Sunday, March 27, 2016

Paul Craig Roberts-Neoconservatives Driving World to War

A superb PCR interview. Interesting, he says how Donald Trump can't be controlled by the ruling elite because he doesn't need their money. Trump says he going to have a proper full investigation into 9/11 and this worries them.

Paul Craig Roberts-Neoconservatives Driving World to War


Published on 27 Mar 2016
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts has a new book out titled “The Neoconservative Threat To World Order.” In it, he talks about the dreadful shape of the global economy and how war might be forced on the world. Dr. Roberts, who is also a former Assistant Treasury Secretary, says, “The Neoconservative ideology is American world hegemony . . . this means you have to subdue the others, and this includes Russia and China. These are two nuclear powers with massive military capabilities, and they are in the way of the Neoconservative agenda of World Empire . . . . So, the Neoconservatives are driving the United States and Western Europe into conflict with Russia and China. Russia and China are not going to give up and be American vassals. . . . Our economy is a house of cards. It’s held up by the Federal Reserve. The question is how long can they hold it up? . . . There is no way around the coming war unless the American empire begins unraveling, which it could do

27 comments:

Matt Franko said...

"Our economy is a house of cards. It’s held up by the Federal Reserve. "

LOL!

John said...

In 2008 the US economy was a house of cards! Without all the Fed's intervention the financial sector would have collapsed, taking with it many large industrial companies, which would then have taken many small businesses with it. It would certainly have been worse than the Great Depression.

PCR gets some important stuff terribly wrong, but he's spot on in this case, although for some of the wrong reasons.

Matt Franko said...

John the financial sector DID collapse when their moron "music stopped playing"... the rest of us just went on about our business doing what we do provisioning the US economy and it came right back...

John said...

Matt

You naughty boy! Nevertheless this is a good way to revive the argument as to whether allowing a total collapse would have taken "Main Street" down with it. You think the rest of the economy would have just kept on going and everyone would go "about their business" if the Fed didn't do what it did? The financial sector did not collapse. It had started to collapse, and a few major players went down, but the Fed intervened and stopped total collapse, which would have had an unbearable effect on the US economy. Losing your footing for a brief second with somebody there to catch you is not the same as falling on your face.

As Minsky said, there is no such thing as the "financial economy" and the "real economy". There is only one economy, and allowing a major part of it to collapse is unwise in the extreme. The economy would not have "come right back" without the Fed's extraordinary actions. It would have been Great Depression 2.0. It's an unfortunate fact, but it remains a fact. I for one would have been delighted to see Wall Street and the City of London dig their own graves, jump right in and then have engraved on their tombstones "Financial Criminals: Suicide by Stupidity and Arrogance".

There are no excuses for Wall Street's behaviour, but at the time the Fed had absolutely no other alternative. Having overseen and egged on a fragile financial system, what else could it do but save it? Congress should then have reformed the whole financial sector, but that's another story. Next time, Congress may have no choice but to dismantle the whole architecture, but that's unlikely given the current power interests...

Kaivey said...

It made me think of 'American Exceptionalism' and all that BS.

Tom Hickey said...

Actually, Ben refused at first to step in when Hank was twisting his arm to do so. Ben said it is fiscal, not monetary so Congress has to act.

Senator Obama flew to DC from the campaign trail to lead the argument for a congressional bailout while much of the GOP was ready to scuttle the ship.

It was only subsequently that ben stepped in with infinite liquidity to support the financial system.

John said...

If a dysfunctional Congress won't or can't act, the Fed has no choice but to keep the financial system from imploding. It's the most important part of its mandate. It's the best clearing house yet devised. And as such, it has to administer an efficient clearing operation for the economy. It's the lender of last resort. It abused this position, by keeping the worst offenders still in the game, but the alternative was just too awful to contemplate.

Matt Franko said...

Financials were 40% of SP earnings and they got wiped out and the index went down by 40%... so how did they do a "bailout"?

Fannie???? wiped out.... Freddie???? wiped out.... Lehman????? wiped out... Entire US Commercial Paper market???? wiped out ..... WaMu??? wiped out... Countrywide???? wiped out.... First Union???? wiped out.... Mortgage REITS??? wiped out... Bear Stearns???? wiped out....

I dont know how you guys think there was this big successful "bail out"????

Tom Hickey said...

Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP)

The Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) is a program of the United States government to purchase assets and equity from financial institutions to strengthen its financial sector that was signed into law by U.S. President George W. Bush on October 3, 2008. It was a component of the government's measures in 2008 to address the subprime mortgage crisis.

Matt Franko said...

Well Tom this is like you are Jeb saying that his older brother "kept us safe"... there was allegedly a "bailout" yet most of the firms were totally wiped out and never came back...

John said...

Matt: "Financials were 40% of SP earnings and they got wiped out and the index went down by 40%... so how did they do a "bailout"?"

Between a 40% loss and a 100% loss I know which I'd choose. Their profits are back. So it's all as it was. In fact worse, because the too big too fail banks are now far too big to fail.

I suppose we have different interpretations of "wiped out". Lehman certainly was wiped out. The two biggest actors Fannie and Freddie have been nationalised and will be privatised in due course, when Wall Street needs an artificial boom in profits. Others were kept on life support and only then sold off before they went bust and set off a domino effect. If the markets had their way, it wouldn't have been a Minsky moment, it would have been a Mellon moment: liquidate, liquidate, liquidate.

It was successful in that the country was not dragged into something almost certainly worse than the Great Depression. Congress and the Fed should have done so much more, but they didn't, leaving so many unemployed and many, many other terrible economic and socioeconomic disasters in their dysfunctional wake. We can be thankful that they did the little they did. Any less, and it would be a Mad Max world outside your window.

