A Global Economic Hit (Part the First)

"By the way, I took care of that thing for ya . . . "

Pete (the Killer), Goodfellas (1990)

The S&P has downgraded U.S. treasuries for the first time in history, but it is also probably the first time in history one of the principal owners of the S&P is one of the largest supporters of a presidential candidate running against the current president.  Harold McGraw is a principal of McGraw-Hill, which owns Standard & Poor.

And so the numbers come crashing and crashing downward, and it really leaves you to wonder.  What if there were no "economies" and "markets" churning in computer servers with green and (mostly) red digital numbers.  There would still be a bunch of people with a demand and a bunch of other people with the ability to meet that demand with supply.  Is this not an economy?  What grand bargain did our governments strike to take away this self-evident truth, that we are, in essence, the economy?

This question led me to ask further questions about government debt.  I have been in awe at the recent feverish, insane hysteria of austerity.  It reaches everything.  You would think money is a bad thing the way the media has hoi polloi barking like a rabid dog at anything even remotely resembling debt.  What has hoi polloi so set off?  And why?

Certainly, the way hoi polloi laps up the ideas it needs to think directly from the media, whatever it is telling us should be telling in revealing what has put us in the unenviable position of being victims of all of these failing numbers, and this strange "economy" that exists apart from us, yet inexplicably holds us all indebted to it.

The author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man writes recently that what he had done for the U.S. decades ago has now evolved and transformed into a hit on all of us.  He talks recently about how that growth model is now being used by global corporations to enslave even Americans.  But that is far too complicated for our purposes here.  Our question is what happened to our economy?  You know, you and me making and serving and selling, and used-to-be, getting paid.

The reason why the hoi polloi are calling for the dismantling of their governments is because the corporatists want to take over the work, the economic muscle and financial remuneration, from these governments.  John Maynard Keynes knew that governments play a role -- and are meant to play a role -- in the economy.  The modern state must maintain a government, and inevitably that government becomes one of the biggest players in the economy.  On the global scale, these governments wield an extraordinary amount of power, not only themselves, but their relations to corporations contractually, as they hire contractors to perform for the government, and regulatory.

Worse, when the corporatists get into trouble, they have the governments bail them out, and hoi polloi pays for the bailouts.  That is why these governments are all so massively in debt.  Defense spending?  Corporatists.  War financing?  Corporatists.  Banking and financial speculation?  Corporatists.  Infastructure or human services?  That doesn't make the corporatists any money, so you can forget it.

You see, the corporatists have hoi polloi calling for their own enslavement.  It was a brilliant plan, a global economic hit on hoi polloi.  And the killers even made their prey like it.