Orwellian Doublethink Part 3-Asshole Economics

In this final installment on modern Orwellian Doublethink, we examine the acceleration of the Price Gouging, Low Wage paying “Asshole Economics”. This new school has benefited by the actions of Obama, Summers, Gietner, and Rubin. One has to have Orwellian Doublethink blinders on to believe the Conventional Wisdom that this new stage of Asshole Economics is indeed Free Market Capitalism.

When I say Asshole Economics, I mean things like using Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs) to artificially prop up housing prices as was done from 2004 until the Real Estate Bubble burst in 2007-2009. The main buyer of these CDOs was not the government. It was Banks using their own money to rig the marketplace by buying the middle portion of Mortgage backed Securities and turning them into new CDOs. It has a direct link to the repeal of the Glass-Steagal Act, which Larry Summers and Robert Rubin helped to get rid of in the Clinton Administration (with huge bipartisan support!).

In George Orwell’s 1984, the Ministry of Truth (the Propaganda machine that lies to the people of Oceania) regularly rewrites history. Eurasia is an ally and Eastasia is an enemy in this world. Suddenly Eastasia is the enemy of Oceania and always has been and Eurasia is the ally of Oceania and always has been. Doublethink fits the ideology. The ministry of Truth says so. And if the evidence of your own eyes and ears is telling you otherwise, you need to work on your Doublethink!

Now, we have people using major news outlets to tell us that the evidence of my own eyes and ears is not to be trusted regarding recent history. According to them, the market’s implosion was not the fault of Bankers creating fake demand in a huge historically pooch screwing moment of hubris. Nor was it the fault of people being suckered en masse into 3/1 or 5/1 ARM interest only loans that they needed in order to afford the artificially inflated properties. It was the fault of the Community Reinvestment Act. In order to buy this one, you need to indulge in Doublethink! After all, if it fits the ideology, then it must be true. If evidence is pointing towards CDOs, Credit Default Swaps, and 5/1 ARMs as the culprit, that evidence must be ignored. If only 1 in 4 higher priced 1st mortgage loans were made by CRA covered banks and the rest made by independent private mortgage companies and large banks, then that needs to be ignored as well.http://www.fdic.gov/news/news/speeches/archives/2008/chairman/spdec1708.html

This was recent history that is being rewritten for ideological purposes. The result of Asshole Economics was devastating consequences for homeowners, the banks themselves and ultimately, the global economy. And if it happens again, you can thank the people who are rewriting history right now!

A hard sell by AM radio Newstalk stations, right wing think tanks and Fox News does not magically make the CRA the culprit in the Housing crisis any more than it made WMDs magically appear in Iraq.

Am I being too harsh using the term “Asshole Economics”? Given the fact that I am paying taxes to support these Bankers and their bonuses, I don’t think so. Nearly 9 Billion man hours were worked to pay the taxes that composed AIG’s $182 Billion Bailout, which flowed through banks such as Citigroup, Merril Lynch, and Goldman Sachs to help them out of trouble they caused by using CDOs to create false demand. And last time I looked, I still had Freedom of Speech. My calling this behavior “Asshole Economics” is me being polite.

And that’s just the beginning; Asshole Economic is an accurate description of –

· One half of US agribusiness being subsidized by corporate welfare when cheaper crops are available abroad.
· Pharmaceutical companies preventing the largest buyer of their products, the US Govt., from negotiating prices thereby growing the deficit and increasing revenues at the expense of the US taxpayer.
· Endless giveaways of natural resources to corporations- wars fought for energy companies, free spectrum provided to broadcasters with no restraint on balanced commentary, low royalties levied on mining companies, subsidies of lumber companies.
Asshole Economics can not survive with a large amount of Orwellian Doublethink. In order for people to allow this parasitic behavior, they need to believe that this is not parasitic behavior. They need to believe that people like Ken Lewis of Bank of America, Lloyd Blankfien of Goldman Sachs, John Mack of Morgan Stanley, are job producers as they siphon off the wealth of this country. These men and 10 other Bankers firmly believe that they are entitled to a system were profits are privatized and costs are socialized. If they succeed, they will make us go through this all over again only worse.
http://13bankers.com/title/

