"Voting and calling representatives won't do any good, we need a revolution! The whole system has to change!" I have said this myself in the past, and I have heard this from other people countless times.
"They would rather kill us all than change the system!" Said about the 1%.
I spent ten years in a revolutionary movement. I've never lived through a revolution, but I have talked to many people from Central and South America that have, and read about many revolutions in history.
Violent revolution is not a solution. It does change a lot of things in a seemingly "quick" fashion, but only because of years of work by a few individuals that were prepared for the moment of a mass uprising, and had a plan to take power. These people- for the most part- had their own agendas, and just ended up replacing the faces in power, and making cosmetic changes to the power structure. The masses of people have never been in power. There has never been a "people's government." (Iceland might be, but I haven't researched it enough yet. They did make a lot of changes without violence.)
And revolutions are wars, and wars are a nightmare. Everybody suffers. (A few psychopaths, like George H.W. Bush, prosper and thrive, and usually live to propagate more wars.)
There are 7 billion people on this planet, twice the population of all the civilizations before us, twice the population of the world in 1970, and we are running out of drinkable water on a global scale. Any mass death requires disposal of the dead, and treatment of wounded. We really don't have the resources for this. Our species can't afford to solve problems with violence anymore.
The American Revolution created a kind of Republic that is unique in the world. Freedom of and from religion, democratic mass voting (except for the President), the Constitution, all of these things were created after the revolution against the monarchy. People had to think up these new modes of government and bring them into existence. There was debate and disagreement, countless discussions.
None of the bloodshed and sacrifice of the revolution would have made a damn bit of difference without the work that came afterward.
For the first time in history, we could actually accomplish everything WITHOUT the violent uprising and war. We could create a whole new mode of government power, run by and for the people, without killing each other.
From roughly age 16 to age 26 I advocated armed revolution in the U.S. I sold newspapers and talked to people and went to demonstrations and organized conferences and rallies. I don't hold the same beliefs anymore but I learned a lot and talked to a lot of people about politics and things that really matter in their lives.
Back then (the 1980's) there was no internet and no cell phones. I remember trying to get information on the MOVE massacre in Philadelphia. I had to go to different libraries, look in card catalogs and at microfiche, track down people that had videotaped news segments. (Video machines were still very new then, and personal video cameras were cumbersome and heavy.) Then a leaflet had to be written and photocopied and distributed on the street in my spare time.
To talk to people I had to have all of the facts in my
head or on a piece of paper in front me. Most people don't really want
to know about things that are happening because it is disturbing. (Most
people in our country have the luxury of avoiding political interaction
with their government. This is very different than avoidance in poor countries
where leisure time of any kind is very limited, and simply questioning politicians can mean imprisonment and/or death.)
Even in areas that were responsive and sympathetic - in the MOVE example we went to South Central Los Angeles- we were encountering people when they were out shopping, or running errands. They could buy the paper or take a leaflet, but to find out more, they had to keep in touch with us, calling the bookstore to find out when an action might be, or we had to call them.
It was a lot easier for people in power to lie and cover up dishonest and deadly actions. And many people who didn't want to be disturbed by cold, hard evidence of their governments misdeeds were able to dismiss the few people like me that they might encounter.
Research that took months and even years in 1985, can be found on line in minutes. Tens of petitions can be signed on line in an hour. Hundreds of elected officials can be emailed instantly in the time it took to write one letter and mail it.
A lot of people that say "there has to be revolution" really mean "I am not going to do anything until it gets so bad that I can't ignore it anymore." But a lot of people really don't think that anything can be done unless we overthrow the existing power structure, with violence. Which means they have to wait around until enough other people will revolt with them.
Which means things have to get really, really bad.
This is the first time in 35 years that I have felt like a revolutionary uprising might occur in the U.S.A. The only other time was in Los Angeles after the police that beat Rodney King were acquitted in 1992.