Tom Hickey said...

Well Tom this is like you are Jeb saying that his older brother "kept us safe"... there was allegedly a "bailout" yet most of the firms were totally wiped out and never came back...

The bailout was for the TBTF banks.

Then, if you recall, when FASB was pressured to drop mark to market for wrk to model, equities took off. Geithner concocted his phony street tests to give the TBTF's a pass, and the Fed rolled over trillions to provide liquidity to disguise insolvency.

Still the crash went vial and spread from finance to the real economy, threatening into engulf major corps. So the Feds stepped in and rescued AIG and GM, for example.

Matt Franko said...

No way...

You give that sector waaaay too much credit...

Flows didnt miss a beat throughout the whole thing, DoD, SS, Medicare/Medicaid, Highways, NASA, Education, Agriculture, etc..

The big problem since 2009 has been the rent we have been paying to turd world oil monopoly rentiers and the domestic oil rentiers who coat tail on the foreign oil cartel ... now that is gone we are going to be in even better shape if we can stave off the return of the oil rent for a few years...

John said...

Wasn't General Electric about to go down too? And this was a relatively innocent player in all the financial crimes and shenanigans. So many giant corporations would have gone down through no fault of their own. And then you had to take into consideration the very many medium and small companies that served the giants. They would have gone down too. The Fed had no choice. Given the pressures and the many binds they found themselves in, the Fed and the Bernanke did a pretty damn fine job.

Tom Hickey said...

Interest rates (price of money), oil (price of energy), commodities (price of materials) and real wage (price of labor) at historic lows — and so is world trade.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/03/wolf-richter-world-trade-collapses-in-dollars-languishes-in-volume.html

Tom Hickey said...

Wasn't General Electric about to go down too?

The chief profit centers of big corps like GM and GE were their financial arms.

Veronica said...

I don't understand some of the comments and attitudes on this post.

It seems obvious to me that the economy in the US is in bad shape; it seems obvious that much of our economy has been shifted abroad. Large number of youth cannot get work and live at home. Michael Hudson paints a most dismal picture of debt peonage and the financialization of the economy. One commentator asserts that "PCR gets some important stuff terribly wrong, but he's spot on in this case, although for some of the wrong reasons." but offers no evidence or examples for his remarks, which imply that those in the know--the inner circle of commentators on the blog, presumably--will understand to what he refers, and others may just take him on faith. Another commentator just resorts to scorn: LOL! Again, no reason given. Those who know will understand. No credit or respect is given to a person who is obviously very respected and accomplished. Elsewhere, comments seem to focus on petty details of this or that corporation.

Roberts, Hudson, Bill Black, and many others point to a highly fragile and deeply corrupt economy and government. The government has clearly been hijacked by powerful banking and other corporate interests; the US has militarized its police and maintains an obscenely bloated and illegal predatory military presence all over the world.

Yet reading here one would surmise that all is well: LOL!

Matt Franko said...

" it seems obvious that much of our economy has been shifted abroad. "

V, the "D" in GDP stands for 'domestic'.... fyi...

Matt Franko said...

Mike's interview with PCR went so bad he couldnt even air it... and Hudson wont even go on Mike's show in the first place...

PCR, Hudson, Black... they are all conspiracy theorists... they think it is all some sort of "neo-liberal conspiracy!" or "control fraud!" or something... they dont understand the system operations so they resort to conspiracy theories and metaphors...

Matt Franko said...

"Still the crash went vial and spread from finance to the real economy,"

No it didnt... no way.... Look at GDP... Tom there is no evidence of this...

The financial sector was mostly effected...

John says "Between a 40% loss and a 100% loss I know which I'd choose."

What are you talking about why would a firm producing oil & gas go to zero because some moron run financial firms failed?

Fedex/UPS moving product around would go to zero? Whhhaaaaat??????

Perdue chickens???? What they are going to all of a sudden stop producing chickens because some morons in finance wiped themselves out?????

So you are saying that Apple coming out with smart phones during that time would go to zero because some incompetents running some financial firms wiped themselves out?

No way... you guys give that sector waaaaaaaayyy too much credit... theyre more like a parasite...

Tom Hickey said...

Look at the employment numbers. That's the real economy. GDP is fictitious.

Corporate profits rose not by investment but by stock buybacks and cutting expenses, much of that the wage bill.

Matt Franko said...

Well yeah all the people working in FIRE got laid off... no kidding....

Mortgage brokers? House flippers? Securities lawyers? Investment bankers? sure there were massive layoffs...

But this is just one sector of our economy...

John said...

Tom: "Look at the employment numbers. That's the real economy."

Absolutely. Then add in all the other socioeconomic disparities. Things aren't as rosy as some make out. Matt's boosterism for Obama's economy is unexpected! We've got the same problem here in the UK. The true unemployment figures, personal indebtedness, inequality and straight out poverty (food banks for example) is frightening. As the saying goes: if something can't go on forever, it won't.

Tom Hickey said...

Well yeah all the people working in FIRE got laid off... no kidding....

Mortgage brokers? House flippers? Securities lawyers? Investment bankers? sure there were massive layoffs...

But this is just one sector of our economy...



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Kaivey said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Kaivey said...

So the 00.1% haven't got fantastically richer while everyone else has bottomed out or got poorer. What's happened over the last 40 years is simply a mirage. There's Zero Hours here in the UK, who would have ever thought that this would happen.

Kaivey said...

Roberts, Hudson, Bill Black, Bill Mitchell, Greg Palast, and many others, are all heroes of mine.