The last time they succeeded in bleeding their banks and clients dry and stand before us with economy held hostage, we were staring at two options. We could have used taxpayer funds to buy the worthless assets (which they caused by selling CDOs to themselves) or we could have bought the banks and held them temporarily. It would have been much more cost effective to buy the banks outright. And I’m not alone. Fed Chairman, Alan Greenspan (who bears a huge responsibility for this…but that’s another column) is a well-known acolyte of Ayn Rand. He said, “It may be necessary to temporarily nationalize some banks in order to facilitate a swift and orderly restructuring.” Conservative Senator Lindsay Graham, said “If nationalization is what works, then we should do it. It doesn’t matter what you call it, but we can’t keep on funding these zombie banks [without gaining public control]. That’s what the Japanese did. In limited circumstances the Swedish model makes sense for the US.” http://www.istockanalyst.com/article/viewarticle/articleid/3049965
And what happened? Both parties took money from the banking lobby and we wound up going with the most expensive option.
George Orwell got so much right about modern politics when he wrote 1984. In the tradition of Doublethink, Obama goes for the most expensive option (at the advice of people like Summers, Geitner, and Rubin-the same people who set us all up for this in the 1990’s with getting rid of Glass-Steagall) and then creates a Deficit commission. In the tradition of Doublethink, the Bush Tax Cuts to the wealthy were not allowed to expire (cost to the US Citizen taxpayers-$860 Billion) which is regarded in Washington Elite circles as good for the economy and the unpopular TARP was only $700 Billion initially (and has been downgraded to a cost of $50 Billion) and has been used by those Washington Elites to push us towards Austerity measures. http://www.marketwatch.com/story/treasury-total-cost-of-tarp-will-be-50-billion-2010-10-05-164330. And then of course there’s the money pit that is the Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghan Wars. In addition to the 876 Billion in Current Military and $522 Billion in Past Military outlays, there is an additional $159 billion that is currently off the books to fight these Wars. George Orwell predicted wars that are not meant to be won, only continued. We don’t have exit strategies for any of these wars, so a state of Orwellian Doublethink is needed to rationalize the state we are currently in.
Asshole Economics is not only the abuse of Capitalism-http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Asshole%20Economics , it is the financial model used to drain riches from an empire before it’s collapse. Orwellian Doublethink is the tool that Washington Elites use to rationalize that what they are doing.
Asshole Economics is draining us and they couldn’t do it without Orwellian Doublethink.

Orwellian Doublethink Part 2-Our Bloodthirsty Leadership’s Response to Wikileaks

In Part 2 of my Orwellian Doublethink series, let’s examine how you can be in a leadership position of a free democratic republic and still make remarks that are not only anti-democratic and anti-constitutional, but which are bloodthirsty and tyrannical regarding Wikileaks. AND let’s give credit where credit is due to Ron Paul for speaking common sense to power on the House floor.

On the subject of Wikileaks recent revelations, Ron Paul rose to the floor of the House on December 9, 2010 and uttered the following…
“WikiLeaks release of classified information has generated a lot of attention in the past few weeks. The hysterical reaction makes one wonder if this is not an example of killing the messenger for the bad news. Despite what is claimed, the information that has been so far released, though classified, has caused no known harm to any individual, but it has caused plenty of embarrassment to our government. Losing our grip on our empire is not welcomed by the neoconservatives in charge.
There is now more information confirming that Saudi Arabia is a principal supporter and financier of al Qaeda, and that this should set off alarm bells since we guarantee its Sharia-run government…”

Because of Wikileaks, the prevailing atmosphere of neo-conservative Orwellian Doublethink in Washington has been challenged and stands exposed as the hypocritical mode of thought and behavior it is. Ron Paul’s voice of reason regarding this matter should be applauded.

Information has also been revealed that our “ally” in Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, is a paranoid corrupt individual who is as up to his eyeballs in drug connections as is his brother. It is an act of Doublethink to see this as acceptable and yet permit the arrest of Willie Nelson for possessing marijuana! As a matter of fact, DynCorp, the same defense contractor whom Wikileaks exposed for pimping small boys to Afghan police recruits-http://www.globalwhisperer.com/2010/12/wikileaks-cable-reveals-dyncorp-funding-child-sex-slavery-in-afghanistan/
has a long history of violent tyrannical mercenary “counter-narcotic” operations (all at our tax expense) in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia.
http://www.alternet.org/drugs/10921/dyncorp_in_colombia:_outsourcing_the_drug_war/?page=3
So, Drugs are okay if you are Afghanistan’s corrupt leadership but worth millions of taxpayer dollars to fight in Colombia. And an elderly and respected Country musician has to go jail if he is smoking marijuana and not harming anyone? This is pure Orwellian Doublethink.

Not only that, but Wikileaks revealed that the DEA is now a huge foreign intelligence eavesdropping service-
http://www.contracostatimes.com/news/ci_16943340
The hypocrites stand exposed and what is the reaction of the leadership towards this newly revealed information? Is it to cut off funds to Saudi Arabia? Is it to suspend the War on Drugs and launch an investigation into DEA and DynCorps’ activities in Afghanistan and Colombia on the taxpayer dime? No. The hypocrites in charge of leading our country turn immediately to betraying the ideals of the US Constitution and start spouting the most heinous tyrannical venom at Mr. Assange and Wikileaks.