The revolt that is brewing is another sign of a new world. It's not the usual suspects this time. It's the Good Ole Boys that are taking over government buildings and hoarding guns and ammo. As someone said to me at a Ferguson protest "Equality feels like privilege or special treatment to the oppressed, and it feels like discrimination to the oppressor."
In Ferguson it was the mostly white Peacekeepers walking around with guns, not the Black Panthers. The paranoid delusions of the Dylan Roof's and the Donald Drumpf's are not completely paranoid or delusional. They are losing their privilege. America is not "Great" for racists anymore. The status quo no longer serves them first, because the rest of us demanded a more equitable and fair society.
The Armchair Revolution and Phoning It In are more effective now than an armed uprising. For the first time in history, we can make revolutionary change without making revolution. We can, literally, "call them on their bullshit." Make them answer to you and work for you.
Make this country great. Not "again", but for the first time. Your mind, your time, and your phone (or computer), are the only weapons you need.
OPTINSTL
OCCUPY! PUBLIC TRANSIT Image by Eric Drooker for Occupy Wall Street, click on image for Drooker's website
Showing posts with label war. Show all posts
Showing posts with label war. Show all posts
Saturday, March 12, 2016
Tuesday, May 6, 2014
WHAT METRO'S ACCOUNTING HAS TAUGHT ME ABOUT THE NATIONAL AND GLOBAL ECONOMY
I haven't been posting the last few days because I started working on a
plan for unemployed and low-income to get discounted or free passes. (I hope to post both soon.)
I've been looking at the sales tax revenues, and Metro's annual fiscal
reports.
I've also been trying to come up with some sort of model where Metro would be financially solvent.
They don't have an ideal model for solvency. Most public transit agencies operate at a loss, with two-thirds or more of their funding from local, state, and federal sources. They are just going to keep plodding along, doing the same thing everyone else is doing. So it is up to us-- the public transit riders-- to find solutions.
This is some of what I have been learning and thinking about:
Even if Metro raises the fares in July, and again in two years, they will never be viable in their current incarnation.
To be solvent right now, Metro would need between $4.50 to $5.80 per boarding! NOT per person, per boarding-- that 55 million per year statistic they like to throw around. That's just their operating expense. That doesn't include paying off all their debts.
(The $1.30 variance is due to the fact I do not know what their "Depreciation and Amortization" is really hiding. I do know that eliminating 5 million in "Contributions to Outside Entities" would cover the 2.5 million a year they claim they need from the riders.)
As I began to examine Metro's annual fiscal reports, I have had to study how bonds are structured, public/private partnerships, and public transit agencies generally-- in particular how tied they are to local "business development".
I have had to research the structure of government funding for both public entities and private business development. This has further led me to investigate things like "fiat currency" and money generally, foreign "aid", banking and the Federal Reserve, and, of course, bonds.
In my post "Metro Is Juggling A Lot Of Bonds" I compare our public transit agency to Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers before the economic collapse in 2008 and 2009.
http://optinstl.blogspot.com/2014/04/metro-is-juggling-lot-of-bonds.html
Metro isn't the only agency that involves itself in "business development" using (pardon the pun) government funding as a vehicle for private development and individual political careers.
Someone gave me the book "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man," by John Perkins on Friday, and I read the whole thing on Sunday.
From Wikipedia:
Economic hit men (EHMs) are highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars. They funnel money from the World Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and other foreign "aid" organizations into the coffers of huge corporations and the pockets of a few wealthy families who control the planet's natural resources. Their tools included fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs, extortion, sex, and murder. They play a game as old as empire, but one that has taken on new and terrifying dimensions during this time of globalization.
These days, global dominance is no long dependent on military invasions and "manifest destiny". Instead of sending in an army to "bring freedom and Christianity" to the impoverished heathens of the world (and gain control of their natural resources and cheap labor), private industry-- Like Halliburton, once run by Dick Cheney, to use one familiar example-- go to a place like, say, Ecuador, and convince the rich people and government to "invest" in new roads and bridges (sound familiar, cough-County Executive and Prop A- cough?) and electrical grids, plumbing, and of course, oil and gas pipelines and refineries.
