Thread: The war between liberals and conservatives is a false divide

America Is Being Raped ... Just Like Greece and Other Countries
George Washington's picture
Submitted by George Washington on 06/16/2011 14:55 -0400

Abu Dhabi
Central Banks
Corruption
Council Of Economic Advisors
Countrywide
Credit Default Swaps
Creditors
Deficit Spending
Fannie Mae
Federal Deficit
Federal Reserve
Freddie Mac
Goldman Sachs
Greece
Gross Domestic Product
Indiana
Institutional Investors
International Monetary Fund
Iraq
Larry Summers
Milton Friedman
Monetary Policy
Morgan Stanley
Naomi Klein
National Debt
national security
New Orleans
New York Times
Obama Administration
Prudential
Rahm Emanuel
Rating Agencies
ratings
Ratings Agencies
Real estate
recovery
Sovereigns
SWIFT
The Economist
Unemployment
United Kingdom
White House
World Bank
World Trade



→ Washington’s Blog

Preface: The war between liberals and conservatives is a false divide-and-conquer dog-and-pony show created by the powers that be to keep the American people divided and distracted. See this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this and this. So before assuming that privatization is a good thing, read on.

If these resources had always been in the private sector, that would be fine ... that would be free market capitalism.

But if they were purchased with our taxpayer funds and then sold to the big boys for cheap, that is looting.

Greece is thinking of selling some islands. Austria is thinking of selling mountains to pay off their national debt. Cities throughout the U.S. are thinking of privatizing their parking meters.

What's going on?

Well, as I predicted in December 2008, bailing out the giant, insolvent banks would cause a global debt crisis:

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) is often called the "central banks' central bank", as it coordinates transactions between central banks.



BIS points out in a new report that the bank rescue packages have transferred significant risks onto government balance sheets, which is reflected in the corresponding widening of sovereign credit default swaps:

The scope and magnitude of the bank rescue packages also meant that significant risks had been transferred onto government balance sheets. This was particularly apparent in the market for CDS referencing sovereigns involved either in large individual bank rescues or in broad-based support packages for the financial sector, including the United States. While such CDS were thinly traded prior to the announced rescue packages, spreads widened suddenly on increased demand for credit protection, while corresponding financial sector spreads tightened.

In other words, by assuming huge portions of the risk from banks trading in toxic derivatives, and by spending trillions that they don't have, central banks have put their countries at risk from default.

Top independent experts say that the biggest banks are insolvent (see this, for example), as they have been many times before.

And a study of 124 banking crises by the International Monetary Fund found that propping banks which are only pretending to be solvent hurts the economy:

Existing empirical research has shown that providing assistance to banks and their borrowers can be counterproductive, resulting in increased losses to banks, which often abuse forbearance to take unproductive risks at government expense. The typical result of forbearance is a deeper hole in the net worth of banks, crippling tax burdens to finance bank bailouts, and even more severe credit supply contraction and economic decline than would have occurred in the absence of forbearance.



Cross-country analysis to date also shows that accommodative policy measures (such as substantial liquidity support, explicit government guarantee on financial institutions’ liabilities and forbearance from prudential regulations) tend to be fiscally costly and that these particular policies do not necessarily accelerate the speed of economic recovery.



***

All too often, central banks privilege stability over cost in the heat of the containment phase: if so, they may too liberally extend loans to an illiquid bank which is almost certain to prove insolvent anyway. Also, closure of a nonviable bank is often delayed for too long, even when there are clear signs of insolvency (Lindgren, 2003). Since bank closures face many obstacles, there is a tendency to rely instead on blanket government guarantees which, if the government’s fiscal and political position makes them credible, can work albeit at the cost of placing the burden on the budget, typically squeezing future provision of needed public services.

By failing to break up the giant banks, governments are forced to take counter-productive emergency measures (see this and this) to try to cover up their insolvency. Those measures drain the life blood out of the real economy ... destroying national economies.

Selling the Farm to Pay for Debt Incurred to Make the Rich Richer

Matt Stoller notes:

Privatization takes inherently governmental functions — everything from national defense to mass transit and roads — and turns them over to the control of private actors, whose goal is to extract maximum revenue while costing as little as possible.



