolf learned it is not a list of suspected terrorists but of journalists, academics, activists, and politicians “who have criticized the White House.”Some of this hassling has made headlines, such as when Senator Edward Kennedy was detained five times in East Coast airports in March, 2004, suggesting no person, however prominent, is safe from Bush nastiness. Rep. John Lewis of Georgia has also been mistreated. And it can be nasty. Robert Johnson, an American citizen, described the “humiliation factor” he endured:“I had to take off my pants. I had to take off my sneakers, then I had to take off my socks. I was treated like a criminal,” Wolf quotes him as saying. And it gets worse than that. Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela’s foreign minister, said he was detained at Kennedy airport by officers who “threatened and shoved” him. And that was mild. Maher Arar, a Canadian software consultant was detained at Kennedy and “rendered” to Syria where he was imprisoned for more than a year by goons that beat him with a heavy metal cable. Read the rest of this entry »

From an Amazon reader review of John Perkins' "The Secret History of the American Empire.

In his first book, Confessions of an Economic Hitman, John Perkins lifted the veil on a world rarely seen by most people. He took us on a tour of the costs and consequences of American corporate hegemony, dispelling myths of the `free market', and forcing us to peer deep into our own souls. As Perkins states in his earlier works, "The world is as you dream it," so the question is, what will you dream?

Picking up where he left off, Perkins continues down the path of redemption. Once serving the masters of modern slavery, Perkins now works tirelessly to free those who have been oppressed by the corpratocracy. His thesis? Our planet cannot survive ruthless consumerism at the expense of the world and its people. When all the trees are gone, and all the oil is tapped, what will be left? Does your shirt still feel nice when you understand the suffering involved in its production?

The world John Perkins envisions is one in which personal participation is crucial, and power does not rest in the hands of the few. We have everything we need to create a sustainable global society. We have the resources, the technology, and viable social models. What we need now is a vision, and the inspiration to create such a world. In 329 pages, Perkins provides us with the inspiration to fearlessly question ourselves, and the power structures that exist around us.

Traveling through countries like Indonesia, Brazil, Bolivia, Iraq, and Iran, Perkins paints a picture so vivid its life-altering. This is an amazing follow-up to Confessions, and I strongly recommend this book to anyone who still believes the `free market' benefits all, or anyone who is still waving a flag. This story is brutal, harsh, and real. But the good news is: life can change. We can change. Deep down we all share common values. We all want to live peacefully, we all want to prosper, and we all want to feel love.

If you wish to understand the world for how it really exists, and you seek the tools to help create positive changes, then you have to read this book.

As John says, "Today is the day for us to begin to truly change the world."

Additional resources

• The Meritocracy Myth by Stephen J. McNamee and Robert K. Miller, Jr. University of North Carolina at Wilmington
• We're Right, They're Wrong
• Wealth Inequality ChartsPublish Post
• War Profiteering and the Concentration of Income and Wealth in America
  

Discoveries

• Carl Jung - Matter of Heart

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