Friday, October 7, 2016

THE LOOMING GLOBAL ECONOMIC MELTDOWN: Pension Funds and Insurance Companies to Default First

Pension funds and insurance companies, which are dependent for their financing on investment in long-term government bonds, were particularly adversely affected, with their solvency “threatened by a prolonged period of low interest rates.” 

 


AMERICA’S TWISTED ROAD TO REVOLUTION:

 

Fighting back Wall Street’s Looting and Rule


http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2016/09/america-nation-ruled-wall-streets.html


OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS:


THE FINAL TRANSFER OF AMERICA’ ECONOMY TO THE SUPER RICH!

 

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2016/09/barack-obama-and-his-crony-bankstershow.html



THE GREAT DEPRESSION IS JUST AROUND THE/ALL CORNERS!
AMERICA’S ECONOMIC ARMAGEDDON
Under Obama-Clintonomics, the rich became VERY rich and we got the tax bills for their bailouts and crimes!
30 REASONS FOR 30 YEARS IN PRISON FOR HILLARY!
THE UGLY, SORDID, CORRUPT AND SLEAZY LIFE OF BILLARY AND HILLARY CLINTON:Thirty reasons not to vote for Hillary

She would make a terrible president and Bill an equally terrible “First Gentleman” for these thirty reasons.

