Corporate Capitalism's Debt Machine Hides A Much More Insidious Reality

My upcoming post or possibly few series of posts will be an economic update. I noted in pretty substantial detail pre-coronavirus that the US economy was rolling over well before 2020.  The cat was recently let out of the bag in Congress that during 2019 and into 2020 the Federal Reserve was bailing out the banking system at a far greater rate than they publicly documented.  The secrets and fraud to keep our criminal banking system afloat are staggering.  On that note, there is a lot of nonsense and conspiracy reported out there on many popular financial sites.  I get all of my data directly from the Federal Reserve.  But since so much isn't reported by the Federal Reserve or anyone in the press, I use WallStreetOnParade.com pretty much exclusively to help me piece together that the Federal Reserve, Congress, the SEC or other regulators are misrepresenting or misleading us about.  Pam and Russ Martens have literally no equals in reporting on our financial system.  It's based in fact. They understand central banking, finance and monetary policy.  I get no money or have no affiliation on this blog. I don't even know Pam and Russ.  It's purely based on my indepth understanding of finance and their unique insight and journalistic excellence.  

I noted countless times post 2008 that the US would never see an economic recovery under the current economic system. And, that the world we knew before 2008 is gone. Forever.  The world is far different than anything that anyone will ever learn on Fox News, CNN, from Wall Street or from politicians. Over a lifetime, I have come to appreciate the palpable ignorance of the establishment.  It exists in science, in politics, in corporations, in the successful classes of corporate capitalism and in large segments of our population who rely on these sources.  This certainly doesn't mean people are stupid.  Far from it. Many of the most ignorant people are very bright by many measures. But if any narrative has become  mainstream, regardless of what ideology or doctrine, it is almost certainly fundamentally based on ignorance. And, the establishment elites arrogantly believe in their own ignorance regardless of any facts that may exist to the contrary. These are the effects of belief systems, or lies we tell ourselves, that I have written about incessantly. The ego will do anything to perpetuate its own belief systems. That includes look directly at an outright fallacy that is part of my belief system and rather than recognize my own ignorance, incorporate into my own faulty beliefs. This is why magical thinking and conspiracy theory abounds so much with White Americans and the professional class Americans being the two most predominant. They are the largest targeted population classes that suffer from a hive mind mentality that results in them lying to themselves so much they don't know who they truly are or what reality truly is.

As noted in prior posts, I'll be addressing all of this in detail in 2020 as these dynamics played a major role in my voluminous anticipated outcomes written of on here for the last sixteen years.  And, they are almost all in play or have already come to pass.  

We are never going back to the world that existed. And, never is a long time.  The revolutionary (the working poor and those most exploited by corporate capitalism) and counter-revolutionary (Trump supporters) forces that exist in our society are here to stay. Corporate capitalism is not and cannot mathematically recover.

For now, I want to simply highlight a topic discussed ad nauseam on here for sixteen years.  That is, US wealth creation peaked around 1980, capitalism can't pay its own bills, we don't live in a democracy but rather a corporate plantation and corporate captured government, capitalism is in systemic and likely permanent failure post 2008, I'm projecting US empire to end in 2022 and the US has spent hundreds of trillions of dollars (in today's dollar terms) bailing out corporate capitalism over the last four decades at the expense of democratic programs and the common good.

There were huge political and economic changes that happened in the last 70s and early 80s that I'll be discussing this year.  Those were generally driven by a radicalized fascist Republican Party and corporations.  As capitalism started losing its control and domination of democracy, it's strong adherents circled the wagons and started a multi-decades effort to destroy its democratic opposition.  One of the first of these efforts is the Lewis Powell memo I have mentioned numerous times on here; a blueprint for corporate capitalist to dominate democracy. (Link.)   (Powell was a radical right wing corporate fascist with incredibly undemocratic views that Nixon eventually nominated to the Supreme Court, which has been the most egregious violators of democracy and individual rights while legislating from the bench unconstitutional corporate laws.  If one does the research, they will find out this memo started the flood of dirty Republican corporate money that led to the endless wall of corporate money in politics, neoliberal trickle down economics of Reagan, right wing fascist think tank propaganda and resultant fascist changes in federal government policies and Federal Reserve policies. Both political parties in the US have long since adopted these stances.)  