***



It isn’t true, as a general rule, that privatization shrinks the public sector. When investor demand for high returns is combined with the natural monopolies of public assets, what often results instead is citizens finding themselves saddled with high fees and poor service.



Even more perniciously, selling infrastructure such as toll roads puts the coercive power of the state in the hands of private actors. We have great public assets built by prior generations. We should and could be building a better country for our children, rather than liquidating what we have.

***

Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) pointed out the truth of the Obama administration’s stimulus program: “Larry Summers hates infrastructure. And some of these other economists — they don’t like infrastructure. … They want to have a consumer-driven recovery.â€

there are many links I will bring a few of them over here but you need to go to the above link and at the site under this top paragraph to them all. Here is the first THIS:



Monday, September 20, 2010
"Poll After Poll Shows That Both National Parties Are Deeply Unpopular With An Electorate Looking For Something New And Different"


As I noted a year ago:

Famed trend forecaster Gerald Celente is predicting that a third party candidate will be elected President in 2012....

***

The willingness of Obama/Emanuel so blatantly to disappoint those to whom they promised so much (especially young and first-time voters who were most vulnerable to Obama's transformative fairy dust) will lead them either to support a third party or turn off from politics altogether.

***

What About the Right?

The Washington Examiner writes:

The fact that just doesn't register with Washington GOP establishmentarians is that the Tea Party Protests seen around the country in April were aimed as much against them as they were against the tax and spending policies of Obama and the Democratic Congress.

There are millions of libertarians and traditional conservatives (or "paleo-conservatives", in contrast to Neo-conservatives) in the U.S. who are very unhappy with the direction the Republican party has taken in recent years.

Post-Partisan Coalitions

There are many millions of liberals and conservatives who have become disgusted by their parties and have started judging candidates based upon what they are actually doing.

As just one example, there are millions of Americans who would support either Ron Paul as president and Dennis Kucinich as vice president or the other away around. Why? Both challenge the status quo, and have proposed legislation which will actually help the American people.

Conclusion

Based on the above trends, I believe that Celente could be right. A third-party candidate could win in 2012.

Now, a new Gallup poll shows that the majority of Americans - 58% - say that both the Republicans and Democrats are doing such a poor job representing the people that a new, third party is needed.

And even the Washington Post writes:

Poll after poll shows that both national parties are deeply unpopular with an electorate looking for something new and different.

Pundits claim that the Republicans will gain quite a few Congressional seats in November. But even if they do, it doesn't mean that Republicans are regaining popularity.

As the Post article notes:

[Pollster Glen Bolger said]: "This is the first time where there has ever been data like this - where the party poised to take control has not improved its image ...."

Indeed, the American people are acting like a guy standing on hot sand hopping back and forth from one foot to the other. He doesn't like how the burning sand feels on either the left foot or the right foot.

He just knows he's getting burned, and can't wait to get wait to get somewhere cooler. The American people know they're being burned by both parties, who are serving the big banks and military-industrial complex at the expense of the little guy.

Come 2012, the American voter might sprint off of the hot sand of big-money-parties-fleecing-the-little-guy altogether for more welcoming turf: a party which does more than just talk populism, but actually stands up to the powers-that-be.

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/09/ ... -both.html






Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Don't Fall For the Old Divide And Conquer Trick

The powers-that-be are trying to distract us from the looting of our wallets by the big banks by creating a left-versus-right, us-versus-them drama.

You know, the old divide-and-conquer schtick.

Americans from across the political spectrum are furious at the financial elite who have robbed us blind, and their enablers in government.

While at the moment, conservatives are getting more press, those on the left are just as angry. For example, leading progressive Glenn Greenwald wrote an essay entitled "The virtues of public anger and the need for more" cheering the fact that Americans are starting to get in touch with their righteous anger at being ripped off.

Liberals have launched their own version of the tea party protests calling for the big banks to be broken up.

And many leading economists and policy experts have thunderously railed against Obama's continuation of Bush's cover-up-the-truth, too-big-to-fail, stick-it-to-the-taxpayers approach to the economic crisis.

