January 23, 2010...3:03 pm

Augustinian China Will Defeat Corrupt Senatorial US In Power Struggle

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The US Senatorial system of government is collapsing.  This is due to the utter corruption at the top of the government. Thanks to this corruption, the health and welfare of our empire is totally ignored as the super rich and the super international bankers go on a major looting expedition: looting our own empire!  Our debts are mounting at warp speed while all our industrial systems collapse equally fast.  And Obama’s stab at fixing this by tinkering on the edges is going to fail since the problem starts in our own Senate.  Will we end up fixing this the Roman way?  Via imposing a real dictatorship which will then turn on the Senators and their sponsors and kill them?  History is betting ‘Yes’ on this.

Obama Plan May Cost Banks $13 Billion, JPMorgan Says (Update3) – Bloomberg.com

President Barack Obama’s plan to curb proprietary trading will cost Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse Group AG, UBS AG and Deutsche Bank AG about $13 billion in revenue next year, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co. analysts.

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Of the five banks analyzed, Obama’s proposals will impact Goldman Sachs the most, resulting in an estimated $4.67 billion drop in earnings in 2011, analysts led by London-based Kian Abouhossein said in a note today. UBS stands to lose the least, with revenue declining an estimated $1.92 billion.

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I am very much betting this is Volcker’s hand at work.  Obama has no idea how to deal with economic matters.  He presses flesh and takes the loot offered with the handshakes.  Now, he must rule.  Both Reagan and Bush Sr had to raise taxes.  But these two dumped the onus for the taxes on the Democratic Congress which took the body blow for them and we had a GOP Congress for a critical 12 years which fed first the Dot Com and then the housing bubbles.  Not that the Democrats were unhappy with these bubbles.  Even today, on ‘liberal’ websites, people tout the false prosperity of the Clinton years as if this wasn’t due to a bubble.

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During the Clinton years, we did close the budget deficit very briefly thanks to the Dot Com bubble taxes.  But never the trade deficit. It yawned wider and wider.  Also, oil was cheap and this gave us the illusion that we were doing well when we were simply burning a big fat hole in our own pockets, buying SUVs.  During the Clinton years, the FDR reforms in banking and Wall Street continued to be demolished and Bush completed the demolition.  Libra was vanquished and access to the Goddess of Infinity was wide open.  The bankers rushed in and grabbed the goodies.

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The ideology that FDR was some evil monster because he seized gold should be viewed in light of the nearly universal seizure of gold during the Great Depression’s grinding collapse.  That is, Germany, for example, expropriated gold via looting anyone who was ‘Jewish’.  The need to loot in times of distress is very, very powerful.  For example, if you have a libertarian society that hits some sort of economical difficulty, the looting there would be identical to all the looting of previous governments.  That is, anyone who thinks there is a system that avoids all looting of accumulated wealth in times of great distress, well….that is plain silly.  There is no system that doesn’t resort to looting in times of distress.

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I like history because the goddess of history likes to teach us by whacking us on the head with a two by four with big nails in it.  If we don’t learn, she uses an iron bar with spikes.  Anyway, we have a Senate.  It was designed to be just like the ancient Roman Senate. The photo at the top is the last of the ruins of the Roman Senate.  There is nothing left except for a few pillars at entrance.  The Roman Senate was politically destroyed long before it vanished from history.  And the need to pay for imperial wars and ‘elections’ of the various Emperors killed it off, rather literally.

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Roman Senate – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The ethical requirements of senators were significant. Senators could not engage in banking or any form of public contract. They could not own a ship that was large enough to participate in foreign commerce,[16] and they could not leave Italy without permission from the senate. And since they were not paid,[21] individuals usually sought to become senators only if they were independently wealthy. Election to magisterial office resulted in automatic senate membership.

