Dave Emory’s entire life­time of work is avail­able on a flash dri­ve that can be obtained here. (The flash dri­ve includes the anti-fas­cist books avail­able on this site.)

Lis­ten: MP3

Side 1  Side 2  

Intro­duc­tion: This pro­gram con­tin­ues analy­sis of Eddie Snow­den’s “op” and the GOP gov­ern­ment shut­down and fis­cal ter­ror­ism as part of the same phe­nom­e­non. Begin­ning with analy­sis of fifth colum­nists’ media leaks pri­or to, and dur­ing, World War II, the broad­cast posits that both those leaks and Eddie the Friend­ly Spook’s gam­bit are of sim­i­lar intent and design. Where­as leaks of crit­i­cal Amer­i­can World War II plans and oper­a­tional intel­li­gence were designed to aid the Axis, Eddie the Friend­ly Spook’s actions are designed to injure the Unit­ed States, to the ben­e­fit of the Under­ground Reich.

High­light­ing indi­vid­u­als asso­ci­at­ed with Amer­i­ca First, the dis­cus­sion under­scores their links and inter­ac­tion with the Third Reich and its lead­ers, includ­ing Hitler.

Review­ing dis­cus­sion from FTR #758, the pro­gram under­scores ide­o­log­i­cal con­ti­nu­ity between the views expressed by Hitler in his speech before the Indus­try Club of Dus­sel­dorf, the anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic sen­ti­ment of the Lud­wig von Mis­es Insti­tute, the anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic views of Peter Thiel (chief bankroller of Ron Paul’s 2012 Pres­i­den­tial cam­paign and the largest investor in, and chair­man of the board of, Palan­tir) and the pro-monar­chist, anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic views of von Mis­es dis­ci­ple Hans Her­mann-Hoppe.

It should not come as a sur­prise that Hoppe has net­worked with Amer­i­can Renais­sance, one of the many white suprema­cist groups with which Ron Paul asso­ciates. (Dis­cussing Ron Paul net­work­ing with white suprema­cists is sim­i­lar to say­ing “Adolf Hitler net­works with Nazis.”

Most of the sec­ond side of the pro­gram under­scores ele­ments of com­mon­al­i­ty between the insti­tu­tions and indi­vid­u­als sup­port­ing Edward Snow­den and the GOP ele­ments that shut down the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment and threat­ened the U.S. and the world with eco­nom­ic chaos.

In addi­tion to what we call the “Paulis­tin­ian Lib­er­tar­i­an Orga­ni­za­tion” (Ron Paul and his son sen­a­tor Rand Paul), Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Justin Amash (R–Grand Rapids, Michi­gan) was one of the prin­ci­pal GOP archi­tects of the shut­down. Amash spon­sored anti-NSA leg­is­la­tion and, not sur­pris­ing­ly, is a schmooz­ing bud­dy of Glenn Green­wald, Snow­den’s leak­ing jour­nal­ist of choice.

In addi­tion to financ­ing most of Ron Paul’s Super PAC, Peter Thiel chan­neled funds to Ted Cruz as well.

The pro­gram con­cludes with dis­cus­sion of the effect on world opin­ion and the U.S. econ­o­my of the gov­ern­men­tal shut­down effect­ed by the “Paulis­tin­ian” milieu of which Snow­den is part and par­cel. It is Mr. Emory’s con­tention that Snow­den’s “dis­clo­sures” are part of what might be con­ceived of as an anti-Amer­i­can, anti-Oba­ma, pro-Under­ground Reich pin­cers move­ment. The var­i­ous tar­gets of and goals of the oper­a­tion will be laid out in future pro­grams.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Hitler’s view that democ­ra­cy auto­mat­i­cal­ly leads to com­mu­nism; Hitler’s opin­ion that the pol­i­tics of per­son­al­i­ty and achieve­ment trumped a need for democ­ra­cy, which he viewed as a mob-beast; Hoppe’s view of democ­ra­cy as “mob rule;” Hoppe’s eugeni­cist con­tempt for uni­ver­sal health care, some­thing which clear­ly res­onates with the GOP fanat­ics hold­ing the U.S. gov­ern­ment hostage; Peter Thiel’s view that small, idio­syn­crat­ic, loose­ly-con­fed­er­at­ed gov­ern­ing bod­ies are the opti­mum form of social organization–a view sim­i­lar to those of Hoppe; Excerpts from Ron Paul’s newslet­ters endors­ing Amer­i­can Renais­sance.

