Despite what you might hear or read in the newspapers the recovery is non-existent
unless you are a banker, government official, corporate head or lobbyist.
You can not have a recovery without full consumer participation. Although unemployment figures are considered lagging indicators in a recovery. If you read this post in it's entirety you will see that the reported unemployment figures are misleading.
The truth is that companies who have reported rising earnings have done so on the backs of the "common worker", e.g. closing factories, laying off workers, and squeezing the last bit of sweat possible out of what workers remain to increase production.
They are able to engage is this third world type of slavery because those who currently have jobs live in fear of losing them knowing that they can be replaced easily by any of a number of just as qualified, if not more qualified, persons waiting to take there place. Thus those who do have jobs will work harder, longer or less hours as there employer dictates, settle for no raises and less benefits. For the most part they will not rock the boat.
In other words the wealthy and the government could not have done a better job of creating a class society if they had planned it. There are some who would postulate that it has been planned, as the economic disasters of a republican administration are carried over to a democratic administration.
Ostensibly we have been led to believe that the banks were the root of the problem through mismanaged investments and that they had to be bailed out in order to save the economy/country.
The flaw in that premise is that the banks most guilty of malfeasance continue to engage in business as usual. That the major promised infrastructure build outs that could put people back to work and revitalize the economy have not materialized as the banks continue to sit on the money they were supposed to loan out while they profit from credit spreads and even more derivatives.
We have written in the past that this was coming. However our fear is that most people are continuing to get there news from e-mail forwards that snopes.com has labeled false as much as six years ago (I received two in my inbox today).
However much of what we have just written is food for future posts. All of which by virtue of the topic and it's complexity can only be long and arduous reading which we suspect few will engage in.
The complexity stems from the fact that this has nothing to with economy and everything to do with "POWER". Ask yourself who benefits and who suffers from economic disaster. Those who have, will have the means to get more. Those who have not, will have less.
People who have underestimated what people with money and power can actually accomplish will soon learn. But we can use an analogy that should bring it down to street level. "When shooting craps, the money man always wins."
Before we can go into the reasons and solutions however, we must first ferret out the what is, from what isn't. We must look between the lines to see how we are being sold a bill of goods wrapped in feel good optimism designed to suck in those that have not yet been ravished. In other words we must find the truth in the lies.
So what we have done is taken various reports about the economy and looked for what was out of place or contradictory to what we are being sold/told. Much of what follows will be excerpts, some of which have been taken out of context for two reasons. 1. There is no way we can print the volume of information in one post, and 2. In many of the articles the offhand mention of the "bad news" is buried in what is supposed to convince you the news is good. It is not.
For the most part what follows will be some what chronological other than first three bookmarks which set the stage for how we have been fooled and how it is, or will, impact us. We will comment little, provide the links and rely on you to educate yourself should you choose to. We wonder at this point in time how much it really matters as it may in fact be to late. Not only for us, but for generations to come. There are solutions. However to date the American citizenry has shown little motivation to to pursue them preferring stick their heads in the sand and "cluck".
I do wonder though, if you thought that reading what follows could at some point in time lead you to
speculate as to how 9/11 may in fact have led us to Iraq where Bin Laden wasn't instead of Afghanistan, where Bin Laden was and why? Let us begin:
Inequality in the U.S. Recovery Period
by: The Baseline Scenario August 19, 2009 http://seekingalpha.com/article/157104-inequality-in-the-u-s-recovery-period?source=article_lb_articles
I looked at similar data here; what I find interesting is one of their conclusions, one I’m trying to think through these days. There’s a general assumption that, to whatever extent historically record-high inequality is present,
it will almost certainly be gone post-recession. But what if it isn’t? What if this recession, and the recovery, will cement inequality in the United States even further? From them:
What’s more, on the asset side, BofA Merrill says the middle-class has suffered more than the wealthy from the
housing crash because middle-class families tended to rely more on their homes to build savings through rising equity. Also, the wealthy naturally had a much larger and more diverse portfolio of assets — stocks, bonds, etc. — which have mostly bounced back significantly this year.