We’ve had Vice-President Joe Biden publicly call Mr. Assange a “high tech terrorist”. I personally subscribe to the US Army’s definition of terrorism as the “use of violence or threat of violence to attain goals, which are political in nature”. Mr. Biden’s statement is laughable and a disgrace to all victims of real violent terrorism. Ron Paul is right when he said that so far, Wikileaks release of information has harmed no one. To use the label terrorist when no violence has been committed is an act of Doublethink!

And Chairman of Homeland Security Committee Congressman Peter King joins Biden in this hypocritical Doublethink. He has said, “WikiLeaks presents a clear and present danger to the national security of the United States.” Not only that, he labels Wikileaks “foreign terrorist organization”!

And it’s not just Democrats, as witnessed by Newt Gingrich’s non-existent commitment to the Constitution! The former Speaker of the House said, ““Information warfare is warfare, and Julian Assange is engaged in warfare. Information terrorism, which leads to people getting killed, is terrorism, and Julian Assange is engaged in terrorism. He should be treated as an enemy combatant.” This from a man who rationalized that outed CIA agent Valerie Plame was “fair game”.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has said, “I think the man is a high-tech terrorist, He's done enormous damage to our country, and I think he needs to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, and if that becomes a problem, we need to change the law.” That last part is so insidious that it bears repeating-in regards to Freedom of the Press-“…if that becomes a problem, we need to change the law.” Mitch McConnell 12/5/10-
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/132043-mcconnell-wikileaks-founder-a-high-tech-terrorist

And in the true spirit of Orwellian Doublethink, at the same time that these statements were being made, the US Government announces that it will host UNESCO’s “World Press Freedom Day” event from May 1-May 3!
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2010/12/152465.htm

Call it a triple whammy for libertarians- Ron Paul looks like a rock star being the only one to defy Washington’s Conventional Wisdom in this manner AND the government is exposed as having a chilling hostility to a Free Press at the same time it announces that it is holding a Free Press Seminar! And I say triple whammy because a truly efficient institution would never allow such an embarrassing contradiction as the US Government just did. So the US Government looks like a chump for dropping the ball with the timing of the seminar on top of being exposed as corrupt and hypocritical on numerous fronts by Wikileaks and our leadership’s chilling lack of commitment to the 1st amendment stands naked for everyone to see!

And the Orwellian Doublethink hits just keep coming. Remember Judy Miller? She is the “journalist” responsible for bleeding Ahmed Chalabi’s manipulative drivel about Saddam hussein’s Weapons of Mass Destruction directly into the New York Times. Ahmed Chalabi received over 2 million dollars of our tax money from the time he was head of the Iraqi National Congress until the Start of the Iraq War for intelligence on Saddam Hussein. Not one piece of evidence he ever was paid for turned out to be true! Heroic soldiers who signed up to avenge 9/11 paid for this error with their lives and property. Judy Miller didn’t care. She said regarding this, “…My job isn’t to assess the government’s information, and be an independent intelligence analyst myself. My job is to tell the readers of the New York Times what the government thought about Iraq’s arsenal.” And in true journalistic Orwellian Doublethink, she criticized Julian Assange for not verifying his sources!
That’s how dangerous Doublethink is. This government is responsible for breaking every single treaty ever signed with every Indian Nation, the Palmer Raids, the murders/executions of Sacco and Vincetti, Prohibition, the Bonus March Massacre, the Japanese relocation camps, the Dresden and Japanese firebombings, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Red Scare witchhunts of the 1950’s, lying about the Gulf of Tonkin in order to get us into VietNam, Agent Orange, the War on Drugs, sponsoring the terrorist army the Contras in the 1980’s, sponsoring Manuel Noriega in Panama, the largest per capita Prison Population in the world, funding Osama Bin Laden and the current Afghan and Iraqi quagmires.
Doublethink is how they operate because the people who are a part of these atrocities need to be told that they are not doing the obvious. They need to think that they are engaged in something noble and ignore the evidence of their eyes ears and conscience.

If you are not chilled by the governments response to Wikileaks let me reiterate-

(regarding Freedom of the Press)“…if that becomes a problem, we need to change the law.” Mitch McConnell 12/5/10-

“…were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” Thomas Jefferson-1787

“ …If Assange can be convicted of a crime for publishing information that he did not steal, what does this say about the future of the first amendment and the independence of the internet?
…Could it be that the real reason for the near universal attacks on Wikileaks is more about secretly maintaining a seriously flawed foreign policy of empire than it is about national security?
…Is there not a huge difference between releasing secret information to help the enemy in a time of declared war, which is treason, and the releasing of information to expose our government lies that promote secret wars, death and corruption?” Ron Paul 12/9/10

Orwellian Doublethink Part 1: Sarah Palin

George Orwell used the term Doublethink in his novel 1984 to describe the act of simultaneously accepting as correct two mutually contradictory beliefs, often in distinct social contexts. In the 1st part of this 3 part series in which I observe this prevalent political phenomenon, I’d like to look at America’s most popular hypocrite- Sarah Palin.