As geo-political and economic tensions mount

IMF warns of record high global debt

By Nick Beams 
7 October 2016
Eight years after the eruption of the global financial crisis, the conditions are being created for another meltdown of even bigger proportions, amid rising geo-political and economic tensions between the major capitalist powers.
This is the implication of three reports issued by the International Monetary Fund in preparation for its annual meeting, which begins in Washington today. The World Economic Outlook reported lower growth in all the advanced economies, underscoring the lack of a genuine recovery in the global economy, while two financial reports pointed to mounting instability resulting from the injection by central banks of trillions of dollars into the world financial system.
Taken together, the reports point to the underlying economic contradictions that are fuelling a series of crises. These include slowing world trade and rising protectionist measures, the row between the US and the European Union over tax payments by Apple, the move by the US Justice Department to impose a $14 billion penalty on Deutsche Bank, the breakdown in talks on the US-sponsored Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, and accusations from politicians in Berlin that the US is waging “economic warfare.”
The increasing instability of the financial system was highlighted in the IMF’s twice-yearly Fiscal Monitor report issued on Wednesday. It found that debt in the nonfinancial sector of the world economy had doubled in nominal terms since the turn of the century, reaching $152 trillion last year and continuing to rise.
Current debt levels are 225 percent of global gross domestic product (GDP), rising from 200 percent in 2002. The IMF said that while there was no consensus on how much debt was too much, current debt levels, of which two-thirds is privately held, were at a record high.
There was a need for deleveraging, but the current low-growth environment was making “the adjustment very difficult, setting the stage for a vicious feedback loop in which lower growth hampers deleveraging and the debt overhang exacerbates the slowdown.”
The report said the debt overhang problem, characterised as a situation in which the borrower’s debt service liability exceeds its future repayment capacity, “resides squarely within advanced economies’ private sector.”
While the IMF did not make the point, its analysis exposes the claim that too much government spending is the cause of mounting financial problems. According to the Fiscal Monitor report, the easing of restrictions on credit meant that nonfinancial private-sector debt in the major economies increased by 35 percent of GDP in the years leading up to the global financial crisis.
Significantly, there was a rapid rise in household debt in this period. The report did not point to the reasons, but two major factors undoubtedly were the low level of wage increases, forcing increased borrowing, and the surge in house prices in a number of countries, itself a product of credit expansion. The IMF noted that in some countries—Australia, Canada and Singapore—private-sector debt had continued to accumulate at a fast pace.
The report found that public debt, which makes up one-third of the total, had risen from 70 percent of global GDP to 85 percent. But almost half of this increase was a result of low nominal growth. In other words, far from the rise in government debt being the result of “profligate” spending on health, pensions and social services—the mantra of those demanding austerity—its expansion is rooted in the ongoing stagnation following the 2008 financial crisis.
A second financial report, Global Financial Stability, drew out the growing risks to the financial system. It said that while short-term risks had abated since the previous report in April, “the medium-term risks are building.” The continued slowdown in global growth had prompted financial markets to expect a continued period of low inflation, low interest rates and “an even longer delay in normalizing monetary policy.”
It warned, however, that some monetary policies, such as negative interest rates, were “reaching the limits of their effectiveness, and the medium-term side effects of low rates are rising for banks and other financial institutions.”
Pension funds and insurance companies, which are dependent for their financing on investment in long-term government bonds, were particularly adversely affected, with their solvency “threatened by a prolonged period of low interest rates.”
Financial institutions as a whole in the advanced economies faced a “number of cyclical and structural challenges and need to adapt to the new era of low growth and low interest rates.” If these challenges were left unaddressed, it “could undermine financial soundness.”
These problems go to the very heart of the capitalist financial system—the banks. The report stated that weak profitability could “erode banks’ buffers and undermine their ability to support growth.” Even if there were a cyclical recovery in the economy, this would not resolve the problems of low profitability. “Over 25 percent of banks in advanced economies (about $11.7 trillion in assets) would remain weak and face significant structural challenges,” with the problems concentrated in the European and Japanese banking sector.
“In the euro area,” the report stated, “excessive nonperforming loans and structural drags on profitability require urgent and comprehensive action.” Reducing nonperforming loans and addressing deficiencies in capital were a priority.
The mounting financial problems, while concentrated in the advanced economies, are not confined to them. The report found that in emerging market economies, around 11 percent of corporate debt, over $400 billion, was held by firms with “weak repayment capacity.”
High debt levels and excess capacity made it difficult for these companies to “grow out of the problem” which left them “sensitive to downside external or domestic developments,” and if interest rates started to rise and earnings fell, “such a scenario would exhaust bank capital buffers in some emerging markets.”
Another area of concern was China, where “continued rapid credit growth… and expanding shadow banking products pose mounting risks to financial stability.” The rapidly growing financial system “is becoming increasingly leveraged and interconnected, and a variety of innovative vehicles and products are adding to the complexity.” Corporate debt at risk remained high and “underlying risks from non-loan credit exposures add to these challenges.”
The three reports point to the deepening contradictions of the global capitalist system. The IMF has insisted that in the absence of any cyclical rise of the economy, monetary policy alone cannot bring about a recovery, and government infrastructure and other spending is necessary to provide a boost.
But such spending would increase debt and would depend on interest rates remaining low. Ultra-low interest rates, however, are increasingly undermining the stability of banks and other financial institutions, creating the conditions for another financial crisis, which will further inflame the already high level of geo-political and economic conflict.
THE CLINTON MAFIA:
IN THE IMAGE OF THE “HOPE & CHANGE” HUCKSTER BARACK OBAMA, REDEFINING POL CORRUPTION!
When asked to compare Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump, D'Souza said no contest.  "She is basically Obama plus gangsterism.  The Clintons are like Bonnie and Clyde.  Their goal is to steal America. 
AMERICA’S FINAL DAYS: The Global Looting of Bill & Hillary Clinton – unconvicted.
When asked to compare Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump, D'Souza said no contest.  "She is basically Obama plus gangsterism.  The Clintons are like Bonnie and Clyde.  Their goal is to steal America. 
In Hillary's America, D'Souza documents how Democrats transitioned from pro-slavery to pro-enslavement; the longstanding Democratic political war against women; how Hillary Clinton's political mentor was, literally, a cold-blooded gangster, Saul Alinsky; how the Clintons and other Democrats see foreign policy not in terms of national interest, but in terms of personal profit; and how Democratic-controlled cities have turned into hotbeds of crime and corruption.  American Thinker interviewed him about his latest projects

OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS: You were wondering how many jobs went to illegals and how well Obama’s crony banksters have done???

