You are here

Paul Craig Roberts

Reading on a Sunday morning ..... finally.

Submitted by Roanman on Sun, 08/26/2012 - 09:47

 

The photos all link up to somebody's site.

There are some random links within these excerpts that I couldn't get Drupal to identify within the edit function ... I've no clue what I did.

 

“The powers of financial capitalism had (a) far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent meetings and conferences. The apex of the systems was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland; a private bank owned and controlled by the world's central banks which were themselves private corporations. Each central bank...sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world.”  Prof. Carroll Quigley from Tragedy and Hope

 

 

"But what of the inequality in income that exists in today’s state-corporatist economy?  Did the 1% acquire its wealth solely through hard work?  The answer is hardly in many cases.  Though there are some innovative businessmen who became rich by providing new and better products, the sharp increase in income inequality over the past two decades is due to an economic phenomenon outside of normal market operations. 

Krugman and Stiglitz rightfully point out that the greatest periods of income inequality in the United States were the late 1920s and the period since the mid-1990s.  What they fail to mention is that both these periods were not defined by capitalism run amok but by massive credit expansion.  This expansion in credit, aided and abetted by the Federal Reserve’s loose money policy, is the real culprit behind vast income inequality." - James E. Miller, www.Mises.ca, 08-07-12

 

 

TARP, despite its mind-boggling size, was puny and practically irrelevant compared to the many trillions—how many trillions exactly is still being argued over—the Fed printed and handed out through a variety of programs, and the money started flowing to banks, and not only to American banks but to foreign banks, and to industrial companies like GE and to just about everybody on or off Wall Street who was well enough connected.  With this money, they acquired assets and drove up their value.  The banks ended up with more free money from the Fed than they knew what to do with, but instead of making low-cost loans, they bought treasuries and other assets, and they made profits not by doing what a bank should be doing but by benefiting from the Fed’s largesse.  And they paid out record bonuses.

Thelargest banks, the prime beneficiaries, were eager to buy back the preferred stock and warrants they’d issued to TARP because it was expensive money compared to what the Fed was handing out, which was free.  Thus, the Fed had done what Hank Paulson couldn’t bamboozle Congress into letting him do, namely unlimited funds to any entity, including his ownGoldman Sachs.  And in doing so, the Fed had bailed out TARP.

TARP wasn’t large enough to prop up the house of cards that these mega-banks had become. It wasn’t large enough to even bail out Citi by itself.  Had the Fed not stepped in with its trillions, the banks would have blown through the TARP billions in no time, and then that would have been it.  The “catastrophic losses” would have been reality.

However, there were casualties.  One of them was capitalism.  The Fed had preserved rotten-to-the-core banks that should have collapsed—or rather it had bailed out stockholders, bondholders, and counterparties.  Now these banks are even larger, and the creative destruction of capitalism, and thus capitalism itself, has been replaced by the Fed’s will and its printing press.   Wolf Richter, Testosterone Pit

 

 

"Consider the inter-campus rivalry in recent years. There was a breather in 1992: Bush (Yale) vs. Clinton (Yale law School). Then came 2000. It heated up again: Gore (Harvard) vs. Bush, Jr. (Yale). But this was not a full-scale confrontation. Bush also went to Harvard Business School. Then, the nation got another breather. It was John Kerry, Yale (Skull & Bones) vs. Bush, Yale (Skull & Bones). In 2008, an outsider entered the fray: McCain (Annapolis). He battled Obama (Harvard Law). Today, Yale is on the outs. It's Harvard Law vs. Harvard Law, plus Harvard MBA (Romney earned both in one shot). Dr. Obama, J.D., vs. Dr. Romney, J.D., MBA.

There have been only two major presidential elections since 1932 that did not conform to this Punch and Judy arrangement. One was in 1964, when Goldwater was able to get the Republican nomination, and the Eastern Republican Establishment literally walked out of the convention, and then spent the rest of the summer torpedoing Goldwater's campaign. The other exception, which was only a partial exception, was Reagan's election in 1980. His new Chief of Staff was James Baker III. Baker, then as now, was one of the chief advisors to George H. W. Bush. The Reagan administration was run by Bush's men, with only a few exceptions, for all eight years. Then Bush replaced him.

