What Are You Gonna Do About It?

Tucked into the recent recovery bill was a provision granting the Federal Reserve the right to set up a $450 billion bailout plan without following key provisions of the federal open meetings law, including announcing its meetings or keeping most records about them, according to a POLITICO review of the legislation.

The provision further calls into question the transparency and oversight for the biggest bailout law ever passed by Congress. President Donald Trump has indicated he does not plan to comply with another part of the new law intended to boost Congress’ oversight powers of the bailout funds. And earlier this week, Trump dismissed the government official chosen as the chief watchdog for the stimulus package.

The changes at the central bank – which appear to have been inserted into the 880-page bill by sympathetic senators during the scramble to get it approved — would address a complaint that the Fed faced during the 2008 financial crisis, when board members couldn’t easily hold group conversations to address the fast-moving economic turmoil.

The provision dispenses with a longstanding accountability rule that the board has to give at least one day’s notice before holding a meeting. Experts say the change could lead to key information about the $450 billion bailout fund, such as which firms might benefit from the program, remaining inaccessible long after the bailout is over.

The new law would absolve the board of the requirement to keep minutes to closed-door meetings as it deliberates on how to set up the $450 billion loan program. That would severely limit the amount of information potentially available to the public on what influenced the board’s decision-making. The board would only have to keep a record of its votes, though they wouldn’t have to be made public during the coronavirus crisis.

A Fed spokesperson did not comment on the changes in the law or whether the Fed would continue keeping records of its meetings.

– Politico: Recovery Law Allows Fed to Rope off Public as It Spends Billions

An era can be said to end when its basic illusions are exhausted.

– Arthur Miller

Before going any further, I want to share a graphic that accurately summarizes my position on the current pandemic affecting the world.

Unfortunately, it’s quite common for many to latch on to one of these conclusions and singularly obsess about it to the detriment of the others, when we need to be thinking about all three simultaneously.

It’s absolutely critical we understand governments throughout the world are rapidly mobilizing to use the crisis as an excuse to extract more wealth from society and condition the public to relinquish more precious civil liberties. The response in my own imperial oligarchy masquerading as a country has been particularly grotesque. A government that told us masks don’t work and couldn’t roll out testing for weeks, is now responding with the worst of both post-9/11 and post-financial crisis responses. The idea of representative government or democracy in America is a complete myth. The interests and desires of the people are irrelevant, and our economic system can be best described as financial feudalism.

We’ve seen this movie before. The U.S. government and Federal Reserve used major crises to consolidate wealth and power twice before this century, and it’s happening again. They got away with it before — and they’re getting away with it now — because the public accepts it. I hate to write that, but it’s true. People will tell me the public has no way to fight back, but that’s not accurate. The public hasn’t even tried historical methods like mass strikes and boycotts, instead they’ve been successfully neutered by phony red/blue team mainstream politics, through bickering about marginal issues like pronouns and bathrooms, and by endless entertainment and debt-based consumption. This is why the oligarchy keeps winning. Americans aren’t a serious people yet.

Witnessing the massive theft and power consolidation during the financial crisis a decade ago shook me to my core. I learned so much about how the world really works I simply couldn’t go on in the same way, so I quit my finance job and moved out of NYC. I was convinced such in your face theft would lead to effective popular movements and that the people would discover their power and take direct action, but I was wrong. Rather than economic populism transcending other differences to become ascendant and potent, most Americans were successfully shoved back into convenient political boxes easily managed by oligarchy. The rest is history.

Is the above wishful thinking? It might be. I had similar thoughts a decade ago and nothing truly meaningful happened. That said, I’ve learned some valuable life lessons over the past decade and will share some of them today.

The title of today’s piece is “what are you gonna do about it?”, but let me start by telling you what I’m not going to do. I am not going to vote in the 2020 presidential election. In previous cycles, I went out and voted third party as a protest, but I won’t even do that this time. I refuse to give such a farcical system the satisfaction of even a protest vote. I’m over it. Done. 