The sputtering economic recovering under President Obama, the last to follow a major recession, has fallen way short of the average recovery and ranks as the worst since the 1930s Great Depression, according to a new report.

Had the recovery under Obama been the average of the 11 since the Depression, according to the report, family incomes would be $17,000 higher, six million fewer Americans would be in poverty, and there would be six million more jobs.


SENATOR BERNIE SANDERS PUSHES HILLARY CLINTON'S AGENDA OF EXPLOITATION

In secret Goldman Sachs speeches, Clinton explains why the rich should rule

In secret Goldman Sachs speeches, Clinton explains why the rich should rule

By Tom Carter 
17 October 2016
In one question-and-answer session on October 24, 2013 at Goldman Sachs, with CEO Lloyd Blankfein in attendance, an audience member asked the current Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton the following question: “And Mike Bloomberg had 30 billion other reasons than to take office. Do we need a wholesale change in Washington that has more to do with people that don’t need the job than have the job?”
Clinton’s answer was revealing. “That’s a really interesting question,” she said. “You know, I would like to see more successful business people run for office. I really would like to see that because I do think, you know, you don’t have to have 30 billion, but you have a certain level of freedom. And there’s that memorable phrase from a former member of the Senate: You can be maybe rented, but never bought. And I think it’s important to have people with those experiences.”
Clinton’s response is an open defense of the aristocratic principle: the rich should rule. By virtue of being very wealthy, the rich have the leisure time to pursue a political career. Moreover, they supposedly have immunity from being bribed, since they are already so wealthy. Finally, they have the “experience in business” necessary to preside over a social system that benefits the social layer which appropriates all the profits from business and finance. These are sentiments that any 18th or 19th century aristocrat would recognize and embrace.
Clinton merely echoes, in a more crude form, the patrician arrogance of Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830-1903), whose views were summed up by historian Barbara Tuchman:
He did not believe in political equality. There was the multitude, he said, and there were the “natural” leaders. “Always wealth, in some countries birth, and in all countries intellectual power and culture mark out the man to whom, in a healthy state of feeling, a community looks to undertake its government.” These men had the leisure for it and the fortune, “so that the struggles for ambition are not defiled by the taint of sordid greed… They are the aristocracy of a country in the original and best sense of the word… The important point is that the rulers of a country should be taken from among them,” and as a class they should retain that “political preponderance to which they have every right that superior fitness can confer.”
Clinton’s argument that her own wealth entitles her to govern America is an argument also made repeatedly by Donald Trump, who touts his own billions as a reason he will remain immune to “special interests.”
The “former member of the Senate” to whom Clinton was apparently referring was John Breaux, a Louisiana Democrat who held office from 1987 to 2005. Considered one of the most conservative Democrats ever to take office, Clinton’s role model went on to pursue a lucrative lobbying career at the firm Squire Patton Boggs. His name is synonymous with Washington’s corrupt “revolving door.”
"On Saturday, WikiLeaks published the 

transcripts of three lavishly paid speeches 

given by Clinton at gatherings held by 

Goldman Sachs, dating from June 4, October 

24 and October 29, 2013. All three feature a 

mix of groveling before the financial 

malefactors who hired her to speak and 

gloating over her own wealth."
In one of her secret Wall Street speeches, Clinton frankly admitted that she has a “public position” and a “private position.” The private position is expressed in “backroom discussions,” while the “public position” consists of the lies she tells to the rest of the population.
The fact that Clinton addressed the notorious 