Don't worry, wealthy Ecuadorians and government, you don't have to come up with the money up front! The U.S. government via USAID will loan your country the money to hire our contractors, and your country will pay the loan back with all the money you make from this modernization! We will "create jobs" and "new services" and you will attract lots of "talented young professionals" that will make you even richer, and saddle your country with a debt to the U.S.!
The rich people say "yay, more money for us!" And the U.S. government loans them a bunch of money in "foreign aid" so that they can hire and pay companies like Halliburton. Those companies come in and cut down the rain forest and put oil pipelines and electrical grids to run the pipelines.
Who is paying that debt you ask? Not the wealthy. Not the government. Ecuador, and other countries like it that have accepted U.S. foreign "aid", have become a modern slave plantation. The slave owners owe the U.S. government a lot of money for all those pipelines and modernizations ("business development") and now the slaves better pick a lot of "cotton" (oil) to pay it off.
In all of the places where this has occurred, the average people are actually worse off than they were before the U.S. industry and government loans.
Now, the flip side of this is a place like Saudi Arabia. This oil rich nation doesn't need the U.S., but the U.S. needs Arabian oil. Those crafty developers sold the wealthy of Arabia on the idea of modernized, western-style, skyscraper filled cities. "It will be better than Vegas!" They said. And the Saudi's agreed.
But they are not in debt to us. And the skyscrapers that you see inDubai (EDIT: sorry my bad- Dubai is in the United Arab Emirates- actually a country that has benefitted a lot more than even the Saudis from petro dollars.) were constructed with petrodollars, that is, money the U.S. pays to Saudi Arabia for oil imports. Clever, huh?
Does that benefit the taxpayer of the U.S.? Not really. Of course, our cars keep getting fueled with Saudi oil. But that money the government is "loaning" in "aid" is your tax dollars. And it's all going right into the pockets of Halliburton executives. Many of whom end up as our politicians (not just Cheney).
You know, like how John Nations becomes the head of Metro, and receives a $250,000 a year salary to build Metrolink stations for the likes of companies like Cortex. (http://optinstl.blogspot.com/2014/04/metro-optinstl-is-driven-by-you.html)
John Nations is very vocal about his purpose at Metro. He is there for five years so that he can run for either a Senate seat, or Governor, depending on who you talk to. Public transit? That's an after-thought. That is just a necessary technicality. Nations sole responsibility is to make sure the local Cheney's and Halliburton's are happy, so that they will contribute to his campaign finance fund.
Or how people like County Executive Charlie Dooley need to make sure that his friends at Musick construction get all the construction jobs for the Metrolink.
It is not just that the inflated statistics of the "Economic Hit Men" and croney capitalism have become the new economic success model for "business as usual", it is that profit is funnelled only to a certain section of society: Big business and the already wealthiest individuals, and the two things that keep the wealth flowing to them: the military, and the government.
Substitute the U.S. military for the Saint Louis city and county courts and lawyers. Our lawyers and judges are so wealthy because there is so much crime. There is so much crime because half the city is a 1st world ghetto-- the national version of the 3rd world, international sweat shop.
You know, like those children and prisoners in China working to make t-shirts and stuff? http://www.businessinsider.com/letter-in-saks-bag-from-china-2014-4#!JkEIe
The Chinese government has to accept payment for these manufactured goods. They accept the payment in U.S. Treasury Bonds. That is why you hear that Chinese own 1.5 Trillion of the U.S. Debt. (You know, that debt that equals $55,000 for every man, woman and child in the U.S. And $155,000 per taxpayer?)
From:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/10/17/china_bond_purchases_stop_being_wrong.html
Many objects are manufactured in China these days, and many of those objects are purchased by people and firms located in the United States of America. And before an American firm can purchase something from a Chinese firm, the American firm needs to trade some of its US dollars for some Chinese money. Thus America ends up with more Chinese-made goods and China ends up with more American money.
From:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ianshepherdson/2013/10/23/four-big-reasons-why-china-will-keep-buying-treasuries/
...once you accept the idea that China’s dollar earnings mostly have to stay as dollars, it is clear that there are no alternatives to owning U.S. securities, government and private. There no other safe, liquid investments available in the necessary quantities. At the margin, China’s sovereign wealth fund can buy equities and real assets like property, but the bulk of the overall portfolio has to be held in liquid securities. These are foreign exchange reserves, remember, not some pot of spare money to be gambled away.
The Chinese government is not going to let their own money's value increase, or demand higher wages and safer conditions for those sweat shop workers, because they need those foreign exchange reserves to make their country wealthy. (And that means make their government and rich families- the Chinese 1%- richer. See it doesn't matter what race or religion or what country. The world is really about the rich profiting from the poor. All the other divisions are to keep us fighting each other instead of them.)
The Chinese government need the U.S. dollar to stay strong. That way they can keep making a profit from all that sweat shop and prison labor.
This works out for the U.S. government, too. U.S. corporations have lots of "aid" and "modernization" and "democracy" to sell to the oil producing nations. And then there is always "re-building" after a war, or a natural disaster.
From:
http://www.truth-out.org/archive/component/k2/item/68279:henry-pelifian--the-iraq-war-and-crony-democracy
In "Cronies," it is clear why Halliburton hired Mr. Cheney, for he "knew how to vacuum up federal money and federal contracts." Other facts from "Cronies": During Cheney's tenure at Halliburton, he nearly doubled the amount of federal contracts to $2.3 billion. Also, Cheney assisted the parent company, Brown & Root, in receiving a fifteenfold increase in federally backed loans and insurance from the Export-Import Bank and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation. Mr. Cheney understood the importance of lobbying, for he doubled political donations while at Halliburton. According to the Center for Public Integrity and mentioned in "Cronies," seventy companies and individuals who were substantial contributors to the Bush-Cheney campaign have been awarded billions of dollars in contracts in Iraq.
Have we become a nation of lobbyists, for lobbyists, and by lobbyists? The crony democracy chain links politicians, government appointees, corporations, government contracts and lobbyists. The chain includes interchangeable employment with each successive administration from government officials to corporate CEO or Washington lobbyist. The goal is profit at government expense. What is the financial calculation of waste and abuse in such a system?
(This is also worth reading: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2010/jun/09/arianna-huffington/halliburton-kbr-and-iraq-war-contracting-history-s/)
There is enough money in the world for every single person to have enough to eat, a place to sleep, and medical care.
According to Jeffrey Sachs: http://www.visionofearth.org/economics/ending-poverty/how-much-would-it-cost-to-end-extreme-poverty-in-the-world/
To end extreme poverty worldwide in 20 years, Sachs calculated that the total cost per year would be about $175 billion. This represents less than one percent of the combined income of the richest countries in the world.
...
The military budget in the USA is about $680 billion per year3. A large amount of other funding is directly connected to military spending in the states, bringing the total closer to $1 trillion per year4.Even if we assume the lesser of these numbers, annual defense spending in the US is about four times as much money as is needed to begin rapidly ending extreme poverty in the entire world. If some of the US military’s monstrous budget could be channelled towards humanitarian goals, then extreme poverty in our world could quickly become a thing of the past.
There is enough money, it is just not being distributed in a way that is meaningful. It's all about "profit" for the corporations and corporate leaders.
When wealthy people buy a bond, whether it the Chinese government buying Treasury bonds, or William "Bucky" Bush's St. Louis neighbor buying a Metro municipal bond, they expect not only a nice return on their investment financially, they expect to be catered to.
That means no Metrolink running through the northside neighborhoods that serve only to supply surplus labor that will work cheap and not complain. Keep those people incarcerated by lack of decent public transportation. Make sure the slave-maid has to ride the bus for two or three hours to get to the plantation house.
