The Unraveling - Democratic Underground

The Unraveling
By David Glenn Cox

The unraveling has begun, watching the talking heads the only thing they seem to agree on is the money being pumped in by central banks around the world isn’t getting to where it needs to go. That’s an easy one, everyone wants to help the leper’s but no one wants to go do it personally.

But for George Herbert Hoover Bush this is his moment in the sun, his hour of redemption. During hurricane Katrina Bush was accused of ignoring the suffering of the residents of Louisiana because they were poor and black. Now he’s proving to the world that it was not so, this time he’s ignoring bankers who are rich and white. Trapped on the rooftops of failing banks as the economic levees collapse and the castles made of sand wash away all while George tunes up his air guitar.

Not that they wouldn’t help if they could but no one has the answer. The philosophy of when in doubt do nothing reigns supreme. The Fed working in relatively small increments pours money in then sits back and watches. The European central banks alone have poured in more than double the amount of the US Federal Reserve and the problem is in America not Europe. Proof positive the smart money boys are lost like a ball in high weeds.

During the Three Mile Island accident the plant operators went through the manual and yet everything they tried just made the problem worse. The problem was that they didn’t understand the problem in the first place. This was a new problem that wasn’t in the manual. Our economic wizards will tell you the problem is liquidity in the sub prime mortgage market.

But missed in the economic floodwaters among the flotsam was the waterlogged performance of Wal-Mart. The home of low prices and lower wages is in a crisis mode as store sales are flat. They have tried to attract newer more upscale customers but they prefer to stay segregated from the great unwashed. Wal-Marts customers are generally the lower strata of the economic ladder, those of us who are all ready under the floodwaters.

There is a section of the population myself included that won’t shop at Wal-Mart because of their policies and practices and that demographic is growing. Wal-Mart stock suffered from reduced profit expectations do to shrinkage. Theft, Wal-Mart estimates 47% of shrinkage is caused by employees, funny isn’t it. No one hates Wal-Mart more than your friendly Wal-Mart associate does. A 44% annual turn over of employee’s leads to employee’s who don’t know or don’t care or don’t want to know and won’t ever care.

Maybe you saw your co worker put a camera or DVD player in the trash on his way out what do you care it’s not worth the trouble. It’s not like the company would appreciate you or something. But in reading about Wal-Marts troubles I read something that disturbed me greatly, so much that I went looking for corroboration. The theft problems at Wal-Mart weren’t camera’s or DVD players or sneakers or rap music CD’s but food!

Food from Wal-Mart grocery stores was among the leaders, the canary in the coal mine. Teenagers steal sneakers and video games the elderly steal Poly Grip or Preparation H to stretch their Social Security checks. But food crosses all lines hungry people steal food, they don’t brag about it nor are they proud of it they don’t do it to impress their friends or to be thought of as cool.

I was shocked to read it but I bet the boys at the Fed don’t know about it yet. George Herbert Hoover Bush doesn’t know it and I bet the traders in the money pits on Wall Street don’t know about it either. If the economic talking head guru’s on TV know about it mums the word. But as they pontificate about the nations largest mortgage lender becoming insolvent can they miss the significance of the nations largest retailer losing millions of dollars in stolen food! Duh! Just doesn’t seem to cover it.

Globalization has brought lower wages to the middle class and even to the upper middle class and two days of hunger can undo a lifetime of thou shall not steal. Civilization is a voluntary organization and people priced out of it and pushed out of it don’t care about it any more than Wal-Mart associates care about stock forecasts.But they do understand that working two jobs isn’t full employment but empty life.A life of struggle and hardship of doing and doing and doing without.

But those at the top really believe if you pour enough money in it will trickle down but the evidence says other wise. Globalism was sold to us that it would bring jobs and prosperity but the evidence says other wise. The exportation of manufacturing and the outsourcing of technical jobs has left a hole in our economy and it is exacerbated by 20 million illegal aliens driving down wages even more. Any good Republican can tell you it’s not about racism its about supply and demand.

But the housing bubble or any bubble is built on the expectation that it will continue to expand. But when a nation export's it’s manufacturing base and outsources technical jobs and forces down wages what else can mortgage lenders do? But lower standards after all they will pass that paper on anyway and their income is dependent on how much paper they pass. Just as the homebuilders is on how many homes they sell and they material suppliers depend on them selling as well.

But forgotten in the formula is low wages and no health insurance force people out of the home buying market. People stealing food at Wal-Mart don’t buy houses in fact they don’t buy much of anything. The illegal alien carpenter building those new homes sends his money home to Mexico or Guatemala where globalism and free trade have brought even more misery.

It’s the great global disconnect, high corporate profits does not prosperity make. The Chinaman earning five dollars a day might look great on the balance sheet but it doesn’t help Pittsburgh or Portland and since the corporation uses a mail drop in the Caribbean it doesn’t add one dollar of tax revenue to the local economy. You’ll just have to make up that tax revenue from the Wal-Mart associates or maybe add a penny of sales tax.

