The unfolding Washington DC disaster involving a Federal shutdown, a potential debt limit breach, and endless posturing by everyone involved over pointless issues, is just another event in the rather rapid decline and fall of the American Empire. Our nation’s criminal oligarchy has so corrupted most elected officials at the Federal and state levels to institute a generally lawless society for the sole benefit of a very small class of powerful people and corporations.
I am not part of either political party; I try to see the world from outside the artificial matrix in which most individuals dwell. From an outsider’s perspective, this crisis is principally the result of current Republican anger, delusions, bigotries, and carefully-planned tactics. Democratic party mistakes in the recent past have led many Republicans to believe they can get away with this power grab. Both parties have contributed to the massive political and economic mess in which this nation finds itself. But for instigating this specific crisis, Republicans bear the blame but resolving it will require Presidential action – and not just negotiating over trivial matters.
The results of prior elections and recent polls of the American electorate mean nothing to our “leaders” in Washington who do not work for us but serve the best interests of their wealthy puppet masters. The charade over Federal Government spending and the implementation of the Affordable Care Act are merely diversions from a sadistic experiment being conducted on most Americans by our behind-the-scenes ruling sociopaths and psychopaths.
Congress has left the lunatics to run the asylum and they have determined that the tattered U.S. Constitution is indeed a suicide pact. The harm done by less than a week of shutdown is principally felt by the poor and middle class who need government support in our Potemkin economy that has long collapsed and whose recovery will always be just a mirage for the many. The paltry funding we allocate towards food stamps, WIC, and other safety-net programs is dwarfed by the trillions given to our criminal oligarchy by the Federal government in contracts, tax breaks, and the non-existent enforcement of business and environmental regulations. It is also generously supplemented by near zero-interest credit from their exclusive servant – the private banking cartel known as the Federal Reserve.
Those who are trying to manage this Tea Party temper tantrum are not interested in actually telling the truth to the American people or dealing with reality since the political structure of the nation permits them to live in alternative ideological bubbles. The public’s ignorance of reality is a result of most principle players being woefully ignorant on how our Federal, banking, domestic and financial systems work, or they are lying to us in order protect and serve the best interests of the global criminal oligarchy that financially insures their careers.
The U.S. is a sovereign nation with full control over its currency and yet it acts as if it were Greece or Detroit. However, this continuing lie about not telling most people about the truth behind Modern Monetary Theory (MMT – also known as Monetary Realism or Monetary Sovereignty) only serves the greedy global elite whose sole purpose is to increase the gap between their endless wealth and the rest of humanity by every means possible. (A list of MMT blogs is found at the end of this submission.)
What the President will do in the face of this Republican power grab is anyone’s guess – but it will ultimately serve the best interests of the criminal oligarchy (banks and financial institutions plus large global corporations and extremely wealthy campaign contributors that he serves) as would the majority of Democrats and Republicans in Congress. This is a fight between factions of our criminal elites who merely disagree on the best tactics to employ to continue their financial enslavement of 90% of the humans on this planet. Most of us are mere powerless and irrelevant spectators to this ugly contrived drama – though we will be stuck with the bill when the curtain falls.
The most logical course of action to serve he best interests of the Nation, the vast majority of Americans, and most people around the world would be for the President to declare a national emergency and state the debt limit a pointless and unconstitutional provision from our nation’s past that no longer serves its purpose and conflicts with his executive duties. This is a valid argument using various provisions of the U.S. Constitution including the 14th Amendment. He could also order the Treasury to mint a handful of Platinum coins (each one worth a trillion dollars) to be deposited at the Federal Reserve Bank to back up the Federal government’s continuing debt-backed dollar creation in order to pay for the obligations Congress has already incurred and will likely incur over the next few years.
For those who foolishly decry unsustainable Federal deficits and the cumulative debt – you are simply delusional and have been duped by the 1% criminal oligarchy. The federal debt is just the total number of Treasury bills held by the Federal Reserve (an accounting entry) and the number represents the cumulative increase in the nation’s money supply. No living person in the U.S. “owes” this money to anyone else on the planet – such talk has always been a scare tactic and an effort to make a false equivalency between unique sovereign Federal “Debt” and the private debt held by individuals, corporations and local governments that do not issue their own currencies.
