economists with red faces politicians with blood on their hands voodoo = 'rational' theft, pentagon = murder for spoil

.. stagflation ...

  .. supply-side ...

    .. 'rationalist' lies

Preamble, 1: A rising tide lifts all boats.

Preamble, 2: A smaller slice of a bigger pie can be larger.

Preamble, 3: Both of the above are premeditated, filthy lies.

Preamble, Q: Why do I have to do this?

Preamble, A: Because the economists both won't and can't; the academics/teachers have sold out and the graduates lie to us.

-=*=-

Trigger article 1:

US credit rating cut for first time ever
Updated August 06, 2011 14:25:44
  «The United States' credit rating has been cut for the first time ever, with Standard & Poor's lowering it from AAA to AA+, citing the country's looming debt and deficit burden.
S&P attached a "negative outlook" to the new rating, despite a push back from the White House which said its analysis of the US economy was deeply flawed.» 
[AusBC/'news']

Comment; Q1: What took this rating agency so long? The US has been broke for years.

Comment; Q2: What would the White House know? It/they are part of the cause, and like all politicians, they lie pretty-well continuously.

Trigger article 2:

Better than expected jobs figures for US
Updated August 06, 2011 09:39:00
  «LISA MILLAR: On a more wider front do you think that the economy is changing at all? Is there any optimism out there for people like yourself?
DIANE PITTS: No, I don't think so. I think it's getting worse. I don't see anything changing.» 
[AusBC/'news']

Comment 1: PITTS is a 'vox-pop;' basically a useless method of gaining information; contrast with professionally organised polling, whereby they need to carefully select a thousand of so interviewees. Nevertheless, "thinking it's getting worse" is 100% correct, and has been 100% correct since the 70s at least.

Comment 2: Expecting a 0.1% change out of 9% to be significant, *especially* when the 9% is considered by many to be a lie, with the correct number being around 20% is bizarre. The 0.1% could merely be a statistical artefact - but they talk it up = more lies.

Trigger article 3:

US job figures temper market free fall
North America correspondent Lisa Millar, wires
  «RBS Morgans private client adviser Ken Howard says the market is being driven by sentiment, which makes forecasting the future tricky.» 
[AusBC/business]

Comment: What's sentiment got to do with anything; the neoliberal market is *supposed* to know all!!? But then there'd be *no* stock market crashes, eh?

Trigger article 4:

Market tumble sparks super fears
By Ashley Hall
Updated August 06, 2011 11:08:53
  «Fears of another global downturn wiped more than $50 billion off the value of the Australian share market yesterday - a slide that would have been particularly worrying for retirees and people planning to give up work soon.
People living on a superannuation pension or the proceeds of a share portfolio say they are already struggling to pay the bills.» 
[AusBC/AM]

Comment 1: Slick-Johnnie Howard was a great one for encouraging share ownership, for one reason at least, he needed mugs to buy shares in privatised entities like Telstra. In other words, Howard pushed the people into gambling with their savings = future retirement funds, onto the stock market. Even if people don't buy in directly, their super funds do it for them - hence the widespread, *justified* fear.

Comment 2: One of the reasons given for privatisation was a alleged shortage of investment 'opportunities,' and getting the people to buy shares forces them to have an interest in how the privatised entities perform. Hence, as in the case of the monopolist Telstra and electricity, water, gas etc., when share-holders get ripped-off on their bills, they can offset that - but only minimally - by any dividends they may then get. The major factor in buying shares in some shonky operation is to get an interest in perpetuating the shonk. Do anything for profit and you'll most likely = 99.9% get profit before performance by default; service levels usually drop and prices go up. Maintenance is minimised, now any storm above fart-level blows lines down all over the place = service *outages*.

Comment 3: Another of the reasons given for privatisation is that public-servants can't run chook-raffles and bludge continuously - but after privatisation, many such are hired back on as sub-contractors; lower head-counts, lower wages, lean & mean; stress, stress & more stress - but the same now ex-public-servants. Oh yes; plus a few management-types also remain, again the same now ex-public-servants, but now fabulously rewarded for their 'genius.' You work it out.

-=*=-

It doesn't take much genius to see that neoliberalism is bad news for most, and after 30-40 or so years of it, the proof is in, well in. No surprise; it works as designed; the rich got/are still getting richer, and many of the poor are well on their way to serfdom - so Q: Why don't we have a revolution? A: Because those most affected are (no apologies) the dumbest; they got that way partly by choice (TV-watching is just sooo easy); but mostly by being deliberately lied to, i.e. "Competition/free markets are good for *all*!" (See Preamble 1 & 2, say.)