Duh! I wonder why bridges are falling in? I wonder why those levees failed? I wonder why our jails are full? I wonder why do those kids want to sell drugs?

Push has come to shove, the bubble burst not because of easy credit or action by the Federal reserve, or mortgage lenders but by the strangulation of the American working class. The pinprick of reality the one time wealthiest consumer in the world now steals food from Wal-Mart, where one income was once enough now it takes three or more.

There is a cynical guilty pleasure in watching the smart boys struggle to swim against the current, trying to handle the crisis. I know it’s wrong, but for so many years they had all the answers and spoke of the working class in their academic abstractions of lowered expectations and short term economic pain. Eat some of your own lowered expectations and short term economic pain fellas it’s called humble pie. Maybe the wife can get a job, I hear Wal-Mart’s hiring or maybe if you work more hours or live in a smaller house this will all go away.

But it won’t go away, last week the experts called it a correction yesterday the used the word bank failure. Last week Country Wide mortgage said they had $187 billion in reserves but the reserves are in those same depreciated dollars that force Americans to steal food from Wal-Mart. The weakness isn’t at the top it’s at the bottom, a con perpetrated on the American people to pay for wars and tax cuts when they didn’t need either.

We seem to need to relearn the lesson every few generations, that the top of the economy is supported by the bottom. That wealth comes from the bottom up that there has never been an economy where the working class has done well that has collapsed. The wreckage from economies manipulated to move wealth to the top of societies litter history books pages. Maybe now we can go back to business building products rather than stock prices and making money by making things. And by paying decent wages to the people so they can buy those products.

If your answer is that can’t be done, then start swimming Capitalism is finished.

That CNBC has changed the name of their program from Squawk on the Street to Splat on the Street.

strangulation of the American working class

Yep, that says it all. The superrich just understand that a vibrant, thriving middle class is the goose that lays their golden eggs. They think that strangling the goose to steal all its eggs today is what makes them wealthy; they think that can go on forever; they don't comprehend that a dead goose lays no golden eggs. In fact, wealth doesn't trickle down; it trickles up. And when they strangle the real source, they'll eventually strangle themselves. But they just don't get it.

'cause that's the reality generated by more than a quarter century of 'puke-dominated tax and fiscal policies.

I think there are two things at work here. Well, probably more, but two that I think of offhand.

The first is, as you said, they'd rather have a bigger slice of a smaller pie. These are the types who "put themselves up by putting others down." They'd live in a medieval stone castle that's 95 degrees in summer with servants to fan them and freezing in winter with servants to put logs on the fire so they can be superior rather than have everyone have air conditioning, heating, and insulation, and they'd be less superior.

The second thing is, quite simply, short-sightedness. The inability to look beyond this quarter's report. They just don't have a clue where wealth really comes from, but if they can take more right now, they think that it's automatically permanent. These ones are no different than children tempted uncontrollably to steal candy at the grocery store because they want it now and they can't even think about longer term consequences.

few who have almost all the wealth will live in high-walled fortresses guarded by private armies while rapidly growing numbers of the people will be living in squalor. Those who control the levers of power hate America, imnsho, because this has not already happened to a large enough extent with the proof being in 'puke tax and fiscal policies and budget priorities since the early days of the Gipper.

Edit: spelling

And when it comes down, we'll be under it.

is obviously still around - headed into the "bust" part of the cycle.
A good bumper sticker: "How Bad Does It Have To Get?"
Unfortunately, we'll know soon.

grand theft and a different real estate bubble. but, at it's root, what Reaganomics did was steal from the workers/poor and give to the rich. if the economy isn't based on real value (manufactured goods), then it becomes a paper chase where money "is made" on the books. turns out that making money on the books doesn't create value and leaves an empty shell behind of a true economy.

Bush Junior took this to it's most extreme. In for a penny, in for a pound. Funny that his Dad knew better, calling this Voodoo Economics. It's like the economy itself has been Junior's Oedipal battleground.

Your last paragraph says it in a nutshell: the top of the economy is supported by the bottom; let's go back into the business of building products to make money instead of relying on stock prices; and the average worker needs to be paid decent wages so that they can buy those American-made products.

Recently I was stopped at a railway crossing waiting for a long train to pass & I seethed at seeing dozens of boxcars with Chinese lettering delivering "goods" that could be made with more quality by Americans.

William Jennings Bryan from his Cross of Gold speech if I am not mistaken.

Wal-Mart treats its employees poorly - everyone knows it's a meat-market, and they have gone so far as to shut down an entire store rather than let it unionize.

AND, the workers are paid poorly.

So they're mystified by the inventory "shrinkage" due to employee theft?

