Austerity and Deficit Hawks Say, “Let Them Eat Cake,” The People Will Say, “Off With Their Heads”

By David DeGraw, AmpedStatus Report

The vultures are circling above the debt ceiling, along with the austerity and deficit hawks, ready to pounce on what little remains.  

Before I get into the tragic comedy that is the deficit debate, I must say that it is both fascinating and horrifying to watch the global financial elite incrementally destroy the United States. The American people remain passive while enduring a slow death by a thousand cuts. Each year brings another step down in living standards. The efficiency of the Neo-Feudal Technocratic-Fascists is impressive. They always seem to know just how much they can get away with without causing “civil unrest.” They bribe 45 million people with food stamps, 10 million with unemployment checks.  They give you just enough to keep you passive and weak, so they can continue their plunder.

They’re masters of slow economically-induced death.  They’re like vampires, sucking our blood slowly, turning us into beaten down zombies. You wake up one day and realize that you are thousands of dollars in debt, working harder for much less money, while everything costs more.  You’re struggling to get by and make ends meet. Your future prospects are increasingly dire and you don’t have the ability to retire without living in poverty. So you jump on prescription meds or turn to alcohol or other drugs to deal with all the stress and anxiety.  You try to escape by watching increasingly trivial and absurd “reality” TV for hours daily, you need to get your soma and delude yourself some more. Next thing you know, you have failing health and can’t afford treatment. At this point, every penny of your Social Security and Medicare counts, but now, as billionaire Charlie Munger recently said, sorry, you’re going to have to “suck it in and cope.”

Yeah, he’s talking to you.

As if a collapsing economy, skyrocketing costs of living and reduced pay weren’t making life hard enough, now vital social programs are getting cut. Social Security and Medicare cuts are going to be very painful for millions of Americans who are already hanging by a thread. As are cuts to food and housing assistance programs.  Paid off politicians are using deficit hysteria to implement an austerity program; an attack on social safety nets that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.  It is a shame that we squandered trillions of tax dollars on Wall Street, wars and tax breaks for multi-millionaires and billionaires.

No matter how technocratically skilled the ruling class is, at some point soon 250 million Americans are going to become aware that they have been completely screwed and thrown overboard.  The naïve propagandized masses are headed for a nasty wake up call.  They will finally come to the brutal realization of how depraved, greedy and power-addicted our ruling class truly is.

Wake up Dorothy, you’re not in Kansas anymore. The American Dream is O-V-E-R.

The Obama Illusion, Act II: Countdown to Collapse…

When it comes to the economy, the Obama Administration and their global banking benefactors have been kicking the can down the road by hiding trillions of dollars in losses, “extending and pretending” that things are fine. Recovery is just around the corner.  Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.  The economic stimulus and quantitative easing programs were never serious attempts to revive the economy, they were a way of prolonging the charade and papering over reality, to buy more time while pumping even more money into the global banks so they could continue their pillage and set the conditions for the next phase of their assault on the existence of a middle class and democracy worldwide.

The Obama Administration injected a mild stimulus, just enough to keep the dying body from convulsing.  They temporarily extended unemployment benefits, food stamp and other “anti-poverty” programs, just enough to keep a suffering population pacified a little bit longer.  Just enough to keep our society from rioting, to keep the torches and pitchforks at bay a little while longer, so they can complete their plunder.

Given the way they have played it thus far, you would expect another half-ass stimulus to kick the can a little further down the road to get us closer to the 2012 election without all-out disaster, perhaps.  But the vultures are now circling above the debt ceiling, along with the austerity and deficit hawks, ready to pounce on what little remains.

Austerity and Deficit Hawks Say, “Let Them Eat Cake”

Do you know why the deficit hawks want to cut and privatize your Social Security?

It’s because these people flat out stole the money you spent your entire working life putting aside into the system.  Excuse me for not being “civilized” enough, apologies, they didn’t “steal” it, they just “borrowed” it and are refusing to pay it back.

It astounds me how people constantly debate the fiscal condition of Social Security but they never seem to notice or mention that the Social Security Trust Fund has been looted.  Guess what?  Between Wall Street, wars and tax breaks for multi-millionaires and billionaires, the $2.5 trillion surplus that was supposed to be used for your retirement has already been used.  Forgive me for being blunt, but one-tenth of one percent of the population is giving you the finger and telling you to “suck it in and cope.”

The looting of the Social Security Trust Fund is about as funny as Wall Street executives crashing the economy and then using trillions of our tax dollars to give themselves all-time record-breaking bonuses.

Speaking of the joke being on us, the late great comedian George Carlin once prophetically warned:

“You know what they want? They want obedient workers… Obedient workers, people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork. And just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it.  And now they’re coming for your Social Security money. They want your f#ckin’ retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street.  And you know something? They’ll get it… they’ll get it all from you sooner or later cause they own this f#ckin’ place.

It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it.

You and I… are not in The big club.”

When you hear all these talking heads and politicians saying that they want to cut “entitlement” programs that we have already paid into, they are literally saying that they do not intend to payback money that they owe.  While they cry about the national deficit that they created and demand austerity measures to cut back on vital social services, they have the audacity to demand debt increasing tax cuts for themselves and their corporations.

