Uncapitalism and the immediate future.

From yet another thoughtful piece by Charles Hugh Smith:

All of these [hollowing out companies, share buy backs, high-frequency, computer trading, the carry trade] are "lawnmower" operations, rentier skims enabled by the Federal Reserve, its too big to fail banker cronies, a complicit federal government and a toothless corporate media.

This is not classical capitalism; it is predatory exploitation being passed off as capitalism. This predatory exploitation is only possible if the central bank and state have partnered with financial Elites to strip-mine the many to benefit the few.

This has completely distorted the economy, markets, central bank policies, and the incentives presented to participants.

The vast majority of this unproductive skimming occurs in a small slice of the economy--yes, the financial sector.^[1]

These scams produce "no new products/services, no new jobs and no improvements in productivity." And in 1997-2007, the top 1% increased their family income by 224%. The middle 20%, only 18%.

I don't object to people getting very rich but I do when they do so by gaming the financial system and producing nothing useful. This is an astonishing failure on the part of the political system, not to have kept this from happening.

With an enormous amount of our manufacturing now in communist hands and our being flooded by unchecked and uninvited immigration from the third world that will forever change the unique identity of this country, the GOPe now thinks the time is ripe to alienate an infuriated electorate even further.

It's clear the country is advancing smartly to a giant crisis of legitimacy because voters see that on every front their wishes and interests have been completely ignored. Who among us asked that tens of thousands of Syrian "refugees" be brought to the U.S.? Yet the GOPe toys with explosive insider manipulations even after demonstrating that it has deliberately squandered the congressional majorities that the voters handed them in 2014.

It's astonishing. Political and economic leaders have watched passively, at best, while destructive, predatory, reckless policies have caused enormous damage to the country. Now that "politics" has broken out, they're in full panic/suicide mode.

Only Donald Trump comes close to addressing some of the the problems related to this, and that's not all that close. Clinton thinks that "pay equity" and "gun violence" are what vex us, and Sanders thinks sky-high taxes and free college will save the day. Cruz the constitutionalist still doesn't know what "natural born citizen" means and he's been dragged kicking and screaming in the direction of immigration patriotism while his wife is a shill for Goldman Sachs and the North American Union. Lord knows what Kasich proposes but it isn't border control and deportation of illegals.

God bless Donald Trump but it's hard to see how this election cycle is going to lead to the kind of changes that need to be made. Whoever the next president is, he or she is going to preside over a long-overdue economic, fiscal, and monetary crash. What will be demanded across the land then is anybody's guess but the replacement for all of this isn't likely to be marked by insight, rationality, and a re-dedication to constitutional basics.

Whoever makes it across the finish line, this crash will be laid at the feet of that person in its entirety. Given the inescapable "logic" of the MSM and no small proportion of the electorate, this will just be the case, just as Bill Clinton is seen by them as having presided over an expanding economy when the policies underlying the expansion were forced on him by Newt Gingrich. Since the coming crisis is the result of the political elite's enthusiastic willingness to abandon the Constitution and embrace the oppressive, exploitative state, it's important that voters see the final result as happening on the watch of a clueless leftist. Thus, I don't see a Clinton presidency as a disaster necessarily.

The mere fact that people like her and Sanders and Obama were ever given serious consideration is an indication of how corrupt and moronic the electorate has become. An electorate so indifferent to and ignorant of liberty makes rational reform impossible. About all the non-parasitic electorate is saying now is "we're hurting and we're pissed." That's wonderful but look at the difficulty bloggers and activists have in trying to warn of such a simple thing as the disaster of Muslim immigration. It's a rare American who understands the threat. Virtually the entire educated population lives to grovel at the feet of foreigners and grind their own countrymen into the dust. So how likely are the electorate to make informed decisions on anything? What can you say about a country that supports an Obama or a Clinton?

I hate to think of the damage Clinton can do but I'm quite certain that Americans have to get what they've voted for "good and hard" as Mencken put it. Trump appears to be willing to try a different approach but I think his understanding is thin. Historically, a vote for Republicans has meant a continuation and a strengthening of the progressive nightmare. Thus, if Trump fails and a Dem wins, it won't, to be frank, be that much worse.

Notes
^[1] "The Root of Rising Inequality: Our "Lawnmower" Economy (hint: we're the lawn)." By Charles Hugh Smith, Of Two Minds, 4/12/16.