Sam's Club (owned by the same company) is even more anal. I've bought stuff at Sam's Club, when I used to belong, and would check out, push my cart 3 feet - literally - and be forced to show my receipt to whoever was guarding the door to make sure I "bought" the stuff I was taking out the door even though I just checked out in front of their very eyes.

(sigh) :eyes:

Lots of stores of that annoying policy

A good grasp of our current mess without debate.

Ahhh. Yes. Triangulation should be called strangulation of the middle class. Bill Clinton's biggest error and historical legacy could well be NAFTA and the great sucking sound that was the nation's jobs rushing out overseas.

"... The weakness isn’t at the top it’s at the bottom, a con perpetrated on the American people to pay for wars and tax cuts when they didn’t need either.

We seem to need to relearn the lesson every few generations, that the top of the economy is supported by the bottom. That wealth comes from the bottom up that there has never been an economy where the working class has done well that has collapsed. The wreckage from economies manipulated to move wealth to the top of societies litter history books pages."

Absolutely brilliant! The American middle class has been sold at bargain basement prices to plump up balance sheets. Eat the rich? Sooner or later we'll all have to. There won't be anything else left to eat!
Wake up America!

Just wanted to make sure! I'm saving this one, and also putting it where the few remaining supply-siders I know can see it. Talk about an endangered species...

This is probably unfair, because DaveParts wrote this in passion - boy, did he write it in passion! But there are so many ideas in this essay, and so many of them deserve more space, that it's just too concentrated.

This contains the seeds of a multi-page article that could appear in just about any good magazine that would publish it - say, Harper's or Rolling Stone. It's that intelligent and passionate.

The part that a lot of you might have overlooked is the Wal-Mart employees who don't give a damn about their employer. That's the real tragedy. People used to be proud of the companies for which they worked, because their companies compensated them well, treated their needs well, and made them feel their work was valuable. Modern companies have kept the last part - hell, glad-handing and brown-nosing have spawned entire "human relations" departments within companies - but it's all phony because the companies don't back it up, and the workers know it.

And that betrayal goes up the ladder. If you're a manager in, say, a concrete plant, it's bad for you to know too much about making concrete, because you're looking for a job in the broadcasting business, and if you're "only a concrete man" you can't switch industries. To the managerial class, it doesn't matter what business you're in, and the quality of the stuff you make isn't important. It's your own salary and power that matters. Thus are defective bridges made.

...and apparently there are still a good many well educated talking heads who don't read.

You touch on some very good points here.

If you intend on posting this elsewhere, or even submitting it as an article (as has been suggested by others here), I recommend you check your use of apostrophes. I found it terribly distracting. It's the editor (and self-editor) in me. Stuff like that makes me nuts.

Otherwise, great job.

...and people priced out of it and pushed out of it don’t care about it"

Insightful and very well stated.

Kicked and recommended in a big way.

Thanks!

the movement of money, is a society in trouble. (paraphrasing here)

:-(

MKJ

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I would love to read this as an extended New Yorker or Vanity Fair piece. I suggest that you expand your astute thoughts and submit it for publication. :applause:

Damn.

Everyone needs to read this.

...he is not an American, he has no interest in preserving the U.S. Constitution, he is out for number one. How about Felix G. Rohatyn ? He is from the Vienna Austria. He is a nazi and has no interest in the U.S. Constitution. Most of the wealthiest people in America who benefit and make tonnes of money are from places other than America. They could give a rat's ass about what it says in the U.S. Constitution about providing for "the general welfare" and jobs and creating and supporting an expanding middle class with all the benefits of shared wealth that represents.

We need another FDR type as a democratic president from either a change of heart by the existing Democratic lineup, or someone else who fits that job profile. He will put together a New Deal for the 21st century well into the middle next 50 years and beyond! Start listening for that person as the next president.

<snip>
From: Democrats are Running from FDR Legacy

<cut>
Most older Americans remember what life was like in America in 1932, before Roosevelt changed the role of government.

President Hoover and the conservatives then believed that the Great Depression would run its course without the intervention of the Federal government. They felt private charity and volunteerism was the solution.

But communities and private charities were overwhelmed by the poor. Over 15 million men -- a quarter of the workforce -- were jobless. The farm economy had collapsed. There were about two million Americans roaming from state to state looking for food and jobs that were not to be found.

The shantytowns of the homeless known as Hoovervilles could be found in almost every major city. There was legitimate fear that fascism or communism would take over the country. People were hungry and desperate and looking for a leader.

When Roosevelt accepted his party's nomination for president at Chicago Stadium that year, he pledged a "new deal" for the nation.

"There are two ways of viewing the government's duty in matters affecting economic and social life," he said in his acceptance speech. "The first sees to it that a favored few are helped and hopes that some of their prosperity will sift through, to labor, to the farmer, to the small businessman. That theory belongs to the party of Toryism, and I had hoped that most of the Tories left this country in 1776.