Choosing to refrain from participation in a clearly rigged and sham presidential election process may feel like giving up, but it’s the exact opposite. It’s actually quite liberating to give up on the fantasy that voting for one of two sociopaths will materially improve your life or the direction of the country. Once you stop believing in the lazy fairytale version of politics you can get down to real action. If you accept that voting is largely a charade, you can either sit back and take it while playing video games, or you can get motivated. I see two avenues for action that can actually change things.

The first consists of mass organized movements that unite as many disparate factions as possible to focus on a single issue. This can take the form of a workers strike, a targeted boycott or something similar. The key thing that’s prevented this from happening is Americans have been so successfully divided and conquered. “Activist leaders” often demand those who constitute a movement see eye to eye on virtually everything, yet oligarchy knows to unite whenever their core interests are even slightly threatened. A hopelessly splintered public is one reason the people always lose.

Although I’m confident in the success of such a strategy if implemented by enough people, this doesn’t mean it will materialize. I was hopeful it could happen last decade, but it never did. Americans proved to be as divided, conquered and distracted as ever, and it’s possible things will continue along this path in the years ahead. As such, waiting for mass movements that may never occur to materialize is not a sufficient strategy. You need a primary strategy, and that strategy starts with you. 

The only thing you truly have control over is your mindset and your actions. Think about what angers you most about the system as it stands and turn that anger into something productive. What can you do as an individual to protest or reject that system? What can you do to become more resilient? Can you repurpose your skillset or profession in a way where you become more of a solution than part of the problem? Some of us can do more than others, but virtually everyone can take some action. If you can’t think of anything, think harder.

Reflecting on the past decade, every moment I spent taking control of my life and improving as an individual was worthwhile and rewarding, while every moment I spent hoping others around me would change was a gigantic disappointment.

This doesn’t mean we should give up on mass movements, it means you cannot rely on other people to get to the point you’re at as quickly as you’d like. Think about what’s actually in your control and go for it. And good luck.

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43 thoughts on “What Are You Gonna Do About It?”

  1. In 1980, I was 18 and able to vote. I haven’t missed a vote since.

    You make a powerful argument about abstaining from the next presidential election Michael, but I feel that I must cast a ballot for the Libertarian candidate(s) – whoever that may be.

    It is a vote against the ‘phony red/blue team’, and against the Executive Branch and Congress that aids and abets the actions of the Federal Reserve. That is my strategy. I hope others around me will change and follow my strategy, but I may be disappointed – again.

    One thing I know is that on the Wednesday morning after the election, I will look in the mirror and see a citizen who cast a vote for the type of government most desired. Nothing else will let me look at myself in the mirror, and not be ashamed.

    Thank you Michael, and keep up the fight!

    Reply
    • The thing is, Daniel, recent LP candidates are NOT libertarian. That said, it is still worth voting on ballot initiatives and bond issues (always NO on those).

    • Casting a vote is painless and long proven to be futile. On the Wednesday morning after the election you will look in the mirror and see an idiot who has done the exact same thing for 40 years expecting a different result. 40 fucking years of no results and you talk as though its goddamn virtuous to keep doing it, and not serially incompetent and moronic. You actually tolerate 40 fucking years of no results. No wonder you vote. You and government are one in the same.

  2. One thing we could do to unite would be to stop arguing. Just stop. And let’s upgrade any disagreement to arguing, and put a cultural stigma on it all.

    Like Daniel above. By outlining a different opinion than Michael’s, it passive-aggressively attempts to start an argument, which divides us.

    Maybe my comment’s doing it too, ironically.

    If we stopped voicing our slightly different, but wedging, opinions at every opportunity, maybe we’d be a force to be reckoned with, instead of the joke we so obviously are to the powers that shouldn’t be.

    I’m starting now.

    Reply
    • Greg and readers, in no way do I want to start an argument.

      The only point I was attempting to make is that in our agreement with the idea that the red/blue duopoly needs to be countered, I haven’t been able to bring myself to follow Michael’s strategy of not casting a vote. Perhaps my reasoning for voting Libertarian is self-justification, but it was not meant to question Michael’s choice.

      Apologies to all if it has.

