While Hillary continues to remind everyone that her nomination is a “done deal”, supporters of Bernie Sanders refuse to go quietly into the night. Bernie’s supporters put so much pressure on establishment Senator Barbara Boxer that she suffered an unfortunate meltdown in Nevada recently; they plan to do the same at the Democratic National Convention in July as well.
According to The Hill, Sanders supporters are planning a massive rally that could have as many as 30,000 participants, although organizers hope to have the number end up much larger. Permits for four demonstrations at the Philadelphia convention have already been secured, and now the focus is on getting as many people to attend as possible.
Bernie Sanders’s supporters have secured permits for four demonstrations near July’s Democratic National Convention, according to a new report.
The events will rally support for Sanders’s message while Democrats select their presidential nominee in Philadelphia, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The Wall Street Journal on Friday reported that one permit authorizes an event consisting of four days of all-day rallies at FDR Park.
Philadelphia expects at least 30,000 participants; organizers are hoping the turnout is even higher. The park is located close to the Wells Fargo Center, putting it in close proximity to the convention’s epicenter.
The Wall Street Journal said that the other three events are scheduled for Thomas Paine Plaza, which is located a few miles from the convention’s venue. Philadelphia expects around 2,000 to 3,000 fans demonstrating for the independent Vermont senator at those events.
Just like in the case of the Republican race before it was made clear that Trump would win by a landslide, now it is the Democratic establishment’s turn to use every trick in the playbook to try and marginalize anyone who dares go against them, with the Nevada State Democratic Party warning recently that the demonstrations may be used to instigate “actual violence.” Which is even more ironic because until recently its was Trump supporters who were saying precisely that only to be laughed down by the media.
The claim of violence was quickly downplayed by Bill Taylor, one of the events organizers.
“We are marching,” he said. “If you’re planning on coming here with violence in mind, we don’t want you.”
The Democratic establishment will likely end up winning the push for Hillary as its nominee, but one major legacy has remained as a result of what already has been the most surreal presidential race in history: the voices of those who are not part of the establishment, and who want real genuine change to a broken system, are no longer silent and have understood they too can and will be heard.
A little over a year ago, GMO giant Monsanto was furious at the World Health Organization for linking glypshophate, the chief ingredient in weed killer Roundup, to cancer. As a result Monsanto immediately demanded that WHO retract said report, saying that the report was biased and contradicts regulatory findings that the ingredient, glyphosate, is safe when used as labeled.
A working group at WHO said after reviewing scientific literature it was classifying glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans.” Howeber Monsanto was relentless and said that “we question the quality of the assessment,” according to Philip Miller, Monsanto vice president of global regulatory affairs. “The WHO has something to explain.”
In retrospect it may have been Monsanto who had something to explain, which it did, indirectly, when last week another report was released, this time from the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), according to which Roundup’s glyphosphate is unlikely to cause cancer in people. Continuing the explanation, diazinon and malathion, two other pesticides reviewed by the committee, which met last week and published its conclusions on Monday, were also found to be unlikely to be carcinogenic.
“In view of the absence of carcinogenic potential in rodents at human-relevant doses and the absence of genotoxicity by the oral route in mammals, and considering the epidemiological evidence from occupational exposures, the meeting concluded that glyphosate is unlikely to pose a carcinogenic risk to humans from exposure through the diet,” the committee said.
As Reuters itself notes, the conclusions appear to contradict the abovementioned finding by the WHO’s Lyon-based International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), which in March 2015 said glyphosate is “probably” able to cause cancer in humans and classified it as a ‘Group 2A’ carcinogen. This is when the alarm bells at Monsanto went off and, according to some, the company’s spending on favorable reports shot through the roof. The result was immediate.
Seven months after the IARC review, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), an independent agency funded by the European Union, published a different assessment, saying glyphosate is “unlikely to pose a carcinogenic hazard to humans”. The United States’ Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which first assessed glyphosate in 1986 and has reviewed it several times since then, had also previously concluded it has “low toxicity for humans”.
