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Paul Craig Roberts Warns "The Entire World May Go Down The Tubes Together"
Submitted by Paul Craig Roberts,
Washington’s IQ follows the Fed’s interest rate - it is negative. Washington is a black hole into which all sanity is sucked out of government deliberations.
Washington’s failures are everywhere visible. We can see the failures in Washington’s wars and in Washington’s approach to China and Russia.
The visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping, was scheduled for the week-end following the Pope’s visit to Washington. Was this Washington’s way of demoting China’s status by having its president play second fiddle to the Pope? The President of China is here for week-end news coverage? Why didn’t Obama just tell him to go to hell?
Washington’s cyber incompetence and inability to maintain cyber security is being blamed on China. The day before Xi Jinping’s arrival in Washington, the White House press secretary warmed up President Jinping’s visit by announcing that Obama might threaten China with financial sanctions.
And not to miss an opportunity to threaten or insult the President of China, the US Secretary of Commerce fired off a warning that the Obama regime was too unhappy with China’s business practices for the Chinese president to expect a smooth meeting in Washington.
In contrast, when Obama visited China, the Chinese government treated him with politeness and respect.
China is America’s largest creditor after the Federal Reserve. If the Chinese government were so inclined, China could cause Washington many serious economic, financial, and military problems. Yet China pursues peace while Washington issues threats.
Like China, Russia, too, has a foreign policy independent of Washington’s, and it is the independence of their foreign policies that puts China and Russia on the outs with Washington.
Washington considers countries with independent foreign policies to be threats. Libya, Iraq, and Syria had independent foreign policies. Washington has destroyed two of the three and is working on the third. Iran, Russia, and China have independent foreign policies. Consequently, Washington sees these countries as threats and portrays them to the American people as such.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin will meet with Obama next week at the UN meeting in New York. It is a meeting that seems destined to go nowhere. Putin wants to offer Obama Russian help in defeating ISIS, but Obama wants to use ISIS to overthrow Syrian President Assad, install a puppet government, and throw Russia out of its only Mediterranean seaport at Tartus, Syria. Obama wants to press Putin to hand over Russian Crimea and the break-away republics that refuse to submit to the Russophobic government that Washington has installed in Kiev.
Despite Washington’s hostility, Xi Jinping and Putin continue to try to work with Washington even at the risk of being humiliated in the eyes of their peoples. How many slights, accusations, and names (such as “the new Hitler”) can Putin and Xi Jinping accept before losing face at home? How can they lead if their peoples feel the shame inflicted on their leaders by Washington?
Xi Jinping and Putin are clearly men of peace. Are they deluded or are they making every effort to save the world from the final war?
One has to assume that Putin and Xi Jinping are aware of the Wolfowitz Doctrine, the basis of US foreign and military policies, but perhaps they cannot believe that anything so audaciously absurd can be real. In brief, the Wolfowitz Doctrine states that Washington’s principal objective is to prevent the rise of countries that could be sufficiently powerful to resist American hegemony. Thus, Washington’s attack on Russia via Ukraine and Washington’s re-militarization of Japan as an instrument against China, despite the strong opposition of 80 percent of the Japanese population.
“Democracy?” “Washington’s hegemony don’t need no stinkin’ democracy,” declares Washington’s puppet ruler of Japan as he, as Washington’s faithful servant, over-rides the vast majority of the Japanese population.
Meanwhile, the real basis of US power—its economy—continues to crumble. Middle class jobs have disappeared by the millions. US infrastructure is crumbling. Young American women, overwhelmed with student debts, rent, and transportation costs, and nothing but lowly-paid part-time jobs, post on Internet sites their pleas to be made mistresses of men with sufficient means to help them with their bills. This is the image of a Third World country.
In 2004 I predicted in a nationally televised conference in Washington, DC, that the US would be a Third World country in 20 years. Noam Chomsky says we are already there now in 2015. Here is a recent quote from Chomsky:
“Look around the country. This country is falling apart. Even when you come back from Argentina to the United States it looks like a third world country, and when you come back from Europe even more so. The infrastructure is collapsing. Nothing works. The transportation system doesn’t work. The health system is a total scandal–twice the per capita cost of other countries and not very good outcomes. Point by point. The schools are declining . . .”
Another indication of a third world country is large inequality in the distribution of income and wealth. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2172.... ">According to the CIA itself, the United States now has one of the worst distributions of income of all countries in the world. The distribution of income in the US is worse than in Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Belarus, Belgium, Benin, Bosnia/Herzegovina, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Cote d’Ivoire, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Estonia, Ethiopia, Finland, France, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Guinea, Guyana, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, South Korea, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Latvia, Liberia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Malawi, Mali, Malta, Mauritania, Mauritius, Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, Morocco, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Senegal, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Timor-Leste, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Ukraine, UK, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Vietnam, and Yemen.
The concentration of US income and wealth in the hands of the very rich is a new development in my lifetime. I ascribe it to two things.
One is the offshoring of American jobs. Offshoring moved high productivity, high-value-added American jobs to countries where the excess supply of labor results in wages well below labor’s contribution to the value of output. The lower labor costs abroad transform what had been higher American wages and salaries and, thereby, US household incomes, into corporate profits, bonuses for corporate executives, and capital gains for shareholders, and in the dismantling of the ladders of upward mobility that had made the US an “opportunity society.”
The other cause of the extreme inequality that now prevails in the US is what Michael Hudson calls the financialization of the economy that permits banks to redirect income away from driving the economy to the payment of interest in service of debt issued by the banks.
Both of these developments maximize income and wealth for the One Percent at the expense of the population and economy.
