The Austerity Scam: Next Target, the U.S.A.

We all talk about it, and we all complain about it.  We see it everyday on television.  There seems to be no real effort to hide it from us.  It’s flaunted, maliciously, in our faces.  The arrogance of assuming themselves untouchable, and impervious to any action our wrath can muster, is displayed on the evening news through their profit margins juxtaposition with unemployment rates and foreclosures.

We all know that the financial sector has robbed the American people while increasing their wealth.  We all know that they created a massive debt and then held the American economy hostage until the responsibility for the debt was forced onto the backs of the American people.  We all know these things, but we continue to do nothing.  Now we are being treated to the same economic solution, designed by those that created the problem, that has been forced on Greece, Ireland, and many, many others.

This is not a new tactic.  This is a recipe for economic oppression has been used on less developed countries for decades.  It is a constantly refined system born out of Milton Friedman’s Chicago School of Economic Theory, and the Ford Foundation, that has been used to ravage economies for the benefit of a very few, very wealthy, private interests.

The fact the this scam has finally come home to roost is parabolic of a misguided American arrogance that has believed in it’s own exceptionalism.  Financial institutions, banks, and corporations, are not your friends.  Simply because Americans have allowed themselves to be home to the global corporations, even allowing their supreme court to grant them personhood in 2010, and have enjoyed the treatment as the corporations favoured house servants, while they turned a blind eye to the field servants in the worlds lesser developed countries being exploited, has not made them immune to the same treatment.  But, as greed knows no bounds, it is now time for all the in-house servants to be told that they are loosing their favoured positions and being relegated to the shanties.   Once there they will be expected to work harder in order to pay for the renovations to their former quarters, and make room for their not-so-benevolent corporate master’s private home theaters, party rooms, increased security staff, and computerized security systems to be used to monitor the now disgruntled masses crammed into the quickly expanding shanty town.

The financial system has put the American economy in peril and now stands to profit from the very crisis they created.  They’ve caused desperation and now they plan to exploit it.  They’ve destabilized everything from the economy to the government, effectively causing division, so that little stands in the way of their conquest.  Disaster capitalism has grown up and is ready to try to land the big fish.

This tactic has been used by proponents of this economic model all across the globe; from Indonesia in the 1960’s and 70’s, to Chile throughout the 1970s  , and Bolivia in the 1980s  just to name a few.  These countries have fought to release themselves from these bonds and are only now beginning to re-establish economies that serve the people rather than the interests of an elite.  A fantastic resource that follows the development of this economic tool, otherwise known as disaster capitalism, is Naomi Klein’s book, ‘The Shock Doctrine,’  a must read for anyone who wants to understand what is about to happen to America.

This model of economic extortion has been adopted by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, the World Trade Organization (WTO), and the global banking system in general.  For decades, counties which found themselves in economic difficulties, like those now faced by America, have been coerced into agreements that slash public services, bust workers unions, devalue labor, raise costs of necessary utilities, drain education and healthcare of adequate funding, castrate any representative government, and auction the public’s natural resources, lands, and utilities to corporations that will sell them back to the people at inflated prices and leave both the environment and the people devastated.

When this is happening on a global scale, to countries both developed – like those in the EU as well as America – as well as to the traditional victims of this extortion in lesser developed countries throughout Africa, Asia, and the global south, who is it that everyone is supposedly in debt to?  The answer is simply.  A global financial sector that produces absolutely nothing but profit from running this scam over and over again; the money lenders who have grown fat charging interest on money they’ve created out of thin air, the same magical money that is used to buy up a counties resources so that the money can then be returned to the banks, by the country, to pay the interest.

You have to admit, it’s brilliant… in a purely evil way.  Create money out of thin air that must be paid back, with interest, from the taxes and existing public service funds in a country, and then use more of the same fiat money to buy up resources, utilities, land, etc.. so that the country will have some money to meet the interest payments.  The money just keeps rolling in.  This same internationalized system is what has been done to the American people through Wall Street, the major banks,  and the Federal reserve.  And, as you can see, they keep getting wealthier, with record profits and bonuses, as more Americans are loosing their jobs, being thrown out of their homes, and having their benefits and services cut.