In other words, whether or not a Monsanto compound is carcinogenic may depend on how much in “research funding” Monsanto has spent in advance to the writers of the study.
In any case, whether Roundup causes cancer or not, the opinion of millions of people around the world is already be made up, and as RT reports more than 400 simultaneous demonstrations around the world are voicing fury at US biotech leviathan Monsanto, which is now facing a hostile takeover from German pharmaceuticals company Bayer (a transaction which ha stunned analysts and shareholders who warn Bayer would need to take on too much debt and dilute equity holdings in its quest to acquire an embattled target).
But while Bayer may or may not end up being the new owner of Monsanto, it won’t matter to millions of people who will boycott the product regardless.
“The whole world hates Monsanto!” read the banners among a throng in Paris, marching to the sound of a drum band.
— Occupycentre Debout! (@Occupycentre) May 21, 2016
The crowd held up posters condemning the sale of the herbicide RoundUp, which may or may not lead to cancer in humans (depending on who one asks) and the development of genetically-modified crops.
— Occupycentre Debout! (@Occupycentre) May 21, 2016
Environmentalist and leftist politicians, such as former presidential candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon, marched at the front of the column, but the impetus for the rallies was provided by another group.
The grassroots Nuit Debout has mobilized hundreds of thousands for labor reform protests in recent months, and many of the same demonstrators turned out to barrack the St. Louis-based giant in Lyon, Bordeaux and Lille.
Genetically-modified crops are banned in France, despite the European Union gradually loosening regulation on the varieties, as they become more popular across the world due to higher yields and greater disease resistance.
Meanwhile, despite the latest UN report supposedly clearing Monsanto of any carcinogenic fault, Glyphosate, the active chemical in RoundUp and other leading herbicides, could still face a Europe-wide ban, after an EU committee failed to issue it with a new retail license, following protracted negotiations. A UN report published this month stated that it was not likely to be ingested in quantities sufficient to cause cancer in humans, but last year’s report by the UN cancer agency called for it to be recognized as a carcinogen that could cause non-Hogdkin’s lymphoma.
“Monsanto is killing me & you!” and “I am not your experiment!” read placards at a protest march through New York. More than 90 percent of US-grown corn, soybean and cotton is genetically-modified.
RT`s correspondent Caleb Maupin talked to some of the hundreds of activists gathered in the center of Manhattan to protest against Monsanto. People marched through the streets chanting, “No more Monsanto” and “Monsanto has got to go.” The demonstrators carried signs saying: “Ban glyphosate,” the herbicide which is suspected of causing cancer, and “Stop Monsanto.”
“I think it`s very corrupt and they have too much power over our government,” one of the rally`s participants told Maupin, referring to the biotech giant`s outreach.
“I`m tired of being lied to about what is in my food. We are getting sick, there`s cancer, there`re kids that are being affected, so we want to put a stop to that,” said another activist.
The safety of glyphosate, which is an active ingredient in Monsanto`s herbicide Roundup, has been doubted by many environmental organizations, including Greenpeace.
“If I were Monsanto right now, maybe a Monsanto executive gonna hear this, I would be worried. I would than change my life and come over to the right side of history. Amen,” another protester said.
Well-attended rallies also took place in Tokyo, across Germany and in Canada. Monsanto, which has repeatedly put out publicity campaigns to try and demonstrate that its product range is safe, issued a conciliatory statement to the protesters.
“The 22,000 people of Monsanto are committed to having an open dialogue about food and agriculture – we’re proud of the work we do, and we’re eager for people to know more about us,” said a Monsanto text sent out to the media. “We know people have different points of view on these topics, and it’s important that they’re able to express and share them.”
Marches against Monsanto have become a regular event over the past half-decade, but activists may soon need to find a new target for their anger, following Bayer’s proposed bid for the US company, which has a market cap of nearly $46 billion.
We delve into the implications of negative interest rates, and what they are really saying about the soundness of the financial system. In short we have too many rich people doing nothing productive with their wealth.
