Financial Feudalism

“Happy 18th Birthday! Meet your new Daddy,” read one website advertisement. “Do you have strong oral skills? We’ve got a job for you!” cooed another.

A message on another billboard directed at the “daddies” was more blunt: “The alternative to escorts. Desperate women will do anything”…

SeekingArrangement was founded by Las Vegas tech tycoon Brandon Wade. Wade is apparently worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $40 million. His motto is, “Love is a concept invented by poor people”…

SA also markets itself as an antidote to student debt. In the U.S. and elsewhere, college students are enduring financial instability and hardship. Because of rising college fees and rent, and the lack of time available for work during studies, many women are extremely vulnerable to exploitation. “SeekingArrangement.com has helped facilitate hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of arrangements that have helped students graduate debt-free,” Wade boasts on the website. Promotional videos show young, beautiful women enrolled in “Sugar Baby University” — in classrooms, holding wads of cash, driving luxury cars, and discussing the pleasure and ease of being a sugar baby.

When signing up for an account, potential sugar babies are told, “Tip: Using a .edu email address earns you a free upgrade!”

TruthDig: Sugar-Coated Pimping

Watching politics unfold in the post-financial crisis era has been extraordinarily frustrating. While it’s been refreshing to observe the emergence of grassroots populism over the last few years, there’s a problematic lack of depth and clarity embedded in these burgeoning mass movements. Tens if not hundreds of millions of Americans now acknowledge that something’s deeply broken within the current paradigm, but we remain focused on identifying symptoms as opposed to understanding and rectifying the systemic nature of the problem.

Of course, there are numerous complexities when it comes to the administration of an imperial oligarchy, and our system didn’t emerge overnight. Perhaps the most fundamental mutation of the post WW2 era came in 1971 when the international convertibility of U.S. dollars into gold was severed. This is when the country began its long transformation from a largely industrial empire to a financial one. I’ve often highlighted how the purely fiat USD reserve currency is the most powerful weapon ever invented, and how the U.S. control of the global financial system is the true backbone of empire, but it’s equally important to understand how the predatory financial system is also used to subjugate Americans in their own country.

In order to understand how this works we need to dig into the most fundamentally important four letter word in any modern economy: Debt.

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Merkel “Surprised” as Hundreds of Thousands March in Berlin Against TTIP “Corporate Dictatorship”

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In what is being described as the largest German protest in recent years, hundreds of thousands of enraged citizens descended upon Berlin over the weekend to voice their collective displeasure at the government’s attempt to consolidate corporate dictatorship by passing a democracy killing agreement being marketed as a “free trade” deal, known as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).

The TTIP is basically the TPP but between the U.S. and Europe as opposed to the U.S. and Asia and parts of Latin America. Like the TPP, it further consolidates corporate power, destroys consumer protections and has been negotiated entirely in secret. For prior articles on the TPP, see:

How the TPP Could Lead to Worldwide Internet Censorship

U.S. State Department Upgrades Serial Human Rights Abuser Malaysia to Include it in the TPP

Julian Assange on the TPP – “Deal Isn’t About Trade, It’s About Corporate Control”

Trade Expert and TPP Whistleblower – “We Should Be Very Concerned about What’s Hidden in This Trade Deal”

As the Senate Prepares to Vote on “Fast Track,” Here’s a Quick Primer on the Dangers of the TPP

It seems the Germans aren’t prepared to take this assault lying down. We learn from Reuters that:

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In New York City, Workers with Full Time Jobs Are Living in Homeless Shelters

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Puleo added he has “never seen” the homeless situation this bad.

Dilcy Benn, president of the union’s Local 1505, said more than 100 of the 1,000 parks workers she represents are living in shelters and at least another four, including Torres, are living on the streets on Staten Island and The Bronx. 

– From the Market Watch article: Hundreds of Full-Time New York City Workers are Homeless

One of the main data points that pundits and politicians who claim there is an “economy recovery” point to is jobs created. Please tell me, what good is a job if it can’t earn you a roof over your head?

Welcome to the Oligarch Recovery.

From Market Watch:

Angelo Torres punches in to work at 5 a.m. each weekday and spends the next eight hours cleaning up debris on Staten Island’s Midland Beach.

It’s a grueling job, says the veteran Parks Department maintenance worker, but also a welcome escape from the uncertainty of living on the streets as one of the city’s more than 300 full-time workers who are homeless.

“I cry every night thinking this isn’t really happening, but it is,” Torres, 45, told The Post.

Torres earns $33,662 a year but says it’s not enough to find four walls and a roof to call his own in a city where, according to StreetEasy, the median rent is $2,690 a month.