That money is also not to be spent improving those neighborhoods. They aren't earning enough to pay for improved street services. How can they, on such low wages?
In St. Louis, there is enough money for public transit to be absolutely free of charge. Rider revenues could be easily covered by Prop A's one half of one percent sales tax in the county and one quarter of one percent in the city, if the full amount was used for operating expenses.
But it can't. Even though Prop A is straight revenue, most of the money Metro receives (or so the man at Dooley's office told me) goes to paying its bonds-- it's IOU's.
Metro operated at a loss of $249,514,470 in 2013. So no matter how often they raise fares, they will never have enough.
And it is so burdened by debt that another fluctuation in the market could cripple it completely.
And if you have read this whole post, you probably understand as I do, that this current global economic model is destined to crash-- again and again.
This system needs constant, voracious expansion. That can only occur if more construction and "business development" is needed, paying the lowest possible wages and providing the fewest possible services.
Find a reason to invade another country, like the Russians in the Ukraine. Or start a war, as the Bush-Cheney regime did in Iraq.
Or if you're lucky, there will be a natural disaster, like Hurricane Sandy:
http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/feb/19/lawrence-odonnell/lawrence-odonnell-says-chris-christie-steered-6-mi/
Or an earthquake in Haiti. (Sorry, did you think the Red Cross was sacred?)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/24/red-cross-earthquake-haiti-where-did-the-money-go_n_1228334.html
This system is not going to change by itself. Not globally, nationally, or locally. These people make money whether there is war or peace. They make MORE money the smaller the middle class is and the more poor people there are.
It is only going to change when enough of us DEMAND our fair share. And frankly, that time is long passed.
OCCUPY!
PS: if you read all the way through this, you might be interested in this stuff as well:
On "Foreign Aid":
http://www.transparency.org/topic/detail/humanitarian_assistance
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2012/10/03/The-Scandal-That-Is-Foreign-Aid
On the Economics of the 1%:
http://www.upworthy.com/what-the-1-dont-want-you-to-know?g=3&c=hpstream
BILL MOYERS: Here’s Piketty’s main point: capital tends to produce real returns of 4 to 5 percent, and economic growth is much slower. What's the practical result of that?
PAUL KRUGMAN: What that means is that if you have a large fortune, or a family has a large fortune, they can -- the inheritors of that large fortune -- can live very, very well. They can live an extraordinary standard of living and still put a large fraction of the income from that fortune aside and the fortune will grow faster than the economy.
On Fiat currency:
http://dailyreckoning.com/fiat-currency/
http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/how-the-fiat-system-works.html
I've also been trying to come up with some sort of model where Metro would be financially solvent.
They don't have an ideal model for solvency. Most public transit agencies operate at a loss, with two-thirds or more of their funding from local, state, and federal sources. They are just going to keep plodding along, doing the same thing everyone else is doing. So it is up to us-- the public transit riders-- to find solutions.
This is some of what I have been learning and thinking about:
Even if Metro raises the fares in July, and again in two years, they will never be viable in their current incarnation.
To be solvent right now, Metro would need between $4.50 to $5.80 per boarding! NOT per person, per boarding-- that 55 million per year statistic they like to throw around. That's just their operating expense. That doesn't include paying off all their debts.
(The $1.30 variance is due to the fact I do not know what their "Depreciation and Amortization" is really hiding. I do know that eliminating 5 million in "Contributions to Outside Entities" would cover the 2.5 million a year they claim they need from the riders.)
As I began to examine Metro's annual fiscal reports, I have had to study how bonds are structured, public/private partnerships, and public transit agencies generally-- in particular how tied they are to local "business development".
I have had to research the structure of government funding for both public entities and private business development. This has further led me to investigate things like "fiat currency" and money generally, foreign "aid", banking and the Federal Reserve, and, of course, bonds.
