On March 13th, U.S. President Donald Trump declared a pandemic national emergency, because the number of daily new cases was now suddenly doubling within only three days. However, no lockdown was imposed. The policy-response was instead left to each individual. This is in accord with America’s libertarian ideology. Trump even announced that “he was allowing his health secretary to bypass certain regulations to provide more flexibility to doctors and hospitals responding to the outbreak” — outright reducing, instead of increasing, federal regulations, this being his way to address the matter. That’s the libertarian response.

Covid-19 (coronavirus-19) cases started soaring in the U.S., from 600 daily new cases on March 13th, to 25,665 on March 31st. Americans were scared to death, and facemask-usage soared, and independent small businesses started laying people off en-masse. (Restaurants, hair salons, travel agencies, inns, dental offices, etc., were hard-hit.)

Immediately, the alarming rise in new cases halted on April 4th (at 34,480), and the daily new cases remained approximately flat, but slightly downward, from March 31 to June 9th (when it reached bottom at 19,166), but then soared yet again, to 78,615, on July 24th.

But, then, it again declined, so that, on September 8th, it was at only 28,561. This was already returning to around what the new-cases rate had been back on March 31st. So: despite peaking again on July 24th, the rate of daily new cases was little changed between March 31st and September 8th. And, all during that 5-month period, people were coming back to work.

The key immediate and direct economic variable affected by Covid-19 is the unemployment rate. Here, that economic effect is clearly shown:

U.S. unemployment: March 4.4%, April 14.7%, May 13.3%, June 11.1%, July 10.2%, August 8.4%

Though the daily-new-cases rate went down after March 31st and after July 24th, the unemployment rate progressed far more gradually downward after March 31st: the small businesses that had been panicked by the explosion of new cases during March were now gradually re-opening — but they remained very nervous; and, so, unemployment still was almost twice what it had been during March.

Here, that experience will be compared with two Scandinavian countries, starting with Denmark, which declared a pandemic national emergency on March 13th, just when Trump also did. “Starting on 13 March 2020, all people working in non-essential functions in the public sector were ordered to stay home for two weeks.” The daily new cases fell from the high of 252 on March 11th, down to the low of 28 on March 15th, but then soared to 390 on April 7th, and gradually declined to 16 (only 16 new cases) on July 9th. Then it peaked back up again, at 373, on August 10th, plunged down to 57 on August 26th, and then soared yet again back up to 243 on September 8th. The new-cases rates were thus irregular, but generally flat. By contrast against the experience in U.S., Denmark’s unemployment-rate remained remarkably stable, throughout this entire period:

Denmark: March 4.1, April 5.4, May 5.6, June 5.5, July 5.2

Sweden’s Government pursued a far more laissez-faire policy-response (“The government has tried to focus efforts on encouraging the right behaviour and creating social norms rather than mandatory restrictions.”), and had vastly worse Covid-19 infection-rates than did the far more socialistic Denmark, and also vastly worse death-rates, both producing results in Sweden more like that of the U.S. policy-response than like that of the Danish policy-response, but far less bad than occurred on the unemployment-rate; and, thus, Sweden showed unemployment-increases which were fairly minor, more like those shown in Denmark:

Sweden: March 7.1, April 8.2, May 9.0, June 9.8, July 8.9

That was nothing like the extreme gyration in:

U.S.: March 4.4%, April 14.7%, May 13.3%, June 11.1%, July 10.2%, August 8.4%

Why was this?

Even though Sweden’s policy-effectiveness was more like America’s than like Denmark’s at keeping down the percentages of the population who became infected, and who died from Covid-19 (i.e., it was not effective), Sweden’s policy-effectiveness at keeping down the percentage of the population who became unemployed was more like Denmark’s (i.e., it was effective, at that). Unlike America, which has less of a social safety-net than any other industrialized nation does, Sweden had, until recently, one of the most extensive ones, and hasn’t yet reduced it down to American levels (which are exceptionally libertarian). Therefore, whereas Swedes know that the Government will be there for them if they become infected, Americans don’t; and, so, Americans know that, for them, it will instead be “sink or swim.” Make do, or drop dead if you can’t — that is the American way. This is why Swedish unemployment wasn’t much affected by Covid-19. When a Swede experienced what might be symptoms, that person would want to stay home and wouldn’t be so desperate as to continue working even if doing that might infect others. Thus, whereas Sweden’s unemployment-rate rose 27% from March to May, America’s rose 202% during that same period. Americans were desperate for income, because so many of them were poor, and so many of them had either bad health insurance or none at all. (All other industrialized countries have universal health insurance: 100% of the population insured. Only in America is healthcare a privilege that’s available only to people who have the ability to pay for it, instead of a right that is provided to everyone.)

On September 9th, Joe Neel headlined at NPR, “NPR Poll: Financial Pain From Coronavirus Pandemic ‘Much, Much Worse’ Than Expected”, and he reported comprehensively not only from a new NPR poll, but from a new Harvard study, all of which are consistent with what I have predicted (first, here, and then here, and, finally, here), and which seems to me to come down to the following ultimate outcomes, toward which the U.S. is now heading (so, I close my fourth article on this topic, with these likelihoods):

America’s lack of the democratic socialism (social safety-net) that’s present in countries such as Denmark (and residual vestiges of which haven’t yet been dismantled in Sweden and some other countries) will have caused, in the United States, massive laying-off of the workers in small businesses, as a result of which, overwhelmingly more families will be destroyed that are at the bottom of the economic order, largely Black and/or Hispanic families, than that are White and not in poverty. Also as a consequence, overwhelmingly in the United States, poor people will be suffering far more of the infections, and of the deaths, and of the laying-off, and of the soon-to-be-soaring personal bankruptcies and homelessness; and, soon thereafter, soaring small-business bankruptcies, and ultimately then big-business bankruptcies, and then likely megabank direct federal bailouts such as in 2009, which will be followed, in the final phase, by a hyperinflation that might be comparable to what had occurred in Weimar Germany. The ceaselessly increasing suffering at the bottom will ultimately generate a collapse at the top. Presumably, therefore, today’s seemingly coronavirus-immune U.S. stock markets, such as the S&P 500, are now basically just mega-investors who are selling to small investors, so as to become enabled, after what will be the biggest economic crash in history, to buy “at pennies on the dollar,” the best of what’s left, so as to then go forward into the next stage of the capitalist economic cycle, as owning an even higher percentage of the nation’s wealth than now is the case. Of course, if that does happen, then America will be even more of a dictatorship than it now is. Post-crash 2021 America will be more like Hitler’s Germany, than like FDR’s America was.

The Democratic Party’s Presidential nominee, Joe Biden, is just as corrupt, and just as racist, as is the Republican nominee, Donald Trump. And just as neoconservative (but targeting Russia, instead of China). Therefore, the upcoming November 3rd elections in the U.S. are almost irrelevant, since both of the candidates are about equally disgusting. America’s problems are deeper than just the two stooges that America’s aristocracy hires to front for it at the ballot-boxes.

Yet as becomes more clear every day, far from maintaining the current global structure, created by U.S. bankers and diplomats and dictated to the rest of the world back in 1944, all these efforts are just accelerating the disintegration of the Old Order.

There is a supreme irony to this, for the most important creator of the Old World Economic and Financial Order – the one that is now disintegrating as we watch – was none other than the patron saint of liberalism – a man who has become a non-person in the United States in the past 40 year “Age of Reagan” (as I explain in my 2015 book “Cycles of Change“) – legendary 32nd President of the United States President Franklin Roosevelt.

