LittleLightShining
03-25-2009, 10:24 AM
Jim Hogue: Bursting Our Bubbles - The Theft of Our Common Wealth, the Collapse of the United States (http://www.vtcommons.org/journal/2009/02/jim-hogue-bursting-our-bubbles-theft-our-common-wealth-collapse-united-states)
Jim Hogue is an actor who portrays Ethan Allen. He operates a small farm in Calais, has a weekly radio program on WGDR, and works with Vermonters for Voting Integrity.
Jim Hogue's recent radio interview with Richard Cook served as a springboard for this feature article.
Richard Cook served as a policy analyst for the U.S. government from 1970 until 2007, and his career included service with the U.S. Civil Service Commission, the Food and Drug Administration, the Carter White House, NASA, and the U.S. Treasury Department. He also taught history at the Field School in Washington, D.C., and owned and operated an organic farm for 10 years while commuting to work from rural Virginia. Cook's most recent book is We Hold These Truths: The Hope of Monetary Reform, released in December 2008 (available through tendrilpress.com.).
In my interview with economist, author, and former U.S. government official Richard Cook, he explained that the economic collapse we see before us didn’t happen merely from greed or an over-enthusiastic faith in the American dream, as the pundits report. The collapse is part of the Reagan revolution to shrink social services, quash democracy and nationalism, and bloat the military. The leaders of this revolution (Elliot Abrams, John Negroponte, Henry Kissinger, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Bushes Senior and W, et al) constituted a shadow government under Carter and Clinton, surfacing from time to time in the BCCI fraud, in the Iran Contra affair, and were behind “The October Surprise.” The major players in the Iran Contra affair were protected by Lee Hamilton and John Kerry. They produced a blueprint under Clinton known as The Project for a New American Century, one that the Democrats were only too happy to bring to fruition.
Bubbles: Planning and Bursting Them
The economics of this coup took the form of planned bubbles and bursts on the one hand, and the theft of our common wealth accompanied by vast federal expenditures on the other. (Why anyone falls for that canard about Republicans shrinking government is beyond me.)
As the economy switched from real production to financial maneuverings in the 1970s, investments were made in China and Mexico. Manufacturing was sent abroad and money flowed like water in the purchase of companies in order to take advantage of cheap labor, until interest rates shot up and the bubble collapsed. That bubble was collapsed deliberately under the auspices of Paul Volker in 1979. Those in the know made out like . . . well, like bandits.
The recent housing bubble was created by lowering interest rates and was burst by raising them. Certain not-quite-elite-enough companies such as Lehman Bros and Washington Mutual were caught in the crunch as part of the predatory consolidation process.
To burst the bubble is the plan, not a mistake. Those who plan it win. They are not patriots. They do not consider themselves as belonging to one country or another. They are international financiers with no allegiance to anything or anyone but themselves. Among those who planned it is David Rockefeller. He announced the plan in Baden, Germany, on June 15, 1991, with the words: “The world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries.”
Better for whom?
The “Bailout” and Mr. Obama Reconsidered
The current collapse of the economy was engineered. Those who planned it worked with those we bailed out: Citibank, Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs. They were not bailed out to help the folks on Main Street. They were bailed out to help themselves. So, the economy is collapsing and will collapse further, on purpose, as planned by the financial elite. And those responsible are rewarded and employed for their expertise by Barack Obama who looks to Paul Volker, former president of the Federal Reserve, Timothy Geithner, most recently president of the Federal Reserve Bank of NY, Larry Summers, former Treasury secretary, Jon Corzine, formerly with Goldman Sachs, and Henry Paulson. “Interventionists” all, and all can be relied upon to further consolidate the power of the Federal Reserve. No decentralists are allowed, considered, or acknowledged – this at a time when decentralization looks like the clear solution to the economic woes of people the world over. Obama is David Rockefeller’s dream come true.