One must realize that corporate capitalism is an economic control system just like communism, feudalism, mercantilism or any other ism dreamed up by the ruling economic-political class. And, that what is happening in the economy today was driven by inputs that may have happened a decade or a century ago. Constant rigging and handouts to corporate capitalism, Wall Street and the ruling class are ongoing in the endless bribing of government and stealing of wealth from the poorest and working class in our society. There is no such thing as the free market. There's only policy and handouts created by politicians at the behest of their corporate-investor class donors that transfer money from the working class, the poor and democracy to the corporate class.

I noted some posts ago about the many examples of the massive corporate capitalist bailouts over the last forty years that amounted to well north of $100 trillion. And, I haven't even scratched the surface with that post.  It's far greater than what I highlighted. In a similar vein, the Rand Corporation recently did an analysis that the top 1% of the corporate capitalist class stole $50 trillion dollars from the working class in the last forty years. Their analysis is completely different than my highlighted thefts but does intersect on some level. Their analysis is way too small.  The looting by corporate capitalism is far, far greater.

In the graph below, we see the total US corporate & economic debt versus GDP since 1975.  It's obvious that we aren't on a trend to ever pay back these debts. Ever.  And haven't been since Ronald Reagan replaced intrinsic demand from citizens with ever-increasing government spending and debt to prop up corporate capitalism, which required endlessly cutting democratic programs and social safety nets.   

What I want readers to take away from this graph has nothing to do with debt itself. It has to do with what's behind the debt that I have talked about repeatedly over the years. Debt is a myth. It's an illusion.  And, because US debt is all dollar denominated, we owe it to ourselves.  It doesn't matter if China holds our bonds or if a retired citizen in Detroit holds them.  (More on this later)  Debt is and can and be vanquished continuously around the world every day. 

What you should start thinking about is what would our economy have looked like without that buildup of corporate debt.  The simple answer is it would have collapsed alongside the Soviet Union, with similar timing.  Lenin told us communism was nothing more than state capitalism. And, in reality, they are extremely similar in how they are used to control the masses.  The US simply lasted longer because of its reserve currency status.  So, if we have had ever increasing debt for the past 40-odd years, that means what our economy has become during that time is completely unsustainable. Because, it obviously cannot repay its debts.  It also tells us the free market that Ronald Reagan and radical Republicans ushered in is nothing more than enslaving citizens to private corporations and debt that left society holding the bag on ever-increasing debt while the political and economic class pillaged democracy.  Mind you, this has been discussed time and again as a major driver behind the American Revolution in 1776 and our Declaration of Independence from the king's corporations and his corporate bankers.

The Federal Reserve can keep the debt Ponzi scheme going for a long time.  What it can't do is control the behavior of a global system with trillions of moving parts. It cannot control human behavior and it cannot cover over gross corporate capitalist incompetence forever.  

What this graph also points to is that corporate capitalism and Wall Street have grossly misallocated capital. That it has not served society or democracy but that corporations and ruling elites do just the opposite without democratic oversight.  They have allocated what served them best while leaving democracy in a debt-enslaved society where our only reason for existence is to service their entitlement. This chart alone shows you that corporate capitalism has plundered and looted society and left them with nearly a future $100 trillion dollar obligation in corporate debt alone. All while they deny Americans healthcare, living wages, the fruits of their labor and destroy their communities and democracy. This after receiving massive government subsidies that required cuts to democratic and social programs. This is why the wealth gap is so great. Because the top 10-20% have cashed out trillions while leaving the rest of society holding the bag on massive corporate debts.

This dynamic is why the government is now giving dollars to American citizens to survive. Because citizens have been looted and pillaged by corporate capitalism. But, even those checks are only enough to pay the corporate debts and endless bills that we are all enslaved to.  So, once again, these are backdoor handouts for corporations and banks that will receive nearly all of these payments to citizens.

So, what is behind this debt?  Massive physical global overcapacity and overconsumption. When you understand this, you appreciate the elephant in the room isn't debt. As noted ad nauseam, its the massive misallocation of capital by corporations (the mythical free market) in excess plant, equipment, consumption, retail, consumerism and the like that hasn't balanced with society's ability to intrinsically consume corporate capitalism's output for four decades. So, the biggest concern should not be debt but the physical imbalances behind it.  Because if those are taken out, then we will see massive global unemployment. Massive. As noted many times, it could be upwards of 70% in the US.  A few sources who calculate real unemployment recently put total unemployment in 2020 at nearly 50% during the height of the pandemic.  That has again fallen to around 25% but the pandemic exposed the risks to the system when shocks are absorbed.

