All
political leaders promulgate policies to perpetuate their power
The
lies of the current UPA government of India regarding the civilian
nuclear deal and the changing lies of the current US president regarding
the elective preemptive Iraq war are perfect examples. The Indian
Constitution unfortunately has no clause for ratification of treaties by
parliament. The US Constitution was framed by a wiser Madison who
foresaw the benefits of war for the president and thus gave the power to
the Congress which over the last hundred years has mostly been composed
of rubber stamping morons and sycophants without integrity, honesty or
intelligence.
“War is in fact the true nurse of executive aggrandizement. In war, a
physical force is to be created; and it is the executive will, which is
to direct it. In war, the public treasures are to be unlocked; and it is
the executive hand which is to dispense them. In war, the honors and
emoluments of office are to be multiplied; and it is the executive
patronage under which they are to be enjoyed. It is in war, finally,
that laurels are to be gathered, and it is the executive brow they are
to encircle.’‘
Thus spake and wrote Madison, but in the hope of adding
Canada to the Union while the British were occupied with the threat of
Napoleon of France, he went to war in 1812 with disastrous consequences.
There is little hope of America having a decent and responsible Congress
or President, so like Plato’s draconian prescription for “The
Guardians”, the people of the US need to pass a national referendum by
which, those presidents and Congress who authorize an elective,
unprovoked, preemptive and offensive war must immediately go for active
combat duty on the front line as soon as the war starts, instead of
sending the children of the common or poor people to become cannon
fodder. A second referendum needed to pass is that the salaries of all
elected officials be decreased every year by the rate of inflation and
omitted altogether including their perks, privileges and pension
benefits, every year that the budget is in a deficit. The leaders with
all their cries of patriotism should loudly proclaim that they regret
that they have but one life and one salary to offer in the service of
their nation. Their failure to do so would make the truth obvious that
patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels.
Let me illustrate why the above are essential. A foolish Bush by his
burning desire for war has raised the price of oil from $25 to $110 thus
raising our oil import bill to nearly 500 billion dollars which go to
some OPEC members who are not our friends and may even be financing
terrorists. The war, according to Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph
Stiglitz, will cost us an additional three trillion dollars. As I
predicted in “Federal Reserve has a Sophie’s Choice” and my previous
part 3 of this article, Bernanke like Greenspan has flooded the markets
with money, shunned transparency and used his position to buy junk
mortgage bonds to keep the crooked banks afloat and on Friday gave a
non-recourse (not required to be repaid) loan to JP Morgan Chase Bank to
pass the money on to Bear Stearns to rescue it. Bear Stearns was one of
the offending culprits that securitized, packaged and sold this weapon
of mass destruction to other banks, insurance companies, pension funds
and individuals blinded by greed and ignorance. The securities were
created by duping naive, ignorant people desperate to own a home. One
might as well give the Nobel Prize for Medicine to Typhoid Mary who
began an epidemic of typhoid in America a century or so ago.
The facile argument used is that the collapse of Bear Stearns would be
contagious and other big avaricious institutions with highly leveraged
bets would be sucked in to the whirlpool of counter-party credit default
risk, leading to a cascade of defaults. Nobody mentions the fact that
lack of due diligence by the rating agencies (Moddy’s, S&P, Fitch etc.),
unthinking greed and absence of caution and prudence by the mono-line
insurers (MBIA, Ambac, FGIC etc.) and absent supervision and regulation
by the Fed, Bank examiners etc. led to the burgeoning 500+ trillion
dollar unregulated derivative market that will ruin the US economy.
Greenspan encouraged irresponsible behavior by consumers by recommending
the use of adjustable rate mortgages, without prohibiting the
institutions from luring home buyers with teaser ARM rates that jumped
exponentially on resetting in a year or two. The gullible sub-prime
borrowers never read the fine print and the Fed’s job is only to protect
the big boys, not common folk. No such grand plan has been put into
effect for the payment delinquent home buyers. The taxpayer will foot
the bill just like in the S&L debacle of the Reagan era and the
institutions will do their mea culpa like Reagan, by saying “mistakes
were made”, but we are not responsible.
History and geography bear witness to governments’ debasement of
currency. The Roman emperors reduced the gold and silver content of
their coins and replaced them with lead. The US government and the Fed
are sinking the dollar by deficits and making the dollar a fiat
currency. From Argentina to Zimbabwe hyperinflation devalued the
national currency. One needed billions of Reichsmarks to buy a pack of
cigarettes in Weimar Germany. The lust for bigger kingdoms of tyrants
and CEOs leads to economically destructive wars and takeovers, and the
lust for re-election to power in democracies leads to earmarks, COLA
increases in Social Security and deficit spending to please voters. They
eventually lead to national ruin.
Look at the nation destroying policies of puppet Manmohan Singh and his
fiscally irresponsible Finance Minister Chidambaram. To avoid losing in
state elections, the central government did not raise the price of
gasoline, continued the cooking gas subsidy causing severe losses to
PSEs (to be subsidized from the national exchequer), started a rural
employment program laden with corruption to enrich crooked and corrupt
local party leaders and bureaucrats and caused heavy losses to
nationalized banks by forgiving farmer loans. This last bribe for votes
will be ineffective as most poor farmers do not qualify for bank loans
and borrow from moneylenders at exorbitant rates. They will not be saved
and nor will the US sub-prime borrowers. The profligate deficit spending
increases the national debt, a burden to be borne by future generations.
It is this same malfeasance that allows Bernanke and Blunder Bush to
make whole the fat cats who finance the latter’s election and the
political parties, while leaving a staggering burden on future
generations. The previous nation destroyer Greenspan now travels from
state to state and country to country giving speeches at I don’t know
how many thousands of bucks a speech and gets handsome advances for his
memoirs like Bush Sr., Clintons (Bill & Hillary)
The life of politicians is like the passage of food through the human
alimentary canal. No matter how appealing to taste, smell and vision,
the food maybe at the beginning prior to intake and passage (winning
elected office), politicians ultimately (after winning elected office)
become visually disgusting, foul smelling waste of little use and
possibly great hazard. At best they can only be used as fertilizer and
that also after appropriate treatment, so as not to be a threat to
public health.
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The
lies of the current UPA government of India regarding the civilian
nuclear deal and the changing lies of the current US president regarding
the elective preemptive Iraq war are perfect examples. The Indian
Constitution unfortunately has no clause for ratification of treaties by
parliament. The US Constitution was framed by a wiser Madison who
foresaw the benefits of war for the president and thus gave the power to
the Congress which over the last hundred years has mostly been composed
of rubber stamping morons and sycophants without integrity, honesty or
intelligence.