It is now crystal clear for all to see: the Wizards of Wall Street who run the global economy for their own benefit have no clue what they're doing, nor any control over the monster they have set loose.  The Dow Jones continues to bang and bounce like a Cessna over the High Sierras as investors try to determine if the economies of the "civilized" nations are capitalist, communist, or fascist.  If there is anything the markets dislike it is uncertainty, and at this time there is no commodity in greater supply. 

Things are unwinding more rapidly than even most pessimists (once known as realists) predicted.  Had any of the main acts in the three-ring circus that is the 24/7 news business predicted in early 2008 that Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual would cease to exist before year end, they would have been banished from the big tent and ordered to perform outside with the bearded lady and Goat Boy.  Yet, that’s exactly what happened.  Here’s a snapshot of what transpired in the last 3 months:

American International Group (AIG): Currently $2.16; in May  2007, $72.00

Bear Stearns: Absorbed into JPMorganChase to avoid bankruptcy filing; share price in April 2007, $159

Fannie Mae: Currently 65 cents; in June 2007 $69.00

Freddie Mac: Currently 79 cents; in May 2007 $67.00

Lehman Brothers: Currently 6 cents; in February 2007, $85.00

Those bits of financial data are world changing.  When the ongoing financial and geo-political rejiggering is complete, it's about a zero probability that America will return to the consumer/war/debt economy established during the past three decades of corporate globalization.  This was an unsustainable mirage -- a "finance economy" where money is manufactured out of thin air in the form of loans, derivatives, margins, and digital hijinks; nothing more than a globalized Ponzi scheme, smoke and mirrors, mixed with a strong dose of classic imperial overreach. 

In the Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush era, the corporate propagandists morphed freedom and democracy into free-markets, but the archipelago of US military bases that make the world safe for capitalism is no longer affordable under the new, new economy.  De-industrialized America simply cannot finance their 730 military bases in 130 foreign countries, and the natives are not likely to continue loaning money to an insolvent rogue nation with a rapidly devaluing currency.  They’re looking around at the smoking economic and military wreckage and asking themselves: “What’s in this for us?”

The high priest of corporate globalization — neo-liberal demagogue Thomas Freidman — preached from his gilded tower that "The World is Flat."  The true-believers went along with this nonsense — either because it directly benefited them, or because they didn’t do the math… or look at those Hubble photos of Earth from space.  Well, the world is spherical once again, and the days of neo-feudal, flat-earther dark ages has been banished by the light of reality.  Goodbye, and good riddance, to a planet wrecking regime.

Once this three-decade world order disappears forever over the horizon of a round earth, will America return to the industrial powerhouse economy that flourished from World War II until the 1970s?  Not likely; chief obstacles include resource depletion, peak oil, exploding energy costs, crumbling infrastructure, and rampant government, corporate and consumer debt.  This bubble too has popped – the largest in history.  As the pieces of the machine fly off into the stratosphere never to return, what comes in to fill the vacuum is yet to be seen.  Now is the time for sane, fair-minded individuals to take control, lest we leave the reconstruction to the madmen who created the FrankenEconomy.

As we heard in the just concluded two-year charade that dupes Americans into believing that they choose their rulers, the so-called conservative/capitalists stand staunchly against the "redistribution" of wealth.  Unless it means a reverse Robin Hood action that further enriches the super-wealthy ruling elites who vet "our" candidates and write the laws of the land.  Hence $850 billion was instantly sucked upward to reward the high-stakes gamblers who roll big with other people’s money.  Is it possible that "the folks" out there in America's abandoned backwaters still believe this will be trickling back down the pant legs of the globalist gangsters?

Remember back in September that we were told if we didn’t fork over the loot immediately, the ATMs would seize up tomorrow and small business owners would not be able to get loans or pay wages.  Then, on November 12, a suddenly pensive Hank Paulson said: “We have continued to examine the relative benefits of purchasing illiquid mortgage-related assets. Our assessment at this time is that this is not the most effective way to use [bailout] funds.”  So with gun to head, the public was forced to hand their money over to Hank and da Boyz with virtually NO oversight or deliberation, yet the banksters have not yet figured out what to do with their gigantic haul of fresh booty... and the ATMs go on working!  Their scams never end; they just grow bolder as their crimes continue without so much as a slap on the wrist from Justice or Congress.

What we witnessed was Operation Shock and Awe pulled off against our own country, much like the bogus panic selling of the ongoing criminal war against a people who did us no harm.  Now as then, the threat was "we must do something, or else."  But this war which costs $12 billion per month with no end in sight will likely be aborted when we can no longer service the machines, pay the "contractors" or buy the oil to keep the tanks rolling and the guns blazing.  Still more incentive for our foreign lenders to pull the plug on America's imperial project.

Stay tuned for more news and information on the global financial collapse and dispatches from divergent voices on how to create a sane economy that works for the masses... the ultimate goal of this project.

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