investment bank in the first place highlights the 

extent to which the American corporate, financial 

and political establishment is drenched in 

corruption and criminalityIn April 2011, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations released a report entitled “Wall Street and the Financial Crisis: Anatomy of a Financial Collapse.” This report exhaustively documented that the financial crash of 2008 and the recession that followed were the product of fraud and illegality on the part of mortgage lenders and banks such as Goldman Sachs, with government regulatory bodies as well as credit rating agencies serving as accessories.
Forty percent of the 639-page report, or some 240 pages, 

were devoted to the fraudulent and deceptive practices of 

Goldman Sachs. The report presented documents, emails, 

internal communications and other evidence showing that 

the largest US investment bank had sold billions of dollars in 

subprime mortgage-backed securities to investors, vouching 

for their value, even as it was betting that the investments 

would fail. Goldman made billions and CEO Blankfein and 

other top executives pocketed millions in bonuses by 

accelerating the collapse of the financial system.
Michigan Senator Carl Levin, the chairman of the Senate subcommittee, famously described how the investigation had uncovered “a financial snake pit rife with greed, conflicts of interest and wrongdoing.”
“Using their own words in documents subpoenaed by the subcommittee,” Levin said, “the report discloses how financial firms deliberately took advantage of their clients and investors, how credit rating agencies assigned AAA ratings to high-risk securities, and how regulators sat on their hands instead of reining in the unsafe and unsound practices all around them. Rampant conflicts of interest are the threads that run through every chapter of this sordid story.”
So when Clinton was hobnobbing with 

Goldman Sachs CEO Blankfein in 2013, while 

investigations of wrongdoing by Goldman 

and the other Wall Street banks were still 

ongoing, she was consorting with a man who 

belonged in prison. In 2011, Levin had recommended that the Justice Department criminally prosecute Blankfein for his fraudulent and deceptive conduct, and the Senate subcommittee charged that he had perjured himself in testimony in 2010 regarding his bank’s role in the financial crash. Nevertheless, no charges were brought, and in 2013 Clinton was accepting upwards of $225,000 per speech from Blankfein’s firm.
Hillary and Bill Clinton have accumulated a total of $153 million in speaking fees since Bill Clinton left the White House. Only the very naive could believe that these vast sums were paid for the speeches themselves. They were payment for services rendered to the American financial aristocracy over a protracted period.
Clinton’s Wall Street speeches deserve to be widely read. They provide an invaluable first-hand education in the sheer cynicism of the American ruling class. While the Obama administration publicly insisted that the Dodd-Frank reforms of 2010 were “strict regulations” that would ensure that the 2008 crash would “never happen again,” Clinton privately told her Goldman audience not to worry, that these cosmetic reforms had to be passed for “political reasons,” to provide the appearance that the government did not “sit idly by and do nothing” as people lost their jobs, homes and life savings.
When Blankfein snidely asked Clinton how, should he decide to run for president, he should conduct his campaign, Clinton responded with her own cynical joke. “I think you would leave Goldman Sachs and start running a soup kitchen somewhere,” Clinton replied, to the merriment of the assembled guests.
The response to the publication of these 

speeches by so-called “socialist” Bernie 


Sanders exposes the utterly fraudulent 


character of his entire presidential bid. While 


he postured during the Democratic Party 


primaries as a proponent of a “political 


revolution” against the “billionaire class,” 


Sanders now functions shamelessly as a 


sideshow for the Clinton campaign, 


browbeating his (now much smaller) 


audiences with admonitions to vote for the 


preferred candidate of the “billionaire class” 