I am the opposite of a redistributionist, and the unintended consequences would be off the charts, but it would be interesting to see what Elon Musk could do with all this unproductive capital earning negative real rates around the globe being that he is always trying to push the envelope of the possible from a creativity standpoint. Give me a “Bad-Ass” who fails in pushing the envelope over a “Passive Capital Hoarder” any day of the week.
Following numerous violations of last summer’s landmark comprehensive nuclear agreement, as Iran repeatedly test fired ballistic missile rockets in direct contravention of the treaty terms, a curious tangent emerged last week when a senior Iranian military commander claimed that U.S. officials had been “appeasing” the Iranian regime, and quietly encouraging the Islamic Republic to keep its illicit ballistic missile tests a secret so as not to raise concerns in the region, according to Persian language comments.
As the Free Beacon reported, Amir Ali Hajizadeh, commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Aerospace and Missile Force, said in recent remarks that the Obama administration does not want Iran to publicize its ongoing missile tests, which have raised questions about the Islamic Republic’s commitment to last summer’s comprehensive nuclear agreement.
“At this time, the Americans are telling [us]: ‘Don’t talk about missile affairs, and if you conduct a test or maneuver, don’t mention it,’” Hajizadeh was quoted as saying during a recent Persian-language speech that was translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute.
“If we agree to this, they will advance another step, and say: ‘Don’t conduct [a missile test] at this time, and also don’t do it in the Persian Gulf region.’ After that, they will tell us: ‘Why do you need your missiles to have a range of 2,000 km anyway?’ Hajizadeh reportedly said.
In other words, far from giving the US a right of first refusal on Iranian military activity, the Obama administration had effectively lost all control over what the National Guard would do, and its only recourse was to hope Iran keeps quiet.
That plan, however, appears be a spectacular failure as overnight the Mehr news agency announced reported that the Iranian military has successfully carried out launches of two short-range ballistic missiles during ground forces exercises, local media reported Sundayl it added that the improved versions of Nazeat and Fajr-5 missiles were used during the first stage of the two-day drills in Kashan’s Maranjab Desert and Isfahan’s Nasrabad region.
Mehr adds that the Iranian Army’s Ground Forces have successfully test-fired Naze’at rockets in Beit-ul-Muqaddas 28 drill on Suanday. Launched in central Iran on Sunday, the Beit-ul-Muqaddas 28 war game started with successful test-fire of N-6 and N-10 Naze’at and Fajr 5 rockets. Army’s long-ranged artillery also hit the predetermined targets successfully during the operation.
“The message of Beit-ul-Muqaddas 28 military drill is peace and friendship in the region; Iranian Army is getting ready to confront extra-regional threats and the aim of the maneuver is to improve the defense capabilities and exercise the tactics practiced at military courses during proxy and asymmetric wars,” said Iranian Army’s Ground Forces Commander Brigadier General Ahmad Reza Pourdastan before the drill opening on Sunday.
He added that “the Beit-ol-Moqaddas-28 military drills aimed at enhancing defensive capabilities, training techniques in asymmetric war and test-firing improved weapons of the Iranian Army.”
As Sputnik reminds us, Iran’s target of boosting its national defense program has sparked concerns among the international community, despite reassurances from Tehran that it would never threaten the national security of another state.
On July 14, Iran and the P5+1 group of countries comprising Russia, the United States, China, France and the United Kingdom plus Germany, signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which guarantees the peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.
Following the adoption of the JCPOA, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 2231, which prohibits Iran from engaging in activities related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons.
Which, incidentally, is precisely why Iran keeps parading with national media reports of doing just that in its ongoing attempts to mock the Obama administration as one which no longer has any leverage over what Iran does, something Trump, who has repeatedly said he would immediately cancel the deal if he is elected president, will use to his full advantage in the coming months.
“Buy silver, sell gold” is the bold call of currency, bullion and money analyst Dominic Frisby in the latest edition of best selling Money Week.
Frisby looks at the relative value of silver to gold and comes to the conclusion that silver is a better buy right now. We share his bullish view on silver and hence our current campaign regarding VAT free silver coins.
From the article:
“Today we consider gold and silver.
We suggest that you should buy one and sell the other.