Disclosure: I'm not one of the poor serfs, but neither am I an obscenely rich fat-cat ripper-off type. It means that I'm *not* motivated by wealth-envy (as r-whinger trolls are apt to fallaciously assert), rather by outrage at the lies, unfairness & outright criminality of many of our 'leading citizens.' Also, whereas there are undoubtably some lazy, skiving public-servants and some unnecessary bureaucracy, it's no reason to paint all govt. black. Proper management would help, but the neoliberalist erring ideological thrust is to junk all government, kill-off all govt. services - all govt. everywhere - except the 'security industry' = police, spies & military = 'enforcement' thugs, liars & killers.

The rich got/are still getting richer by two main pathways, a) by benefiting from the general business shonkiness (greatly helped by deregulation, say, and typified by the motto 'greed is good' - but which isn't), and b) by being largely, newly untaxed. Both a&b arise from the rich having purchased the sell-out politicians, justifying it all by the sell-out academics/economists' and think-tanks' erring ideology. Nowhere is this more clearly and criminally illustrated than "The Israel Lobby."

-=*=-

Suck it up; move on!

If we imagine our situation as a brick wall, we started out with a largely white one, the white having been provided to us by history; influenced by The Enlightenment (Liberté, égalité, fraternité, say), the struggles for justice for workers (8-hr day, etc.), the fall-out of the 1929 stock exchange crash/depression, and the post WW2 'good times' of the 50s & 60s, and the then apparently-OK "of, by, for the people etc." democracy.

Each time we the people lost some 'skirmish,' a brick in the wall turned black. Keywords: Supply-side, economic rationalism, neoliberalism, globalisation. We had/have no effective choice; representatives purporting to be working *for* us either 'allowed' some change (deregulations, or simply bad laws - ½CGT, SerfChoices) or actually did the bad deeds (privatisations, service cuts etc.). The only effective say we are usually left with is to de-elect; note, *after* any damage is done. Too bloody late, mate! Yes, there were the odd occasions when the voters chose their own poison in advance; Howard's never-ever GST resuscitated being one of them. A regressive tax, sold with lies; to 'set us free?' Perhaps Howard meant following "Arbeit macht Frei." How he must have laughed! Now, our wall is mostly black; suck it up, move on!

-=*=-

Some way-points:

1. August 6 and 9, 1945, respectively; the twin atomic-bombing war crimes.

2. May 15, 1948++, Nakba Day. The UN, mainly US+UK, allowed the aggressive Z-invaders to steal an entire country = Palestine. 2nd greatest crime of the century.

3. August 15, 1971, the Nixon Shock = US-bankruptcy, end of Bretton Woods.

4. December 2, 1972, Election of the 1st Whitlam govt, plus subsequent construction of the original Medibank.

5. November 11, 1975, Aus' day of political infamy. Among the corrupt goings-on was a 100+ day campaign against Gough by Murdoch's theAus.

6. 1979-80, first TINA-Thatcher & voodoo-Reagan governments.

7. 1983 to 1996, Hawke-Keating Government, neoliberalism for Aus.

8. 1996 to 2007, Howard Government, aggressive invasion of Iraq.

9. March 19 2011, latest US (NATO; F, UK & +) attack against Libya.

10. August 06 2011, US credit rating cut for first time ever, exactly 66 years to the day since making themselves the world's #1 pariah; unlikely ever to be contested - except possibly by the equal #1, the I/J/Z-plex. After all, *someone* has to be 'top-shit.'

-=*=-

No free lunch?

From The Nixon Shock [ibid.]:
  «By the early 1970s, as the costs of the Vietnam War and increased domestic spending accelerated inflation,[1] the U.S. was running a balance-of-payments deficit and a trade deficit, the first in the 20th century.» 

Q: What's changed?

A: Not much.

This is how the US$-racket works:

The US (Fed, other private banks) 'print' fiat-$s, conjuring them out of thin air = nowhere. The $s are loaned to trading entities, and are spent on local goods & services or imports; Mercedes cars or oil, say. Local $s go around in cycles, landing in banks as deposits, 'balancing' part of the loans, but 'earning' less % than the borrowers pay = 'normal' bank business, and what a good (= more than enough) business it is. Part of the (assumed) profit made by the borrowing entities is paid in interest, a 'normal' business expense always passed onto the customer (not incidentally, making things *more* expensive). So far so 'normal,' hardly different than any other country - BUT: The US, from those very same 70s, has been running an ever-widening trade-deficit (as their govt. now runs a chronic domestic-deficit.)

Deficits result from wanting more than you can pay for, but what gets Greece into trouble is 'business as usual' for the US; how/why?