he claimed to oppose.
During his run for the Democratic nomination, Sanders repeatedly called on Clinton to release the transcripts of her Wall Street speeches, which she refused to do. He charged that the speeches would show her subservience to the bankers. Now, transcripts have been leaked to the public, completely substantiating his accusations. His silence only underscores the depth of his political treachery and dishonesty.
Meanwhile, emails published by WikiLeaks to and from Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, reveal the consummate cynicism with which Hillary Clinton sought to portray herself as a champion of “everyday Americans,” small businesses, unionized workers, minorities and women. Having no connection whatsoever to any popular movement or any policies that have benefited the bottom 90 percent of American society, Clinton relies on a network of “community leaders,” union bureaucrats, academics, celebrities and media “surrogates,” who use empty demagogy and identity politics to market her brand to voters.
In one particularly Machiavellian email, one of Clinton’s aides discussed adding a “riff” of demagogic statements against Wall Street in a speech to Deutsche Bank in 2015, “precisely for the purpose of having something we could show people if ever asked what she was saying behind closed doors for two years to all those fat cats.”
“I wrote her a long riff about economic fairness and how the financial industry has lost its way,” the aide wrote. “Perhaps at some point there will be value in sharing this with a reporter and getting a story written. Upside would be that when people say she’s too close to Wall Street and has taken too much money from bankers, we can point to evidence that she wasn’t afraid to speak truth to power.”
In another email, Podesta frankly noted that Clinton hated the phrase “everyday Americans,” but Podesta urged her to use it anyway. “I know she has begun to hate everyday Americans, but I think we should use it once the first time she says I’m running for president because you and everyday Americans need a champion,” Podesta wrote.
The cynicism of Clinton’s campaign knows no bounds. Her staff actually worked to help Donald Trump secure the Republican nomination, believing that Clinton would have a better chance of defeating Trump in the election than a more conventional Republican candidate. The media was encouraged to “take him seriously,” and Clinton was urged to single Trump out for criticism in order to “help him cement his front runner status” among the Republican primary candidates.
Around 11,000 out of 50,000 emails obtained by WikiLeaks have been published. The Clinton campaign’s response to these exposures has been to blame Russia, in line with the Obama administration’s campaign of saber-rattling against the Putin administration. In an interview last weekend on Fox News, Podesta suggested that the emails were not authentic, while simultaneously (and inconsistently) arguing that the emails were acquired by “the Russians,” who are supposedly attempting to deliver the election to Donald Trump.

On Friday, Podesta taunted WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange with a picture of a number of uniformed chefs preparing a luxurious private dinner for the Hillary Victory Fund. “I bet the lobster risotto is better than the food at the Ecuadorian Embassy,” Podesta wrote as the caption to the photograph on Twitter, referring to the fact that Assange has been a de facto prisoner at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London since he sought asylum there in June 2012. Assange immediately replied, “Yes, we get it. The elite eat better than the peasants they abuse.”


“Sanders, who spoke for about a half hour, advanced his boilerplate pitch, promising that Clinton would redress a myriad of ills—income inequality, lack of access to healthcare, crumbling infrastructure, poverty wages and overflowing prisons. He spoke as if the disastrous social conditions in the US were unrelated to the policies pursued by President Obama and the Democratic Party for the past eight years.”

 

THE SMELL OF MONEY:

Senator Bernie Sanders Takes the Crooked Road For Obama’s Crony Banksters for Hillary Clinton

Much more here:

http://hillaryclinton-whitecollarcriminal.blogspot.com/2016/10/sandsers-and-clinton-closet-republicans.html


 


AMERICA’S ECONOMIC ARMAGEDDON
Under Obama-Clintonomics, the rich became VERY rich and we got the tax bills for their bailouts and crimes!

"Barack Obama will shortly take a similar path, reaping his reward from the financial aristocracy whose interests he safeguarded so assiduously over the past eight years."


 "Even as Citigroup and its Wall Street 

counterparts were dragging the US and world 

economy into its deepest crisis since the 

1930s, they remained, as the email shows, the 

real power behind the façade of American 

democracy and its electoral process."



THE VERY BANKSTERS THAT ALL BUT DESTROYED 

AMERICA'S ECONOMY AND A TRILLION DOLLARS IN 

HOME EQUITY HAD ALREADY BOUGHT BARACK OBAMA

BEFORE HIS FIRST CORRUPT DAY IN OFFICE!


