Stephen Lendman

Global Depression grips world economies. Destructive polices fueled today's crisis. Conditions are fast coming to a head.

Throwing good money after bad delays decision day at the price of far greater trouble on arrival. D-Day will shake world economies. It may, in fact, be months away, perhaps in 2012.

No one knows for sure, but things that can't go on forever won't, and when they end, watch out. Ordinary people will be hurt most, much more than already.

Perhaps Greece is the canary in the coal mine. The country's bankrupt. Only its obituary isn't written. Its citizens are being impoverished. Anger rages in Athens. Revolutionary sentiment may explode any time, sending shock waves across Europe.

Trends analyst Gerald Celente says when people lose everything and have nothing else to lose, they lose it.

Greek citizens are close to losing it. Others in troubled countries aren't far behind, including in America where growing thousands rage against a system destroying their livelihoods and futures.

Fixing it demands direct action. Focusing on core issues is key, and knowing bottom-up change only is possible, never the other way. Entrenched corporate and political interests don't yield.

Sustained pressure is crucial. Today's struggle is the mother of them all. Change won't come easily or quickly. Minimally it will take years to remake what's too corrupted and broken to fix.

Ripping it down and starting over is essential. American and Eurozone workers are on their own to do it. They're in for the fight of their lives. Odds are greatly stacked against them, but the stakes are too important to back down.

Money power in private hands must change. People must get back what's rightfully theirs. America's Constitution mandates it. Enforcing it is crucial. Doing so makes everything else possible. Without it, expect failure.

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Stephen Lendman

Class war raged for decades. Business and America's super-rich always win. In his 1925 short story titled "Rich Boy," F. Scott Fitzgerald said:

"Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early...They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we.."

"Even when they enter deep into our world....they still think that that they are better than we are. They are different."

In his article, titled "The Truth About 'Class War' in America," economist Richard Wolff said:

"The last 50 years have indeed seen continuous class warfare in and over federal economic policies."

Corporate giants and America's super-rich waged war against working Americans and won. Notably since the 1970s, "(b)usiness and its allies shifted most of its federal tax burden onto individuals."

Since WW II, tax rates on super-rich Americans fell from 91% to 35% today. Obama's deficit cutters want it lowered to 24% along with eliminating some deductions with loopholes to compensate and save others. Moreover, they want the top corporate tax rate slashed from 35% to 26%.

Many corporate giants, in fact, pay minimal or no taxes. Some, like General Electric, get generous rebates in highly profitable years. They game the system, benefitting form tax laws they write. American workers lose out from greater than ever burdens on them.

Obama schemers also want deeper Medicare cuts, higher Medicaid co-pays, and Social Security's retirement age raised to 69 with lower cost-of-living increases. Privately they want Wall Street to control it to suck out maximum profits, then shut it down entirely. In addition, they want home mortgage interest and tax-free employer provided health insurance capped or ended. They represent business and super-rich elites. America's middle class is targeted for extinction.

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Stephen Lendman

Despite a deepening global depression, establishment economists are in denial. On June 9, the Wall Street Journal said those surveyed expected slow, steady growth through 2011, despite high US unemployment, a housing depression, European sovereign debt in crisis, and the unreported insolvency of major French and other banks.

On June 8, testifying before the House Budget Committee, Fed chairman Bernanke fantasized about 3.5% US growth through 2011, stopping just short of ruling out the possibility of recession he called "unlikely."

And in 2007, when equity and housing bubbles peaked, neither he or Greenspan expressed alarm, destroying their credibility in the process.

Based on an early August survey, establishment (in bed with Wall Street) economists now put the chance of "another" downturn at 30%, compared to 15% in May, expecting 2.5% growth over the next year.

Some, in fact were sanguine, calling America's economy strong, attributing negative views to a crisis of confidence, not hard reality, signaled by the August 4 shot across the bow market rout.

Despite a predictable rebound, it signified much worse to come because conditions are dire getting worse. Even manipulated data show enough to sound alarms, highlighted by economists like David Rosenberg.

On August 15, he expressed surprise about so

"little reaction to the shocking US consumer sentiment data that were released on Friday - the worst since the tail end of the Jimmy Carter recession era in 1980."

