Nail Biting Time
By David Truskoff
23 September, 2007
Countercurrents.orgHallelujah! The Fed cut the interest rates. Newspapers clear across the USA had front page Headlines such as, "Rate drops, Dow leaps. The New York stock exchange gained more than three hundred points.
All that it means to the average American is that the rich will get more rich and the poor will get poorer. For days before the increase actually happened it was expected by those close to the market. If you had your computers ready and bought early and bought big can you imagine the profits that you would have gained? Let’s say you invested $250, 000 on 9/18 or 9/17/2007 and the market went up as you expected over 300 points; your profit would be tremendous. Of course you would have to be the person or organization that could have the $250,000 to invest in the first place.
After the market went down 50 points on the twentieth the Associated Press ran this story, "profit taking sends stocks lower." Wall street had driven the Dow Jones industrials up more than 400 points in just two days after the Fed’s half-point rate reduction, so it was expected that investors would eventually stop to cash in gains."
The fact is that the foundation the market was built on was the premise that if workers put their money into the market to help companies grow it would mean more jobs and a better economy. That has not been the case for a long time. If the average worker puts money into his company that same company may send his job overseas. The Average worker does not benefit from the stock market gyrations.
Mr. Greenspan the ex chairman of the United States Federal Reserve Board, which oversees the Federal Reserve Bank, said In his book, that he worries if wages for the average US worker do not start to rise more quickly political support for free markets may be undermined.
Greenspan also said the chances for a recession in the United States were still "somewhat more" than 1 out of 3, despite the cut in the Fed's overnight federal funds rate to 4.75 percent, but cautioned it was hard to be more precise.
In the American game of football, when a quarterback is running to his right and does not see a defender about to hit him on his left it is called being blind sided. That is exactly what Wall Street has done to the average worker in America. They are made to think that they are running for a score when in fact they are losing ground.
When Alan Greenspan was on the Jon Stewart program (9/19/2007) he admitted that the need to stimulate the economy was to get the people to have the confidence to spend more. Ever since the market crash of 1929 Americans have always been told that the market crash was the reason for the great depression. The reason for the market crash and the roles of the uncontrolled robber barons is seldom discussed. So Americans are led to believe that if the market is doing well, America is doing well.
On the same program Greenspan said that the big boost in the market was to give the American public that confidence.
In 2006 USA Today ran this story, "U.S. income inequality has risen to such a level that "there are signs that (it) is intensifying resistance to globalization, impairing social cohesion, and could, ultimately, undermine American democracy," San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank President Janet Yellen said.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke recently cautioned that without steps to smooth the effects of a changing economy, people could "become less willing to accept the dynamism that is so essential to economic progress. Although we Americans strive to provide equality of economic opportunity, we do not guarantee equality of economic outcomes, nor should we," Bernanke said. "That said, we also believe that no one should be allowed to slip too far down the economic ladder."
The last twenty years have shown the top 300,000 Americans collectively enjoyed almost as much income as the bottom 150 million Americans. Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics, said such growing disparities were significant in terms of social and political stability.
Prof. Emmanuel Saez, the University of California, Berkeley, economist who analyzed the Internal Revenue Service data, said such growing disparities were significant in terms of social and political stability. "If the economy is growing but only a few are enjoying the benefits, it goes to our sense of fairness," Professor Saez said. "It can have important political consequences."
One can now see why the mass media, in particular Rupert Murdoch’s world wide media empire, in the USA and UK and the Australian press are almost daily running stories about the evil of Communism. They very often tell their readers that Communism is dead. If that is so why do they refuse to bury it? The answer is that it is nail-biting time. They know as those quoted above know. A social upheaval is on the horizon and no one knows who or what is going to fill the void.
USA is no longer a world leader and has not been such since it lost the war in Vietnam.
A political surge is growing in Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe and yes even in the UK toward new leadership and new politics.
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