Citigroup chose Obama’s 2008 cabinet, WikiLeaks document reveals

By Tom Eley 
15 October 2016
One month before the presidential election of 2008, the giant

Wall Street bank Citigroup submitted to the Obama 

campaign a list of its preferred candidates for cabinet 

positions in an Obama administration. This list corresponds 

almost exactly to the eventual composition of Barack 

Obama’s cabinet.
The memorandum, revealed by WikiLeaks in a recent document release from the email account of John Podesta, who currently serves as Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair, was written by Michael Froman, who was then an executive with Citigroup and currently serves as US trade representative. The email is dated Oct. 6, 2008 and bears the subject line “Lists.” It went to Podesta a month before he was named chairman of President-Elect Obama’s transition team.
The email was sent at the height of the financial meltdown that erupted after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers on September 15. Even as Citigroup and its 

Wall Street counterparts were dragging the 

US and world economy into its deepest crisis 

since the 1930s, they remained, as the email 

shows, the real power behind the façade of 

American democracy and its electoral process.
Froman’s list proved remarkably prescient. As it proposed, 

Robert Gates, a Bush holdover, became secretary of Defense; 

Eric Holder became attorney general; Janet Napolitano, 

secretary of Homeland Security; Rahm Emanuel, White 

House chief of staff; Susan Rice, United Nations ambassador;

Arne Duncan, secretary of Education; Kathleen Sebelius, 

secretary of Health and Human Services; Peter Orszag, head 

of the Office of Management and Budget; Eric Shinseki, 

secretary of Veterans Affairs; and Melody Barnes, chief of the 

Domestic Policy Council.
For the highly sensitive position of secretary of the Treasury, 

three possibilities were presented: Robert Rubin and Rubin’s 

close disciples Lawrence Summers and Timothy Geithner. 

Obama chose Geithner, then president of the Federal 

Reserve Bank of New York. Geithner, along with Bush 

Treasury Secretary (and former Goldman Sachs CEO) Henry

Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, had played the 

leading role in organizing the Wall Street bailout.
Rubin had served as Treasury secretary in the Bill Clinton administration from 1995 until 1999, when he was succeeded by Summers. In that capacity, Rubin and Summers oversaw the dismantling of the Glass-Steagall Act (1933), which had imposed a legal wall separating commercial banking from investment banking. Immediately after leaving Treasury, Rubin became a top executive at Citigroup, remaining there until 2009.
A notable aspect of the Froman memo is its use of identity politics. Among the Citigroup executive’s lists of proposed hires to Podesta were a “Diversity List” including “African American, Latino and Asian American candidates, broken down by Cabinet/Deputy and Under/Assistant/Deputy Assistant level,” in Froman’s words, and “a similar document on women.” Froman also took diversity into account for his White House cabinet list, “probability-weighting the likelihood of appointing a diverse candidate for each position.” This list concluded with a table breaking down the 31 assignments by race and gender.
Citigroup’s recommendations came just three 

days after then-President George W. Bush 

signed into law the Troubled Asset Relief 

Program, which allocated $700 billion in 

taxpayer money to rescue the largest Wall 

Street banks. The single biggest beneficiary 

was Citigroup, which was given $45 billion in 

cash in the form of a government stock 

purchase, plus a $306 billion government 

guarantee to back up its worthless mortgage-

related assets.
Then-presidential candidate Obama played a critical political role in shepherding the massively unpopular bank bailout through Congress. The September financial crash convinced decisive sections of the US corporate-financial elite that the Democratic candidate of “hope” and “change” would be better positioned to contain popular opposition to the bailout than his Republican rival, Senator John McCain of Arizona.
As president, Obama not only funneled trillions of 

