What Profits? The Nation Is Dying!
by John Hoefle
July 17—Four of the biggest banks in the U.S.A. declared huge profits for the second quarter, prompting a predictable chorus from the usual lame-brained cheerleaders about how the financial system has weathered the storm and returned to normalcy. "Put your party hats on, kids, because the money machine is back in business!" Oh yeah, and the tooth fairy is going to leave the winning lottery ticket under your pillow tonight.
The levels of delusion, duplicity, and stupidity among the government, financial, and media circles are incredible. Virtually nothing they are saying is true, because virtually nothing they believe is true. It would be hard to find a bigger pack of idiots anywhere on the planet.
No matter what they say, the banks are not earning profits. The system is dead, and so are they. No amount of accounting fiction and asset-puffery will change that.
Deadly Fantasies
Rather than debate them on all their silly talking points, let's demolish their fantasies from the top down, beginning with the belief that the return of the financial system would be a positive development.
We're talking here about a global monetary system which was created and run by parasites, for the express purpose of subjugating and looting the people of the planet. This Anglo-Dutch Liberal system, more generally known as the British Empire, has been the bane of the planet for centuries. Its power lies in its control over global finance, acting through a system of central banks and powerful financial houses, using its money to buy off and corrupt private and government interests in every nation. This empire is the entity which created the derivatives markets that blew up the world in mid-2007; it is this empire that has stolen trillions of your tax dollars to cover its losses, leaving you to face savage cuts in your standard of living. Reviving this monstrosity is about the worst idea a person could have, which presumably is why President Obama supports it.
The second fantasy is that the system is coming back. It's not—it's deader than Adam Smith. The derivatives markets are dead, the banking system is rapidly consolidating—with the biggest and most bankrupt banks kept open on the Federal teat, while the little ones are being closed at a pace not seen since the early 1990s. The only thing keeping the banking system from a visible collapse, is phony accounting on a world-historic scale, with trillions of dollars in worthless assets being carried at "whatever it takes to make us look solvent" valuations. It is a criminal conspiracy of the first order, and a monumental stupidity.
The third fantasy is that this is a financial crisis, for which the so-called financial "experts" must provide the solution. That's a fallacy of composition, with a so-called "financial solution" being dangled in front of desperate bankers and citizens, as a way of keeping them distracted, while a very nasty political solution—fascism—is being put in place. While we stare at the carrot on the stick, the world is being reorganized into a global financial dictatorship, and our nation is being politically destroyed.
Just as the financier oligarchy imposed fascism around the world in the 1920s and 1930s, it is attempting to do so again. Franklin Roosevelt, and the American spirit and industrial capacity stopped them then, defeating a coup attempt in the U.S., and defeating Hitler, Mussolini, and Japan. This time, however, we have President Obama openly pushing Hitler-style policies.
Far from being a good sign, even the illusion of a revival of the financial system is a dangerous development, because it takes us further away from the only real solution to this crisis—the abandonment of imperial monetarism in favor of a return to the American System of political economy, and its core, the Hamiltonian credit system. Anything else is a one-way ticket to global, corporatist fascism, the end of the United States as a sovereign nation, and the death of the nation-state system for decades to come.
Look Around You
Take a good look at the economy around you. Compare the standard of living of your family, your friends, and your neighbors now, with the way it was in previous decades. What kind of work do you do—productive or overhead? Do you earn enough income to pay your expenses and have a comfortable surplus? Do you spend hours every week in bumper-to-bumper traffic, commuting to and from work? Are you optimistic about the future? Or, are you grimly holding on, hoping for a break? Are conditions getting better, or worse?
Our nation is dying. Forty-seven of the 50 states are bankrupt, as are thousands upon thousands of cities and counties. As the economy sinks, as people lose jobs by the hundreds of thousands, as real estate and financial assets collapse in value, revenues are drying up. At the same time, prices are soaring on food, energy, and other staples. When incomes plummet and costs soar, even President Nero should be able to figure out we're headed deeper into trouble.
Six U.S. states hit contemporary-record unemployment rates in June, with Michigan being the first state in a quarter of a century to top 15%, according to the Labor Department. Fifteen states have unemployment levels above 10%. These are the official rates—real unemployment is probably twice those rates. What do you think that means for the families involved, the governments which depend upon them for tax revenues, and the financial institutions which hold their mortgages and their credit cards?
Look at the bank profits in this context. Even if the banks were solvent, they would not be for long, as the economy collapses beneath them. But that's only half of it. The other half is that the population, and the physical economy upon which their lives depend, is being systematically looted by banks like Goldman Sucks, with the deliberate, knowing collusion of the Obama Administration and the Federal Reserve. The more money these fools give away through the bailout, the faster the real economy collapses. We are throwing out the baby to save the bathwater.
Rise to the Occasion
The poet and historian Friedrich Schiller once remarked, of a earlier period of crisis, that a great moment had found a little people. That is a perfect description of inept leaders like President Obama and Nancy Pelosi, monetarist fools like Larry Summers and Ben Bernanke, and most of the citizenry.
Summers, for example, claimed as proof that the "recession" was over, that Google searches for "economic depression" are declining! "We were at the brink of catastrophe at the beginning of the year, but we have walked some substantial distance back from the abyss," he claimed in a speech today at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Are we really going to let our nation be destroyed by such fascist idiots?
The solution is on the table, courtesy of Lyndon LaRouche, and the great minds of history. The choice is clear: the fascism of the financier oligarchy versus a return to the principles of the American Declaration of Independence and Constitution. The issue is not can we save the nation, but will we.
Don't wait for the proverbial "them" to do it for you. "They" are either deliberate plotters of the destruction of the nation, corrupt individuals looking out for themselves while the nation collapses, or cowards hiding under their beds. There are good people out there who want to do the right thing, but they don't believe they can win. Our job is not only to show them that it can be done, but to lead the fight.
Without such action on our part, the nation is doomed. The oligarchy can not win, as its success in implementing its "solutions" ensures its demise. The real question then, is, will we let them take us with them?