It is fascinating to watch Democratic Party leaders today as they desperately try to conjure up the great appeal and success of the only man ever to win four U.S. presidential held up Roosevelt’s leadership through World War II as a model of leadership for today.

That should be entirely true, But neither current (and sinking fast) putative party nominee Joe Biden nor his always-collapses-at-the-crucial-moment Senator Bernie Sanders haven’t a clue what they are talking about.

Two factors were central to Franklin Roosevelt’s extraordinary success as a war leader – and Sanders and Biden are both pathetically blind to both of them:

The first was Roosevelt’s unhesitating and consistent support for his allies, especially the unprecedented flow of Lend Lease aid in food, trucks and other equipment to the Soviet Union which was carrying the main burden of the combat war against Nazi Germany almost single-handedly.

The second was the remarkable fiscal prudence and caution Roosevelt showed throughout his presidency, especially in his creation of the landmark Social Security program.

Roosevelt was vastly more cautious and even cynical in developing this program to give financial support for the first time in history to aging Americans.

Although the landmark congressional legislation was passed in 1935 and became law on August 14 of that year as part of the so-called “Second New Deal,” financial contributions out of the pay checks of all legally working Americans only started to be withdrawn in 1937. Even then, it was still another three years before the first U.S. citizen ever to receive a check from Social Security picked it up: That was 76-year-old Ida Fuller of Vermont on January 17, 1940. Her first check came to the generous sum of $41.30.

From 1935, when the legislation was passed to vast popular acclaim, it was another six years at the height of the Great Depression, when more Americans were starving and dying of poverty and related hardships than ever before or since in the nation’s history before a single individual actually got any benefit from it.

The actuarial calculations on which Roosevelt designed Social Security were even more cynical and ruthless.

Social Security was to be paid to retirees after the age of 65. But at the time, the median age of Americans was 61. Only a tiny privileged minority survived to the age of 65 or beyond.

Roosevelt practiced exceptional caution to keep the U.S. economy and currency stable during the New Deal and the Great Depression. Contrary to popular (Republican) myth, he was adamantly opposed to bankrupting the country either in his own time or in that of his grandchildren. “It is almost dishonest to build up an accumulated deficit for the Congress of the United States to meet in 1980,” he famously said. “We can’t do that. We can’t sell the United States short in 1980 any more than in 1935.”

Roosevelt’s exceptional caution contrasts with the wild spending both Republicans and Democrats from Bernie Sanders to Donald Trump have been practicing, driving their country into final bankruptcy during the current coronavirus crisis.

Comments financial analyst and former London merchant banker Martin Hutchinson in his May 4 “Bear’s Lair” column, “the CBO (Congressional Budget Office)’s estimate of budget deficits of 18% of GDP in 2020 and 10% of GDP in 2021 are truly frightening. …they bring the likely bankruptcy of the U.S. government much closer than seemed likely previously, probably to around 2030.”

Indeed, given the terrifying vulnerability of the U.S. financial system to the collapse of the $2 trillion junk bond market used to financial the collapsing fracking energy sector, projecting a meltdown U.S. financial crisis a balmy ten years ahead seems wildly optimistic.

In fact, the road from Franklin Roosevelt’s cautious callousness in designing Social Security so that it would not pay a penny to those who needed it for another five years (until, indeed, the Great Depression was already over!) to the “spend endlessly, spend now” crazed panic of both Republicans and Democrats is a very clear one:

It is the road of palliative Western liberalism, open borders and global Free Trade: It is a road that inevitably leads to ever huger debt burdens, ever-declining standards of living and inevitable ruin.

By contrast, the extremely fiscally cautious, highly conservative financial policies that Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to follow get no respect from the spendthrift, zero interest rate maniacs on Wall Street. Yet it is Russia that is currently in a far stronger position to ride out the global financial as well as pandemic crises than the United States.

In statecraft and economics as in architecture, the most important issue is not how high you build but how well you build and how deep you build – How good your foundations are.

The storm of pandemic is already heralding the storm of financial crisis. That crisis can indeed be solved, but only by abandoning the old shibboleths, the old false gods that, as Dostoyevsky predicted at the very beginning of our modern industrialized, interconnected Age, would inevitably bring us to our ruin, unless reined in and reversed in time.

At the start of the day on May 2nd, the U.S. had 4.2% of the world’s population and 33.3%, or one-third, of all coronavirus-19 cases.

At the start of the day on May 10th, the U.S. had 32.9% of cases. The decline from 33.3% to 32.9% is .4% down, or a decline of slightly over 1% of the 33.9%, in 8 days. It’s virtually certain never to go down to the 4.2% of global coronavirus cases which would match America’s 4.2% of the global population.

America will therefore probably, for a long time to come, have a larger number of coronavirus-19 cases than any other country. America has, furthermore, been adding new cases at around 20 to 30 thousand per day since around April 1st and therefore still continues rising, but as the virus spreads and takes hold in more and more countries, America’s percentage of the global total is probably now declining, from the peak of one-third (33.3%), which it had reached on May 2nd.

The libertarian Mises Institute headlined on May 7th, “How Many Lives Will Politicians Sacrifice in the Name of Fighting COVID-19?” and argued for do-nothing governmental policy, and for relaxation of the “lockdowns” that are in place. Mike Whitney at the libertarian Unz Review  headlined on May 4th, “Sweden Is the Model” and wrote that “Herd immunity is the only path that is currently available.” This means there should be no “lockdowns.” He asserted that “After 6 weeks of this nonsense, many people are getting fed-up and demanding that the lockdowns be ended”:

As we said in last week’s column, the lockdowns must be lifted gradually, that is crucial.

“You have to step down the ladder one rung at a time”, says Senior Swedish epidemiologist and former Chief Scientist of the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control, Johan Giesecke. In other words, slowly ease up on the restrictions and gradually allow people to get back to work. That is the best way forward.

Sweden has, indeed, taken a remarkably libertarian approach to dealing with Covid-19. As I wrote on April 22nd under the headline “Why Post-Coronavirus America Will Have Massive Poverty”, comparing Sweden’s policies versus the more socialistic Denmark’s policies on this:

The daily number of Denmark’s new Covid-19 cases peaked on April 7th, and has been declining since that time. Its neighbor Sweden peaked on April 8th. Sweden’s emergency legislation is less strict about lockdowns, but relies more on individual discretion. However, since Sweden, like Denmark, is a democratic socialist country, individuals needn’t worry about paying medical bills, nor about being paid while on sick-leave. So, employees aren’t desperate to return to their places of work, such as in America; and, therefore, these countries don’t spread the infection as readily as in the U.S. and are thus far less likely to have recurring peaks and delayed terminations of the coronavirus crisis. (By contrast: in America, where losing one’s job can mean losing one’s health care, even sick employees may be inclined to stay on the job and perhaps infect customers.) And there are no corporate bailouts in either Denmark’s or Sweden’s legislation. Denmark’s Finance Minister, the Social Democrat (or democratic socialist) Nicolai Wammen was interviewed for 15 minutes on March 27th, by Christiane Amanpour, and he explained Denmark’s emergency law, which was overwhelmingly bottom-up, not top-down (such as America’s is).