There are a lot of moving parts going on with the interaction between the top percents and the middle class, inequality and collapse, but it isn’t hard to see a story where the stock market picks up, housing is in decline for a decade, and we have a jobless recovery. I’m not sure how that would effect our quantitative measures of inequality, like the gini coefficient, but we could end up with much more inequality, and inequality that stings a lot harder than it did during the boom times.
I bring it up because, in a seperate analysis of similar data, Zero Hedge made similar points in their massive weekend A Detailed Look At The Stratified U.S. Consumer (my underline):
…It is probable that the dramatic increase in savings as disclosed previously, is an indication that at long last the richest 10% of America may be finally feeling the sting of a collapsing economy. Yet estimates demonstrate that
even though on an absolute basis the wealthy are losing overall consumption power, the relative impact has hit the lower and middle classes the strongest yet again…
90% of the population will be feeling the impact of an economy still gripped in a recession for a long time due to the bulk of its assets deflating. The other observation is that only 10% of the population has truly benefited from the 50% market rise from the market’s lows: those better known as the Upper class.
Is the Second Great Depression Imminent?
by: Lionel Badal December 15, 2008 |
by: Lionel Badal December 15, 2008 |
History is here to remind us that dramatic changes can happen so fast that we don’t even see them until they have happened. Nick Griffin, who is passionate about Peak Oil as one of the BNP permanent staff members told me, is also a racist, holocaust denier. Make no mistake, in a post-Peak Oil world Mr. Griffin and his look-a-likes throughout the world will do all they can to apply their heinous political agenda.
The process has started and once again Europe will face its old demons, fuelled by populism, unemployment and incompetence from mainstream leaders. As mentioned in a recent Newsweek article, un-favourable views on Jews have climbed from 20% in 2004 to 25% today in Germany, in France from 11% to 20% and in Spain from nearly 21% in 2005 to about 50% today. Yet the worst of the crisis is just a few years away and nobody seems to perceive the seriousness of the situation. In fact, the current crisis will soon be seen as no more than a gentle
prelude or the “good old days”. Denis MacShane the author of the Newsweek article similarly observed that “the BNP was now the fastest growing political party in Britain”. Wake up.
Rollingstone.com
Inside The Great American Bubble Machine
Matt Taibbi on how Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression
Posted Jul 02, 2009 8:38 AM
The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/28816321/the_great_american_bubble_machine/print
Goldman Sachs Scandal: Myth or Reality?
July 06, 2009Robber Barons, Pigs and Prom Queens
You don’t have to be a “conspiracy theory nut” to realize that throughout history the wealthy and powerful have exploited the greater masses and ignored their own nation’s long-term health for their own gains. In fact, you have to be a “nut” to refute that. It need not be a “backroom, smoke-filled conspiracy”; it’s enough that “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”.
Some may argue that Robber Barons don’t exist anymore because of sound market regulations and independent judiciaries, and that they’re as irrelevant as Rockefeller and Vanderbilt. Trying telling that to victims of the Stanford banking and Madoff ponzi scandals. Greed, financial exploitation, “gaming the system” (e.g., putting lipstick on a pig and passing it off as a prom queen), and victimizing the little guy still happens; it’s still very real, and still devastates families (and nations).
