This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
Well-Paid Pandering Pundits And The Fantasy Of Reform
Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,
Any serious reform has to start with the dissolution of the existing political parties and the Federal Reserve. Anything less is self-serving, pandering fantasy.
Well-paid econo-pundit Joseph Stiglitz has a new book that repeats the usual pandering fantasy that "reform" can fix what's broken with the U.S. economy: Rewriting the Rules of the American Economy: An Agenda for Growth and Shared Prosperity.
Stiglitz has penned an economist's equivalent of round up the usual suspects: if only we limit rentier skims, too big to fail banks and "democracy" auctioned off to the highest bidder, everything will be peachy: debt-serfs' wages will magically soar and all the inequalities in our society and economy will magically disappear.
Stiglitz appears blind to the reality that everything he suggests would harm the interests of those who own the nation's wealth and fund the country's political class. Every proposal is DOA (dead on arrival), a fantasy that panders to the dearly held delusion that "reform" is not just possible but useful.
We can grasp the crass and foolish absurdity of Stiglitz's "reforms" by imagining him addressing the super-wealthy class of senators and Imperial bigshots in Rome circa 100 A.D.:
"Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears, for I propose a new agenda for Imperial Rome. First, I suggest eliminating the sources and machinery of your power and wealth. Second..."
The would-be reformer is then interrupted by uproarious laughter, for the audience assumes only a toga-clad comedian would propose the decimation of their wealth and power as a "reform."
Like all well-paid pandering pundits, Stiglitz carefully turns a blind eye to the failed system that issues his paycheck: for the vast majority of well-paid pandering pundits, this is higher education/academia and/or the mainstream media.
It's altogether too easy to propose phony "reforms" of the financial sector--that's like shooting fish in a barrel--especially when you know ahead of tme absolutely none of the "reforms" have a snowball's chance in heck of being remotely useful in the real world.
What well-paid pandering pundits like Stiglitz never dare to criticize are the failed, broken cartels that are equally deserving of being disrupted and dismantled: higher education, sickcare ("healthcare") and the corporate media, each of which have failed the nation as completely as the financial sector and the political class.
In terms of the real-world impact on households, the soaring costs of higher education and healthcare are more crushing than Wall Street's skim. In terms of culpability, the corporate media that pays pundits like Stiglitz turned a blind eye to the financial fraud for years, and only belatedly began reporting the consequences when the Global Financial Meltdown was well under way and could no longer be ignored.
The corporate/NGO/PBS media loves this sort of phony "reform" because it suggests democracy is still functioning in America and that the media plays an important role in the phony "dialog" of well-paid Establishment-crony pundits and media anchors.
This sort of "serious" call for "reform" by a "serious" well-paid pundit is the equivalent of Silicon Valley Unicorn startups that claim to be real companies despite a lack of revenues and profits.
Reforming the Empire is fantasy, and well-paid pandering pundits know it. But the faux-earnest appeals for "reform" make for good copy and even better PR.
Any serious reform has to start with the dissolution of the existing political parties and the Federal Reserve and the reining in of the Deep State. Anything less is self-serving, pandering fantasy.
* * *
My new book is #4 in Amazon's Kindle ebooks > Business & Money > International Economics: A Radically Beneficial World: Automation, Technology and Creating Jobs for All. The Kindle edition is $8.45, a 15% discount from its list price of $9.95.
»
- 49 reads
- Printer-friendly version
- Send to friend
- advertisements -
It is a pandering fantasy to think that electing anyone except Trimp, Cruz, or Rand will yield any change in the country.
Talk about a retard.
There you are, retard!
What were the last two repukes like?
Meet the new boss.....same as the old boss.
We live in the Banksters' Republic. All parties and ideologies are subservient to them.
Welcome to Prison Planet. The only way off is death.
Truth and Reconciliation hearings are needed. At least 100 of the most prominent Wall St and Washington talking heads will have to be tried, probably closer to 1000.