Here, therefore, is the actual performance [number of cases per million population], thus far, of both of those two countries:

DENMARK = 1,329 peaked April 7th

SWEDEN = 1,517 peaked April 8th

Both of them are reasonably comparable to Germany, UK, Turkey, and Iran, but not as good as S. Korea, and not nearly as good as the two best, China and Japan.

As of the start of the day on May 10th, those numbers are:

DENMARK = 1,782 (up 34%)

SWEDEN = 2,567 (up 69%)

Consequently, as more time passes, Denmark’s policy is considerably more effective at keeping down the number of cases than is Sweden’s.

Furthermore: whereas Sweden had tested only 14,704 persons per million (which is a very low percentage), Denmark had tested 53,345 per million (which is an extremely high percentage), and this fact likewise indicates that whereas Sweden, which has been reducing its socialism and increasing its libertarianism, is pursuing a remarkably libertarian approach to Covid-19, Denmark, which remains socialistic, is pursuing a remarkably socialist approach. And Denmark’s approach is increasingly better than Sweden’s in terms of keeping down the percentage of Covid-19 cases.

As regards the economies of those two countries: The unemployment rate in Denmark at the end of March 2020 was 4.1% and that was 170,000 unemployed; and as of May 5th there are 180,000 unemployed Danes; so, Denmark’s productivity hasn’t been much affected yet by Covid 19.

By contrast: Reuters headlined on April 14th, “Swedish unemployment rate could reach 10% by summer – Labour Board”, and reported that “Unemployment in Sweden could reach 10% in the coming months if the current wave of lay-offs due to the outbreak of the novel coronavirus continues, the Labour Board said. … Unemployment was 7.4% in February, but many companies have since shut down and sent workers home due to supply chain problems and measures to prevent the spread of the virus.” On May 7th, the Wall Street Journal bannered “Sweden Has Avoided a Coronavirus Lockdown. Its Economy Is Hurting Anyway.”

Consequently, the newly libertarian Sweden’s coronavirus policies, as compared to the still-socialistic Denmark’s, are actually a disaster — like America’s are (though America, being more libertarian than Sweden, is doing even worse).

In other words: the supposed either-or choice (trade-off) that the libertarian U.S. regime and its propagandists assert, between either controlling the epidemic (continuing the “lockdowns” etc.) or else preventing economic collapse (“reopening the businesses” etc.), is fraudulent. The exact opposite is the actual case: in order to minimize the economic damage, controlling the epidemic is basic — whatever is sound policy for the public’s health is also sound economic policy. (America’s libertarian President takes on faith the opposite viewpoint; and, so, on May 10th, the Washington Post reported that, “Trump has expressed confidence that lifting public health restrictions will jump-start the economy.” The only basis for accepting libertarianism is faith, because the empirical evidence disproves it — and not only on this matter.)

What, then, is the situation regarding the three major countries that are doing the most effective job of keeping down the percentage of their population that’s Covid-19 infected: China (58 cases per million), South Korea (211) , and Japan (123)? (Note those stunningly low numbers — and each one of those countries is well past its peak of daily new cases, which the libertarian countries are not.)

America’s propaganda organizations blame China for the coronavirus-19 and criticize anyone who publicly advocates China’s model on this, but as more time passes and the U.S. regime’s accusations against China continue to be ‘documented’ only by half-truths and outright lies, a public need increases that what China’s policies actually have been regarding controlling this epidemic become accurately understood. On May 9th, the South China Morning Post bannered “Coronavirus response: China’s military may have filled the gap left by the US but it’s only temporary, experts say”, and ignored even touching upon what China’s policy is and has been regarding coronavirus. On May 8th, they headlined “Coronavirus: China to revive special ‘off-budget bonds’ as pandemic stokes debt dilemma” and said little more than that the Government’s debts were increasing due to the virus: “‘Off-budget doesn’t mean it can be excluded from the overall debt level,’ said David Wang, head of China economics at Credit Suisse.” How that money is being spent is not discussed, other than “increasing the limit for local governments to issue bonds for infrastructure spending.” To the extent that there is specifically a coronavirus policy-response, rather than merely a continuation or amplification of pre-existing economic policies, that’s not mentioned. There are merely ‘filler’ statements, such as “The central government has not announced how the proceeds from the special treasury bonds will be used, but analysts warn they will be wasted if funneled to projects that do not make economic sense.” Whatever China’s specific coronavirus-19 policy-responses are is non-public information.

Back on 28 March 2017, the America-based SupChina site headlined “How Does Healthcare In The U.S. Compare With China’s?” and reported that “More than 97 percent of people in China use public health insurance systems” and patients who had experienced both America’s and China’s said that “receiving treatment in the U.S. is less efficient” but “that sometimes patients in China simply can’t see a doctor without the help of a scalper.” At least a reasonable assumption would be that China is more socialistic in its coronavirus policies than are the vast majority of other countries, which have dramatically worse coronavirus results.

South Korea has done remarkably little coronavirus-19 testing, but remarkably much coronavirus contact tracing (if that can even be effectively done with such little testing). So, the situation there isn’t much clearer than it is in China.

Japan has, apparently, been socialistic in its policy-response but relying far more on the public’s voluntary compliance than on law-enforcement in order to reduce to a minimum the number of coronavirus cases. Of course, in a country such as the U.S. and throughout Latin America — lands where the government is widely distrusted — any compliance whatsoever relies necessarily upon law-enforcement, and so the Japanese method would almost certainly not work.

All three of those countries are, of course, culturally Asian; so, their vastly superior handling of the coronavirus maybe isn’t due ONLY to their being more socialistic than the U.S. and other failing countries are. They are all non-Western nations.

As of May 10th, two countries that have approximately half the population-size of the smallest of those three (which is the 52 million population in South Korea) also have stunningly low Covid-19 infection-rates and seem likewise to have passed the peak in the number of their daily new cases: Taiwan has a population of 25 million, and has only 18 cases per million; Venezuela has 30 million and only 14 cases per million. Both nations also have socialized the healthcare function and (like all of the countries mentioned here except U.S.) 100% of the people there have health insurance. (It’s a right, not a privilege, in all of the countries except America.) As regards the percentage of people who have been tested for Covid-19, that percentage is 2,819 per million in Taiwan, and 18,012 per million in Venezuela. (For a few comparisons: it’s 1,676/M in Japan, 54,873/M in Denmark, 14,704/M in Sweden, and 28,452/M in U.S. So: the percentage who have been tested seems not to correlate with a nation’s success or failure in dealing with Covid-19.) 

The indications, thus far, are that the libertarian approach (which is exemplified especially in today’s U.S., UK, and most of Latin America) is catastrophic, and that whatever may have been its alleged benefits in a pre-Covid-19 world, only intensification of its propaganda (such as by the ‘news’-media in those more-libertarian countries) can continue it into the post-Covid-19 world. Libertarianism is, now, more clearly than ever before, a failed model.

Why would that be? Perhaps it’s because, in reality, the only people who have more liberty under libertarianism are the controlling owners of corporations, the wealthiest 1% (who fund the politicians and the media), whereas everybody else has less actual liberty, and more insecurity, under libertarianism — the fact is, libertarianism is liberty ONLY for the richest, and the opposite for everybody else: it is aristocracy, instead of democracy. It’s for only the big-corporate owners, and especially for the international-corporate owners.