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Ah!  Back when the Senate of Rome began, they worried about conflict of interest, privatization of services and banking temptations!  Not only that, they also worried about sovereignty issues and if a Senator had dual loyalties.  So they forbade all these things, outright.  And they wanted poor Senators who were interested in not only debates but sacrificing themselves for the common good!  In the US Senate today, we have a collection of multi-millionaires who line their pockets, get all sorts of insider deals and have lots and lots of nepotism, getting jobs for all clan members with corporations and organizations they are supposed to oversee.

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That is, our Senate and House are both extremely corrupt.  The Supreme Court has decided to make the corruption absolute so the feeble barriers to prevent bribery and venality have been finally wiped out and it is now total corruption, all the time.  Since the House and Senate are part of the top 1% of our population in wages and benefits, as well as owning stocks and sitting on boards, or running ‘charities’ that feed their nepotistic offspring…well, well, well…they have lots of love and interest in the affairs of the very rich who are at one with them all.  Thus, the desire to cut the taxes paid by the top 1%.

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Thanks to this, wealth has been steadily flowing from the bottom to the top and the wealth disparity in the US has grown greater and greater just like in Rome after the victory in the final Punic Wars.

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Constitutional Reforms of Lucius Cornelius Sulla – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

By the middle of the 2nd century BC, the Plebeians (commoners) saw a worsening economic situation.[1] The long military campaigns, in particular those of the Punic Wars, had forced citizens to leave their farms, which often caused those farms to fall into a state of disrepair….When the soldiers returned from the battlefield, they often had to sell their farms to pay their debts, and the landed aristocracy quickly bought these farms at discounted prices.

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An iron law of economics: the end of all wars and the return of all soldiers always leads to a depression and the value of land drops and unemployment rises.  The only realistic solution to this is to send out troops to colonize newly-won lands or have revolution/reactions at home.  Either the returning military seizes power or are brutally suppressed.

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The wars had also brought to Rome a great surplus of inexpensive slave labor, which the landed aristocrats used to staff their new farms.[1] Soon the masses of unemployed Plebeians began to flood into Rome, and into the ranks of the legislative assemblies. At the same time, the aristocracy was becoming extremely rich,[2] and with the destruction of Rome’s great commercial rival of Carthage, even more opportunities for profit became available….

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Today, this great surplus of inexpensive labor is in Asia.  It has made our ‘aristocrats’ very, very rich, too.  And the poor pour into the cities and become welfare beggars.  Crime goes up and commerce declines.  Like in Detroit.

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…By the end of this era, Rome had become full of unemployed Plebeians…(who) soon acquired so much political power that the Plebeian Council became highly populist.[3] These Plebeians were often angry with the aristocracy, which further exacerbated the class tensions. Their economic state usually led them to vote for the candidate who offered the most for them, or at least for the candidate whose games or whose bribes were the most magnificent. The fact that they were usually uninformed as to the issues before them didn’t matter, because they usually sold their votes to the highest bidder anyway.[3] Bribery became such a problem that major reforms were ultimately passed, in particular the requirement that all votes be by secret ballot. A new culture of dependency was emerging, which would look to any populist leader for relief.[4]

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For years, the most popular thing a government could do was to build stadiums.  Just like ancient Rome.  And then pass out the bread and circuses.  It works!  And like then, bribery is a huge problem and no reforms ever work since they are insincere like the attempt at reforming the healthcare insurance industry.  The healthcare insurance industry has turned from a helping system to a destructive system.  Instead of scrubbing it, the Senate and Congress want to protect its profits even though these profits are destroying several very important systems such as our trade relations with the world.

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That is, the overhead costs of the healthcare insurance profits has made the US uncompetitive with even the most sophisticated economies like Germany and Japan both of which do not allow anyone to profit much off of health problems.  So they can undercut the profitability of US exports so even if we sell things at the same price as Japan or Germany, we profit much less than they and over time, the loss of capital this represents is putting our industries at a severe disadvantage.  The most dire thing facing the US is the loss of jobs due to this high overhead cost of insurance.  Yet, the Senate is totally paralyzed when it comes to chopping off the hydra heads of the insurance industry. An industry that is MALPRODUCTIVE, not productive.