1. The first side of the pro­gram con­sists pri­mar­i­ly of a read­ing of a post com­par­ing the activ­i­ties of Snow­den et al with the activ­i­ties of the Amer­i­ca Firsters and the Axis Fifth Col­umn in the Unit­ed States pri­or to, and dur­ing, World War II:

COMMENT: A term that is essen­tial for users of this web­site to com­pre­hend is “fifth col­umn.”  The advance and suc­cess of fas­cism pri­or to, and dur­ing, World War II would not have been pos­si­ble with­out the aid of the fifth columns.

It is for that rea­son that books about fifth col­umn fas­cist move­ments and activ­i­ty are includ­ed in the “Books” cat­e­go­ry.

Vital­ly impor­tant, though long for­got­ten, books like Under Cov­er and Cairo to Dam­as­cus by John Roy Carl­son, Falange–The Secret Axis Army in the Amer­i­c­as by Alan Chase,  Armies of Spies by Joseph Golomb, The Nazis Go Under­ground by Curt Riess, and Tri­umph of Trea­son by Pier Cot shed light on the pro­found pres­ence of Nazis, fas­cists and their sym­pa­thiz­ers with­in coun­tries tar­get­ed for fas­cist con­quest.

As back­ground to this dis­cus­sion, we might coin the term “deep fifth column”–powerful and dom­i­nant forces that saw fascism–“corporatism” as Mus­soli­ni termed it–as a won­der­ful solu­tion to what they saw as “problems”–democracy and trade unions among them.

(Par­en­thet­i­cal­ly, we note that ours is a failed civilization–one that has failed to take into account the great eco­nom­ic, polit­i­cal and intel­lec­tu­al pow­er behind fas­cism. World War II is seen by our cul­ture as an unfor­tu­nate event, caused by a “bunch of weirdos, who got out of hand.” It is for this rea­son that we include books about the alto­geth­er dead­ly (and sad­ly eclipsed) forces that caused the blood­let­ting in the Sec­ond World War, much of the glob­al car­nage that has ensued since, and the anni­hi­lat­ing future that awaits our civ­i­liza­tion, if polit­i­cal iner­tia pre­vails.

We also note that much of the suc­cess of The Under­ground Reich has been Ger­many’s mas­ter­ful strate­gic use of anti-com­mu­nism and class war­fare as a gam­bit to infil­trate and co-opt the pow­er elites of coun­tries tar­get­ed for sub­ver­sion. Where­as anti-com­mu­nism and class strug­gle are seen by Amer­i­can and oth­er elites as ends in them­selves, to real­ize “cor­po­ratism”–Ger­many has used those as vehi­cles for con­quest.)

We also note in this con­text that the fifth columns were nev­er addressed in many coun­tries. Just as Ger­many was nev­er real­ly de-Naz­i­fied, the fifth columns were nev­er root­ed out in many of the oth­er West­ern coun­tries, includ­ing the Unit­ed States, Unit­ed King­dom and France. The fifth columns–the deep fifth columns in particular–were crit­i­cal to the enabling and for­ma­tion of The Under­ground Reich.

Lis­ten­ers and users of this web­site should make it a point to down­load, print and read the books deal­ing with the “deep fifth col­umn.”

In our recent, volu­mi­nous analy­sis of “Snow­den’s Ride”–the Nazi psy-op so suc­cess­ful­ly per­pe­trat­ed by Eddie The Friend­ly Spook and the forces who have man­aged his escapade–we are look­ing at the activ­i­ties of an Under­ground Reich milieu/intelligence net­work. Our series on this is long, com­plex and mul­ti-lay­ered: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI, Part VII, Part VIII, Part IX, Part X, Part XI, Part XII, Part XIII, Part XIV, Part XV, Part XVI, Part XVII.

It is less clear pre­cise­ly who is the imme­di­ate intel­li­gence con­troller of Eddie the Friend­ly Spook, although BND is almost cer­tain­ly involved and may be the ulti­mate exec­u­tive author­i­ty. The prob­a­bil­i­ty is very strong that a “deep fifth col­umn” with­in U.S. intel­li­gence, mil­i­tary, cor­po­rate and polit­i­cal struc­ture is involved.

A recent (and pre­dictably slant­ed) Wall Street Jour­nal arti­cle dealt with a leak of Naval Intel­li­gence secrets dur­ing the course of World War II.

