JEFF GATES” Crisis by Consensus
03. Jul, 2011
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Jeff Gates
By JEFF GATES | ARAB NEWS
This is the first in a series of four articles
Greece is in crisis because it has too much debt. The US is in crisis because it needs to issue more debt. The debt-hobbled economies of Europe are known as the PIGS: Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain. Their fiscal health may determine the future of the euro.
Like the euro, the dollar suffers from a fiscal cold poised to become financial pneumonia. The US could soon have $16.7 trillion in government bonds secured by our full faith and (ahem) credit.
The deficit for 2011 alone is $1.3 trillion. In 1980, the entire US debt totaled $900 billion. An additional $2.4 trillion in debt is sought to fund the government through 2012.
With fiscal resources tight, budget cuts are under way at the federal, state and local level. New York City plans to lay off five percent of its teachers. California plans to close dozens of its popular state parks. Arizona sold its public buildings and now leases them back.
Public sector pensions are on the chopping block. Look for cuts in Social Security benefits as annual interest payments on US bonds reach $627 billion by 2017 — enough to fund the Pentagon in 2007. America’s securitized debt is exceeded only by its unsecuritized obligations. Those debts total tens of trillions more.
Two months ago, Standard & Poor’s lowered its outlook for US bonds from stable to negative. Moody’s signaled its intent to announce a possible default on US bonds, even if temporary. Fitch also forecasts a possible downgrade.
How did the US reach this perilous juncture?
Post-World War II, America was home to 50 percent of the world’s productive power. That strength infused US bonds with global credibility and guaranteed the dollar would be favored worldwide as the reserve currency. Those strengths also ensured we could borrow at will.
Finance has long been the “operating system” shaping geopolitical affairs from the shadows — invisible, intangible yet ever present. That stable presence suggests today’s destabilizing dynamics were foreseeable.
As the US reduces its commitments to Africa, China is reinvesting in commodities, building infrastructure and making African allies. While we Americans continue to put our faith in financial assets, Beijing is reinvesting our purchasing power in physical assets — roads, railways, ports — and commodities, including metals, minerals, factories and even farmland. The interest we pay to China on US bonds helps modernize its navy and air force, positioning Beijing to project force worldwide.
Did today’s financial dynamics “just happen”? Or was this systemic disabling of America done by design? Americans want to know: How did we get it so terribly wrong?
When waging long-term warfare, shared mindsets are the key battlefield. Victories flow to those skilled at creating generally accepted truths — even if false. Where do consensus beliefs reside if not in a shared mindset? That intangible realm is where modern-day wars are won or lost. At present, the US is losing to those skilled at sustaining false beliefs. Iraq had no WMD yet we were induced to invade by a consensus belief that persuaded us otherwise. Nor did Iraq have yellowcake uranium from Niger. Nor did Al-Qaeda operatives meet in Prague with Iraqi officials. Nor was Saddam Hussein’s secular regime collaborating with religious fundamentalists in Afghanistan.
How do lies become widely held beliefs? How was Secretary of State Colin Powell induced to believe that Iraq had mobile biological weapons laboratories? Who has the means, motivation, opportunity and, importantly, the stable nation state intelligence to deceive us with such success?
This latest inducement to war on false pretenses was tactical, not strategic. Strategic duplicity induced the world’s strongest economy to freely embrace the very financial forces that now threaten the capacity of Americans to defend their freedom. Did we freely choose to squander and now endanger our “full faith and credit”? Or were we induced? Was post-World War II America the target of a trans-generational fraud?
Debt is a well-traveled route to wealth. With borrowed funds, you can buy a house. Securitize that debt and more credit becomes available for more homebuyers. Securitization can also fuel a debt-induced housing boom. The resulting wealth accrues to those positioned to capture that inflated value. And to those who pocket fees for repackaging debt as tradable securities.
Who captured the bulk of the wealth that we were induced to believe would be found down that debt-fueled path? Answer: The same financial sophisticates who pocketed the bulk of the private sector wealth financed with today’s public sector debt. Skeptics question whether the US freely chose this path. Americans rightly want to know how their nation became a global purveyor of junk debt. The US faces a consensus-enabled crisis. Was this outcome a consequence of dysfunctional domestic politics? Or was this the handiwork of those skilled at pitting parties against one another while selling debt to both?
— Jeff Gates is author of Guilt By Association-How Deception and Self-Deceit Took America to War. See www.criminalstate.com
© 2010 Arab News
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Jeff Gates asks a few pointed questions of his readers, trying to get us to think about why the USA is reduced to a soldier of fortune state of brainwashed super patriots and antagonistic progressives battling it out for leadership on the listing ship of state’s decks as the perfect storm approaches and the hatches are battened down for the duration of this epic default.