On the conservative side of the aisle, Ron Paul's media coordinator said that the mainstream Republican party has tried to hijack the tea party movement and has "co-opted" its message. He warns against letting the movement be diverted:

It's important the people at the grassroots level stick to our guns and say no when they try to co-opt our message....

Bringing in someone like Gingrich takes away from the message. Newt Gingrich enabled George W. Bush, he enabled the big spending...

And as Michael Rivero has written:

Beware this "left wing versus right wing" dichotomy. This is an attempt to trick us into arguing with each other instead of uniting against the common cause of our problems...

The only real divide is the one mentioned at the very top of this article. The one percent that owns it all against the 99% of us being driven into poverty. The poor against the oligarchs.

To my friends on both the left and the right, I urge you to remember that folks on the other side of the aisle are not the problem. As honest people on both the left and the right agree, the real problems are:

Lack of honest disclosure about the shenanigans of the financial giants

Failing to prosecute the criminal actions of those companies and their big wigs

Failing to break up zombie insolvent companies

Slipping trillions of dollars into the hands of the richest and most powerful companies under the table

Gaming the numbers

And continuing to pursue failed economic policies even after they've been proven counterproductive

If we fall for the divide and conquer strategy, where idiots on both sides try to focus our anger on the "other team" instead of the real culprits, we will get distracted, lose direction, and thus became easy to ignore and control. Then the powers-that-be will be able to continue pickpocketing us for years to come.

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2009/04/ ... nquer.html


Sunday, November 9, 2008
Neocons and Neoliberals: Two Masks, One Face


Obama might very well be classified as a "neoliberal". He appears to be appointing leading neoliberals to key positions in his administration.

If you're a liberal, you might think this is great. Instead of the Neoconservatives who have been in power for the last 8 years, we'll now have neoliberals. You may assume that "neoliberals" are new, smarter liberals -- with liberal social policies, but with a stronger, more realistic outlook.

Nope.

In reality, neoliberalism is as dissimilar to true progressive liberal politics as neo-conservatism is to true conservative politics (if you don't know it, most leading neoconservatives are former followers of Trotsky communism - not very conservative, huh?)

For example, did you know that Ronald Reagan was a leading neoliberal? In the U.S., of course, he is described as the quintessential conservative. But internationally, people understand that he really pushed neoliberal economic policies.
As former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer Philip Giraldi writes:

Neoconservatives and neoliberals are really quite similar, so it doesn’t matter who gets elected in 2008. The American public, weary of preemptive attacks, democracy-promotion, and nation-building, will still get war either way.

And leading neo-conservative strategist Robert Kagan recently said:

Until now the liberal West's strategy has been to try to integrate these two powers into the international liberal order, to tame them and make them safe for liberalism."

So neoconservatives are not really conservative and neoliberals are not really liberal.

But neocons and neoliberals are very similar to each other. Neocons are alot more similar to neoliberals than to true conservatives; neoliberalss are more similar to neocons than to real liberals.

Do you get it? Both the Republican and Democratic party are now run by people with identical agendas: make the big corporations richer and expand the American empire.

There is only one party, which simply puts on different faces depending on which "branch" of the party is in power. If its the Democratic branch, there is a slightly liberal social veneer to the mask: a little more funding for social programs, a little more nice guy talk, a little more of a laissez faire attitude towards gays and minorities, and a little more patient push towards military conquest and empire.

If its the Republican branch, there's a little more tough guy talk, quicker moves towards military empire, a little more mention of religion, and a tad more centralization of power in the president.

But there is only a single face behind both masks: the face of raw corporatism, greed and yearning for power and empire.

Until Americans stop getting distracted by the Republican versus Democratic melodrama, America will move steadily forward towards war, empire and -- inevitably as with any country which extends too far -- collapse.

Neoliberalism is neither "new" or liberal. Neoconservativism is neither new or conservative. They are just new labels for a very old agenda: serving the powers-that-be, consolidating power, controlling resources. Whether the iron fist has a velvet glove on it or not, it is still an iron fist.

A true opposition party is needed to counter the never-changing American agenda for military and corporate empire.


http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2008/11/ ... s-one.html




Kathyet