How can this happen in a democracy? He argues that “…organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy.” (pg. 53) Taibbi alleges that the government is penetrated-and-gamed by Goldman:
…Paulson elected to let Lehman Brothers – one of Goldman’s last real competitors – collapse without intervention…The very next day, Paulson greenlighted a massive, $85 billion bailout of AIG, which promptly turned around and repaid $13 billion it owed to Goldman…Immediately after the AIG bailout, Paulson…put a heretofore unknown 35-year-old Goldman banker named Neel Kashkari in charge of administering the [TARP] funds. (pg. 98-99)
For release 10:00 a.m. (EDT) Wednesday, September 23, 2009 
Mass Layoffs (Monthly) News Release
Employers took 2,690 mass layoff actions in August that resulted in the separa-
tion of 259,307 workers, seasonally adjusted, as measured by new filings for
unemployment insurance benefits during the month, the U.S. Bureau of Labor
Statistics reported today. Each action involved at least 50 persons from a
single employer. The number of mass layoff events in August increased by 533
from the prior month, and the number of associated initial claims increased by
52,516. Over the year, the number of mass layoff events increased by 803, and
associated initial claims increased by 70,356. Year-to-date mass layoff events
(21,184) and initial claims (2,162,202) both recorded progr-
am highs through August. In August, 900 mass layoff events were reported in the manufacturing
sector, seasonally adjusted, resulting in 93,892 initial claims. Over the
month, the number of manufacturing events increased by 279, and associated
initial claims increased by 21,626. (See table 1.)http://www.bls.gov/news.release/mmls.htmhttp://www.cnbc.com/id/32962379
Tired of the government bailing out banks? Get ready for this: officials may soon ask banks to bail out the government.
Bankers and their lobbyists like the idea because it is more attractive than the alternatives: yet another across-the-board emergency assessment on them, or tapping an existing $100 billion credit line to the Treasury.(NOTE) The bankers love this idea. The government will have to pay them yet again!
The Destruction of the 'American Dream'
The latest report from the Census Bureau on income, poverty and health insurance coverage portrays a darkening economic picture for millions of Americans. Incomes and living standards fell without regard to geography, race or work profession. For many, the Census report only confirms the destruction of the “American Dream” of economic advancement.
- For 2008 real median household income declined 3.6% to $50,303.
- The official poverty rate in 2008 increased to 13.2% from 12.5% the previous year a nd is the highest since 1997. There are now 39.8 million people in poverty. The government definition of poverty for a family of four is an income below $22,025.
- The number of people without health insurance increased from 45.7 million to 46.3 million. The number of people with private health insurance decreased slightly to 201 million.
- Incomes declined across all racial groups.
- Incomes declined in every geographic region except the Northeast where incomes remained unchanged.
- Income inequality was unchanged in 2008 from the prior year, indicating that no income class was spared from a decline in income.
While the government is rolling out the press releases congratulating itself on an economic recovery, many Americans remain in an economic nightmare of unemployment, poverty and hopelessness. The latest stats from the Census Bureau provide little reason for optimism since without income growth there will be no economic recovery. The latest report on the number of homeowners in foreclosure signals no recovery to date in incomes or jobs.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/160999-the-destruction-of-the-american-dream
Published: Tuesday, 22 Sep 2009 | 12:39 PM ET
The SEC has proposed banning flash trading.
Democratic Senators Charles Schumer and Ted Kaufman urged the commission to halt the practice, a rguing frequent traders use technology to profit from access to information not available to retail investors. “The SEC has done what we asked for,” Schumer said in a statement today. “This proposal will once and for all get rid of flash trading, which, if left untouched, could seriously undermine the fairness and transparency of our markets.” High-frequency trading strategies may now account for 70 percent of share volume in the U.S., according to Patrick O’Shaughnessy, an analyst at Raymond James & Associates.Wow - 70%! Gee, if you thought volume was low lately, wait ’till you see what happens when they shut down Goldman's pump-bots…
http://seekingalpha.com/article/162260-options-trader-flash-ban-friday?source=article_lb_articles
The Depressing Income and Poverty Data
http://seekingalpha.com/article/160879-the-depressing-income-and-poverty-data?source=article_lb_articles
September 10, 2009Update: Emily Monea and Isabel Sawhill of the Brookings Institution have a paper out which says that “the poverty rate will increase rapidly through 2011 or 2012, at which point about 14.4 percent of the country will be in poverty”, and that the number of children living in poverty could rise by 5 million, or 38%, to 18 million.Update 2: David Leonhardt points out that real incomes fell over the course of the past decade, from $51,295 in 1998 to $50,303 in 2008:http://seekingalpha.com/article/160864-inflation-expectations-and-the-price-of-hedgesIn the four decades that the Census bureau has been tracking household income, there has never before been a full decade in which median income failed to rise. (The previous record was eight years, ending in 1986.) Other Census data suggest that it also never happened between the late 1940s and the late 1960s. So it doesn’t seem to have happened since at least the 1930s.