The Obama cabinet reflects this as well. Writes Kate Sheppard of Gristmill, Colorado Senator Ken Salazar (Interior secretary) voted against an amendment to the farm bill that would have capped farm subsidies and redirected almost $100 million of those funds to the Grassland Reserve Program and the Farmland Protection Program. The amendment would have closed loopholes that provide giant subsidies to industrial-scale farms.
Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, like Salazar, is a booster of agribusiness and a proponent of genetically made crops and ethanol.
Mr. October Surprise and traitor to the Carter Administration, Robert Gates, is secretary of defense. And, Mr. Revolving Door, James L. Jones, is national security advisor. He is on the boards of Boeing and Chevron, and president and CEO of The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Institute of Energy. That means that he is responsible for consolidating the plans of stake-holders to ensure that you have an unlimited supply of energy whenever you need it (while protecting the environment). So, naturally, he chaired the Independent Commission on the Security Forces in Iraq. General Jones was the Supreme Allied Commander, Europe; and Commander of the US European Command.
This snap-shot of Obama’s cabinet is to point out that these men are empire builders. This is not Small is Beautiful. They are not members of the Schumacher Society. They are the servants of international corporations.
This, of course, is why the Wall Street money poured into Obama’s campaign. A patriot with some public spirit would not look to reward those who perpetrated the biggest robbery in history. (I am not suggesting that a Republican president would pursue another course. But this article is about the situation we have at hand.)
What is the U.S. economy? It’s a collapsed house of cards. Hence the G-20 summit. The financial elite will be there to create the next bubble and the next gigantic sink hole of debt into which investors will pour their cash. That is the agreement they have made with each other, and that is why the Federal Reserve banks must remain the mechanism for creating money for them, and debt for the people.
Obama, through his appointments, including Rahm Emanuel, will place us even more under the thumb of those for whom the United States is a cash cow. Wall Street must have the assurance that we are the coin of the realm.
Land of the Free, Home of the Brave
Politically, the U.S. is an agreement among those in Congress, certain corporations (including the media), the courts, the executive branch, allies, and the financial elite to provide for the enrichment of selected entities and to consolidate power and control over military forces and financial mechanisms everywhere in the world. They call it “full spectrum dominance.”
There is no place on earth, be it ever so humble, that escapes the notice of these predators. And from Granada to Rwanda, this has been proven over and over again. Now, with the current collapses of various economies and subsequent consolidation, it will become even more possible for the IMF and any other economic hit men to quash a currency, a nationalistic tendency, a democratic movement, or an attempt at local control that might threaten their hegemony over all. If there is a resource, they want it. That is what the advance of civilization means: the ability of the civilized to take from the savage whatever they want. And I don’t have to tell you, gentle reader, how they create savages wherever and whenever they need them. (The most recent attempt at savage creation was Putin. The lies told to us about the big bad Russian bear have a purpose connected to finance and resources, not – surprise, surprise – to the autonomy and human rights of the citizens of Georgia.)
So politically, the agreement known as The United States is a convenience. These players who make use of it are not playing for a national team. They do not do what they do for King and country. They never have.
Applying force: the USAF in context
Militarily (the ability to use force), the U.S. is a major part of the international constabulary that rounds up and kills those who are deemed a threat to the authority of those in power. In the words of Mr. Cook, the military is the “personal police force of the financial elite.” It is the job of the president and Congress (which awarded a $175 billion bonus over the $600 billion military budget) to provide this constabulary to those who request it.
There are countless historical examples – from the British East India Tea Company in the 18th century to the corporations of today – where private entities send soldiers to do their bidding. Governments (the debtors) provide the mechanism by which the creditors impose their will. The debt is the stick used to beat the debtors into submission. Those who own the nation (or person) through debt have first claim to the labors of the debtor. The creditor controls the military because the creditor owns the means by which the military is employed, including your congressional representative. The 1989 invasion of Panama (partly to consolidate the drug trade) is a case in point.