In my post "Metro Is Juggling A Lot Of Bonds" I compare our public transit agency to Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers before the economic collapse in 2008 and 2009.
http://optinstl.blogspot.com/2014/04/metro-is-juggling-lot-of-bonds.html
Metro isn't the only agency that involves itself in "business development" using (pardon the pun) government funding as a vehicle for private development and individual political careers.
Someone gave me the book "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man," by John Perkins on Friday, and I read the whole thing on Sunday.
From Wikipedia:
Economic hit men (EHMs) are highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars. They funnel money from the World Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and other foreign "aid" organizations into the coffers of huge corporations and the pockets of a few wealthy families who control the planet's natural resources. Their tools included fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs, extortion, sex, and murder. They play a game as old as empire, but one that has taken on new and terrifying dimensions during this time of globalization.
These days, global dominance is no long dependent on military invasions and "manifest destiny". Instead of sending in an army to "bring freedom and Christianity" to the impoverished heathens of the world (and gain control of their natural resources and cheap labor), private industry-- Like Halliburton, once run by Dick Cheney, to use one familiar example-- go to a place like, say, Ecuador, and convince the rich people and government to "invest" in new roads and bridges (sound familiar, cough-County Executive and Prop A- cough?) and electrical grids, plumbing, and of course, oil and gas pipelines and refineries.
Don't worry, wealthy Ecuadorians and government, you don't have to come up with the money up front! The U.S. government via USAID will loan your country the money to hire our contractors, and your country will pay the loan back with all the money you make from this modernization! We will "create jobs" and "new services" and you will attract lots of "talented young professionals" that will make you even richer, and saddle your country with a debt to the U.S.!
The rich people say "yay, more money for us!" And the U.S. government loans them a bunch of money in "foreign aid" so that they can hire and pay companies like Halliburton. Those companies come in and cut down the rain forest and put oil pipelines and electrical grids to run the pipelines.
Who is paying that debt you ask? Not the wealthy. Not the government. Ecuador, and other countries like it that have accepted U.S. foreign "aid", have become a modern slave plantation. The slave owners owe the U.S. government a lot of money for all those pipelines and modernizations ("business development") and now the slaves better pick a lot of "cotton" (oil) to pay it off.
In all of the places where this has occurred, the average people are actually worse off than they were before the U.S. industry and government loans.
Now, the flip side of this is a place like Saudi Arabia. This oil rich nation doesn't need the U.S., but the U.S. needs Arabian oil. Those crafty developers sold the wealthy of Arabia on the idea of modernized, western-style, skyscraper filled cities. "It will be better than Vegas!" They said. And the Saudi's agreed.
But they are not in debt to us. And the skyscrapers that you see in
Does that benefit the taxpayer of the U.S.? Not really. Of course, our cars keep getting fueled with Saudi oil. But that money the government is "loaning" in "aid" is your tax dollars. And it's all going right into the pockets of Halliburton executives. Many of whom end up as our politicians (not just Cheney).
You know, like how John Nations becomes the head of Metro, and receives a $250,000 a year salary to build Metrolink stations for the likes of companies like Cortex. (http://optinstl.blogspot.com/2014/04/metro-optinstl-is-driven-by-you.html)
John Nations is very vocal about his purpose at Metro. He is there for five years so that he can run for either a Senate seat, or Governor, depending on who you talk to. Public transit? That's an after-thought. That is just a necessary technicality. Nations sole responsibility is to make sure the local Cheney's and Halliburton's are happy, so that they will contribute to his campaign finance fund.
Or how people like County Executive Charlie Dooley need to make sure that his friends at Musick construction get all the construction jobs for the Metrolink.
It is not just that the inflated statistics of the "Economic Hit Men" and croney capitalism have become the new economic success model for "business as usual", it is that profit is funnelled only to a certain section of society: Big business and the already wealthiest individuals, and the two things that keep the wealth flowing to them: the military, and the government.
