The Farcical Ryan Budget Deal, Corporate State Violence, Austerity And The End Of Money

To start, just a few comments about the “budget deal” in Washington.  There are some that are mortified by its contents or lack of willingness to address reality.   It seems as though some people still live under the delusion that we can save this system.  Look, our monetary and financial systems are finished.   Anyone who still has delusions that this system will be saved just isn’t facing up to reality.   And for those who believe all we have to do is cut government spending, a popular meme put forth by the plutocrats and adopted by their useful idiots, we aren’t going to cut our way to prosperity.  In this debt-based monetary system, cuts will lead to crisis or collapse.  Even if that includes cuts to completely useless programs.  It still reduces the quantity of money in the economy.   The only way to increase the quantity of money is to create new money.   The only way to create new money in this system is by issuing more debt.  (Or by the Fed monetizing debt aka money printing)   That certainly is insane but that actually isn’t the worst injustice of this system. 

In an economy that is truly increasing its productive ability (monetization of science and invention) to meet the needs of society, debt can always be inflated away.  The U.S. has done this in the past.  In fact, we had forgiven countless foreign debts when we had an economy capable of doing so.  50 years ago, the U.S. could deal with this debt load for various economic reasons.  Not today.  Not without a massive restructuring of our economy that the plutocrats and globalists will certainly block.  Today the U.S. economy has become a Humpty Dumpty in many regards courtesy of corporate and aristocratic interests.  A service-based economy does not allow for debt to be inflated away as I have discussed ad nauseam.  That very reason is why China and the U.S. has seen an explosion of debt since 2008.  Because now both the U.S. and Chinese economies are reliant on consumption and their service economies to carry the load for collapsing capitalism.  So, rather than productively being able to inflate away debt, we have simply seen an explosion of global debt since 2008.  At some point I’ll put up a post explaining this in detail. 

It should be of no surprise that this budget “deal” cuts the retiree benefits for military personnel while our budget policies give an “accidental” $100 billion tax break to the plutocrats.   There are no accidents.  Only distortions and deceptions.   This system has become wildly unjust and capable of incredible evil.  

Paul Ryan, the architect of this secret budget deal, has a very disconcerting persona to me.  That he crossed the isle to help craft this budget was almost certainly contrived by his insatiable desire for more power.   Unbridled ambition, driven by ego, thwarts human connection and empathy.  We see that in spades with Ryan; one of the plutocracy’s staunchest supporters of free market corporate capitalism and its endless social violence.  In order to appear presidential, and to have a chance at winning the presidency, the Washington propaganda machine believes it has to show an ability to compromise.  This budget deal proves to the propagandists that are manufacturing Ryan’s image, that he has an ability to do that.   These are the same propagandists who contrived the deceptive Obama image. 

Contrarily, compromise with this system is nothing more than an appeasement of evil.   It is Chamberlain’s agreement with Hitler.  We look more like the British Empire in 1776 than ever.  But our empire is breaking apart from the inside-out unlike the British Empire.  Today we have people of all ilk who wish to see economic and social justice on one side of this “breaking apart” and on the other side the Paul Ryans, the Barack Obamas and the idiocracy seeking to hold the corporate plutocracy together. 

People who wax poetic about what America used to be are simply not willing to face their delusional belief systems and accept the truth.  Our nation has always been wildly corrupt and driven by class that is an affront to human dignity and the will of the people or democracy.  I have written of some of the historical dynamics surrounding this statement time and again.  Smedley Butler wrote of the military being nothing more than corporate strong men.  Legalized bribery of politicians for the first 80 years of our nation’s existence.  The list of corruptions are endless.  Washington always has been a Parliament of Whores. 

The only difference from past periods of outright slavery to wage slavery  is that now corporate capitalism has reached a very mature state.  So, we have a mature corporate economy as has existed in Europe forever.   Or, as I like to think of it, a mature forest of dead wood that is choking out new growth and diversity of invention, creativity and ideas.   The laws of nature hate control or monoculture (corporate-controlled) ecosystems whether they are economic or on the plains of Africa.  Corporate capitalist bureaucrats seek greater order and efficiency, just as their communist brethren did.  But nature seeks greater and greater entropy or disorder.  Eventually nature torches that mature forest or dead wood to allow for renewal, rebirth and new growth.  So too will the forces of nature solve our current dilemma.  And, while natural disaster certainly could play a role in the crackup of this system, the forces of nature that are likely to bring this system down are that of the human mind and its desire to be free.  To be able to invent, create and express itself without being controlled by corporate capitalism or communism or any other form of state violence.  

