Uncle Miltie

dear family and friends
well it has been a few days since i have had a chance to write. i have continued with my research nonetheless.

as you know my focus politically is to make people aware of the role the federal reserve plays in our lives and how the banking establishment and corporate america all play pivotal roles in the execution of the policies of the federal reserve.

what follows is the first of many parts on how we are manipulated and controlled by the banks and the federal reserve.

one of the key figures in the development of corporate america and our economic policy is or i should say was milton friedman..........uncle miltie.

this diminutive 5'2" dynamo in my opinion should have been on the ten most wanted list of the fbi. the reason he wasnt was probably because the fbi is govt agency.

some might ask what a guy who has been dead for almost 3 years has to do with the current economic meltdown. well we have to look at the ways change takes place.
in our own lives we tend to make major changes because we have experienced some sort of painful experience ie. we get a divorce and decide to go into counseling. or an industry we are working in is experiencing some difficulty and we need to relocate. some change is gradual and more organic ie. we go to school to learn a new skill or trade. this sort of change is voluntary and generally longterm.

so we can break it down into to types of change for simplicity sake. one in response to external circumstances being forced on us (painful, sudden, involuntary) and the other in response to an internal prompting to make beneficial changes in our circumstances(not painful, over time voluntary).

when it comes to making changes in the economy uncle miltie had a very definite preference for painful and sudden changes. the following is a quote from 1982.

"only a crisis -actual or perceived- produces real change. when that crisis occurs the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. that i believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable."
milton friedman

now on the surface it seems not too bad an idea to have some ideas lying around in case we have a crisis. however it is a very bad idea to precipitate a crisis to implement your ideas.

i have said it before and i will continue to say it.........this current economic "crisis" actual or perceived is not an accident.
alan greenspan was not a stupid man he knew exactly the outcome of his monetary policy. he lowered rates and kept them low for a very long time. when you pump that much money into an economy credit bubbles happen. bubbles pop and there are serious consequences in the economy. the bigger the bubble the bigger the consequences. in the nineties we had the tech bubble followed by the real estate bubble in the early 2000's

ben bernanke is a self described student of the great depression. he is now the chairman of the fed. his policies which are a continuation of greenspan's are directly responsible for our current crisis. he recently lowered the discount rate by .5 %. effectively it was .67% so it is just about 0. dont go looking for this cheap money just yet: this is money "loaned" to banks to lend to other banks.
(this is currently not happening as banks do not trust one another......imagine that)

in the 1950's and 60's countries in south america were experiencing a wave of developmentalism led by juan peron in argentina. under developmentalism countries nationalized natural resources, raised tariffs to keep out foreign imports, building infrastructure, subsidizing factories and creating economies in chile, argentina, uruguay and brazil which were the envy of the rest of latin america. universities were built, unions negotiated contracts which led to the expansion of the middle class, uruguay offered free health care for all its citizens, and literacy rates soared.

uncle miltie had a different idea "lying around". being a disciple of freidrich hayek of the austrian school of economics, uncle miltie believed that government involment in the economy was a bad thing. he was for the privatization of just about everything, health care, pension funds, education, the post office, and even the national parks.
he believed that corporations should have free rein in the marketplace (deregulation) and that the market would function to regulate the economy. ( alan greenspan before congress last week actually said he thought the investment banks and others would self police themselves thereby avoiding the problems of the subprime meltdown). uncle miltie would have done away with any laws in regards to labor such as the minimum wage, child labor laws and workplace safety regulations. he was in favor of very low taxes and a flat tax on everyone.

the first u.s. president to embrace fully miltie's ideas was ronald reagan. when reagan took over in 1981 the u.s. was the largest creditor nation on the planet. in eight years the u.s. was the largest debtor nation. reagan fired over 11,000 air traffic controllers who went out on strike using the logic that if they did not show up for work they did not want their jobs. james watt his secretary of the interior sold off land owned by the people of the u.s. for bargain prices. deregulation led to the savings and loan fiasco in
which john mccain played a minor part and george bush's brother, neal a somewhat more major role. all to the tune of billions of dollars that the taxpayer had to pay.

i think the theory that markets can in a egalitarian way provide for the welfare of a country makes sense on paper. but the departure from reality is where the problems lie.
in a totally free market of individuals on a local level, i believe that free market capitalism can work. it can work because on a small scale it can be self-policing.
it can be self policing because we live and work in the same community.

the current system of "free" market capitalism has several flaws. number one corporations are treated as individuals. it is not self policing because the effects of it's actions on local citizens are not factored into decisions. we have a system where a corporation with headquarters in a totally different country can determine the economics of any given locale. it can determine the environment of any given locale and can determine the politics of any given locale.

these decisions made by corporations are made with only one interest in mind .......the bottom line. the corporations are responsible to only one group.....shareholders.
these shareholders have only one interest .............profit.
these shareholders are held blameless for any action taken by the corporation in the name of profit.
there is a total disregard for the idea of the commons. the commons being the air we breathe, the water we drink. the land we hold in common ....public lands.

now some of you might be wondering what all this has to do with uncle miltie.
well quite a bit actually.
there is a lot of ground to cover and it will take a number of posts to explore all the ways uncle milties ideas have impacted not only our lives but the lives of virtually every being on the planet.

uncle miltie was not in my opinion an "evil" man. he was very smart. i am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, and say he was just misguided by being married to an ideology. an ideology which had devestating perhaps unintended consequences for the planet.
i am giving him the benefit of the doubt because i know he was right about at least one thing....................we should get rid of the federal reserve.
i do not know how actively he pursued that idea but at least he said it.

so my family and friends it is election day in america............as you know i voted for ralph nader. many of you are obama supporters.
probably the biggest reason is the desire for change.
i personally do not think obama will bring much of a change since he was financed by wall street.
i think he will just shift the war in iraq to the war in afghanistan.
we will still have over 800 u.s. military bases in 130 countries around the world, providing security for the corporations doing business there(and not paying taxes here).
he will continue to give the banks all the power over the american economy. (his speech on the bailout was really quite illuminating)
we will continue to have a military industrial , congressional complex
we will continue to bear the consequences of the systematic destruction of the middle class.
we will continue with a failed healthcare system.
we will continue to stand by as our education system deteriorates.
we will continue as the media of this country continues t dumb down the american people by narrowing the scope of the dialog.

so i just keep hearing the song in my head............change change change .........change of fools.

your loyal info serf
om shanti
joe