Bad Economy: A Cure Must Have A Nexus To A Cause

When a person is ill the doctor first determines the cause before administering a treatment plan.

The cause is determined by an analysis of the ill effects, the symptoms, which is part of a map of sorts.

Through experience and education, which develop the ability to read that map, the doctor follows the trail that the symptoms will leave.

The exercise involved in any such analysis is to follow the trail across the map all the way back to the cause.

That cause will then be the key determinant for developing the cure or treatment plan.

The treatment plan is, then, nexus based, meaning that it is focused on the trail, the link, from the symptoms back to the source, back to the cause of the illness.

The basic treatment strategy is to remove the cause which will axiomatically remove the ill effects, the symptoms.

Why would that diagnostics first then treatment later process not work (knowing the cause, not just the symptoms) for an economic illness, such as a recession or depression?

The symptoms of national economic illness are high unemployment rates, a drop in output showing up as a decreasing Gross National Product (GNP), home foreclosures, an imbalance in debt-to-income ratios, an unprecedented disparity between the wealthy 1% compared to the unwealthy 99%, and a general consumer spending decrease.

What are the causes?

There can be no effective treatment or cure of any economic malady absent a tracing of the contours of the nexus from a symptom back to a cause.

In the Dredd Blog post Add It Up And It Still Smells (April 2009), we explored an alternative treatment plan.

Instead of the give it all to the banks approach, Dredd Blog came up with a trust the people approach.

That approach functions as a grass roots up economics approach which is admittedly biased in favor of the betterment of the public (99%), not the 1% who actually own the country.

To the contrary of the Dredd Blog approach, the government chose a trust the banks approach that functions as a trickle down economics policy, which failed, so now the government is suing the banks:

The agency that oversees mortgage markets is preparing to file suit against "more than a dozen" big U.S. banks, accusing them of misrepresenting the quality of mortgages they packaged and sold during the housing bubble, the New York Times reported on Thursday.

(News Daily, see also Huffington Post). Is something wrong with this picture in the sense that the policy has been to dump hundreds of billions of dollars on those banks, but to now sue them?

The economic policy concerning "Too Big To Fail" banks, since the 9/11 trance set in, has been "Ready, Fire, Aim" in place of "Ready, Aim, Fire".

The government lawsuit mentioned above, so far contains the following specifics:

The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), as conservator for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the Enterprises), today filed lawsuits against 17 financial institutions, certain of their officers and various unaffiliated lead underwriters. The suits allege violations of federal securities laws and common law in the sale of residential private-label mortgage-backed securities (PLS) to the Enterprises.

Complaints have been filed against the following lead defendants, in alphabetical order:

1. Ally Financial Inc. f/k/a GMAC, LLC
2. Bank of America Corporation
3. Barclays Bank PLC
4. Citigroup, Inc.
5. Countrywide Financial Corporation
6. Credit Suisse Holdings (USA), Inc.
7. Deutsche Bank AG
8. First Horizon National Corporation
9. General Electric Company
10. Goldman Sachs & Co.
11. HSBC North America Holdings, Inc.
12. JPMorgan Chase & Co.
13. Merrill Lynch & Co. / First Franklin Financial Corp.
14. Morgan Stanley
15. Nomura Holding America Inc.
16. The Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC
17. Société Générale

These complaints were filed in federal or state court in New York or the federal court in Connecticut. The complaints seek damages and civil penalties under the Securities Act of 1933, similar in content to the complaint FHFA filed against UBS Americas, Inc. on July 27, 2011. In addition, each complaint seeks compensatory damages for negligent misrepresentation. Certain complaints also allege state securities law violations or common law fraud.

(US vs THEM, PDF). As Dredd Blog has pointed out ad nauseum, we entered the Age of Plunder (see Series Page under "PLUNDER") during the Bush II regime, and it may be the last age of MOMCOM, if we consider that it also includes the Peak of The Oil Wars and The Peak of Sanity.

GE Serves The Pentagon On TV Near Yoo - 2

On this date two years ago, Dredd Blog published the post GE Serves The Pentagon On TV Near Yoo, pointing out the massive propaganda engine GE corporate media has and uses on U.S. citizens.