In the past, there was always some way to outrun the corporate state.   Whether that was by heading west to an undeveloped or underdeveloped part of the nation or by serving society as an entrepreneur in some way that was not dominated by corporate power.  But, today, corporations and the corporate state control everything.  They have rigged everything.  They suppress democracy and humanity through endless dynamics.  Corporate capitalism and the corporate state and its manifestations of class makes us ignorant and dumbs down society.   And, most often it does so through psychological violence so we become unaware of our ignorance.

This brings me to a topic I have talked about on here in the past.  All of these dynamics of austerity create a self-fulfilling prophecy in the decline of the quantity of money.  Bernanke is a Friedmanite (religious ideologue) who believes it was the collapse in the quantity of money that led to the Great Depression.  Obviously, this theory was created well after the Great Depression as curve-fitted junk science.  And, as I have noted on here many times, this theory will fail central bankers.   The quantity of money is very important in this current economic system but in a vacuum, or taken out of context to serve the desires of class and corporations, it is useless.  Simply increasing the quantity of money regardless of the reasons or economic value to democracy, as is the case today, is literally nothing short of insanity.    ( I’ll come back to this at some point and show how Friedman and Reagan teamed up to enhance the ignorance of the junk science of economics using the QoM theory that we are now dealing with.   But for now, I want to focus on the quantity of money in this environment. )

Austerity as prescribed by Rogoff & Reinhart, our corporate masters, the Federal Reserve, Washington pathocrats and other loonies in this system is ludicrous.  All it takes is one example to falsify their conclusions and we can then recognize their theory as junk.  And, there are many examples that falsify their ignorant theories.  Yet, since science in this nation has been turned into a mockery, no one in the mainstream seems to even have an understanding of what a sound scientific argument is.  Or what scientific falsification even is.  So, instead we live through the ignorance of an inverted society or a plutocracy that constantly is throwing out all of these junk theories like austerity.  ie,   In the corporate state conformity and ignorance are rewarded with advancement and riches while suppressing the creativity, inventiveness and genius of the masses.  Austerity is certainly one truism of this.  

Whether it is the destruction of private pensions that was so prevalent under the Clinton administration, or the destruction of public pensions that is now happening under the Obama administration, or the collapse of financially-trade assets (stocks and real estate) under Bush, or the austerity programs that involve cuts in social spending that have become a Washington mainstay for the last twenty years, or the replacement of high wage productive jobs with low wage service jobs or full-time jobs being replaced by part-time or temporary jobs, or the cut in military pensions advocated by the Ryan budget, all of these dynamics and more suck huge quantities of money out of the economy and leave massive distortions in their wake.   All use corporate state violence to reduce the quantity and breadth of money.  Not just in the future but in the present.  If my pension no longer exists, I am going to reduce my spending today due to the uncertainly of my future.  And, if I am about to enter retirement or currently in retirement, it has an even more profound effect.   

Austerity has the exact same impact on the quantity of money as the massive wave of bank failures that took place in the Great Depression.   Both created the exact same outcome of a collapse in the quantity of money.  We see this today in places like Detroit, Cleveland and Buffalo.   Once industrial powerhouses that have been reduced to economic rubble.  Their collapsed, and I do mean literally collapsed, (If you haven’t been to these places, you could assume I am exaggerating.  But the accurate word is collapsed.)  economies and massive impoverishment are a sign of the quantity of money collapsing in their localities.   They have been under a system of austerity for decades.   But this is not just a geographic issue.  It is also a demographic issue driven by private, class-based interests controlling our economy, our banking and our money.

Do you want to see your future under austerity that our masters wish to impose?  Look at Detroit, Cleveland and Buffalo.  There isn’t a large enough quantity of money in their local economies to conduct commerce and trade; something I have talked about on here quite often over the years.   That is austerity.  This economic crisis is contrived.   Not necessarily contrived as in it was willfully and intentionally created.  It is contrived because private and class-based interests control access to democracy’s capital, and thus, the artificial control system of money used to exploit it or gain access to it.   You might be the smartest person in the world who is capable of curing cancer or solving every sickness known to man, but if you live in geographies or demographics that are under the faux intellectual suppression of austerity, you are most generally destined to live in squalor and have your genius go unfulfilled.  To have it suppressed by class and private interests.  Suppressed for no other reason than the artificial control of the quantity of money that class-based interests, corporations and private banks exert over our society.   That is how the ignorant elites and the pathocratic predators maintain control.  They do so via controlling access to democracy’s capital and through controlling the quantity of money.  Money is a tool of enslavement.  It has never been a tool of empowerment.  The only way money could be empowering and democratic is if it is abundantly available to all citizens to monetize their creativity and inventiveness.  That is, the only money could be democratic is to fiat money as noted on here ad nauseam.