Sometimes, of course, the operation is covert, bypassing congress when the job is particularly unseemly. The assassination of John F. Kennedy falls into that category. It was a coup d’état that left the masters at the Federal Reserve in charge of the creation of money. Sometimes a false flag operation such as the Gulf of Tonkin is required to provide cover; but that has never been a drawback even when the operation is exposed.
The elephant in the room, unless you hold your nose or close your eyes, is 9/11. The success of the crimes of 9/11 is but another example of how Congress provides cover for the crimes of its masters.
Big Media censorship: The more local the paper…
I mention the media because our founding fathers regarded an informed, educated public as a cornerstone of democracy. It is supposed to be a vital part of what makes this a country. A country cannot remain healthy when its media have no allegiance to the truth.
Author and historian Michael Parenti once admonished me for my naiveté about the media with the following quote: “The role of the corporate media is to support corporate America.” You can stop wondering why so many important stories remain unreported, why so many lies are told, and why so much horse shit is shoveled out ad nauseam. Constant entertainment has calmed the desire for freedom and independence.
We are supposed to make informed choices, but as Mark Twain told us: “If you don’t read the papers you are uninformed. If you do you are misinformed.” In a plug for decentralization, I’ve observed that the more local the paper, the more likely you are to get the truth.
The media support whatever fiction they need to support. And they need you to believe that the recent financial collapse was the result of mistakes, and of forces that got out of control.
The most lethal injections into our republic are the lies and silence of the media on the most crucial issues of our time.
The UNTied States considered
It may not be a matter of secession. It may be a matter of surviving when all else has fallen apart.
What is left of the United States of America? Retired Air Force Lt. Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski called it a rotting corpse. Our president called it the greatest country in the world.
Whatever it is – whatever any country is at a given time in history – it is an agreement. This agreement is a fluid, mutable organism that makes its place among other mutable organisms on Planet Earth. Where there is a lack of agreement – say, between South Ossetia and Georgia, Palestine and Israel, Ireland and England, East Timor and Indonesia, Vermont and New York – there is conflict. This conflict has to do with whether or not the people within certain geographic boundaries should be sovereign, and how sovereign they should be. After all, some countries are more sovereign than others.
What is the agreement among us, and among the countries of the world, as to the nature of that political entity, that place, that military force, that economy, that corporation known as the United States?
Maybe the words “United States” are just words used to perpetuate a fiction that this land between the oceans and beyond is something other than what it really is.
Over the last 30 years, those in real power have built a criminal network whose goal has been to destroy the previous agreements that defined the United States. They have crossed the lines of gentlemanly, diplomatic, wise, productive, legal, reasonable, and patriotic policies to such an extent that, today, the world is reeling from the coup. Their success has eclipsed all the feeble attempts to impede it or to construct alternatives. And they have accomplished all this in the last few years in open defiance of the law and all principles of accepted governance. They have changed the political environment to such an extent that what we call the United States is a ghost. To those who now exercise the reigns of power, we the people are sources of money or labor or cannon fodder.
They have stolen our prosperity. They have taken the franchise from millions of our citizens and abrogated the rights guaranteed by our Constitution. In the name of security they have sacrificed our soldiers for their own gain. They discourage fruitful enterprise and commerce on any terms but their own. They do not befriend other nations. They bully and insult them. They do not strive for peace. They create enemies, real and imaginary. They are not stewards of our land and heritage. They are exploiters. They are not public-spirited or even patriotic, as they have stronger allegiances abroad than they do at home.
They do not protect. They attack. They are not committed to the well-being of the people because they must enrich the few who stride the globe like a colossus.
What next? (Secede from what?)
What next? Our preparations need not focus in secession, but rather on local agriculture and sources of energy, diplomacy, sustainability, productive labor, a healthy environment, carbon sequestering and soil building, local/complementary currencies, transportation and infrastructure after Peak Oil, and a host of other efforts that communities should do together. These are the sources of sovereignty. Sovereignty is their offspring. And such sovereignty as is not supported by them will not stand, but will be consumed by the greed and terror of those we seek to leave behind.
We must be prepared if we are to go it alone.
