WHILE THE SWAMP KEEPER TWITTER TRUMPER SERVES THE SUPER RICH…. The
wall remains a joke on Legals and HUNDREDS OF STORES across America’s OPEN
BORDERS are being shuttered by the hundreds!
"Dalio wrote that the economic and social divisions in the US are similar to the revolutionary upheavals of this previous period. “During such times conflicts (both internal and external) increase, populism emerges, democracies are threatened and wars can occur.” He added that he could not say how bad it would get, but he was not encouraged. “Conflicts have now intensified to the point that fighting to the death is probably more likely than reconciliation."
Behind the political
warfare in the US: Rising fears of financial collapse, social unrest
22 August 2017
There are growing concerns in US and global
financial circles that the rise in the US stock market that accelerated with
the election of Donald Trump is heading for a major downturn. These concerns
shed a revealing light on some of the underlying forces driving the virtual
civil war in the US political establishment.
The growing view among Wall Street speculators
and corporate executives is that the “Trump trade”, which sent the Dow Jones
and other market indexes to record highs, has run its course, with the
president increasingly becoming an economic liability. The tipping point in
business sentiment came in the wake of the conflict over the Charlottesville
Nazi rampage. Trump’s remarks defending neo-Nazis were seen as undermining the
interests of American imperialism internationally and threatening to unleash
social and political instability at home.
However, concerns over the instability caused by
Trump reflect deeper fears. The American ruling class confronts problems that
extend far beyond the current occupant of the White House.
In a comment published yesterday, Ray Dalio, the
head of Bridgewater, the world’s largest hedge fund, said that politics was now
set to “probably play a greater role than we have experienced before in a
manner that is broadly similar to 1937.” Whether the US was able to overcome
political conflicts would have a greater effect on the economy than “classic
monetary and fiscal policies.”
The reference to 1937 is significant. The first
half of that year saw a major downturn in the US economy—the decline took place
at an even faster rate than in 1932, in the midst of the Great Depression. The
year also saw the eruption of the class struggle in the auto and steel
industries.
Dalio wrote that the economic and social
divisions in the US are similar to the revolutionary upheavals of this previous
period. “During such times conflicts (both internal and external) increase,
populism emerges, democracies are threatened and wars can occur.” He added that
he could not say how bad it would get, but he was not encouraged. “Conflicts
have now intensified to the point that fighting to the death is probably more
likely than reconciliation.”
Almost 170 years ago, in
his work The Class Struggles in France, Marx noted that the
eruption of the class struggle has a major impact on the financial system
because it calls into question confidence in the very viability of the economic
system over which the ruling class presides.
In his comment, Dalio wrote that, when one
looked at average figures, “one might conclude that the United States economy
is doing just fine, yet when one looks at the numbers that comprise those
averages, it’s clear that some are doing extraordinarily well and others are
doing terribly, with gaps in wealth and income being the greatest since the
1930s.”
Dalio and others couch references to the growing
social and political divide in terms of “populism,” but their real fear is the
emergence of overt class conflict. “The majority of Americans,” he wrote,
“appear to be strongly and intransigently in disagreement about our leadership
and the direction of our country” and were “more inclined to fight for what
they believe in than to try to figure out how to get beyond their disagreements
to work productively based on shared principles.”
In other words, the nostrums of the “American
dream” and America as the “land of economic opportunity,” which functioned
historically as a kind of political glue, have disintegrated. What terrifies
the ruling class
is that the working class will intervene,
under conditions in
which all signs
point to a collapse of the financial
bubble created by the
world’s central
banks since the financial crisis of 2008.
The complete disintegration of financial markets
nine years ago was only prevented by the injection of trillions of dollars into
the global financial system—the US Fed alone poured in more than $4 trillion.
But the chief effect of these measures has not been to stimulate a significant
recovery in the “real” economy—investment rates in the US and other major
economies remain at historically low levels—but to facilitate a financial
market boom.
The latest expression of the speculative mania
is the rise of the crypto currency Bitcoin. After taking more than 3,000 days
to reach a level of $2,000, the currency, which is used in Internet trading,
went from $2,000 to more than $4,000 in just 85 days. The overall market
valuation of Bitcoins has expanded to $140 billion, as major investors,
including Goldman Sachs, move in.
This is only one expression of bubbles that have
developed in virtually every financial asset.
With the provision of ultra-cheap money by the
Fed and other central banks, one of the chief mechanisms by which companies
have been able to maintain share values is by using borrowed funds to organise
share buybacks. But this process is reaching its limit, as already
over-leveraged companies cannot borrow more to sustain their share values.
As the Financial
Times noted in a comment yesterday, based on longer term historical
valuations, US stocks “appear more expensive than at any time bar the months
before the great crash of 1929, and the bursting of the dotcom bubble in 2000.”
Under what were once considered to be “normal”
circumstances, money would move into bond markets to take advantage of higher
rates of return. However, bond markets are also in a bubble, trading at
historical highs, with interest rates (which move in an inverse relationship to
the price) at record lows.
