VHeadline's Washington DC-based commentarist Chris Herz writes: The DOW lost 82% of its value between October of 1929 and July of 1932. During that period there were several rallies where values increased by up to 9% -- very temporarily.
It was not until 1955, after the military Keynesianism of World War II and the beginning years of the Cold War, that the DOW finally surpassed its pre-crash levels.
Paul Craig Roberts, late of the Treasury and the Wall Street Journal tells us that were we to devote somehow 100% of our remaining industrial output to exports we would only decrease the trade deficit by 12%.
Prince and Associates reveal that three-quarters of those whose income is between 1 to 10 millions per annum will vote for McCain and the Republicans. Two-thirds of those pulling down still higher incomes will vote Obama and the Democrats.
For the mean (not average) employee, wages have been in decline since 1973. All income gains since then have been achieved by the top 10% of households. With most concentrated in the hands of about 100,000.
These facts are not comfortable. But offering lies and pabulum for the comfort of those who would deceive themselves and others is NOT our job at VHeadline. You want pretty stories? Read the Washington Post.
If Democrat Barack Obama is elected in less than a month as our President, and that is not yet a done deal, he is going to face a situation which may well call not only for the devious political skills of a Franklin D. Roosevelt but also the courage and perseverance of an Abraham Lincoln.
For it was not possible to accomplish the liquidation of a nation's economy without first managing the destruction of its polity. And before gutting its constitutional organs it was necessary to fragment its population. And all this has been done. Before us we see the fruits of a bitter harvest.
It was really the election of Richard M. Nixon first in 1968, and then his re-election in 1972 which marked the great turning. True, his predecessor but one, John Kennedy began the economic meltdown by facilitating the dismantling of the progressive income tax (Kennedy's family were and remain filthy rich). But it was Nixon, who exploited white resentment of rights for blacks and pacifism to tie the super-rich of the northeast to the bellicose racism and religiosity of the south and west. And the rest is history.
Along with social stratification at home we have achieved here the construction of the world's largest GULAG, the de-construction of our health and education infrastructures, and now the devastation of a nation's hard-earned patrimony. Abroad our accomplishments include a trail of millions of dead and maimed. The mass impoverishment and immiseration of whole regions of the world.
But we are indeed the proud sponsors of 13 aircraft carrier task forces, and 10,000 nuclear bombs. In my own home town we breed genetically modified pathogenic virii and bacteria that could destroy whatever life remains after the bombs are detonated. We have no less than 720 military outposts world wide.
And yes, all this has impoverished our nation for sure. But it may be that the damage done by Nixon and his follower Reagan in dividing a people against themselves on harsh racial and class lines, will prove even more intractable.
Obama is no Roosevelt. He specifically and repeatedly denies and denounces all attempts to portray him as some sort of liberal in the New Deal mold. He proposes no diminusion of US militarism; indeed calling for two new divisions in the Army and more in the Marines. He never objects to, even works to increase the military corruption that until just the last few weeks has always been Washington's prime fiscal preoccupation. In fact, by his own statements he supports even an harsher line in the Israel/Palestine mess and in Pakistan and Afghanistan than does the present Bush government.
Any notion that he proposes ending the aggression against Iraq and the expropriation of its oil is pure legend.
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