The economic future for the world, and especially for the U.S., is bad, and not only because of this plague. On April 14th, I headlined “Why at Least America Will Be in Another Great Depression”, and explained it there in one way; on May 1st, The Saker headlined “The Saker interviews Michael Hudson about the current economic crisis”, and Hudson explained it there in another way — these are different sides of the same phenomenon, but our analyses are the same (except that he is more optimistic than I: he said “The current depression is the worst since the 1930s,” whereas I expect it to be the worst ever). My article was simply focusing on the way that the coronavirus-crisis is going to expedite what I expect to be the biggest economic crash in world history. Hudson said that “We are at the end of the 75-year upswing that began in 1945 when the war ended.” I agree with that, too, and have elsewhere identified 26 July 1945 as the commencement of this pillaging by the Deep State, via its millions of employees and other agents. This will be the ultimate near-term catastrophe of libertarianism, otherwise called “neoliberalism,” and in international affairs this pillaging is called “neoconservatism” and “imperialism.” America therefore stands now at the precipice, facing a grim new world, and that is how we got here. Coronavirus merely expedites the fall off this cliff. But the ascent to such an extremely bad end started, actually, on 26 July 1945. That’s when the fateful decision was made, from which the post-WW-II world became irrevocably shaped — the foundation was laid at that time, for America’s Deep State (America’s billionaires, not the CIA and not the think tanks, but themselves, who actually pull the strings behind the curtain) to take over the country and almost the entire world, and for an even worse Depression than the one that FDR had inherited from Herbert Hoover. America’s taxpayers now pay around half of global military expenditures, and the bill for its billionaires to use their government so as to grab and hold control over that vast American empire is now coming due. Nothing like this has ever existed before. And Covid-19 simply expedites the coming American free-fall.

theduran.com

While I’m not arguing that a systemic change is not vital to protect people from the effects of a general meltdown of the $1.2 trillion derivatives bubble sometimes called “the western banking system”, what such central bankers are proposing is a poison more deadly than the disease they promise to cure.

In principle, the world crisis, is no different from the artificially manufactured crises which the world faced in 1923 when unpayable Versailles debts were heaved onto a beaten Germany, which I elaborated upon in my previous report. It is also no different from the nature of the folly that unleashed unbounded speculation during the “roaring 1920s” which led to the bank-run and general meltdown. Similarly, the solutions being proposed to put out the fire by those same arsonists who lit the matches today are identical to what the world faced in 1933 as a “central bankers” solution for the world depression.

How the 1929 Crash was Manufactured

While everyone knows that the 1929 market crash unleashed four years of hell in America which quickly spread across Europe under the great depression, not many people have realized that this was not inevitable, but rather a controlled blowout.

The bubbles of the 1920s were unleashed with the early death of President William Harding in 1923 and grew under the careful guidance of JP Morgan’s President Coolidge and financier Andrew Mellon (Treasury Secretary) who de-regulated the banks, imposed austerity onto the country, and cooked up a scheme for Broker loans allowing speculators to borrow 90% on their stock. Wall Street was deregulated, investments into the real economy were halted during the 1920s and insanity became the norm. In 1925 broker loans totalled $1.5 billion and grew to $2.6 billion in 1926 and hit $5.7 billion by the end of 1927. By 1928, the stock market was overvalued fourfold!

When the bubble was sufficiently inflated, a moment was decided upon to coordinate a mass “calling in” of the broker loans. Predictably, no one could pay them resulting in a collapse of the markets. Those “in the know” cleaned up with JP Morgan’s “preferred clients”, and other financial behemoths selling before the crash and then buying up the physical assets of America for pennies on the dollar. One notable person who made his fortune in this manner was Prescott Bush of Brown Brothers Harriman, who went onto bailout a bankrupt Nazi party in 1932. These financiers had a tight allegiance with the City of London and coordinated their operations through the private central banking system of America’s Federal Reserve and Bank of International Settlements.

The Living Hell that was the Great Depression

Throughout the Great depression, the population was pushed to its limits making America highly susceptible to fascism as unemployment skyrocketed to 25%, industrial capacity collapsed by 70%, and agricultural prices collapsed far below the cost of production accelerating foreclosures and suicide. Life savings were lost as 4000 banks failed.

This despair was replicated across Europe and Canada with eugenics-loving fascists gaining popularity across the board. England saw the rise of Sir Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists in 1932, English Canada had its own fascist solution with the Rhodes Scholar “Fabian Society” League of Social Reconstruction (which later took over the Liberal Party) calling for the “scientific management of society”. Time magazine had featured Il Duce over 6 times by 1932 and people were being told by that corporate fascism was the economic solution to all of America’s economic woes.

In the midst of the crisis, the City of London removed itself from the gold standard in 1931 which was a crippling blow to the USA, as it resulted in a flight of gold from America causing a deeper contraction of the money supply and thus inability to respond to the depression. British goods simultaneously swamped the USA crushing what little production was left.

It was in this atmosphere that one of the least understood battles unfolded in 1933.

1932: A Bankers’ Dictatorship is Attempted

In Germany, a surprise victory of Gen. Kurt Schleicher caused the defeat of the London-directed Nazi party in December 1932 threatening to break Germany free of Central Bank tyranny. A few weeks before Schleicher’s victory, Franklin Roosevelt won the presidency in America threatening to regulate the private banks and assert national sovereignty over finance.

Seeing their plans for global fascism slipping away, the City of London announced that a new global system controlled by Central Banks had to be created post haste. Their objective was to use the economic crisis as an excuse to remove from nation states any power over monetary policy, while enhancing the power of Independent Central Banks as enforcers of “balanced global budgets”. elaborate

In December 1932, an economic conference “to stabilize the world economy” was organized by the League of Nations under the guidance of the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) and Bank of England. The BIS was set up as “the Central Bank of Central Banks” in 1930 in order to facilitate WWI debt repayments and was a vital instrument for funding Nazi Germany- long after WWII began. The London Economic Conference brought together 64 nations of the world under a controlled environment chaired by the British Prime Minister and opened by the King himself.

A resolution passed by the Conference’s Monetary Committee stated:

“The conference considers it to be essential, in order to provide an international gold standard with the necessary mechanism for satisfactory working, that independent Central Banks, with requisite powers and freedom to carry out an appropriate currency and credit policy, should be created in such developed countries as have not at present an adequate central banking institution” and that “the conference wish to reaffirm the great utility of close and continuous cooperation between Central Banks. The Bank of International Settlements should play an increasingly important part not only by improving contact, but also as an instrument for common action.”

Echoing Carney’s current fixation with “mathematical equilibrium”, the resolutions stated that the new global gold standard controlled by central banks was needed “to maintain a fundamental equilibrium in the balance of payments” of countries. The idea was to deprive nation states of their power to generate and direct credit for their own development.

FDR Torpedoes the London Conference

Chancellor Schleicher’s resistance to a bankers’ dictatorship was resolved by a “soft coup” ousting the patriotic leader in favor of Adolph Hitler (under the control of a Bank of England toy named Hjalmar Schacht) in January 1933 with Schleicher assassinated the following year. In America, an assassination attempt on Roosevelt was thwarted on February 15, 1933 when a woman knocked the gun out of the hand of an anarchist-freemason in Miami resulting in the death of Chicago’s Mayor Cermak (1).

Without FDR’s dead body, the London conference met an insurmountable barrier, as FDR refused to permit any American cooperation. Roosevelt recognized the necessity for a new international system, but he also knew that it had to be organized by sovereign nation states subservient to the general welfare of the people and not central banks dedicated to the welfare of the oligarchy. Before any international changes could occur, nation states castrated from the effects of the depression had to first recover economically in order to stay above the power of the financiers.