All money in circulation is not gifted or loaned to nations and people by the very wealthy on the planet, nor is it backed by gold, silver or any other hard assets –though many of our political and business leaders want the rest of us to believe those pathetic lies. T-Bills are principally issued to give people, corporations, banks and other nations a safe place to put their savings – and more money will be created by the U.S. to pay them off with interest when they come due. It’s not a Ponzi scheme if one can never run out of money.
Every sovereign nation – particularly one that creates from nothing the world’s reserve currency – cannot run out of dollars it solely controls – never – and it cannot go broke or be put into bankruptcy. It does not need taxes or purchases of debt by China or any other nation or private corporation to manage and pay for its finances and programs. A fiat sovereign currency is merely an efficient and objective means of exchange for goods and services within a society and a scorecard to measure all financial and economic activities in a society. Most governments throughout history have served that role of establishing the rules of conducting the economy within their territories. (If you disagree, then you dear reader are a fool – and I strongly urge you to go to the recommended readings found at the end of this post.)
If the President takes such rational steps to protect the nation from the stupidity and nastiness of the Republicans in Congress, they will file lawsuits and demand that the U.S. Supreme Court rule on the Constitutionality of such a unilateral move – and they will likely get a good excuse to impeach the President they so despise. But having Congress fabricate a “debt default” and allowing such to proceed for days or weeks would constitute inexcusable and impeachable inaction by the President as the Nation would face serious economic, political, social and military harm.
Since our criminal oligarchy (that financially controls our completely corrupt executive and legislative branches of government in Washington DC) will make the ultimate call – I am unsure if some of the global elite criminals might relish a quick demise of U.S. Federal power in favor of various splinter and local political entities, foreign governments, and global corporations. Where there is a power vacuum – it is quickly filled by other powerful players. The Tea Party’s wet dream will not come true that the nation will just magically revert to some 18th Century fantasyland of small government and Jeffersonian yeoman farmers.
If I were President, I would consider listing about 100 of the most rabid, uncompromising and lunatic Tea Party members of the U.S. House and Senate as treasonous terrorists. As so classified I could then order various law-enforcement entities in the Executive Branch to arrest all of them and ship them off to Guantanamo for a protracted stay. Then the remaining Democrats and Republicans would still have a quorum to conduct business and pass whatever legislation necessary to end this crisis. We are just beginning a second U.S. Civil War so this might speed things up towards more obvious yet inevitable excitement across the nation.
Instead, many people now hope that some “grand bargain” will be struck at the last moment that placates most of the oversized egos in Washington, screws the vast majority of Americans of modest means, rewards the ruling criminal elites, and continues the nation’s and globe’s path towards general dysfunction and chaos in the spheres of politics, economics, trade, environment, and human habitability on this finite planet. Since any types of reforms or changes are impossible in a permanently gridlocked nation, such a “grand bargain” will only set up the next fabricated crisis.
Various real climatic, environmental, and widespread health disasters will unfold. Many more financial frauds, and greedy food and energy speculation will be perpetrated. More nasty religious conflicts will boil over around the globe. And various “black swan” events will inundate the planet over the next few decades with or without a Federal Budget and however poorly the global money system still operates. This particular crisis is just one of many more to come in our nation that no is no longer an exceptional world leader in anything of consequence – except its decades-long propensity to globally misuse its massive war machine.
The majority of Americans will continue to mindlessly distract themselves on their many electronic entertainment devices until it is far too late to prevent a national and global disaster. Yes, the sun will come up tomorrow – but most humans won’t be around to see it.
Submitted on Monday, October 7, 2013 by Marc Pascal, ranting happily from Phoenix, Arizona. Here’s my list of recommended MMT blogs (a partial reprise of my post of 8/21/13):
• MICHAEL HUDSON (http://michael-hudson.com)
• MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY by Rodger Malcolm Mitchell (http://mythfighter.com)
• NAKED CAPITALISM is probably one of the best aggregator site of many different blogs and news sources with many posts written & edited by Yves Smith & Lambert Strether, and it strongly features MMT contributors (http://www.nakedcapitalism.com)
• NEW ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVES is the MMT site for the professors at the University of Missouri – Kansas City (http://neweconomicperspectives.org) including Michael Hudson.
• PRAGMATIC CAPITALISM is edited by Cullen Roche (http://pragcap.com) of Orcam Financial Group in San Diego, CA.
• Social Science Research Network (http://www.ssrn.com) has a link to Mr. Roche’s well-written paper explaining Monetary Realism (AKA MMT) at this link: (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1905625)