It’s been the same headline for months now:
* April of 2020: American billionaires have gotten $280 billion richer since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic
* May of 2020: American billionaires got $434 richer during the pandemic
* August of 2020: American billionaires got $637 richer during the pandemic
* September of 2020: U.S. billionaires got $845 billion richer since the start of the pandemic/Wealth of US billionaires rises by nearly a third during pandemic
* October of 2020: US billionaires saw their net worth rise by almost $1 trillion between March and October — Jeff Bezos remains the richest, a study says.
From nearly the start of the COVID-19 pandemic it’s been clear that the public health disaster wasn’t a disaster for everyone, with the wealthiest individuals being not only largely insulated from the economic lockdown but in many cases well positioned to profit from it. The pandemic was turning into a giant upward transfer of wealth. And as we’re going to see, giant upward transfers of wealth are essentially what the private equity industry is all about. The rise of ‘supply-side’ economics in the 1980s coincided with the rise of private equity and that’s no coincidence. The philosophy behind the private equity movement is the philosophy of supply-side economics. An anti-New Deal philosophy, where ruthlessness is a virtue, that fueled a 40 year giant fascist leveraged buyout of society.
The future of health care in societies subjected to the doctrine of “Austeria” may be seen with the appointment of doctrinaire neo-Nazi Makis “The Hammer” Voridis as Health Minister of Greece. Fascism is surging in a Europe subjected to German-mandated austerity, as evidenced by the recent EU Parliamentary elections. Much of the program highlights fascism marching under the deceptive banner of “freedom” and/or libertarianism. Bitcoin continues its march toward monopoly, with the mysterious Ghash.io controlling 51% of the market. Gun-wielding fascists supportive of “libertarian” (read “white-supremacist”) Ron Paul gunned down police in Las Vegas, while so called “sovereign citizens” shot up police in California. “Cliven Bundists” (supporters of Cliven Bundy) have declared themselves exempt from Bureau of Land Management regulations in Nevada, as the GOP ramps up another government shutdown to foil Obama’s climate change legislation. At the same time, the very high-tech giants that complained so loudly about Obama’s failure to protect individual privacy are surging ahead with programs and technology to obliterate that very consideration.
In our ongoing critique of Bitcoin, we’ve noted that it appears to be an “op,” executed by Siemens spinoff Lantiq, which was capitalized by Golden Gate Capital (staffed by alumni of Bain Capital, Mitt Romney’s firm.) In a reprise of a previous and apparently ongoing vulnerability of Bitcoin, the possibility of an “Armageddon” in the Bitcoin world produced by concentration of ownership looms. Once again, the GHash.io mining pool is at the center of the plot. Because it had garnered 50% of the Bitcoin market, it could “double-sell” coins and compromise the integrity of the entire network.
If you thought that campaign finance had become a sticky wicket in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United and McCutcheon decisions, you might be bitterly amused by the latest development in the lubrication of the wheels of democracy. The Federal Election Commission has given the nod to accepting Bitcoins as campaign contributions. Fans of Citizens United and McCutcheon will be thrilled to know that the top tenth of one percent of Bitcoin owners control 50% of the total of the currency in existence.
Presented as an alternative to the existing monetary and fiscal paradigms, bitcoin is–in fact–as bad, or worse, than what it is designed to replace. Subject to a wide variety of crooked machinations, bitcoin also lends itself readily to concentration of ownership–get ready for the “bitcoin 1%.” The bitcoin milieu increasingly overlaps that of Eddie the Friendly Spook and “The Paulistinian Libertarian Organization.”
NB: this description contains information not included in the original broadcast. In FTR #760, we examined the techno-libertarian, Ludwig von Mises milieu-affiliated nature of the bitcoin phenomenon. Quite possibly developed by elements of German intelligence and the Underground Reich, bitcoins are not only vulnerable to “tape-painting,” but can be stolen by hackers. Someone operating under the name “Kuwabakatake Sanjuro” has begun a bitcoin-funded, online assassination consortium called “The Assassination Market.” His project was inspired by the “disclosures” of Snowden.
Are you running for president? Do you find yourself in a bit of a Bain-bind? Is life starting to feel like a convoluted mess? Then we have just the advice for you.
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