The American people, decade after decade, generation after generation, are persuaded that presidential elections are fought over fundamental differences regarding the way the world works and the way the world ought to work. Yet every newly inaugurated President brings in his senior advisers, most of whom are men recruited by the Council on Foreign Relations, and some have been trained in the Trilateral Commission. This never gets any attention by the media, because the media at the top are run by members of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission.

What I do believe is that there are factions within the American political establishment, just as there are within any establishment.  I think this division has been going on since at least 1948. The big banks and big oil are in cahoots together, because that is where the money is.

There is a constant trade-off between the special interests of the two factions.  Each side wants to get its share of the booty after each election.  At the margin, one group or the other gets some benefits.  One group or the other gets to preside over a giant federal bureaucracy in which virtually all of the employees are protected by Civil Service legislation, so no President has the power firing more than a few hundred of them.  

No one is talking about the unfunded liabilities of the United States government, which are now in the range of $222 trillion. Nobody is talking about closing Guantánamo Bay prison, even though Obama promised that he would when he ran back in 2008. Nobody is talking about an immediate withdrawal of troops out of Afghanistan.

So, where is the great debate? It isn't about Medicare, Social Security, Afghanistan, the war on terror, Federal Reserve policy, a Federal Reserve audit, immigration, tax policy, or even the extension of the Bush tax cuts. Where exactly is the great ideological battlefield on which class warfare is being conducted?" - Gary North, PhD,  Reality Check, www.GaryNorth.com,

 

 

"The West’s ragtag army of foreign hirelings, masquerading as the 'Free Syrian Army' have been badly beaten in their attempts to carve out a foothold of opposition in both Damascus and Aleppo. The Syrian Army, trained by Russian advisors and amply supplied with post-soviet equipment, has proven to be one of the most formidable of Israel’s opponents in the Middle East – that’s why the globalists are pushing to remove Assad and replace him with a Western puppet leader.  While I’m no fan of tyranny, I’m even more opposed to Western puppets pretending to represent democracy while fronting for the new globalist tyranny.  This week the US moved to create yet another phony threat in Syria in order to justify NATO military intervention and a no-fly zone. 

In the first place, this is not a civil war – it’s a foreign intervention. Second, this threat is trap for Syria no matter what they do.  One of England’s most venerable international reporters Robert Fisk got in on the ground in Syria and filed this report on the so-called 'Rebel army,' and confirmed 'They're a gang of foreigners.' One Syrian major reported to him that one of the prisoners they captured thought he was fighting the Israelis in Jerusalem, and didn’t know he was in Damascus!  the US and NATO are gathering intelligence on Syrian air tactics in preparation for attacking it—as they actively did in Libya under the cover of enforcing a no-fly zone.  Ultimately, the attack on Iran is what is driving the move against Syria, whose arsenal of deadly rockets poses a major risk to Israel should Syria help Iran retaliate after a pre-emptive strike by Israel on Iran.  

There is a growing hysteria about the necessity of attacking Iran emanating from Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and his defense minister Ehud Barak. Both are attempting to drum up support for the attack and insist that it be done soon. They and the media which promotes the imminent nuclear threat scenario are clearly attempting to prepare the public in both Israel and America for war - Joel Skousen, World Affairs Brief, 08-24-12

 

 

"The pieces come together...

"1) New software, associated with Google, will recognize customers in stores so as to offer them discounts; having your photos uploaded to allow this service will (for now) be voluntary.

"2) A new surveillance system in New York will store footage from cameras in, for example, the subway, so that when an unattended package is discovered, the police can look back in time to see who left it.

"3) TSA is perfecting a laser that will allow detection on travelers of trace amounts of drugs, explosives, and doubtless a wide variety of other things.

"4) The government is moving toward mandating black boxes on cars to record information thought to be useful in ascribing blame in crashes.

"5) Various police departments are beginning to use 'drone' aircraft to monitor the population.

"These are recent pieces of the coming world. They have not yet all been completely deployed and linked. Some are voluntary, for the moment. Others are in development. All are coming.

"Add the now-routine tracking of passports, cameras that read every passing license plate and record the time, NSA’s automated monitoring of email, Google’s and therefore the government’s knowledge of your searches, GPS tracking of cell phones, detailed records of bank transactions, and so on. Not all of these are instantly accessible by the police. They can easily be made accessible, and they move in that direction.