    • I’m sure you’re a good person, but see what happened here? Your energy, my energy, your energy again, my energy again. Wasted. They win this round.

    • There is arguing and then there is the fair exchange of ideas and debate on them. At times as free individuals we have to agree to disagree and still remain honest and fair with the other. This as per Natural Law which governs the behavior of all human beings

  3. What have I done? I’m 73, and can’t can’t even remember all the campaigns I’ve got off my butt and worked for… 2004 Howard Dean, 2016 Sanders, 2018 Sanders (mostly $), zillion campaigns – legalizing pot (the union support we were promised was sabotaged by ACLU who wanted to lead the parade), etc, etc…. collecting signatures, registering voters, phone banking, door to door, etc. Not counting working at community supper, sandwich service for homeless shelter, diversion court, etc, etc. I’m tired now, and consider that Bernie’s effort was God’s reward to me for all my efforts. Why vote, if there is no ‘real’ candidate? I’m writing in Bernie in November… I don’t care if the uni-party pundits blame him for Trump’s win… ‘confused voters’ weren’t responsible for Bush’s 2001 theft. If those in the know don’t see a ‘way forward’, they are paralyzed.

    But, I have always thought that the easiest way to pressure TPTB is by withholding what they want most … our $ (they rig the elections) … i.e., a boycott. So, how to organize an effective target…. one bank? one petrol co? one .. ? What/which would be easiest for the mostest folks? I think human nature’s willingness to cooperate, i.e., this ‘lockdown’? the 8pm cacerolazo supporting medicos? etc, when they see a ‘just cause’ and feasibility, is only hope. Now, where are those with superb ‘marketing’ brains who can ‘sell’ this idea/plan….where are the soundbytes that encapsulate and create a ‘picture’ of this protest? Communication is key… as is ease and effectiveness. The secret is ‘many hands make work light’, i.e., the Howard/Sanders campaign funding (the real threat to the corporate uni-party?)

    Otherwise, I think the US will have to break into independent regions… as is apparently being contemplated right now by some N.E. governors. Blue states don’t want to carry Red states any longer…. let’s be ‘Eisenhower Republicans and FDR Democrats’… i.e., repudiate the MIC and embrace the safety net. (Hmmm… a thought arises.. a new party… the “Roosevelt/Eisenhower Party”…. the REP… just awkward enough to be memorable.. .hmm. OK let’s get this ‘uprising’ started…just remember, I’m too old and poor 🙂 thanks, Michael)

    Reply
    • Sanders never, ever wanted to really be a president. He got his beach house in 2016 , and now he probably got much more from Obama than a beach house. I can’t believe anyone would support him twice!

  4. Reinventing the wheel is a waste of time – so..? Occupy WS gave us ‘99% vs 1%’ (probably accounted for much of Bernie’s success)… let’s get out George Lakoff… et al. What have you got? “Divided we are suckers (prey) – UNITED we are winners!” “Fair economy – NOT a free-to-rip-&-rape market!” “People welfare, not Corporate welfare!” “Bail out People! not Corporate Parasites!” “Corporations are NOT PEOPLE!… otherwise, they’d be in jail” (Yes, I like sign slogans – I made one re: auditing the Fed, where Fed was a blood-dripping Dracula cartoon! 🙂 We need a song … new lyrics for… ? We’ll need ‘partners’ (the stumbling block of lefties…they’re self-destructively egotistical… remember, “It’s amazing what you can accomplish, if you don’t care who gets the credit!”) OK – what have you got?

    Reply
  5. Yes, the Rockefeller Foundation sponsored a pandemic situation paper back in 2012 and I imagine the Brits were doing the same for real back in the 1800S. After they invented the concentration camp back in the late 1800s during their Boer War.

    Reply
  6. The first thing to remember is that powerful people are cowards. Really! Bill Black recalled that after he convicted the first 100 bankers in 1987, the other 900 threw themselves at his feet, crying for mercy to stay out of jail. Politicians cringe whenever Femen protesters storm a stage. CEOs cover themselves with their briefcases whenever someone yells an epithet in their direction. Politicians hide behind their wives when a protester howls at them.

