Counter Economics

There was a huge focus on change during the Obama presidential campaign. However, after being elected, Obama had the opportunity, or at least the perceived opportunity to bring in fresh blood into the senior posts. However, Obama decided to select the same people from previous administrations. This was extremely concerning, particularly for the cabinet positions related to the economy. This is of course because of the deep economic crisis that occurred before Obama took office and was a major contributor to him being able to become elected.

Obama’s Appointments

Obama’s appointments have been the “usual suspects,” and have demonstrated no unique or critical thinking on his part. He seems to have selected people from an extraordinarily narrow group of names. These names seem to have been provided to him by the banking industry. This includes Timothy Geithner (replacing another industry person Hank Paulson who had already provided immense bail-outs to his friends at the major investment banks), and Laurence Summers. Timothy Geithner has done nothing but give more money to banks, with no strings attached, and what Laurence Summers has provided is less clear, however, what is clear is that both these men are totally subordinated to the banking industry. Laurence Summers was instrumental in supporting the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which lifted the six decade restrictions between commercial banking, insurance, and investment services. His statement..

“Today Congress voted to update the rules that have governed financial services since the Great Depression and will replace them with a system for the 21st century. This historic legislation will better enable American companies to compete in the new economy”

It turns out that this legislation was critical in removing the old safeguards and was instrumental in allowing the behaviors that caused the current crisis. Other areas that Laurence Summers bet wrong on include opposing regulation and standards on credit default swaps. This allows companies like AIG to provide insurance on bad mortgage backed securities without having to set any money aside to pay out. AIG, with a book value of $50 billion, now owes $300 billion due to the collapse of the mortgage backed security market. This difference will be picked up by Laurence Summers.

While Laurence Summers was president of Harvard and has quite a reputation as an economist, it is clear that he has cost US taxpayers billions and is wrong on almost every major policy decision he supports. We suspect this is not because Laurence Summers is a stupid man (he was the youngest tenured professor in Harvard’s history), but because he is utterly corrupt. Laurence Summers received millions from hedge funds and well paid speaking engagements at many of the major investment banks.

After seeing this track record, Obama selected him as Director of the National Economic Council. This is how much Obama seems to value track record vs. pedigree. Of course this depends upon how you look at his track record. His track record of being correct is awful, but his track record of supporting policies that are corrupt and enrich elite interests is second to none. This brings up the question…

Does Obama believe or know that he has to appoint a specific number of people from a batch of individuals that are provided to him by corporate representatives. Does his Chief of Staff (Rohm Emanual) have this list compiled for him by corporate doners? Are they first cleared with large corporate interests before they are presented to Obama to he can choose from a preselected group? Has this always been the way political appointments have been done, at least for the very top political appointments. Does Obama realize or at least intuitively know what would happen to him if he were to appoint people from outside of this pre-selected group?

A Democracy Allows Corporations to Control The Appointment Process?

One can question the degree of democracy in a country that both controls the electoral process to the degree that it does, has Madison Avenue produce the political commercials, engages in voter purging, adjusts the votes through computerized machines and after all of this has one final trick up its sleeve:  it then decides for those who are elected who will be appointed to the key positions in the any new administration.

Kennedy was not getting along very well with the Pentagon and Federal Reserve Bank and was not buying into key concepts like “the Domino Theory,” Cuba as a threat to US national security and the Federal Reserve as a private banking entity with government money creation abilities. LBJ proved a compliant president which the Pentagon and Federal Reserve Bank was much more happy with. Obama has to be careful and institute policies that support elite interests, or else…..well lets just say the elite have their methods of limiting someone like Obama. If it were to actually happen, it will be a lone gunman. (its must always always be a lone gunman, or the individual does it to themselves. For instance, the Waco victims were not killed by the FBI, they shot themselves, some of them managed to shoot themselves 9 times.) If anyone ever disagrees with the official story they will be labeled conspiracy nuts. However, given Obama’s complicity with the elite, putting their people in key positions and taking tax-payer money and giving it to Goldman Sacks and so on, he should avoid JFK’s fate.

US History of Political Assassination

The fact is the US conservative power structures (i.e. FBI, Pentagon) kills people that get in the way of the objectives of concentrated power. The following list of people have a number of similarities. First, each of them were opposed to the Vietnam War, each of them had an extensive FBI file on them as well as substantial FBI intimidation (except JFK), and all of them were killed by bullets.

• JFK
• Robert Kennedy
• Martin Luther King
• Malcom X
• John Lennon
• Fred Hampton

The conventional wisdom is that each of these people were killed by lone gunmen (except for Fred Hampton, who was killed in police raid by the Chicago Police Department, after being told, falsely by the way, by the FBI that Mr. Hampton was responsible for the killing of police officers). However, how likely is it that the most influential anti-Vietnam individuals were all killed by lone gunmen? Mathematically, and considering that no pro-Pentagon people were killed, not very likely at all. Simple probability theory would indicate that these people were assassinated by criminal conspiracies by those who were in the power to do so and who found their politics objectionable. Its really not that complicated, once you see the pattern. The government does not have to answer these questions because anyone questioning the official story is marginalized as a conspiracy nut.