Dis­clos­ing the piv­otal fact that U.S. intel­li­gence had cracked the Japan­ese “White Code” (not spec­i­fied in the WSJ arti­cle), “Colonel” Robert R. McCormick­’s Chica­go Tri­bune leaked vital infor­ma­tion for the sec­ond time in less than a year.

Hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly leaked the Rain­bow Five con­tin­gency plan for U.S. mobi­liza­tion and war-mak­ing doc­u­ments for the Sec­ond World War, McCormick was a mem­ber of Amer­i­ca First. Osten­si­bly iso­la­tion­ist and “patri­ot­ic” in out­look, the orga­ni­za­tion was, in fact, active­ly fund­ed by Third Reich intel­li­gence and com­prised (for the most part) of doc­tri­naire fas­cists who loved Hitler and Mus­soli­ni and hat­ed Franklin Delano Roo­sevelt with a pas­sion.

(For a good under­stand­ing of the active pro-fas­cist nature of Amer­i­ca First, open Under Cov­er by John Roy Carl­son and use the “find” func­tion on your com­put­er, search­ing “Amer­i­ca First.” This will yield a good under­stand­ing of the nature of that orga­ni­za­tion and its mem­bers.)

As dis­cussed in AFA #11, the prob­a­ble source of the leak of the Rain­bow Five pro­gram was Gen­er­al Albert Wede­mey­er, one of its pri­ma­ry authors and an active Amer­i­ca Firster. (See text excerpts below for infor­ma­tion about Wede­mey­er and the leak of Rain­bow Five.)

A lynch­pin of the Chi­na Lob­by, the MacArthur group in the mil­i­tary and the milieu that coa­lesced into the  John Birch Soci­ety, Wede­mey­er stud­ied at the Ger­man mil­i­tary acad­e­my, begin­ning in 1936, rent­ing his apart­ment from Ger­hard Ross­bach, one of the lead­ers of the Brown­shirts (SA.) Lat­er (as dic­sussed in AFA #11) Ross­bach went to work for the CIA in the post­war peri­od.

Yet anoth­er point about Wede­mey­er set forth in AFA #11 is the fact that Ronald Rea­gan appoint­ed Wede­mey­er as a spe­cial mil­i­tary advis­er.

In a book excerpt below, Wede­mey­er blames the leak of Rain­bow Five on–of course–Franklin Delano Roo­sevelt, claim­ing that it was part of Roo­sevelt’s plan to get the Unit­ed States into World War II. Roo­sevelt was con­ve­nient­ly dead by the time Wede­mey­er held forth. (This is a major claim of the deep fifth col­umn through the decades, since picked up and ampli­fied by the con­spir­a­cy crowd.)

In his pre­dictably self-serv­ing analy­sis, Wede­mey­er does reveal some­thing inter­est­ing about the net­work­ing in which McCormick engaged. Wede­mey­er main­tains that McCormick sent the Rain­bow Five infor­ma­tion direct­ly to Hitler!

Again, dis­cus­sion of Snow­den’s Ride, per se, is beyond the scope of this post. It is, quite clear­ly, a fascist/Underground Reich oper­a­tion, with the ulti­mate exec­u­tive author­i­ty being the BND, in all prob­a­bil­i­ty.

It may be that an Under­ground Reich fifth col­umn with­in U.S. intel­li­gence is involved, ulti­mate­ly answer­ing to BND.

One impor­tant pos­si­bil­i­ty entails Peter Thiel, whose Palan­tir com­pa­ny appears to be the devel­op­er of the PRISM soft­ware. Thiel embod­ies the con­cept of the deep fifth col­umn. Ger­man born, son of a chem­i­cal engi­neer from Frank­furt (read “I.G. Far­ben”), Thiel has open­ly negat­ed the con­cept of democ­ra­cy, hates Oba­ma and is the chief finan­cial backer of cryp­to-Nazi Ron Paul, to whose cam­paign Eddie the Friend­ly Spook con­tributed. The “Paulis­tini­ans” are to be found at many lev­els of this con­cate­na­tion.

In addi­tion, Alex Karp, the CEO of Palan­tir and some­one who appears to have been cen­tral­ly involved in the devel­op­ment of Thiel’s career also has roots in Frank­furt Ger­many! (See text excerpts below.)