The reason why this control dynamic exists is because corporations and private, for-profit interests determine the quantity of money in our economic system.  And, the only way to ameliorate that dynamic under today’s corrupt, anti-democratic monetary and banking system is through the corporate state pumping up the quantity of money when corporations won’t.  They do this by spending endlessly on wars, corporate handouts, welfare, bridges to no where, pork spending projects, the overproduction of military weapons, the overproduction of industrial food, etc that benefits class and elites.  ie, Keynesianism.  That is, central planning of the idiocracy.  

So we have people with no qualifications to improve our lot in life, who have little to no skills other than rhetoric and control making all of our economic decisions.  Barack Obama and Paul Ryan are in your living room telling you how your money is going to be spent.   How society’s capital is going to be allocated.  And they are doing so by creating bureaucratic, violent, state-based or state-controlled programs that increase state influence and power rather than increasing your own freedom, personal safety or well-being.  This leads to massive violence against humanity as ignorant bureaucrats impose their will on society’s livelihood.   Just as the Soviets, the British Empire and the Nazis did. 

This choice between corporations and private interests controlling our quantity of money and the corporate state central planners controlling the quantity of money is a false choice of violence created by class-based corporate capitalism.  There are many routes to increase the quantity of money in any economy beyond corporations or state overspending or debt serfdom.  That includes methods that increase economic vibrancy and empowerment of our citizens rather than pumping up the welfare state or corporate profits.  I gave some examples of how to do this in my last post and many other prior posts. 

If I laid out what our monetary and banking system could look like, I think most people would be floored.   Because they have been willfully kept ignorant of what our world really could be.  And how the quality of life and personal empowerment could literally explode upward for most people in this world were it void of this repressive, violent, exploitative system of class-based control.   With just a swag, were wealth in our nation to be distributed equally, every family would have a six figure income.  No one would ever have to rent.  No one would ever have to use debt to enjoy a life of personal safety and abundance.  No one would ever have to go without food, clothing or a great education or world-class health care.  And the price of real estate, houses, etc, would collapse to the point of everyone being able to live essentially anywhere in our nation rather than a nation separated by neighborhoods of haves versus have-nots.   If  income were distributed more democratically, we wouldn’t have such a disparity in what people can and cannot afford to simply stay alive.  Now, I’m not advocating a system of equal pay but rather I want to make a point of how truly evil this system is.

The welfare state exists because our economic system is unjust.  It does not exist to serve the needs to society or democracy.  It exists to serve class and privilege.  The welfare state exists to serve private interests that want to privatize gains and socialize losses.  Dumping people on the public dole serves corporate capitalism and class-based interests who loot with impunity and not the people who lose their determinism and dignity through such inhumane and violent welfare state programs.  If our society was just, people would always have the ability to make a living wage and have substantial, if not final say, over their economic determinism.  That is a natural right. 

So, the more austerity gains a grip on our society, the more likely we are going to see some type of out-of-bounds monetary event.  I have written on here extensively that we will someday see the end of money.   Forever.   That it is an institution of the ego or an institution of control and that it primarily serves the purpose of ego and its manifestations of greed, evil, power, control, selfishness, etc.  And when money dies it won’t likely happen out of virtue but out of necessity.  

Let me give you one example of how money could fail this cycle, either temporarily or in a first phase of permanency, because of people like Paul Ryan, Barack Obama and the Rogoffs and Reinharts of this world who support this endless ignorance of the dumbed-down corporate state.  

As we see a greater concentration of wealth in our society, due exclusively to wealth-shifting and rent-seeking economic policies to support the plutocracy, coupled with austerity, we could see a day where an extremely large swath of the population has no money to speak of.  Especially if asset prices collapse.  Which, they certainly will without radical reform.  Reform that the plutocracy and corporate capitalism will resist. 

This dynamic is the exact same dynamic that the economy faced in the 2008 collapse.   But, rather than with money itself, it was with monetary equivalents.  ie, bonds.   Mortgage-backed securities were concentrated in the hands of the plutocracy just as money is today.  And, there were no more counterparties left to trade with.  There was no one to buy any more of their monetary equivalents or take the opposite side of the trade for mortgage-backed securities.  What happened?  The economy collapsed.  Or should I say the microcosm of the economy that was trading these monetary equivalents collapsed. 