By May 1933, the London Conference crumbled when FDR complained that the conference’s inability to address the real issues of the crisis is “a catastrophe amounting to a world tragedy” and that fixation with short term stability were “old fetishes of so-called international bankers”. FDR continued “The United States seeks the kind of dollar which a generation hence will have the same purchasing and debt paying power as the dollar value we hope to attain in the near future. That objective means more to the good of other nations than a fixed ratio for a month or two. Exchange rate fixing is not the true answer.”

The British drafted an official statement saying “the American statement on stabilization rendered it entirely useless to continue the conference.”

FDR’s War on Wall Street

The new president laid down the gauntlet in his inaugural speech on March 4^th saying: “The money-changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit”.

FDR declared a war on Wall Street on several levels, beginning with his support of the Pecorra Commission which sent thousands of bankers to prison, and exposed the criminal activities of the top tier of Wall Street’s power structure who manipulated the depression, buying political offices and pushing fascism. Ferdinand Pecorra who ran the commission called out the deep state when he said “this small group of highly placed financiers, controlling the very springs of economic activity, holds more real power than any similar group in the United States.”

Pecorra’s highly publicized success empowered FDR to impose sweeping regulation in the form of 1) Glass-Steagall bank separation, 2) bankruptcy re-organization and 3) the creation of the Security Exchange Commission to oversee Wall Street. Most importantly, FDR disempowered the London-controlled Federal Reserve by installing his own man as Chair (Industrialist Mariner Eccles) who forced it to obey national commands for the first time since 1913, while creating an “alternative” lending mechanism outside of Fed control called the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) which became the number one lender to infrastructure in America throughout the 1930s.

One of the most controversial policies for which FDR is demonized today was his abolishment of the gold standard. The gold standard itself constricted the money supply to a strict exchange of gold per paper dollar, thus preventing the construction of internal improvements needed to revive industrial capacity and put the millions of unemployed back to work for which no financial resources existed. It’s manipulation by international financiers made it a weapon of destruction rather than creation at this time. Since commodity prices had fallen lower than the costs of production, it was vital to increase the price of goods under a form of “controlled inflation” so that factories and farms could become solvent and unfortunately the gold standard held that back. FDR imposed protective tariffs to favor agro-industrial recovery on all fronts ending years of rapacious free trade.

FDR stated his political-economic philosophy in 1934: “the old fallacious notion of the bankers on the one side and the government on the other side, as being more or less equal and independent units, has passed away. Government by the necessity of things must be the leader, must be the judge, of the conflicting interests of all groups in the community, including bankers.”

The Real New Deal

Once liberated from the shackles of the central banks, FDR and his allies were able to start a genuine recovery by restoring confidence in banking. Within 31 days of his bank holiday, 75% of banks were operational and the FDIC was created to insure deposits. Four million people were given immediate work, and hundreds of libraries, schools and hospitals were built and staffed- All funded through the RFC. FDR’s first fireside chat was vital in rebuilding confidence in the government and banks, serving even today as a strong lesson in banking which central bankers don’t want you to learn about.

From 1933-1939, 45 000 infrastructure projects were built. The many “local” projects were governed, like China’s Belt and Road Initiative today, under a “grand design” which FDR termed the “Four Quarters” featuring zones of megaprojects such as the Tennessee Valley Authority area in the south east, the Columbia River Treaty zone on the northwest, the St Laurence Seaway zone on the North east, and Hoover Dam/Colorado zone on the Southwest. These projects were transformative in ways money could never measure as the Tennessee area’s literacy rose from 20% in 1932 to 80% in 1950, and racist backwater holes of the south became the bedrock for America’s aerospace industry due to the abundant and cheap hydropower.

Wall Street Sabotages the New Deal

Those who criticize the New Deal today ignore the fact that its failures have more to do with Wall Street sabotage than anything intrinsic to the program. For example, JP Morgan tool Lewis Douglass (U.S. Budget Director) forced the closure of the Civil Works Administration in 1934 resulting in the firing of all 4 million workers.

Wall Street did everything it could to choke the economy at every turn. In 1931, NY banks loans to the real economy amounted to $38.1 billion which dropped to only $20.3 billion by 1935. Where NY banks had 29% of their funds in US bonds and securities in 1929, this had risen to 58% which cut off the government from being able to issue productive credit to the real economy.

When, in 1937, FDR’s Treasury Secretary persuaded him to cancel public works to see if the economy “could stand on its own two feet”, Wall Street pulled credit out of the economy collapsing the Industrial production index from 110 to 85 erasing seven years’ worth of gain, while steel fell from 80% capacity back to depression levels of 19%. Two million jobs were lost and the Dow Jones lost 39% of its value. This was no different from kicking the crutches out from a patient in rehabilitation and it was not lost on anyone that those doing the kicking were openly supporting Fascism in Europe. Bush patriarch Prescott Bush, then representing Brown Brothers Harriman was found guilty for trading with the enemy in 1942!

Coup Attempt in America Thwarted

The bankers didn’t limit themselves to financial sabotage during this time, but also attempted a fascist military coup which was exposed by Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler in his congressional testimony of November 20, 1934. Butler had testified that the plan was begun in the Summer of 1933 and organized by Wall Street financiers who tried to use him as a puppet dictator leading 500 000 American Legion members to storm the White House. As Butler spoke, those same financiers had just set up an anti-New Deal organization called the American Liberty League which fought to keep America out of the war in defense of an Anglo-Nazi fascist global government which they wished to partner with.

The American Liberty league only changed tune when it became evident that Hitler had become a disobedient Frankenstein monster who wasn’t content in a subservient position to Britain’s idea of a New World Order. In response to the Liberty League’s agenda, FDR said “some speak of a New World Order, but it is not new and it is not order”.

FDR’s Post-War Vision Destroyed

While FDR’s struggle did change the course of history, his early death during the first months of his fourth term resulted in a fascist perversion of his post-war vision.

Rather than see the IMF, World Bank or UN used as instruments for the internationalization of the New Deal principles to promote long term, low interest loans for the industrial development of former colonies, FDR’s allies were ousted from power over his dead body, and they were recaptured by the same forces who attempted to steer the world towards a Central Banking Dictatorship in 1933.

The American Liberty League spawned into various “patriotic” anti-communist organizations which took power with the FBI and McCarthyism under the fog of the Cold War. This is the structure that Eisenhower warned about when he called out “the Military Industrial Complex” in 1960 and which John Kennedy did battle with during his 900 days as president.

The New Silk Road as the 21^st Century New Deal

This is the structure which is out to destroy President Donald Trump out of fear that a new FDR impulse is beginning to be revived in America which may align with the 21^st Century international New Deal emerging from China’s Belt and Road Initiative and Eurasian alliance. French Finance Minister Bruno LeMaire and Marc Carney have stated their fear that if the Green New Deal isn’t imposed by the west, then the New Silk Road and yuan will become the basis for the new world system.

The Bank of England-authored Green New Deal and Synthetic Hegemonic Currency which promise to impose draconian constraints on humanity’s carrying capacity in defense of saving nature from humanity have nothing to do with Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and they have less to do with the Bretton Woods conference of 1944. These are merely central bankers’ wet dreams for depopulation and fascism “with a democratic face” which their 1933 conference failed to achieve and can only be imposed if people remain blind to their own recent history.