September 10, 2009Over time, China will attempt to trade $2 trillion worth of Treasury securities for $2 trillion of production inputs. In this order, China’s priorities are food, food, food, energy, food, iron ore, food, copper, food, and food again.
Market Believes in Economic Positives, We Remain Skeptical September 10, 2009
there are two powerful offsets that give us pause as to how sustainable the current good news is likely to be.
First, the $8,000 tax credit for first-time homebuyers that supported many house sales will expire in No vember and the Fed’s $300 billion long-term treasury purchase program, which has helped to keep interest rates low, will end in late October. Like our thoughts for the Cash for Clunkers program, we suspect those stimuli have expedited future house purchases to the present. In addition, despite robust sales, foreclosures and short sales reflected 31% of existing homesales in July, and mortgages either in foreclosure or with at least one payment past due hit 13.16% in the second quarter, the highest percentage ever recorded by the Mortgage Bankers Association.http://seekingalpha.com/article/160789-market-believes-in-economic-positives-we-remain-skeptical
America: A Bona Fide Plutonomy
September 08, 2009http://seekingalpha.com/article/160347-america-a-bona-fide-plutonomy?source=article_lb_author
If this wealth concentration in a democracy is good, bad, or indifferent is the subject for an entirely different blog but that's neither here or there right now.In a "plutonomy", according to Citigroup global strategist Ajay Kapur, economic growth is powered by and largely consumed by the wealthy few.
Now that it has become clear that unlike the 1930s where this historic concentration of wealth was reversed for a good 4 decades post-crisis, this time around, a financial crisis is actually serving to concentrate wealth even further, it might be helpful to readers to see how the entrenched money thinks on how to benefit from it. Basically the same way you'd invest in feudal Europe in the 1400s - avoid the peasants, stick with the lords. I don't see this changing anytime soon; as I said in 2007, in time you will not want to have anything to do with the bottom 80% of the country; it won't be a fun place to be. [Dec 8, 2007: Do the Bottom 80% of Americans Stand a Chance?] I think in the nearly 2 years since written, the fissures I spoke about have already begun to widen considerably.According to new Internal Revenue Service data announced last week, income inequality in the U.S. is at its worst since the 1920s (before the Great Depression). The top percentile of wealthy Americans earned 21.2% of all income in 2005, up from 19% in 2004, while the bottom 50% of wage earners earned 12.8% that year, down from 13.4% a year earlier.
Cash for Clunkers Coming Soon to Your Kitchen and Laundry Room
- Appliance manufacturers are counting on a "cash for clunkers"-type rebate program to revive slumping sales of refrigerators, washing machines and dishwashers.
- Beginning late this fall, federal rebates will be available for purchasers of high-efficiency household appliances, furnaces and air-conditioning systems. Congress authorized $300 million for the program earlier this year as part of the federal economic-stimulus bill.
- After seeing the recent surge in new-car orders attributed to the federally funded clunkers program, appliance industry executives are hoping to lure consumers back into appliance store showrooms with rebates that are expected to reach $200 on some types of appliances.
- "It's a good way for the consumer to get back into the marketplace," said J.B. Hoyt, director of governmental relations for Whirlpool Corp. (WHR), the world's largest producer of household appliances by revenue. "Clearly, anything that boosts business is good for us."
Clearly. By adding to the U.S. debt so that certain corporations can do well... it's certainly a win-win.
- Whirlpool has been pushing for such a program for years.