At that time two years ago we did not know that the work GE corporate media helped the military with was linked to a Pentagon secret document, now unclassified, which defined the contours of the media propaganda efforts.

Those efforts are called Information Operations Roadmap, detailed in that once-classified but evidently unwittingly declassified document, produced by Donald Rumsfeld when he was Secretary of Defense.

A copy of the document is available through the link in the comments at the end of this post of two years ago:

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GE looks at the media as one of its tools for selling ideas as if ideas were toothpaste.

This echoes the observation of Professor Noam Chomsky, who said:

One of the most important comments on deceit, I think, was made by Adam Smith. He pointed out that a major goal of business is to deceive and oppress the public.

And one of the striking features of the modern period is the institutionalization of that process, so that we now have huge industries deceiving the public — and they're very conscious about it, the public relations industry. Interestingly, this developed in the freest countries—in Britain and the US—roughly around time of WWI, when it was recognized that enough freedom had been won that people could no longer be controlled by force. So modes of deception and manipulation had to be developed in order to keep them under control.

And by now these are huge industries. They not only dominate marketing of commodities, but they also control the political system. As anyone who watches a US election knows, it's marketing. It's the same techniques that are used to market toothpaste.

And, of course, there are power systems in place to facilitate this. Throughout history it's been mostly the property holders or the educated classes who've tended to support power systems. And that's a large part of what I think education is—it's a form of indoctrination. You have to reconstruct a picture of the world in order to be conducive to the interests and concerns of the educated classes, and this involves a lot of self-deceit.

(Noam Chomsky, Professor, MIT, emphasis mine). Notice how GE calls various entities "Brands" on its own website:

BRANDS

* Bravo
* CNBC
* Focus Features & Rogue Pictures
* Global Networks
* MSNBC
* Mun2
* NBC Entertainment
* NBC News
* NBC Sports & Olympics
* NBC Universal Television Group
* NBC Universal Television Stations
* SCI FI
* Telemundo
* USA Network
* Universal Parks & Resorts
* Universal Pictures
* Universal Studios Home Entertainment
* iVillage

(General Electric Website, UPDATE: they took the page down to hide this egregious reality, so to see this use The WayBack Machine). The GE website points out that they are also into military contracts in war zones as well as oil, gas, healthcare, and banking.

GE is part and parcel of the military oil media complex once called the military industrial complex.

This blog has a series of posts which show the roots of this system which worships war and deceit, our worst enemy.

The Pentagon needed to help Bush II get elected, to save the military oil complex from becoming a class like the military in other countries of the world:

Until more money arrives, the defense apparatus is literally feeding on its own parts, pinching this and that, scrimping here and there, in order to keep the same Cold War force structure in place and the same lineup of new weapons moving through the pipeline of development. During the Cold War era, the military institution acquired a reflexive appetite for growth that it's now unwilling to give up. Instead, it lumbers toward a self-induced crisis of malnourishment, as when an addict's starving body eats its own liver.

(Is There A Shadow Government - 2). That was the state of the military just as Bush II was being elected, with the help of GE and the GE CEO, Bush II's greatest campaign contributor.

The author observed "the defense apparatus" (a.k.a. "military industrial complex") as being an addict to public money, which is synonymous with dangerous, aberrant behaviour.

The Pentagon had the choice of easing the burden of the nation it is sworn to uphold, by dropping the cold war habit, or instead staying addicted and becoming too big to fail - continuing to impoverish the nation.

The Pentagon did not wait long after installing Bush II to begin their wars, which still continue to this day, to fatten them at the expense of millions of Americans who are losing homes, jobs, and healthcare.

We have written some posts exposing some of how the Pentagon, through puppets like MSNBC's Morning Joe, habitually deceives the public.

GE financials looked at here.

