Tfgray’s Weblog

This news report is what set me off:

“Standard & Poor’s cut the U.S. long-term credit rating from top-tier AAA by a notch to AA-plus on Friday over concerns about the nation’s budget deficits and climbing debt burden.

China — the United States’ biggest creditor — said Washington only had itself to blame for its plight and called for a new stable global reserve currency.

“The U.S. government has to come to terms with the painful fact that the good old days when it could just borrow its way out of messes of its own making are finally gone,” China’s official Xinhua news agency said in a commentary.

After a week which saw $2.5 trillion wiped off global markets, the move deepened investors’ concerns of an impending recession in the United States and over the euro zone crisis.

The source said the credit rating downgrade had added a global dimension on top of the euro zone debt issue, raising the need for international coordination.

In the Xinhua commentary, China scorned the United States for its “debt addiction” and “short sighted” political wrangling.

“China, the largest creditor of the world’s sole superpower, has every right now to demand the United States address its structural debt problems and ensure the safety of China’s dollar assets,” it said.

“International supervision over the issue of U.S. dollars should be introduced and a new, stable and secured global reserve currency may also be an option to avert a catastrophe caused by any single country,” Xinhua said.”

Here’s the rant:

Nice job, Mr Cantor. You’ve got the world’s largest creditor nation calling for your supporter’s worst nightmare, a global currency to replace the dollar as the world’s default currency. Plus “international supervision.” The credit downgrade will increase government expenses by driving up interest rates, and, of course, tax increases are, according to you, off the table. Let’s see…how to get the economy moving…hmmm…
Wait! first we’ll throw teachers, police, and firefighters out of work and destroy the right of American workers to organize. Then we’ll give our manufacturers more tax incentives to ship jobs overseas. Then we’ll cut unemployment benefits, get rid of the minimum wage and child labor laws. When the American middle and working class have been starved into submission, we’ll offer them $3 an hour to pick tomatoes…no, wait, make that a dollar a day, you know, like in the good old days before Teddy Roosevelt, when a loaf of bread cost a nickle.
Okay! Corporate profits are up, and being invested in China, Brazil, and India. Americans live in the way the Founders intended: growing their own food and hauling it to market on dirt roads, since government isn’t supposed to maintain infrastructure.

Let’s get rid of the EPA, so industry can save a buck by disposing of toxic waste in people’s lungs, intestines, and bones. Health care crisis? What health care crisis? Anyone who can’t afford a doctor or insurance on their $1 a day can pay with the chickens they are raising in their back yards. You know, just like in the days of the Founding Fathers, when a cancer diagnosis was accompanied by a bottle of laudanum and instructions to take a little nip when the pain gets too bad and plan your funeral.
High tech industry? Why bother? We’ll defund the public school system so nobody will be qualified for those jobs anyway. India’s just chock full of English-speaking geeks. Practically a dime a dozen.
All that money that came out of your payroll for Social Security and Medicare? You really think that will be there when you need it? I bet you thought your 401K was going to be there, too. And that you’d get a pension when you retired, you know, like they promised when you decided to forego that pay increase in favor of better retirement benefits. Sucker. I have a bridge to sell you. (No, seriously, it’s part of the Indiana Turnpike, sold to a foreign consortium a few years back.)
Of course this all will restore America to robust economic health, as the minimally employed will buy tons of consumer goods with the money they are simultaneously spending on food and shelter, saving for their old age, spending on private school tuition for their kids-since “vouchers” are really only discount coupons-and medical care. No, wait…the consumer market will be in places like China and India, oh, right, where the jobs went.
Wow. You’ve succeeded in outsourcing the entire country.
Except for the people.
Did you know that prior to Social Security, the leading cause of death among those over 65 was suicide?
Nice work, you piece of work.

Thought about it some more, put on my tinfoil hat, and thought about the unfolding shakedown of recent events.

• China’s asking for a global currency (presumably the renmibi). Look for the headlines on NewsMax, Drudge, and Fox to crow, “See! We were right!” Never mind that it was brought on by House Republicans refusal to do the totally normal thing of voting to raise the debt ceiling. Cutting taxes in the middle of a war (Never done before because it’s economically stupid.) =Good. Raising the debt ceiling (Never questioned before.) in the middle of a recession = Bad. How does that go? Right up there with War is Peace. Ignorance is Strength.
• Expect Limbaugh’s (et al) main talking point to be “Look what Obama did to us!” Um, who was it who started this food fight and refused to settle for anything other than running out the clock? Nevermind.)
• Look for S&P’s and China’s comments to power a blathering rush to austerity. Yes, the problem is that those who have gotten 88% of the income gain in the last 10 years just don’t have enough money. Those whose incomes have remained flat, or fallen, are just being piggies.
• The list of things that we can’t afford will encompass everything that can’t afford to have a lobbying firm represent it. It will not include subsidies to the most profitable companies in the history of the world, or military spending on unnecessary and ineffective weapons systems. (Nah, my prediction is that one or two will be sacrificed for appearances.)
• Look for the flood of ALEC-created legislation to intensify at the state and federal level, especially legislation designed to create barriers to voting for the elderly population,  minorities, and the economically disadvantaged. In their heart of hearts, Conservatives know that they can’t win without gaming the system. This may sound terribly cynical, but “average” means the middle. By definition, half of any population falls below it on some measure, including intelligence. (Rupert Murdoch has made billions off this simple mathmatical fact.) In order to rule, the 1% that benefits from the destruction of the American middle and working classes only needs to persuade 50% of the electorate to agree with them, to which end they have built a massive media structure that relies on misinformation, faulty logic, and appeals to psuedo-religious fervor and base instinct. When 50% of the population can no longer be schnookered, it’s necessary to move the goalposts (i.e 60 votes now needed to pass legislation in the Senate) and shrink the pool of eligible voters by denying the vote to as many likely opposition voters as possible, by whatever means necessary.
• It’s been documented that negative campaign ads don’t so much change people’s votes as change the likelihood of the target’s supporters voting. This will be an election of unparallelled ugliness. Vast sums of money, from Even God Doesn’t Know Where will be spent.

“The Quest,” as Galadriel told Frodo, “Stands upon a knife’s edge.” So does our Democracy. There are some very odd bedfellows between these sheets. The ideologues on the Right want to prove themselves correct, no matter what the cost, including taking down the US economy. After all, in their view, their policies will work in preciesly the opposite fashion that they ever have throughout history. China will benefit greatly from the collapse of the American economy. Bedfellows! Osama bin Laden’s three goals for 9/11 were Oil at $140 a barrel, up from $28, (60% success on that) US out of Arabia, (announced 3 days before the infamous “Mission Accomplished” banner photo op. I’m still wondering what mission, other than Osama’s #2 goal was accomplished.) and bankrupting the US by bogging us down in a land war in Asia or so.  That makes it a threesome with the Tea Party Right, China, and Al Quaeda. Throw in a bunch of pious folks whose fervent dream is total war in the Middle East, preferably involving nukes and men with scorpion heads, and you’ve got enough for a swinger’s party. Toss in a few of Bush’s Got-Mores, the Saints of Selfishness, who apparently won’t be happy until they’re the Got-It-Alls, and you’ve got a political daisy chain.

They all hate each other, of course, but when you have that many interests lined up, working toward the same goal, wittingly or not, we’re in for a rough ride. We’d better get up off the couch and fight politically before the knives come out. Or the guns.