    Corruption has weakened the men leeching off the system as much as it has weakened the system itself.

    I expect to see exasperated individuals testing the iron facades of these clay giants soon, and we will be surprised at what happens. One by one they will all be shown to be childish sniveling cowards unworthy of our respect, our obedience, or our love. I expect the time will be soon when both red and blue partisans on the streets will rejoice as worms from both parties as well as their rich travelers in business, entertainment, and culture flee their seats, get hospitalized or slain by deranged loners, or imprisoned in their mansions by enraged mobs.

    I finished reading the monumental History of Germany in the Nineteenth Century by Heinrich Treitschke, and this book astonished me by how many instances kept popping up that absolutely mirrored today’s problems: cultural degeneracy, the widening of rich and poor, laziness and corruption in the government, cowardice in the leadership — it was all there 180 years ago. Its all here today. The outcome was that an enraged populace terrorized the elites. Although most consider the 1848 revolutions to be a failure, the episode did not fail to impress the elites. Within 20 years, nearly all of the demands of the revolution were peacefully granted under more competent and respected leadership. A veritable golden age of progress dawned as a result of peaceful cooperation between a watchful populace and an elite class that knew just what might happen to them if they did not behave.

    Perhaps that lesson needs to be learned once again by the powers that be.

    Reply
  7. “We’ve seen this movie before.” Only superficially. Yes the bail outs of the banksters and their corporate executive pals and the banks and corporations they run and all at the people’s expense is the same but there is much more to this event. This event is very much like a combination of the 9/11 event and the 2008 bailout but with the additional twist of a plannedemic as cover that will last as long as needed for the set up.

    What we are actually witnessing is the fast tracking of agenda to swap out one socio-economic system, nation state capitalism, for another socio-economic system, sustainable development….aka Technocracy. SD is based in eugenics, trans humanism and scientism. That SD as a Technocracy cannot provide for even the basic needs of the present planetary human population must be understood as it speaks to the pyramid cap’s wishes to see that 90% of humanity does not go forward. Under the plan the current Gen Y-Z (the Millennial’s kids) is likely the last generation to be naturally produced from sperm and egg. The future is already looking like genetically modified humans will be the way forward. Sold by the cap as ‘enhanced babies.’

    Or as one former FEMA administrator with expertise in planning, who quit because the agency was becoming too sinister put it. Those that can be safely and quickly re-educated will be. Others not able to meet this criteria will be euthanised. This was a person who had been at all the major disasters that FEMA was present at and It ake her word as a probably a good warning that those we are up against are playing for keeps Meanwhile as this article is entitled “What are you gonna do about it?” The least a person can do is to pull the blinders off their eyes and the wool out of their ears and to call it like it is and quit with the self imposed limited mental hangouts!

    Reply
  8. Either I’m being soft censored or this comment section needs repair! Comments I make are not being posted. If I’m being censored lets be man enough to say so. It pisses me off royally to take the time and thought to write a commentary and not have it post.

    Reply
    • Exactly! Don’t pay our taxes, refuse to pay usurious compound interest rates. Refuse to do any business with any corporations that fall under global elitism (global general boycott). A genera people’s strike and world jubilee. I propose July 4 2021 as the start date, organize and prepare!

    • Federal withholding from your paycheck makes that attempt to duck the violence that is necessary impossible. If nobody pays on April 15th they’ll just borrow more from the Fed and put that on your tab too.

  9. Our current global state , appears to be angering many ,who see this charade as yet another political exercise to subjugate its population .
    Let there be no mistake…. this was brought on by government for government as a result of gluttonous deficit spending, since the end of WWII .
    The culprit they chose to blame is not surprising,…. what will be , is if the populous, actually wake up out of its slumber and do something about it .
    I myself don’t hold out much hope 🙁

    Reply
  10. Comment to Greg. I did not take Daniel’s comment as an argument, but rather part of a discussion. If we can’t discuss things without it being called an argument we will get nowhere worth going.

    Reply
  11. I believe necessity will provide the answer. I honestly believe there will be widespread desperation, despair, hunger, and quite a bit of actual starvation in the coming period of turmoil. Out of this, an essential fundamental “cause” will emerge – by necessity ! Until it does, there is no way of telling people what it will be.

