Meeting Collusion with Cooperation

One could hope that at some point the more intelligent aspects of the “Tea Party” movement and “Occupy Wall Street” people might get their heads together and recognize their common interests and common enemies. If they do, the results could be a rapid evolution of the American political process.

But unless or until each side frees itself from the constraints of “left vs. right” doctrines it won’t happen, or at least not up to the potentials of such a merger.

Both groups recognize, at least to some extent, that the root of the problem is in the open collusion between government elites and financial elites. They even may say it out loud but none has the courage to openly label it for what it is; fascism.

The “OWS” group is to some extent guilty of wanting to throw the baby out with the bath water. Their most strident voices seem to be little more than planted, would be communist college professors, or union activists, openly calling for the destruction of capitalism itself, preaching to a choir of poorly educated followers who couldn’t properly define communism, fascism or capitalism. That’s not to say that I don’t agree with the slogan; “the banks got bailed out, we go sold out.” Rather than thinking outside the constraints of conventional politics they are being led down the path to the left of more government and more dependency while ignoring the violent and deadly excesses of central planning collectivism. Even more dangerously it has allowed anti-Semitism to creep in from the fringes. Again ignoring not so historically distant dangers on that particular poison.

Some of the more active voices among the “TEA” people on the other had seem to completely reject out of hand any concept of a “social compact” between citizen and government, or at the very least feel it has become so bloated and abused that it no longer functions in any positive manner and has become disassociative rather than cohesive to society in general. In this last respect they too are correct. This has lead some of them down the path to the right, where personal initiative and self-reliance thus becomes the be all and end all justification of their argument while ignoring the oft as deadly consequences of greed and unfettered laize-fair capitalism. This is how we get an almost knee-jerk reaction to the actions of the OWS by the TEA defending what they know to be the excesses of the very few on Wall Street with the mistaken attitude of “well at least they are capitalists.”

Meanwhile the OWS compounds the mistake of categorizing the criminal behavior on Wall Street as definitive capitalism by attempting to tar the entire system and its participants with that same brush.

Both sides need to recognize that it’s not a matter of the 99% vs. 1%. It’s more like 99.9% vs. 0.1%. If both sides could come to an understanding that the excesses of big government, as viewed from the Tea Party “right,” and the excesses of Wall Street, as viewed for the “Occupy Wall Street” left are but two side of the same coin, and that the collusion between them is working to keep them divided and more occupied fighting each other rather than addressing the issue of that fascist collusion that is at the heart of the problem. If such an understanding amongst the rank and file of both political sets could be reached then the more distasteful extremist elements, communist and racists, on both ends could be marginalized if not pushed out of the picture. And then something might be accomplished furthering work on those elements where there is agreement rather than expending and wasting energy fighting over those thing where there is not.

Such a combination would not only marginalize the extremists but put the left and right wings of our one party state on notice that their game has been exposed for the fraud that it is and a new paradigm is in play that will make them obsolete almost overnight. The thesis of one side must meet the antithesis of the other and give birth to a new synthesis of political and economic direction. Without it only chaos and violent conflict lays ahead.

Sailing Into Dark and Dangerous Waters or Tonkin Gulf Redux.

If ever there was any question that the super elites of Wall Street and their wholly owned subsidiary know as Congress is a “Ship of Fools,” the recent moves to “punish” China for undervaluing its currency and the CME’s (Chicago Mercantile Exchange) decision to raise margin requirements on copper should remove all doubt.

As has often been stated the last resort of the elites to fend off the repercussions of failed monetary policy is to rattle the war saber. So act one, scene one becomes possibly initiating a trade war with China. The currency bill is clearly a warning to China not to dump US Treasuries. But what does margin requirement on copper futures have to do with a trade war? Quite simply China has liquidity problems of its own. Local industries, finding themselves cut off from domestic credit markets in the face of growing inflation, have been using raw materials stockpiles, particularly copper, as collateral for loans from the international market. So then act one, scene two is the margin increase on copper futures which has the immediate effect of depressing spot market prices and (down by a third in the last few weeks) and simultaneously knocking down the value of the Chinese loans, essentially putting them “under water” as with the US housing bubble. Act one closes with scene three as the Financial Times of London reported today that China’s actual stockpile of copper may me as much as 100% higher than was being officially reported, unleashing even greater volatility in the copper price.

Act Two shifts to the precarious Middle Eastern front and opens with allegations of Iranian involvement in an alleged plot to blow up the Saudi and Israeli Embassies in Washington DC and assassinate the Saudi Ambassador. Most curiously, those cast members from off stage left that were quick to claim the Bush administration trumped up the accusations against Saddam Hussein in order to go to war in Iraq are deafeningly silent about the same possibility being in play here.

While there can be no question that part of the Chinese action in stockpiling raw materials has been to build up their military capacity, there are also growing doubts about the actual strength of the Chinese economy as the central government had to recently do a bank bailout of their own.

It is yet to be scene if Act Three will reveal these actions perhaps driving the two most dangerous regimes in the world right into each other’s arms. Couple China’s growing thirst for energy and need to keep it economy expanding to keep its restive populations appeased with Iran being increasing isolated from open participation in Western markets (along with their own healthy dose of internal discontent) and we have a potential recipe for a situation that can spin out of control on a moments notice, set in motion by a foolish act or increasing instability in financial markets.