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Speaking of oligarchs -- Nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman is one of a pitiful handful of media people who is unafraid to utilize his op-ed soapbox at the New York Times to document the damage that the plutocrats are knowingly and willfully inflicting on the middle-class and working poor of America.
Krugman spares no bones about it:
In his latest column for the New York Times, award-winning economist and best-selling author Paul Krugman says that despite new studies showing higher inflation would benefit the U.S. economy, American policymakers are unlikely to do anything for one chief reason: because the “oligarchs” who fund our elections don’t want to see their holdings decrease in value.
Krugman builds his argument off a new report from the IMF, which included in its analysis a strong implication that an inflation target even higher than the one the U.S. has currently (to eventually get it to around 2 percent) is too low for promoting more growth and more universal prosperity. Yet despite its own work, Krugman says, the IMF appears unwilling to outright endorse a higher inflation target.
“So what makes the obvious unsayable?” Krugman asks. “In a direct sense, what we’re seeing is the power of conventional wisdom. But conventional wisdom doesn’t come from nowhere, and I’m increasingly convinced that our failure to deal with high unemployment has a lot to do with class interests.”http://www.salon.com/2014/04/07/paul_krugman_blame_american_oligarchs_for_mass_unemployment/
So basically the people who benefited the greatest in the years leading up to the 2008 financial crisis and who's reckless gambling was the cause of the 2008 crisis and who subsequently had their financial asses saved by the tax dollars of the American working class via the Wall Street bailout, and who have benefited the greatest since that bailout, are deliberately stifling an even modest increase in the inflationary rate, which every straight-shooting, reputable economist says will benefit the most people in the U.S. economy, because, horror of horrors, it might eat away a tiny fraction of their ill-gotten gains.
God forbid should these fuckers have to give up anything at all to help their fellow Americans during one of the most devastating economic periods in the history of the country huh? If you ask The Gadfly, that attitude truly does validate The Gadfly's long-standing assertion that these people don't really give a rat's ass about America and Americans or American flags or mom and apple pie and baseball. As long as their individual stock portfolios and on-shore and off-shore bank accounts are prospering at a steady pace, that is the only fucking thing that matters to them. You, dear readers, and The Gadfly, are nary a blip on their radar screen.
Even more galling is the conservatives braying about how these people are the "job creators" and that we must ensure that their ability to continue making money hand over fist, while the middle class dies an ignominious death, and the working poor descend in to a suspended state of life-long indentured servitude, must not be hindered because - FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEDOM!! - or some such other mind-numbingly, idiotic bullshit.
Summing it up once again though - none of it will ever change for as long the people of this country feel no urgency to want it to change. And as the handful of oligarchs consolidate and strengthen their grip on political and economic power, the walls of serfdom close in on their subjects. And once that fist closes completely, it's going to be game over for democracy and liberty and the pursuit of anything resembling happiness.
Just something to think about dear readers - perhaps as a bit of motivation to carry your carcasses to the voting booth in these upcoming mid-term elections and make your voices heard - because right now, as it stands, voting is still one the very few remaining rights of yours that they have yet to take away from you - trying mightily though that they are.
----TFG
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