Minyanville’s daily Five Things You Need To Know
As the former CEO of Goldman Sachs, one of the world’s largest investment banks Henry Paulson announces a new initiative called HOPE NOW.
Hmmm leaves a CEO position at Goldman Sachs to take a $185,000 job as Treasury Secretary. Odd.
Minyanville’s daily Five Things You Need to Know to stay ahead of the pack on Wall Street:
1. U.S. Announces Major Toll Increase on Road to Serfdom
Hahaha. That headline is a funny joke. Except it is not a joke at all, but true in every sense of unironic tragedy and awfulness. This morning Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson appeared on television and announced the latest coalition of do-gooders, this time a collection of 11 of the largest mortgage service companies in the U.S, representing 60% of all mortgages, coming together to help counsel and repair the properties they now own, like so many looters working together to rebuild a burned out liquor store the morning after; the gesture is appreciated. The hangover well-earned.
The real joke, the irony of it all, is that this charade of free-market capitalism can get paraded in front of a daily audience at all, much less an audience of too-willing serfs, eager to lap up any spillage from this government’s ladle of grim-faced collectivism wrapped in flag-waving triumph.
Steeped further in irony, and near impossible to tell if it was intended as a finger in the eye to the American middle class, or was simply an unintentional fragment of idiocy that slipped through the cracks, is the name this new initiative carries: HOPE NOW. The emphasis on the name is it’s own. The New York Times printed it in all-caps, presumably not a typo.
Believe me when I say that this is not our defining “let them eat cake” moment. That’s like blaming the looters for the power failure. The savage destruction of the dollar, its debasement, the insidious transfer of wealth by hyperinflationary Federal Reserve policies intent on serving a small collective of wealthy decision-makers and rule makers is the circle in the pond created by this tiny pebble. Eh, so what? If not a tiny pebble in the pond, then an aggravating pebble in the shoe of the wealthy few as they ride the backs of the middle class off into the sunset.
The confusion we live in these days is a deep one, traumatic in its intensity and violence. While chasing debt-soaked dollars down a filthy, rusty drainpipe, it’s hard to differentiate between friends and enemies. From gutter height, everyone looks like an enemy. And that’s exactly how it’s meant to be; welcome to the new class war pitching the dissolving middle class against itself in one long reality TV show. Rich versus poor is a fairy tale. Middle class versus itself is the reality. The confusion is real, and it’s intentional.
Meanwhile, the incremental transfer of wealth from the middle class to Asia’s poor perpetuates itself, both as a cause of this new class war, and most bitterly, also as an effect; a horrible cycle of debt addiction spiraling inward and feeding on itself, an autoimmune deficiency attacking itself. The code word for this transfer is globalization. It’s real name is looting.
Fifty years ago the U.S. manufactured things and produced tangible goods that allowed our fathers and grandfathers to save and invest in their families, their homes. God help us for even re-imagining what it was like to own something. Those memories lie flat now in tattered photo albums, a handful of aging black and white snapshots peeling away from the page as the glue holding them in place dissolves.
But you know what? The stock market is now at an all-time high. Man, what a cruel and vicious joke. Didn’t anyone tell you that the S&P 500 stock market index has lost 60% of its value in real terms since 2000? Well, if you sit high enough in the saddle, maybe you won’t notice the stench of the excrement you’re trampling. In this case, that excrement is denominated in dollars.
2. Minyanville Presents: Daily Dose of Crushing Irony
Speaking of the Road to Serfdom, Friedrich Hayek’s 1944 book arguing that a centrally planned economic system will inevitably lead to a distribution of goods and resources controlled by a small group and, ultimately, tyranny, was so popular after its release that Look magazine turned it into a picture book that was then made into a pamphlet. The pamphlet’s distributor? General Motors (GM).
Check out the rest….