Substitute the U.S. military for the Saint Louis city and county courts and lawyers. Our lawyers and judges are so wealthy because there is so much crime. There is so much crime because half the city is a 1st world ghetto-- the national version of the 3rd world, international sweat shop.
You know, like those children and prisoners in China working to make t-shirts and stuff? http://www.businessinsider.com/letter-in-saks-bag-from-china-2014-4#!JkEIe
The Chinese government has to accept payment for these manufactured goods. They accept the payment in U.S. Treasury Bonds. That is why you hear that Chinese own 1.5 Trillion of the U.S. Debt. (You know, that debt that equals $55,000 for every man, woman and child in the U.S. And $155,000 per taxpayer?)
From:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/10/17/china_bond_purchases_stop_being_wrong.html
Many objects are manufactured in China these days, and many of those objects are purchased by people and firms located in the United States of America. And before an American firm can purchase something from a Chinese firm, the American firm needs to trade some of its US dollars for some Chinese money. Thus America ends up with more Chinese-made goods and China ends up with more American money.
Now in the natural course of floating exchange rates what would
happen here is that the dollar price of Chinese money would rise, and
this would increase the price of Chinese-made stuff in America and
decrease the price of American-made stuff in China. That in turn would
tend to discourage the flow of Chinese-made stuff to the United States
of America.
But the Chinese government for various reasons wants to subsidize
Chinese manufacturing. So they want to send those dollars they
accumulate back to the United States
From:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ianshepherdson/2013/10/23/four-big-reasons-why-china-will-keep-buying-treasuries/
...once you accept the idea that China’s dollar earnings mostly have to stay as dollars, it is clear that there are no alternatives to owning U.S. securities, government and private. There no other safe, liquid investments available in the necessary quantities. At the margin, China’s sovereign wealth fund can buy equities and real assets like property, but the bulk of the overall portfolio has to be held in liquid securities. These are foreign exchange reserves, remember, not some pot of spare money to be gambled away.
The Chinese government is not going to let their own money's value increase, or demand higher wages and safer conditions for those sweat shop workers, because they need those foreign exchange reserves to make their country wealthy. (And that means make their government and rich families- the Chinese 1%- richer. See it doesn't matter what race or religion or what country. The world is really about the rich profiting from the poor. All the other divisions are to keep us fighting each other instead of them.)
The Chinese government need the U.S. dollar to stay strong. That way they can keep making a profit from all that sweat shop and prison labor.
This works out for the U.S. government, too. U.S. corporations have lots of "aid" and "modernization" and "democracy" to sell to the oil producing nations. And then there is always "re-building" after a war, or a natural disaster.
From:
http://www.truth-out.org/archive/component/k2/item/68279:henry-pelifian--the-iraq-war-and-crony-democracy
In "Cronies," it is clear why Halliburton hired Mr. Cheney, for he "knew how to vacuum up federal money and federal contracts." Other facts from "Cronies": During Cheney's tenure at Halliburton, he nearly doubled the amount of federal contracts to $2.3 billion. Also, Cheney assisted the parent company, Brown & Root, in receiving a fifteenfold increase in federally backed loans and insurance from the Export-Import Bank and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation. Mr. Cheney understood the importance of lobbying, for he doubled political donations while at Halliburton. According to the Center for Public Integrity and mentioned in "Cronies," seventy companies and individuals who were substantial contributors to the Bush-Cheney campaign have been awarded billions of dollars in contracts in Iraq.
Have we become a nation of lobbyists, for lobbyists, and by lobbyists? The crony democracy chain links politicians, government appointees, corporations, government contracts and lobbyists. The chain includes interchangeable employment with each successive administration from government officials to corporate CEO or Washington lobbyist. The goal is profit at government expense. What is the financial calculation of waste and abuse in such a system?
(This is also worth reading: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2010/jun/09/arianna-huffington/halliburton-kbr-and-iraq-war-contracting-history-s/)
There is enough money in the world for every single person to have enough to eat, a place to sleep, and medical care.
