David Lindorff at CounterPunch writes: "The Recession Isn't Over, By a Long Shot." I have to say that his analysis makes a lot more sense than the "happy talk" from the Obama administration and the MSM:
Where is the consumer spending supposed to come from that used to represent a whopping 70% of economic activity in a United States that long ago stopped making things? The answer is: nowhere. The amount of lost wealth makes a joke of the celebrated Obama stimulus plan, which was less than $1 trillion, and which is spread out over two years.
There is simply no money to rekindle the orgy of consumer spending that kept the US economy afloat for so long.
Certainly, "happy talk" might get an economy going by boosting public confidence, but like Lindorff, I feel that consumers are just too over-extended and vulnerable to return to their previous role.
The MSM has been chirping about a rally in the stock markets again. For a long time I've found this to be absolutely inane. Stocks were trading at completely bogus price-earnings ratios for over a decade, it was obvious that any rationalism attached to the stock markets was long-divorced from anything to do with the real economy and more related to some gambler's mentality. Still, given today's circumstances, I've been wondering what could possibly be behind this rally in the financial markets. Apparently it's the Obama administration! In another CounterPunch article, Mike Whitney's "Bernanke's Shell Game" describes how the Federal Reserve is creating money to help boost the stock markets:
It means the revered professor Bernanke figured out a way to circumvent Congress and dump more than a trillion dollars into the stock market by laundering the money through the big banks and other failing financial institutions. As Kessler suggests, Bernanke knew the liquidity would pop up in the equities market, thus, building the equity position of the banks so they wouldn't have to grovel to Congress for another TARP-like bailout. Bernanke's actions demonstrate his contempt for the democratic process. The Fed sees itself as a government-unto-itself.
...
So, the magical "Green Shoots" stock market rally was fueled by a mere $400 billion from the money markets. The rest ($2.3 trillion) was main-lined into the market via Bernanke's quantitative easing (QE) program, of which Krugman and others speak so highly.
Meanwhile, of course, the real economy on which all of this is nominally based goes begging. There's a thin strand of thread anchoring this gigantic balloon to the earth. The danger, as Whitney and others point out, is that this is unsustainable. This "rally" depends upon continued monetary growth, supplied by the Fed, and as the Whitney's article points out, that's going to give foreign buyers of $US-denominated government savings bonds leery of the worth of those assets.
Finally, via "Crooks and Liars" there's this article from Jeffrey Scahill in The Nation, "Blackwater Founder Implicated in Murder."
I've always found Eric Prince to be one of the more revolting and frightening products of the USA's degenerate political culture. A child of privilege who is also an elite killing machine and a fanatical Christian, founds a company of mercenaries and builds the world's largest private army. I'm getting inspired to create a leftist "James Bond" kind of agent to try to save the world from this sort of insanity.
What are the allegations? Prince's large-scale operation of smuggling illegal weapons into Iraq:
Among the additional allegations made by Doe #1 is that "Blackwater was smuggling weapons into Iraq." He states that he personally witnessed weapons being "pulled out" from dog food bags. Doe #2 alleges that "Prince and his employees arranged for the weapons to be polywrapped and smuggled into Iraq on Mr. Prince's private planes, which operated under the name Presidential Airlines," adding that Prince "generated substantial revenues from participating in the illegal arms trade."
Employing violent racist sociopaths and steroid abusers knowingly:
Both individuals allege that Prince and Blackwater deployed individuals to Iraq who, in the words of Doe #1, "were not properly vetted and cleared by the State Department." Doe #2 adds that "Prince ignored the advice and pleas from certain employees, who sought to stop the unnecessary killing of innocent Iraqis." Doe #2 further states that some Blackwater officials overseas refused to deploy "unfit men" and sent them back to the US. Among the reasons cited by Doe #2 were "the men making statements about wanting to deploy to Iraq to 'kill ragheads' or achieve 'kills' or 'body counts,'" as well as "excessive drinking" and "steroid use." However, when the men returned to the US, according to Doe #2, "Prince and his executives would send them back to be deployed in Iraq with an express instruction to the concerned employees located overseas that they needed to 'stop costing the company money.'"
And murdering others who tried to alert federal authorities about these crimes:
Doe #2 alleges in a sworn declaration that, based on information provided to him by former colleagues, "it appears that Mr. Prince and his employees murdered, or had murdered, one or more persons who have provided information, or who were planning to provide information, to the federal authorities about the ongoing criminal conduct." John Doe #2 says he worked at Blackwater for four years; his identity is concealed in the sworn declaration because he "fear[s] violence against me in retaliation for submitting this Declaration." He also alleges, "On several occasions after my departure from Mr. Prince's employ, Mr. Prince's management has personally threatened me with death and violence."
The allegations against Prince are from two former Blackwater employees' sworn affadavits as part of a legal suit against Prince and his company for the murder of innocent Iraqis by the Iraqi families of those victims. I hope that somehow, someway, this will take this psychopathic Prince down permanently. Even in Obama's "forget the past, think about continuing these crimes in the future" administration.
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