Richest Capitalists Decry Class Warfare … By the Wealthy Against the Poor....
In a page taken right out of the FBI's Counter-Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) and the CIA's domestic spying operations from the 1960s, a handful of long-time CIA operatives have been detected among the key leadership of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement in New York.
The CIA's penetration of OWS comes at the same time that a longtime CIA clandestine services officer, with field experience in Jordan and Pakistan, has been identified as a special assistant to the deputy commissioner of intelligence at the New York Police Department. The CIA agent has been assigned to his NYPD duties since July. The stationing of the CIA liaison officer at the NYPD has the approval of CIA director David Petraeus.
Two former CIA officers, David Cohen and Larry Sanchez, helped establish the NYPD's new intelligence division. Sanchez left the NYPD in 2010 while Cohen remains as the Deputy Commissioner for Intelligence. After retiring from the CIA but before taking his present job, Cohen worked for the "too-big-to-fail" American International Group (AIG), a company with longstanding links to the CIA, Globally....
http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/buckle-up-america-is-getting-very-angry-and-the-protests-are-going-to-become-much-more-frightening
Pimco boss Bill Gross – one of the 1% – tweeted today:
Class warfare by the 99%? Of course, they’re fighting back after 30 years of being shot at....by the utterly corrupt ZOG in DC and the greedy oligarchic shister Bankster/gangsters....
http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/10/10/financial-giants-put-new-york-city-cops-on-their-payroll/
(No word on whether the protesters marching on New York City billionaires’ houses had any influence on the timing of Gross’ tweet.)
Gross joins Warren Buffet, who pointed out in 2006:
There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war ….
Asher Edelman – the well-known corporate raider who helped inspire the character Gordon Gekko in the 1987 film “Wall Street” – supports the protests and says:
The greed of the banks are the cause for the terrible economic situation that we have today.
And the Chief Investment Officer for Calpers – California’s $235 billion dollar pension fund – said today:
I understand why people are protesting: Wall Street is a rigged game....
Of course, the father of modern economics himself – Adam Smith – didn’t believe that inequality should be a taboo subject.
And libertarian champion Ron Paul says that the system is rigged for the rich and against the poor and the middle class:
Libertarians and conservatives support the protests because everyone hates corporate socialism, and the Federal Reserve and the giant banks are part of a single malignant, symbiotic relationship. So conservatives and liberals are uniting in breaking up both.
Yes, this is class warfare. But it is class warfare by the 1% against the other 99% (and see this). Specifically, it is the looting of the country by the top .1% through fraud....
That is another reason that conservatives and liberals are uniting in protesting the status quo. We currently have crony capitalism, socialism or fascism … not free market capitalism. Those who commit the biggest frauds and are part of the aristocracy get richer, while everyone else gets poorer. That is anti-American, and conservatives and liberals are pissed about it.
Indeed, being against governmental policies which will increase inequality in the future is not anti-capitalist. In free markets, dumb, speculative and risky bets mean that you go bankrupt, not that you’re bailed out by the taxpayers. And the poker game can only continue if everyone has some chips.
Studies show that runaway inequality makes the middle and lower classes poorer. Leading economists note that rampant inequality was one of the main causes of the Great Depression and of the current economic crisis.
Indeed, the 1% has caused a depression for the 99%. (Yes, in case you didn’t get the memo, we are currently in a depression....
Dizzying levels of inequality also corrupt the political system. In other words, when the 1% control D.C., we no longer have a democracy or a republican form of government. We have the best system money can buy.
Given that inequality in America is worse than Egypt (or Tunisia, or Yemen or most Latin American banana republics), that inequality in the U.S. hasn’t been this bad since 1917 (even before the Great Depression), and that social mobility is lower in America than in most European countries (and see this), we have been predicting these types of protests for years.
Why the Elite Hate the “We Are the 99%” Protests
Conservatives – as well as liberals – are against rampant inequality. If more Americans understood how much inequality we have, they would be outraged too.
For example, Dan Ariely of Duke University and Michael I. Norton of Harvard Business School demonstrate that Americans consistently underestimate the amount of inequality in our nation. As William Alden wrote last September:
Americans vastly underestimate the degree of wealth inequality in America, and we believe that the distribution should be far more equitable than it actually is, according to a new study.
Or, as the study’s authors put it: “All demographic groups — even those not usually associated with wealth redistribution such as Republicans and the wealthy — desired a more equal distribution of wealth than the status quo.”
The report … “Building a Better America — One Wealth Quintile At A Time” by Dan Ariely of Duke University and Michael I. Norton of Harvard Business School … shows that across ideological, economic and gender groups, Americans thought the richest 20 percent of our society controlled about 59 percent of the wealth, while the real number is closer to 84 percent.
A new Washington Post poll shows that the majority of Republicans – 53% – support raising taxes on people making more than $250,000 a year:
While eight in 10 Democrats and two-thirds of independents support raising taxes for Americans earning $250,000 or more, that drops to 53 percent among Republicans. Conservative Republicans split about evenly on the issue: 49 percent in support, and 46 percent opposed.