(1) Zingara was labelled a “lone gunman” and promptly executed before any proper investigation could be done.

 The author can be reached at matt.ehret@tutamail.com

In my last report, I discussed why the current financial system is on the verge of a 1923-Weimar style hyperinflation driven by Federal Reserve bailouts trying desperately to support a deleveraging of the $1200 trillion derivatives bubble that has taken over the western banking system. I also discussed the Bank of England-led “solution” currently to this crisis involves a new global “green” digital currency with new “rules” which are very similar to the 1923 Bank of England “solution” to Germany’s economic chaos which eventually required a fascist governance mechanism to impose it onto the masses.

In this article, I wish to take a deeper look at the causes and effects of Weimar Germany’s completely un-necessary collapse into hyperinflation and chaos during the period of 1919-1923.

Versailles and the Destruction of Germany

Britain had been the leading hand behind the orchestration of WWI and the destruction of the potential German-Russian-American-Ottoman alliance that had begun to take form by the late 19^th century as foolish Kaiser Wilhelm discovered (though sadly too late) when he said: “the world will be engulfed in the most terrible of wars, the ultimate aim of which is the ruin of Germany. England, France and Russia have conspired for our annihilation… that is the naked truth of the situation which was slowly but surely created by Edward VII”.

Just as the British oligarchy managed the war, so too did they organize the reparations conference in France which, among other things, imposed impossible debt repayments upon a defeated Germany and created the League of Nations which was meant to become the instrument for a “post-nation state world order”. Lloyd George led the British delegation alongside his assistant Philip Kerr (Lord Lothian), Leo Amery, Lord Robert Cecil and Lord John Maynard Keynes who have a long term agenda to bring about a global dictatorship. All of these figures were members of the newly emerging Round Table Movement, that had taken full control of Britain by ousting Asquith in 1916, and which is at the heart of today’s “deep state”.

After the 1918 Armistice dismantled Germany’s army and navy, the once powerful nation was now forced to pay the impossible sum of 132 billion gold marks to the victors and had to give up territories representing 10% of its population (Alsace-Loraine, Ruhr, and North Silesia) which made up 15% of its arable land, 12% of its livestock, 74% of its iron ore, 63% of its zinc production, and 26% of its coal. Germany also had to give up 8000 locomotives, 225 000 railcars and all of its colonies. It was a field day of modern pillage.

Germany was left with very few options. Taxes were increased and imports were cut entirely while exports were increased. This policy (reminiscent of the IMF austerity techniques in use today) failed entirely as both fell 60%. Germany gave up half of its gold supply and still barely a dent was made in the debt payments. By June 1920 the decision was made to begin a new strategy: increase the printing press. Rather than the “miracle cure” which desperate monetarists foolishly believed it would be, this solution resulted in an asymptotic devaluation of the currency into hyperinflation. From June 2020 to October 1923 the money supply in circulation skyrocketed from 68.1 gold marks to 496.6 quintillion gold marks. In June 1922, 300 marks exchanged $1 US and in November 1923, it took 42 trillion marks to get $1 US! Images are still available of Germans pushing wheel barrows of cash down the street, just to buy a stick of butter and bread (1Kg of Bread sold for $428 billion marks in 1923).

With the currency’s loss of value, industrial output fell by 50%, unemployment rose to over 30% and food intake collapsed by over half of pre-war levels. German director Fritz Lang’s 1922 film Dr. Mabuse (The Gambler) exposed the insanity of German population’s collapse into speculative insanity as those who had the means began betting against the German mark in order to protect themselves thus only helping to collapse the mark from within. This is very reminiscent of those Americans today short selling the US dollar rather than fighting for a systemic solution.

1923: City of London’s Solution is imposed

When the hyperinflationary blowout of Germany resulted in total un-governability of the state, a solution took the form of the Wall Street authored “Dawes Plan” which necessitated the use of a London-trained golem by the name of Hjalmar Schacht. First introduced as Currency Commissioner in November 1923 and soon President of the Reichsbank, Schacht’s first act was to visit Bank of England’s governor Montagu Norman in London who provided Schacht a blueprint for proceeding with Germany’s restructuring. Schacht returned to “solve” the crisis with the very same poison that caused it.

First announcing a new currency called the “rentenmark” set on a fixed value exchanging 1 trillion reichsmarks for 1 new rentenmark, Germans were robbed yet again. This new currency would operate under “new rules” never before seen in Germany’s history: Mass privatizations resulted in Anglo-American conglomerates purchasing state enterprises. IG Farben, Thyssen, Union Banking, Brown Brothers Harriman, Standard Oil, JP Morgan and Union Banking took control Germany’s finances, mining and industrial interests under the supervision of John Foster Dulles, Montagu Norman, Averill Harriman and other deep state actors. This was famously exposed in the 1961 film Judgement at Nuremburg by Stanley Kramer.

Schacht next cut credit to industries, raised taxes and imposed mass austerity on “useless spending”. 390 000 civil servants were fired, unions and collective bargaining was destroyed and wages were slashed by 15%.

As one can imagine, this destruction of life after the hell of Versailles was intolerable and civil unrest began to boil over in ways that even the powerful London-Wall Street bankers (and their mercenaries) couldn’t control. An enforcer was needed unhindered by the republic’s democratic institutions to force Schacht’s economics onto the people. An up-and-coming rabble rousing failed painter who had made waves in a Beerhall Putsch on November 8, 1923 was perfect.

One Last Attempt to Save Germany

Though Hitler grew in power over the coming decade of Schachtian economics, one last republican effort was made to prevent Germany from plunging into a fascist hell in the form of the November 1932 election victory of General Kurt von Schleicher as Chancellor of Germany. Schleicher had been a co-architect of Rapallo alongside Rathenau a decade earlier and was a strong proponent of the Friedrich List Society’s program of public works and internal improvements promoted by industrialist Wilhelm Lautenbach. The Nazi party’s public support collapsed and it found itself bankrupt. Hitler had fallen into depression and was even contemplating suicide when “a legal coup” was unleashed by the Anglo-American elite resulting in Wall Street funds pouring into Nazi coffers.

By January 30, 1933 Hitler gained Chancellorship where he quickly took dictatorial powers under the “state of emergency” caused by the burning of the Reichstag in March 1933. By 1934 the Night of the Long Knives saw General Schleicher and hundreds of other German patriots assassinated and it was only a few years until the City of London-Wall Street Frankenstein monster stormed across the world.

The New Silk Road or New World Order

Today’s world sits atop a bubble of unimagined proportions which began to blow in 2008 and has been kept afloat by nothing more than a decade of blind hope mixed with money printing, zero interest rates, speculation and austerity. The PHYSICAL economic basis supporting the money system has been crippled due to 40 years of post-industrial consumerism rampant across the west. While it is admitted that the U.S dollar cannot remain the reserve currency for the world as it has from 1945-present, those same central banking forces from London have admitted that if their plans for a “one-world” green digital currency is not forced onto nations, then China’s Yuan and the New Silk Road will shape the new system.

Whether London will manage to succeed in 2020 pushing a fascist de-carbonization (ie: depopulation) scheme onto the world where their 1920 Monster failed remains to be seen.

The author can be reached at matt.ehret@tutamail.com

See if you can answer the following if / then statement without the help of a calculator, tape measure or quaaludes:

If inequality, then instability.

If instability, then _____ .