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Here are some quotes from the Information Operations Roadmap document mentioned at the top of this post:

We Must Fight the Net. DoD is building an information-centric-force. Networks are increasingly the operational center of gravity, and the Department must be prepared to "fight the net." (page 6 [PDF page 10])

We Must Improve PSYOP. Military forces must be better prepared to use PSYOP in support of military operations and the themes and messages employed in a PSYOP campaign must be consistent with the broader national security objectives and national-level themes and messages. (page 6 [PDF page 10])

The integrated employment of the core capabilities of Electronic Warfare, Computer Network Operations, Psychological Operations, Military Deception and Operations Security, in concert with specified supporting and related capabilities, to influence, disrupt, corrupt or usurp adversarial human and automated decision-making ... (page 11 [PDF page 15])

SOCOM's ongoing PSYOP Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration and modernization efforts should permit the timely, long-range dissemination of products with various PSYOP delivery systems. This includes satellite, radio and television, cellular phones and other wireless devices, the Internet and upgrades to traditional delivery systems such as leaflets and loudspeakers that are highly responsive to maneuver commanders. (page 15 [PDF page 19])

USD(P), in coordination with ASD(PA) will analyze and make recommendations on those policy, strategy and legal issues affected by and related to the proper role for public diplomacy and public affairs in relation to IO. Particular emphasis will be given to examining the appropriate relationship of PSYOP to public affairs as they relate to [U.S. Government] communications strategies for both adversaries and non-adversaries. (page 24 [PDF page 28])

(Information Operations Roadmap, emphasis added). The roadmap includes the ways the information operation is to be carried out, such as:

• Brokering press availability for senior leaders (speeches, interviews, etc.)

• Inoculations: Preemptive global communications to demonstrate past behavior or spotlight transgressions

• Rapid Response/Truth Squads and "Briefings Plus"

• Media embeds

• Official press releases

• Domestic opinion pieces and editorials by senior DoD officials

• News releases

• Press conferences

(ibid, at page 71 [page 75 PDF]). This document was prepared in 2003 so its application in the real world "turned the U.S. military into a global propaganda machine" according to the president of the Associated Press.

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"I never realized how big nothing could be" (Roches) ... love that line.

Propaganda is BIG but it gives you nothing of truth, which is one of the main ingredients of mental health.

Leave truth out and all you have is the big nothing: social dementia.

Banker Jekyll Will Hyde Your Money - 8

The plunder barons of the banking industry, who are subservient to MOMCOM, have not changed.

That is a fact even though their crimes have been known for years now.

To review, two years ago on this date Dredd Blog posted the third eposode in an ongoing series, entitled "Banker Jekyll Will Hyde Your Money - 3".

That post follows:

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In a previous post the case of Bloomberg L.P vs Governors of the Federal Reserve System was discussed.

Details of how the Board works came out, and it was held that the Federal Reserve System is a governmental rather a private entity, and therefore it was subject to the Freedom of Information Act ("FOIA"); and that being the case, specifically, the federal court ordered:

1. The Board shall produce forthwith the Remaining Term Reports within five business days of the date hereof;

2. The Board shall search forthwith records at the FRBNY that constitute "Records of the Board" within the meaning of 12 C.F.R. § 261.2(i)(1); and

3. The parties shall confer following their review of the results of the search and inform the Court by letter no later than September 14, 2008 how they propose to proceed.

(Order and Opinion, Preska J., Federal District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan), 8/24/09, page 47).

Immediately the Board asked for a stay, to which the court replied that if would be stayed until the Board applied for and was granted an emergency stay by the Federal Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. We are awaiting the appellate court decision.

Thus, this issue seems to be headed for the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, where the new Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor who was recently seated, was a judge.

Then the case is likely to go on up to the U.S. Supreme Court, where Sotomayor is now a Justice.

Hopefully the very conservative federal courts, which interestingly have not been as conservative as they are now since the Great Depression era, will require that citizens be informed of what is being done with their tax dollars.

If a veil of secrecy covers the public treasury we can be sure that the plunder this blog has been complaining about will continue until our financial oblivion is complete.

We can also wonder why the administration does not chasten the Board for violating the President's Directive to be more open in FOIA requests.

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You can read all of those posts on the Series Posts Page under the heading BANKSTERS.

