Charles Hugh Smith: America Is Just Going Through the Motions

11-19-2010 • OfTwoMinds.com/blog

Going through the motions for PR purposes only fools yourself. Reality isn't swayed by propaganda. A profound realization hit me last night: America is just going through the motions now--of reform, of healthcare, of everything. America's leadership--both its elected and appointed officials, and its "shadow" Financial Power Elite leadership (the corporatocracy of crony Capitalist cartels and rentier/speculative parasites) are just going through the motions of financial reform. And the American public is resigned to just going through the motions of accepting the travesty of a mockery of a sham that is called "reform," too, even as they understand in their bones that nothing has been fixed and the next financial crisis has already been cooked into their future. One of our few reliable voice of reason in the world of finance, Simon Johnson, has already laid bare how the the next financial crisis and inevitable bailout of the banking parasites will unfold. His article in The New Republic Way Too Big To Fail reveals how the "too big to fail" banks have shredded the wet paper bag of "reform" Congress went through the motions of conjuring up: they are quickly expanding globally, beyond the reach of any mere nation-state's grasp. When the liquidity/speculation/leverage/toxic-asset bubble bursts again--and I think a strong case can be made that we are seeing the incipient signs of that bubble bursting in emerging markets, commodities and elsewhere--then the only nation-states with enough borrowing power to bail out the global banks will be the American Empire-- or more correctly, the shocked and dazed taxpayers of the Empire--the EU and Japan. Unfortunately, all three have already socialized staggering bank losses, shifting the burdens of future meltdowns to the State itself.