Moreover, consumer spending is weak even with suspect upward revisions. In addition, "(n)ew mortgage and refinancing loan volumes fell 19% in Q2 to" a three-year low. Further, auto buying plans declined to a decade low, likely headed much lower as economic conditions deteriorate. Other big ticket buying plans also dropped to 2008-09 depths when the economy falling off a cliff seemed possible.

In fact, growth indicators overall are rapidly heading south at a time they're already woefully weak. There's no end to decline in sight. Remarkably, negative household assessments of government policy hit record lows, surpassing the depths of the early 1980s recession and Watergate.

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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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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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Saman Mohammadi

"I have no intention for the next weeks and months to be talking about this committee." - House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi when asked by reporters at a press conference about the new Super Congress. (Gregory Korte, USA Today, August 3, 2011).

"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. . . Things that we had postponed for too long, that were long-term, are now immediate and must be dealt with. This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before." - Chicago Mayor/Former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. (Gerald F. Seib, The Wall Street Journal, November 21, 2008).

"We all live in a house on fire, no fire department to call; no way out, just the upstairs window to look out of while the fire burns the house down with us trapped, locked in it." - Tennessee Williams

Nothing makes sense in Washington if you assume that the leading political figures in both parties care about the interests, freedoms and security of the American people. The political, media, and financial elite are pursuing an anti-democratic, anti-Constitution, and anti-American agenda.

This agenda includes the gutting of Social Security and Medicare, an endless war for empire, the economic, security and political unification of Mexico, America and Canada, and top-down control of the economy and society by a technocratic class that answers to criminal bankers and criminal corporations.

The creation of the Super Congress is another step in a process that began long ago, and won't end until the structures that underpin the American constitutional republic are destroyed once and for all.

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Stephen Lendman

Nero (A.D. 37-68), Roman emperor A.D. 54-68. Nero, lyre in hand, watches Rome burn. Nero was accused of kindling the fire in 64 A.D. which destroyed much of Rome. (Image by © Bettmann/CORBIS)

With an approaching August 2 deadline, Paul Craig Roberts assessed the state of things accurately like he always does, saying in his new article headlined, "Disastrous Outcomes From An Orchestrated Crisis:"

"Americans need desperately to ask themselves why they put into political office such utterly irresponsible and incompetent people capable of creating such a totally unnecessary crisis loaded with such disastrous potential outcomes."

Michael Hudson's new article also covered important ground headlined, "The Debt Ceiling Set For Progressive Repealing," saying:

Obama's "blatantly empty threat (claims) there won't be money to pay Social Security checks next month (if Congress doesn't) 'tackle the tough challenges of entitlement and tax reform.' "

As always, Obama did what he does best. He lied. His threat "is not remotely true. But it has become the scare theme for over a week," and will be repeated until political Washington agrees on a deal destroying America's social contract, claiming it was done to save it.

In the end, of course, the debt ceiling will be raised as done routinely numerous previous times, including 10 times in the past decade and 74 times since 1962. Moreover, raised or not, no default will occur. Threatening otherwise is a lie. Failure to act, however, will lose America's AAA rating.

But that's virtually guaranteed anyway, given decades of reckless spending, largely on out-of-control militarism and handouts to Wall Street and other corporate favorites.

In contrast, America's entitlements are fiscally sound, needing only occasional tweaking to keep them steady-as-you-go for decades, maybe in perpetuity. But you'd never know it from bipartisan lying, regurgitated by managed new media deception.

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Stephen Lendman

In this game, the house always wins. Bipartisan complicity stacked the deck against millions of working households, needing to know that political Washington is scamming them.

The end result is the banana republicanization of America. American writer O. Henry (William Sydney Porter: 1862 - 1910) coined the term (his fictional Republic of Anchuria) in his book, "Cabbages and Kings."

It refers to a country (often politically unstable and/or repressive) where a small percent of the population has a disproportionate share or wealth and power, where ordinary people are exploited, often persecuted, and where profits are privatized while working households bear the burden of debt.

It's also a kleptocracy run by criminals, complicit with corporate thieves who bribe them to get their way. It's corrupt, rotten to the core gangsterism, run for personal gain, both sides profiting at the public's expense.