George Carlin (1937-2008, R.I.P.) called the "people" in MOMCOM "owners":

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The next post in this series is here.

MOMCOM And The Sins of Libya

Libya provides a complete education to all students free of cost to them, from the kindergarten level up through the university level.

At least it did before it was invaded.

Libyans can purchase gasoline for their automobiles at a cost of 14 cents a litre.

At least they could before their nation was invaded.

Libya provides complete health care coverage to all of its citizens free of cost to them whatever their age.

At least it did before it was invaded.

Libya provides good labor laws "for workers’ compensation, pension rights, minimum rest periods, and maximum working hours."

At least it did before it was invaded.

That means women in that Islamic nation get a complete education for free, are cared for at no cost when their health is an issue, and can work in humane conditions, and wonder of wonders, women can drive automobiles in Libya.

At least it was that way before Libya was invaded.

Libya was categorized by the United Nations as a "High human development" country.

In that U.N. ranking, Libya even ranked above Saudi Arabia, for example (Saudi Arabian women cannot drive automobiles, or vote).

At least it was that way before Libya was invaded.

Libya provided $50,000 to newlyweds, and zero interest home loans to the citizens of that nation.

At least it did before it was invaded.

Ghastly, Eric Cantor must be turning over in his grave at night thinking about how to not let such sins take place in America.

But the worst thing Libya did, much like Iraq which also suffered an invasion, was to threaten to nationalize oil and stop using the U.S. dollar as the currency for oil trading:

Is Libya about to take the lead of its friends in Venezuela and Russia and launch a new round of energy-sector nationalism? The thought sends a shiver through the collective spines of ConocoPhillips, Marathon Oil, Occidental Petroleum ... Amerada Hess ... and Royal Dutch Shell ... All have made massive new investments in Libya since Gaddafi renounced his nuclear weapons program, made reparations for past terrorist activities like the Lockerbie jetliner bombing and returned to the fold of seemingly responsible nations.

(Forbes). Now is not the decade for any nation to do that, other than Russia or China, because there will then be blood for oil upon any such nation.

The C.I.A. had grown accustomed to the Libya that would even read C.I.A. speeches (written by the C.I.A.) to inform the Libyan people:

The speech that appears to have been drafted for Colonel Qaddafi was found in the C.I.A. folder and appears to have been sent just before Christmas in 2003. The one-page speech seems intended to depict the Libyan dictator in a positive light. It concluded, using the revolutionary name for the Libyan government: “At a time when the world is celebrating the birth of Jesus, and as a token of our contributions towards a world full of peace, security, stability and compassion, the Great Jamhariya presents its honest call for a W.M.D.-free zone in the Middle East,” referring to weapons of mass destruction.

(NY Times). When the Libyan government began to think it was sovereign MOMCOM went ballistic.

Soon the rocket's red glare was everywhere revealing that our flag was still there, waving over the Libyan soil with the Libyan people's oil underneath, out of sight.

The next post in this series is here.

Additional Dredd Blog posts on this issue:

Iraq: Number One Oil Producer?

The Peak of the Oil Wars

Fleets & Terrorism Follow The Oil

The Virgin MOMCOM

See also: "Top Secret America" (Amazon)

New Government Climate Change Policy: Triage - 4

As it turns out, the republican party is the mother of all climate change denial.

How did it all begin?

Both the history of climate science as well as the origin and history of climate change denial are documented and detailed in the following video.

This video will edify anyone who takes the time to listen to all of it carefully.

It is a lecture by a university professor who competently details the history of climate science back to the mid 1800's, thereafter going forward until the crucial point in time event, which was the time when scientific consensus on global warming took place in the late 1970's (consensus that climate change was a clear and present danger).

The lecturer then reveals how three republican scientists worked to get Reagan's Star Wars program going, then after that worked for the tobacco industry to promote the tale that cigarette smoking has nothing to do with lung cancer.

Their final claim to fame began with their formation of today's oft repeated climate change denier talking points:

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The previous post in this series is here, the next post in this series is here.