I assume everybody remembers “if / then” statements from middle school? One day your jaded teacher, who had clearly just had some sort of relationship issue, walked into the room and said, “Class, it works like this: IF Tom is a good-looking man, THEN he is a pedophile. …That will be on the exam, so write it down!”

It won’t shock you when I say the U.S. is home to an abundance of inequality and instability. The Dow Jones almost saw its worst December since the Great Depression. No one bought anything for the holidays from a company other than Amazon. Mom and Pop shops have nearly resorted to simply selling Mom and Pop. And worker wages are so stagnant they give Matt Lauer’s career a run for its money. Yet at the same time, the stock market sets new record highs almost every single year.

This is from Nomi Prins at TomDispatch:

“… [I]f you really want to grasp what’s been happening, consider that, between 2009 and 2017, the number of billionaires whose combined wealth was greater than that of the world’s poorest 50% fell from 380 to just eight.”

And in the U.S., it’s even worse. It’s three. Three dudes have the same wealth as the bottom 50% of everyone! Yet most Americans seem fine with it—at least in the sense that we’re only expressing our anger via strongly worded tweets rather than hurling flaming bottles filled with lighter fluid and urine.

Could you imagine how fucking angry people would be if this were about anything other than money? For some reason we expect the ultra-rich to have all of the money. If three guys had 50% of the nation’s iPhones or Siamese cats or York Peppermint Patties, we would lose our goddamn minds. Every casual conversation would include the following declarations: “Who the FUCK do they think they are? I want a York Peppermint Patty, and I don’t get one? But those three dick helmets have a pile the size of Rhode Island?! … I want some of that chocolatey, minty goodness.”

All of this is to say America boasts more inequality than LeBron James’ high school basketball team. (No one ever passed Danny Lipschitz the rock.)

Former bankrupt philandering con man and current President of the United States Donald Trump regularly brags about how low the nation’s unemployment numbers are. He does this for two reasons. One: He wants to win reelection to prove to everyone that he’s doing a great job at a job he doesn’t want nor cares to actually do. (He has never wanted to be president. He just wants others to know that he IS president. And that distinction matters a lot.) The second reason he brags about low unemployment numbers is because the unemployment numbers are very low. However, much like a sausage filled with sawdust, those numbers are packed with people who have stopped searching for work and others with shit jobs.

Not too long ago, Walmart was caught having a canned food drive for their own employees on Thanksgiving. If you work at Walmart and you can’t afford Thanksgiving dinner, that doesn’t mean customers need to donate some Spam. It means working at Walmart is less a job and more a partial enslavement opportunity. Think about that: Workers at one of the largest corporations in the world within one of the richest countries in the world can’t even afford to feed their families.

Amazon probably would have a food drive for their warehouse employees, except those workers aren’t allowed to stop to eat solid foods. Instead, Amazon patented a device that pumps nutrients into their workers rectally, at surprise intervals. You can choose to take the rectal nutrients in Power Bar form, but it’s truly uncomfortable. (I made this system up, but doesn’t it sound like something Amazon would do?)

Inequality.org has a chart that shows the top 0.1%’s share of total U.S. income over time. It’s peaking right now, and the previous peak on the chart happened just before the 2008 collapse. The only other peak occurred just before the Great Depression.

The top 400 U.S. earners have hugely increased how many millions they bring home every year. The top tier is still benefiting from that peak on the chart from just before the 2008 financial collapse … for which our Justice Department prosecuted nobody. They’re still looking for the guy who caused it. They’re gonna crack the case any minute. I picture our Department of Justice looking a lot like the college dorm room of the kid who dropped out to start a porn website. Not sure if that’s just me.

So what has caused this breathtaking level of inequality? There are several culprits. One is Bill Clinton’s gutting of the Glass-Steagall Act, which former opponent of desegregation and fervent Amtrak rider Joe Biden supported as well. Another is the Federal Reserve’s “quantitative easing,” which is basically a massive giveaway to Wall Street while the rest of us on Main Street stand there like idiots with our gonads in our hands! (Before you get offended that I’m implying women can’t be Main Street idiots, please recall that both men and women have gonads.) And yet another reason for the inequality we now see is the near obliteration of strong unions.

Also at Inequality.org, you can find a chart that lines up the percentage of income the top 10 percent take home as compared to union membership in America. When union membership goes down, the rich get a lot richer, because the workers have no power to stop the ruling elite from stealing everything. And right now, union membership is at a record low—about 10.7%.

If inequality, then instability.

Even the largest financial firms like JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs have stated the next financial crisis will happen by 2020.

But this level of inequality carries other ramifications. It causes people to protest and cast votes outside of the “normal” establishment candidates. This can produce great leaders looking to help decrease inequality, like Jeremy Corbyn in the U.K. or Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico. Or it can lead to fascistic, anti-immigrant, nationalist tendencies like it has in Italy, France, Brazil, (the United States) and elsewhere. Luckily the good ol’ US of A is there to fight the leftists and prop up the fascists!

In terms of the outwardly racist President Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, The Wall Street Journal endorsed him during his run, and as Brazilian journalist Marcelo Zero wrote, “The CIA Has Its Fingerprints on Brazil’s Election.” Thanks to leaked documents, we now know the prosecution that kept left-wing candidate Lula da Silva out of office was a fraud. And while our government actively tries to destroy leftist presidents like Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela, they partner with and fund neo-Nazi groups in the Ukraine.

(You know, the nice thing about partnering with neo-Nazi groups? When you stay at their house, they almost always have clean sheets for you. … There might be some holes in them, but it’s better than nothing.)

Truly left-wing leaders like Corbyn must be undermined by the ruling elite and the media those elite own. Outlets like the BBC and The Washington Post can’t get enough of claiming Corbyn is an anti-Semite by intentionally conflating criticism of Israel with criticism of Jewish people.

Of course, our own lefty Bernie Sanders was carefully undermined to make sure he lost the 2016 Democratic presidential primary. In case you forgot, the New York City Board of Elections admitted in court that it broke the law—purging 200,000 voters. Then what did we get instead of the democratic socialist? We got a racist nationalist.

So let’s go back to our if / thens:

If inequality, then instability.

If instability, then popular uprisings.

If popular uprisings, then either lefty leaders or neo-fascists.

This will all be on the exam, so write it down.

truthdig.com

Beginning with President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal the Democrats enjoyed a hard-earned reputation as the truly ‘progressive’ party. Through a series of federal programs enacted between 1933 and 1936, like the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), the Farm Security Administration (FSA), and the Social Security Administration (SSA), American workers gradually got back on their feet following the Great Depression. So powerful was the legacy of the New Deal that FDR served four consecutive terms (1933-1945), while the Democrats controlled the White House for seven out of the nine presidential terms from 1933 to 1969.

Describing the Democrats’ initiatives during this tumultuous period, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. explained in ‘The Cycles of American History’ that the Liberals “saw government as, historically and potentially, an indispensable instrument of the general welfare…” Although criticized for invoking the radical policies of John Maynard Keynes, who advocated that the government spend money it didn’t have, at least the hearts and minds of the Liberals seemed to be in the right place.

It would be very hard to argue that that is the case today. Many people are truly perplexed, asking what on earth happened to the Democrats and their commitment to the working man and woman in the face of corporate power run amok.