"In short, the technology exists for a detailed, unblinking, unforgetting watchfulness of the entire population beyond anything imagined, or perhaps imaginable, a few decades ago.  Fred Reed

 

 

When Republicans are in office, the conservatives go to sleep and we lose our civil liberties like with the 'Patriot Act'. We lose liberties under Democrats as well as they expand and invent new government programs. Americans lose under either major party.  The real issue of this election should be about runaway government police power and the loss of civil liberties." - Joel Skousen, World Affairs Brief, 08-17-12

 

 

"The United States won’t prosecute Corzine for raiding segregated customer accounts, but will happily convene a Grand Jury in preparation for prosecuting Julian Assange for exposing the truth about war crimes.  Nobody knows how much dirt Corzine has on other Wall Street crooks.  Not only may Corzine get away with corzining MF Global’s clients’ funds, he may well end up with a whole raft of seed money to play with from those former colleagues and associates who might prefer he remain silent regarding other indiscretions he may be aware of. But the issue at hand is the sense that we have entered a phase of exponential criminality and corruption. A slavering crook like Corzine who stole $200 million of clients’ funds can walk free.  

Meanwhile, a man who exposed evidence of serious war crimes is for that act so keenly wanted by US authorities that Britain has threatened to throw hundreds of years of diplomatic protocol and treaties into the trash and raid the embassy of another sovereign state to deliver him to a power that seems intent not only to criminalise him, but perhaps even to summarily execute him.  The Obama administration, of course, has made a habit of summary extrajudicial executions of those that it suspects of terrorism, and the detention and prosecution of whistleblowers. And the ooze of large-scale financial corruption, rate-rigging, theft and fraud goes on unpunished." - John, Aziz, azizonomics.com, 08-16-12 ...

 

 

"The Status Quo around the globe is trying to manage perceptions to foster the illusion that all the high expectations can be met; but the reassurances are increasingly hollow, and the promises increasingly threadbare. People are waking up, one at a time, to the reality that all the promises and guarantees are fantasy, and their emotional response is deeply negative: they feel betrayed by the Status Quo and its institutions, and they feel a volatile mixture of rage, distrust and resignation.

"Studies have found that people (usually those in the lower social and financial tiers) with low expectations tend to be happier than those with high (and unmet) expectations. The Status Quo bought the support of the masses by raising expectations of permanently rising prosperity and security for all. Now that these near-infinite claims cannot be fulfilled, the Status Quo has no institutional ability to lower expectations to more realistic levels. It only knows how to spin artifice and fantasy, in the vain hope that managing perceptions will substitute for managing reality. This is how credibility is lost.

"Managing perceptions is a dangerous game, as the perceptions are pushed ever-farther from reality, increasing the shockwave when the two snap together: it won't be reality rising to meet lofty perceptions, it will be perceptions and expectations plummeting to meet reality. This is how the Status Quo will collapse: it will lose the faith of its people, and become the target of their wrath." - Charles Hugh Smith, www.OfTwoMinds.com, 08-14-12 

 

 

“The government that lies to you about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, about Iraq’s al Qaeda connections, about the Taliban in Afghanistan, about Osama bin Laden, about Libya and Gadhafi, about Iranian nukes, about Syria, about Pakistan, about Yemen and Somalia, about Bradley Manning, about Julian Assange and Wikileaks, indeed about everything under the sun, also lies to you about jobs, unemployment, economic recovery, GDP growth, 9/11, the ‘terrorist threat,’ everything.

Try to find anything that the government has said over the past 6 presidential terms that is not a lie. Other than some minor insignificant detail, ‘your’ government has been consistently lying to you about everything of importance. ‘Your’ government lies to you, because ‘your’ government has an agenda that it most certainly will not tell you about, because if you knew what it is, you would revolt. Putting down the revolt would divert the government from its agenda. It would also alert the rest of the world to the fact that the US government has an undeclared agenda of world domination, despite the costs to the American people and every other people. - Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, Former US Asst. Sec. of the Treasury

 

Our new motto ..... We're here to brighten your day.