As Michael Hudson and I have discovered, neoliberal economics is blind to reality and serves to justify the destruction of the economic prospects of the Western World. It remains to be seen if Russia and China can develop a different economics or whether these rising superpowers will fall victim to the “junk economics” that has destroyed the West. With so many Chinese and Russian economists educated in the US tradition, the prospects of Russia and China might not be any better than ours.
The entire world could go down the tubes together.
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One the confidence games fail and people lose faith, it'sover.
Not sure Paul Craig Roberts has correctly identified the Problem/Problems.
- US Needs Sweeping Reforms
- Foreigners will not ask for Sweeping Reforms due to influence, dependence on funding, self promotion, greed, and the fact that the US is a Political, Economic, Financial, and Military Superpower
Was thinking about this.
Central Bank, Banking, Finance, Real Estate, Federal Budget Process is not being used by congress, US Courts are influenced by those with the most money and biggest legal teams, Financial Regulators can't fight many big battles in court, Regulators are influenced by the president and congress who support their lobbyists... and those are just some of the many problems that demand reform.
Repost:
Identify the Problem:
- Greed, Corruption, Cronyism (Networking included), Money in Politics & Government, Money in Elections, Money as Free Speech, War is a Racket, Foreign Policy is a Racket, Party Line of Democracy is a Racket, both political parties are One Political Party.
- Suppression of Free Speech, Free Press, Monopolies in Media/Telecoms, and suppression of wages and jobs through globalism.
- Term Limits for Lawyers, Lobbyist, and DC Politicians... end political appointments, we have plenty of old boy networking without politicians putting in their guys too
- And if you look closely at the Federal Budget Increases, the Budget Deficit Trend, the dismantling of our Banking Regulations and Financial Standardization... and our Financial Ratings Agencies, Non-Standard Accounting, Corporate Overhead and Leverage that steal from small stock investors, ... Capital, Savings, and Jobs going overseas, ... Low Investment in the US in Capital Facilities or Capital Expansion or Infrastructure, ... Trends in Wealth and Income Gap... It is Clear we have a National Security Crisis and Constitutional Crisis.
- Our Dysfunctional Congress not only doesn't correct simple problems, obvious errors in banking, it constantly passes bills in favor of Pharma, Fossil Fuels, and Finance and Banking... against the poor & middle class.
- War is not Free Speech
- War as a Policy is a Violation of International Treaty
RENUNCIATION OF WAR Treaty of 1928/1929
RENUNCIATION OF WAR AS A POLICY
Treaty providing for the renunciation of war as
an instrument of national policy.
Signed at Paris August 27, 1928.
Entered into force July 24, 1929.
46 States Signed. 2343; TS 796; 2 Bevans 732; 94 LNTS 57.
- Too Bad we don't have Honest Brokers in DOJ, FBI, SEC, FINRA, FTC, GAO, CBO, FED, Treasury, OCC, FSOC, BCFP, CFTC, FDIC, FHFA, SIPC
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- USA - A Puppet State -
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No matter which parties you gratitate too, it appears there is a super majority for Charging:
- Treason
- Sedition
- Racketeering
- Anti-Trust
- Conflict of Interest
- Breach of Duty
- Breach of Trust
- False Representation of Duties of Office
- Embezzlement
- Fraud
- Gross Neglect of National Security Issues
- Breach of Fiduciary Duties
- Perjury to US Citizens, Stakeholders, Investors, Consumers, High Court, Congress
- Failure of Congressional Ethics & Morals Committees to Act
- Failure of the following Agencies to Act: DOJ, FBI, SEC, FINRA, FTC, GAO, CBO, FED, Treasury, OCC, FSOC, BCFP, CFTC, FDIC, FHFA, SIPC
- Congress giving up its War Powers, Budget Powers, and Legislative Powers is enough to make most of these charges stick, IMHO
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- USA - A Puppet State -
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The Solution:
- Solution to sweeping Reforms must be to purge many high level public and private Officials, Central Bankers, Bankers, Congressmen, Political Appointees, Lobbyist, DC Lawyers, Public Relations Firms, ... The Federal Budget Process will have to be undertaken full time by the new Congress to eliminate perks for congress members and corporate subsidies with an eye to eliminate most of what we previously called National Security as a must fund... Eliminate Advanatages for the Largest Corporation... to reinstate anti-trust laws... And we have to break up TBTF Banks and separate deposits from Investment Banks.
- Ethos, Logos, Pathos
- Middle Class Wealth would have to become National Security
- Corporate Bailouts would have to be crushed if not totally eliminated
- Greedy & Wealthy who ship money off shore to hide or protect it from US Risks, Tax Risk, or whatever would be deemed Expatriots who are ineligible for a long list of Federal & State Subsidies, Federal Contracts, Tax Credits, Tax Loopholes, Employment in government, service in a Prime Lender, Service in a Key Industry or the US Military or in Defense Contractor Employment... Work for US Banking... etc
- We need to begin to talk about the Wealthy, Super Wealthy, Money Protected by the Wealthy, Mitt Romney Type Advantages, Insider Trading by Congress, Off Shore Tax Havens or Shelters, Monopolies, Oligopolies, Oppression of the US Workers, Education Schemes, Employment Schemes to use Background info to control the labor force, debt to Control the Labor Force
- War on the Poor & Middle Class, waged by those with advantages
- What does it mean to be a Patriot if you are Wealthy, What do we expect from our US Wealthy Class, Are there Role Models of Wealthy that do enough to save the USA?? Why don't Lawyers & Bankers Defend Democracy, Simple Laws,... why don't they make it easier to live and understand the Business World?
Given the correct application and combination of sod's law, murphy's law and finagles law; collapse will always happen considering the players involved are not inclined to offer advice or solutions without getting something in return while the value of their own offer inversely shrinks to zero. It's really a question of when not if it happens, just how it always happens.