And, the debt bubble isn't just a US phenomenon.  The US has saddled China with even more debt as it has plundered that country. China's total government, corporate and private debt is now over 400% of GDP.  The US has pillaged China and left it in a disastrous situation as noted countless times on here.  

This is almost certainly the final days of corporate capitalism.  Whether it fails in one fell swoop or slowly grinds its way to nonexistence through a series of continual shocks remains to be seen.  

Until the next time. (You can click on the graph for a larger image.)

Germany, France and Italy Suspend AstraZeneca CV19 Vaccine Due To Complications

This was reported by the AP.  This suspension is due to one of the issues I linked to in the last CV19 post where doctors sent a letter to the European equivalent of the FDA raising this concern.  I can imagine the first thing we are going to hear is that this isn’t the Moderna or Pfizer vaccine.  Yet, my last post highlighted increasing medical and scientist concerns and risks to both.  Both types of vaccines target the spike protein we’ve all become laymen experts about. Both trigger the body to respond similarly with potentially substantial yet-t0-be-uncovered unknowns and risks. Why would it not be plausible that side effects could be similar without scientific research/validation to the contrary?  The virologist who actually used to work for the Gates Foundation (for those who hate Bill Gates), said something very profound in the link I provided. That science didn’t take the time to understand the virus and how it was reacting with the human body before creating a vaccine.  So, we ended up not understanding our enemy and going to war with the wrong weapons.  There is merit to that perspective. That we didn’t do scientific diligence and quantify risks. Does that mean the vaccines are dangerous to most?  No. But, we are still learning about the virus and the vaccines so what the governments of nations should have done is be honest with citizens and tell them we believe these vaccines are safe but that there are risks.  And, we will monitor their impacts and transparently share that data.  But instead we are treated as infants or politicians fear telling us the truth.  Either way, this doesn’t represent the consent of the governed.

American medicine in particular lacks a scientific research mindset. What a surprise. We are a nation that rejects science. We ship our science jobs to China, Mexico, India and Vietnam. Or, let the Europeans do it for us.  As I noted back in February in 2020, more than a year ago as it pertained to what was potentially coming re this virus, US medicine often looks more like witchcraft than science.  What I mean by that is we lack a rigorous data-driven infrastructure to validate medical procedures, outcomes, approaches and treatments.  To this day, we don’t have a national data-driven effort to capture effective CV19 treatments, CV19 short and long term medical side effects or CV19 vaccine short or long term side effects.  Thus, we just piss against the wall and hope for the best.  Doctors and nurses are left to make things up and use word of mouth for successes and failures.  They have done an admirable job by cutting death rates.  But, it’s poking in the dark as opposed to using data-driven science to achieve those goals on a national level. 

It is my perspective that a substantial reason this exists is that doctors are not scientists; something noted on here for years. So, they don’t think like scientists. Many, especially general practitioners are often little more than legalized drug pushers. There is no incentive for them to be scientists. 

There was once a time when Europeans were pioneering medicine by offering or even requiring PhD science degrees in concert with MD degrees.  The US has never done that.  Although I believe there are a very small number of US schools that now offer this approach. I don’t stay close enough to this point to speak authoritatively on who is currently offering what but I do know the US isn’t focused on producing scientists as it pertains to doctors. That doesn’t mean US doctors aren’t capable. But it does mean the thought processes behind treatments, outcomes, drug usage and the like are too often void of data-driven science. It’s an awareness, rigor mindset more than an intelligence or capability issue. 

So, while US medicine is busy ramrodding a never-before used vaccine approach, with two months and 20,000 trial participants, numerous European nations have been and continue to raise issues about what the vaccine is actually doing in the body. And reporting negative outcomes including what the implications are for a vaccine that actually doesn’t vaccinate people but rather is some type of a booster shot. (My last CV19 post)  This is because they are capturing data and, more importantly, rather than conforming to a profit-driven corporate healthcare edict that only exists in the U.S., they are asking and raising serious scientific questions.  Just imagine how many other healthcare dynamics enforce this conformity in our nation? This because private profit is the primary intent of the healthcare delivery system. I’ll give you another dynamic just as it pertains to CV19.  The number one correlation of CV19 hospitalization and death appears to be obesity.  Who’s responsible for the obesity epidemic in our nation?  The for-profit, investor-owned industrial food complex hooking us on high-profit, low nutrition food that has addictive qualities. Where’s the healthcare system demanding accountability on nutrition? They are owned by the same corporate investors as healthcare.  And, the corporate media and on and on.  People would be fired for speaking the truth against corporations and investors.  This already happens everywhere in medicine where employees are muzzled and terminated for speaking the truth.  We lie to each other in this nation so much we don’t even know what the truth is.