"But it is not and never will be the theory of the Democratic Party. Ours must be a Party of Liberal thought, of planned action, of enlightened international outlook, and of the greatest good to the greatest number of our citizens."

Those are the principles this nation should stand for. Government is not "them." Government is "us." It's all of us, working together for the common good. We cannot abandon that philosophy. If we do, our nation is certain to fall apart.
<MORE>

http://www.albionmonitor.com/9705a/dishonorfdr.html

for all your recomends and kind words of support

Wicked scathing prose - I love it!	Xipe Totec	Aug-16-07 10:11 AM	#1
It's so Bad	Daveparts	Aug-16-07 10:17 AM	#2
Needs to be heard. k/r, n/t.	zehnkatzen	Aug-16-07 10:33 AM	#3
Brilliant. K&R (nt)	fiziwig	Aug-16-07 10:37 AM	#4
strangulation of the American working class	hvn_nbr_2	Aug-16-07 11:01 AM	#5
Me thinks the super wealthy would rather settle for a much bigger slice of a much smaller pie	indepat	Aug-17-07 08:31 AM	#30
That's a significant part of it.	hvn_nbr_2	Aug-17-07 10:38 AM	#35
Two fine analogies. The USA will look more and more like a third-world country where the relative	indepat	Aug-17-07 11:57 AM	#38
Kick and recommend	Summer93	Aug-16-07 11:05 AM	#6
K&R	Dr.Phool	Aug-16-07 11:22 AM	#7
The upside down pyramid is tilting.	Major Hogwash	Aug-16-07 12:58 PM	#8
K&R	mimitabby	Aug-16-07 01:30 PM	#9
Well put. The 'boom-bust' cycle of capitalism, declared dead awhile back	BridgeTheGap	Aug-16-07 01:32 PM	#10
anyone who works, knows wealth trickles up -- Reaganomics immediately brought the S&L	nashville_brook	Aug-16-07 02:21 PM	#11
FDR: "We have nothing to fear but fear itself". nt	BornagainDUer	Aug-16-07 04:54 PM	#12
I'm no economics scholar, but I've always believed the "trickle-up" method is most successful.	8_year_nightmare	Aug-16-07 06:12 PM	#13
Sounds like	Sherman A1	Aug-17-07 08:22 AM	#29
Hmmm.... let's see now	Tab	Aug-16-07 06:52 PM	#14
Pretty common	ramapo	Aug-16-07 10:57 PM	#18
K&R for a well grounded perspective	bonito	Aug-16-07 09:03 PM	#15
I could not agree more.	Laelth	Aug-16-07 10:25 PM	#16
Right on the money....or where it was......k&r	ooglymoogly	Aug-16-07 10:43 PM	#17
Which dem candidate approved wal-mart policies as the 1st female board member?	gulfcoastliberal	Aug-16-07 10:58 PM	#19
HRC	hawkowl88	Aug-17-07 12:55 AM	#23
Well done! Right-the-fuck On! Kicked and Recommended!	Raster	Aug-16-07 11:38 PM	#20
"Error: You've already recommended that thread."	Raksha	Aug-17-07 12:10 AM	#21
Critique: this essay contains too much!	tomreedtoon	Aug-17-07 12:50 AM	#22
K & R. Good piece -- the writing's on the wall...	Mr_Jefferson_24	Aug-17-07 02:13 AM	#24
K&R. Outstanding post.	txwhitedove	Aug-17-07 02:23 AM	#25
Brilliant Piece! k&r /nt	jannyk	Aug-17-07 03:40 AM	#26
Well done	Mythsaje	Aug-17-07 04:17 AM	#27
Like Eddy and Patsy would say, "absolutely fabulous".	acmavm	Aug-17-07 06:54 AM	#28
"Civilization is a voluntary organization...	Jokerman	Aug-17-07 09:10 AM	#31
Something Thom Hartmann said a few weeks ago has stuck with me: A society whose economy is based on	BleedingHeartPatriot	Aug-17-07 09:18 AM	#
## PLEASE DONATE TO DEMOCRATIC UNDERGROUND! ##	DU GrovelBot	Aug-17-07 09:18 AM	#32
Nicely Done! n/t	Gamey	Aug-17-07 09:24 AM	#33
Fantastic piece!	myrna minx	Aug-17-07 09:49 AM	#34
Error: you can only recommend threads which were started in the past 24 hours	Flarney	Aug-17-07 10:47 AM	#36
THANK YOU!!! Now to get the talking heads to listen. n/t	ejbr	Aug-17-07 10:48 AM	#37
Who is it in America at the top who benefit...Rupurt Murdock? He is Australian	whistle	Aug-18-07 12:19 AM	#39
Thank You All	Daveparts	Aug-19-07 11:45 AM	#40