More Talk of Revolution -- thefourteenthbanker

Outside the beltway, members of both major parties agree, America is bust. Both liberal and conservative principles have been completely obliterated by the current First and Second Estates, who have no loyalty except to their own interests.  This is the stuff of revolution. Paul Craig Roberts of the Reagan years describes the conundrum accurately, adding his voice to David Stockman's, then drives home the emergency measures to prevent an implosion. What is interesting on both cases is that while some vestiges of their prior political leanings remain, the crisis of today rises above political philosophy and traditional party lines. The class war is against the American people who I refer to as the Third Estate. It is a war for plunder. Roberts:

   To borrow from Lenin, "What can be done?"

    Here is what can be done. The wars, which benefit no one but the military-security complex and Israel's territorial expansion, can be immediately ended. This would reduce the US budget deficit by hundreds of billions of dollars per year.  More hundreds of billions of dollars could be saved by cutting the rest of the military budget which, in its present size, exceeds the budgets of all the serious military powers on earth combined.

    US military spending reflects the unaffordable and unattainable crazed neoconservative  goal of US Empire and world hegemony. What fool in Washington thinks that China is going to finance US hegemony over China?

    The only way that the US will again have an economy is by bringing back the offshored jobs. The loss of these jobs impoverished Americans while producing oversized gains for Wall Street, shareholders, and corporate executives. These jobs can be brought home where they belong by taxing corporations according to where value is added to their product. If value is added to their goods and services in China, corporations would have a high tax rate. If value is added to their goods and services in the US, corporations would have a low tax rate.

    This change in corporate taxation would offset the cheap foreign labor that has sucked jobs out of America, and it would rebuild the ladders of upward mobility that made America an opportunity society.

    If the wars are not immediately stopped and the jobs brought back to America, the US is relegated to the trash bin of history.

President Obama continues under the influence of the mystic Rasputian trio, Ben Bernanke, Larry Summers, and Timothy Geithner. When will Obama realize that he has been beguiled?

His first act of independence can be to appoint Elizabeth Warren and tell her to "sic em".

There is a genuine question as to whether Obama has been beguiled or has simply chosen the advisors he knows will send him on the road he wants/believes he must travel. This reminds me of the persistent peasant fantasy under the ancien regime: "If only the king knew!" Appointing Elizabeth Warren to head the office she recommended WOULD be a good sign, but I am not holding my breath.

For those who do not remember the Reagan Administration, David Stockman, Director of the Office of Management and Budget in Reagan's first administration, was a former divinity student who was so indiscreet as to publicly state the tax cuts and spending enacted while he was at OMB would produce "deficits as far as the eye can see." and he was quoted in an article by William Greider in the Atlantic Monthly as saying, (per wiki), "I mean, Kemp-Roth [Reagan's 1981 tax cut] was always a Trojan horse to bring down the top rate.... It's kind of hard to sell 'trickle down.' So the supply-side formula was the only way to get a tax policy that was really 'trickle down.' Supply-side is 'trickle-down' theory."

Of Paul Craig Roberts I am reminded of Migreu's comment earlier this year, responding to a comment I posted about Ron Paul, to the effect that recently about the only people who seemed to be saying publicly things that made any sense on economics were Libertarians such as Ron Paul and Paleocons such as Paul Craig Roberts. The criticisms cited above from these two of current "austerity" proposals from the likes of The Peterson Foundation are encouraging, coming as they do from people who were instrumental in bringing about "The Reagan Revolution".

If any of the ongoing policies leading the economy to destruction are to be stopped, it will require the combined efforts of all who can see the problems and are willing to work to force changes that address those problems. A banker with a blog talking revolution. Who could have imagined? :-)


"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."