A Few Comments About The Here And Now - Mitt Romney’s Real POV, The 2012 Elections And Fedex Sees First Earnings Decline Since 2009 Due To A Weakening Economy

For the last few months I have said this is coming.   I’ve written a few times that corporate balance sheets are deteriorating faster than at anytime in the last twelve years and money is draining out of the global economy faster than in 2008.   Ain’t no one in the economics community writing those words.  The Federal Reserve’s bazooka announcement last week was most certainly because of feedback it was receiving from businesses about the severity of the weakness in the underlying economy.  

Let me say something else while I am on the periphery of this topic.  I would say the distinct possibility exists that Mario Draghi of the ECB announced this massive bond-buying plan because of pressure from the United States/IMF.  There are a lot of unsubstantiated rumors flying around about the exposure of Wall Street to European sovereign debt.  Both in the derivatives and the actual bond markets.  When it smells like shit…… 

We know JP Morgan has an incredibly massive exposure to European debt because that fact came out during their admission of a massive loss.  We don’t really know how large that exposure is beyond hundreds of billions of dollars of the debt itself.  What is the derivatives exposure?  Remember, with 30x leverage, a 3% loss on any position wipes out all of the capital placed on that bet.   Again, a reminder about the derivatives exposure on Wall Street is in the tens of trillions of dollars.  Beyond that, we don’t actually know who owns what because the derivatives market surrounding sovereign debt is completely unregulated.  It is one of the largest Ponzi schemes out there today.  Maybe the largest.  It is a wildly unregulated betting parlor with massive leverage.  No one actually knows who is exposed to what except management within these firms.  You know, like 2008.  Now, I don’t like speculating about issues like this, but if I were a betting man, I would bet that a few Wall Street firms in the U.S. would have eventually failed if Draghi did not act last week.  There is no doubt that back channel communications are taking place regularly between the Treasury/Federal Reserve and Europe.    Make no mistake, Germany, and to a lesser extent, France  essentially control the ECB and are the looters responsible for the European crisis.  Something other than Germany and France compelled Draghi because his actions were clearly not fully supported by the stooges in Germany.   What force compelled him?  The most logical conclusion is the U.S. Treasury because of an impending crisis on Wall Street.  This is purely speculation but don’t be surprised if this information comes out at some point in the future.

If you use your noggin, the programs announced last week by the Fed and the ECB were unprecedented.   The Fed made statements that they would do whatever it takes for as long as it takes.  Draghi said he would buy every sovereign bond from every nation in Europe for as long as it takes.  That panic at the Fed and ECB, and it was a panic, was most assuredly because the global economy is collapsing.   Right now. 

I told a friend of mine recently that I went in to get a haircut two weekends ago in the early afternoon.  There are usually quite a few clients in the chairs and more in the waiting area.  There was no one in the salon.  No customers period.  When I asked the person who cuts my hair what was going on, she said, “I have no idea.  I have never seen anything like this.  It has been like this every day now for two weeks.”.     It’s coming. 

While no one can know for certain what will happen and when, it is clearly probable that we will start to see measurable crises by the November elections.   Late September of 2012 is an incredibly important time.  Remember what I wrote many times starting in 2009 about the 2012 presidential elections?   That a third party could arise to challenge the status quo.   Well, the Green Party has qualified for matching funds.  And, it has only been around for a short period of time.  Now, much has been hidden from the American people by both parties so that makes is very difficult for the Green Party to make a large showing in 2012.  But, if the economy starts tanking, or if Wall Street starts tanking before the election, all confidence will be lost in Obama because he has told us that he fixed this mess.  The reality is he hasn’t fixed anything.  He has made it worse.  And, now with the new revelations of what a truly unfit and unqualified candidate Mitt Romney truly is, the next few months could become very, very, very interesting.  We might see things happen that have never happened in our history.  No one really knows.  But one thing is certain, the linearity of the past is finished.  You can’t look in the rearview mirror to know where to drive your car in the future. 

By the way, in the link above, Mitt Romney secretly tells his corporate crony donors and the wealthiest elites in the Republican Party that half of all Americans won’t take responsibility for their lives.  We finally see what has been discussed on here numerous times.  A man who truly is a walking contradiction.  A man who professes to be a follower of Jesus of Nazareth yet clearly has a distorted perspective on what that means.   A man that I believe is clearly very tormented. 

So, let’s talk a little bit about Mitt’s statement that 150 million Americans don’t take responsibility for their lives.  You know, the kind of responsibility Wall Street Republicans took for the $23+ trillion in covert bailouts and backstops they took for their massive incompetence, criminal looting and lack of responsibility.   Let’s say you live in a town of five or ten thousand people.  And, you have a spouse and kids.  A private equity firm, you know like one Mitt ran, comes to town and buys the factory you work at.   They raid the firm’s assets and cash and load it up with debt.  Obviously with the help of a Wall Street investment bank.  Let’s say Goldman Sachs since this is all hypothetical.  Your pension and your job disappear as the private equity firm tells you the factory is closing.  You are told that in order to get your last few paychecks or a bonus you need to live on,  that you have to help crate up all of the machinery because it is being shipped to a private equity-owned factory in China.  This is possibly the most humiliating and degrading act of your life because you are forced to actually help destroy your own economic livelihood.  You can’t pass on those paychecks because now your future is completely unknown.  Now, there is a Wal-mart in the local community that has destroyed every locally-owned retailer and manufacturer.  They don’t hire full time, they don’t pay a living wage and they don’t have any worthwhile benefits.  But that is your only real employment opportunity.   What little savings you have are now being used to stay alive, feed your family and pay your mortgage.  Your skills are such that the odds are that no one else is going to hire you for any type of living wage.  Your skills are around making things rather than financial skills of pushing around paper used to loot, prey upon and exploit companies and society.   Job benefits?  Forget it.  Your health care benefits and pension are gone forever with any new job.  Now, how again do you, Mitt Romney, want these people to take responsibility to what you did to them?  Are you, Mitt Romney, willing to take responsibility for how you looted society and made it nearly impossible for others to take responsibility for their own lives?   All hypothetical, of course.  Because Mitt Romney would never do this.  He takes responsibility for his life by not harming others. 

There most certainly are people who become institutionalized in a system of exploitation and violence.  No one more so than politicians, corporate CEOs, bankers and private equity firms who often use public resources and corporate welfare to loot our society.  But, does Mitt Romney actually believe that people would rather live on a $100 a month welfare check than have a living wage, the dignity of their own worthiness by being able to provide for their children and some level of determinism over their own existence?  Has he ever actually met anyone who would fit the stereotype he believes?   A stereotype perpetrated by elitists/Social Darwinists.  What kind of people think these thoughts about literally half of all Americans?  About anyone?  That literally everyone else is wrong and they are right about issues of human decency and dignity?  I’ll tell you who.  Politicians, bankers and corporate CEOs who use their positions of authority to exploit and prey upon average Americans.  Obviously not all bankers, not all politicians and not all CEOs.  But enough of them that they continue to rig the game for looters and no one else in their position is willing to stand up to stop them. 

What the world has become that these are the two choices for the presidency of any democratic nation.    Change you can believe in.  But it won’t be the change that politicians envision. 

Update:  Thurston Howell Romney from conservative journalist David Brooks