NOTE: Palan­tir offi­cial­ly claims that “their PRISM” is NOT the same PRISM in the focal point of the Snowden/NSA imbroglio. We feel this claim is laugh­able, frankly. The notion that the intel­li­gence ser­vices are using TWO counter-ter­ror soft­ware pro­grams with iden­ti­cal names is not cred­i­ble. Had a com­pa­ny devel­oped a counter-ter­ror soft­ware pro­gram for use by the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty and called it “PRISM,” there would have been lit­i­ga­tion. The major tech com­pa­nies are NOTHING if not liti­gious, and Thiel and com­pa­ny have PLENTY of mon­ey!

That Oba­ma is deal­ing with a deep fifth col­umn in these leaks is a pos­si­bil­i­ty to be seri­ous­ly con­sid­ered.

“Echoes From a Past Leak Probe” by Jess Bravin; Wall Street Jour­nal; 8/7/2013.

New­ly released doc­u­ments pro­vide a road map of how the gov­ern­ment tried to mount a no-holds-barred legal attack against jour­nal­ists sus­pect­ed of leak­ing mil­i­tary secrets.

But the mem­os weren’t about the cur­rent-day Bradley Man­ning case. They came after a dis­clo­sure 71 years ago about World War II’s Bat­tle of Mid­way and show the U.S. has long wres­tled with how to square nation­al secu­ri­ty and press free­dom.

The Jus­tice Depart­men­t’s Office of Legal Coun­sel, which advis­es the exec­u­tive branch on the extent of its own pow­ers, pub­lished in late July a selec­tion of pre­vi­ous­ly secret legal opin­ions span­ning from 1933 to 1977. Among them were mem­os about a June 7, 1942, scoop in the Chica­go Tri­bune by cor­re­spon­dent Stan­ley John­ston, who saw a naval intel­li­gence file while trav­el­ing with the Pacif­ic Fleet.

Pen­ta­gon offi­cials were stunned by the head­line, “U.S. Navy Knew in Advance All About Jap Fleet,” when they saw the sto­ry, which also ran in the Wash­ing­ton Times-Her­ald. The arti­cle all but revealed one of the war’s great­est secrets: that the U.S. had cracked the Japan­ese navy’s code. It report­ed that Japan­ese fleet strength “was well known in Amer­i­can naval cir­cles,” that the U.S. Navy knew the Japan­ese were like­ly to stage a feint against the Aleut­ian Islands, and that “the advance infor­ma­tion enabled the Amer­i­can Navy to make full use of air attacks on the approach­ing Japan­ese ships.”
Navy Sec­re­tary Frank Knox wrote to Attor­ney Gen­er­al Fran­cis Bid­dle, demand­ing indict­ments. The head­line alone “dis­clos­es secret and con­fi­den­tial infor­ma­tion to the detri­ment of our nation­al defense,” Mr. Knox wrote. Mr. Bid­dle then asked staff for advice, result­ing in the just-released mem­os. . . .

. . . . The mem­os are notice­ably silent on one pos­si­bly per­ti­nent point: Tri­bune’s pub­lish­er, Col. Robert R. McCormick, was an incen­di­ary antag­o­nist of the New Deal and, before Pearl Har­bor at least, a vocif­er­ous oppo­nent of inter­ven­tion in World War II. . . .

“The Big Leak” by Thomas Flem­ing; Amer­i­can Her­itage Mag­a­zine; Decem­ber 1987.

 . . . .Gen­er­al Wede­mey­er, still erect and men­tal­ly alert, recalled the atmos­phere he encoun­tered when he walked into the Muni­tions Build­ing at 7:30 A.M. on Decem­ber 5. “Offi­cers were stand­ing in clumps, talk­ing in low tones. Silence fell, and they dis­persed the moment they saw me. My sec­re­tary, her eyes red from weep­ing, hand­ed me a copy of the Times Her­ald with Manly’s sto­ry on the front page. I could not have been more appalled and astound­ed if a bomb had been dropped on Wash­ing­ton.”

For the next sev­er­al days Wede­mey­er almost wished a bomb had been dropped and had land­ed on him. He was the chief sus­pect in the leak of Rain­bow Five, which with­in the closed doors of the War Depart­ment was called the Vic­to­ry Pro­gram. He had strong ties to Amer­i­ca First, the lead­ing anti­war group in the nation. Both he and his father-in-law, Lt. Gen. Stan­ley D. Embick, were known to be oppo­nents of Roosevelt’s for­eign pol­i­cy, which they thought was lead­ing the Unit­ed States into a pre­ma­ture and dan­ger­ous war. . . .