In 2008, the American ruling class responded to
the financial collapse through political and economic mechanisms. On the one
hand, they installed Obama to the US presidency—proclaiming the “audacity of
hope” and “change you can believe in”—with the support of the trade union
bureaucracy and the various organisations of the privileged middle class, who
hailed his election as a “transformative” moment.
On the other, they undertook the greatest
injection of money into the financial system seen in economic history to
finance an orgy of speculation and organize a massive transfer of wealth from
the working class to the rich. Far from resolving the contradictions, these
measures have reproduced them at a higher level.
While sections of the ruling class are terrified
of the growth of class conflict, they can propose no measures to address the
conditions that are leading inexorably toward social explosions. While Trump
has pursued a policy of developing an extra-parliamentary movement of the
extreme right, his critics within the ruling class are working to reorganize
his administration to place it even more firmly under the direction of the
military and the financial elite.
A new period of economic and political
convulsion is emerging, for which the working class must prepare through the
building of a revolutionary leadership, based on an internationalist and
socialist program, to resolve the historic crisis of the capitalist profit
system in its interests.
Nick Beams
OPOID AND ALCOHOL ADDICTION KILLS OF MIDDLE
AMERICA
SOARING
POVERTY AND DRUG ADDICTION UNDER OBAMA
"These
figures present a scathing indictment of the social order that prevails in
America, the world’s wealthiest country, whose government proclaims itself to
be the globe’s leading democracy. They are just one manifestation of the human
toll taken by the vast and all-pervasive inequality and mass poverty
AMERICA UNRAVELS:
Millions of children go hungry as the super- rich gorge themselves
and ILLEGALS SUCK IN BILLIONS IN WELFARE!
"The top 10 percent of Americans now own roughly three-quarters of all household wealth."
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2017/08/america-unravels-millions-of-children.html
"While
telling workers there is “not enough money” for wage increases, or to fund
social programs, both parties hailed the recent construction of the U.S.S.
Gerald Ford, a massive aircraft carrier that cost $13 billion to build,
stuffing the pockets of numerous contractors and war profiteers."
JAMES
WALSH –
THE OBAMA HISPANICAZATION of
AMERICA
How the Democrat party
surrendered America to Mexico:
“The
watchdogs at Judicial Watch discovered documents that reveal how the Obama
administration's close coordination with the Mexican government entices
Mexicans to hop over the fence and on to the American dole.” Washington
Times
SOARING POVERTY AND DRUG ADDICTION UNDER
OBAMA
"These figures present a scathing
indictment of the social order that prevails in America, the world’s wealthiest
country, whose government proclaims itself to be the globe’s leading democracy.
They are just one manifestation of the human toll taken by the vast and
all-pervasive inequality and mass poverty.
Worsening hunger for older
Americans.... as U.S. lets Mexico suck out hundreds of billions in welfare, drug sales and remittances.
By
Gary Joad
Seniors the most food-insecure
550,000 very low food-secure seniors
Worsening hunger for older
Americans.... as U.S. lets Mexico suck out hundreds of billions in welfare, drug sales and remittances.
By
Gary Joad
22 August 2017
The growth of seniors who are food-insecure has seen a staggering
growth in twenty-first century America. Some 14.7 percent of this age group are
said to be food-insecure, totaling at least 9.8 million in the US senior
population. Compared to 2001, this constitutes a rise of 37 percent, with the
number of seniors increasing in the same period 109 percent.
In an update posted at Feeding America’s web site earlier this
month, Professors James Ziliak from the University of Kentucky and Craig
Gundersen from the University of Illinois confirmed this worsening hunger
situation for Americans age 60 and over. According to the US Census Bureau,
about 10,000 people a day turn age 60 in the United States, a trend that will
continue through 2030.
Feeding America’s study, titled “The State of Senior Hunger in
America 2015” (and updated this month), noted that the threat of hunger to
older people was especially harsh in the South and Southwestern US. And the
publication noted that economic hardship constituted the main reason seniors
could not obtain sufficient food, despite the government’s declaration of an
improved economy and the dramatic explosion of Wall Street stock valuations.
The study also concluded that seniors living below the federally
recognized poverty line have a 45.3 percent risk of hunger, and that the threat
of food insecurity was significantly greater for elderly single adults than for
marrieds. The threat of hunger was noted to be three times higher for the
disabled elderly. If the seniors had grandchildren in the home, the risk of
hunger was twice as high. The number of children living with their grandparents
increased 64 percent between 1991 and 2009, to about 7.8 million. At the same
time, the majority of hungry seniors live above the official poverty line, with
nearly two-thirds reporting insufficient access to needed calories per day to
remain healthy.
Almost three of four seniors facing hunger are white, and almost
half of the retired seniors in the United States are today at risk for not
having enough to eat. The top 10 states with the most persons at and over age
60 who are food-insecure are Mississippi, Louisiana, North Carolina, South
Carolina, Arkansas, New York, West Virginia, Indiana, Oklahoma and Georgia. The
sharpest increase in all the groupings of elderly at risk for hunger came after
the Great Recession of 2008-2009.