(Whether you oppose or support raising taxes on the wealthy, this shows the dramatic change of sentiment in the country right now.)
That is one of the primary reasons that the powers-that-be hate the Wall Street protests and it’s message of “We are the 99%” … it helps to wake people up to the class warfare by the 1% against everybody else.....
Top Economists Slam the Fed
I noted last year that Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz strongly dislikes the Fed:
Joseph Stiglitz – former head economist at the World Bank and a nobel-prize winner – said yesterday that the very structure of the Federal Reserve system is so fraught with conflicts that it is “corrupt” and undermines democracy.
Stiglitz said:
If we [i.e. the World Bank] had seen a governance structure that corresponds to our Federal Reserve system, we would have been yelling and screaming and saying that country does not deserve any assistance, this is a corrupt governing structure.
Stiglitz pointed out that – if another country had presented a plan to reform its financial system, and included a regulatory regime that copied the makeup of the Federal Reserve system – “it would have been a big signal that something is wrong.”
Stiglitz stressed that the Fed banks have clear conflicts of interest, since the banks are largely governed by a board of directors that includes officers of the very banks they’re supposed to be overseeing:
So, these are the guys who appointed the guy who bailed them out … Is that a conflict of interest?
They would say, ‘no conflict of interest, we were just doing our job. But you have to look at the conflicts of interest”…
The reason you talk about governance is because in a democracy you want people to have confidence … This is a structure that will undermine confidence in a democracy.
(Stiglitz supports the Wall Street protests).
Former Fed officials agree. For example, the former Vice President of Dallas Federal Reserve said that the failure of the government to provide more information about the bailout signals corruption. As ABC writes:
Gerald O’Driscoll, a former vice president at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas and a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, said he worried that the failure of the government to provide more information about its rescue spending could signal corruption.
“Nontransparency in government programs is always associated with corruption in other countries, so I don’t see why it wouldn’t be here,” he said.
In fact, many high-level economists have blasted the Fed for bungling virtually everything it does.
Top Economists: End the Fed
Indeed, Milton Friedman, Murray Rothbard and many other economists have called for an end to the Fed.
Yesterday, the New York Sun reported that another Nobel economist may have implied that the Fed should be abolished:
Thomas Sargent, the New York University professor who was announced Monday as a winner of the Nobel in economics … cites Walter Bagehot, who “said that what he called a ‘natural’ competitive banking system without a ‘central’ bank would be better…. ‘nothing can be more surely established by a larger experience than that a Government which interferes with any trade injures that trade. The best thing undeniably that a Government can do with the Money Market is to let it take care of itself.’”
Americans Are Finally Waking Up to the Fact that the Federal Reserve, Big Banks and Government Have Robbed Us Blind
Compare Zbigniew Brzezinski’s statement that the whole world is becoming awakened, and people everywhere are aware of inequities, lack of justice and lack of respect.
With this statement by Christopher Greene that Americans are finally waking up to being ripped off by the big banks, Federal Reserve and their enablers in the executive and legislative branches (as confirmed by Nobel prize winning economists):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=7wLoCmPjhb8
By Carl Herman, National Board Certified Teacher in economics, government, and history, who blogs as the Nonpartisan Examiner at Examiner.com. Carl was one of the leaders who launched the microcredit movement, and is a tireless activist for peace and justice.
Occupy Wall Street (and nationwide) has three emerging objectives:
- Public recognition of the 1%’s crimes, centering on war and money.
- End war and money crimes that annually kill millions, injure billions, and loot trillions of our dollars.
- Build a brighter future for 100% of humanity, centering on full constructive employment and the creation of money that maximizes public good.
My Open proposal for US Revolution: end unlawful wars, parasitic economics explains and documents
- war and money crimes so they are “emperor has no clothes” obvious,
- Gandhi and Dr. King’s strategy for victory, with recommendation for a Truth and Reconciliation window to encourage criminals’ peaceful surrender,
- Historical consideration and today’s possibility of the US creating money to cause full employment and optimal infrastructure. This replaces the Orwellian “debt supply” the 1% creates and controls as their main weapon of dominance (more on economic solutions here).
This 6-article series documents the history of criminality of the 1%’s Wars of Aggression and War Crimes. The power of this history is to reveal that the 1% lies, kills, and loots as their usual business. We the People, the 99%, have historically been distracted by political and media rhetoric that propagandized the crimes.
For whatever reasons of greed never having “enough,” the 1% overplayed their hand. We the 99% have reached a critical mass stage of engaged attention. The criminals among the 1% have a rapidly closing window of opportunity to reclaim their humanity, have “Scrooge conversions,” and contribute to causing the above objectives.
The facts that the 1%’s war and money policies are massive and obvious crimes is important. The 99%’s recognition is a trigger for those of us with Oaths to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Arrests will follow; the 1%’s houses of cards will collapse in tragic-comedy.
These six articles are taken from an assignment for my high school seniors to understand current events. The 11-part series will be available under the title, Teaching US History of empire/terrorism to recognize it today.
The 1%’s crimes will end because the 99% embrace the political, economic, and spiritual ideals of our Declaration of Independence
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