. . . . Lat­er in this tumul­tuous morn­ing two FBI agents appeared in Wedemeyer’s office and exam­ined the con­tents of his safe. Their eyes widened when they dis­cov­ered a copy of the Vic­to­ry Pro­gram with every­thing that had appeared in the news­pa­pers under­lined. The sweat­ing Wede­mey­er explained that he had just done the under­lin­ing to get a clear idea of how much had been revealed. The two agents began an inter­ro­ga­tion of Wede­mey­er and oth­er Army and Navy offi­cers that con­tin­ued for months.

Sev­er­al Army staff offi­cers said they strong­ly sus­pect­ed Wede­mey­er of being the leak­er. An anony­mous let­ter, obvi­ous­ly writ­ten by an insid­er and addressed to the Sec­re­tary of War, accused him and Gen­er­al Embick. Wedemeyer’s prospects grew even bleak­er when the FBI dis­cov­ered he had recent­ly deposit­ed sev­er­al thou­sand dol­lars in the Rig­gs Nation­al Bank in Wash­ing­ton. He explained it was an inher­i­tance and went on man­ful­ly to admit to the FBI that he knew Gen. Robert E. Wood, Charles A. Lind­bergh, and oth­er lead­ers of Amer­i­ca First and agreed with some of their views. He often attend­ed Amer­i­ca First meet­ings, although nev­er in uni­form. . . .

. . . . On Decem­ber 7, 1941, the ques­tion of Rain­bow Five’s impact on Amer­i­can pol­i­tics became moot. Japan­ese planes swooped out of the dawn sky to dev­as­tate the Amer­i­can fleet at Pearl Har­bor. The Vic­to­ry Pro­gram had envis­aged devot­ing almost all of America’s mil­i­tary strength to defeat­ing Hitler. Japan, in that sce­nario, was to be han­dled by defen­sive strate­gies short of war. . . .

In and Out of Hol­ly­wood: A Biog­ra­pher’s Mem­oir by Charles High­am; p. 212.

. . . . [Bur­ton Wheel­er], see­ing the plan as a breach of neu­tral­i­ty and proof of Roo­sevelt’s ille­gal and supra­con­sti­tu­tion­al behav­ior, in turn took the plan to anoth­er iso­la­tion­ist, Robert R. McCormick, own­er and pub­lish­er of the Chica­go Tri­bune, who at once pub­lished it on the front page.

Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, McCormick sent the plan to Hitler by West­ern Union. Hitler met with Joachim von Ribben­trop, his for­eign min­is­ter, and asked him if the exis­tence of the plan called for imme­di­ate action. . . .

2. The sec­ond side of the pro­gram opens with review of the sim­i­lar­i­ty between Lud­wig von Mis­es dis­ci­ple and Juer­gen Haber­mas stu­dent Hans Her­mann-Hoppe’s indict­ment of uni­ver­sal health care and the GOP/Tea Par­ty offen­sive against the Afford­able Care Act. For more detailed dis­cus­sion of this, see the descrip­tion for FTR #758.

3. Hoppe has net­worked with Amer­i­can Renais­sance, one of the many white suprema­cist groups allied with Ron Paul, Eddie Snow­den’s Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date of choice.

“Lib­er­tar­i­ans and Race Real­ism” by Gilbert Cavanaugh; Amer­i­can Renais­sance; 10/11/2013.

For those of us who enjoy a touch of lib­er­tar­i­an­ism, the news of Jared Taylor’s recent appear­ance at Hans-Her­mann Hoppe’s Prop­er­ty and Free­dom Soci­ety was well received. . . .

4. The pro­gram under­scores the nature of the Amer­i­can Renais­sance, not­ing the type of indi­vid­u­als cham­pi­oned by, and net­worked with, the orga­ni­za­tion.

“Pro­file: Amer­i­can Renais­sance;” His­to­ry Com­mons.

Sam Fran­cis. [Source: Amer­i­can Renais­sance]Sam Fran­cis, a senior colum­nist and writer for the con­ser­v­a­tive Wash­ing­ton Times, is fired after sug­gest­ing that white Amer­i­cans must reassert what he believes is their innate dom­i­nance over oth­er races. At the 1995 Amer­i­can Renais­sance con­fer­ence, host­ed by the white suprema­cist orga­ni­za­tion of the same name, Fran­cis tells his audi­ence: “[Whites] must reassert our iden­ti­ty and our sol­i­dar­i­ty, and we must do so in explic­it­ly racial terms through the artic­u­la­tion of a racial con­scious­ness as whites. The civ­i­liza­tion that we as whites cre­at­ed in Europe and Amer­i­ca could not have devel­oped apart from the genet­ic endow­ments of the cre­at­ing peo­ple, nor is there any rea­son to believe that civ­i­liza­tion can be suc­cess­ful­ly trans­mit­ted to a dif­fer­ent peo­ple.” . . .

