Duh, ya think?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2006/07/14/cnusa14.xml&menuId=242&sSheet=/money/2006/07/14/ixcity.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2006/07/14/cnusa14.xml&menuId=242&sSheet=/money/2006/07/14/ixcity.html
These last comments are typical of the way the MSM handles news: they publish the truth and then bring in the spellbinder to put everyone back to sleep. They do this under the pretense of "presenting both sides of the issue." But, as we know, when the country is being run by the Cult of the Plausible Lie, one side is lying and the other is telling the truth. There is no "gray area in the middle." As we write in the Second Edition of 911: The Ultimate Truth:By Edmund Conway, Economics Editor
(Filed: 14/07/2006)
The United States is heading for bankruptcy, according to an extraordinary paper published by one of the key members of the country's central bank.
A ballooning budget deficit and a pensions and welfare timebomb could send the economic superpower into insolvency, according to research by Professor Laurence Kotlikoff for the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis, a leading constituent of the US Federal Reserve.
Prof Kotlikoff said that, by some measures, the US is already bankrupt. "To paraphrase the Oxford English Dictionary, is the United States at the end of its resources, exhausted, stripped bare, destitute, bereft, wanting in property, or wrecked in consequence of failure to pay its creditors," he asked.
According to his central analysis, "the US government is, indeed, bankrupt, insofar as it will be unable to pay its creditors, who, in this context, are current and future generations to whom it has explicitly or implicitly promised future net payments of various kinds''.
The budget deficit in the US is not massive. The Bush administration this week cut its forecasts for the fiscal shortfall this year by almost a third, saying it will come in at 2.3pc of gross domestic product. This is smaller than most European countries - including the UK - which have deficits north of 3pc of GDP.
Prof Kotlikoff, who teaches at Boston University, says: "The proper way to consider a country's solvency is to examine the lifetime fiscal burdens facing current and future generations. If these burdens exceed the resources of those generations, get close to doing so, or simply get so high as to preclude their full collection, the country's policy will be unsustainable and can constitute or lead to national bankruptcy.
"Does the United States fit this bill? No one knows for sure, but there are strong reasons to believe the United States may be going broke."
Experts have calculated that the country's long-term "fiscal gap" between all future government spending and all future receipts will widen immensely as the Baby Boomer generation retires, and as the amount the state will have to spend on healthcare and pensions soars. The total fiscal gap could be an almost incomprehensible $65.9 trillion, according to a study by Professors Gokhale and Smetters.
The figure is massive because President George W Bush has made major tax cuts in recent years, and because the bill for Medicare, which provides health insurance for the elderly, and Medicaid, which does likewise for the poor, will increase greatly due to demographics.
Prof Kotlikoff said: "This figure is more than five times US GDP and almost twice the size of national wealth. One way to wrap one's head around $65.9trillion is to ask what fiscal adjustments are needed to eliminate this red hole. The answers are terrifying. One solution is an immediate and permanent doubling of personal and corporate income taxes. Another is an immediate and permanent two-thirds cut in Social Security and Medicare benefits. A third alternative, were it feasible, would be to immediately and permanently cut all federal discretionary spending by 143pc."
The scenario has serious implications for the dollar. If investors lose confidence in the US's future, and suspect the country may at some point allow inflation to erode away its debts, they may reduce their holdings of US Treasury bonds.
Prof Kotlikoff said: "The United States has experienced high rates of inflation in the past and appears to be running the same type of fiscal policies that engendered hyperinflations in 20 countries over the past century."
Paul Ashworth, of Capital Economics, was more sanguine about the coming retirement of the Baby Boomer generation. "For a start, the expected deterioration in the Federal budget owes more to rising per capita spending on health care than to changing demographics," he said.
"This can be contained if the political will is there. Similarly, the expected increase in social security spending can be controlled by reducing the growth rate of benefits. Expecting a fix now is probably asking too much of short-sighted politicians who have no incentives to do so. But a fix, or at least a succession of patches, will come when the problem becomes more pressing."
Consider the ideology of "freedom and democracy" that is espoused by the American government in the "war on terror". Clearly, the U.S. government is using these noble ideals as tools to "deal with" and deceive the population into supporting their plans. Given all that has occurred in Iraq and Afghanistan to date, the architects of the "war on terror" have obvious contempt for real freedom and democracy.Lobaczewski said:"Psychopaths are conscious of being different from normal people. That is why the "political system" inspired by their nature is able to conceal this awareness of being different. They wear a personal mask of sanity and know how to create a macrosocial mask of the same dissimulating nature. When we observe the role of ideology in this macrosocial phenomenon, quite conscious of the existence of this specific awareness of the psychopath, we can then understand why ideology is relegated to a tool-like role: something useful in dealing with those other naive people and nations. [...]
Pathocrats know that their real ideology is derived from their deviant natures, and treat the "other" - the masking ideology - with barely concealed contempt." [...]
Those members of the ruling pathocracy in the U.S. certainly use "double talk" when they speak of "fighting terrorism" and "promoting freedom" and, among themselves, they are certainly aware of the real meaning, as they define them, of these phrases: "fighting terrorism" means using terrorism to achieve their goals, and "promoting freedom" means crushing those people who aspire to true freedom.Lobaczewski said:"The names and official contents are kept, but another, completely different content is insinuated underneath, thus giving rise to the well known double talk phenomenon within which the same names have two meanings: one for initiates, one for everyone else. The latter is derived from the original ideology; the former has a specifically pathocratic meaning, something which is known not only to the pathocrats themselves, but also is learned by those people living under long-term subjection to their rule."
