There are two things you should fear in life, a thug armed with a gun and a suit armed with big words. On second thought, you should fear the suits more; behind their big words and their fancy education are malicious intentions to make you part ways with your life savings. Sadly, these suits are the very same people we entrust to govern us and have faith in to tend to our economy. The Great Recession of 2008 should have been the wake up call for all of us; instead of rising against the criminals who gambled with our savings and wrecked our economy, we hit the snooze button and went right back to bickering as usual.
It’s politics that is preventing us from realizing that we are all getting screwed by this biggest of Ponzi schemes ever foisted upon humanity. So busy viewing everything through the left/right prisms that we are blinded to the bipartisan criminality taking place in Washington DC and Wall Street. Well folks, buckle your seat belts because what happened today in the global markets might be the first shots of another economic implosion.
Just in case you missed it—seeing that the bankrupt mainstream media is inundating us with meaningless outrage and manufactured sensationalism to keep us distracted—the Dow Jones took a nose dive throughout today’s trading session. At one point, the Dow was down 1,500 points as traders were driven into panic by an “unexplained selloff”. By the time the closing bell rung, the Dow closed down 1,175 points for the day. Let’s put this into perspective, after the markets were closed for six days following the horrors of 9/11, the Dow closed down 684 points on Monday, September 17th of 2001.
Lest I become a sensationalist like the hounds at MSNBC and Fox News, let me put the above paragraph into context. The Dow Jones in 2001 was hovering around 10,000 compared to 24,345 it closed at today. Consequently, the retrenchment of 9/17/01 was a lot steeper in terms of share of the overall market. Yet the focus on stats and ratios overlooks a broader perspective. Behind the numbers and for every point shaven from Dow Jones, NASDAQ or the S&P is a working mother or a worried father who just lost his or her job or life savings. Viewing life through statistics is blinding us to the fact that human beings are suffering.
The title of this article is “Quantitative Fleecing” for a reason; it is a take on a policy called Quantitative Easing implemented by the Obama administration. If you asked an average voter or the man on the street what Quantitative Easing is, a vast majority will shrug and say they don’t know. Remember how I said to fear the suit who is armed with euphemisms, a fancy education and big words. I’m about to explain to you exactly why corporate executives and governmental bureaucrats are infinitely more malicious than thugs on the streets when it comes to the criminality they purvey on humanity.
Barack Obama is given credit for “saving the economy”. Not even the biggest grazing fields in Texas have as much bullshit as the notion that Obama saved us from another Great Depression. He did not save the economy; what he did was resurrect a failed system and made “too big to fail” permanent by transferring wealth from the bottom 90% of Americans while punting the systematic issues that cracked our economy into the future. He did so by implementing the most insidious economic policies where the interests of Wall Street and the banking mafia that bled our economy were put ahead of taxpayers and citizens.
Instead of bailing out homeowners, Obama gave trillions in bailout money to multinational corporations. But the bailouts were just the tip of the iceberg. The truly pernicious parts of Obama’s monetary policies were ZIRP and QE. Don’t know what that is? Don’t worry, that is how our leaders in government and their masters in Central Banks planned it. ZIRP stands for Zero Interest Rate Policy and QE stands for Quantitative Easing. Still don’t know what that is? At the risk of sounding like Robin Williams in Goodwill Hunting, let me comfort you by saying it’s not your fault—neither do a large plurality of majority of Americans.
ZIRP is an action the Federal Reserve took to stimulate the economy by lowering interests to near zero. They did so under the theory that low interest rates would encourage investments by business and spending by consumers. What they actually did was reward Wall Street by punishing the rest of us. How you ask? A near 0% Fed Rate meant that banks could borrow money at no cost, turn around and lend to customers at cost while giving consumers no incentive to save.
This is why the average savings rate of Americans is less than $1,000; when banks are offering interest rates less than the rate of inflation, the smart money is to invest it in stocks and failing that hide your money under your mattress. Either way, savers get punished while the degenerate gamblers at firms like Goldman Sachs, Citibank, Wells Fargo and Co get rewarded handsomely. Tails we lose, heads they win.
ZIPR was nothing compared to Quantitative Easing. QE is a policy that Janet Yellen and the Federal Reserve Board of Governors undertook where they literally laundered money between the Fed and Treasury. Without voter input or acquiescence and without the approval of our elected representatives, a cabal of banking executives implemented a policy whereby the Federal Reserve bought tens of trillions of dollars of T-bills from the Treasury. They did this in order to lower the bond rates as a way to incentivize equity. In other words, the Federal Reserve tipped the scales in favor of corporations at the cost of the public.