5. In addi­tion to infor­ma­tion pre­sent­ed in FTR #756 about the Amer­i­can Renaissance/Ron Paul link, the show sup­ple­ments the dis­cus­sion with mate­r­i­al from Ron Paul’s newslet­ters.

“More Selec­tions from Ron Paul’s Newslet­ters” by TNR Staff; The New Repub­lic; 1/14/2008.

. . . . In an arti­cle enti­tled “The Com­ing Race War,” The Ron Paul Polit­i­cal Report refers to the “pro-com­mu­nist phi­lan­der­er Mar­tin Luther King” and refers to his “non-vio­lent approach” as “(i.e., state vio­lence).” The newslet­ter advis­es that, “if there is any issue the Repub­li­cans have in their favor for the next pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, it is the ques­tion of race. It was all over for Michael Dukakis when Jesse Jack­son gave his awful prime-time speech at the last Demo­c­ra­t­ic
con­ven­tion, and the cam­eras focused on mass­es of teary-eyed, left-wing blacks.”

A May 1990 issue of the Ron Paul Polit­i­cal Report cites Jared Tay­lor, who six months lat­er would go onto found the eugeni­cist and white suprema­cist peri­od­i­cal Amer­i­can Renais­sance.

The May 1991 issue of the Ron Paul Polit­i­cal Report cites Amer­i­can Renais­sance and offers read­ers sub­scrip­tion infor­ma­tion for it.

The July 1994 Ron Paul Sur­vival Report cites “crim­i­nol­o­gist” Jared Tay­lor. . . .

6. High­light­ing ele­ments of com­mon­al­i­ty between the forces behind Eddie Snow­den and those behind the gov­ern­ment shut­down and threat­ened eco­nom­ic chaos, the pro­gram high­lights Justin Amash, Repub­lic of Grand Rapids, Michi­gan. Amash co-spon­sored anti-NSA leg­is­la­tion.

“Momen­tum Builds Against N.S.A. Sur­veil­lance” by Jonathan Weis­man; The New York Times; 7/28/2013.

The move­ment to crack down on gov­ern­ment sur­veil­lance start­ed with an odd cou­ple from Michi­gan, Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Justin Amash, a young lib­er­tar­i­an Repub­li­can known even to his friends as “chief wing nut,” and John Cony­ers Jr., an elder of the lib­er­al left in his 25th House term. . . .

7. Not sur­pris­ing­ly, Amash and Cit­i­zen Green­wald are on excel­lent terms.

“The Repub­li­cans Who Caused the Gov­ern­ment Shut­down” by Charles John­son; Lit­tle Green Foot­balls; 10/16/2013.

The Atlantic has a help­ful run­down of 32 Repub­li­cans Who Caused the Gov­ern­ment Shut­down. First on the list:

Rep­re­sen­ta­tive: Justin Amash

Home Dis­trict: Grand Rapids, Michi­gan

Quot­ed: “Pres­i­dent Oba­ma and Sen­a­tor Reid refuse to nego­ti­ate over giv­ing reg­u­lar Amer­i­cans the same breaks they give them­selves, gov­ern­ment work­ers, and big busi­ness.”

And lest we for­get, Rep. Justin Amash was strong­ly endorsed by none oth­er than pseu­do-lib­er­al activist Glenn Green­wald, who called Amash a “GOP dis­si­dent.” Right. . . .

8. Sen­a­tor Ted Cruz of Texas was in the cen­ter ring of the GOP “shut­down cir­cus.” Cruz has drawn much finan­cial sup­port from the afore­men­tioned Peter Thiel.

“Reminder: Peter Thiel Is Ted Cruz’s Gay Bil­lion­aire Ally” by Sam Bid­dle; Val­ley Wag; 9/2/2013.

Where does a man like Ted Cruz get the con­fi­dence to IRL troll the Unit­ed States Sen­ate for 21 hours? Know­ing that Pay­Pal bil­lion­aire and Sil­i­con Val­ley king­pin Peter Thiel has his back sure­ly helps. . . .

9. The con­clu­sion of the broad­cast focus­es on the dam­age done by the GOP “shut­down” milieu, inex­tri­ca­bly linked with Eddie Snow­den’s polit­i­cal envi­ron­ment. A for­mer vice chair­man of the Fed­er­al Reserve not­ed some of the dam­age that has been done to the U.S. econ­o­my by the shut­down and what would be done if the debt ceil­ing had not been raised. The “shutdown”/Snowden milieu had threat­ened to do just that.