For evidence of the twisted morality as promoted by the pathocrats we need only look to the morality of mainstream religion where to use contraception is to "sin". The U.S. and Israeli governments (among others) claim that the Iraqi insurgents are "immoral" in their tactics of resisting oppression and occupation and in their fight to safeguard the lives of their friends and families. Essentially, as Lobaczewski says, any resistance to the American government, be it by foreign insurgents or American 'disgruntled citizens', is immoral and must be crushed.Lobaczewski said:"Doubletalk is only one of many symptoms. Others are the specific facility for producing new names which have suggestive effects and are accepted virtually uncritically, in particular outside the immediate scope of such a system's rule. We must thus point out the paramoralistic character and paranoidal qualities frequently contained within these names. The action of paralogisms and paramoralisms in this deformed ideology becomes comprehensible to us based on the information presented previously. Anything which threatens pathocratic rule becomes deeply immoral." [...]
For evidence of the depths of depravity to which the ruling pathocrats have stooped to ensure their survival, we need only look at the events of 9/11 and all of the patriotic fervor, which amounted to psychological manipulation of the masses, that resulted. By the end of this book, you will have been presented with enough information to leave you in no doubt that the 9/11 event was just such an act of depravity carried out by the ruling pathocrats.Lobaczewski said:"This privileged class of deviants feels permanently threatened by the "others", i.e. by the majority of normal people. Neither do the pathocrats entertain any illusions about their personal fate should there be a return to the system of normal man.
If the laws of normal man were to be reinstated, they and theirs could be subjected to judgment, including a moralizing interpretation of their psychological deviations; they would be threatened by a loss of freedom and life, not merely a loss of position and privilege. Since they are incapable of this kind of sacrifice, the survival of a system which is the best for them becomes a moral imperative. Such a threat must be battled by means of any and all psychological and political cunning implemented with a lack of scruples with regard to those other "inferior-quality" people that can be shocking in
its depravity."
The above paragraph is perhaps one of the most important and chilling things that Lobaczewski writes. The pathocracy ensures its continued hold on power by periodically engaging in reduction of the population of normal people - culling the herd - chiefly by means of manufactured war. As Lobaczewski says, "an obstinate and well-armed foe" is used to throw legions of normal people (in the form of the military) at this foe and thereby debilitate and subdue the normal peoples of the world - the only threat to the ruling pathocracy.Lobaczewski said:"Thus, the biological, psychological, moral, and economic destruction of the majority of normal people becomes, for the pathocrats, a "biological" necessity. Many means serve this end, starting with concentration camps and including warfare with an obstinate, well-armed foe who will devastate and debilitate the human power thrown at him, namely the very power jeopardizing pathocrats rule: the sons of normal man sent out to fight for an illusionary "noble cause." Once safely dead, the soldiers will then be decreed heroes to be revered in paeans, useful for raising a new generation faithful to the pathocracy and ever willing to go to their deaths to protect it."
Notice also the devilish manipulation whereby these soldiers, deliberately and needlessly sacrificed by the pathocrats, are then lauded as heroes to ensure future generations of cannon fodder. Notice the real life evidence of this where millions of American citizens cry "support our troops". What are they supporting but the futile sacrifice of their own sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, and all to serve the agenda of the psychopaths in power?
A clearer description of what is happening right now in modern day America is unlikely to be found. Expansionism has been made a virtue by the American pathocracy. Bush claims that the U.S. military is spreading "freedom and democracy" when in fact he is pursuing an imperialist agenda. Lobaczewski says:Lobaczewski said:Any war waged by a pathocratic nation has two fronts, the internal and the external. The internal front is more important for the leaders and the governing elite, and the internal threat is the deciding factor where unleashing war is concerned. In pondering whether to start a war against the pathocratic country, one must therefore give primary consideration to the fact that one can be used as an executioner of the common people whose increasing power represents incipient jeopardy for the pathocracy. After all, pathocrats give short shrift to blood and suffering of people they consider to be not quite conspecific. [...]
Pathocracy has other internal reasons for pursuing expansionism through the use of all means possible. As long as that "other" world governed by the systems of normal man exists, it inducts into the non-pathological majority a certain sense of direction. The non-pathological majority of the country's population will never stop dreaming of the reinstatement of the normal man's system in any possible form. This majority will never stop watching other countries, waiting for the opportune moment; its attention and power must therefore be distracted from this purpose, and the masses must be "educated" and channeled in the direction of imperialist strivings. This goal must be pursued doggedly so that everyone knows what is being fought for and in whose name harsh discipline and poverty must be endured. The latter factor - creating conditions of poverty and hardship - effectively limits the possibility of "subversive" activities on the part of the society of normal people.
The ideology must, of course, furnish a corresponding justification for this alleged right to conquer the world and must therefore be properly elaborated. Expansionism is derived from the very nature of pathocracy, not from ideology, but this fact must be masked by ideology. Whenever this phenomenon has been witnessed in history, imperialism was always its most demonstrative quality."
Reference the fact that Americans are being told that they must sacrifice their liberties in order for the government to better wage the "war on terror" and the clampdown on anti-Bush demonstrations because they "harm the war on terror". As regards "creating conditions of poverty" in order to limit the possibility of "subversive" activities on the part of the society of normal people: there is much evidence that the American economy is set for a major nose-dive. When it does, the effect on a large percentage of ordinary Americans (all those not part of the 'monied classes') will be a dramatic re-prioritization, leaving them concerned chiefly with their ability to feed themselves and their families."This goal must be pursued doggedly so that everyone knows what is being fought for and in whose name harsh discipline and poverty must be endured."
