Update On Obama’s TPP Dystopian “Free Trade” And His Crown Jewel Of Taxpayer Investment, A123, Sold To Chinese Firm For Pennies On The Dollar

Obama’s business acumen maintains its AAA rating as his battery maker’s assets are sold in bankruptcy to Chinese firm for $250 million.  Chrysler is owned by the Italian firm Fiat, who received an Obama-directed American-taxpayer-funded handout and now the hybrid battery maker and Obama-directed American-taxpayer-funded handout recipient is owned by China.  Fisker received an Obama-directed American-taxpayer-funded handout for making cars in Finland.  They will almost certainly  go bankrupt at some point.  Tesla, another Obama-directed American-taxpayer-funded handout is burning tons of cash and will more than likely go bankrupt at some point.   That’s just the automotive industry.  Obama’s got plenty of other failures too including the political hot potato Solyndra.   Where is democracy’s bailout?   Soon, our democracy will be owned by everyone other than us.   Hey, look on the bright side.   That means our politicians can’t meddle with our employers if none of them are actually American.  And, maybe working for a communist is better than working for a fascist.  Can’t be much worse.   

The original U.S. government investment in A123 was to be $2.4 billion or as noted on here at the time, an almost unbelievable and massively incompetent $500,000 for each job that was supposed to be created in the U.S.   Anyone with a modicum of business sense knew this was a bad investment as was noted and mocked on here at the time.   But, a Chinese firm benefited from our endless political malfeasance and politicians distorting the employment and economic opportunity markets by picking winners and losers based on Ouija boards, payback and favoritism.  

I want to be on the corporatocracy’s handout welfare train.   I don’t know what the average welfare or unemployment benefit check is but a government check of $500,000 for each job at A123?  That is the bomb! albeit it isn’t anything compared to Wall Street corporate welfare handouts.   I think someone called in huge crony favors for that level of stench.   Is Obama accountable for this mistaken use of taxpayer money?  Of course not.  He’s Mr. President.  Our own modern-day self-appointed king who is above the law.  Our kings, who grace our presence in the oval office,  are not bound by written law.  And, when they are, they simply make up new laws on the fly that serve their unbounded ego motive  through unconstitutional executive orders.  Unconstitutional executive orders that grant them the power of unconstitutional war, unconstitutional murder, unconstitutional torture, unconstitutional spying, unconstitutional destruction of habeas corpus, unconstitutional spending other people’s money how they see fit and on and on.   Sound familiar?  Sounds like King George.  But the American people are held to account for every single mistake we ever make.  We are personally-responsible even when we have little, if any ability to directly impact our situation as slaves the the corporate state.  Even if those mistakes are a result of government and Wall Street corruption like in the housing bubble.  Can you imagine if you lost $2.4 billion dollars of other people’s money?  Or, $25 trillion as is the case with Federal Reserve handouts?  It would be time to stock up on a lifetime supply of soap on a rope. 

The Detroit News ran a story that the  Whitehouse is excluding Japan from the Asian TPP sham “free trade” talks.   You know, Obama’s secret TPP “free trade” agreement that grants corporations extrajudicial and extraconstitutional powers.  This exclusion of the largest industrial and financial economy in Asia from Asian “free trade” talks simply proves there’s nothing free about free trade.  It’s corporatism and corporate welfare handouts negotiated in secret to benefit the corporatocracy while destroying the American economy and American democracy in the process. 

The reason why Japan, the second largest industrial economy in the world and arguably the largest sustainable economy in Asia, is excluded from an American-rigged Asian “free trade” agreement is because their industrial corporations routinely eat what are often our financialized, MBA-incompetently-managed, state-welfare-propped-up, humpty dumpty, industrial  corporation’s lunch.   That is, whatever is left of our industrial economy.  And, their financial firms provide stiff competition for capital development in lieu of financial looting provided by Wall Street firms. 

Put more poignantly, American car makers have concerns about access to Japan’s markets as cited in this article.  Okay, let’s digress a little on this one. I have been to Japan and have close relationships in Japan.  Let’s take cars as the example used in this article as the basis for Obama’s exclusion of the largest industrial and financial economy in Asia from Asian “free trade” talks.   Japan’s streets and alleyways in cities, which is where almost everyone in Japan lives, are often tiny and very cramped.  Even their road working and construction equipment comes in  miniaturized sizes to work in alleyways and tight quarters.   And, they are a nation with no domestic natural resources so efficiency, quality and saving resources or miniaturization is a huge issue for all consumable markets.  ie, Consumables and durables are expected to last and to be made with as little imported resource as possible.  Additionally, their cars use right-hand steering systems.  Most importantly, from my experience, I believe they are the most discriminating consumers in the world.   They are informed, they are frugal and they demand incredible quality and service.  In other words, if you want to sell to Japan’s consumer, you’ve got to invest and earn their business.   It is possible.  There are American brands in Japan. 