 

Reading in the middle of the night again

Submitted by Roanman on Sun, 07/22/2012 - 09:20

 

"Just as the 'terrorist threat was used to destroy the laws that protect US civil liberty, the financial crisis has resulted in the Federal Reserve moving far outside its charter and normal operating behavior. To sum up, what has happened is that irresponsible and thoughtless--in fact, ideological--deregulation of the financial sector has caused a financial crisis that can only be managed by fraud. Civil damages might be paid, but to halt the fraud itself would mean the collapse of the financial system. Those in charge of the system would prefer the collapse to come from outside, such as from a collapse in the value of the dollar that could be blamed on foreigners, because an outside cause gives them something to blame other than themselves." - Paul Craig Roberts

 

 

"Contrast the anti-war sentiment during the Vietnam era with how the government/media is now pulling out all the stops to create an ultra-patriotic, 'support our troops' mentality as they drive the nation to war in Iraq, Afghanistan and beyond for their own globalist conflict-creation purposes. I assure you it isn’t that these politicians have had a change of heart or repented of their betrayals. They purposely used the discouraging no-win restrictions and the resulting combat deaths of Vietnam to destroy in the minds of Americans the long-held inclination to combat communist aggression. Decades later they would rally the former anti-war media into shills for government and turn Americans into knee-jerk unthinking patriots ignorantly lending support to a totally different kind of war for empire and domination. This recent effort was started by our government’s created terror incidents and by exaggerating the war on terror in order to justify continual intervention in other nations. They poured money into millions of yellow ribbons and 'Support our Troops' bumper stickers in order to make support for troops synonymous with the rightness of wars—which was no longer true. Media lackeys constantly put forth the government line that all this money and sacrifice was for the purpose of establishing democracy in the Middle East—which wasn’t their true purpose at all. We are still fed this line today and thousands of soldiers will yet die in the falsified war(s) on terror." -  Joel Skousen, World Affairs Brief, 07-20-12

 

"For every wealthy entrepreneur, there are countless hundreds to thousands of individuals that tried out a new idea and failed. They risked their own capital savings and lost it. Does society owe them for their losses? Why does society get the proceeds from the successful risk takers but doesn't owe a thing to the failed risk takers? Entrepreneurial profits are a kind of risk premium. 'Society' isn't taking that risk; the individual is. So, it is the individual that should receive the reward for the risk he or she alone took." - Marc Porlier, 07-20-12

 

"A six-figure income used to be a hard-earned sign of success, but due to skyrocketing costs and inflation, $100,000 doesn't have the cachet it once had. Crunching the numbers for standard inflation, it would take $172,000 in 2011 dollars to match a $100,000 salary in 1990. 'What would have cost you $100,000 in 1976 would cost you $381,000 today,' Mari Adam of Adam Financial Associates to Bankrate. '

 

"Washington has been at war since October, 2001, when President George W. Bush concocted an excuse to order the US invasion of Afghanistan. This war took a back seat when Bush concocted another excuse to order the invasion of Iraq in 2003, a war that went on without significant success for 8 years and has left Iraq in chaos with dozens more killed and wounded every day, a new strong man in place of the illegally executed former strongman, and the likelihood of the ongoing violence becoming civil war. Upon his election, President Obama foolishly sent more troops to Afghanistan and renewed the intensity of that war, now in its eleventh year, to no successful effect.

"These two wars have been expensive. According to estimates by Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes, when all costs are counted the Iraq invasion cost US taxpayers $3 trillion dollars. Ditto for the Afghan war. In other words, the two gratuitous wars doubled the US public debt. This is the reason there is no money for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, the environment, and the social safety net. Americans got nothing out of the wars, but as the war debt will never be paid off, US citizens and their descendants will have to pay interest on $6,000 billion of war debt in perpetuity.

"Not content with these wars, the Bush/Obama regime is conducting military operations in violation of international law in Pakistan, Yemen, and Africa, organized the overthrow by armed conflict of the government in Libya, is currently working to overthrow the Syrian government, and continues to marshal military forces against Iran.

"Finding the Muslim adversaries Washington created insufficient for its energies and budget, Washington has encircled Russia with military bases and has begun the encirclement of China. Washington has announced that the bulk of its naval forces will be shifted to the Pacific over the next few years, and Washington is working to re-establish its naval base in the Philippines, construct a new one on a South Korean island, acquire a naval base in Viet Nam, and air and troop bases elsewhere in Asia. In Thailand Washington is attempting to purchase with the usual bribes an air base used in the Vietnam war. There is opposition as the country does not wish to be drawn into Washington’s orchestrated conflict with China. Downplaying the real reason for the airbase, Washington, according to Thai newspapers, told the Thai government that the base was needed for 'humanitarian missions.' This didn’t fly, so Washington had NASA ask for the air base in order to conduct 'weather experiments.' Whether this ruse is sufficient cover remains to be seen. US Marines have been sent to Australia and elsewhere in Asia.

