Vladimir Putin: The Most Powerful
Person In The World
Vladimir Putin: The Most Powerful
Person In The World
Paul Craig Roberts
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Here is today’s column:
It must be wonderful being Vladimir
Putin and being the most powerful person on earth. And not even have to say so
yourself. The US Democratic Party is saying it for Putin along with the
entirety of the Western presstitute media and the CIA and FBI also. The Russian
media doesn’t have to brag about Putin’s power. Megyn Kelly, the Western
presstitutes, and Western leaders are doing it for them:Putin is so powerful
that he is able to place in office his choice for the President of the United
States.
I mean, Wow! What power! Americans
are simply out of the game. Americans, despite a massive intelligence
budget and 16 separate intelligence services plus those of its NATO vassals,
are no match whatsoever for Vladimir Putin.
I mean, really! What is the CIA for?
What is the NSA for? What are the rest of them for? Americans would do better
to close down these incompetent, but expensive, “intelligence services” and pay
the money to Putin as a bribe not to select our president. Maybe the CIA should
get down on its knees and beg Putin to stop electing the President of the
United States. I mean, how humuiliating. I can hardly stand it. I thought we
are the “world’s sole superpower, the uni-power, the exceptional, indispensable
people.” It turns out that we are a nothing people, ruled by the
President of Russia.
When the Democrats, CIA, and media
decided to launch their PR campaign against Trump, they didn’t realize how
inconsequential it would make the United States appear by putting American
democracy into Putin’s pocket. What were they thinking? They weren’t. They were
fixated on making sure Trump did not endanger the massive military/security
complex budget by restoring normal relations with Russia.
There is no sign that American
leadership in any area is actually capable of thought. Consider Wall Street and
corporate leadership. To boost share prices Wall Street forced all corporations
to desert their home country and move the production of goods and services sold
to Americans offshore to where labor and regulatory costs were lower. The lower
costs raised profits and share prices. Wall Street threatened resistant
corporations with takeovers of the companies if they refused to move abroad in
order to increase their profits.
Neither Wall Street nor corporate boards
and CEOs were smart enough to understand that moving jobs offshore also moved
US consumer incomes and purchasing power offshore. In other words, the
financial and business leadership were too stupid to comprehend that without
the incomes from high value-added, high productivity US jobs, the American
consumer would not have the discretionary income to continue in his role as the
economy’s driver.
The Federal Reserve caught on to Wall
Street’s mistake. To rectify the mistake, the Fed expanded credit, allowing a
buildup in consumer debt to keep the economy going on credit purchases.
However, once consumer debt is high relative to income, the ability to buy more
stuff departs. In other words, credit expansion is not a permanent fix for the
lack of consumer income growth.
A country whose financial and
business leadership is too stupid to understand that a population increasingly
employed in part-time minimum wage jobs is not a big spending population is a
country whose leadership has failed.
It is strictly impossible to boost
profits by offshoring jobs without also offshoring US consumer incomes.
Therefore, the profits from offshoring are temporary. Once enough jobs have
been moved offshore that aggregate demand is stymied, the domestic market
stagnates and then declines.
As I have demonstrated so many times
for so many years, as has John Williams (shadowstats.com), the jobs reports
from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics are nonsense. The jobs in the alleged
recovery from June 2009 are largely low income domestic service jobs and the
product of the theoretical birth/death model. The alleged recovery from the
2007-08 financial crisis is the first recovery in history in which the labor
force participation rate declined. Labor force participation rates decline when
the economy offers scant job opportunities, not when employment opportunities
are rising.
What we know about US jobs is that
the jobs are increasingly part-time minimum wage jobs. According to a
presstitute news report that might or might not be true, there are only 12
counties in the entirety of the United States in which a person can rent a
one-bedroom home on a minimum wage income. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jun/08/minimum-wage-affordable-housing-rentals-study
In response to this report, a
professor at Virginia Tech suggested that the government offer increased rental
assistance and boost programs such as the National Housing Trust Fund, which
invests in affordable housing.
In other words, taxpayers are to pick
up the costs to Americans of US corporations deserting the US labor force.
Those Americans who still have middle class incomes will be taxed to cover the
lost incomes that the offshoring corporations and Wall Street have snatched
away from American workers who can no longer earn enough to pay for their own
housing.
In other words, capitalism has
reached the point in its descent that it cannot exist without public subsidies
for the people dispossessed by capitalism.
On a number of occasions I have
written about how many costs of production are imposed on third parties, such
as the environment. A significant percentage of the profits of capitalist
corporations comes from the political and legal ability of the corporations to
impose their costs of production on third parties. In other words, capitalism
makes money because it can impose its costs of production on the environment
and on people who do not share in the profits. I have provided many examples of
this, especially in the area of real estate development. The developer is able
to shift a large part of his costs to others.
This cost shifting has now reached
the level of inducing Armaggedon. There is an effort to impeach Trump and put
the warmonger VP Pence in the presidency. As Trump campaigned on restoring
normal relations with Russia, a defeat of the attempt to reduce tensions would
reinforce the recent conclusion of the Russian military high command that
Washington is planning a first strike nuclear attack on Russia.
This is the risk that the entire
world faces due to the dependence of the power and profit of the US
military/security complex on war and enemies.
In other words, there is only one
remaining rationale for the existence of the United States of America — the
interests of the military/security complex — and these interests require a
powerful enemy whether real or orchestrated.
Former CIA official John Stockwell
wrote: “It is the function of the CIA to keep the world unstable, and to
propagandize and teach the American people to hate, so we will let the
Establishment spend any amount of money on arms.” The hatred and distrust of
Russia that the West is currently being force-fed reflects Stockwell’s
revelation, as does the orchestrated hatred and distrust of Muslims that has
supported Washington’s destruction in whole or part of seven countries and
trillions of dollars in new US war debt.
Globalism, that is, labor arbitrage
across national boundaries, and financialization, the diversion of consumers’
incomes into interest and fees to banks, have wrecked the US economy. The
“opportunity society” has vanished. Children have poorer economic prospects
than their parents. The offshoring of manufacturing and professional service jobs
such as IT and software engineering has collapsed the growth of aggregate
demand in the US. The Federal Reserve’s credit expansion was only a temporary
reprieve.
Formerly prosperous areas are in
ruins. States’ budgets and pension systems are failing. There is no payoff to a
university education. Americans’ economic prospects have been erased by
globalism. Getting ahead requires connections as it did in the aristocratic
systems. The high concentration of income and wealth has negated democracy. The
government is only accountable to the rich.
American political and business
leadership not only destroyed the image of US sovereignty by placing American
democracy in Putin’s pocket, but also destroyed the formerly vibrant American
economy, once the envy of the world.
Where can Americans find leadership?
Certainly not in the Democratic Party, nor in the Republican Party, nor in the
media, nor in the corporate community. How then does the US compete with Russia
and China, two countries with good leadership? Is
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