“The GOP’s Flir­ta­tion with Dis­as­ter” by Alan S. Blind­er; The Wall Street Jour­nal; 10/11/2013.

 . . .What dam­age has Amer­i­ca endured already from the par­tial gov­ern­ment shut­down? Sev­er­al pri­vate firms esti­mate that each week of shut­down trims the GDP growth rate for the fourth quar­ter of 2013 by some­thing around 0.15 to 0.2 of a per­cent­age point—with vir­tu­al­ly all of that made up in the first quar­ter of 2014. If you don’t care about mess­ing up the lives of about 800,000 gov­ern­ment employ­ees, plus tens of mil­lions of Amer­i­cans who depend on their ser­vices, that may not seem like much. But there is also a less tan­gi­ble, though per­haps more durable, cost of mak­ing the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca look clown­ish in the eyes of the world.

Fail­ing to raise the nation­al debt lim­it on time would be vast­ly more cost­ly. Start with the most obvi­ous, tan­gi­ble, and eas­i­ly mea­sur­able cost: the near-term dam­age to Amer­i­ca’s econ­o­my. The fed­er­al bud­get deficit is now run­ning around $750 bil­lion a year, rough­ly 4.5% of GDP. If the Trea­sury los­es the abil­i­ty to bor­row more, the bud­get must be bal­anced imme­di­ate­ly, mean­ing that fed­er­al spend­ing must fall imme­di­ate­ly by about $750 bil­lion (at annu­al rates), or about 20%. Both the amount and the sud­den­ness are stun­ning. Cut­ting fed­er­al spend­ing that much would like­ly reduce GDP by more than 4.5%—in an econ­o­my that is bare­ly man­ag­ing 2% growth rates. That spells reces­sion.

Most of the neg­a­tive impact on GDP would cease once the impasse end­ed, though strong down­ward momen­tum is hard to arrest. Oth­er costs, how­ev­er, would last for years, if not decades. Once inter­na­tion­al investors come to see threats to default as a stan­dard weapon of Amer­i­can polit­i­cal combat—something they may now be start­ing to believe—U.S. Trea­sury debt would cease being the world’s safest asset. And that would have two seri­ous impli­ca­tions.

First, the Trea­sury would have to pay some­what high­er inter­est rates on all future bor­row­ing, per­haps for decades, maybe for­ev­er. By the way, that might hap­pen even if we meet all our inter­est and prin­ci­pal pay­ments and default—yes, that is the right word—on some oth­er oblig­a­tions.

Sec­ond, the glob­al finan­cial sys­tem would begin a fran­tic search for a new inter­na­tion­al cur­ren­cy. U.S. Trea­surys have long served that pur­pose. But if inter­na­tion­al investors see Trea­surys as poten­tial polit­i­cal pawns, they will seek some­thing safer. Since there is no obvi­ous replace­ment, a world-wide finan­cial pan­ic along 2008 lines is pos­si­ble.

And did I men­tion that Wash­ing­ton would look like a bunch of knaves and fools? It is hard for a nation that has tak­en leave of its sens­es to remain the undis­put­ed leader of the Free World. Hope­ful­ly, Mr. Boehn­er’s offer will take this dooms­day sce­nario off the table. How­ev­er, the lev­el of par­ti­san acri­mo­ny has ratch­eted up sev­er­al notch­es in the past month. Fur­ther­more, the tea-par­ty fac­tion has intim­i­dat­ed Mr. Boehn­er before, and might do so again. And since the par­tial gov­ern­ment shut­down has­n’t end­ed civ­i­liza­tion as we know it, some Repub­li­cans may now see the risk of a debt calami­ty as accept­able. A few are already talk­ing that way. . . .

10. The threat of fail­ure to raise the debt ceil­ing shook glob­al con­fi­dence in the Unit­ed States and the dol­lar’s sta­tus as a reserve cur­ren­cy.

“Imag­in­ing the Dol­lar With­out Its Priv­i­lege” by Eduar­do Porter; The New York Times; 10/16/2013.

“The effec­tive­ness, sta­bil­i­ty, and pre­dictabil­i­ty of Amer­i­can pol­i­cy mak­ing and polit­i­cal insti­tu­tions have weak­ened at a time of ongo­ing fis­cal and eco­nom­ic chal­lenges,” it said. Investors around the world rushed to find a safe place to put their mon­ey.