The Conspiracy Nut and the Perfectly Rational Institution

The very existence of the concept of a conspiracy nut is in a way a license to kill. However, labeling people as “nuts” is not a new strategy. Interestingly, institutions are never described as nuts. For instance, the Pentagon and defense contractors were at one point performing nuclear testing in the atmosphere, distributing nuclear debris far and wide, but strangely the Pentagon is never described as nut. When some American scientists opposed this, the Pentagon had their passports taken and they were extensively monitored by the FBI. Only individuals are nuts, institutions are perfectly rational.

The Nut Behind the Wheel

When the automobile industry was opposing the introduction of safety belts into cars the industry (specifically GM, Ford and Chrysler, all the same companies now asking for a bail-out) came up with the concept of “the nut behind the wheel.” This was an idea that all traffic fatalities had nothing to do with car design or their safety features, but where simple a feature of “nuts” who were not driving safely. This worked for quite some time, but eventually, the industry lost the fight and began to put safety equipment in their cars. This drastically reduced the fatalities and injuries from vehicles, disproving the nut behind the wheel concept. Institutions will always propose that they are perfectly rational, and that those who oppose them or criticize them are “nuts” or “hippies,” etc… These is nothing new about this strategy, but what is interesting is that it works.

No Prosecution of the Financial Criminal Class?

What is most amazing is that there have been no prosecutions of the people responsible for this crisis. Bernie Madoff perpetuated a large ponzi scheme, however, he is not responsible for the crisis. The culprits are the major financial institutions such as Citibank, Bank of America, Country Wide, Lehman Bros, Goldman Sacks, AIG, etc…along with people like Laurence Summers and Phil Graham that supported legislation that removed necessary financial regulation. The major players a not being prosecuted, but rather are being bailed out. The number of responsible parties reaches far and wide, from the corrupt mortgage broker to President Bush who appointed people with no interest in enforcing financial and accounting laws. None of these people is headed to jail, though this scandal is far greater than the previous accounting scandals that did result in a few criminal prosecutions. Is there some reason Obama is not pushing for investigations of people in this area? Has he concluded that these people helped elect him and will be necessary to help raise money for both his re-election and the reelection of his Democratic majority in congress? Did the Secret Service show him the video of JFK when he came into office and then leave a note on his desk stating “mistakes can happen for those that don’t go along?” Its hard to know, but it is quite suspicious.

Reference

“The Order was for the Treasury to issue silver certificates against all silver held by the government which did not already have certificates against it. The Order was needed due to the passage of Public Law 88-36 which repealed the Silver Purchase Act and other related monetary measures. One result was that after the repeals, only the President could issue new silver certificates.

The Federal Reserve System could replace the certificates, but only in larger denominations. The thrust of the Order returned the authority to issue new silver certificates (and specify denominations) back to the U.S. Treasury.

This executive order allowed for the Federal Reserve System to distribute and exchange currency at lower denominations that met the growing economic need. The authoritative basis for the Order was substantially nullified in 1982 with the passage of Public Law 97-258.

The Order was never directly reversed. However, Section 1(j) of Executive Order 10289, which was added by Section 1(a) of Executive Order 11110, was revoked when Ronald Reagan signed Executive Order 12608 in 1987.[1]” – Wikipedia

In terms of how to begin thinking like this, we offer a quote from Ralph Nader:

“Ralph Nader: One day in the spring, at Princeton, where I went to college, I noticed there were dead birds on the pavement between the campus buildings, where very large trees were. At first I didn’t think much of it, I just said, there’s a blue bird or a robin. They weren’t mutilated in any way, they just were on their back, dead. And, a few days later I saw more such birds, early in the morning before the grounds keepers picked them up. I noticed that during the day, we’d be going from one classroom to another, and the ground keepers would be spraying with huge hoses these trees. It turns out it was DDT. At the time, in the early ’50s, no one thought DDT was dangerous to anybody but insects. Well, it turned out it was dangerous right there to birds. I went down to the Daily Princetonian, the college paper, and tried to persuade them to do a story. I had one of the birds with me to show them, and they said, “Naw, there’s nothing wrong. We have some of the best science professors in the world,” they told me. “Chemistry, Biology, if they had any idea it was harmful, it would be stopped.” Well it continued on for years, into the 60s and even later. And the students would wipe some of it off their face, it would be so thick at times. But that taught me a very important lesson. One, that newspaper people can get very jaded. The editor was a senior, he had his feet on the desk, leaning back in his swivel chair, which is always a sign that curiosity might have dimmed. Second, that you might know something, like an expert chemistry professor, but if you are not interested in a problem, or if you have a dual allegiance like perhaps you might be a consultant to one of the chemical companies that produces the pesticide, you are not going to apply what you know. You are going to be in your little, pigeon-holed specialization, and become one of the world’s experts on some tiny little item. But when it comes to applying it to a problem right where you live and work, you are not necessarily the best person to start the ball rolling. It could be someone who doesn’t have a Ph.D., someone who has a sense of curiosity, and begins to ask questions. That’s why I always say there’s no ticket of admission for active citizenship. Anybody can get through that gate, and anybody can ask that basic question that gets the ball rolling. “