We then advise walking away for a couple of years…
Silver and Mother Nature’s ratio
There is, say the wise old men of geological lore, something like 15 times as much silver in the Earth’s crust as there is gold. Received wisdom is that in days gone by, the value of silver relative to gold reflected the amount of metal Mother Nature has given us: gold was, for hundreds of years, about 15 times the price of silver.
Last year 27,579 tonnes of silver were produced (according to my most reliable of precious metal data sources, Nick Laird of Sharelynx) and about 3,000 tonnes of gold. In other words, just over nine times as much as silver as gold was produced.
However, the gold price – about $1,270 an ounce – is about 75 times silver’s price of $17 an ounce. What gives?”
Dominic kindly mentions us as a bullion dealer who will buy gold bullion from you and sell silver coins and bars to you:
“If you want to buy physical silver, our friends in Dublin, the precious metals dealers GoldCore, have a new scheme whereby you can buy silver coins VAT-free. They’ll also, as most dealers will, buy your gold”.
We make a market in all popular bullion formats from small gold sovereigns to large 400 ounce gold bars and at the risk of doing ourselves out of business, we would caution against selling gold bullion right now.
Sell paper and digital gold, like Bullion Vault, maybe but not physical gold coins and bars. Rather both physical gold and silver bullion should be owned as financial insurance and hedges against currency debasement, bail ins, systemic and counter party risks and the myriad other risks today.
There is the possibility that gold continues to outperform silver in the short term. This is quite likely if we get another bout of severe deflation and the next stage of the global financial crisis. There is also the real chance of the currency reset where gold prices are revalued by the global monetary authorities to $5,000 to $10,000 per ounce. This could see silver underperform in the short term.
Silver remains severely undervalued versus gold but more particularly versus stocks, bonds and other financial – digital and paper – assets and we believe will outperform most assets in the coming years. Allocations to both depend on risk appetite and motivations for buying.
Read the full article by Dominic Frisby on MoneyWeek here.
Gold and Silver Prices and News Gold down 1.4% for week on Fed rate views – Reuters Asian shares set for weekly loss, Fed talk lifts dollar – Reuters Gold Takes ‘Brunt of the Selling’ as Fed Primes Markets for Hike – Bloomberg Philly Fed index dips to negative 1.8 in May – Morning Star Gold jewelry is getting pricier – CNN Money
Warning signs everywhere that the British housing bubble is about to go POP! – This Is Money English Farm Prices Fall Most Since 2008 on Brexit Fears – Bloomberg Rating agencies highlight the gloomy Brexit scenarios – Irish Times Market Impact of Brexit Is Key Concern for G-7 Finance Chiefs – Bloomberg George Soros Takes Massive Gold Position, Fears of a Crisis Grow – Value Walk
Gold Prices (LBMA AM) 20 May: USD 1,256.50, EUR 1,120.18 and GBP 862.75 per ounce 19 May: USD 1,253.75, EUR 1,117.74 and GBP 857.37 per ounce 18 May: USD 1,270.90, EUR 1,127.21 and GBP 882.05 per ounce 17 May: USD 1,270.10, EUR 1,121.43 and GBP 877.50 per ounce 16 May: USD 1,281.00, EUR 1,132.04 and GBP 892.87 per ounce
Silver Prices (LBMA) 20 May: USD 16.60, EUR 14.81 and GBP 11.35 per ounce 19 May: USD 16.60, EUR 14.81 and GBP 11.35 per ounce 18 May: USD 17.05, EUR 15.13 and GBP 11.77 per ounce 17 May: USD 17.08, EUR 15.09 and GBP 11.80 per ounce 16 May: USD 17.32, EUR 15.30 and GBP 12.07 per ounce
Putin is being urged to do so because the U.S. and NATO have been preparing for war themselves.
Syria and Ukraine have just been warm ups. The real thing could be around the corner, and other proxy flashpoints are ready to line up.
The rising tensions for military conflict are sharply complicated by the stealthier financial war that is nonetheless taking a serious toll across the globe, in particular as collapsing oil prices put incredible pressure on those regimes who have cast a big social benefits net financed primarily by $100/barrel oil.