Rather than dump America’s down­grad­ed bonds, how­ev­er, investors flocked to them. The dol­lar strength­ened. The Unit­ed States might have become a threat to the world econ­o­my, but with even worse trou­bles devel­op­ing else­where, includ­ing a flare-up in the euro cri­sis, it was still its safest place.

As George Soros, the hedge fund investor, told me in an inter­view last Fri­day, “The dol­lar is the weak­est cur­ren­cy except for all the oth­ers.”

The dollar’s resilience comes to mind as Con­gress again flirts with finan­cial dis­as­ter.

As time ticked down to a pos­si­ble gov­ern­ment default as ear­ly as Thurs­day, Repub­li­cans in the House failed once again on Tues­day to agree on a pro­pos­al to relieve the impasse, reopen the gov­ern­ment and lift the debt ceil­ing.

“How can the Unit­ed States pre­serve its finan­cial and secu­ri­ty lead­er­ship role when it con­ducts itself with such inep­ti­tude and such dis­re­gard for the con­se­quences for the world?” asked Charles Dal­lara, a senior Trea­sury offi­cial for the for­mer pres­i­dents Ronald Rea­gan and George H. W. Bush who until ear­li­er this year head­ed the Insti­tute of Inter­na­tion­al Finance, a lob­by group of inter­na­tion­al banks.

Host­ing finance min­is­ters from around the world last week at the Inter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund’s fall meet­ing in Wash­ing­ton, Chris­tine Lagarde, the fund’s man­ag­ing direc­tor, told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that fail­ing to lift the debt ceil­ing would cause so much dis­rup­tion to the world econ­o­my that “the stand­ing of the U.S. econ­o­my would, again, be at risk.”

Indeed, the Unit­ed States’ errat­ic pol­i­cy mak­ing has kin­dled fears that the dol­lar could lose its perch as the world’s reserve cur­ren­cy — what the for­mer French pres­i­dent Valéry Gis­card d’Estaing, while de Gaulle’s finance min­is­ter, once called America’s “exor­bi­tant priv­i­lege.”

Today almost two-thirds of the world’s for­eign cur­ren­cy reserves are held in dol­lar assets, most­ly Trea­sury bonds. Near­ly half the for­eign debt secu­ri­ties in the world are in dol­lars, as are more than half the world’s cross-bor­der loans and deposits.

It made sense for oth­er coun­tries to embrace the dol­lar in an ear­li­er era, when the Unit­ed States was will­ing to act as guar­an­tor of glob­al sta­bil­i­ty. But today, with Repub­li­cans in Con­gress wield­ing default as a lever in a vain attempt to kill Oba­macare, per­haps it is no sur­prise that the rest of the world is get­ting more seri­ous about find­ing an alter­na­tive. .  .  .

11. Con­clud­ing with an out­look that applies to both the eco­nom­ic assault/terrorism inflict­ed on the U.S. by the GOP ele­ment of the “deep fifth col­umn” and Eddie the Friend­ly Spook and his fifth colum­nist asso­ciates, the pro­gram notes the glob­al atti­tude toward the Unit­ed States as a result of what we are see­ing. Both the actions of the “shutdown”/Paulistinian Lib­er­tar­i­an Orga­ni­za­tion milieu and those of Eddie the Friend­ly Spook have left the world view­ing the U.S. in fear and dis­may. Note that Chi­na, in par­tic­u­lar, is dis­mayed at the Paulis­tin­ian Lib­er­tar­i­an Orga­ni­za­tion’s actions, because of the poten­tial dam­age to the dol­lar. Much of Chi­na’s for­eign cur­ren­cy reserves are held in dol­lars.

Amer­i­can and Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion rela­tions with Chi­na were also the tar­get of the actions of Snow­den’s “op”.

“View­ing the U.S. in Fear and Dis­may” by Damien Cave; The New York Times; 10/16/2013.

. . . . Faced with Washington’s march toward a default, the world has react­ed most­ly with dis­be­lief that the reign­ing super­pow­er could fall into such dys­func­tion, wor­ry over glob­al suf­fer­ing to come and frus­tra­tion that Amer­i­can law­mak­ers could let the prob­lem reach this point. . . .

A com­mon ques­tion cross­ing con­ti­nents remains quite sim­ple: The Amer­i­cans aren’t real­ly that unrea­son­able and self-destruc­tive, are they? . . . .