According to Jeffrey Sachs: http://www.visionofearth.org/economics/ending-poverty/how-much-would-it-cost-to-end-extreme-poverty-in-the-world/
To end extreme poverty worldwide in 20 years, Sachs calculated that the total cost per year would be about $175 billion. This represents less than one percent of the combined income of the richest countries in the world.
...
The military budget in the USA is about $680 billion per year3. A large amount of other funding is directly connected to military spending in the states, bringing the total closer to $1 trillion per year4.Even if we assume the lesser of these numbers, annual defense spending in the US is about four times as much money as is needed to begin rapidly ending extreme poverty in the entire world. If some of the US military’s monstrous budget could be channelled towards humanitarian goals, then extreme poverty in our world could quickly become a thing of the past.
There is enough money, it is just not being distributed in a way that is meaningful. It's all about "profit" for the corporations and corporate leaders.
When wealthy people buy a bond, whether it the Chinese government buying Treasury bonds, or William "Bucky" Bush's St. Louis neighbor buying a Metro municipal bond, they expect not only a nice return on their investment financially, they expect to be catered to.
That means no Metrolink running through the northside neighborhoods that serve only to supply surplus labor that will work cheap and not complain. Keep those people incarcerated by lack of decent public transportation. Make sure the slave-maid has to ride the bus for two or three hours to get to the plantation house.
That money is also not to be spent improving those neighborhoods. They aren't earning enough to pay for improved street services. How can they, on such low wages?
In St. Louis, there is enough money for public transit to be absolutely free of charge. Rider revenues could be easily covered by Prop A's one half of one percent sales tax in the county and one quarter of one percent in the city, if the full amount was used for operating expenses.
But it can't. Even though Prop A is straight revenue, most of the money Metro receives (or so the man at Dooley's office told me) goes to paying its bonds-- it's IOU's.
Metro operated at a loss of $249,514,470 in 2013. So no matter how often they raise fares, they will never have enough.
And it is so burdened by debt that another fluctuation in the market could cripple it completely.
And if you have read this whole post, you probably understand as I do, that this current global economic model is destined to crash-- again and again.
This system needs constant, voracious expansion. That can only occur if more construction and "business development" is needed, paying the lowest possible wages and providing the fewest possible services.
Find a reason to invade another country, like the Russians in the Ukraine. Or start a war, as the Bush-Cheney regime did in Iraq.
Or if you're lucky, there will be a natural disaster, like Hurricane Sandy:
http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/feb/19/lawrence-odonnell/lawrence-odonnell-says-chris-christie-steered-6-mi/
Or an earthquake in Haiti. (Sorry, did you think the Red Cross was sacred?)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/24/red-cross-earthquake-haiti-where-did-the-money-go_n_1228334.html
This system is not going to change by itself. Not globally, nationally, or locally. These people make money whether there is war or peace. They make MORE money the smaller the middle class is and the more poor people there are.
It is only going to change when enough of us DEMAND our fair share. And frankly, that time is long passed.
OCCUPY!
PS: if you read all the way through this, you might be interested in this stuff as well:
On "Foreign Aid":
http://www.transparency.org/topic/detail/humanitarian_assistance
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2012/10/03/The-Scandal-That-Is-Foreign-Aid
On the Economics of the 1%:
http://www.upworthy.com/what-the-1-dont-want-you-to-know?g=3&c=hpstream
BILL MOYERS: Here’s Piketty’s main point: capital tends to produce real returns of 4 to 5 percent, and economic growth is much slower. What's the practical result of that?
PAUL KRUGMAN: What that means is that if you have a large fortune, or a family has a large fortune, they can -- the inheritors of that large fortune -- can live very, very well. They can live an extraordinary standard of living and still put a large fraction of the income from that fortune aside and the fortune will grow faster than the economy.
On Fiat currency:
http://dailyreckoning.com/fiat-currency/
http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/how-the-fiat-system-works.html
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