As SHTF previously reported, that made Venezuela the most vulnerable, and it is plain today that the oil rich nation is collapsing. However, the manipulation of these prices was also meant to put pressure on Russia (as well as other countries)… while the attempt to undercut Russian natural gas by taking over Ukraine and have NATO supply gas to Europe instead of Russia has so far failed.
It is a sophisticated geopolitical gamble that perhaps no one is winning, apart from who manages not to topple over.
A detailed, but nonetheless alarming article by Alastair Crooke reports that there is significant pressure on Putin from other Russian leaders to take a hard line in the days ahead.
Putin carries, at one end of his balancing pole, the various elites more oriented toward the West and the “Washington Consensus“ and, at the pole’s other end, those concerned that Russia faces both a real military threat from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and a hybrid geo-financial war as well. He is being pressed to come down on the side of the latter, and to pry the grip of the former from the levers of economic power that they still tightly hold.
In short, the issue coming to a head in the Kremlin is whether Russia is sufficiently prepared for further Western efforts to ensure it does not impede or rival American hegemony. Can Russia sustain a geo-financial assault, if one were to be launched? And is such a threat real or mere Western posturing for other ends?
What is so important is that if these events are misread in the West, which is already primed to see any Russian defensive act as offensive and aggressive, the ground will already have been laid for escalation. We already had the first war to push back against NATO in Georgia. The second pushback war is ongoing in Ukraine. What might be the consequences to a third?
In mid-April, General Alexander Bastrykin, the head of Russia’s Investigative Committee (a sort of super attorney general, as Cohen describes it), wrote that Russia — its role in Syria notwithstanding — is militarily ill prepared to face a new war either at home or abroad, and that the economy is in a bad way, too. Russia, furthermore, is equally ill prepared to withstand a geo-financial war. He goes on to say that the West is preparing for war against Russia and that Russia’s leadership does not appear to be aware of or alert to the danger the country faces.
[…] A retired Russian general entered the fray to confirm that the West is indeed preparing for war — he pointed to NATO deployments in the Baltics, the Black Sea and Poland, among other places — and underlines again the unpreparedness of the Russian military to face this threat. “This is a heavy indictment of Putin,” Cohen says of the revelations from this analysis. “It is now out in the open.”
[…]
The government’s economic policy is being criticized. The opposing faction wants to see an immediate mobilization of the military and the economy for war, conventional or hybrid. This is not about wanting Putin ousted; it is about pushing him to wield the knife — and to cut deeply.
There is every reason to think that the clashing interests of NATO and Russia can and will spark more flashpoints across the map and around the arc that generally surrounds the former Soviet empire, which the United States hopes to contain in order to maintain its own crumbling empire.
While President Obama, now officially the president to oversee the longest period of war (albeit somewhat contracted), may be reluctant to pursue in form of open conflict with Russia, a president like Hillary Clinton may be all-too willing to do so. She has already called in recent days for an escalated ‘war against ISIS,’ which handily also gives an open ended pretext to challenge NATO-Russian conflict points wherever they might appear.
Donald Trump’s positions here are as yet unclear, but he is beginning to surround himself with the same type of advisers – including Henry Kissinger – that have brought us to this point.
With economic decline and a definite fatigue for war, Americans face an end of the dollar as the world currency standard and an era where the BRICS nations, and in particular the militaries of Russia and China, pose an existential threat to the world that the U.S. and Britain carved out in the WWII era and which they essentially won away from the Soviets by the end of the Cold War.
These waxing and waning empires are dangerous as their vulnerabilities and short-comings become exposed, and their territories challenged.
That fact that Putin is being prodded from within Russia to be less diplomatic and more aggressive in posturing for war is downright unsettling. Many of our most dangerous American leaders are all-too willing to poke the bear and evoke a reaction.
Ukraine and Syria, as well as the Georgian conflict before it in 2008, prove that the U.S. will continue waging war and posturing for global domination in spite of the lack of a coherent narrative (but there’s ISIS), or any convincing pretext for sending troops and sponsoring proxy armies.