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Portrait of the American Oligarchy – The Very Troubling Income and Wealth Trends Since 1989

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One of the primary purposes of Liberty Blitzkrieg is to dispel the myth that America is politically a democracy and economically a free market, and prove that it is in fact a centrally planned oligarchy. If the people were well aware of this and fine with it, that’s one thing, but my contention is that the vast majority of the public is merely buying into the myth. This is why the population is so passive and easily controlled. They simply don’t understand what is happening to them. The proverbial frog slowing boiling to death.

Whenever I note that real median incomes in America haven’t increased for decades, many people have a hard time believing it. Nevertheless, as John Adams famously proclaimed: “facts are stubborn things.” Indeed they are, and an article published today by Bloomberg View provides some disturbingly stubborn facts that must be admitted to and faced. We learn that:

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“Serfdom is the New Normal” – Talkin’ Oligarch Blues with Perpetual Assets

“Oligarchs like protecting themselves from peasants…” – Gus Demos of Perpetual Assets The guys at Perpetual Assets are not only fellow warriors in the struggle against oligarchy and fascism in the USSA, they are also friends. It’s been great getting to know them over the years, and working with them in this existential struggle we face. … Read more

Welcome to the Recovery Part 2 – Washington D.C.’s Homeless Population Expected to Rise 16% in 2014

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Earlier this week, I published a post titled: Welcome to the Recovery – U.S. Child Homelessness Hits Record as Poverty in Mass. is Highest Since 1960. That was actually the second in a recent series of pieces highlighting the real world impact of this so-called “economic recovery,” which is now supposedly in its fifth or sixth year, despite having provided little or no benefit to the average citizen. The first in the series was: Child Poverty Jumps by 2.6 Million in Developed World Since 2008, While Number of Global Billionaires Doubles.

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American Upper Middle Class Share of Wealth is Worse than Every Country Besides Russia and Indonesia

Screen Shot 2014-11-06 at 11.53.35 AMOne of Liberty Blitzkrieg’s most popular posts in 2013 was titled: How Does America’s Middle Class Rank Globally? #27. Here’s an excerpt:

We are number 1 right? USA! USA! No one can beat our wealth creation machine, our economic dynamism, our level playing field and our bastions of higher education. We have a middle class that is the envy of the world, right?

Well, like so much of the “American dream” we have been force fed for a generation or more, this perception is not based in reality whatsoever. Sure it may have been the case for a couple of decades immediately after World War 2. Before the military-industrial-Wall Street complex fully took over the political process, but it certainly isn’t true any longer. Myths die hard and this one is particularly pernicious because it prevents people from changing things.

The data in that article was based on a comprehensive study published by Credit Suisse titled Global Wealth Data Book. Well, the 2014 version is now out, and the results are not pretty.

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Child Poverty Jumps by 2.6 Million in Developed World Since 2008, While Number of Global Billionaires Doubles

Screen Shot 2014-10-30 at 2.04.27 PMTwo headlines came across my screen today, which taken together pretty much sum up the effects of policy decisions made by Central Bankers and politicians since the financial crisis. The financial oligarchs got bailed out, and the rich got richer due to decisions made by “leaders” around the globe. As such, the entire planet has now been transformed into a neo-feudal tinderbox. Myself and countless others warned all the way back to 2008 that this is what would happen, and here you have it.

Let’s first examine the results from Oxfam’s report on the billionaire growth spurt. I hope all 1,645 of you have sent thank you notes to the patron saint of oligarchy: Ben Bernanke. From NBC:

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United Serfs of America – Low Income Workers at Jimmy John’s Forced to Sign Noncompete Agreements

Screen Shot 2014-10-14 at 2.29.52 PMWhile oligarchs and corrupt politicians continue to loot the world with impunity, low income workers and the middle class continue to be pushed into a life of misery and serfdom under a neo-feudal plutocracy. The latest example has manifested itself under ridiculous noncompete clauses that low wage workers are being forced to sign at Jimmy John’s.

The Huffington Post notes that:

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New York Times Admits Wages Haven’t Grown in 15 Years, Worst Since Great Depression

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The following article from the New York Times is actually pretty awful. However, the admission that wages have failed to grow in 15 years is important. Particularly in light of the fact that we are five years into the second so-called “recovery” since the turn of the century. These are recoveries that only Joseph Goebbels could love.

While the wage growth stagnation observation is helpful, what’s so sad about the article is that rather than dive into the underlying systemic issues driving this horrible statistic, the author spends most of the article explaining why we should be optimistic. It’s a nice try, but when systemic issues aren’t being addressed from a systemic standpoint, things don’t just magically get better.

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