chycho: Government Shutdown and Appointment of Janet Yellen Guarantees Flow of Funds to Wall Street: They are reducing “two-thirds of this country to subsistence level”, Chris Hedges

Thursday, October 10, 2013

Government Shutdown and Appointment of Janet Yellen Guarantees Flow of Funds to Wall Street: They are reducing “two-thirds of this country to subsistence level”, Chris Hedges

It’s no secret that the only reason the markets have been roaring – since bottoming out in March 2009, the DOW is up approximately 125% and The S&P 500 approximately 120% - is because of unlimited quantitative easing, which peaked at $85 billion a month by December 2012, a last resort, desperate measure that the FOMC began to maintain its ‘growth’ targets. The end result of this program has essentially been the transfer of wealth from Main Street to Wall Street.

“In terms of types of financial wealth, the top one percent of households have 35% of all privately held stock, 64.4% of financial securities, and 62.4% of business equity. The top ten percent have 81% to 94% of stocks, bonds, trust funds, and business equity, and almost 80% of non-home real estate. Since financial wealth is what counts as far as the control of income-producing assets, we can say that just 10% of the people own the United States of America.”

click to enlarge - source

How this plays out with the ‘government shutdown’ and the fears that we will enter a recession if the U.S. Treasury has to step in to prevent a default was summed up in the opening sentence of the following article: “Dollar Seen as Shutdown Loser as Growth Hit Spurs QE”:

“The first U.S. government shutdown in 17 years is stoking speculation that the longer it lasts, the more likely the Federal Reserve will delay reducing its monetary stimulus program.”

This, in conjunction with the nomination of Janet Yellen as chairman of the Federal Reserve can be considered a one-two punch that guarantees the continuation of flow of funds to Wall Street:

“‘She has extended Bernanke’s view that policy needs to be accommodative for a long period of time in a post-crisis environment.’… Yellen has backed Bernanke’s efforts to boost the economy through three rounds of asset purchases that have swelled the Fed’s balance sheet to $3.66 trillion.”

Members of congress have a vested interest in the markets (2), i.e., they own shares in publicly traded companies - a lot of shares (2) - and they risk reduction in wealth if the Federal Reserve turns off the taps and stops funneling hundreds of billions of dollars through Wall Street:

“Boehner is one of 34 members of Congress who took steps to recast their financial portfolios during the financial crisis after phone calls or meetings with Paulson; his successor, Timothy F. Geithner; or Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, according to a Washington Post examination of appointment calendars and congressional disclosure forms.

“The lawmakers, many of whom held leadership positions and committee chairmanships in the House and Senate, changed portions of their portfolios a total of 166 times within two business days of speaking or meeting with the administration officials. The party affiliation of the lawmakers was about evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, 19 to 15….

“‘They shouldn’t be making these trades when they know what they are going to do,’ said Richard W. Painter, who was chief ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush. ‘And what they are going to do is then going to influence the market. If this was going on in the private sector or it was going on in the executive branch, I think the SEC would be investigating.’”

Bernie Sanders "The Truth Is Wall Street Regulates Congress"

That’s why the markets have reacted positively with Yellen’s nomination. It’s that simple. The government shutdown is a game, not a game to help you or me, but a game for certain members of congress to acquire more wealth for themselves and their masters.

As for how we can stop this madness? That’s simple as well. We’re in the midst of a revolution, and as Chris Hedges has implied on multiple occasions, the revolution is well on its way so all we have to do is realize it and pick a side.

“I have seen my share of revolts, insurgencies and revolutions, from the guerrilla conflicts in the 1980s in Central America to the civil wars in Algeria, the Sudan and Yemen, to the Palestinian uprising to the revolutions in East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Romania as well as the wars in the former Yugoslavia. George Orwell wrote that all tyrannies rule through fraud and force, but that once the fraud is exposed they must rely exclusively on force. We have now entered the era of naked force. The vast million-person bureaucracy of the internal security and surveillance state will not be used to stop terrorism but to try and stop us.”

“All of that has been used to essentially, in this reconfiguration of American society… into an oligarchic state, a neofeudalistic state—you criminalize dissent, because they know very well what’s coming, as they reduce roughly two-thirds of this country to subsistence level.”