The American people are sick of war, but the misleaders in Washington are eager enough to reinvigorate their sense of power and entitlement to control the affairs here and abroad. After all, war – in a sick kind of way – is good for the economy, and a big one means a mandate of emergency powers and a period of unquestioning obedience from the domestic population.
The threat is all-too real, and a serious provocation, like the false flag attacks that have sparked most of the wars in the past, could be on the horizon.
That all basically points to WWIII… or at least a full second Cold War. It could be a long way off, but the sense is that the scent is in the air.
I have pointed out in previous articles how most of the growth in stocks over the past few years has been due to stock share buybacks. Without this hideous (and at one time illegal) practice, there would have been no bull market over the last few years.
That’s right. Research from no other place than Wall Street, itself, indicates that almost all of the returns since 2009 have been due to stock share buybacks!
Stock share buybacks are winding down
But you cannot do share buybacks forever. Companies have been using profits and loading up on debt to make these share buybacks for so long that the law of diminishing returns is kicking in here, too.
First, it is kicking in because companies are nearing the end of their capacity to keep eating themselves. Earnings have been falling while debt has been stacking up, and so the capacity just isn’t there any more. (And I mean even the doctored earnings — as almost all major corporations have moved away from GAAP reporting policies — have been falling badly.)
Secondly, buybacks have gone insane to the point where the practice is even starting to reek of death to market bulls who are growing wary of them.
Over the past five weeks, the value of shares bought back has fallen 42% (yoy). The number of scheduled buybacks has fallen off substantially this year (35% below last year’s pace). So, we can anticipate the market will lose the hot air that once kept it aloft.
Stock share buybacks have transformed America into the Alzheimer’s ward of enterprise
We are now a nation full of companies with much bigger piles of debt and much less capacity to keep propping up their share prices with buybacks because those companies are rotting from within. Buybacks syphoned money away from capital expansion and research and development in order to deliver candy to investors now at the cost of crippling the company down the road.
All of that was smiled upon (until now) by Wall Street and government for saving the day while losing the decade. Yes, a decade of potential recovery has been consumed by milking corporations dry, and there will be hell to pay as a result of this self-consuming greed.
Former Republican presidential candidate, Carly Fiorina, championed this kind of corporate management during her stint at Hewlett-Packard until the Crowned Executive Officer was forced off her throne. During her brief reign, HP bought back $14 billion of stocks, which was more than its entire profits during that same period ($12 billion).
That was total self-cannibalism, as during that time HP practically eliminated research and development, caving in to the idea that it was no longer capable of innovation and dominance in the consumer electronic field that it had long dominated. They gave up and walked away from their staple market of personal computers and home printers. Then they rejigged this plan into severing off separate companies. Contrasting this to Apple, can you even think of the last thing HP invented? Can you even remember the last thing that someone else invented that HP successfully produced and popularized?
Because of her great accomplishment at HP, Fiorina believed she was qualified to become president of the United States. Having successfully gotten rid of her, did HP learn anything? Of course not. Her successor tripled down on all of this, buying back $43 billion in shares on $36 billion in profits! Following him, Leo Apotheker did the same thing, buying back nearly a billion dollars in stock every month of his brief eleven-month reign. This is a company that knows how to eat itself one leg at a time.
“HP was the poster child of an innovative enterprise that retained profits and reinvested in the productive capabilities of employees. Since 1999, however, it has been destroying itself by downsizing its labor force and distributing its profits to shareholders….” HP declined to comment. (Reuters)
And this is the new corporate norm for America. Last year, corporations spent almost a trillion dollars on share buybacks and dividends, even though it was largely a year of declining profits. Maybe I should say because it was a year of declining profits. So, they weren’t doing it because they had the money to spend. Like HP, many spent money they didn’t earn.
That’s what you do when your business stinks so bad no one wants your stock because you have started to smell like the toe fungus and old urine that odorizes a bad nursing home. When the company is selling its own limbs on the meat market, it might not be in the healthiest of shape.