In many ways, she is too easy a target for a discussion of Doublethink in modern political discourse. And so, although she is easy (with nice legs), Sarah Palin, however, does put herself out there before the public and thus we are entitled to an opinion of anything she presents publicly. She was elected Governor by the people of Alaska and thought so highly of that honor that she did not bother to complete a full term when she became a national celebrity. She rails against the “lame-stream” media and yet is rewarded by that same media with book deals, a reality T.V. show and lots of attention.
Yet she thrives in an atmosphere where neither her, nor anyone who works for her sees any contradiction. Her world of media (remember, she started out as a T.V. reporter) and politics embraces double standards. Indeed, one of the first things we knew about her (as a national figure) was that she embraced an enthusiastically hypocritical double standard when it came to the subject of the “Bridge to Nowhere”.
And, in case you think that I’m exaggerating because I don’t like her, the Anchorage Daily News asked her on October 26, 2006-“Would you continue state funding for the proposed Knik Arm and Gravina Island bridges?” She responded, "Yes. I would like to see Alaska's infrastructure projects built sooner rather than later. The window is now -- while our congressional delegation is in a strong position to assist." This answer was given AFTER Congress killed the bridge earmark. That was not Sarah saying “Thanks, but no thanks” to a fiscal stimulus package!
To take this woman seriously when these contradictions erupt, one must engage in rationalization. One must embrace two mutually contradicting beliefs to ignore such disingenuous spin i.e. Orwellian Doublethink.
And it makes complete sense that someone who embraces Doublethink the way Mrs. Palin does would thrive in the world of politics and media. And that’s just one example, the first on the national stage of the many contradictions embraced by Mrs. Palin personally and professionally.
Sarah Palin:
-Has a strong history of opposing pre-marital sex, yet she not only indulged in it (Track Palin was conceived in July 1988 and Sarah Palin was married on August 29, 1988), but she indulged in extramarital sex with her husband’s business partner. http://www.nationalenquirer.com/celebrity/65481
-Set up a cabinet level task force to deal with climate change as Governor of Alaska only to do a complete switch to peddling Climate Change Denial talking points when she became a national right wing celebrity.
http://www.climatechange.alaska.gov/
-Has had ties, through her husband, to a secessionist party (People who love their country so much, they want to leave it). These where ties so strong that she addressed their convention in Fairbanks as a sitting governor. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwvPNXYrIyI Yet she routinely questions the patriotism of US citizens whom she does not agree with.
And I do not think that Barack Obama, a sitting President of the U.S., could get away with addressing a group of militant black separatists in this manner!
I don’t mean to add to the mountain of criticism that has been heaped on Sarah Palin, but instead I wish to use this as an example of Doublethink and why politicians and media and the Conventional Wisdom they believe in are untrustworthy. She is a brazen hypocrite but she is just one woman. Hypocrisy will not disappear when her career is over any more than incompetence and corruption ended when George W. Bush left office. But mildly going along with the hypocrisy, incompetence and corruption because we rationalize through Orwellian Doublethink is only going to make horrible matters worse.
To engage in Doublethink is to set oneself up for inevitable disappointment. Accepting the manipulative drivel that pours out of propaganda outlets as they engage in the rationalization of double standards has harmful effects. For example, the newly seated Congress has a “Tea Party” caucus that has requested 764 earmarks valued at $1,049,783,150 during Fiscal Year 2010!
http://hotlineoncall.nationaljournal.com/archives/2010/12/tea-party-caucu.php
And newly inducted “Tea Party” Senator Ron Johnson is so hostile to Washington insiders that he is appointing one of them, experienced Washington lobbyist Don Kent, as his chief of staff. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/30/ron-johnson-lobbyist-chief-of-staff_n_802684.html
That is very two-faced behavior that you can expect from any politician. If Barack Obama can sell out what he ran on immediately after elected, then the Tea Party certainly can too!
Not that Sarah had anything to do with any of the Tea Party caucus’s or Obama’s betraying their supporters. She’s just one woman and she does not hold the patent on political hypocrisy. But not only does she indulge in it, but she gets a free pass on her contradictions from the same “lame stream media” which she derides continually.
How else can you explain her opinion when Wikileaks broke the “Climategate” controversy compared to her current definition of Julian Assange as a terrorist? When 20Mb of emails, documents, computer code and models from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, written between 1996 and 2009 were published by Wikileaks, that’s all that Ms. Palin needed. She publicly said “…The documents show that there was no real consensus even within the (Climate Research Unit) crowd.” She was proud to use Wikileaks discovery to help derail the Copenhagen Climate Summit.
When the University of Anglia funded an independent study to get to the bottom of the “scandal” http://www.cce-review.org/About.php, Ms. Palin used her media pulpit to publicly apologize for being part of an alarmist anti science embarrassment.