As I noted in prior posts, our society lacks an understanding of risk analysis and risk management.  That includes the appreciation of future risk.  Poverty, lack of healthcare, lack of education, lack of employment, lack of community, lack of social support structures and the like creates incredible risks and ends up with a fragile society.  That is the United States.  This is consistent with the cheerleading of a vaccine where two months of clinical trials on a very small participant data set of generally healthy individuals. The real world was not reflective of those trials nor the profile of participants.  And, what’s even more disconcerting is more than a year later the US has no national data capture system for CV19 treatments, CV19 short or long term side effects, or CV 19 vaccine short or long term side effects. Even though we see disturbing trends on the very underused CDC VAERS site.  How is this much better than witchcraft?  Yet, Fauci comes out last week and blames Republicans who want to see more data, which we are now getting and it’s not good, on not wanting a vaccine.  Well, I’m not a Republican and as I’ve noted, I will not be getting the vaccine. That is an open statement that may change with new treatments or more data but to-date, the data isn’t moving in the right direction.  The first thing that should happen is a house cleaning at the CDC that builds transparency, operational expertise and a data-driven science mindset.  None of which seem apparent today.

Do you know why these risks exist everywhere in our society?  Because spending money to build a resilient society takes money out of corporate profits or raises taxes on corporations and the rich to pay for that resilience.  Who hates America?  Corporate capitalist criminals and the rich who embrace profits over the common good.  Even if it means sending all of our science, technology and capital-producing industries to communist and third world countries.  Thus, killing Americans with poverty, stress and loss of livelihood. 

The United States is a death cult enforced by corporations and the investor class and both political parties, corporations themselves.

While The Mainstream Celebrates The End Of CV19, Major Risks Remain

Back in my January update on how disastrous the US response to the coronavirus is, I talked about delaying second shots and trifling with the virus opened the doors to mutations.  And, thus, the possibility of making this situation even more disastrous.  Interestingly, a top vaccine advocate, link below,  has come out and talked about the possibility of attempting to vaccinate people during a pandemic could create a horrendous monster.  And, with the vaccine permanently altering our immune response, the potential for a mutated strain to overrun our immune system.  In other words, regardless of whether the vaccines work and to what degree, exposing the virus to vaccines in the midst of a pandemic where the virus is jumping from host to host gives the virus a chance to become exposed to the vaccine and mutate around it.  Thus, creating a potentially deadlier situation that is potentially unstoppable.  Right now, these are risks based on sound science as opposed to guaranteed outcomes.

While some of this scientist’s assertions are yet to be validated in outcomes, and are open to being challenged, this dialog brings up a good point that many people don’t seem to grasp.  Risk management and risk analysis and absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.  As an example, countless people including those with sciences training view death graphs or infection graphs and see cases going down. Thus, they conclude the pandemic is over.  Or, people see that many have some substantial degree of immunity or show few symptoms and conclude this is just like the flu.  This happened in the 1918 pandemic as well.  And, years later countless health issues arose.  This isn’t a political issue.  It’s an issue of science and a lack of understanding of risk analysis.  Even conservative doctor Scott Gottlieb has talked about how without modern medicine this virus could have been as deadly as the 1918 pandemic.  Lack of understanding and quantification of risk is everywhere in this pandemic and in our fragile society.  Everything is politicized.  $15 an hour minimum wage is attempting to deal with a risk of a fragile society.  Providing healthcare to all in society is an attempt to create a resilient society.  Helping those during the pandemic is an attempt to address a risk of a fragile or non-resilient society.  Not helping communities and small businesses creates a risk in a fragile society.  The lack of public policy enforcement in Texas’s energy debacle creates risks and fragility.  Global supply chains and globalization creates incredible risks and fragility across countless outcomes.  The list of risk and even a lack of rudimentary understanding of fragility, lack of resilience and associated outcomes defines our horrendously corrupt corporate government and our wildly fragile society.  The United States is one shock away from massive crisis.  Yet, rather than discussing real and substantive issues, all of these and more are turned into political issues that the US doesn’t have money to deal with.  Or, that one party or the other is attempting to gain an upper hand.  This is fundamentally due to the lack of democratic public policy embracing a common good and the outcomes associated with Ayn Rand, Ronald Reagan and Chamber of Commerce fundamentalism that places faith in corporations to provide in lieu of democratic public policy.  Our nation is literally run by corporate and political idiots.

