Finian Cunningham

If there is one thing that the office of President Barack Obama demonstrates it is that democracy does not exist in the United States. This may seem a rather outlandish statement. For many people, the fact that the 44th president is the first black man to preside over the White House – with its American colonial-style architecture – is a tribute to the triumph of US democracy.

But many other more telling facts indicate that Obama is but a figurehead of an unelected government in the US. This unelected power of corporate elites – commercial, financial, military – governs with the same core policies regardless of who is sitting in the White House. Whether these policies are on social, economic or foreign matters, the elected president must obey the direction ordained by the unelected elite. That kind of untrammeled power structure conforms more closely in practice to dictatorship, not democracy.

As Michael Hudson and Ellen Brown reveal in their analyses of the US budget debacle, Obama is pathetically doing the bidding of Wall Street – much like an errand boy [1] [2]. Brown writes:

“The debt crisis was created, not by a social safety net bought and paid for by the taxpayers, but by a banking system taken over by Wall Street gamblers. The gamblers lost their bets and were bailed out at the expense of the taxpayers; and if anyone should be held to account, it is these gamblers.

“The debt ceiling crisis is a manufactured one, engineered to extort concessions that will lock the middle class in debt peonage for decades to come. Congress is empowered by the Constitution to issue the money it needs to pay its debts.”

Obama’s servile toeing of Wall Street’s line is not the behavior of a free leader boldly defending the interests of the people and the greater good. Rather, his behaviour is that of one doing what he is told to do – and doing it with grateful deference.

In this way, of course, Obama is hardly different from his predecessors. But of difference is just how blatant the White House is now appearing to function as a mere tool of the rich and powerful elite.

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Stephen Lendman

As a result, going for broke this September is essential. Delaying for another year is conceding defeat and denying the aspirations of millions of Palestinians who deserve better. It's high time they got it.

In September, when the General Assembly meets (beginning 9/13), Palestinians will seek de jure UN membership. Unless current policy changes, it will ask for official recognition as an independent sovereign state. Currently, it has Observer State Status only, denying its right to vote.

Israel opposes recognition. So does Obama, both Houses of Congress, and The New York Times.

Earlier articles explained the following:

(1) Last March, Israel told UN Security Council members and other prominent EU countries it will act unilaterally if the General Assembly grants Palestine de jure membership in September inside 1967 borders, 22% of historic Palestine.

(2) If granted, Israel will likely deny recognition, continuing its illegal occupation, this time against a sovereign country. Moreover, expect it to accelerate West Bank/East Jerusalem land seizures, isolating Palestinians on smaller portions of worthless scrub land.

(3) While rhetorically favoring Palestinian statehood, Obama categorically rejects PA officials seeking it unilaterally. Instead, he wants Israel to decide its terms, size, locations and timetable. In other words, he supports Israeli veto power of Palestinian rights, including sovereignty, an unacceptable/illegal condition under international law.

In a White House statement, he also "emphasized that a vote at the United Nations will never create an independent Palestinian state" even though defying a two-thirds majority General Assembly affirmation is illegal. More on that below.

(4) Last December 15, Congress (by voice vote) passed HR 1765: "Supporting a negotiated solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and condemning unilateral measures to declare or recognize a Palestinian state, and for other purposes," including:

"affirm(ing) that the United States would deny recognition to any unilaterally declared Palestinian state and veto any (Security Council resolution) to establish or recognize (one) outside of an agreement by the two parties."

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Stephen Lendman

[* The imaginary town of Mudville: This refers to a famous old baseball poem, Casey at the Bat - a fictional Babe Ruth who spread sorrow, not joy, when he struck out, his team losing as a result. Analogized, it may refer to the markets striking out. - SL]

Indeed not. The equity markets struck out, or as highly respected analyst Louise Yamada believes: "Clearly, this cyclical bull is over," but it's worse than that with Western and other economies cratering.

Some hover close to collapse or may head there. The operative word is hard times, the beginning of leg two of the global Depression that begin in fall 2007, likely to exceed it in harshness and duration.

Only massive monetary intervention prevented collapse earlier. Doing it, however, exacerbated a major problem, the equivalent of treating a metastasizing cancer with snake oil remedies. As a result, the patient is in sickbay failing.

Perhaps hindsight will prove what many analysts now believe - that the August 4 market rout was a major negative inflection point. By early August 8 trading, in fact, America's S & P 500 lost all its gains for the past nine months. By day's end much more. Other markets also got hammered, and why not.

Weak economic data are, in fact, worse than reported by manipulating them to look better or omitting their fine print, let alone what they portend.

For example, Friday's employment report showed 117,000 jobs gained in contrast to the broader Household Survey showing thousands lost. Moreover, labor force participation and the employment rate both dropped to a 28-year low heading south.

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Paul Craig Roberts

Although economic policy will continue to be discussed in terms of employment, inflation, deficits, and national debt, the policies that are implemented will reflect the interests of the two contending power centers [the military/security complex and the financial sector]. Their struggle for supremacy could destroy the rest of us.

On Friday, August 5, the credit rating agency, Standard & Poors, downgraded US debt from AAA to AA+.

Gerald Celente’s view that S&P’s downgrade of the US Treasury’s credit rating reflects a loss of confidence in the political system was confirmed by the rating agency itself.

S&P explained the downgrade as the result of heightened political risks, not economic ones. The game of chicken over the debt ceiling increase and the GOP’s ability to block tax increases indicate that "America’s governance and policymaking is becoming less stable, less effective, and less predictable."

The reduction in the government’s credit rating to AA+ from AAA is a cosmetic change.

It remains a very high investment grade rating and is unlikely to have any effect on interest rates. It is revealing that despite the downgrade, US bond prices rose. It was stocks that fell. The financial press is blaming the stock market decline on the bond downgrade. However, stocks are falling because the economy is falling. Too many jobs have been moved offshore.

Interest rates could fall further as investors flee into Treasuries from the euro because of sovereign debt worries, flee equity markets as they continue to tumble, and as large banks charge depositors for holding their cash. Indeed, the latter policy could be seen as an effort to drive people with large cash holdings out of cash into government bonds. Japan has a lower credit rating than the US and has even lower interest rates.

More hard knocks are on their way. As the economy weakens and the economic outlook darkens, new deficit projections will elevate the debt issue.

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Madison Ruppert

The world seems to be just now realizing that the government handling of the economy is completely fraudulent and corrupt.

In an attempt to reassure Americans that we will not default on our debt, former Chairman of the private Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan revealed the delusional mindset that has brought us to this precipice.

Greenspan absurdly claims that the sharpest drop in stocks since 2008 is actually due to Euro zone fears and not flawed American economic policy. This statement is exemplary of the condescending attitude harbored by the elite, assuming that we are not capable of reading the writing on the wall.

It doesn’t take an economist to connect the complete lack of spending cuts in the debt ceiling deal and the Down Jones Industrial Average’s performance today.

The mainstream media coverage of our current economic climate is similarly contradictory and nonsensical.

The New York Times correctly pins the massive drop in stocks to increased fears about our stagnating economy coupled with the lack of government ability to spur growth, and yet claims that the downgrade is not an equally powerful contributing factor.

The problem is in the NYT’s logic: they connect the lack of Treasury security dumps with continued investor confidence in the American economy and our government’s ability to pay back the behemoth debt created by the criminal private Federal Reserve.

The flawed logic lies in not attributing the continued holding of U.S. Treasury bonds with the European Union’s debt crisis.

With the economy as it is and the global engineered debt crisis crippling every economy under the veil of “free trade” and “capitalism”, there are few nations to which a securities trader can flee.

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