Bring out the guillotines
it won't happen. Name me one time in history these fuckers have actually gotten their comeuppance. I'll wait.
Wulfkind : "Welcome to Prison Planet. The only way off is death."
Well, actually not.
If you believe you are the totality of your meat puppet, then perhaps so. If you believe you are a soul that has temporary residence inside the meat puppet on loan.... then the joke is on you also. ;)
Follow the soul trap into the "white light" and see where that gets you. It gets you a new ride and a new ticket back onto the Prison Planet here in your next incarnation of your meat puppet. It's just a reset button on this hologram.
I believe neither. And neither matters.
i would totally agree - except for the fact that weren't there some people that came around saying the same thing, but that there *was* a way? yes.. people and 'history' turned what they said into religions.. kind like the bitch-slap of putting andrew jackson on a federal reserve note... but seems remarkably relevant today. maybe always has.
Does he take sugar ?
It's a pandering fantasy to think that that, at this stage of what was supposedly founded as 'a Republic', electing ANYONE would result in anything other than the next step towards FACISM...
There, fixed it. NO WAY JOSE
Just restoring original Congressional apportionment to the 1:30000 the Founders intended would result in almost 10000 congresscritters that would be forced to meet from their districts electronically. (This was fixed in the 1890's at around 435)
That would bust up the K St Lobby industry which has brokered the sale of our government to various corporate interests
Would allow for adequate supervision of the numerous federal agencies that currently run roughshod over the Constitution and our rights
Allow you and I to directly observe who our congresscritter regularly consorts with
Is a simple enough, easily enough understood proposition that it might well be able to be passed from within the system
Other alternatives are too complex to occur without a lot of, shall we say, "disruption"-which provides an excuse for the existing Fed.gov to fully exercise their newly acquired police state powers
Actually, this is what you and most folks did.
http://youtu.be/JTF2j0OWUi8
Think about that stall thing. Its the only good way to go after the deep state.
Reform might be possible, but only after it all burns down.
I gave my love a cherry...
I took a loves Cherry.
FIFY.
toga
I gave my love a cherry
That had no stone
I gave my love a chicken
That had no bone...
The hippie era officially ended when that guitar was smashed.
Just get rid of the Fed and see how well the parties survive.......
Agreed Charles.
You have allies out there.
Those without courage are favored and fed. Those with courage are murdered and martyred.
Which one are you?
"Next year, when we find that the U.S. economy falls into recession, the Fed will inevitably return to ZIRP, launch a QE4, QE5, ad infinitum, or even introduce negative interest rates in a continuation of its bad economic theories and egotistic failures.
We know that adding more fiat money to the Fed balance sheet will only make matters worse for the United States economy. Why?
The problem: The American people and the people of the world could be in economic misery for many years before honest, strong leadership gathers the courage to state the whole truth and nothing but the truth; to prosecute financial crimes, and to restructure our entire financial system from top to bottom before we can truly unleash our economic creativity and energy again.
So, as 2016 approaches, we must individually consider these final questions:
Where is our nation going?
Will we make the choice to stand up and take our nation back, or leave it to the wolves who are cannibalizing our nation for short-term gains?
Do we have the courage to change before we are forced by catastrophic change?
With these sober thoughts in mind, the party will come to an end.
Happy New Year to you."
Ref:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/truly-big-shorts-john-m-cunningham?trk=pr...
leadership?
BS a smart leader would step aside and let things happen. Today's 'leaders' just want a taste of everything. I can't wait for the government to be soooo broke it can barely afford goons. That'll be the day!
LVP,
In the corrupt environment that your country is in, you may be right.
That day, you mention, will be when the U.S. Dollar is toast.
Is that also the day when real leaders step up?
Stay away from the Strip tonight.
It's not a matter of "the choice to stand up and take our nation back".......it's now a matter that when you DO stand up you stand up with a gun in your hands.