What? She didn’t? Of course, she did not. That would be out of character for an elitist who is making lots of money parroting Inside the Beltway Conventional Wisdom and marketing it as “Going Rogue”. But you would think that she would at least use her influence with the State of Alaska to end the use of Alaska tax dollars to study the effects of Climate Change on that State.
Nope. It’s still there-http://www.climatechange.alaska.gov/
When that same news organization which broke the “Climategate” story had a boss - Julian Assange- who dared to embarrass the Foreign Policy establishment, Sarah Palin called him “an anti-American operative with blood on his hands.” Sarah recently tweeted, “Inexplicable: I recently won in court to stop my book "America by Heart" from being leaked, but US Govt can't stop Wikileaks' treasonous act?” She even embraces the Post 9/11 corruption of the concept of terrorism to mean your enemies at this very moment in time regardless of whether those enemies have ever committed any violence for a political cause. How else can you explain a statement like “Why was he not pursued with the same urgency we pursue al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders?”

So it seems that Freedom of the Press is dependant entirely upon who is embarrassed for Mrs. Palin.
Freedom is too important to be trusted to someone like Sarah Palin to defend. Freedom of Speech and Press is for everyone, including and especially for people whom you disagree with or whom embarrass you. Someone who gleefully embraces numerous double standards while giving us a proven history of rationalizing away our rights is someone who should never be entrusted with power.
By the way, the government has still not returned the right of Habeus Corpus. This is a glaring flaw in the Obama Administration’s record. Did Sarah ever demagogue that one? Why not point it out if you are indeed a voice of the opposition to Obama? Could it be that it never became an issue for Sarah and the Republicans for the same reason that it wasn’t an issue for Obama and the Democrats when Habeus Corpus was taken away by Bush and the GOP’s lame duck session in 2005?
Both parties, both the shills and the powers behind the throne, want the right to declare whoever they don’t like a terrorist and deprive them of a trial in the name of “protecting” us from terrorists.
And you really have to purposely embrace Orwellian Doublethink in order to believe Sarah Palin or anyone who parrots Washington elitist Conventional Wisdom talking points is going to do anything except exploit tragedy and grab power then tell you how they are not doing exactly that.

Peter Navarro on the Afghan War!

Originally posted on Peter Navarro's website in Sept' 09-
Excellent piece on ending the Afghan War!

Orange Grove: Get out of Afghanistan now
By PETER NAVARRO

2009-09-24 17:16:02

During my senior year in high school, in 1966-67, our local congressman came to speak to us soon-to-be-draftees about the necessity of the Vietnam War. His basic pitch was a frothy combination of Red menace, yellow peril, and domino theory. While not particularly versed in geopolitics at the time – although, as a paper boy delivering and regularly reading the Washington Post, I wasn't a complete ignoramus – the speech rang as hollow as a beer keg after a frat party.


Today, I get the same kind of hollowness in my gut every time I hear President Barack Obama and a gaggle of Democratic and Republican hawks offer eerily similar arguments for the Afghanistan war. Terrorism is the new Red menace. Yellow peril has morphed into radical Islam. Dominoes, perhaps surprisingly, are still dominoes. In fact, sober analysis of the two major arguments in support of the war leads me to the same conclusion as my gut – let's get the hell out.


Consider the first argument: Afghanistan must not be allowed to be a staging area for al-Qaida terrorists. Of course, it was from Afghan soil that Osama bin Laden oversaw the 9/11 attacks so this argument seems at first glance compelling. However, Afghanistan is now just one of many possible staging areas for al-Qaida. In fact, hot zone that Afghanistan is, it is now much easier for al-Qaida's decentralized networks to conduct operations in numerous other places, with Algeria, Somalia, and Yemen emerging as the newest strongholds. Why aren't we invading them?


The second pro-war argument is domino theory redux. If the Taliban and Islamic extremists once again control Afghanistan, they will spread their poison to neighboring Pakistan. If the domino Pakistan falls to Islamic extremists, they will inherit Pakistan's nuclear weapons capability and use it to attack Israel and the U.S.


This argument fails to acknowledge that America's presence in Afghanistan is inflaming tensions on Pakistan's border and doing more to destabilize the country than protect it. The broader important issue is whether the United States can, or should, baby-sit a country like Pakistan. After all, with its own standing army and a growing middle class, Pakistan should be able to protect its own territory and political and economic institutions.


