by James Corbett
corbettreport.com
November 29, 2016
In a surprising moment of self-awareness, Wolfgang Münchau just published an editorial in the Financial Times comparing the gatekeepers of the “global liberal order” (the FT included) to Marie Antoinette and the House of Bourbon, blindly “let them eat cake”-ing their way toward their own guillotine.
Münchau knows of what he speaks; as associate editor of the Financial Times he is in the unenviable position of acting as the spokesman for the banksters ensconced in the City of London. And in case you haven’t noticed, the banksters aren’t exactly the most popular people in the world right now. But don’t take my word for it, take his:
“Some revolutions could have been avoided if the old guard had only refrained from provocation. There is no proof of a ‘let them eat cake’ incident. But this is the kind of thing Marie Antoinette could have said. It rings true. The Bourbons were hard to beat as the quintessential out-of-touch establishment.
“They have competition now.
“Our global liberal democratic establishment is behaving in much the same way. At a time when Britain has voted to leave the EU, when Donald Trump has been elected US president, and Marine Le Pen is marching towards the Elysée Palace, we — the gatekeepers of the global liberal order — keep on doubling down.”
Now I think we all understand what is happening here: A demoralized and disoriented would-be ruling class, reeling from the fact that they are no longer able to control the narrative that shapes public perception of the world, is looking to re-legitimize themselves by re-connecting with the public.
The trick is old but effective. Admit wrongdoings and missteps. Acknowledge the anger the public is feeling. Adjust rhetoric as needed to reconnect the public with the goal of constructing the “global liberal order.” Rinse and repeat as necessary.
To give credit to Münchau, he is quite good at this trick, and some of the one-liners from his editorial should be branded on the foreheads of all the slimy politicians and their bankster overlords. “Because of a tendency to exaggerate, macroeconomists are no longer considered experts on the macroeconomy.” You don’t say?
Still, the editorial comes embedded with the booby traps we would expect from a born-and-bred bankster mouthpiece. The problem, we are told, is “uncontrolled flows of people and capital” and “unequal income distribution.” Gee, I wonder how the ruling oligarchs propose to fix this problem? When your only tool is the hammer of government regulation and intervention, every problem looks like a nail with a little too much freedom. Just another thing for the loving-but-misguided politicians to regulate back into proper order, I suppose.
But keep in mind, the “global liberal order” will not collapse quietly, and for every “good cop” like Münchau wearing the velvet glove of fuzzy feel-good populist rhetoric there is a “bad cop” who is just waiting to expose the iron fist.
Like the Atlantic Council. They have just taken the cake in the unbelievable race-to-the-bottom of the neocon-led Cold War 2.0 push against “Russian propaganda” (aka anyone and everyone, including The Corbett Report, that doesn’t parrot the official global liberal order propaganda chapter and verse). Their contribution is a cartoonishly over-the-top piece of pants-wetting hysteria entitled “The Kremlin’s Trojan Horses.” This remarkable piece of neo-McCarthyist claptrap identifies every populist political movement in Europe as a secret agent of Russian influence on the continent, working in the interest of evil-arch-overlord-of-everything, Adolf Beelzebub Putin. The pamphlet not only points the finger of accusation at the usual suspects in the traditional far-right spaces (Le Pen’s National Front, PEGIDA, etc.) but also at Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party and, bizarrely, former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder.
Combined with the recent attempt to demonize any and all alternative media on the internet as “fake news” and/or “Russian propaganda,” there can be no doubt that the very out-of-touch political elite that Münchau is writing about are not just stumbling toward their Marie Antoinette moment, but pole-vaulting toward it. Evidently they believe that heavy-handed censorship will re-direct people back to the very establishment mouthpiece media that has recently set records for distrust among the public. They couldn’t be more wrong.
Yes, the global liberal order as envisioned by the banksters and their puppet politicians is collapsing. And yes, it is going to be messy, chaotic and violent. But you have to admit it will be entertaining to watch. Perhaps the people will have their cake and eat it too, after all.
encore!!!!!!
Loving this ‘global liberal order’ business. Hopeful they do get a shake up and you’re right, it will be entertaining to see them squirm.
I think it’s fair to say that ‘the powers that shouldn’t be’ and their msm mouthpieces should also be labelled conspiracy-theorist-crackpots now?
Ha!…I looked at the Directors and Honorary Directors of “The Kremlin’s Trojan Horses” Atlantic Council.
Oh man! Oh man!
An upside down bundt cake.
Sidenote – Today (Wednesday Nov 30) should be an interesting day for oil prices.
I am excited to see the coming change but also unsure of what to do in my financial life next. I am in a position to be buying a house or starting a business in the next year or so and don’t want to get hosed like what I saw in 2007-2008. Real estate seems over valued and leases and equipment are at peek pricing for the last 7 years. I owned a food based business for 4 years and literally had to close it because of a %40 rent increase. I was in the black with zero debt and still couldn’t double my sales in one year to cover what the slumlords demanded. Starting now with high rent/mortgage and going into a low spending period will put me right where all the people I bought used equipment from in 2010 were. Over leveraged with not enough sales.
The point of all of this is that normal people have to ride this wave in order to do good for themselves and their families. The question I pose to others today is do we buy assets now? Or should we wait and try to scoop up stuff when it is cheaper? If business slows down lower payments may be harder to make but at least it is not high payments with slow business. What have others experienced?
I have no answers for you and no cautious person probably will, I just wanted to bid you welcome to the renter class controlled world.