It's in plain sight in Washington, the heart of darkness, where bipartisan crooks are destroying personal freedoms, democratic values, and general welfare to grab everything for themselves and their corporate partners.

Previous articles discussed it, accessed through the following links here, here and here.

Read them and weep, or better still, react by refusing any longer to put up with bipartisan corruption, stealing us blind for the Big Monied interests that own them. Obama was made president to play ball, a Democrat engineering what no Republican would dare, at the same time duplicitously claiming populist credentials.

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Stephen Lendman

(Schuyler Ebbets © The People's Voice)

The criminal class in Washington is bipartisan, united against working household interests. In fact, lawmakers yield on virtually everything big money wants, notably when banks and other corporate favorites are affected.

Last December, Obama capitulated to Republicans, rigging a deal for up to $1 trillion dollars in handouts, mostly to corporate giants and America's wealthy with working households almost entirely left out.

They still are, enduring a protracted Main Street depression, stiff-armed by Obama-led bipartisan crooks. In fact, he's more crime boss than president - stealing from the many for the few. More on his dirty scheme below.

As a result, America and other "(e)conomies are being turned into rentier ('tollbooths') to pay debts that ('real' ones) can't sustain," according to Michael Hudson. "It's a losing game," but goes on, criminally defrauding millions of people to assure creditors are paid, sucking massive amounts of wealth to their coffers, unreported by major media scoundrels, suppressing what people most need to know.

In fact, new audit figures show that Bernanke's Fed gave Wall Street and European banksters at least $16.1 trillion (called emergency loans) from December 1, 2007 - July 21, 2010, besides unknown amounts earlier and in the past year.

Moreover, it's well known that trillions of dollars are stolen, handed to corporate interests and never returned, as well as gotten in other illegal ways. As a result, taxpayers get stuck with the bill, the nation with unsustainable mounting debt, heading it eventually for ruin.

About $13 trillion in Fed bailouts went to US financial institutions, the rest to their counterparts in Britain, Germany, France, Switzerland, and Belgium, according to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) analysis.

In addition, asset swaps (good ones for toxic corporate junk) were arranged with banks in Britain, Switzerland, Canada, South Korea, Norway, Mexico, and Singapore.

Moreover, the Wall Street controlled Fed mostly outsourced its lending operations to the same institutions responsible for engineering the financial crisis, letting them profit hugely at the public's expense.

Though unsustainable, the dirty game goes on, a take the money and run scam, leaving hollowed out economies and impoverished millions on their own sink or swim.

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Stephen Lendman

John Boehner (left) is the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and
a member of the Republican Party. Neither he nor Barak Obama work for the
people of America, who elected them. Obama works for the bankers, the war
profiteers, the Military Industrial Complex and, apparently, for Israel.

Short of finalizing details and assuring enough bipartisan support, it's a done deal to slash Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other social spending while leaving outsized military budgets and generous handouts to corporate favorites in place. At the same time, the timeline to accomplish it is undetermined. Political posturing may extend the August 2 deadline until fall or beyond.

It's how corrupted Washington always works, notably since the 1980s under both parties. Obama was elected to assure continuity and accomplish by rhetorical duplicity what Republicans on their own can't do.

Notably after capitulating last December on tax cuts for America's super-rich, he proposed deep budget cuts, affecting disease prevention, children's and community healthcare, education, supplemental grants to poor women and children, community block grants for housing, energy efficiency and renewable energy, and other benefits for people most in need.

He's a charlatan, not a leader who cares. Earlier, he proposed hundreds of billions in Medicare cuts. It was step one ahead of incrementally ending entitlements and other social benefits altogether, including publicly funded pensions, returning America to dark age harshness.

Bipartisan duplicity supports it, including slashing healthcare, education, housing, virtually all social benefits incrementally, eliminating them all altogether. Obama and many Democrats tacitly agree. Timing is mostly at issue with an eye to 2012.

In principle, Obama and Speaker Boehner privately agreed to $4 trillion in Social Security, Medicare, and other social spending cuts, backtracking when word leaked prematurely to a more modest $2.4 trillion package, then resurrecting the $4 trillion one.

At a July 11 press conference, Obama again stressed "shared sacrifice," leaving unexplained he means working households sacrifice to let America's super-rich share.

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