Even if you buy the pro-war arguments, consider this: The war can never be won in any quick or decisive fashion – if at all. As the British learned in two wars with Afghanistan in the 1800s and the Soviets learned in their bloodbath of the 1980s, Afghanistan is no country at all. Rather, it's a diverse collection of primitive tribes occupying a harsh landscape pockmarked with tens of thousands of hiding places ideal for guerrilla warfare. On the quagmire scale, it rates a full 10 and makes Vietnam look like a cakewalk. Why we want to send American sons and daughters into that trap is the question for this age.


In fact, our very presence in Afghanistan (and Iraq) is doing more to help al-Qaida recruit new members and develop new military and terror tactics than any other event Osama Bin Laden could have dreamed up. While American troop numbers are constrained by both the size (and battle fatigue) of our military and what American political opinion will bear, al-Qaida has an ever-deepening well of recruits. Why we want to help al-Qaida build its network on the back of anti-American sentiment is a mystery.


The saddest fact is that our new president has taken ownership of this war less for strategic and military purposes and more to show his backbone. As a strong and early opponent of the Iraq war, Barack Obama had to protect his dovish flanks during the 2008 campaign by talking tough on Afghanistan. Now, as he gets deeper into the quagmire, the supreme irony is that he doesn't have the backbone to realize this is an unwinnable war without any compelling strategic rationale.
Navarro on TheStreet.com

I’ve started a daily video column for TheStreet.com that analyzes high volume movers using a Market Edge technical analysis screen. Click here to review my videos on TheStreet.com. Or subscribe to the RSS feed for these videos.

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Published in August '09-South Park, the Nevada Senate Race, and the Political Cycle of Death!!

Trey Parker and Matt Stone brilliantly summed up the horrible choices (or rather lack of choices) the American public faces when going to the voting booth in their episode Douche vs. Turd. As a Nevada voter forced to choose between Harry Reid and Sharon Angle, I think the political parody is still timely and we must rescue ourselves from this vicious two party cycle if we are to stand even a chance against coming crises.
In the 2004 South Park episode, Douche vs. Turd, the school puts up two candidates for the next school mascot-a giant douche and a turd sandwich. One of the boys voices his disgust with these two options and is hounded out of town for voicing the obvious. After his adventures he sees that "every election is about a choice between a douche and a turd."

In 2010 Senate Campaign in Nevada, the two candidates who stand a chance at winning are Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Tea Party Favorite Sharon Angle. On one hand we have someone who voted for the Bankruptcy Bill in 2005 and has many pieces of legislation passed for a Democratic agenda by the House sit by the wayside because of the lack of a "supermajority" (despite George W. Bush getting everything his greedy corrupt heart wanted to when his party had nowhere near these numbers).

And on the other hand we have Sharon Angle, who seeks to implement "Biblical Law" (Strike 1 if you've ever actually read what's in that book and the trivial offenses for which it mandates death), supports eliminating Social Security and Medicare (Strike 2 if you have paid into these most of your adult life and shiver when Conservatives talk of scaling them down or eliminating them), and says that bringing industry to this state is "not her job" (Strike 3 because that is a direct quote)!

So I have to give the "I can't do anything because I don't have a supermajority" guy 6 more years or put in a woman whom I not only feel is an imbecile but wrong in pretty much every stance she takes. I have to say that I feel like a character in South Park!

And not only that, but both choices lead down a road that repeats history to the detriment of our lives, liberties and property. If history repeats itself and we are looking at a repeat of the 90's (a Democratic president being a rubber stamp for a Republican agenda), then the result will be a sequel to the Bush years when the Republicans regain control of the White House and all the death, tyranny and debt that entails.

I always felt there was an inherent dishonesty when Bill Clinton (and all who came after him) made a case for deficit reduction. Granted we had to cut back domestic programs (a Gingrich favorite) to get where there was a projected budget surplus in 2005. And those programs were cut back. But what happened to fiscal responsibility when Bush came to office? The deficit was run up to even beyond what it was in the Reagan years! Most of the money went to the DOD and it's lackeys. Defense contractors have never had better friends than George W. Bush and Osama Bin Laden!

I'm old enough to remember the 1980 election. I remember Carter being killed in the campaign ads for the $73 billion dollar deficit in 1980. When Reagan got in, reducing the Deficit was so important that he ballooned it to an average of $167 billion per year of Reagan's administration (most of it spent on weapons). Deficits seem to be important only when the Democrats control the White House.

When we are being manipulated by fear into compromising our Constitution, when Defense Contractors are making out like bandits, and when Wall Street is getting handout after handout-deficits are not important. When we need our infrastructure updated and repaired, when businesses need to see activity so that they start hiring, when the whole economy needs to get people back to work with shovel ready projects so that then they would take their paychecks and spend them-deficits are important and must be reduced!