Expand this from the small microcosm of monetary equivalents to the entire U.S. economy and the generalization of money.   We are already on our way to something along these lines as corporations and the plutocracy amass greater and greater concentration of paper wealth or money.  A wealth that has come to have no meaning in almost every regard.  Especially because most people have little of it.  And, because most people have little of it, its economic value is severely limited or even verging on useless.   Our economic system is reminiscent of past examples of the gold standard where the plutocracy controlled and owned all of the money.   That should be no surprise.  All feudalist economic systems eschew the monetization of society’s best and brightest ideas in favor of control;  a dynamic the gold standard effectively accomplished.

Just as in 2008, there is a broad swath of the economy that cannot actually take a counterparty trade for the massive monetary wealth held by Wall Street and the plutocracy.  We could easily see a day when someone who has amassed $50 or $500 million or $5 or $50 billion can find no counterparty to  exchange for the accumulated money.  Go to Detroit or Appalachia and find someone who actually can take a trade for any money.  They either have nothing to offer economically, because the corporate state plutocracy has suppressed economic vibrancy of most Americans, or they have no money to offer in return for any economic trade.   In these microcosms of the economy, money has already lost almost all economic value.  In other words, there are large geographic areas in the U.S. where money could serve a greater purpose by burning it in the fireplace for heat.    There is little made in Appalachia or Detroit that money has almost no meaning.  But, money still serves a purpose in those areas or demographics for what may be made or acquired by the corporate state outside of those areas or demographics.   People in Detroit can still use money to buy economic goods and services made by people elsewhere.  People under the control of corporations.  The same control that suppresses the people of Detroit and disallows them from being economically-self determined.   The people of Detroit, as just one example, have become forced to the enslavement of consumerism rather than producers, inventors and creators.   Why?  Because the corporate state has violently willed it by denying them access to democratic money and capital.

And, how do the people of Detroit or Appalachia, as just two examples, acquire that money to buy goods and services they are violently denied from producing themselves?  Well, that would be money provided by government transfer payments of Social Security, Medicare, welfare, unemployment insurance, food stamps, etc.  that barely keep people alive.  Or, of course, by selling illegal drugs or whatnot.  Government austerity will only cut these transfer payment programs even further and, thus, have the potential to erode the usefulness of money in our economy even further.  And, what is arising outside of this system of monetary and economic control?  The barter economy, the underground economy and the illegal economy.  As noted in prior posts, more on that later.   

That the U.S. has future monetary obligations of $50 trillion or $300 trillion, or whatever number you want to make up, is the same meaningless nonsense as people having $50 million or $50 billion in cash or financially-propped up assets.  It’s just a  number that some day could have absolutely no meaning whatsoever.  Just like the Fed’s money printing that is all going into the hands of those who rigged the rules to their benefit.   There could easily come a day where all of the money in the world won’t buy you a loaf of bread.  Why?  Not because of hyperinflation.  But because through thirty-plus years of austerity and its effects of draining the quantity of money out of large swaths of the population and large segments of our geography, there may not be enough counterparties to take the trade.  When 50, 60, 70 percent or more of the people have little or no money, who is going to take the counterparty trade for corporations and the elite who are flush with money?   Money could easily become useless or worse before this cycle ends.  Most likely because so few people have any of it.  The quantity of money is a symptom.  And, it is a symptom that is only exacerbated by the horrendous economic policies of the Federal Reserve and the corporate state.  And, that doesn’t mean a dollar collapse is imminent either.  This could all happen with a violently rising dollar. 

The more fundamental question is if society can produce enough to feed, clothe and provide shelter for its citizens regardless of whether money is part of the equation.  Or whether today’s monetary and financial system is part of that equation.  The answer is clearly yes.  And we can do it substantially better than is being done today under this plutocratic, pathological economic, banking and monetary system.

In many ways the arrogant ignorance of people like Paul Ryan, Barack Obama and Jamie Dimon are a good thing.   Paul Ryan’s budget deal is good for most Americans.  Not good in the sense that the pathocrats believe.  Not good for the well being of Americans.   It is nothing more than a continuation of the horrendous injustices of this system.  But it is good in the sense that the unintended consequences to their actions only hasten crisis and/or collapse of the plutocracy.  Their own control-driven belief systems and their massive, unintended consequences are hastening the pathocrats own demise.  And quite possibly, the economic, financial and monetary systems that have allowed them to gain power over our democracy and our freedoms in the first place.  Karma certainly is a bitch.