So, when was the last time an American auto firm made a small, right-hand steering car designed to meet the Japanese consumer’s needs with quality comparable to that offered in their domestic market?  And, then invested in a parts and service distribution network needed to maintain those products on a national level?  The answer is never.  Not one single time.  Period.  GM did slap a right-hand steering column on an American-designed Yugo-quality kar made for American markets twenty years ago.  Then they tried, if you want to call it trying, to sell what was essentially a piece of shit to the Japanese consumer with no support and no service network.   Then when the Japanese consumers didn’t buy it, GM’s incompetent, financialized management bitched that they were being kept out of Japanese markets.   That is no joke.  And, it is not a mischaracterization.  I worked for GM and with the auto industry.  And while I post very infrequently about the industry now, I posted a lot of accurate remarks years ago including a foretelling of their coming bankruptcy and how they would rise again to be successful firms as they are now. 

GM should have gone to Procter & Gamble and asked them how they became a successful brand in Japan through effective brand & product management, marketing strategies targeted to the Japanese consumer’s needs & tastes and Japanese-demanded levels of service.   Or gone to Toyota who offered to teach them how to make and sell cars in Japan.  Haha.  How hilarious that was.  Instead GM quit.  They quit because GM was run by bean counters and financial idiots beholden to Wall Street’s financialization drive (financial terrorism of private, for-profit capital(ism)) and growing control over our industrial economy.  And, therefore, the executives at GM knew nothing about how to run an engineering & design company, let alone a consumer-driven and consumer-centric organization.   But they did know how to destroy innovation and industrial prowess and replace it with a culture of counting beans.  So, GM became a Soviet-style, financialized (efficiency-driven), systemically-incompetent monopoly living off of the gravy train of American political handouts, fleet sales, employee sales, government bulk vehicle sales and lack of competition at home.  You know, like all major corporations in this country today.   Especially Wall Street and financial firms looking to extent their monopoly and looting in the TPP agreement.  People participating in working markets create jobs.  Not corporations who actually destroy jobs. 

Here is the reality of our free trade agreements.  American free trade agreements are based on the premise of investor-class, financial looting using the world’s reserve currency to do so.  So, the only nations that need dollars, ie. the focus of our free trade agreements, that America’s investor class, corporations and financial looters would provide are patsy and corrupt nations.  Those are the sole focus of free trade agreements.  You know, like China and Mexico, two of the most corrupt nations on earth.  Any nation that is truly free on some level has already empowered their people and economy with their own national currency and their own financial system.  And, therefore, they don’t need corporatocracy dollars as provided by free trade agreements. 

Case in point is Japan.   Well, Japan needs petrodollars to buy energy because the dollar is required to buy oil on the global markets.  Today.  We shall see about the future.  But, they don’t need dollars to expand their domestic production, employment or investment.  Everything in Japan is self-funded.  Everything.  You know, like the U.S. used to be 200, 150, 100, 50 and even 30 years ago.  In the U.S. that form of economic democracy, self-determination and personal responsibility has been destroyed by the corporatocracy.  We beg for welfare and unemployment benefits funded by other countries.  We beg for others to buy our bonds, buy A123, buy our automakers, build our schools, pave our roads, pay for our wars, spy on our citizens, bomb the world into submission, FUND OUR DEMOCRACY and on and on and on.   Do you see how f*cking nuts this is?  How undemocratic this is?  How tyrannical this is?  How exploitative and predatory this is?  No democracy ever has to be reliant on the private savings of other nations, dictatorships, communist countries or even private, for-profit bank funding in their own nation.   This is unregulated/deregulated capitalism and it is tyranny defined.  The neoliberal state created equally by Democrats and Republicans.

So, my point is that we see these free trade deals are all based on exploitation.  Countries and markets that need dollars our corporations will provide them - courtesy of defeated American labor; thank you American politicians.  These countries need those dollars because their economy, financial systems and political systems are too corrupt or too tyrannical or both to generate their own wealth.  Do you see Japan, Germany or France signing these free trade con games that allow American corporations to loot, pillage and exploit?  Hahaha.   Canada is part of NAFTA and Australia is part of the TPP for what is one primary reason.   That is, their economies are so dominated by our corporations that including them in free trade deals simply extends American corporate hegemony and corporate rule.   Canada and Australia are already America’s 51st and 52nd corporate states.

These secret corporate state agreements destroy American labor, American democracy and American sovereignty.

We are getting exactly what we voted for and plenty of it.  And, that includes Obama’s acceptance of corporate funding for his inauguration celebration.   “Criticizing the move, the transparency watchdog the Sunlight Foundation said: “[President] Obama said unlimited donations sully our democracy, threaten public service, and weaken representation - and he has now chosen to embrace them.””

“Has chosen?”  His whole presidency is foundational to embracing the demands of the corporate state.   It’s nice to see the Sunlight Foundation has embraced reality.  Change you can believe in.