Tax breaks for the rich and budget cuts for the rest of us.

That’s what I call a recipe for revolution.

Austerity and deficit hawks say, “Let them eat cake.” The people will eventually say, “Off with their heads!”

One-tenth of one percent of the population is drunk with arrogance and blinded by shortsighted greed.  Instead of providing affordable healthcare to hardworking Americans; instead of creating employment programs and improving our educational system; instead of building vital infrastructure, our tax dollars have ended up in the obscenely bloated pockets of the richest people to ever walk the face of this planet.

Deficit Hawks Vs. Keynesian Stimulus Supporters – They’re Both Wrong!

The debate between those who are calling for deficit cuts (austerity) and those who are calling for stimulus spending (debt) is yet another perfect example of how the mainstream media sets the agenda and controls public opinion by limiting the range of acceptable debate and reducing the “spectrum of thinkable thought.”  This is a bullshit debate that exposes the sham that is the Democrat Vs. Republican dynamic.  Both of these choices will not fix our economic crisis and will only reinforce the status quo dominance of the ruling class.

The debate boils down to this: How should we make the working class pay for the crimes of the ruling class?

Should we:

A) Cut vital life-sustaining social programs that keep society functioning.

or

B) Keep the programs in place and pour more money (debt) into them, which will ultimately have to be paid for by the working class through rising taxes.

Call me crazy, but both of these choices screw hardworking Americans and will only make our problems worse.

While the media endlessly debates between deficit cuts and spending, how come we are not discussing a third and much better option?  How about we seize the assets of the criminals who stole our money and stop all the enormous subsidies that we are giving away to the most profitable corporations and obscenely wealthy individuals?

We have such a huge national deficit because the economic top one-tenth of one percent of the population has made off with trillions of dollars in national wealth, and the looting continues, unabated.

How about we tell the paid-off  puppet politicians, “economists,” and “regulators” to step aside and bring in criminal investigators?

At the root, this is not an economic crisis, this the breakdown of law and order.  We are in this mess because global bankers have rigged the system with an organized criminal racket that has robbed trillions of dollars from the American working class.

If you are serious about fixing the economy, first and foremost, we need to stop the ongoing looting and seize the assets of the organized criminal class who have robbed us.   Until that’s done, this crisis will never be solved.

Now, just to be clear, I know it is an extraordinarily difficult task to purge a system that is, at its core, hardwired into organized criminal activity without causing further damage, but it must be done. You can talk about financial reform and economic theory all you want, but anything less than taking the vampire’s fangs out of the neck of the global economy is an absolute waste of time.

Until the criminals are held accountable for their actions, removed from positions of power, have their assets seized and their companies placed under temporary receivership until they are efficiently unwound, our economic crisis will never be solved.

The Federal Reserve board must also be held accountable and broken up just like the “too big to fail” banks.  The International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and Bank of International Settlements must be dealt with in a similar fashion. How can anyone claim a free-market based on fair competition when it is obvious that the system is rigged to serve this global banking cartel?

Let’s also restore Glass-Stegall and rework the markets to eliminate dark pools, shadow banking, casino gambling, high frequency trading, front-running, accounting gimmicks and any other tricks that cause market rigging, economic instability and suck the lifeblood out of the real economy.

Until we restore the rule of law and take these steps, the stock market and global economy will continue to increasingly serve the interests of the few, at the devastating expense of everyone else, and will eventually crash again, sometime soon – no matter how much the Fed, Treasury, CIA and the plunge protection team artificially prop it up.

Countdown to Rebellion…

The jig is up.  The global Ponzi has been exposed for all to see. Either we dismantle it and start anew, or we all drink the Kool-Aid and go lay down.

Clearly, the paid off politicians and bankers are willing to throw us all to the wolves to keep the scam rolling.  For those of you out of the loop, global bankers used financial derivatives to turn the global economy into an elaborate Ponzi scheme.  They created a bogus economy ten times the size of the entire global economy.  No matter how audacious, complex and complicated their Ponzi was, eventually reality was going to catch up with it.  When the derivative Ponzi began to collapse in 2007, law enforcement and politicians should have held the Ponzi players accountable.  Instead, the Bush and Obama Administrations have doubled down on the side of the criminals. Allowing them to not only get away with it, but to make even more money while throwing tens of millions of people into poverty.  For anyone paying attention, it is obvious that we now live in a banana republic run by a global banking cartel, or a financial terrorism network, whichever term you prefer.

To sum this all up, a bold fact, that cannot be argued, is that our tax dollars have been funneled into the pockets of the very people who caused this crisis. The money that we need to live a secure and healthy lifestyle has been looted. The people responsible for this crisis must be held responsible for their actions.  No one, no matter how much money they have, and no matter how politically-connected they are, should be above the rule of law.

Either we have a nation of justice and law, or we have a nation of chaos and war.

A very wise man once made this point clear when he said, as long as “justice remains the tool of a few powerful interests; legal interpretations will continue to be made to suit the convenience of the oppressor powers…. When forces of oppression come to maintain themselves in power against established law, peace is considered already broken.”

That’s a quote from a man who knew something about taking on the global financial elite, his name was Che Guevara.

Viva la revolution!