"To corral China and Russia (and Iran) is a massive undertaking for a country that is financially busted. With wars and bankster bailouts, Bush and Obama have doubled the US national debt while failing to address the disintegration of the US economy and rising hardships of US citizens.  Paul Craig Roberts

 

 

"If we look at the global economy with unclouded eyes, we reach this conclusion: 'This whole thing is about leverage.' If leverage doesn't increase, the system implodes. But since collateral is disappearing from the global economy like sand castles in a rising tide, and disposable income has stagnated, there is no foundation for more leverage.

"As a result, the State/finance cartel has only one choice: increase leverage by whatever means are left. There are only two:

1. Allow banks to claim phantom assets as capital/reserves

2. Lower interest rates so stagnant income can leverage ever greater quantities of debt.

"The State/finance Empire and its army of academic toadies (economists) must cloak this reliance on leverage from the citizenry, lest they grasp the precariousness of the entire financial system...

"The easiest way to 'grow' is to increase leverage so more money/debt can be created. If a bank was constrained to only loaning the cash it held in deposits, that would severely limit the amount of money available in the system for purchasing villas in Spain, BMW autos manufactured in Germany, etc. If we magically enable 25-to-1 leverage, then every euro supports 25 euros in debt (mortgages, auto loans, etc.) The danger is obvious: if 1 of the 25 euros of debt goes bad, the lender has zero reserve. If 2 euros of debt go bad, the lender is insolvent.

"The only way to 'save' an over-leveraged system is to increase leverage and lower interest rates. If we claim phantom assets as real and increase leverage from 25-to-1 to 50-to-1, we have enabled a doubling of loans. All that wonderful new money will flow into the economy as spending, fueling 'growth.' This explains why the State/finance Empire in Europe keeps lowering reserve requirements for its insolvent banks. If the reserve requirement is 10%, then you need 100 million euros on deposit in cash to support 1 billion euros in loans. If you lower the reserve requirement to 1 euro, then the contents of a child's piggy bank supports 1 billion euros in debt. The other game is to claim phantom assets have market values that justify their substitution of cash...

"Any loan is fundamentally a claim on future income. Interest and principal will be paid out of future income.

"The key to keeping the leverage-based system afloat is to lower interest rates...once rates fall to near-zero, the leverage-income-into-more-debt machine runs off the cliff...

"...the bottom 90% leveraged their stagnant incomes into mountains of debt to compensate for their declining purchasing power. The Federal Reserve (a key player in the global State/finance Empire) has been publicly fretting over the dreaded 'debt divide,' which is Orwellian econo-speak for the bottom 90% running out of leverage. Like Wiley E. Coyote, the bottom 90% has run off the cliff and is now in looking down at the air beneath them...

"The same reliance on leverage has occurred in China, Japan, Europe and the U.S. The entire global economy's 'growth' was based on increasing leverage. That machine has soared off the cliff, and now the Empire's global army of toadies is desperately attempting to mask this reality by substituting phantom assets for actual capital. They can't do anything about lowering interest rates, though; that mechanism has already been maxed out as rates approach zero." - Charles Hugh Smith, www.OfTwoMinds.com

 

Western democracy is an intellectually bankrupt concept in its current state. What we have today is regulatory democracy, an environment in which money power's corporate interests feed off the State and thus a mercantilist economy engulfs us all. Politicians are nothing more than talking mouthpieces for the elite, they are there to protect money power's interests – using force if necessary...Barack Obama said he would introduce real change when he was campaigning for the presidency. He said he would improve America's relations around the world and steward a foreign policy that would usher in peace. America would be a beacon once again to all...Obama has done nothing he said he would do to improve America's relations around the world – not that we ever actually believed he could anyway, he is just an actor..." Anthony Wilie, www.TheDailyBell.com

 

"Civilized people save and plan so as to take care of themselves and their families in the present and future. Fiscal conservatism and prudence is valued in a nondemocratic society, as are sound ethics. Democracy undoes the tendency for people to act cooperatively and responsibly. Politicians constantly look to appease voters with more benefits to care for them from cradle to grave, so as to win the next election. At the same time, the bureaucracy that hands out the benefits grows larger and larger and is unaccountable to anyone — especially voters...In order to distribute these benefits, the government must violate property rights. Government produces nothing; it must take from one group in order to give to another... Douglas French, The Daily Reckoning, 07-11-12 .

 

Subscribe to RSS - Paul Craig Roberts