Bondholders Strengthen Chains on Working Middle Classes
by Mark Evans
Sometimes we are told-or obliquely warned- about the future, even in the
media. An article in the Santa Rosa Press Democrat on Saturday, August 13,
1994, is such a case in point. The article, entitled "Federal Budget
Experts Find Entitlements Drying Up Well," is very telling if one has
even a rudimentary understanding of economic reality, an ear for discerning
doublespeak, and can read between the lines.
Senator Kerrey (formerly Governor) of Nebraska, it seems, has been for some
time the co-chairman of a blue-ribbon Senate Sub-Committee of "32 budget
experts" who have been agonizing and studying and debating (presumably
amongst themselves) about this problem of the budget for months now. "In
chilling detail, they left no doubt that unless Washington limits social
benefits-especially for health care-the government is headed straight toward
bankruptcy." That is a very interesting statement in light of the fact
that the U.S. government has been bankrupt for the better part of six decades
now, having gone into receivership to the international bankers back in
1938, a fact which is known to every superior court and circuit court judge
across the length and breadth of the United States; a fact also which most
of them will rigorously deny and which only slipped out of one of them in
an unguarded moment.
So far, the bonded indebtedness or "bankruptcy" of the U.S. government
has not prevented it from levying all manner of taxes on the masses and
functioning, or allowing the IRS to function-fairly efficiently in this
one respect, at least-to channel money from the working- and middle-classes
to the elite circles who own the "preferred" stock in the right
banks, in service on the interest "due" on the national debt.
Keynesian economics and deficit-financing have allowed the U.S. government
to function very well indeed over the last sixty years, even while the national
debt increased from 13 billion-where it stood in 1933-to the more than 5
trillion dollars that it is today. We must always remember, and try to comprehend,
that this almost incomprehensible sum of 5 trillion dollars of spent and
dead money, which seems like a black hole in space to us, is a mountain
of gold in the form of interest-bearing securities to the bond-holding classes,
who collect their semi-annual, tax-exempt dividends on this enormous sum.
The article continues:
Among the most eye-catching findings: ·The Social Security Trust Fund
is on track to go bankrupt in 2029. ·The Medicare Trust Fund will go
bankrupt in 2001. ·Spending on social "entitlements," especially
health benefit programs, combined with interest on the national debt, is
growing so fast that together they will consume all federal tax revenues
by 2012. . .
These dates may be accurate; on the other hand the well may go dry even
sooner. And what shall happen then is a question we should all consider.
In the meantime, this specter of the government "going bankrupt"
is being used as a bogeyman to scare, or persuade, the masses to accept
the new austerity measures that are being imposed top down on the American
people in much the same manner that the International Monetary Fund imposes
austerity conditions on any Third World country. Actually, going into bankruptcy
might not be such a bad thing to happen to the government, were it to do
it lawfully, the way any individual or family would. If the U.S. government
were to file a Chapter 7 bankruptcy, liquidating all of the real estate
and movables yet owned by Uncle Sam, we, the people, could then witness
who the real creditors are when they come in like carrion crows to feast
on the corpse.
It could also be convincingly argued in a court of law, in the context of
bankruptcy proceedings, that the national debt itself is a fraudulent entity
because it was incurred by fraud, and fraud has tainted every aspect of
its progress and accumulation from 1791, when Hamilton funded the near-worthless
revolutionary war bonds, through the National Bank Act of 1863, and the
Federal Reserve Act of 1913, until the present.
The ruling classes do not want the United States to actually file bankruptcy.
It functions quite well as an engine of neo-feudal tax-collection as it
stands. Why kill the goose that lays the golden eggs? They merely mean to
startle us by the threat of bankruptcy into accepting less-less "entitlements"
in the future and no health care, and the reversal of all the token socialism
left over from the New Deal. You will note that the article lumps social
"entitlements" (as if anyone could be so brazen as to think they
were "entitled" to anything from the government) together with
the interest on the national debt and states that "together they will
consume all federal tax revenues by 2013." Actually, the interest on
the national debt is much larger and is growing faster than the "entitlements"
(spending on social services). But the national debt is a sacred cow, one
of the main cash cows of the ruling classes and a cow that may not be sacrificed.
Historically, since the 1930s at least, social democrats and liberals have
believed intrinsically in the institutions of the graduated income tax,
and the Social Security System because of the beneficial aspects of the
social programs instituted under the New Deal. These institutions were accepted
by most progressives as fulfilling certain aspects of the agenda of Fabian
Socialism. Now, however, the fangs of the monster are beginning to show.
It seems that the only group of people who are "entitled" to anything
any longer are those mysterious owners of the Class A stock of the International
Commercial Banks, the recipients of the interest "due" on the
national debt.
Mark Evans
-- North Coast HOME -- Archives
-- Electrons to the Editor