Tag Archives: profits

“The Stealth Coup D’Etat”

30 Saturday Oct 2010

Posted by in Democrats, economy, Republicans, special interests, too big to fail, Wall Street

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“Give me control of a nation’s money and I care not who makes her laws.”—Mayer Amschel Rothschild.

From Tyler Durden’s, The Stealth Coup D’Etat:

“…for the past 25 years or so, finance has boomed, becoming ever more powerful. The boom began with the Reagan years, and it only gained strength with the deregulatory policies of the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations.

…From 1973 to 1985, the financial sector never earned more than 16 percent of domestic corporate profits. In 1986, that figure reached 19 percent. In the 1990s, it oscillated between 21 percent and 30 percent, higher than it had ever been in the postwar period. This decade, it reached 41 percent…The great wealth that the financial sector created and concentrated gave bankers enormous political weight—a weight not seen in the U.S. since the era of J.P. Morgan (the man).”

…Once you have control of the financial powers of the U.S. via the tiny Elites of the Congress, the Executive Branch, the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury, then the rest of the government will follow.

This is how the Stealth Coup D’Etat works: the machinery of governance grinds through a simulacrum [ a slight, unreal, or vague semblance] of democracy, but it’s all for show; the theoretical structures are now completely different from the political realities…The Power Elites and their Stealth Coup are apolitical. They don’t care about the color of your uniform; whether you wear a blue shirt or a red shirt is inconsequential.”

Or as Karl Denninger at The Market Ticker put it, “You’re just voting for which of the two bank robbers you like being assaulted by more – the guy with the red ski mask or the one with the blue one.”

Going back to where we began, Durden concludes:

“The Stealth Coup can be traced by a simple dictum: follow the money. Once you control the money–the money supply, the manipulation of yields and bond sales, the budgeting and borrowing–then you control everything.

This is how a small Financial Power Elite dominates the vast, sprawling American Empire.”

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Is 9% Unemployment the New Norm?

28 Wednesday Jul 2010

Posted by in economy, Obama, Obama administration, Politics, Unemployment

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Considering this:

“Nearly half of the unemployed—45.9%—have been out of work longer than six months, more than at any time since the Labor Department began keeping track in 1948…Overall, seven million Americans have been looking for work for 27 weeks or more, and most of them—4.7 million—have been out of work for a year or more.”

And this:


How do you get to this?:

“Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said the economy has now recovered sufficiently for government to begin to make way for private business investment.

Mr. Geithner’s comments on Sunday, which echo previous sentiments expressed by President Barack Obama, reflect a turning point in the government response to the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, a period marked by deep federal intervention in the financial, housing, auto and other industries.

“We need to make that transition now to a recovery led by private investment,” Mr. Geithner said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Led by private investment? Corporations are sitting on nearly $2 trillion of profits now and unemployment is still hovering around 10%. Just when is this private investment going to kick in and start hiring?

“A survey last month of more than 1,000 chief financial officers by Duke University and CFO magazine showed that nearly 60 percent of those executives don’t expect to bring their employment back to pre-recession levels until 2012 or later — even though they’re projecting a 12 percent rise in earnings and a 9 percent boost in capital spending over the next year.”

“2012 or later” huh? Something else significant is scheduled for 2012, isn’t it? Conspicuously convenient timing for the unemployment picture to start improving if you ask me.

Why aren’t corporations hiring now? The Chamber of Commerce claims it’s because of the “onerous regulations” being placed on them by the Obama administration. Now if one had a conspiratorial mind one might think that big business wants to keep the unemployment numbers high through 2012 so that they get a Republican Congress this year to be followed by a Republican president in 2012 who would cancel all those “onerous regulations.” One might think that, and one would be right, in my opinion.

Sadly, the administration seems to be willing to accept 9% or higher as the new norm:

“The White House said Friday it expects that unemployment will stay at or above 9% until 2012, but at the same time forecast that the economy will grow by at least 4% in 2011 and 2012.”

To whom it may concern at the White House:

If you seriously think that the economy has “recovered sufficiently” so that the government can get out of the way and let private investment take over on job creation; if you’re willing to accept unemployment at 9% or above through 2012; schedule the moving vans for the morning of January 20, 2013.