dollars to the banks, he saw to it that not a single 

leading Wall Street executive faced prosecution for 

the orgy of speculation and swindling that led to the 

financial collapse and Great Recession, and he 

personally intervened to block legislation capping 

executive pay at bailed-out firms.
The same furtive and corrupt process is underway in relation to a Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump administration. Froman’s email is one of many thousands released by WikiLeaks from the account of Podesta. Those communications, such as the Frohman email, which expose who really rules America, have been virtually ignored by the media. The pro-Democratic Party New Republic called attention to it in an article published Friday, but the story has received little if any further coverage.
The media has instead focused on salacious details of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s sexual activities, designed, in part, to divert attention from the substance of the Clinton campaign-related emails being released by WikiLeaks and other sources.
The New Republic drew attention to the Froman memo not because it opposes such machinations, but as a warning to the interests it represents that they must move now to influence the eventual composition of a Hillary Clinton administration.
“If the 2008 Podesta emails are any indication, the next four years of public policy are being hashed out right now, behind closed doors,” wrote New Republic author David Dayen. “And if liberals want to have an impact on that process, waiting until after the election will be too late.”


AMERICA’S TWISTED ROAD TO REVOLUTION:

 

Fighting back Wall Street’s Looting and Rule


http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2016/09/america-nation-ruled-wall-streets.html


Bernie Sanders stumps for Clinton in Michigan
By Shannon Jones
7 October 2016
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders continued his campaign for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in Michigan Thursday, making appearances in four cities. His stops included a United Auto Workers (UAW) union hall in Dearborn, the University of Michigan campus in Ann Arbor, Michigan State University in East Lansing and a high school in Grand Rapids. He moves on to New Hampshire Friday.
The former Democratic candidate is seeking to rebrand his “political revolution” into a get out the vote effort for Clinton, the favored candidate of Wall Street and the military intelligence apparatus. However, instead of the crowds of thousands he addressed during his primary campaign, Sanders spoke before audiences of only several hundreds, largely made up of Democratic Party faithful.
At his first stop at the UAW Local 600 union hall, he addressed an audience of 200 to 300 people mobilized by the UAW. In her introductory remarks, UAW Vice President for General Motors Cindy Estrada noted the difficulties Clinton faced in attracting young voters. She called on those in attendance not to vote for Green Party candidate Jill Stein or other “third party candidates.” She urged union members and others in the audience to make an all out effort to get out the vote for Clinton and to register those not already registered.
During the revolt of autoworkers against UAW-backed contracts last fall, Estrada played the lead role in ramming through the concessions agreement at Ford. The vote ended in a supposed “yes” vote at Local 600 that gave the UAW just barely enough votes to claim that the contract passed, amidst accusations from workers of ballot stuffing.
Sanders, who spoke for about a half hour, advanced his boilerplate pitch, promising that Clinton would redress a myriad of ills—income inequality, lack of access to healthcare, crumbling infrastructure, poverty wages and overflowing prisons. He spoke as if the disastrous social conditions in the US were unrelated to the policies pursued by President Obama and the Democratic Party for the past eight years.
Sanders heaped praise on the unions, calling the Local 600 union hall “hallowed ground.” He said nothing about the miserable sellout foisted on US autoworkers last year by the UAW or its role in suppressing the class struggle for the past three decades. Likewise he made no mention of the ongoing struggles of nurses in Minneapolis, teachers in Cleveland and Chicago, Canadian autoworkers or symphony musicians in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, who are among tens of thousands locked in bitter contract battles.
A little later, at the University of Michigan, Sanders spoke before an audience of several hundred, mainly students. In contrast to the enthusiastic crowds of students he addressed last spring, this campus visit was noticeably subdued. At UM he continued his effort to blackmail young people into voting for Clinton by appealing to hatred of the fascistic Trump.
Sanders has been assigned the role by the American ruling class of channeling growing opposition to endless war and social inequality back into the Democratic Party. To do this he attempted to tap into the growing interest and support for socialism among workers and young people in order only to demoralize and smother it.