When profits are in perpetual decline, you cover the stink of your own slow death with the sweet smell of candy. You throw grain (dividends) to the market bulls to get them to gather.
What have stock buybacks gotten us?
No wonder corporate stock buybacks were illegal until Reagan changed that during his tenure of deregulation. Yes, that deregulation did wonders for the stock market for a long time. It’s amazing how rich shareholders can become (especially the board members and CEOs) when they dine for years on their own company. It’s also amazing how rich you can become when no one is paying for the largess because it is bought on credit.
However, greed and self-delusion among America’s corporate leaders has finally reached the zenith that comes just before self-annihilation. That is what happens when you get carried away with taking the regulations off of avaricious activity. Greed gets bolder and bolder as it explores the outer limits of its success. Evil contains the seeds of its own destruction. It always reaches too far.
Responsible use of credit buys innovation (research and development) or production expansion for the future. Greedy and irresponsible use buys profit sharing for the present when profits are down. That lack of rigorous self-discipline is the new American leadership norm.
For all of this, corporate bosses get bigger and bigger pay and eventually rise to become presidential candidates. That’s because they are best suited to run a country that advocates this kind of business by stripping away the laws that once governed such greed. Those laws were created because past experience taught us that humans couldn’t be trusted to act in the company’s (and the nation’s) long-term best interest, instead of their own immediate self-interest. Left on their own, many would reap and run. We always forget the lessons of the past, so we ditch those laws when they seem to restraining our progress.
However, the buybacks aren’t yielding the returns they once were, and the corporations have already taken on a load of debt for past buybacks that is even threatening the credit rating of some. Earnings have declined steadily as money spent on building for the future has dropped dramatically. It looks like the golden years when companies buy themselves are winding down, and we shall all convalesce together.
With so many American corporations on their sickbeds, it’s a good thing we have Obamacare.
While the common narrative is now that Donald Trump is dividing the United States along racial lines, it would appear that 200 years of widespread immigration (some more integrative and some less) – as the following stunning animated graphic shows – the proverbial melting pot, after 8 years of an African-American president, during which black inequality has worsened dramatically, is boiling over by its own volition.
Here is everyone who has emigrated to the United States since 1820 (1 dot = 10,000 people)
As the next Presidential election nears, optimism regarding candidates and political parties ebbs and flows. Voters like to believe their candidate sees the problems and will fix them. This fundamental belief drives voting. But what if it isn’t true? What if government ain’t fixable? Or can’t be changed? What then?
Government Ain’t Fixable and People Are Sensing It
The public increasingly recognizes that the opportunity to choose between two candidates is not working very well. The election process allows for a peaceful transfer of power but if the only change is in the the names and placeholders that media refer to as “leaders” But government continues to grow, become more expensive, more intrusive, less responsive and more burdensome. That is the way of government in this country for the half century I have been paying attention.
The quadrennial event that is the Presidential election cycle is akin to Charlie Brown, Lucy and the football. Voters play the role of the hapless Charlie Brown. Lucy represents the political class and the football plays the role of campaign promises. The football is never kicked, altered or used. Yet hapless Charlie falls for the promise again and again.
This election seems different. The public is beginning to understand the game. Some are rebelling. How else does one explain the popularity of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders? H. L. Mencken’s wisdom regarding democracy, politics and politicians is gaining followers. Mencken’s litany of disgust is too prolific to deal with other than to suggest that the public may be realizing that:
Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.
Increasing numbers understand this observation and that they are the victims in the game.
Government is too large and entrenched to be changed by elections. The political establishment considers themselves to be privileged and pretends to like and tolerate citizens. The truth is that the citizenry are nothing more than a commodity to the rulers. Their votes and pocketbooks are mined so that political lifestyles can be continued.
This reality is becoming apparent to more and more citizens who recognize the government as Lucy and themselves as Charlie Brown. The football is always promised but never delivered. The story of this election is the number of people dissatisfied with Lucy and her behavior. In a sense this election is beginning to look like a protest similar to the Boston Harbor tea party. It is likely a precedent that will not directly change anything, although the retrospective of history may recognize it as the first shot fired in the coming rebellion against oppressive government.