The federal government has proved that it has no interest or ability to help us or to keep us safe. If we think that it has or ever will again, we might as well believe in the tooth fairy.
We are already on our own.
Jim Hogue is an actor who portrays Ethan Allen. He operates a small farm in Calais, has a weekly radio program on WGDR, and works with Vermonters for Voting Integrity.
Jim Hogue's recent radio interview with Richard Cook served as a springboard for this feature article.
Richard Cook served as a policy analyst for the U.S. government from 1970 until 2007, and his career included service with the U.S. Civil Service Commission, the Food and Drug Administration, the Carter White House, NASA, and the U.S. Treasury Department. He also taught history at the Field School in Washington, D.C., and owned and operated an organic farm for 10 years while commuting to work from rural Virginia. Cook's most recent book is We Hold These Truths: The Hope of Monetary Reform, released in December 2008 (available through tendrilpress.com.).
In my interview with economist, author, and former U.S. government official Richard Cook, he explained that the economic collapse we see before us didn’t happen merely from greed or an over-enthusiastic faith in the American dream, as the pundits report. The collapse is part of the Reagan revolution to shrink social services, quash democracy and nationalism, and bloat the military. The leaders of this revolution (Elliot Abrams, John Negroponte, Henry Kissinger, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Bushes Senior and W, et al) constituted a shadow government under Carter and Clinton, surfacing from time to time in the BCCI fraud, in the Iran Contra affair, and were behind “The October Surprise.” The major players in the Iran Contra affair were protected by Lee Hamilton and John Kerry. They produced a blueprint under Clinton known as The Project for a New American Century, one that the Democrats were only too happy to bring to fruition.
Bubbles: Planning and Bursting Them
The economics of this coup took the form of planned bubbles and bursts on the one hand, and the theft of our common wealth accompanied by vast federal expenditures on the other. (Why anyone falls for that canard about Republicans shrinking government is beyond me.)
As the economy switched from real production to financial maneuverings in the 1970s, investments were made in China and Mexico. Manufacturing was sent abroad and money flowed like water in the purchase of companies in order to take advantage of cheap labor, until interest rates shot up and the bubble collapsed. That bubble was collapsed deliberately under the auspices of Paul Volker in 1979. Those in the know made out like . . . well, like bandits.
The recent housing bubble was created by lowering interest rates and was burst by raising them. Certain not-quite-elite-enough companies such as Lehman Bros and Washington Mutual were caught in the crunch as part of the predatory consolidation process.
To burst the bubble is the plan, not a mistake. Those who plan it win. They are not patriots. They do not consider themselves as belonging to one country or another. They are international financiers with no allegiance to anything or anyone but themselves. Among those who planned it is David Rockefeller. He announced the plan in Baden, Germany, on June 15, 1991, with the words: “The world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries.”
Better for whom?
The “Bailout” and Mr. Obama Reconsidered
The current collapse of the economy was engineered. Those who planned it worked with those we bailed out: Citibank, Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs. They were not bailed out to help the folks on Main Street. They were bailed out to help themselves. So, the economy is collapsing and will collapse further, on purpose, as planned by the financial elite. And those responsible are rewarded and employed for their expertise by Barack Obama who looks to Paul Volker, former president of the Federal Reserve, Timothy Geithner, most recently president of the Federal Reserve Bank of NY, Larry Summers, former Treasury secretary, Jon Corzine, formerly with Goldman Sachs, and Henry Paulson. “Interventionists” all, and all can be relied upon to further consolidate the power of the Federal Reserve. No decentralists are allowed, considered, or acknowledged – this at a time when decentralization looks like the clear solution to the economic woes of people the world over. Obama is David Rockefeller’s dream come true.
The Obama cabinet reflects this as well. Writes Kate Sheppard of Gristmill, Colorado Senator Ken Salazar (Interior secretary) voted against an amendment to the farm bill that would have capped farm subsidies and redirected almost $100 million of those funds to the Grassland Reserve Program and the Farmland Protection Program. The amendment would have closed loopholes that provide giant subsidies to industrial-scale farms.
Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, like Salazar, is a booster of agribusiness and a proponent of genetically made crops and ethanol.
Mr. October Surprise and traitor to the Carter Administration, Robert Gates, is secretary of defense. And, Mr. Revolving Door, James L. Jones, is national security advisor. He is on the boards of Boeing and Chevron, and president and CEO of The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Institute of Energy. That means that he is responsible for consolidating the plans of stake-holders to ensure that you have an unlimited supply of energy whenever you need it (while protecting the environment). So, naturally, he chaired the Independent Commission on the Security Forces in Iraq. General Jones was the Supreme Allied Commander, Europe; and Commander of the US European Command.
This snap-shot of Obama’s cabinet is to point out that these men are empire builders. This is not Small is Beautiful. They are not members of the Schumacher Society. They are the servants of international corporations.
This, of course, is why the Wall Street money poured into Obama’s campaign. A patriot with some public spirit would not look to reward those who perpetrated the biggest robbery in history. (I am not suggesting that a Republican president would pursue another course. But this article is about the situation we have at hand.)
What is the U.S. economy? It’s a collapsed house of cards. Hence the G-20 summit. The financial elite will be there to create the next bubble and the next gigantic sink hole of debt into which investors will pour their cash. That is the agreement they have made with each other, and that is why the Federal Reserve banks must remain the mechanism for creating money for them, and debt for the people.
Obama, through his appointments, including Rahm Emanuel, will place us even more under the thumb of those for whom the United States is a cash cow. Wall Street must have the assurance that we are the coin of the realm.
Land of the Free, Home of the Brave
Politically, the U.S. is an agreement among those in Congress, certain corporations (including the media), the courts, the executive branch, allies, and the financial elite to provide for the enrichment of selected entities and to consolidate power and control over military forces and financial mechanisms everywhere in the world. They call it “full spectrum dominance.”
There is no place on earth, be it ever so humble, that escapes the notice of these predators. And from Granada to Rwanda, this has been proven over and over again. Now, with the current collapses of various economies and subsequent consolidation, it will become even more possible for the IMF and any other economic hit men to quash a currency, a nationalistic tendency, a democratic movement, or an attempt at local control that might threaten their hegemony over all. If there is a resource, they want it. That is what the advance of civilization means: the ability of the civilized to take from the savage whatever they want. And I don’t have to tell you, gentle reader, how they create savages wherever and whenever they need them. (The most recent attempt at savage creation was Putin. The lies told to us about the big bad Russian bear have a purpose connected to finance and resources, not – surprise, surprise – to the autonomy and human rights of the citizens of Georgia.)
So politically, the agreement known as The United States is a convenience. These players who make use of it are not playing for a national team. They do not do what they do for King and country. They never have.
Applying force: the USAF in context
Militarily (the ability to use force), the U.S. is a major part of the international constabulary that rounds up and kills those who are deemed a threat to the authority of those in power. In the words of Mr. Cook, the military is the “personal police force of the financial elite.” It is the job of the president and Congress (which awarded a $175 billion bonus over the $600 billion military budget) to provide this constabulary to those who request it.
There are countless historical examples – from the British East India Tea Company in the 18th century to the corporations of today – where private entities send soldiers to do their bidding. Governments (the debtors) provide the mechanism by which the creditors impose their will. The debt is the stick used to beat the debtors into submission. Those who own the nation (or person) through debt have first claim to the labors of the debtor. The creditor controls the military because the creditor owns the means by which the military is employed, including your congressional representative. The 1989 invasion of Panama (partly to consolidate the drug trade) is a case in point.
Sometimes, of course, the operation is covert, bypassing congress when the job is particularly unseemly. The assassination of John F. Kennedy falls into that category. It was a coup d’état that left the masters at the Federal Reserve in charge of the creation of money. Sometimes a false flag operation such as the Gulf of Tonkin is required to provide cover; but that has never been a drawback even when the operation is exposed.