I personally wouldn’t purchase any overpriced real estate nor allow myself to get into debt only to enable purchasing stuff that should be deemed as necessities. With business in mind, I guess this view is slanted by the fact business can be commercially sucessful, while a house can’t.
I think mkey said it best: No cautious person could honestly give you good advice. I’m in a similar situation as you, bakedinbend. I refuse to consider paying these outrageously inflated prices for real estate, but at the same time I’d like to protect myself by having something tangible that can exist or produce independently of the current financial model. Here’s the problem though – if you save today and wait for a crash, will your fiat be worth anything? The question of how, exactly, to prepare is one without a clear answer (for me at least). I wonder what some of the commenters here think about this, or how, exactly, they are preparing/saving/thinking about their financial security (if such a thing exists).
There’s one solid method through application of which wealthy families managed to stay wealthy over several generations. Basically, equal thirds of ones’ wealth are to kept in real estate, precious metals and art respectively.
Now, in the real world which is shared by you and I, the first and third option is not a real choice, if not for anything else but then because the prices are currently profusely inflated for both.
Precious metals is always a good option, if you ask me. Gold for portability, silver for its modest speculative potential. Always, and I do mean always, opt for having real metal in your hand. Say no to paper, no to offshore mega secure vaults. If you don’t have it in hand, you don’t have it. Be it bars or coins with small premium, both are good imo. If you have a bit of land, just bury it somewhere while making sure your family can access it if need be.
How much to invest in metals? Well, I think diversification is key. It all depends on what are you expecting in your future. For those getting ready for a mad Max scenario, gold nor silver won’t serve much of a purpose. On the other hand, metals will probably carry you well through a hyperinflation, but so may paper currency too. As long as you have spread it around you should be fairly safe as it’s not to be expected that all fiat currency will fail all at once. Good hard cash in your hand is always good, also holding on to some local currency makes sense.
bakedinbend,
Dog gone! I hear ya! For more than 30 years of my life I have had my own entrepreneurial businesses, some doing millions in yearly sales. But I have gone broke repeatedly too. Most businesses I have started have been on a pauper’s budget.
In fact, two of my most successful businesses I started by just selling items on a street corner. e.g. blue jeans in the ghetto on banquet tables finally grew into a big women’s wholesale apparel place. Overstock books sold on a street corner grew into a chain of bookstores (10,000 sq ft each) and wholesale/online warehouse.
Now, again, I am starting over. Working on some things.
So…
You will be your best counsel.
You have seen the road. You know how it is.
Keep throwing ideas up against the wall, viewing them.
One thing we know: Things change. Sometimes we can ride a trend. Sometimes the trend will change (like after 9/11/01 when I got wiped out, or after 2008 when I got wiped out again).
RENT – I have made many deals with landlords on a month-to-month basis or short term basis. It works especially well with limbo property or places with many vacancies. Some deals were sweet!
Housing RENT bubble – One aspect about the rent bubble in the U.S. is that banks will approve a mortgage loan with virtually no paperwork or worry about credit status if you already own a house and have a tenant lined up for the new place which you want to buy as a rental property.
This type of activity caused the disaster of 2008.
What caused 2008 is complete deregulation of the financial sector.
The bubble was just a side effect, it was something to be expected from a “free” market since completely perverse conditions had been created that’s to a completely compromised legislature.
– RENT –
Just to clarify… I was responding to bakedinbend’s post about high rent.
A similarity on real estate exists between the pre-2008 era and this current era.
Pre-2008, many banks including Washington Mutual (who financed my home at the time) did not even look at records of credit worthiness even though the folder of papers was brought to them. It was a rubber-stamp approval on a person’s word.
Currently, in this era, the banks are doing it again (i.e. credit worthiness be damned attitude). This time it is towards “investment real estate” or rental property. Average home owners can purchase “investment rental property” with a greased slide of approval. We now have a stampede of folks buying homes or property in order to rent them out.
In effect, this is creating an inflated real estate market. Very inflated. Rents have gone through the roof! Homes in many markets are being sold very fast at inflated prices.
Here is the rub… The INFLATION of rental cost is not registered as part of the official U.S. degree of inflation. But rents have skyrocketed! People who do not own their home are getting squeezed big time.
Go to the 41 mark of this excellent money documentary recommended by another CorbettReport subscriber when Corbett was talking about money.
The hidden inflation of real estate…
https://youtu.be/XcGh1Dex4Yo?t=40m54s
Can you hear the sound of thundering applause, James? In the words of the late Madeline Kahn “You got it Mister!” I’ve thought it, said it, and written it. As usual, TPTSB don’t get it. Apparently, like the pain of childbirth the pain of the guillotine has been forgotten.
Trump basically got elected thanks to the “alt” media.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2016/11/14/alex-jones-trump-called-say-thanks-support-appear-show-soon/93805246/
Yet, Trump’s Treasury Secretary pick is a Hedge Funder And 2nd-Generation Goldman Sachs Partner.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/steven-mnuchin-treasury-secretary_us_582caddbe4b058ce7aa8b9c0
And you guys actually think there will be a Marie Antoinette moment?
By who? The “alt” media loving populace just voted in their guy…his name is Trump!!!
I’ll say this, I’ll give Trump a chance, he may be a good President, however I have my doubts.
Alex is such a perfect example of controlled opposition, it makes no sense to mention him in this context.
Trump is a wolf in sheep clothing, no doubt about that in my mind.
Buzzfeed’s Ben Smith tells Chuck Todd they have to engage in false statements.
https://twitter.com/The_Real_Fly/status/819416916485931009/video/1
Can anybody help parse that, doubt he meant it straight up. Still a chuckle worthy comment.