Apart from armed rebellion......there is no hope. Has been since 1913.
Just think about this.......do you think for one second you can get the combined army of illegal aliens, Millenial hipsters, liberal zombies, cowardly Bankster owned Conservatives, aggrieved college students and their micro aggression complaints and the retired Baby Boomer old farts to rally for an armed rebellion ?
Yeah, good luck. There is no hope. Best to just ride out the rest of your time here in this hell hole paying off your debt and especially your motgage, learning to garden and make your own food and making only enough money to support yourself and your family and not enough to pay any taxes. Better yet, pay no taxes but get the Earned Income Tax Credit to boot. Let these fuckers pay you all the while NOT paying them. Supplement your food production with SNAP as well. Fuck em. Use the system against it while at the same time not participating in it as much as possible.
Get off Facebook, Twitter, Google+.....all social media. Go as dark as you can. DO NOT REGISTER TO VOTE. It doesn't matter anyway and it gets you off the jury duty rolls so you don't have to participate in the evil justice system.
Lose the TV. If you have to....lose the internet as well. Find your public library to use the internet there once or twice a week and learn to read again.
America is done. You will not make a difference so why burn out your emotions trying? Keep what ever sanity you have for you and for your family and whatever close friend or friends you have. Tune out, Drop Out and Live.
And you, Wulfkind, exactly stated why they want the cause of diversity so very badly these years, with smaller and smaller interest groups, there is lesser and lesseer chance for armed rebellion.
They thought EVERYTHING through long ago, as you inferred (1913, etc.).
One of the smartest posts I have seen here. I almost never give upvotes but you just got one.
Change will come but through crisis and almost never by plan. We will soon see a crisis...a real one...and we will see change...real change.
There you have it. All that needs to be said is this: 'you won't like it'.
Happy New Year!
One way of trying to wake people up would be for someone (perhaps Trump in a weak moment after it looks like he will lose the nomination and intends to drop out?) comes out and tells Americans to wake up to the truth about 9/11 and gets into specifics re: WTC 7, Shanksville, Pentagon, etc. He would need to do it on a live televised debate and focus on it in his opening and closing speeches as well as in every answer he gives. Kind of like Marshawn Lynch at the Super Bowl media scrums: "You know why I'm here".....
At least it might be fun for a few days.....
All that said, at least Rand would limit Executive Orders. Not earth shattering, but achievable, and he would follow through on it.
nothing will change until the russians and chnese send the zionazis to the gas chambers for real. in the realm of insanity that solution has the best chance of reforming the politics and economics of the world.
Charles is not nearly hard enough on our elites and institutions.
9/11 was a FF, Treason. All of our elites have cooperated in covering up that Treason, in pretending our instiutions are working normally. They are not working normally, the US as a law-based, constitution-based system is quite gone. The Constitution is not dead, Constitutional government ended.
We have an entire elite and all our institutions are complicit in Treason. They have kept themselves intentionally ignorant, at best, but that excuse doesn't work now in 2016 : the evidence is not refutable, which is why our elites so often refuse to allow 9/11 FF to be debated in their viscinity, but never debate it : they lose, irrefutably.
Cleaning that rot up so we can get our society back to honesty will be a long process, I think. So many confessions to be taken and read.
Honestly, I don't know what Stiglitz in particular thinks he is doing. The master class know the system is unsalvageable. It was only meant to last until machines could be built that would do all the work their human debt-slaves could do. Then, the debt-slaves were to be exterminated.
Far as I can tell Stiglitz is betting he'll be a goner before his paymasters are ready to haul him off to the Soylent Green factory. I doubt Huma Abedin and her mommy will keep an old Jew waiting quite that long.
Happy New Year.
about a dozen bodies (no blindfolds) on a gallows platform in front of the Washington monument (nationally televised ) and then ..... DROP!
SEE HOW FAST THINGS CHANGE.
“Where is our nation going?”
