Oligarchs for Austerity and the CNP Have a Big New Scheme: Suing their Way to a New Constitution

Did you hear? Pres­i­dent Trump is going to be run­ning for a third term in office. And he’s not jok­ing. Who knows how seri­ous he is, but as we’re going to see, the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of third pres­i­den­tial term may not be as set in stone as many sus­pect. Along with the rest of the US Con­sti­tu­tion. A con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion could be just around the cor­ner. Just a law­suit away. And we can thank the DC aus­ter­i­ty lob­by and their fel­low trav­el­ers at the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy (CNP) and the Amer­i­can Leg­isla­tive Exchange Com­mit­tee (ALEC) for this loom­ing threat. The same aus­ter­i­ty lob­by that has spent years try­ing to roll back Oba­macare, evis­cer­ate Medicare and Med­ic­aid through block-grants, and gen­er­al­ly erode what’s left of the US’s social safe­ty-nets as more and more Amer­i­cans are forced to take any work avail­able just to qual­i­fy for increas­ing­ly mea­ger gov­ern­ment assis­tance. That aus­ter­i­ty lob­by. It’s back with a big sneaky plan: a law­suit pur­port­ing to prove that the 34 state thresh­old for an Arti­cle V con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion has already been met. David M. Walk­er — the for­mer US Comp­trol­ler for both Bill Clin­ton and George W. Bush — is lead­ing the legal effort, with legal sup­port from NRA lawyer (and CNP mem­ber) Charles “Chuck” Coop­er. If the law­suit suc­ceeds, get ready for a new con­sti­tu­tion writ­ten by and for the oli­garchy.

But this sto­ry isn’t just about this new law­suit. It’s also about how the DC aus­ter­i­ty lob­by has been work­ing with CNP to push these con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion ambi­tions since at least 2013, which is right around the same time it become clear that the last major round of DC aus­ter­i­ty lob­by­ing had failed in achiev­ing a “grand bar­gain” of slashed enti­tle­ments. A round of lob­by­ing that began in earnest as the 2008 finan­cial cri­sis was still play­ing out with David Walk­er — then Pres­i­dent and CEO of the new­ly formed aus­ter­i­ty-cen­tric Pete Peter­son Foun­da­tion — tak­ing on a lead role as pub­lic aus­ter­i­ty advo­cate. The Great Reces­sion was a great oppor­tu­ni­ty for a “grand bar­gain”. And it almost worked. But did­n’t work, at least not entire­ly, and it was­n’t long after that fail­ure became clear that we saw the aus­ter­i­ty lob­by and the CNP begin hatch­ing far more ambi­tious plans. Plans that just might be about come to fruition. Because as we’re also going to see, if a con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion does hap­pen, the forces behind this plan are the ones who will be run­ning it. The DC aus­ter­i­ty lob­by real­ly is just a law­suit away from win­ning every­thing.

Heads We Win, Tails You Lose Your Retirement: Private Equity, Pension Funds, and the CRE Double Down

There’s blood in the water. With region­al banks poten­tial­ly look­ing at years of trou­ble ahead and inter­est rates well above the his­toric lows, dis­tress is per­me­at­ing the US com­mer­cial real estate (CRE) mar­kets. That’s been the CRE news, with the pri­vate equi­ty now pal­pa­bly excit­ed about all the dis­tressed real estate that’s bound to come on the mar­ket. A sup­ply and demand dis­lo­ca­tion that can turn blood in water into a gold laced sil­ver lin­ing for the enti­ties with cash on the side­lines. As we’ve seen, being the ‘cash on the side­lines’ oppor­tunis­ti­cal­ly wait­ing for things to fall apart or blow is a big part of the ‘Heads we win, tails you lose’ pri­vate equi­ty busi­ness mod­el. A busi­ness mod­el also root­ed in the fact that the fund man­agers charge high fees whether they’re invest­ments pan out or not. So we should­n’t be sur­prised to learn that one of the big invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties pri­vate equi­ty has been steer­ing bil­lions of dol­lars of pub­lic pen­sion mon­ey into in recent years is...*drumroll*...commercial real estate! With plans on shov­el­ing bil­lions more into the sec­tor going for­ward. JP Mor­gan is now pre­dict­ing these pen­sion funds are going to cre­ate a ‘floor’ in the CRE mar­kets. Yes, pri­vate equi­ty-led pen­sion funds are going to save the CRE mar­ket from com­plete col­lapse. At least that’s the plan. A plan that’s going to pay its pri­vate equi­ty man­agers hand­some­ly no mat­ter how it pans out. It’s all part of how Amer­i­can’s grow­ing retire­ment cri­sis is trans­lat­ing into pri­vate equi­ty’s grow­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty. The kind of cri­sis-dri­ven oppor­tu­ni­ty that pays hand­some­ly whether the under­ly­ing cri­sis grows or not.

Heads We Win, Tails You Lose: The Fascist Philosophy Behind Private Equity’s Leveraged Buyout of Everything

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.