Consider the case of Barack Obama. America’s first African American president was elected into office in 2009 amid economic circumstances reminiscent of those faced by Roosevelt. A little over a year earlier, the bottom had fallen out of the US economy with the subprime mortgage crisis, which led to the extinction of Lehman Brothers, the fourth largest investment bank in the country at the time. The Financial Crisis of 2007-8 has gone down as the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.

At the time, many Americans were anticipating that Obama would initiate a crackdown on the ‘banksters’ who had, by all indication, knowingly rigged the economy to crash out of sheer rapaciousness. Although the Fed turned the money hoses on full blast to extinguish the burning economy, the ‘arsonists’ were never held responsible for the damage they had done to millions of Americans.

“Barack Obama,” wrote Drew Weston in the New York Times as the ‘hope and change’ parades were dying down, “when faced with the greatest economic crisis, the greatest levels of economic inequality, and the greatest levels of corporate influence on politics since the Depression… stared into the eyes of history and chose to avert his gaze.”

Although this article is not about Barack Obama, it does seem that the latest stage of liberal insanity that now plagues the Democratic Party started under his administration. It was then that Pandora’s Box was cracked open, releasing a blast of controversial legislation onto the cultural scene in one fell swoop.

Same-sex marriage, the legalization of marijuana in some states and the transgender bathroom bill all happened in rapid machinegun fashion one after another, too fast to be processed by normal people. Although ‘gay marriage’ and the legalization of cannabis for recreational use certainly rocked the Heartland, it was Obama’s transgender ‘bathroom’ legislation that shook the cultural scene like a veritable earthquake.

The idea of allowing biological males to wake up one morning, identify as females, thereby permitting them to use the ladies’ bathroom and changing facilities is wrong on so many levels it is hard to believe it ever entered a sane person’s skull, let alone the President of the United States. But such are the times. Although the Trump administration rolled back the “signature” Obama legislation, the transgender movement – much like the feminist craze of a bygone generation – promises to press forward once a new Democrat, assuming the brand has not been damaged beyond repair, gets back into the White House again. In other words, the insanity is out of the bag and good luck to the ‘transphobic’ person who wants to stuff it back, as former tennis great Martina Navratilova recently discovered.

Meanwhile, speaking of feminists, the transgender movement will, if successful, eradicate all of the past gains women have made in various pursuits, not least of all in the world of sports. Now that biological males are able to compete alongside females in many athletic contests, it doesn’t take much imagination to understand who will be winning all the future female world records and event titles. Yet here is the irony: rarely will anybody witness a biological woman who has transitioned to a male demanding to enter any male-dominated sport and this more than anything exposes the absolute folly of the entire spectacle.

Naturally, this places the ladies in a strange position of not being able to protest against the transgender demographic, minuscule as it is, since the latter are advocating for status by playing the victim card, much like many females did back in the day.

It makes for a fun thought experiment to ask who will be the next victim group that knocks transgender people off the podium of political correctness. Could it be the robots? Since we now accept the gender bender argument that testosterone-filled men can be women, and vice-versa, who’s to stop a very articulate and extremely powerful robot from proclaiming its right to compete against humans on the field of dreams? If humans are now copulating and marrying the intelligent machinery it stands to reason they, the humans, will also support the right of robots to participate in human sports not limited to lovemaking. Just a thought.

But as we can see now, the Liberals were just warming up for the main event, which gives millions of illegal migrants the right to invade our nation, while at the same time – wait for it – make infanticide legal.

Yes, infanticide. In fact, New York State legislators stood proud and applauded following the passage of the barbaric Reproductive Health Act, which allows doctors to terminate babies in the third trimester, as well as after they are born in the event they somehow survive a blotched abortion attempt.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo was so enthralled by the passage that he ordered One World Trade Center’s 408-foot spire illuminated in pink flood lights. Yes, pink. How appropriate.

Nearly two decades ago, 19 terrorists brought down the North and South Towers of the World Trade Center complex with hijacked aircraft. Now that same site is being desecrated by commemorating the death of yet more innocents – potentially millions more – by an altogether different sort of terrorism. If that crude and grotesque gesture doesn’t show that the Democrats have lost the plot then I don’t know what does. The Liberals don’t deserve to be beaten in 2020. They deserve to become outcasts of the US political system for their part in helping destroy the last vestiges of everything that was once good about America.

Eleanor Roosevelt redefined the role of First Lady. She was a prominent Democrat spokesperson as a leading social reformer and civil rights activist focused on correcting inequalities and social injustice. Mrs Roosevelt championed a special focus on the rights and liberties of African Americans and many struggling through the Great Depression.

She was a fierce champion of her husband’s liberal East Coat patrician Democrat Party policies know as the New Deal and she was the first First Lady to write her own weekly syndicated newspaper column and host her own radio show and the only First Lady and first American to serve as Chairman of the United Nations Human Rights Commission of which she helped draft it’s founding principles shortly after WWII as President Truman’s delegate to the convention on drafting the UN Universal Declaration on Human Rights.

Eleanor Roosevelt also played a prominent role supporting her husband as President during World War II as an advocate for a tough military response against Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party and Imperial Japan. She regularly worked as a nurse in hospital camps treating wounded service personnel and visiting troops serving overseas. Like Hillary Clinton, Eleanor Roosevelt endured a difficult marriage due to her husband’s series of affairs including with his White House secretary Lucy Rutherford who was with him in Warm Springs, Georgia when he died. And just like Mrs. Clinton, Eleanor stayed married to FDR and forged her own space and identity, and again just like Hillary, once out of the White House and no longer actively First Lady, Mrs Roosevelt set up shop in New York City. There was even an attempt to get Eleanor to stand for the Senate or run as President Truman’s Vice-President.

Hillary Clinton has written of how for her own political and intellectual development and inspiration, Eleanor Roosevelt is her central idol. Just as Eleanor Roosevelt redefined the role of First Lady for the first time using it as a pulpit for social reform, political activism and civic crusading – Mrs Clinton as First Lady 60 years later revived the dormant template and model which Mrs R had pioneered – but had never been followed up on and taken to the next level by any subsequent First Lady. Hillary Clinton became the first First Lady to chair a major administration Cabinet level task force on National Healthcare Reform between 1993-94. She was also the first First Lady to be a political candidate for office in her own right doing what Mrs Roosevelt passed up, running for the United States Senate from New York in her husband Bill’s last year of his Presidency 1999-2000.

Mrs Clinton wrote in her White House memoir “Living History” published in the summer of 2003 that when her healthcare effort failed and she slipped into a mild depression it was communing, conducting imaginary conversations, with her adored and revered First Lady idol Eleanor Roosevelt. So, we can see who will be Mrs Clinton’s guiding star in the White House. When Hillary is confronted with difficult challenges and uncertainty, even adversity, she will ask herself: “What would Eleanor do?” Now as leader of her party and 2016 Democrat nominee for President, Mrs Clinton is running on one of the most progressive Democratic platforms since the days of the Roosevelt’s New Deal.

The Obama-Clinton Era will come to be seen by political historians as when the Democratic Party returned to the roots of the New Deal for the 21^st century. Big Government is now back in vogue and acceptable complimented by big visionary liberal ideas and principles that government can be a force for good in the life of the people, not as the Republican Party views the role of government as overwhelmingly negative and hostile to all projects and programmes that emerge from the public sector. Indeed, if Mrs Clinton succeeds in November and becomes the first female President of the United States she will also have pulled of a victory not seen since the days of FDR and Harry Truman. The only time the Democrats have won more than two Presidential terms in a row was under FDR and Harry Truman.