A Socialist Equality Party campaign team distributed information about the party’s election campaign of Jerry White for president and Niles Niemuth for vice president to students attending the Sanders event in Ann Arbor. Niemuth joined the campaign and used the opportunity to talk to young people about the November 5 conference, Socialism vs. Capitalism and War, at Wayne State University in Detroit.
Many students indicated to Niemuth and SEP supporters that they only planned to vote for Clinton as the “lesser of two evils.” There was widespread dislike for the Democratic nominee, as well as a frustration over the outcome of the Democratic primary and a feeling there was no choice but to vote for Clinton to stop Trump’s election.
SEP supporters asked one student, Zainab, what she thought of Sanders’ decision to endorse Clinton. “He had to do it, but I don’t agree,” she said. “We shouldn’t play off the fear for Trump to support someone who is almost as bad.”
On Clinton’s record of support for war, Zainab said the US has “caused chaos in the Middle East with billions of dollars lost. It has cultivated animosity and created a vacuum in Iraq, displacing so many families and turning them into refugees. It’s all for money and power, which go hand in hand. We haven’t even gotten over colonialism. Honestly I don’t see a difference between Democrats and Republicans. Clinton is not anti-war. And with Trump, I can’t even understand him.”
When asked about attending the November 5 conference against war, she said: “It’s a great idea. I don’t even know how to put it in a sentence, but yeah! I’m for it. An international movement would be interesting because there are so many people in the Middle East who are anti-war, who are opposed to the invasions and occupations of their countries. I want to know how we can unite them.”
Another student, Korey, said he was a supporter of the Green Party but was voting for Clinton. “I voted for Sanders in the primary, and I support Clinton because she’ll appoint liberals to the Supreme Court.”
Niemuth noted that Clinton and Trump both represent the financial aristocracy, and that regardless of who is elected the next administration will expand war and intensify the attack on the working class. Korey replied, “I don’t like her positions on the wars. I’m against intervention, and I don’t believe in the occupations, and Clinton’s record has contributed to the crisis in the Middle East. I don’t agree with the US involvement in Syria and I’m also against these drone strikes, but I’m worried about a Trump presidency.”
Another student, Gary, who was originally from England, said, “I’m a socialist. I think everyone should be given a decent shot at life. I think the state should help people. Sanders was the only American political campaign I’ve ever contributed to. I think he had to endorse Clinton.”
A SEP supporter asked him whether there was a contradiction between Sanders’ self-proclaimed “democratic socialism” and his support for the pro-war, pro-Wall Street Clinton campaign. He said, “I don’t like it, but she’s better than Trump. I wouldn’t say I’m entirely anti-war, but I’m anti-unjust wars.” When asked whether any of the US wars of the last 15 years were just, he said: “No. They are not justified.”
Courtney said, “The wars are to get oil. Clinton is a billionaire and she’s in it for the business.”
Her friend Aji said, “Everyone in politics is stupid, and we tend to do things for financial gain.” When Niemuth explained that the wars are not the product of general “greed,” but of the capitalist system, Courtney said: “Oh, I hate capitalism, basically for the reasons I already said. I think socialism would be better.”

OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS:


THE FINAL TRANSFER OF AMERICA’ ECONOMY TO THE SUPER RICH!

 

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2016/09/barack-obama-and-his-crony-bankstershow.html


THE GREAT DEPRESSION IS JUST AROUND THE/ALL CORNERS!
AMERICA’S ECONOMIC ARMAGEDDON
Under Obama-Clintonomics, the rich became VERY rich and we got the tax bills for their bailouts and crimes!
30 REASONS FOR 30 YEARS IN PRISON FOR HILLARY!
THE UGLY, SORDID, CORRUPT AND SLEAZY LIFE OF BILLARY AND HILLARY CLINTON:Thirty reasons not to vote for Hillary

She would make a terrible president and Bill an equally terrible “First Gentleman” for these thirty reasons.