Government Will Correct
No one can fix government. Even if Donald Trump or Hillary/Bern were the best managers in the world, they could only have a marginal impact even if they were inclined.
Government is too far gone and too deeply entrenched. It is a gigantic blob immune to common sense, cost control or the will of the citizens it pretends to serve. People are expected to serve it, a complete contradiction of the stated goal of the Founders. It grows and enriches itself (and its members) simply because it can. It is no different from an unaccountable criminal enterprise, exempting itself from laws it imposes on others. In point of fact, it is less efficient than organized crime which must generate a profit under less than ideal circumstances. Most Mafia-run businesses provide a service or value to their customers in excess of what it costs. Government has no need to do so and is especially ineffective and inefficient.
Government is Leviathan. It looks out for itself and no one person or small group can alter that condition. Government will correct, but not willingly. Today it is at the point where the plant from Little Shop of Horrors was in this clip:
The conflicted Seymour represents the citizens of this country, subject to increasing demands and monetary contributions. Both the plant and the government demand contributions while provide little service or benefits in return. Government is as addicted to more every bit as much as the demanding plant. It knows no other way other than to spend to continue its scam.
Government ain’t fixable but it will correct because there are limits to what people and economies will bear. Government is out of money and hopelessly indebted. Yet it continues to spend as if it had the money. It has seriously wounded the host on which it parasitically survives. The golden goose no longer can shake off the effects of the government burden. The economy is stagnant. Confiscatory taxation and regulatory burdens prevent private capital formation. Without capital, standard of living and employment stagnate. The economy will continue to deteriorate and people will continue to become poorer until the system collapses of its own weight or the people revolt. Either represents a cataclysmic event!
For a time monetary printing can disguise the deterioration. States and municipalities are unable to print money. Their unnecessary and wasteful schemes are surfacing. Puerto Rico demands a bailout. So will Illinois and dozens of other governmental entities. California is driving its productive class away. That is also happening at the Federal level where both people and companies are voting with their feet. The renouncement of US citizenship is exploding as is the relocation of corporate headquarters out of this country.
Government as we know it is doomed. It will not recognize this reality until markets and/or citizens force it. This time is likely close and the process will not be painless. The more government ignores what is inevitable the greater the pain will be. One hopes that civilization does not enter an economic and anarchical Dark Ages. To the extent that government refuses to respond to the fantasy world they have created, the more likely that is to be the outcome.
Everyone has heard more than their share of stories about government inefficiency and stupidity. It is difficult to point to any government agency run effectively or achieving the ends for which it was created. The War on Poverty has increased poverty. The Department of Education was formed at the peak of educational effectiveness and everything has gone downhill since. What does the Department of Energy do besides make it more difficult to achieve more energy? The Internal Revenue Service has become a political tool to hammer opponents who do not hold the presidency. Hasn’t the Veteran’s Administration done a wonderful job for the medical care of our veterans? ObamaCare has driven health-care costs through the roof and put a damper on the creation of jobs like nothing else.
And now this inefficiency seems to be reaching new heights in the TSA, the agency that fails miserably on routine tests to find contraband and other items prohibited. Now we are told that this agency is going to impose the loss of millions of hours of wait time because it cannot do its job properly. The following video shows what is coming:
All the money being spent on preventing terrorism has not stopped one terrorist act at an airport. If you are a traveler, you are more likely to become a terrorist as a result of treatment by your own government than to be protected from terrorism.
As the following controversial Frontline documentary exposes – for the first time to the mainstream and average joes of America – the inside story of the the radicals who became the leaders of ISIS, the many missed warning signs and the U.S. failures to stop the terror group’s brutal rise.
“We created chaos. We abandoned that chaos… We created ISIS!”
Trailer…
“I said: ‘Mr. President, it isn’t just a simple matter of going to Baghdad. I know how to do that. What happens after? You need to understand, if you take out a government, take out a regime, guess who becomes the government and regime and is responsible for the country? You are. So if you break it, you own it.’”
-Colin Powell
Full documentary here (no embed, click image for link)