    Reply
  12. We are living through the collapse of the final, all consuming economic bubble at the end of the American empire.

    The Hegelian Dialectic relies on the duality of good and evil. Social predators create problems where there are none and like a cancer, slowly kill the body politic.

    The cunning social predators create multiple profits off of dividing humanity. They give us bread and circuses and good political soap operas for us to dance to their tune. We fund their campaigns, we watch their media, we career for them, we soldier for them and we vote for them. What a profitable scam…

    The reality is that there is no collective political, economic, or military solution. Even the recent impeachment process had zero effect on the REAL power behind the scenes.

    The privately-owned Federal Reserve, the Federal Government and the Military-Industrial Complex are never up for discussion. Instead of humanity chopping at the real roots of tyranny, we are distracted by political circuses like the impeachment of Trump and other idiocy.

    Whats needed is to withdraw your energy from the Debt and Death paradigm. You first exchange your digital illusions of wealth for real, tangible and eternal real assets, productive farmland, important skills, close friendships, silver and lead bullion. Help end the Debt and Death paradigm and forge the way forward to the coming new age of Humanity.

    Reply
    • Good commentary ! I agree and would put it this way – I am hopeful that the evolving chaos will shift perceptions of VALUE from accumulated money to creative ability. We don’t need a more equitable redistribution of money, we need a more equitable redistribution of capability ! – A completely different 10%.

  13. And there you go… more “discussion” which is actually disagreement/argument. Whatever you want to call it, your comment is not valuable – nothing was developed or furthered – but it took your time and mine.

    Back and forth, not forward. See what they have us doing CONSTANTLY now?

    Reply
    • No discussion, disagreement, argument allowed. Got it.

      Thanks for your amazing insight!

      Ditto!

      I couldn’t agree more!

      Quite right!

      You know it!

      Exactly.

      Like that?

  14. I last voted for a POTUS in 2004 (Nader) as a protest vote. Got sick of the game then, stopped participating, and never regretted walking away. I was particularly inspired at that time when Counterpunch asked for reader essays explaining why they refused to support Kerry (or Bush). Some of them were very well argued.

    The Venn diagram in this article did make me think. I’ve downplayed the moves toward authoritarianism simply because I never bought into the “hoax” argument toward the virus. I’m sure our overlords will try to consolidate power, but they’ve been doing that for decades anyway with the Fed and 9/11, plus they’ll run into significant problems if regular people start losing everything. The Arthur Miller quote is fitting too, since our last illusions of America seem to be fading quickly.

    As for what to do, there’s no real playbook for this. The localism discussion is as good as anything. Stay out of debt, stay in shape, make friends, learn some skills, and tune out the noise to stay in a good frame of mind. That’s about all anyone can do.

    Reply
  15. With all the humility of a first time commenter, might I suggest boycotting buying from Amazon/Whole Foods (among other companies)? This might be a good box for all of us to check if we’re looking to move the needle now and in the future. Skipping an election is easy to do. It’s our day-to-day choices as consumers that mean more, individually and collectively.

    Reply
  16. I heard/read this quote the other day, can’t recall original source, but, if one ponders it for a moment it’s quite revealing.

    “If the fed can print (type) currency into infinity, then why does the citizen need to pay their taxes”

    Reply
    • It seems to me that there have been a number of cases where the IRS has tried to claim taxes from wage earners and failed because they cannot show where in the tax code that wage earners have to pay any taxes on money received for their labor. Taxes are levied on corporate or business profits. I’m not sure if salaried employees are exempt from paying taxes or not. There are a number of videos on the net on these cases and on those who have openly not filed or paid Personal income taxes in years. This said if you do file then the information on that filing had better be correct or the IRS can under law come after you. What enmeshes most into this system is that tax is deducted at source, coming right off their paycheck so that the worker must file, ending up either paying more or getting a rebate.