This was actually exposed by Trump who has a third grade understanding of science, zero understanding of risk and absolutely no understanding of mathematics.  Projections on where the virus may be going are useful but as we’ve seen, they are often wrong.  Deaths and cases are lagging indicators. By the time someone thinks we are past the virus, new cases could be rising.  So, there is no way we are ever going to tell when this is over.  Does this mean we should shut down every aspect of our lives ad infinitum?  No.  We have learned a lot about transmissibility and how to protect against it.  What we have not learned is risk analysis or risk management and using actionable data to manage it; a concept that seems to not be understood by policy makers, the medical establishment or US citizens.  There are many reasons for this that I’m sure I don’t fully appreciate but a few are 1) the US hasn’t had to deal with crisis in ages so we don’t understand the concept of risk, 2) We make almost nothing and have outsourced science, so we are simply science illiterate, 3) Our educational system is horrendous on purpose and so we don’t education people to think in terms of risk analysis, creating a sustainable democracy(As the liberal arts were created for this purpose by the ancient Greeks) across any spectrum of society, 4) No one is willing to listen to true experts because they believe the entire system is stacked against them or are so close to being completely destabilized by authoritarian corporate government that they can’t afford to contemplate anything.

Below are three timely links worth reviewing as it pertains to remaining risks associated with the pandemic, the vaccine and lack of a data-driven, scientific policy view on behalf of the benefit of democracy and every citizen.

A Brutal Attack on Scientific Dissent link – This is nothing new but timely. I’ve noted for ages that junk science defines so much of our reality. This is substantially driven by the diminishing standards of science created by the corporate (for profit) funding and corporate takeover of US science.  Rabid attacks against those who question the authority of institutionalized entitlement is part and parcel to our hierarchical, institutionalized society.  I’ve talked about this in the posting on credentialism versus competence.  Entitled careerists whose self-interest trumps seeking truth use verbal assaults and attacks against truth seekers who have legitimate questions on policy or science.  This is a form of what is now being called cancel culture that has existed for ages in our culture.  Feynman discussed this generations ago.  So, did Soviet dissident Solzhenitsyn in his criticism of the conformity of US corporate culture including its science nearly 60 years ago.  Cancel culture, shouting down dissent and conformity are part and parcel to corporate capitalism and  institutionalized entitlement.

Open letter from scientists on vaccine safety link – Nothing highlights the level of ignorance in our nation more than the rushing of a new form of vaccine that has absolutely no long term or even short term safety data during small, two month clinical trials.  The complete lack of risk analysis, risk management and data required to make actionable risk decisions is palpable.  These questions are serious concerns about the potentiality of unintended consequences and lack of critical risk assessment of a rushed vaccine.  Corporate medical science in the US is often less about science and more about profits. We lack even rudimentary data in nearly every aspect of our healthcare system.  And, the vaccine safety data NOT being captured except for voluntary submission to the CDC’s VAERS database shows how we are literally flying blind.  Even so, the number of deaths, late term pregnancy losses, Bells Palsy cases and anaphylactic cases is far greater than projected.  Harvard did a study some years ago that VAERS data is so inaccurate it captures an incredibly small amount of true data points.  This doesn’t even take into consideration there are absolutely no longer term reporting systems available to track potential long term effects of either the virus or the vaccine.

Vaccines during pandemic unintended consequences and risks link – This is the video highlighted in the above paragraphs with a vaccine developer who is concerned about rolling vaccines in the middle of a pandemic may allow the virus to mutate into a strain that is far worse.  This is scientifically comparable to bacteria developing resistance with improper use of antibiotics.  At this point, I would classify it as a major risk rather than a quantifiable issue.  But, with vaccine rollouts just starting and policymaker decisions to delay second shots, the opportunity for the virus to react to the vaccine and mutate is definitely real.  Given the world will likely be vaccinating for the next few years and that the vaccines may not stop transmission or infection, the potential for viral mutation is a major risk.  And, in a worst case, as this scientist notes, new vaccine boosters may not accomplish anything as we have permanently changed our natural immune response with the introduction of a vaccine that doesn’t actually vaccinate people but rather limits worst case outcomes.