Gerald Celente likes to mock “The Brilliant” Larry Summers, top economic guru to the Clinton and Obama administrations, and therefore a primary architect of America’s economic decay, especially of its middle class. Greg Palast detailed Summers’ long and close ties to Goldman Sachs, the primary beneficiary of the 2008 TARP bank bailout of Wall St. by Main St., which Hillary backed. And Hillary, of courses, had made millions from speeches to Goldman Sachs, the contents of which she refuses to release.
Summers’ nuttiest idea is to get rid of the $100 bill. Maybe that wouldn’t matter to Goldman Sachs executives, who deal in trillions on computer screens at work or AmEx cards in their private lives. Writing in February, he insisted dumping the century note would make it harder for terrorists and drug lords to move money about, while “technology is obviating whatever need there may ever have been for high denomination notes in legal commerce.” But forcing everyone to use $20 bills as the highest denomination would slam small businesses such as car repair shops or family farms that often are paid a few thousand dollars for their services. A $2,000 fender repair job would go from 20 $100 bills to 100 $20 bills. But I guess that’s the point: to punish small businesses and farms in favor of large firms and agribusiness.
With Crooked Hillary now clinching the Democratic nomination over Bernie Sanders, Summers is itching to again help her and Bill loot the American middle class to benefit their crony capitalist friends. So Summers just typed an attack on Trump for the Financial Times. Headline: “The economic consequences of a Donald Trump win would be severe. He could surely set off the worst trade war since the Great Depression.”
“If he is elected, I would expect a protracted recession to begin within 18 months. The damage would be felt far beyond the United States,” The Brilliant Larry Summers writes. Actually, given Summers’ track record, the opposite would happen under Trump: an American economic boom.
“First, there is a substantial risk of highly erratic policy. Mr Trump has raised the possibility of more than $10 trillion in tax cuts, which would threaten US fiscal stability.” No, it wouldn’t. Like Reagan’s tax cuts in the early 1980s, Trump tax cuts would unleash the creative and productive power of American entrepreneurship, finally lifting us, especially the middle class, out of the wage-cutting “growth” of the Clinton-Bush-Obama-Summers two “lost decades.”
“He has also raised the possibility of the US restructuring its debt in the manner of a failed real estate developer.” Ha, ha. Clearly, he’s just shilling for the holders of the debt run up by him and the rest of the ripoff political and banking class, with middle-class Americans forced to pay for the credit card bills they never signed on the $19 trillion and rising national debt. But for the rest of us, why should we object to a Trump “deal” for a “haircut” cutting down that debt quite a bit, at the expense of the banksters who already have made massive profits at our expense?
The Brilliant Larry Summers: “Second, in a world economy defined by global integration, Mr. Trump’s economic nationalism is highly dangerous. Exports have been a major driver of the American economy in recent years. What would happen to exports if the US were to build a wall along its southern border and abrogate all its trade treaties? Withdrawal from trade agreements does not currently require congressional approval. If Mr Trump did even half of what he has promised, he would surely set off the worst trade war since the Great Depression.”
The wall would be to keep out illegal immigrants, not legal imports. Nor would Trump end all trade. Instead, Trump would renegotiate all the bum trade deals, beginning with the Clinton-Summers NAFTA ripoff of 1994, which wasn’t “free trade,” as advertised, but a 900-page monstrosity of managed trade to the benefit, again, of Wall St. over Main St. This year’s TPP, at 5,544 pages, was an even more enormous monstrosity. Only fancy international lawyers from Summers’ beloved Hahvhad, working for K St. lobbying firms linked to crony capitalists, can figure any of this out. Trump, if he renegotiates these bum deals, might reduce them to a single number for each country—the tariff rate. Trade, instead of moving through the sclerotic processes of NAFTA and TPP, would accelerate, only in a way fair to all Americans, and understood by them.
The Brilliant Larry Summers: “Third, prosperity depends on a secure geopolitical environment. Requiring Japan and Korea to defend themselves and scaling back Nato is a prescription for emboldening China and Russia and promoting nuclear proliferation. A perception that the US is at war with Islam rather than with radical elements within Islam is an invitation to terrorism. In such an environment, investment and trade are unlikely to flourish.”
Huh? It’s Washington’s permanent military-industrial complex, to which Hillary is enlisted as much as the Bushes, that has slaughtered hundreds of thousands and displaced millions of Muslims in the Middle East, not to mention destroying entire ancient Christian communities in Iraq and Syria. Hillary was obsessed with getting rid of Gaddafi, which turned Libya into an ISIS killing ground and base; and she pushed doing the same with Syria, with only partial success, fortunately. And of course, she backed Bush’s 2003 Iraq invasion. Trump wants to bring peace to the area and stop the killing.
As to Japan and Korea, why should we keep paying for their defense? Has Summers himself ever enlisted in the military to possibly die in a combat zone in Asia so that Seoul and Tokyo can maintain massive profits, their defense paid for by us? Do you hear Gen. MacArthur laughing?
“Fourth, Mr. Trump’s authoritarian style and cult of personality surely would take a toll on business confidence.” Blah, blah, blah. The “authoritarian style” attack stems from the phony “Authoritarian Personality” study of the Frankfurt School frauds after World War II. For example, if a father was playing catch with his son, then Pop was “authoritarian.” But if Pop deserted his family and Junior joined the Communist Party, then Pop was OK. Although the Frankfurt Schoolers were exiles from Hitler’s Germany, they themselves had absorbed the country’s fascist ethos of the 1930s and “projected” that onto the free America to which they fled, then helped ruin. Summers bringing up the “authoritarian” trope says more about him, and Hillary, who advocates massive increases in Big Brother’s power, than it does about Trump.
The Brilliant Larry Summers: “Finally, there is the question of uncertainty and confidence. Improving business confidence is the cheapest form of stimulus. Creating an environment where every tenet of the rule of law, internationalism and consistency in policy is up for grabs would be the best way to damage a still fragile US economy. In no election in my lifetime has a major party candidate for president been so dangerous for the economy.”
That’s more “projection,” and describes Hillary, whose private-sector business experience is getting million-dollar Goldman Sachs speaking fees, not Trump, a highly successful businessman who understands what our economy needs to boom—especially for the middle class long squashed by Hillary, Summers and their crony capitalist pals.
Leave a Reply