Mike Whitney has long been telling it straight when nobody else would dare:
The subprime contagion has now spread beyond the US and Europe to markets in the Far East. No one is fooled by Bernanke’s sunny predictions that the economy will bounce back next year with a strong showing in the first quarter. That’s baloney and everyone knows it. The economy has stumbled down the elevator shaft and is just waiting to hit bottom. Consumer confidence is flagging, housing is falling, foreign capital is fleeing, and the greenback is one flush away from the sewage-treatment plant...The "good" news is that we'll have whordes of ex-Iraq military veterans coming back to help out with the "jobs". Maybe that's what it will take for Australians to stop thinking that never-ending consumerism is "sexy".
The average working stiff doesn’t put any stock in Bernanke’s palavering. He sees what’s going on for himself every time he pulls up to the gas pump or goes the grocery store. He doesn’t need the University of Michigan to tell him he’s getting screwed; he knows it! The economy is sinking, inflation is skyrocketing, and the country is adrift. Every farthing in the public till has been shoveled into a black hole in the Middle East. Does Bernanke really think working people don’t know that? Everyone knows that. Everyone knows the economy is on life-support; just like everyone knows the country is collapsing from mismanagement. Even the flag-waving, war-mongering maniacs on the Wall Street Journal’s op-ed page are starting to shutter from the avalanche of bad news. They see what’s going on and they’re scared---scared sh**less.
Structured finance has been an unmitigated disaster. It needs to be scrapped. We need a new financial system for a new epoch; a system that is heavily regulated and supervised to discourage the crooks and con-artists...The Bush-Blair-Howard years will be remembered for names like HIH, Enron and Arthur Anderson. None of these scandals have ever been fixed, not really. The smart money just swung from the volatile stock market into more stable real estate, but the underlying corruption remained endemic.
What's going to happen now is that the big central banks are going to start using YOUR hard-earned taxpayer dollars to prop up the worst of the looming Big Business disasters. The UK government has already spent billions on Northern Rock. The same thing will be happening very soon in Australia, whoever wins the election.
Do you want the same people who helped cause the problem to be in charge when it's time to fix things? The Liberals will just keep feathering their nests till it's time to fly the coop. Globalisation offers multiple opportunities for off-shore assets, you know.