So wrote, “Insurrexion” at 14:26
A few facts will tell us.
One: governmental debt is the process by which a generation of tax consumers financially cannibalizes following generations of tax payers. There is enough such debt on the books to cannibalize following generations of Americans to the end of time, according to data, formulas and assumptions provided by Treasury and the Federal Reserve.
And, Communist China, Japan and Oil Exporting nations hold a large percentage of that debt, something like $5 -$7 trillion.
And they expect to collect on that debt by seizing any and all property within the United States.
Toward that end, China, with cooperation of the federal government, has made preparatory ALLIANCES with Mexican and Columbian drug cartels, American street gangs for the purpose of employing members of such to act as police and military when it comes time to seize guns, property and to eliminate those who dislike rule by criminal and useless classes (one and two).
Don’t take my word for these developments; you can find them in publications provided by Congress, Treasury and the Federal Reserve.
I've been voting for third party candidates since Nadar, 2000. Vote this November. Vote Libertarian Party, Green Party or pick a 3rd party you like better and vote for their candidates. Over 100 Libertarian candidates were elected and are in office now. Over 100 Green Party candidates in the USA were elected and are in office now (e.g. Richmond CA Mayor, Cleveland City Council, Minneapolis City Council, Portland Maine City Council ..).
DJIA down another 0.7% today.
"Any serious reform has to start with the dissolution of the existing political parties and the Federal Reserve"
First thing I've read by CHS that cute right to the core and adresses the problem........ ever.
But Charlie, you DO realize now your're a terrorist, right?
Charles can now expect an early morning call while he's taking a shower --- the DHS busting throught multiple doors until they surround and intimidate him and his family!
Best get a lawyer before saying anything to the feebs of the FBI, Charlie!
Reining in...how? Bigger, stronger, meaner entity than the current government? Somehow just magically headed up by "good" leaders this time? Kept in check by...the ballot box?....a constitution? Right.
Only an unfettered free market for governance allowing for individual sovereignty on private property can "reign in" power by depriving would-be tyrants of resources.
Aaannnd... another fantasy. Nobody has ever found a way to stop wealth from becoming power.
Sponsored content.
Buy my book!
....I do enjoy it when people write about "leaders".
Charles, do you need a "leader"
I suspect not.
Neither do I.
Mr. Hugh-Smith is apparently not self aware. He faults Stiglitz's ideas about solving socio-political-economic problems as fantasies when his---"dissolution of the existing political parties and the Federal Reserve and the reining in of the Deep State" are even more of a fantasy than Stiglitz's.
Agreed. I like Hugh. Have been reading his blog for years. But he's like all the others. He knows WHAT must be done. But there are no REAL ACTIONABLE plans. None that would stick anyway.
Hey....by the way....are you really an "X_Weatherman. Just curious. So am I in reality.
"Any serious reform has to start with the dissolution of the existing political parties and the Federal Reserve"
And then the next step is free tickets on Starship Fantasy piloted by Captain Self deLusion to Planet Utopia :-))
I told you that legalized marijuana would push the USA over the edge :-((
The only change will be, is when a country is invaded and hauled off to babylon.....
And history is repeating itself as we speak......
Great posting and a most excellent and spot on analysis of Stiglitz and his most recent pile of drivel.
Stiglitz is a well-meaning idiot as opposed to Robert Reich, who is an idiotic fraud and farce.
Of course, we all know what must be done, excepting that many, many lives will be lost, and who wishes to lead the charge, after all?
The reason those 28-redacted pages from the 9/11 Commission Report are still classified is that it would incriminate those responsible for the joint US-Saudi operation called 9/11!
When Oliver North was caught shredding classified information it was news, but the point was why was he doing it, instead of wanking off?
They classify that which incriminates them, as the recent declassified stuff on the Kennedy assassination clearly shows the guilty party: those control elements with the CIA.