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Augustus – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

By law, Augustus held a collection of powers granted to him for life by the Senate, including those of tribune of the plebs and censor. He was consul until 23 BC.[2]His substantive power stemmed from financial success and resources gained in conquest, the building of patronage relationships throughout the Empire, the loyalty of many military soldiers and veterans, the authority of the many honors granted by the Senate,[3] and the respect of the people.

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Augustus’ control over the majority of Rome’s legions established an armed threat that could be used against the Senate, allowing him to coerce the Senate’s decisions. With his ability to eliminate senatorial opposition by means of arms, the Senate became docile towards his paramount position. His rule through patronage, military power, and accumulation of the offices of the defunct Republic became the model for all later imperial governments.  The rule of Augustus initiated an era of relative peace known as the Pax Romana, or Roman peace….

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In other words, the only way to get the gears going again was to pretty much turn the Senate into a rubber stamp device.  And to do this, the powerful Senators had to be tamed via being literally killed.  Whenever the costs of Empire rose, the Emperor would use the Praetorian Guards to squeeze the rich, not the poor.  The Emperors always worried about the Populous for the simple reason that rioting people are much harder to control and too much money and power in the hands of others would mean the Emperor would have less power so this kept the very rich under strict control.

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Here is the earliest example of how the last triumvirs (Caesar Augustus and his two temporary pals) looted the very rich and played Robin Hood for the masses which made Augustus in particular, very popular:

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…The triumvirs then set in motion proscriptions in which allegedly 300 senators and 2,000 equites were branded as outlaws and deprived of their property and, for those who failed to escape, their lives.[59] The estimation that 300 senators were proscribed was presented by Appian, although his earlier contemporary Livy asserted that only 130 senators had been proscribed.[60] This decree issued by the triumvirate was motivated in part by a need to raise money to pay their troops’ salaries for the upcoming conflict against Caesar’s assassins, Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus.[61] Rewards for their arrest gave incentive for Romans to capture those proscribed, while the assets and properties of those arrested were seized by the triumvirs.[59]

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The worthlessness of the US Senate was shown very much when we had our first major inflation surge since the Civil War.  During the 1970’s, we had ’stagflation’ where people’s incomes were either suppressed by law by Nixon and Congress or no one’s wages kept up with the deterioration of the value of the currency.  Since WWI, the income tax was ‘graduated’ so the rich would be taxed more than the working poor.  But inflation gradually and then very swiftly pushed everyone into higher and higher tax brackets.  This squeezed the Populous to the point of breaking.

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All the corrupt Senate had to do was propose shifting the tax scales so that the rate of taxation of the lower classes was back to ‘normal’.  This was ridiculously simple to do.  But why didn’t they do this?  I agitated for this and went several times to DC to demand this and made popular speeches in NYC about this and NOTHING happened.  But we had a major tax revolt which was ardently embraced by the upper echelons in society: cutting ALL taxes and FLATTENING the tax rates so the very rich paid the same rates as the very poor!

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This disgusting tax revolt did two fatal things: it began the bankruptcy of the Empire.  And it made the rich much, much richer and the distribution of income between the rich and the poor shifted much of the wealth out of the lower classes and into the hands of the top 1% who happen to also be our Senators and their buddies.  As the workers became poorer and poorer, they were lured deeper and deeper into debt by the Senators and their banking buddies who also happened to be in cahoots with the importers and the corporations that were shifting jobs out of the US to avoid taxes and healthcare insurance costs!  And instead of fixing things, they made things worse and worse.

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Privatization of the military was supposed to save money.  But Pelosi, the head of the House, for example, makes money off of the profits of war so she doesn’t want to fix this and the entire GOP is a looting operation using the military to funnel money into their private pockets.  Money that is flowing out of the Chinese Empire which is ruled by a draconian leader who is basically an old Roman-style Emperor willing to kill the upper class to make money if this is necessary.