On August 12, 2014, the Annals
of Emergency Medicine published the results of a two-month
review of 138 senior citizens admitted to an emergency department in 2013 and
noted that 60 percent were declared malnourished. The reasons included
inability to buy food, poor dentition and depression.
Seniors the most food-insecure
Feeding America has referred to seniors as the most food-insecure
segment of the US population, noting that one third of its food bank clients
are over age 60. On the financial collapse of 2007-2008, Feeding America noted
that more than half of its clients over the age of 65 appeared at food banks
monthly, and that persons over the poverty line were often not eligible for the
federal Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), also known as food
stamps, for food relief.
Feeding America considers SNAP, which suffers regular budgetary
cutbacks, the first line of defense for all food-insecure persons.
The Feeding America studies also note that from 2001 to the
present, hunger has cut into a younger and younger demographic, noting that in
2011, 65 percent of the elderly food bank visitors were under age 69. Between
2007 and 2011, the number of elderly food-insecure jumped 50 percent.
The Feeding America hunger study uses a questionnaire from the
Current Population Survey (CPS) of the US Census Bureau, submitted to
households each December using an 18-question survey focusing on the person’s
experiences of food stress in the last 30 days and the previous 12 months. A
10-question survey is used for households without children. One to three
positively answered questions categorizes a household as under food stress of
varying degrees.
Data for the study was also utilized from the National Center for
Health Statistics (NCHS/CDC), a subsidiary of the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention (CDC), wherein 5,000 persons, 50 percent children and 50 percent
adults, with seniors purposely over-sampled, are interviewed and examined
related to health.
The major findings for hungry seniors concluded that they were
taking in 14 percent less iron and 12 percent less protein than their
food-secure peers. Health outcomes included an increased risk of at least nine
diseases, including a 53 percent increased risk of heart attacks, a 52 percent
increased risk of asthma, a 40 percent increased risk of congestive heart
failure, along with increased reporting of diabetes and hypertension.
Depression unsurprisingly increased 60 percent with hunger. Also, the increased
rate of falling and resulting injuries soared among the hungry and malnourished
elderly. The measure of Activities of Daily Living (ADLs) fell dramatically,
which includes eating, bathing, and dressing oneself independently.
Food insecurity exists in every county of the United States, from
3 percent in Grant County, Kansas, to 38 percent in Jefferson County,
Mississippi. Poor households with children are hungry at a rate of 17 percent,
and homes with a single mother are food-insecure at 30 percent; single men with
children are at 22 percent.
As of 2015, 59 percent of food-insecure households participated in
at least one of three federal relief food programs, including SNAP, the
National School Lunch Program (NSLP), and the Special Supplemental Nutrition
Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC).
Feeding America provides food assistance to some 46.5 million
people a year in the US, including 12 million children and 7 million seniors.
Those assisted at Feeding America who also receive food stamps total about 55
percent, and 24 percent are getting food through the WIC program. Nearly all of
the families, 94 percent, subscribe to the school lunch program. More than half
of the persons receiving assistance had at least one employed person in the
household. The median income for households is at $9,175.
550,000 very low food-secure seniors
About 48 million Americans live in food-insecure households,
including 24.4 million people age 18 to 64 and 14.5 million children. The
majority of people who are food-insecure, 57 percent, are not officially
recognized by the US government as poor, which means living with an income
below 100 percent of the federal poverty level. It is also estimated that
almost 550,000 seniors are now essentially starving, with very low food
security.
In 2013, one half of those on Medicare had an income below
$23,500, or 200 percent of the federal poverty level of 2015. According to the
US Census Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) in 2014, one out of seven persons
over the age of 65 have incomes rendering them impoverished, including 45
percent of women over 65.
In a recent National
Geographic article on “Hunger in America,” Janet Poppendieck,
a sociologist at City University of New York, was quoted as saying, “Today more
working people and their families are hungry because of wages that have
declined.”
The article noted that more than half of the US hungry are white,
and the total of over 48 million food-insecure people constituted a fivefold
jump since the early 1960s, including a 57 percent increase since the early
1990s. The article noted that in the 1980s there existed just a few hundred
food pantries in the US. Now, there are over 50,000. One in six persons runs
short of food at least once a year in the US, compared to about one in 20 in
the European Union.
By 2013, the federal food relief budget had reached $75 billion,
or about $133.07 per hungry person a month, constituting less than $1.50
allotted for each meal, often referred to as a “minimum wage diet.” Moreover,
hundreds of thousands of poor people in the US do not own or have access to a
car, and live more than one half-mile from any source of food, if they had the
money to buy it. In Houston, Texas, alone, at least 43,000 households reside in
a so-called food desert.
As a global food availability specialist, Raj Patel, told National Geographic, “The
problem can’t be solved by merely telling people to eat more fruits and
vegetables, because at the heart of this [crisis] is a problem about wages,
about poverty.”
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