(The declassified documents explaining that the CIA knowingly met months prior to the murder of JFK with the OAS assassin, Jean Souetre, who had been involved with the attempted assassination on President De Gaulle of France, and another declassified doc which explains the CIA's expulsion order, hours after JFK's murder in Dallas, to remove Jean Souetre from Dallas, TX (to have the INS pick him and other assassins up and fly them out of the country in a government plane).
There's no argument about these declassified docs, ignoring all the other incriminating evidence: those two alone explain everything!
...Any serious reform has to start with the dissolution of the existing political parties and the Federal Reserve and the reining in of the Deep State.
Ain't gonna happen.
You all had better have your shit together by Jan. 20th 2017. Bad juju ahead.
I'll bite. What bad JuJu you think goona DuDu?
Any serious reform has to start with the dissolution of the existing political parties and the Federal Reserve. Anything less is self-serving, pandering fantasy.
-----
Any serious reform must start with rejection of all forms of the fiction called "authority", and with the recognition that the concept "authority" is inherently fiction.
There, fixed it.
-----
Seriously, how can anyone (much less the author) be so naive. Elsewhere in the world the Democrat and Repubican parties do not operate, and neither does the Federal Reserve (at least not directly).
How many wars, abuses and tyrannies have existed in the history of mankind? They didn't require Democrats, Republicans or the Federal Reserve (or even a central bank in many cases).
Get real. What has caused war and wide-scale harm and destruction for millennia. The answer is always the same. The answer is always "widescale acceptance of authority".
The so-called "authority" itself is pure fiction... no human has (or can have) authority over another human. Humans cannot own humans. End of issue.
But human action doesn't require authority to exist, it only requires humans believe authority exist. A concept that is fiction motivates human response just as effectively as reality (non-fiction)... when humans don't realize the fictional concept is in fact fiction.
This is quite obvious. The idea of "SantaClaus" motivates kids to take all sorts of actions, even though SantaClaus is fiction (doesn't exist).
The fact is, "authority" is nothing more than a Sith Mind Trick... a lie, a scam, a fraud.
When they are very young, many humans play a game called "Simon Says" in which "Simon" (a pretend authority) issues orders, and the other players (his slaves) obey. However, children understand they are playing a game. If "Simon" says "give me half the money in your piggy bank", or "go kill a bunch of people in some other neighborhood", the other kids will laugh at "Simon" and run away.
But several more years of brainwashing makes children sufficiently insane and intellectually confused, they are introduced to the same bogus game, called "Uncle Sam Says". If "Uncle Sam" says "give me half the money in your bank account", or "go kill a bunch of people in some other nation", the now insane, brainwashed children do not laugh, do not refuse, and do not run away. Instead, they obey. They turn over half their income, then go overseas and [help] kill millions of other human beings.
When young children become so insane and brainwashed they don't realize their new "Simon Says" game is a game... they are called "adults".
-----
The bottom line is this. Humans have descended so very deeply into insanity at this point, minor changes in the game make no difference.
The only solution is to become sane. I mean that exactly. To understand what is real, and what is fiction. To understand that "law" is fiction. That "nation" is fiction. That "authority" is fiction. That "government" is fiction.
Hundreds of concepts that humans take most seriously are fictions. These bogus concepts motivate most human choices and actions.
No solutions can exist for humans until they become sane. And today, somewhere around 99.99999% of humans are utterly insane in the most fundamental way possible (namely, they are unable to distinguish what is real from what is fiction == what exists versus what does not exist == what is versus what is not). Which means, most humans are just as insane as that classic stereotype of a completely insane human being trying to catch non-existent butterflies he imagines are flying around his head.
The situation really is this bad, this serious... and this hopeless.
Humans are a failed species. Humans will remain a failed species as long as they remain fundamentally insane. Since humans just get more and more insane as the years pass, it seems almost certain that humans are doomed, and will soon perish. That is, at least 99.99999% of them, and quite possibly 100.000000000%.