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So our corrupt Senatorial government is in head to head competition with an Augustinian Empire.  The US is being drained by futile civil wars in distant lands, trying to hold down hostile populations willing to mount repeated suicide attacks on the very capital of our empire while the Chinese Augustinian Emperor can quickly suppress similar uprisings while bringing peace by showering industry and a rising income social system on restive provinces.  Here are some examples of this in yesterday’s news in China:

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english.news.cn

Government plans to make China’s southern island province of Hainan an international tourist resort have cut the supply of housing as owners and developers hold out for huge profits.

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More than 200 property buyers had arrived everyday since the end of last year when the government unveiled plans to turn the tropical island into a top international destination by 2020, said Li Zhuo, a salesman with Rongyu Project in Haikou, the provincial capital…

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..”Many home developers and owners suspended sales, expecting higher prices and profits,” said Liu Haiyi, assistant general manager of Hainan Jintai Real Estate Development Co., Ltd.

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In an effort to clamp down on potential speculation, the provincial government on Jan. 15 suspended the leasing of land and approval of projects, which worsened speculation concerns. The suspension was aimed at cooling the overheated sector, but it may have led to a second wave of price hikes, said a property agent surnamed Wu.

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I remember the housing bubble in the US: we had this stupid and futile debate, ‘Is there a housing bubble?’ when it was obvious to anyone with a brain, there was a housing bubble.  Then, when it popped on its own because it outstripped incomes greatly, there was a stupid debate, ‘Did the housing bubble pop?’ when it was painfully obvious, it was badly popped.  The Augustus of China, Hu, knows he has a housing bubble developing and thus, draconian measures were used to stop it.  In the US, we were told that we would all get rich if we saw our housing inflate in value because our corrupt Senate and Emperor make money if things like this inflate in value rapidly.

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So the US wants bubbles!  During the US banking credit bubble, the capitalization rate went from 10% to less than 1% using AIG as the insuring entity so ‘capital isn’t needed anymore, all these loans are fully insured’.  Which was a lie.  And to fix this when it collapsed, the corrupt Senate put the entire empire into hock to the Chinese Augustus by capitalizing the losses 100% so the richest bankers on earth could continue rewarding themselves with billions in bonuses!  While the Chinese Augustus snarled at the Chinese wishing to profit that they would not be allowed to strip HIS empire of its wealth so they can be spoiled rotten.  And the Chinese Augustus hinted that he may loot these rich people, not protect them.

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This is why our bankers can’t flitter off to China and hope to profit even more, eating up Chinese wealth. english.news.cn: ‘Obama Vows To Fight For Jobs’ is another Xinhua news story that is most amusing.  Our weak Emperor who is beholden to the Senate and the Senate’s owners, has to give ritual pledges to protect US jobs even as he works to protect the leeches like the insurance industry or AIG or the military/industrial privateers looting the US budget and spinning us into bankruptcy.  He won’t stop the bad trade nor fix a single, solitary thing that is wrong.

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He will not even talk about restoring the graduated taxes or taking the incomes of the very rich and using this to balance the budget.  He won’t stop free trade nor will he stop futile wars with a quarter of the earth’s population over stupid religious dogmatic matters.  All the things causing our empire to bleed to death are not being sutured up but rather, he is taking a knife to our wounds and opening them wider which is why we now run trillions in the red each year instead of mere multi billions.  All the wrong things are getting worse, not better.  Our futile wars are increasing, not decreasing.  Our debts are rising, not falling.  And our currency is not collapsing only because the Augustinian Emperor of China doesn’t want it to…YET.

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But we know he will do this when the time is ripe and when China will benefit the most.  That day will come!  It is now inevitable. STRATFOR’S TOP PREDICTIONS FOR THE NEXT DECADE: China Collapse, Global Labor Shortages, New American Dominance shows how arrogant and stupid our super-rich are.    Stratfor predicts the future for the rich.  Unlike myself, I am writing history.  They smugly think that the powerful political giant ruling China, Hu, will act like our own rulers, the super rich.  They forget that Hu always has one thing on his mind, day and night: increasing the power of the Chinese people and protecting China’s sovereignty!