You know the Republican talking point of “free markets”? What a load of crock. There are no free markets in America; what we have are fee markets where Wall Street corporations monopolize the public square and treat the rest of us as chattel and possessions. It’s not only Barack Obama who deserves condemnation for the criminal policies he endorsed and and implemented that benefited the criminals who cratered our economy. Republicans were willing accomplices who gave aid and comfort to the crooks of Wall Street.
Thing is, the whole “gridlock in DC” and “obstructionism” only happens when it comes to the things we demand of our government. When it comes to issues like affordable housing, the means to take care of our loved ones and the ability to earn a decent living, our government is hopelessly deadlocked and paralysis rules the day in the District of Caligula. But
when it comes to the demands of plutocrats and Wall Street, both Republicans and Democrats snap to attention and offer us as sacrificial lambs to appease their corporate gods and aristocratic masters.
Where Obama left off, the buffoon from Mar-a-Lago is picking right up as he continues to feed us to the wolves of Wall Street. Where Democrats were screwing us over through monetary policies the likes of QE and ZIRP, Republicans grabbed a different shiv to shove into our collective backs. I’ll give it to the GOP, at least they are a lot more forthcoming in telling us that they are against us.
The tax cuts the Republicans passed in December was a big wet kiss to the 1% as they screwed the rest of us right in our tucheses. They ramrodded a $1.5 trillion tax cut, the vast majority of which goes to the billionaire and millionaire class by way of a permanent tax cut while the poor, working and middle class were given measly tax cuts that expire in ten years. The same moneyed gentry that made off like bandits under Obama were given preferential treatment by Trump by saddling our children with an onerous debt that ensures the continued decline of America.
Democrats and Republicans are not oppositions at all; they are factions working in accord to demolish hope and deliver us into the shackles of debt and insolvency. Right there next to them are corporate media pundits and faux-journalists. Instead of speaking truth to power, mainstream media—they are really yellow journalists—are currying favor from the very authorities they are supposed to be checking. On a day that witnessed one of the biggest selloffs in the history of Wall Street, the Washington Post was breaking news about some Hollywood mogul. Corporate media outlets peddle sensationalism to obfuscate the pyramid scheme that is bleeding our nation and cannibalizing humanity.
I’m not claiming to be some soothsayer and predicting the future as if I’m the Ethiopian Nostradamus. I pray that I’m wrong about the markets imploding in the near future because that outcome will lead to horrific repercussions that I shudder at the thought of. However, one does not have to be a psychic to realize what is in the offing for us. If you look back at the history of Wall Street and inspect the charts of the markets, you will realize a most interesting quirk. Every 7-10 years, the US economy takes a tailspin as a downturn leads into a recession. Sometimes the recessions are “mild” and other times they are severe like the Great Recession of 2008.
At the risk of sounding like George W, fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me—fool me endless times and I’ll walk away knowing the devil can’t be shamed. These recessions are not accidents nor are they happening in a vacuum. Devils like Gates, Buffet, Bezos and Soros et al—who have billions at their disposal and are able to dictate the direction of the markets—are intentionally cratering the markets by manipulating their positions and influencing policies. When recessions arrive, those who have access to cash reign supreme as they use their wealth to buy up distressed assets pennies on the dollar. They are wrecking the economy in order to cull our life savings and dispossess us of our homes and belongings.
The next planned recession is on its way and when it arrives God help us all. The Federal Reserve has no room to lower interest rates in order to stimulate the economy as Fed rates are already hovering around zero. Likewise Quantitative Easing is off the table because there are few buyers who are willing to step up to the table and purchase trillions in T-bills—you can only print your way out of inflation for so long. Don’t look to DC to come to the rescue either; there is no political will to spend trillions more to prop up banks if they seize up again as they did in 2008. We have an economy before us that is in record territory with no safety net below it.
We have been operating under the assumption of perpetual growth for decades. Both parties kept implementing policies that inflated the markets by imploding the lives of the citizenry—a reckoning cometh. The law of gravity is set to kick in; what goes up surely shall come down in a heap of panic selling as bewildered gamblers make a B-line to the exit doors.
Watch the markets tomorrow because we just might be in the beginning stages of a wind down that might end with the planned implosion of our economy. When that day arrives, Wall Street and the American oligarchy will try to affix all blame on Donald Trump. After all, that is why they foisted Trump on us. Plutocrats did not get rich without knowing how to plan for all eventualities. #QuantitativeFleecing The poor labor by their hand and languish; the rich succeed by cunning and flourish. The hand grows weary, the cunning should be leery:: ~The Ghion Journal is a publication that aims to reinvent the way that news is disseminated and consumed. Check us out at https://ghionjournal.com, bookmark our site and find out what we are about. There are articles published daily and each article (like the one above) has an associated podcast that enhances and expands the conversation.