The elephant in the room, unless you hold your nose or close your eyes, is 9/11. The success of the crimes of 9/11 is but another example of how Congress provides cover for the crimes of its masters.
Big Media censorship: The more local the paper…
I mention the media because our founding fathers regarded an informed, educated public as a cornerstone of democracy. It is supposed to be a vital part of what makes this a country. A country cannot remain healthy when its media have no allegiance to the truth.
Author and historian Michael Parenti once admonished me for my naiveté about the media with the following quote: “The role of the corporate media is to support corporate America.” You can stop wondering why so many important stories remain unreported, why so many lies are told, and why so much horse shit is shoveled out ad nauseam. Constant entertainment has calmed the desire for freedom and independence.
We are supposed to make informed choices, but as Mark Twain told us: “If you don’t read the papers you are uninformed. If you do you are misinformed.” In a plug for decentralization, I’ve observed that the more local the paper, the more likely you are to get the truth.
The media support whatever fiction they need to support. And they need you to believe that the recent financial collapse was the result of mistakes, and of forces that got out of control.
The most lethal injections into our republic are the lies and silence of the media on the most crucial issues of our time.
The UNTied States considered
It may not be a matter of secession. It may be a matter of surviving when all else has fallen apart.
What is left of the United States of America? Retired Air Force Lt. Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski called it a rotting corpse. Our president called it the greatest country in the world.
Whatever it is – whatever any country is at a given time in history – it is an agreement. This agreement is a fluid, mutable organism that makes its place among other mutable organisms on Planet Earth. Where there is a lack of agreement – say, between South Ossetia and Georgia, Palestine and Israel, Ireland and England, East Timor and Indonesia, Vermont and New York – there is conflict. This conflict has to do with whether or not the people within certain geographic boundaries should be sovereign, and how sovereign they should be. After all, some countries are more sovereign than others.
What is the agreement among us, and among the countries of the world, as to the nature of that political entity, that place, that military force, that economy, that corporation known as the United States?
Maybe the words “United States” are just words used to perpetuate a fiction that this land between the oceans and beyond is something other than what it really is.
Over the last 30 years, those in real power have built a criminal network whose goal has been to destroy the previous agreements that defined the United States. They have crossed the lines of gentlemanly, diplomatic, wise, productive, legal, reasonable, and patriotic policies to such an extent that, today, the world is reeling from the coup. Their success has eclipsed all the feeble attempts to impede it or to construct alternatives. And they have accomplished all this in the last few years in open defiance of the law and all principles of accepted governance. They have changed the political environment to such an extent that what we call the United States is a ghost. To those who now exercise the reigns of power, we the people are sources of money or labor or cannon fodder.
They have stolen our prosperity. They have taken the franchise from millions of our citizens and abrogated the rights guaranteed by our Constitution. In the name of security they have sacrificed our soldiers for their own gain. They discourage fruitful enterprise and commerce on any terms but their own. They do not befriend other nations. They bully and insult them. They do not strive for peace. They create enemies, real and imaginary. They are not stewards of our land and heritage. They are exploiters. They are not public-spirited or even patriotic, as they have stronger allegiances abroad than they do at home.
They do not protect. They attack. They are not committed to the well-being of the people because they must enrich the few who stride the globe like a colossus.
What next? (Secede from what?)
What next? Our preparations need not focus in secession, but rather on local agriculture and sources of energy, diplomacy, sustainability, productive labor, a healthy environment, carbon sequestering and soil building, local/complementary currencies, transportation and infrastructure after Peak Oil, and a host of other efforts that communities should do together. These are the sources of sovereignty. Sovereignty is their offspring. And such sovereignty as is not supported by them will not stand, but will be consumed by the greed and terror of those we seek to leave behind.
We must be prepared if we are to go it alone.
The federal government has proved that it has no interest or ability to help us or to keep us safe. If we think that it has or ever will again, we might as well believe in the tooth fairy.
We are already on our own.