Republicans, Democrats, and Voodoo Economics – Jeff Nielson

by Jeff Nielson, Sprott Money:

The Republican Trump regime has come out with its first economic policy paper. Democrat Larry Summers call this “voodoo economics” . This is very funny on multiple levels.

Many would argue that it was the Clinton regime (with Larry Summers in charge of economic policy) which began the transformation of the U.S. economy from what was still a relatively strong and prosperous entity into the hopelessly crippled, financial Ponzi-scheme which it has become today. It was during the Clinton years, with a Democrat at the helm of the U.S. economy that the Wall Street crime syndicate was fully unleashed upon the U.S. – and the world – through tearing up the Glass-Steagall Act (1933).

Not only did that crime against humanity mark the beginning of the worst financial crime spree in the history of humanity (X 100), it also marked the beginning of the financial cannibalization of the U.S. economy, not just by the criminal banks, but by the all of the mega-corporations owned by Western oligarchs . It was during the Clinton years that the U.S. government concluded its most significant “free trade” deals.

These corrupt agreements were stacked so heavily in favor of the interests of these large corporations that the populations of all parties to these trade agreements lost. The United States lost jobs, mostly well-paying manufacturing jobs. Roughly 50 million Americans are permanently unemployed today, no longer even counted by the government’s fraudulent “unemployment statistics”. A large chunk of that total was created during the Clinton years.

The trading partners of the United States who were the recipients of all this exported manufacturing also lost. Their corrupt governments allowed the mega-corporations exploiting those nations to pay slave-wages to their workers, while contributing little-to-no tax revenues to those economies. Lose/lose.

The only significant exception to this “free trade” carousel of misery was China. China’s government played the game with Western mega-corporations, but on terms which allowed the Chinese people to significantly improve their standard of living, and with China’s government able to leverage this increased economic activity to the point of transforming itself into a global powerhouse – the new “growth engine” of the global economy.

The economic bubbles which ended up imploding during the reign of error of George Bush Jr. were all germinated during the Clinton years, with Larry Summers spreading most of the economic fertilizer, personally. What are Larry Summers credentials for criticizing the Trump regime today? What has he done after all the damage he did to the U.S. economy?

He spent part of that time as president of Harvard University, where his principal “accomplishment” was managing to incur a $1 billion loss for the university, in financing just $2 billion of debt. Of course that was just part of the losses he racked up while mismanaging Harvard. Altogether, Larry Summers was a $1.8 billion mistake during his short tenure as Harvard’s president. Today, Larry Summers is a Harvard professor – teaching courses in how not to run a university.

But we would be remiss in not giving Republicans their share of “credit” for transforming the U.S. from an economic juggernaut into a bankrupt deadbeat, which only manages to stay afloat by using $trillions in counterfeit money to buy its own worthless bonds.

Who can forget the “Reagan miracle”? Right-wing zealots still get wet dreams thinking about the Reagan years. Yes. Through the magic of “Reaganomics”, the world’s strongest economy managed to triple its national debt – in just eight years. Not even Larry Summers could have done that.

After Reagan the Republican drowned the U.S. in debt, and after Clinton the Democrat gutted the U.S. manufacturing base came George Bush Jr.: someone who managed to combine the mismanagement and incompetence of the Reagan and Clinton regimes. Like Ronald Reagan the “fiscal conservative”, George Bush Jr. also managed to triple the U.S. national debt (again) in just eight years. Like Bill Clinton, he also gave away million and millions of U.S. jobs through more, phony “free trade” deals. Standing next to George Bush Jr., Larry Summers actually looks like the “economic genius” he claims to be.

Of course after eight years of Barack Obama, the knuckle-draggers who still vote Republican will be foaming at the mouth by now. Where is the condemnation of Obamacare (which as any good Republican can tell you “killed the U.S. economy”)? The response to such accusations is to point out the obvious: you can’t kill something which is already dead.

Regular readers are familiar with the chart above. The velocity of money roughly translates into the “heartbeat” of an economy. What this chart clearly shows is that the U.S. economy was already several years into its present death-spiral before Barack Obama ever took his Oath of Office.

Barack Obama is a slick con-man who has spent the last eight years duping the world into believing that the deceased U.S. economy is still alive. Using Wall Street’s (and the Fed’s) counterfeit funny-money to pretend to pay the U.S.’s bills, this Zombie Economy lurches from year to year without any visible means of support to finance its extravagant spending – mostly on hand-outs to the Rich and funding the war crimes of the U.S. military.

…and then came Trump.

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