From The Ramparts

The Coming US Austerity aka Structural Adjustments Part 1

                                                                     From the Ramparts
                                                                 Junious Ricardo Stanton
                                               The Coming Austerity AKA US Structural Adjustments Part 1

        “Since 1980, the richest Americans have seen their incomes quadruple, while for the ‘lowest’ 90% of us, incomes fell. The average wage is lower today than it was in the 1970s, while productivity has risen almost 50%.  In 1983 middle class debt held at 67% of income. In 2007, middle class debt had gone over the falls to 157% of income. (3) In 1950 the ratio of the average executive's paycheck to the average worker's was about 30 to 1. Since 2000 that average has ranged from 300 to 500 to one. ‘As of late 2009, the number of billionaires soared from 793 to 1,011, and their total fortunes from $2.4 trillion to $3.6 trillion. ... Despite the crisis, the list of billionaires has grown by 200 people and their aggregate capital has expanded by 50%. This may seem paradoxical but only at first glance. This result was predictable, if we recall how governments all over the world have dealt with the economic crisis.’ This is the result of a deliberate strategy, one Washington has executed many, many times, though usually in ‘Third World’  nations, by using ‘Free’ Trade Agreements (FTAs) and its front groups, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization. Purchased politicians plunge their countries into unsustainable debt. Under Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs), national industries are sold to transnational corporations and privatized. Social programs are cut to the bone or eliminated altogether. Interest rates are ratcheted up and the economy collapses on itself like the World Trade Center while banks and corporate buzzards fight each other to pick the carcass clean.” Social Inequality in America: Widening Income Disparities.Workhouse Nation:Part One by Vi Ransel http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=1828

    The kleptocratic oligarchy that runs this country have decided they want it all; in their psychopathy  what’s theirs  is theirs and  what’s ours is theirs.  Their goal is to literally own the whole planet and reduce us to peons in bondage to them and their debt based system of servitude for the rest of our lives. Today in the US the wealth and income gaps between the super rich and the rest of us have never been higher, and the gap widens every day. “Wealth is equivalent to ‘net worth,’ which is equal to your assets minus your liabilities. Examples of assets include checking and savings accounts, vehicles, a home that you own, mutual funds, stocks and bonds, real estate, and retirement accounts. Examples of liabilities include a car loan, credit card balance, student loan, personal loan, mortgage, and other bills you still need to pay. Median net worth in 2007, the latest year for which figures are available, was $120,300. Half of American households had net worth greater than this figure, half had less. Net worth is even more unequal than income in the United States. In 2007, the latest year for which figures are available from the Federal Reserve Board, the richest 1% of U.S. households owned 33.8% of the nation’s private wealth. That’s more than the combined wealth of the bottom 90 percent. The top 1% also own 50.9% of all stocks, bonds, and mutual fund assets.  Retirement accounts like 401(k)s are more equally distributed. The top 1% owns only 14.5% of all retirement account assets, while the bottom 90% owns 40.5%.” http://extremeinequality.org/?page_id=8
   
           When you factor in race the numbers are even more glaring. “Since 1968, the year Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, the income gap between blacks and whites narrowed by just 3 cents on the dollar. In 2005 the median per capita income in the United States stood at $16,629 for blacks and $28,946 for whites. At this slow rate of progress, income equality will not be achieved for 537 years. These disparities remain shockingly wide, and especially evident when we examine the polarization of assets and wealth. The black home ownership rate, for instance, sits at 47 percent and the Latino at 49.7 percent, compared with 75 percent for whites. African-American families in the United States have a median net worth of $20,600, only 14.6 percent of the $140,700 median white net worth. The median net worth for Latino families is $18,600, only 13.2 percent of median white net worth. Between 1983 and 2004, the most recent year with official federal data available, median black and Latino wealth inched up from 7 percent to 10 percent of median white wealth. At this rate, wealth equality will not be attained for 634 years.” Racial Dimensions of Inequality http://extremeinequality.org/?page_id=23
   
      This is why the housing crisis is so devastating for people of color, it is wiping out the little equity and wealth we’ve accumulated. “The foreclosure crisis is exacerbating these wealth disparities by stripping away homes, one of  the most important assets in communities of color, at unprecedented rates. In 2009, 3.4 million homes were in foreclosure. A disproportionate share of the families impacted were people of color who were systematically targeted by the financial industry for predatory, subprime loans. In fact, over half of the mortgages to African-Americans in recent years were high-cost subprime loans, mostly to people who would have qualified for regular loans. While some legislation to address the foreclosure crisis has been passed, much of it has already been stripped of its teeth by powerful finance industry lobbyists, and hamstrung by lack of cooperation from big banks. As a result, these policies lack elements that are essential to
stemming the crisis, such as a moratorium on foreclosures, modification of bankruptcy rules,
and strong financial regulation” State of the Dream 2010 Drained Jobless and Foreclosed In Communities of Color http://www.faireconomy.org/files/SoD_2010_Drained_Report.pdf
    The banksters and fraudsters plan to gobble up our homes, businesses, savings, all the wealth of  working and “middle class” folks thus executing the greatest heist and transfer of wealth the world has ever seen. It is all part of their grand scheme to turn the US into a third world banana republic by co-opting the government , shipping factories and jobs overseas, siphoning of the people’s  wealth and leaving us with nothing but debt and lowered living standards. It sounds far fetched but its true. The US has always been ruled by a select cabal. The elites run the country for their benefit, they always have. 
  
      The banksters attempted to gobble up everything  once before in the 1930's. But Franklin Delano Roosevelt stepped and stopped them. In turn the banksters attempted to overthrow  his administration via a coup. See Wall Street’s Plot to Seize The White House: Facing the Corporate Roots of American Facism http://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/53/53-index.html  It was one of the few coups that failed. The attempt on Andrew Jackson’s life being the other.
   
      None of the plotters including George W. Bush’ grandfather, Prescott Bush, were indicted or went to jail. The blue bloods always get off. They and their heirs just waited and bided their time. They are accomplishing their plan now! But their plan doesn’t stop with the US, no it’s global, that’s why they call it globalization. We are seeing its’ affects not only in Africa, Asia and Latin America but in Europe too. That’s what the rioting in France, Greece and Eastern Europe is all about. The people are up in arms as the international banksters force them to bail out the insolvent banks, steal the people’s wealth by siphoning off their savings, gutting their social safety nets and gobbling up their resources for pennies on the dollar.  They have the audacity to call it austerity when it’s really grand theft. We’ll talk more about this in future articles.

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posted by Junious Ricardo Stanton @ 9:40 AM