I am sure if you talk to Whirpool executives they are all for free market capitalism. With exceptions of course.
General Electric? They don't even pretend that the U.S. has anything to do with capitalism. I can at least respect them for being honest unlike the rest of these cats who fight off any regulation because its not "free market" but are happy to accept gifts from the "not so invisible hand". Direct quote from Jeff Immelt, CEO of GE.
It's never been a free market; it's never gon na be a free market. That's just the way it is. The fact that I'd like GE to work in concert with where government policy is in the U.S. doesn't mean that I'm a traitor or a bad guy, I think it's just being practical that that's gotta happen.
Anyhow buy stocks hand over fist, your great grandchildren are subsidizing corporate America. Literally
Banks' Foreclosure Pain Worsens With U.S. Job Losses
http://www.thestreet.com/story/10586042/1/banks-foreclosure-pain-worsens-with-us-job-losses.html?cm_ven=GOOGLENNEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Foreclosures continue to pile up on bank balance sheets, and financial companies are faced with some difficult challenges to dealing with the mounting problem.
According to new data from the Mortgage Bankers Association released on Thursday, loans in the foreclosure process at the end of the second quarter rose to 4.3% of all loans, up 45 basis points from the first quarter and 155 basis points from the year-earlier period. The MBA says that while foreclosures on subprime loans have fallen, increases in the foreclosure rates on prime fixed-rate loans had the biggest increase -- a sign that mortgage performance is being driven by unemployment. "As for the outlook, it is unlikely we will see meaningful reductions in the foreclosure and delinquency rates until the employment situation improves," MBA's chief economist Jay Brinkmann said. "In addition, in some areas where a number of borrowers have mortgages that are larger than the current value of their homes, any life events such as divorce or loss of a job are likely to translate into foreclosures until prices in those areas recover, not just flatten."
Pathology of the U.S. Debt Bubble
http://seekingalpha.com/article/160370-pathology-of-the-u-s-debt-bubbleSeptember 08, 2009
Simply put, some of these banks or financial institutions have been allowed to borrow and lend a lot more money than reasonable, disrupting, in the end, the delicate balance in world’s credit markets. The level of global wealth destruction in the 18 months following September 2007, the beginning of the crisis, is historically unprecedented: $40 trillion.In September 2009, one year after the cataclysmic demise of Lehman Brothers -- which triggered the largest convulsions in this crisis -- the majority of that staggering destruction still remains unexplained. Who is it precisely that allowed this overdose to happen: Management? Central banks? Governments? Something else?
August Bankruptcies Up by 24%
September 02, 2009 http://seekingalpha.com/article/159680-august-bankruptcies-up-by-24
The 119,874 consumer bankruptcy filings in August represented a 24 percent increase over last year’s monthly total….Although an increase over the previous year, the August 2009 consumer filings represented a 5 percent decrease from the July 2009 total of 126,434. Chapter 13 filings constituted 28.3 percent of all consumer cases in August, unchanged from the July rate.“Consumers continue to turn to bankruptcy as a shield from the sustained financial pressures of today’s economy,” said ABI Executive Dir ector Samuel J. Gerdano. “As a result, we expect consumer filings to top 1.4 million this year.”
U.S. Economy: Companies Cut More Jobs Than Forecast (Update1)
By Timothy R. Homan and Shobhana ChandraSept. 2 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. companies cut more jobs than forecast in August and boosted their workers’ productivity the most since 2003 in the second quarter, signaling employers are seeking to cut costs further even as the economy stabilizes.A survey by ADP Employer Services showed businesses reduced payrolls by 298,000 after a 360,000 decline in July. The Labor Department in Washington said productivity, a measure of employee output per hour, rose at a 6.6 percent annual rate in the three months through June.
U.S. Businesses in No Rush to Start Rehiring
Published September 2, 2009
Payroll-processing firm Automatic Data Processing (ADP) today reported an unexpectedly sharp drop in private employment. Private payrolls dropped by 298,000 in August, a bigger decline than analysts had expected.
