Common Dreams lays out many of the vast sums that Americans pay for it's military, wars, homeland security and other allegedly necessary services related to our protection since 9/11. It adds up to $8 trillion dollars. Common Dreams then asks to what extent these vast expenditure are actually making us safer, but there is no dependable answer available.
American businesses complain that they are not in a position to invest in employees given the current climate of uncertainty. Glenn Greenwald explains that they have had decades of certainty:
Businesses have had at least 25 to 30 years near complete certainty -- certainty that they will pay lower and lower taxes, that they' will face less and less regulation, that they can outsource to their hearts' content (which when it does produce savings, comes at a loss of control, increased business system rigidity, and loss of critical know how). They have also been certain that unions will be weak to powerless, that states and municipalities will give them huge subsidies to relocate, that boards of directors will put top executives on the up escalator for more and more compensation because director pay benefits from this cozy collusion, that the financial markets will always look to short term earnings no matter how dodgy the accounting, that the accounting firms will provide plenty of cover, that the SEC will never investigate anything more serious than insider trading (Enron being the exception that proved the rule).
Over at The Real News, William Black discusses the economic crisis in Europe. This was quite informative, especially his conclusion that the bailout of European "countries" (e.g., Ireland and Greece) is really a disguised bailout of European banks.
Finally, I've discovered a prominent media spokesperson who has the guts to acknowledge that America is faced with a dangerous problem based on mathematical facts, a problem that is fueled by systemic financial industry corruption that thoroughly permeates both major political parties. He argues, loudly, that the first step to deal with this danger is for the President of the United States to take to the bully pulpit and to clearly acknowledge our problem rather than suggesting that the debate is between cutting $2 trillion or $4 trillion, both of which are merely kicking the can a few feet down the road (to 2017). I literally stood up to applauded to my computer monitor after hearing Dylan Ratigan cut through the bullshit and nail this critical issue.
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Finally, someone is out there forcefully saying what needs to be said, with the right idea for a first step. Obama could make up for many of his previous sins if he dared to throw the Hail Mary pass Dylan Ratigan suggests. He needs to tell himself "screw 2017," and begin a campaign based on getting into the faces of all politicians, Democrats and Republicans. He should shout from the highest pulpit to root out electoral/banking/trade/taxation/media corruption and he shouldn't stop talking about this issue of monied political corruption, because there will not be any meaningful debate on any other issue until we dare to admit that private money in politics has completely perverted the political process. As Ratigan states, we shouldn't be talking about $2 or $4 trillion. At least nine trillion, (and see here) and arguably dozens of trillions, as much as $70 trillion, are being siphoned out of the system thanks to the complicity of powerful people and entities that couldn't care less about the future of the United States. During his speeches, Obama should hold up traditional grade school civics textbooks and and then set them on fire because they are full of lies. They do not describe how the system works. Not even closely. The predominant political truth is that Congress is bought and paid for by big monied companies that currently control all three branches of government. Consequently, there are two Americas, and you are not part of the America that pulls any meaningful strings. Your vote is severely limited to support only members of the club of which you are not a member. Skip writing emails to your representatives, because those emails just annoy them. They are trying to work in a whirlwind of D.C. money that turns them into functional psychopaths. Good luck getting any federal agency to pay any attention to the needs of ordinary Americans, whether it be the FCC, the FDA or the SEC. The politicians who treasure the somewhat elevated stature of their jobs know deep down that they need to keep voting to further powerful corporations or else they will be swiftly boated from their jobs. We are in the era of Citizens United, where yes, you have a vote, but your choices have both been pre-ordained, pre-approved. I wish I didn't believe the things I've just written, but I've seen far too much evidence establishing that this country is not run by you and me, despite the popular rhetoric to the contrary. Let's take that first step to force our politicians, especially the President, to admit that we absolutely need to discuss and deal with systemic corruption caused by private money drenching politics. Until then, everything we hear is merely a bunch of hot air dressed up to sound like meaningful conversation.Even since my workplace put a television screen in the lunch room, I've gotten a regular dose of the kinds of things that TV offers. I find it incredibly distressing to see that this is the sort of information America relies on. Based on my re-acquaintance with live TV, I know that next week, while the financial markets roil (or not), we will have lots of Black Swan moments by all of the financial "experts." Namely,
The Black Swan Theory or Theory of Black Swan Events is a metaphor that encapsulates the concept that The event is a surprise (to the observer) and has a major impact. After the fact, the event is rationalized by hindsight. The theory was developed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb to explain:Truly, I don't know if there's any sort of "expert" that annoys me more than financial markets "experts," especially highly credentialed well-coiffed economists who "explain" things only after they already know that those things have happened. When has any such expert ever had the courage to predict a major development in the market ahead of time? How many "experts" predicted that they market would lose 7% last week (or even predict that it woudl lose 2%?). I suspect that I (and I'm not a financial investment expert) could make up lots of "reasons" for anything the market does, as long as you tell me what happened before I need to give my reasons. If the market went up 1%, I'd say, "You see, the DOW is up 1% because Ben Bernancke stuttered in a press conference and China's 3rd biggest computer factory is 17 days ahead of schedule. And, oh yeah, because a butterfly flapped its wings in Dayton." I could get away with this kind of crap for many years, especially if I were a fast-talking TV "expert" whose pathetic record (i.e., whose lack of meaningful predictions) was (almost) never held up to ridicule. We should make these jokers always videotape their analyses the day prior to the market-day they are analyzing. We should make them record their analyses in that same cock-sure tone of voice they use when they "explain" what has already happened. If we did that, 99% of them would look like idiots. They can't predict short-term markets any more than a historian can predict what will be in tomorrow's newspaper. They lack the honesty to say that they don't know. Or maybe they are so arrogant and dense that Dunning-Kruger runs rampant. Let the silliness begin on Monday.-The disproportionate role of high-impact, hard to predict, and rare events that are beyond the realm of normal expectations in history, science, finance and technology -The non-computability of the probability of the consequential rare events using scientific methods (owing to the very nature of small probabilities) -The psychological biases that make people individually and collectively blind to uncertainty and unaware of the massive role of the rare event in historical affairs.