The double standard is not only disgusting but it produces unneeded deaths on a massive scale. Because of this double standard, as of this writing 4,732 US troops have died in an Iraq War fueled more by G.W.Bush's vanity, hunger for oil dominance, revenge for 9-11 and greedy Defense Contractors than any threat to the United States from Iraq. Because of this double standard, as of this writing 1991 US troops who should be alive today aren't because they died in a mismanaged conflict in Afghanistan that should have been over in Tora Bora in Dec 2001! And lest we forget, there are also 97,172-106,047 Iraqi civilians who should be alive but are not because their country became a battle zone for the past 8 years.

My point is that this dishonest double standard regarding the deficit is part of a cycle of death. One side, the ones who manipulate their followers with fear of Big Business and then gives Big Business (with maybe breaking up a monopoly or oligopoly as the exception) whatever they want, has strict limitations on what they can spend money on when in the White House. The other side, the ones who manipulate their followers with fear of Big Government and then grow the deficit and take away liberties, has no limitations on what they can spend as long as it kills.

And don't think we are immune as U.S. Citizens. As Dr. Phil said, "If they'll do it with you, they'll do it to you." Boehner wants to "reexamine the 14th Amendment" to determine if people he doesn't like can be stripped of their citizenship. He may turn into the next Speaker of the House. Cheney tied to override Posse Comitatus (the legal precedent that prevents US troops from being used domestically) so he could send troops to a US city. We are not immune from these people just because we live here!

George Orwell put it best in 1984-

" ...it does matter if the war is not real, or when it is that victory is not possible. The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous. The essential act of modern warfare is the destruction of the produce of human labor. A hierarchal society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance. In principle, the war is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation."

That declining standard of living that we are all so familiar with will only get worse as this cycle repeats itself. If you are outraged by the Douchebag, a vote for the Turd Sandwich will only bring death and debt to us so fast it will be as if Bush never left office. If you are outraged by the Turd Sandwich, you leave in power a Douchebag who sits in power ignoring the agenda you sent him there to fulfill. If you are like me, you are outraged at having to make such a horrible choice to begin with and watch with despair and disgust as we repeat the dishonest elective hypocritical cycle of Death!

Published in November '10-The Great Economist Quote Quiz

Can you differentiate between a quote from Adam Smith and a quote from Karl Marx? Would you know a Keynes quote from a Friedman quote? Let's find out.
The competing schools of economics can be a confusing contradictory cacophony of misinformation, distortions, huge errors, outright lies sitting side by side with solid facts. I have found some Libertarians whom I know personally arguing for the top-down autocratic ability of the Federal Government to arbitrarily change the contract and raise the age in which I collect Social Security. I have found adherents of Deregulation honestly tell me that the 1999 repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act was not the cause of the Housing implosion. Banks (private institutions!) were issuing Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs) and buying them back in order to artificially prop up the prices caused by because of this deregulation, and I'm confronted with people who insist that it was "all the government's fault". We have people with such blind loyalty to their school of economics that they insist that we have more deregulation.

This has been an era of deregulation spawning scandal after crash after rewriting history (off the top of my head, Lincoln Savings and Loan, Enron, Tyco International, Adelphia, Peregrine Systems, WorldCom. Fannie-Mae, Freddie-Mac, AIG, Bear Stearns, British Petroleum, Xe-Blackwater, Halliburton are all modern stories of what people who implemented the those regulations were trying to prevent.) Isn't all of this a confirmation of Karl Marx's comments on Overproduction? ( I know, the modern financial press uses the word Bubble not Overproduction or Oversupply)

Regardless of your answer, I think you must agree that it is absolutely essential to know what you believe and why you believe it! It is very important to be able to sift disinformation, distortions and lies from facts. In that spirit, I've prepared a quiz of four great and very influential economists.

Your Choices are-

ADAM SMITH-Regarded as the father of Modern Capitalism for his work "Wealth of Nations". In his argument against the economic system of the day, mercantilism, he stressed a laissez-faire attitude which stated that the Crown or government should cease to limit imports and allow commerce to flourish. However, most modern free market advocates consistently ignore his criticism of permanent corporations, division of labor, imperialism, and business control of state policy in that same volume.

KARL MARX-Critic of 19th Century Capitalism. Held that Industrial Capitalism, unlike Market Capitalism, causes a great deal of harm because the worker is divorced from the profit of his labor. Warned against the Problem of Overproduction (or Bubbles) a century before Lincoln Savings and Loan, Enron, Tyco, Countrywide, AIG financial implosions.

JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES- Author of "General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money" and father of the Aggregate Demand Equation which, although he is personally vilified in many circles, is still used as the Macroeconomic standard to this day. An investor and British Lord whose Fund grew five-fold in a period of turmoil that included 2 World Wars and the Great Depression. Often regarded as a Communist or Socialist in some modern circles.

MILTON FRIEDMAN-Nobel Prize Winner and father of the Monetarist Economic School and the tax withholding system. Held that the Money Supply has a direct proportional relationship with the price level. Publicly advocated abolishing the Federal Reserve System, legalizing marijuana and prostitution, and a volunteer military.

1."Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to, only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer."

____ A Adam Smith

____ B Karl Marx

____ C John Maynard Keynes

____ D Milton Friedman

2. "Universities exist to transmit knowledge and understanding to students not to provide entertainment for spectators or employment for athletes."

____ A Adam Smith

____ B Karl Marx

____ C John Maynard Keynes

____ D Milton Friedman

3."No society can be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable"

____ A Adam Smith

____ B Karl Marx

____ C John Maynard Keynes

____ D Milton Friedman

4."Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone."

____ A Adam Smith

____ B Karl Marx

____ C John Maynard Keynes

____ D Milton Friedman

5."To feel much for others and little for ourselves, to restrain our selfishness and exercise our benevolent affection, constitute the perfection of human nature."

____ A Adam Smith

____ B Karl Marx

____ C John Maynard Keynes

____ D Milton Friedman

6."For the bureaucrat, the world is a mere object to be manipulated by him"

____ A Adam Smith

____ B Karl Marx

____ C John Maynard Keynes

____ D Milton Friedman

7."The social object of skilled investment should be to defeat the dark forces of time and ignorance which envelope our future."

____ A Adam Smith

____ B Karl Marx

____ C John Maynard Keynes

____ D Milton Friedman

8."The black market was a way of getting around government controls. It was a way of enabling the free market to work. It was a way of opening up, enabling people."

____ A Adam Smith

____ B Karl Marx

____ C John Maynard Keynes

____ D Milton Friedman

9. "Democracy is the road to socialism."

____ A Adam Smith

____ B Karl Marx

____ C John Maynard Keynes

____ D Milton Friedman

10."The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency. By a continuing policy of inflation, governments can confiscate secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of its citizens."

____ A Adam Smith

____ B Karl Marx

____ C John Maynard Keynes

____ D Milton Friedman

11. "All money is a matter of belief."

____ A Adam Smith

____ B Karl Marx

____ C John Maynard Keynes

____ D Milton Friedman

12."The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones."

____ A Adam Smith

____ B Karl Marx

____ C John Maynard Keynes

____ D Milton Friedman

13. "The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people."

____ A Adam Smith

____ B Karl Marx

____ C John Maynard Keynes

____ D Milton Friedman

We all should fearlessly ask ourselves what we believe and why we believe it. That goes double for the economic schools of thought we subscribe to. It was not that long ago that free market advocates were being quoted by predatory lenders and laying the groundwork for the malaise we see now. The large economic concepts do affect our lives, and we should be very skeptical of all claims made on authority. There were people, I mean supposedly responsible adults, like Kevin "Dow 36,000 by 2008" Hassett, who were claiming with complete authority that there was no housing bubble back when CDOs were being sold by banks to banks to prop up prices.

Mr. Hassett, by the way, was an economic advisor to the McCain campaign. He would have influenced policy if Obama had not been elected.That's right, we came that close to having a man who didn't see or care about the Housing Bubble when it was forming in 2003 and saw the Dow going to 36,000 by 2008 at the hieght of the dot bomb bust in 2000 influencing policy during the height of the Great Recession!

These concepts affect our lives and even if you don't agree with Keynes or Von Mises-it is important to know what you believe and why you believe it!

And here are the Answers

Adam Smith wrote #1, #3, #5, and #11

Karl Marx wrote #6, #9 and #13

John Maynard Keynes wrote #4, #7, #10, and # 12

Milton Friedman wrote #2, and #8

I am not a teacher of any sort. Any grade or scale I offered you on this quiz would be meaningless. If you felt the need to cheat and indulged you have admitted to yourself the unfamiliarity with these large economic concepts.

The worst thing we can do is allow the Noise Machine to rob words like "Socialist", "Fascist", "Capitalist" and "Bubble" of their meaning.

To allow this is to be at the mercy of charlatans and crackpots to look at one side of the Mixed Capitalist situation we find our selves in and see "Government bad-Private sector good".

So I'll close with one of my favorite quotes, not from an Economist but from George Clinton's P-Funk All Stars-

"My mind is mine and mine my mind will always stay! No way of life, no man no law's gonna take it away"

Parliament-"Fantasy is Reality"

Published in November '10-Sorry, Mr. Paul. It's not the Death of Keynesism, it's the old Bait and Switch!

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