Republicans: The Anti-Business Party
As a media entity for whom “subtlety” is generally a dirty word; Bloomberg can be remarkably indirect when tasked with delivering an unpalatable message about its Friends. After merely a few weeks of (manipulated) price-weakness in the precious metals sector; these Straight Shooters had no qualms about unequivocally declaring a “bear market” in precious metals – a message which is bluntly repeated every time it mentions the sector.
Yet whenever it attempts to describe one of the endless acts of Bankster fraud, all we get are long, meandering dialogues, where (somehow) the words “fraud” or “crime” are never, ever used. It displays a similar, mealy-mouthed reluctance to deliver the bad news about one of its “BFF’s” : the U.S. Republican Party.
The Republican Party is now the Anti-Business Party.
It’s a very simple message, yet watch how Bloomberg struggles in its own attempts to deliver that eight-word communication. We start with the headline of their new, back-stabbing missive:
Republicans Are No Longer The Party Of Business
It is a title which informs readers what the Republican Party is not, when with precisely the same number of words it could have stated what the Republican Party “is”. No nation on Earth is more binary in its thinking than the USA. “If you’re not fer us, you’re agin us.”
If one is not “left wing”, they must be “right wing” (and vice versa). It’s not simply that the Political Center does not exist in the United States, it is that it’s a concept which is beyond the comprehension of virtually the entire population. So if a particular U.S. political party is no longer “for” business, then (inevitably) it must be “against” business. Yet the closest Bloomberg gets to delivering its binary verdict is this:
“They’re the party of antigovernment.”
A rather hilarious, Orwellian spin, in that the Republican Party is “government”; one half of the Two-Party Dictatorship, to be precise. Of course what Bloomberg what have liked to say is that the Republican Party is “the Party of small government”, but that’s a message which even the propagandists in the Corporate Media can no longer deliver with a straight face.
The Republican Party is the party of Big Military. The Republican Party is the party of Big Subsidies (to really Big Business) – and the big “kick-backs” that go with them. The Republican Party is the party of Big Security-Machine (i.e. “Big Brother”).
Not only does this Big Government require lots and lots of Drones, it requires gigantic amounts of tax dollars. The New Republicans love to spend money, they just hate collecting any (tax dollars) to pay for all their Big Government plans.
But don’t accept my word (or even Bloomberg’s) that the Republican Party is the Anti-Business Party. For decades, when discussing the Republican Party and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce; the phrase “two peas in a pod” would have been understatement. And the Chamber of Commerce is “business”. Yet witness the obvious displeasure (if not disgust) as Bloomberg quotes the vice-president of this mouthpiece of the business community.
“A government shutdown is economically disruptive and creates more uncertainty for the U.S. economy,” says R. Bruce Josten, the Chamber’s executive vice-president of government affairs. “We’re disappointed this has happened, and we urge Congress [i.e. Republicans] and the administration to work together immediately to find a path forward on the [continuing resolution] and debt limit to remove any threat to the full faith and credit of the U.S. government.”
The business community can grin-and-bear-it with mediocre government. It can survive bad government. But it cannot survive (for long) with a totally dysfunctional government, overrun by Berserkers whose only goal is to obstruct, undermine, and sabotage. Read between the lines, and the message from the Chamber of Commerce is crystal-clear: “the Madness must end.”
But this begs an obvious question. Why is the Republican Party going out of its way to antagonize its friends in the Corporate Media and its “friends”(?) in the business community? The New Republicans are an obscene perversion of nearly every principle the original GOP represented. However there is nothing new about any of that.
These has been a consistent pattern of Republican politics for at least a decade, and arguably much longer. Framed from a different perspective, why was Bloomberg instructed to pull out its stiletto, and insert it (gently) into exposed, Republican “back” at this particular time? We get a gigantic clue a mere two paragraphs later:
…“The shutdown will add to these [economic] woes. An Oct. 2 Goldman Sachs (GS) report estimates that growth will be reduced on an annualized basis by 0.2 percentage points a week, meaning if the government were to remain closed for five weeks, fourth-quarter estimates of U.S. economic health [lol] would fall by a full point. Says Gentle: “Every second the shutdown continues pushes a delicate recovery closer to a recession.” [emphasis mine]
Regular readers (and all sentient adults) are well aware that there has been no “U.S. recovery”. The economy continues losing jobs month after month. The retail sector continues its Death Spiral. U.S. “GDP growth” itself is a clumsy ruse, which requires nothing more than grossly understating the real rate of inflation.
Now a new housing-bubble has risen from the ashes of the fraud-infested U.S. housing market, fueled once again by the “easy money” (0% money) of the Big Banks being force-fed into the market, while the dishonest Corporate Media lures in new Chumps with a new chorus of get-rich-quick hype.
But with U.S. equity markets already pumped-up to bubble-highs, and a new housing-bubble having been reinflated out of the old housing-bubble; a pretext is necessary in order to declare “the recovery is over.”
At that point; the One Bank (and its Big Bank subsidiaries) will crash the U.S. housing sector, crash U.S. equity markets, and crash the economy itself. It then (profitably) rides these markets down – since its own bets are already placed – at which point (after the “reset”) markets can be pumped-up all over again. Rinse, and repeat as necessary.
With the last, staged “crash” now five years old; a new Script must be fabricated for the parrots in the Corporate Media to faithfully recite. After these parrots have spent the last 4 ½ years gushing about U.S. “economic strength” and “economic health”; it becomes difficult to explain this Mighty Economy simply imploding all by itself.
An Excuse is needed, and with it, a Scapegoat to hold accountable. A mere two weeks ago, my own assumption was that B.S. Bernanke’s (much-hyped) “tapering” was to be that Excuse, with Bernanke himself thrown under the bus as the Scapegoat.
But that would have left a Banker with his fingerprints on the murder-weapon; as the “otherwise healthy” U.S. economy was felled by a Dastardly Deed. With Bankers not exactly the most-popular people on the planet at the moment; apparently the One Bank got some last-minute jitters with its original Script – especially with another opportunity awaiting in the near future.
“Government shutdown.” An even better murder-weapon, and this time it’s politicians (Republican politicians, to be precise) wielding the economic scythe. Politicians are expendable; Bankers are deemed less so.
Should the “Shutdown of 2013” be followed by the “Recession of 2014”; History is already written. The United States was steaming along nicely with its “Goldilocks recovery” which would have continued forever if not for the fact that the “antigovernment” Government Party sabotaged the U.S. economy.
It’s mostly mythology. But then again, so was the entire “U.S. recovery.”
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Jeff Nielson