The chronic govt. domestic-deficit should hardly need explaining; politicians simply *love* bribing voters, so there is always a demand-pull tending to expand govt. spending, and all people hate paying taxes, so there is always a cost-push depressing govt. income. Easy-peasy, and as Abbott repeatedly demonstrates, any idiot can promise to cut taxes, or oppose taxes like mining & climate taxes, which might a) get us a fair share of the mining boom, or even b) save the planet from an excess CO2 climate-change catastrophe. Ho, hum; thanks, but "No, thanks!" for your ultra-cynical populism, Tony. Not that Rudd/Gillard are actually delivering what we the people need, but some thoughts are there. Another note; 'best of a bad lot' is still bad, what we really need is the absolute best, fat chance in current environment.

Also please note: By no means all govt. spending is on bribes; specifically, egalitarian-access to necessary medical & dental services, plus income-support for all below an acceptable income-earning capacity is a *requirement* of any civilised society. (As is 100% govt. paid for, *truthful, comprehensive* education, as far 'up' as necessary. An education system, apparently as any other system, dependent on patronisation will go corrupt. Proof is our economists.) Any arguing against, or actually cutting services below a civilised minimum - should be 1st ostracised, 2nd locked up if not 3rd shot, as unfeeling, power-mad psychopaths. But that is *precisely* what most Republicans are demanding, and many Democrats (incl. Obama) are delivering; bipartisan = un- & anti-democratic. Again, they can only get away with such due to the dumbing-down of the public, via *and actively assisted by* the 4th estate = corrupt & venal MSM, incl. 'our' AusBC.

-=*=-

The chronic foreign-deficit can be explained partly so:

If the US had only one single industry left, it would be armaments. As it is they have a few other arrows left in their quiver; namely Boeing, Microsoft & Apple. Boeing's aircraft are not at all bad (my current favourite is 777, but the A380 is a winner.) Microsoft makes lots of $s, while delivering *extremely* shitty product (this article being produced *in spite of* W7. A beautiful piece of hardware, crippled by MS - boo!) Apple makes extremely successful = extremely expensive toys; the people are to be condemned for wanting = buying such marginally useful rubbish (excepting Nano-G3.)

To the Mercedes/oil case, as an example for generalisation.

The Germans make Mercedes cars, screwed together by Turks in Sindelfingen (me: Sifi.) They sell some to the US, getting $US in return. They, (all sorts of Germans), like zipping along their (some still non-speed limited) Autobahns, for which they need fuel = pay with $US. When the fuel is all gone, they have to go and make another few Mercedes cars, repeat.

The $US are traded for fuel from the multi-national oil companies; mostly US but some UK and F, instantly explaining the NATO attacks on Libya, B, B & H's attack on Iraq, Afghanistan for pipeline-routes - Iran next? But note, this ties in with 'murder for spoil,' the other major one being Zs' mayhem/plunder of Palestine.

The current price (note, not value) of oil is around $80 in EU/USA ($120 tapis; what's the diff?) The cost of FOB delivery in the ME was estimated in 2003+/- at around $1 only. The difference is the profit pocketed by the oil-multis, another explanation for Iraq, etc., and also called 'economic rent.' This is one reason why JMK called for euthanasia of the rentiers, and similar to what Rudd was aiming for with the MRRT.

The $s generated by the oil-trade are, not surprisingly, called petro-dollars, and even though the oil-resource owners get a miserable pittance (just like us, we the sheople in Aus, vis-à-vis the mining boom), still a lot of $s accumulate - which are often swapped for arms, mainly US, and when not then 'stashed' by buying US-treasury bonds.

Repeat this analogy with Chinese manufactures; US-jobs off-shored & out-sourced, big profits accumulating in China, Japan, etc. - again stashed as US-treasuries. In a word: Trillions.

All the $US sloshing around the world are effectively useless to the holders, and (recalling oil-burning = up in smoke, as exploding bombs) are roughly equal to the US external deficit = free lunch, not only but also breakfast, dinner & desert.

One more repeat: All those useless $s cost *zero* to print.

All the US bombs can do is blow things up = destroy and kill.

All this is neoliberalism = rip-offs + militarism = murder for spoil.

Fazit: *Despite* the free-lunch they've given themselves with the $US oil-racket, despite the *trillions* of otherwise useless $s held by supplier-nations, the US is still going broke - because, in the end analysis, they won't properly tax their corrupt rich. The purchased-politicians and the corrupt & venal MSM lie to us continuously, as the US & Z militaries continuously kill to steal. What a world!

Where are the effective, countervailing resistors?

-=*end*=-