The Bubble Blowers: Goldman Sachs
As Cap and Trade races through Congress, here is a question – Who will benefit? The environment and us or Government Sachs?
Courtesy of Jake Towne. "As always, unlike the NFL, the author grants full permission to allow any accounts of, rebroadcasts, retransmissions, repostings of this article to your blog or anywhere else in order to promote the Restoration of our Republic."
Last week the House voted 219-212 to pass HR 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, whose intent is to "create clean energy jobs, achieve energy independence, reduce global warming pollution and transition to a clean energy economy." I’ve only had time to browse the 1,092 page bill and sincerely believe it will not achieve a single one of its purposes.
The creation of clean energy jobs is very vague and the parts that are clear center not on industry but on educating people about global warming – this appears to signal the creation of a new class of bureaucrat-teachers, not industrial jobs.
Energy independence? Transition to a clean energy economy? Get real, there is nothing of substance in the document that details such a plan, and this is a pipe dream for government to create this. What will you ask? Only a free market, driven by the consumer and free from government interventions can do so, in my opinion.
"Reduce global warming pollution?" Somehow I missed the scientific debate where the global warmers square off against the global coolers and those who believe that ‘the weather just changes, weather you want it to or not’ as I suggested here "Anthropogenic Global Warming or an Ice Age, Which Is It? (PART 2/2)". Is carbon dioxide really a pollutant? Don’t plants need it to live and don’t we all respire it? It would be a lot cheaper and a lot more useful than HR 2454!
My own private analysis of HR 2454 can be summarized up with:
- Inefficient energy sources will instead be propped up and buffered from free market competition by the government.
- The taxed companies will pass down the taxes to We the People, and energy costs will rise for us, the consumers.
- The State will subsidize and hence sponsor, mandated education that "global warming" is fact, stifling debate.
- Wall Street will have a great time doing all the carbon credits trading using derivatives with "underlying assets" that are literally in many cases, just hot air.
Or, in three words, as "Crap ‘N Trade"
On the last point above, let’s ask the question, "Cui bono?" Who benefits?
GOVERNMENT SACHS – THE BUBBLE BLOWERS
Goldman Sachs recently announced that RECORD bonuses will be generated in 2009. The $10 billion dollars in bailout money will be returned, although undisclosed amounts lent to GS by the Federal Reserve via the discount window and other off-balance sheet transactions will not be discovered until the FED is audited by Ron Paul’s bills HR 1207 and S 604. How can this be?
Goldman Sachs are our country’s premier inside traders – former Secretary of Treasury Hank Paulson and his appointed lieutenant Neel Kashgari are only the tip of the iceberg in terms of GS alumni in government. They are aware of, and even exercise control over, the next steps our government will take.
This means in upturns as well as downturns, it is possible to profit. Some say it’s even easier to profit during downturns, as Catherine Austin-Fitts discusses in the latter half of this June 26 interview with Max Keiser.
In a recent Rolling Stones piece entitled "The Great American Bubble Machine," Max Tiabbi does us all a great service by – sarcastically but realistically – detailing the history and prior bubbles of this firm. Tiabbi’s next prediction for a bubble (mine, for the record, is still the U.S. Treasury and gold markets, where GS plays a vital role as well) is that of carbon credit trading. He details how GS has promoted this legislation and how they will profit from this market – which, bottom line, is a government-created tax market where the carbon credits issued to energy producers increase in scarcity year after year. (Photo courtesy Steve Ford Elliot License)
Who will deliver these ‘mandated profits’ to Goldman Sachs? That’s our job as the energy consumers!
A "First-Class Democracy"??
In a seething conclusion, Tiabbi finishes with:
"It’s not always easy to accept the reality of what we now routinely allow these people to get away with; there’s a kind of collective denial that kicks in when a country goes through what America has gone through lately, when a people lose as much prestige and status as we have in the past few years. You can’t really register the fact that you’re no longer a citizen of a first-class democracy, that you’re no longer above getting robbed in broad daylight, because like an amputee, you can still sort of feel things that are no longer there.
"But this is it. This is the world we live in now. And in this world, some of us have to play by the rules, while others get a note from the principal excusing them from having to do homework until the end of time, plus 10 billion free dollars in a paper bag to buy lunch. It’s a gangster state, running on gangster economics, and even prices can’t be trusted anymore; there are hidden taxes in everything you pay. And maybe we can’t stop it, but we should at least know where it’s all going."
Here is where, in my opinion, Tiabbi grasps part of the truth, but makes a fatal mistake, the same made by many Americans. Let me attempt to correct it briefly.
Tiabbi relates that most Americans think we live in a "first-class democracy," and fervently believe this is beneficial. It’s not. Democracy is a Greek word from demos (the majority) and –cracy (rule), or literally "rule by majority." Search the both the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution for the term and you will not find it. Our founders – to a man – recognized the dire dangers of democratic rule. This is why they created for us a nation of laws protecting the natural rights of the individual – a constitutional republic, a union of nation-states, consisting of checks and balances, with both democratic and special-rule elections or appointments, and both democratic and special-rule voting practices. This is why:
"A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine."
– Thomas Jefferson, drafter of the Declaration of Independence and 3rd President of the United States
"Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide."
– John Adams, 2nd President of the United States
"A democracy is a volcano which conceals the fiery materials of its own destruction. These will produce an eruption and carry desolation in their way… Liberty has never lasted long in a democracy, nor has it ever ended in anything better than despotism… Democracy pollutes the morals of the people before it swallows up their freedoms."
– Fisher Ames, U.S. Congressman 1789-1797
A choice between a "gangster state" or a nation of laws should be an easy one for most to make. For the Republic!
Jake Towne, the Champion of the Constitution
Jake Towne is running for U.S. Congress in Pennsylvania’s 15th District in the 2010 election as a citizen unaffiliated with any political parties. Jake also writes at www.LibertyMaven.com and www.CampaignForLiberty.com. A master campaign presentation for internet viewing is available.