You may not hear President Obama actually use the term ‘austerity’ in his State of the Union address, he’s a little too politically savvy for that, but you will likely hear him describe it in no uncertain terms.  You are much more likely to hear the much less savvy Republican leaders start testing the waters with the word.  It sounds like a responsible thing if you’ve been foolish enough to believe that the current economic problems have actually been created by the working class who has been asked to pay for them.  “You’ve spent too much money, it’s time to tighten your belts.”  Except it wasn’t you that was draining the economy that you are being asked to salvage.

The truth of the matter is that ‘austerity’ is nothing more than the name given to the scheme that will allow the same corporations that created this mess to finish stealing what’s left of the wealth of this, and every other, nation.

Austerity?  This is what you elected your political representatives to bring you?  A chance to further suffer so that the wealthiest financial institutions, corporations, and elite individuals, can continue to enjoy the lowest taxes in decades while their wealth has grown over 300% in the past thirty years since Reagan and the conservatives first started down this road.

Government waste does not begin to equal what the banks and financial institutions have stolen.  Yes, it needs to be dealt with, but it is nothing but a diversion from what is really going on.  What is happening is that the American people are being asked to pay for the money that the Federal Reserve created so that the government could hand it back over to bail out Wall Street and the Banks.  It’s that simple.  The Federal Reserve created money, loaned it to the American people, whose government handed it over to the banks, leaving the American people to pay the money back, plus interest. The banks robbed America, plain and simple.

Frozen wages and eliminated public services are nothing compared to the unpaid taxes of the wealthiest 2% who have been gifted ridiculously low tax rates, by their purchased politicians, so that they can keep more of the money that they were not able to hide in off-shore tax havens like Jersey Island, and the Caymans… or even the State of Maryland for that matter.  Only those that are too poor to keep their money hidden off-shore are left with the tax burden.  The working people, whose services those tax dollars were meant to pay for, are now no longer getting those services so that that money too can be used to pay the banks.  Austerity.

Smaller government?  Less regulation?  Why? So that the public will have even less strength and representation.  The government is your government; of, by, and for the people.  Why would you want to disempower yourself against a financial and corporate juggernaut that has already proven itself anti-social, and anti-environmental, while being pro-war, and singularly profit-oriented?  It’s madness.  You’ve been robbed, and pillaged, and are now being convinced that you should weaken the only defense you have.

The banks, financial sector in general, and multinational corporations, are in the midst of a hostile takeover of the worlds governments that will leave them controlling everything from our land, to our utilities, and even our food supply.  What they have done for the past sixty years, throughout the world, in lesser developed countries, they are now ready to employ against the worlds developed nations, and our politicians are allowing it, and even assisting.

Washington DC, and your representatives, are nothing more than part of a weakened and corrupted system.  That is a problem, but they are not THE problem.  The banks, the financial institutions, and the corporations that have been given far too much power, and far too few regulations, are.  The government may be broken, but until you replace it, it is the only thing you have to hold off the coming onslaught.  The corporate funded, and organized, Tea Party faux-rebellion, is the farthest thing from the answer.

The approaching debt-ceiling debate will leave your government in a position of choosing between defaulting on payments and raising the debt ceiling, either one weakening the countries credit rating, but defaulting would be disastrous.  Both of these options have the potential of playing into the hands of global financial and corporate interests.  Neither option is great and it will be used to try and scare the American people into accepting these austerity measures.  Don’t let it happen.  Don’t allow the burden to continue to be put on the backs of the people.  This is a scam of epic proportions and it will take an effort of epic proportions to stop it.

The people of the world are under attack from a small number of very wealthy people who have convinced us that they own everything, and that we have to pay them for our very existence.  It is time to wake up and realize the confidence game with which we have all been victimized.  Austerity is what our politicians should be demanding from the banks and the corporations, not us.  The right to exist is what we should be granting corporations and financial institutions, not the other way around.  The constituents should be the most powerful lobbyists in any capital, not the corporations and banks.  We’ve allowed our world to be turned upside down.  Enough is enough.