Goldman Sachs Wrong on Economic Recovery, Macro Hedge Funds Say
Sept. 1 (Bloomberg)
A focus on misleading indicators is driving markets, macro managers say.Clarium watches the unemployment rate that accounts for discouraged job applicants and those working part-time because they can’t find full-time positions, Harrington said. July joblessness with those adjustments was 16 percent, according to the Department of Labor, rather than the more widely reported 9.4 percent.The housing data isn’t as rosy as some see it, Harrington said. As existing U.S. home sales rose 7.2 percent in July from the previous month, distressed deals including foreclosures accounted for 31 percent of transactions, according to the National Association of Realtors, a Chicago-based trade group.A report by the Mortgage Bankers Association, based in Washington, showed the share of home loans with one or more payments overdue rose to a seasonally adjusted 9.24 percent in the second quarter, an all-time high.http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=auGWGWlnohNo
Published: August 21, 2009
Despite encouraging signs on many fronts, American retailers have reported unexpectedly weak sales in the last week — a sign that that consumer spending could drag down economic growth in the months ahead. And on Thursday, the Labor Department reported that new unemployment claims jumped again.And on Friday, a prominent banking analyst warned that hundreds more American banks would fail over the next year, adding to the difficulties that small businesses have experienced in routine borrowing.“There will be over 300 bank closures,” Meredith Whitney, the Wall Street analyst who accurately predicted last year that Citigroup would have to cut its dividend, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television in Jackson Hole.http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/22/business/economy/22fed.html?_r=1
Banks' Foreclosure Pain Worsens With U.S. Job Losses
http://www.thestreet.com/story/10586042/1/banks-foreclosure-pain-worsens-with-us-job-losses.html?cm_ven=GOOGLENNEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Foreclosures continue to pile up on bank balance sheets, and financial companies are faced with some difficult challenges to dealing with the mounting problem.
According to new data from the Mortgage Bankers Association released on Thursday, loans in the foreclosure process at the end of the second quarter rose to 4.3% of all loans, up 45 basis points from the first quarter and 155 basis points from the year-earlier period. The MBA says that while foreclosures on subprime loans have fallen, increases in the foreclosure rates on prime fixed-rate loans had the biggest increase -- a sign that mortgage performance is being driven by unemployment."As for the outlook, it is unlikely we will see meaningful reductions in the foreclosure and delinquency rates until the employment situation improves," MBA's chief economist Jay Brinkmann said. "In addition, in some areas where a number of borrowers have mortgages that are larger than the current value of their homes, any life events such as divorce or loss of a job are likely to translate into foreclosures until prices in those areas recover, not just flatten."
Souring Prime Loans Compound Mortgage Woes
Programs Designed to Prevent Foreclosures Face Pressure
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125082120504548471.htmlBY NICK TIMIRAOS
(See Corrections & Amplifications item below.)A survey found that one in eight U.S. households with mortgages was in foreclosure or behind on its mortgage payments during the second quarter, putting added pressure on programs aimed at preventing foreclosures.While foreclosure starts have slowed on the subprime loans that ignited the mortgage and banking crisis, loans extended to borrowers with good credit are deteriorating at a fast er clip as falling home prices and mounting job losses weigh on more households.The Mortgage Bankers Association said its latest survey, released Thursday, showed that 13.2% of mortgages on homes with one to ...
America Frets About the Economy as China Buys 'Stuff'
February 22, 2009http://seekingalpha.com/article/121853-america-frets-about-the-economy-as-china-buys-stuff
What seems to have escaped wider observation, however, is that deals such as these are a clever way for China to dehoard itself of dollars. This has been a favorite theme of mine for years, as an investor and chronicler of global energy supply. On Tuesday I wrote the following on Twitter: Russia has oil and needs dollars. China has dollars and needs oil. Kismet! Wait. Perhaps there are other observers out there. In Thursday’s LEX column in the FT of London: “China has what Russia wants: masses of US dollars. Russia has what China wants: energ y. Hence Tuesday’s oil-for-loans agreement between Moscow and Beijing.”
