( – promoted by buhdydharma )
Daniel Tencer writing at RawStory Friday reported that “The US economic recovery in recent quarters is little more than a “cover-up” and the world is headed for a “Greatest Depression,” complete with social unrest and class warfare, says a renowned economic forecaster. Gerald Celente, head of the Trends Research Institute, told Yahoo! News’ Tech Ticker that there’s no risk of a “double-dip recession” because the first “dip” never ended.”
“We’re saying there’s no double dip, it never ended,” Celente said. “We’re looking at the Greatest Depression. There’s no way out of this without [rebuilding] productive capacity. You can’t print [money to get] out of it.”
“Celente said the current unemployment rate, if it were measured as it was measured during the Great Depression, would be around 17.5 percent. And he expects that number to rise to around 22 percent in the coming years.”
“One of the good businesses to get in to may be guillotines,” Celente quipped. “Because there’s a real off-with-their-heads fever going on. People are really fed up.”
…
“We went from a country that used to be merchants, craftspeople, manufacturers, to clerks and cashiers,” Celente said. “We have to bring manufacturing back to America.”
Celente also talked with Tech Tickers interviewers Friday about his view of the direction of the US ’empire’, saying that what he and Trends Research Institute sees is effectively America ‘becoming’ the USSR: “In a lot of ways, it’s empire decline. They ran the cold war race and they lost. We’re still in the race”, “We’re also seeing similarities, of the United States breaking up like the USSR did”. “The country is too big to be run by a bunch of people in tight suits, white shirts and red ties. They’re not pulling it off. They’re empty suits.”, he opines.
Celente describes some of the similarities, including:
A rotten political system: He compares politicians (Democrats and Republicans alike) to “Mafioso” and says campaign contributions are really thinly disguised “bribes and payoffs.”
Crony capitalism: Like in the USSR of old, Celente laments that so much of America’s wealth (93%) is controlled by such a small group small portion of its population (10%). Owing to that concentration of wealth, the government makes policies designed to reward “the bigs” at the expense of average citizens (see: Bailouts, banks).
Military-industrial complex: The USSR went bankrupt fighting the cold war and Celente fears the U.S. is “squandering its greater but still finite resources on a gargantuan defense budget, fighting unwinnable hot wars and feeding an insatiable military stationed on hundreds of bases worldwide.”
Crossposted now at DailyKos, fwiw…
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…an interesting quote and article in the 8/18/10 Black Agenda Report, “The Current Economic Crisis and the Way Out” …
Read more —
here
class here – we’re (ahem) yaknow not graduates of Harvard, et al.
But Americans in their heart of hearts and more importantly mind of minds know this to be true. There is a slow dawning coming up.
We just don’t know what to do – we are in serious need of a leader. After all the other side has one – the president and his coterie. We have been fortunate that many economists have been speaking out but let’s face it – we’ve seen what’s been going on in the neoliberal playbook. We’ve been talking about it out here where no one in DC pays attention because yaknow “protectionism.” Or that’s what they call the class war, inter alia.
Shortsighted. Do they want to live in enclaves?
Last year, the theme was “the system is broken.” Now, what’s catching on is “the empire is dying,” which you well elaborate on.
Given the tendency of leftists and generals to always be preparing to fight the previous war, it’s an extremely valuable point to make. The concept re-introduces one word that has disappeared from our vocabulary is “imperialism,” which among other things takes adventures like Iraq and Afghanistan out of the phony realm of national security and exposes the real interests in play. Empire Dying highlights this. What is this empire, who does it serve, can we do without it?
So the question then looms: how do progressives (and radicals and leftists or whatever you want to call them) respond to this empire dying. There is one strain of thought (emiseration theory) that celebrates the dying empire because the ensuing misery will in-and-of-itself provoke rebellion. In this view, the poor are reduced to revolutionary cannon-fodder.
On the other hand, my belief is that the deepening of our hard times demands that the poor be organized. If the working class (or the people or whatever) is continuously shredded from the bottom, that destroys the possibilities of organizing. (First they came for the poor, but I had illusions that my middle-class status meant that I wasn’t one of them …) That entails strategic focus on issues of poverty, unemployment, foreclosure, homelessness, the shredding of the safety net be brought front and center, and that the poor be actually organized, not just pitied.
Now, one might ask how one goes about doing this, and I must admit that I don’t have an adequate answer. Certain questions require preconditions to be answerable. But I believe that if there were a progressive (or radical or leftist, etc., etc.) consensus that this was a strategic priority, that fact itself would make the question of how to organize the poor an answerable one.
are nothing more than helium balloons. History clearly teaches us that a police force or military is the sine qua non of Oligarchy/Royalty, because therein lies its political protection. But it has always been a double edged sword; as history shows it can always turn against you. Therefore, your army must be fed and clothed well and your generals well compensated. They also need something to do i.e. conquest.
In reference to the U.S.S.R., the Communist party comprised about 10% of the population during its last decades, not dissimilar to the 10% ownership of resorces by our own oligarchy today; probably about the same percentages as the nobility and rich merchant classes in Europe around the period of the great masked balls in Europe of the 18th Century.
… this past Wednesday (8/18/10) featured:
The program is one hour, but well worth the listen:
right here
Tarpley says the U.S. will pursue this war in order to strenghten the dollar. I had to listen carefully to follow his logic.
(I do have a “skeleton” of a portfolio remaining) – Jim Cramer was speaking about how the “retail investors” are fleeing the market taking many $$$ with them – there followed some very serious faces and talk about the American people “deserting” capitalism.
Serious CNBC reporters when they are not talking about Obama’s “draconian” antimarket measures or tax cuts are worried.
No talk by the way of “capitalism” deserting the people.
I’m surprised they noticed at all – someone may have gone to the parents for the weekend or maybe taken a cab with a saavy driver. Else why would they speak of “retail investors” at all.