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The US is deeper and deeper into debt to China and the smart alecks at Stratfor think the US will be more powerful than China due to this:

Zeihan: Probably one of the biggest breaks that Stratfor has with conventional wisdom is that most of the world is convinced that the United States is a power in terminal decline. In fact we see the United States withdrawing from its two wars, regardless of whether or not they’ve ended, and returning to a more balanced attention span in dealing with the rest of the world.

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Most of the rest of the world will view that as an American retreat from prominence and a sign that the U.S. is in decline once again. But really when you’re a naval power and a merchant power, being out of the Middle East is increasing greatly your power to act and you willingness to act. So we see it as a very American-centric decade moving forward.

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HAHAHA.  The US is NOT a ‘naval power’.  We have NO merchant marine at all!  China has the greatest ship building yards on earth.  The US has very few ship building facilities left and these are total drains on the economic system since they produce only military ships and do this very slowly.  China could repeat the heroic efforts of the US during WWI and WWII to produce all the ships needed despite them being sunk at a great rate!  Today, we can barely eke out a few ships a decade!  China can churn them out like crazy.

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China sinks several US ships, we are done.  We sink most of the Chinese navy and new ships will appear like sowing dragon’s teeth.  Like Britain which used to produce lots of ships, we are slowly letting go of our grip on world shipping and Britain is even ending its pretense of being a naval power while the US will go bankrupt trying to pretend to be a naval power.  All we have are nuclear bombs on subs. And the Chinese are hard at work figuring out how to deal with that.  The best way is to hold US debt and then bankrupt us so we can’t afford to run these ships.

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Russia went bankrupt and its powerful military and navy vanished like snow in a hot summer.

english.news.cn: U. S. must reach out for China’s helping hand worldwide

One year into U. S. President Barack Obama’s administration, Sino-US relations have not taken off as many people originally wished for. China is the largest creditor of the US, and the US remains the most important export market for China. They are the two largest oil importers, oil consumers and emissions producers in the world.

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While the US faces multiple challenges worldwide, China enjoys good relations with the rest of the world, domestic stability and robust economic growth.

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Truer words have seldom been said.  This is quite blunt.  The Chinese diplomatic machine roars forwards.  In the Chinese news is the story about the visit of the head of Austria who got the Royal Red Carpet Treatment.  China is at peace with everyone while the US expands wars while collecting the goofy ‘Nobel Peace Prize’ which should be renamed, the ‘Nobel War Prize for the US Empire’.

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It is becoming increasingly obvious that the US, despite its status as the only remaining superpower in the world, is no longer capable of handling many urgent challenges by itself and will increasingly need help and assistance from other countries.

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This editorial was probably penned by Xi, the upcoming replacement for Hu.

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Instead, there have been mixed signals on both sides. The US and China are by now the two largest economies in the world and have a high level of economic and financial interdependence upon each other. Given China’s increasing resources, high sense of responsibility, and tradition of honoring its commitments, it is generally expected that China will be more and more involved in many urgent issues in the world….

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….In recent years, the US has made many attempts to get China involved in Afghanistan and other situations of dire consequence to the US.  It doesn’t require rocket science to figure out that when you ask for help, and significant and tremendous help on top of it, you need to demonstrate sincerity and a genuine willingness to work together and seek a win-win situation.

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HAHAHA.  The Augustine Dragon is very pissed off at us.  We go begging to the Dragon for bail outs and then spit at it.  The Dragon is losing patience.  Time is running out, not for China but for us.  If I had to bet who will win the future struggle for power, I bet on the Chinese.  This is because their ruler wants China to be stronger while our rulers want us to be weaker because they get richer, milking us for money.  So they will merrily destroy all our social and economic systems while the Chinese Augustine Dragon simply assists them in this enterprise of destruction.

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Good lord!  Demanding our military, political and economic rival buy our debts is utter insanity.  Never, ever, ever in history has any empire survived, doing this stupid thing.  Good lord, doesn’t anyone read history anymore?