Inside Today's MBA Foreclosure ReportI’m glad to see someone else is paying attention.My view is that the United States has been sleepwalking and navel gazing for years, while China locks up resources around the world. Especially in Africa. If the US now is willing to buy houses, or at least the loans on those houses, why not buy resources? I think the US Treasury would be better off with a future income stream from North American Oil and Gas, than on the dim hope of recapture from AIG’s (AIG) portfolio of credit default swaps. Enough with the fretting. If our government is going to print money, and buy paper, perhaps we should buy some “stuff” as a hedge, alongside.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/32495634
Published: Thursday, 20 Aug 2009 | 2:50 PM ET
Text Size 
By: Diana Olick
CNBC Real Estate Reporter
The headline in today's big Q2 Delinquency Survey from the Mortgage Bankers Association is that the face of foreclosure is changing from subprime to prime.
Is The Fed Hiding Gold Swap Arrangements With Foreign Central Banks?
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 09/23/2009 17:50 -0500
"The Federal Reserve System has disclosed to GATA that it has gold swap arrangements with foreign banks that it does not want the public to know about. The disclosure contradicts denials provided by the Fed to GATA in 2001 and suggests that the Fed is indeed very much involved in the surreptitious international central bank manipulation of the gold price particularly and the currency markets generally." - GATA
Dictators and Totalitarian Governments do not come to power in times of prosperity. An example:
Prior to Castros rise to power Cuba was run by U.S. backed dictator Fulgencio Batista y ZaldÃvar.
During this (first term) in office, Batista carried out major social reforms[11] and established numerous economic regulations and pro-union policies.[13] Under Batista's rule a new constitution was drafted. It called for government intervention in the economy and provided a social safety net.
Sound familiar?
Batista again seized power in Cuba
Batista's return to power did not herald a return to progressivism. He became obsessed with gaining the acceptance of Cuba's upper classes, who had earlier denied him membership (as a mulatto) into their exclusive social clubs.[9] Increasingly, his energies were also devoted to amassing an even greater personal fortune for himself.[9] Batista opened Havana to large scale gambling, announcing that his government would match, dollar for dollar, any hotel investment over $1 million, which would include a casino license.[9] Taking Batista up on the offer, American mobster Meyer Lansky placed himself at the center of Cuba's gambling operation,[9] while Chauncey Holt described Batista as "always in Lansky's pocket."[14]
An American journalist David Detzer, who visited Havana in the 1950's, described the scene thusly:
| “ | Brothels flourished. A major industry grew up around them: Government officials received bribes, policemen collected protection money. Prostitutes could be seen standing in doorways, strolling the streets, or leaning from windows. One report estimated that 11,500 of them worked their trade in Havana. Beyond the outskirts of the capital, beyond the slot machines, was one of the poorest, and most beautiful countries in the Western world.[1 |
From John F. Kennedy:
"I believe that there is no country in the world including any and all the countries under colonial domination, where economic colonization, humiliation and exploitation were worse than in Cuba, in part owing to my country’s policies during the Batista regime. I approved the proclamation which Fidel Castro made in the Sierra Maestra, when he justifiably called for justice and especially yearned to rid Cuba of corruption. I will even go further: to some extent it is as though Batista was the incarnation of a number of sins on the part of the United States. Now we shall have to pay for those sins. In the matter of the Batista regime, I am in agreement with the first Cuban revolutionaries. That is perfectly clear."Read more here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulgencio_Batista
As we said at the beginning of this post, it is not about "economy", it is about "power"! There is no shortage of Corruption among the Bankers and Corporate heads of this country. There is no shortage of corruption among the politicians who will tax you to death to build a bridge to nowhere.
When the two, Money Changers and Politicians, join forces they can get away with murder.
See:
http://www.ae911truth.org/
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