    • I fully agree with your statement regarding taxes.
      Another point that is within the above quote is, if the Fed can create currency into infinity and most of use still pay taxes and if we don’t, the heavy hammer will be forced into falling, what then is really backing the fed and our taxes? Most arguments say nothing backs the fed’s issuance of currency/credits into the system, that IMO isn’t true. Taxes are self explanatory, regardless of arguments for or against.
      Labor, our labor , present and future labor. The Fed’s arrogant and insidious issuance of fiat credit is stolen from our labor, now by the trillions and again handed to Wall St. Big Corpa, etc. This is premeditated covert theft of mine, yours and our children’s labor. Abolish the Federal Reserve and all central banking!

  17. I think any attempt to dissuade people from discussing ideas simply because they might disagree with each other is dangerous to a free society. That is really what “they” want: a society like China’s where opinion is not voiced.

    However, I respect the right of people to **follow their own stated philosophy** and ignore this post.

    Reply
  18. How do the 0.01% and their gov’t/MIC/media enabler classes grab and maintain control in situations like this COVID-19 PLANdemic and “forever wars”?

    Milgram and Zimbardo showed the answer decades ago, yet never seem be presented by activist journalists.

    If there was any info that deserves to be a “stickie” at the top of every alternative news site, it is the works of Milgram and Zimbardo, with Bernays’ propaganda work presented as the predatory evil it is.

    Once what Milgram and Zimbardo revealed about human behaviour is understood, it is easier to see the ubiquitous illegitimate authority behind events as they unfold.

    Milgram and Zimbardo are routinely attacked over the harm caused to the subjects of their experiments, but those using those same illegitimate authority methods in real life are excused as “that’s the way the world works”, and Thatcherite “there is no alternative”.

    Be aware, trying to get your family/friends to comprehend the importance of Milgram’s and Zimbardo’s work will make you VERY unpopular, let alone daring to speak about them on social media.

    The truth hurts, either that we are so easily led by illegitimate authority, or that we are unknowingly complicit in keeping the 0.01% and their minions in power.

    What if they held a war and the public refused to fight or pay for it? What if they held the usual rigged Duopoly elections and 90% of voters spoiled their ballots in protest? Our biggest collective power is the power to not participate in their sham authoritarian schemes. Democracy was supposed to fix illegitimate authority, but it is now apparent “democracy” is now just a label to cover the same old autocratic tendencies of the 0.01% and their courtiers

    “Citizen cain, citizen cain
    Don’t you think that you have the keys
    You might own all the locks in this whole damn town
    But there ain’t no chains on me”
    Tom Cochrane

    But we need to be able to detect the illegitimate authority as it is presented, not years or decades after the fact. Understanding Milgram’s and Zimbardo’s works help reveal the Bernaysian machinations of those who would illegitimately control us all.

    Reply
    • So if ‘they’ come at you with a mandatory vaccine with encapsulated ID chip are you going to resist or go along to get along? These are the types of decisions we need to be thinking clearly about now.

    • I will refuse Gates’ flu tracking/vaccine, or any other similar scheme. Jail me if you like, but even if the Supreme Court rules otherwise, I will not willingly submit. I already don’t get the yearly flu vaccine and haven’t had a severe bout of seasonal flu for years. If tracking of CIVID-19-causing virus vaccine is OK, why not for seasonal flu too… seasonal flu routinely kills more than COVID-19 has, so will the world economy/populations be subjected to rolling shut/lock downs every fall/winter? The seasonal flu vaccines are notoriously ineffective as the “guestimate” on which strains will be active are simply wrong.

      Don’t accuse me of saying “COVID-19 is just the flu”, as it is clearly not. It is different in many aspects, but it’s AVERAGE virulence/lethality over this year will be similar to a bad flu season. Once COVID-19 has made a few tours around the world as the seasonal flu’s also do, it will simply become another annoying-but-low-lethality pathogen in the wild.

      Vaccines?… there is no vaccine for SARS-1, Swine flu, MERS or a long list of other pathogens that grabbed PANIC headlines then faded into the background. So how is COVID-19 so different from them? It isn’t, in the long run.

      But like most modern economists, politicians and corporate types, the COVID-19 focus must be on the short-term panic, not the long term picture.

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