The IMF, during all of this awful debt crisis borrowed from the US treasury at least one hundred billion dollars which it loaned to sagging banks, investment forms and their associate hedge fund managers to shore up the over leveraged accounts for customers. Many question if the money transfers from the overnight window at the fed to central banks and investment forms merger and acquisition firms as insurance, Investment and banking became the too big to fail entities that will drag the US economy down. The ironic aspect of this burning bush in American history is this: the complaints about banks being too big to fail, hence reaping unapreciated salvation from citizens coffers in bail outs of their reckless mortgage bundling affairs, were and yet styill are followed by making these behemoths of financial monopoly even bigger, more wide spread and all the while bemoaning that they are too big in the first place…???? Stop right here, folks and think…..
What the US says to it’s citizens and what it does behind closed doors in meet ups with Goldman, insurance and big Pharma lobbies and military procurments forms and their investors is radically disparate and shows clearly that what is being done is not what is being said should be done, but the opposite.
We “withdrew” from Afghanistan , only to escalate in Iraq, Israel “unilaterally withdrew” from Gaza, then quarantined, massacred and punished civilians for the works of leaders who the US cannot accept, all the while citing terrorism as the reason for rejecting Hamas, while allowing Israel to terrorize civilians in Gaza the West Bank while the US terrorized civilians in Somalia, Congo Iraq Afghanistan and now the US is indebted to bankers for the costs of making war to protect Jews only Israel which rules out Congressional roost against the will and wishes of the American peoples outside of their zionist leaderships strangulated puppet farm of duped dolts. What happened, we all want to know?
Hi ho Hi Ho it’s off to work I go is the song of indebted workers with bills to pay and no less so the tune of nations who owe foreign bankers with home bases on US soil with names like the FED, Goldman Sachs, and others money is the root of all evils so it is said and the US has bedded down with the most devious type of loan sharks ever, geopolitical sharks devouring land and ognoring all else , even humanity in their zeal to dominate the planets peoples and nations by suffocating debt peonage.Here’s how they did it…
Wars won are like drugs to the egotists of conflicts resolved by brute force between idealistically counterposed parties. The US was drawn out of it’s cacoon so to speak, into war against Germany, Hitlers ravaging of the Jewish populous while zionist worked like devils to herd Jews to Palestine from their fearfully insecure moorings in Eastern Europe. Two strategies were and yet still are employed to keep this war train running that delivers Jerusalem to the Jews under the protections and agressive feignts,occupations and bankers coups and corrupting influences of NATO allies under the direction of their despot USA under the Star of David’s comptrol and managment.
The question is, are we the people being used to build Israel, then when it is secure, empowered and sure footed we lose our nation wholly to the service of debts garnered in service to the lenders of such debts. The thought that massive Jewish banking, investment, medical industry control via ownership and the controlling interests of Governance Sacks ,which screwed Greece all can come home to roost on mother Americas door step seem unpalatable to the ruling elites of the USA’s zionist regimes and partnerships in the New World Order, but the axiom, however campy and impetuous it is applies in stark reminder to the bankers gunners, what comes around goes around, right. The muscleheads of US Bohemia club and their respective firms Lockheed Martin Boeing, etc etc and of course the massive Homeland security mega world of spy vrs spy paranoia which extends into all of NATO much of Eastern Europe colored revolution states and into the Latin nations, albeit begrudgingly.all need money to field their operatives and operations which leaves the US workers a bit stranded in terms of money to build small business, expand existing business or work in social services enrichments which teach Americans the good life as opposed to the indebted life.
The truth is ugly, the zionist infiltrations of US everything is replete with the reignation of US diplomats and legislators that they work primarilty for Israel’s foreign policies and if these policies starve average Americans and common peoples in nations which Israel seeks to subjugate, dominate and pillage as they have the US France UK EU and Canada of their soveriegn rights to determine their own foreign policy irrespective of Jews only Israeli thrusts through the hearts of their minions of finance by debt peonage wiles. Is it any wonder that the hosts of the zionist end up being devoured by this rapacious beasts ignoble covetousness of others possessions, lands and rights under the law?
Israel is a bantustan of the zionists, an excuse to rampage over humanity with brutal means that serve only brutal peoples with arrogant wiles as their ways and means, the real prize isnt that arid waterless grave of desert in Palestine, but the fertile lands of the USA, Canada,South America and the oil rich regions of Asia Middle east and far eastern nations.
The target was China in the early part of the decade and China became disgusted with both Israel and the US subversive ways, smarmy clap traps and colossal ignorance of it’s leadership in terms of where they take the USA, why and what happens as the end games unfold in 3 dimensions.
Puny banker antagonises wretched angry military leadership of the US and get;s his due punishment or massive beast rendered defensless by puny banker, who knows how it ends but if the bankers beat their own beast into it’s role as bigots bastard, the US deserves to be devoured by this Jewish atheism parading as Holy Land theme Park guide to eternally connected Jews and their coveted Israel. To be clear the US put all it’s eggs in one basket and now is stuck with fucking Santa Clause and the Easter bunny and debts higher than the yearly take in GDP, I may not be an economist but I do know a few things about money and this is the end of rthe US either way either take on more debt or more austerity and die slowly trying to hide the reasons from the people or attack where the target is softest, most insecure and vulnerable, if you have the nerve, if not decline is like shit, it happens every day welcome to the third world.
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