Neocons Cheer for War

According to an article in the Nation magazine by Ari Berman, over seventy percent of the neocons who ran the Iraq war have signed up as foreign policy advisors to Mitt Romney. Elliott Cohen served as counselor to Condoleeza Rice and in 2009 urged the Obama administration to “actively seek the overthrow of Iran’s government.” Robert Kagan the author of Romney’s American exceptionalism stance; Robert Joseph National Security Council who inserted the famous “16 words” in Bush’s 2003 SOTU address claiming Iraq tried to buy enriched uranium from Niger; Dan Senor, former spokesman for the CPA under Paul Bremmer, and Eric Edelman a top official at the Pentagon under President Bush.


Many of these advisors belonged to the PNAC, an influential neoconservative advocacy group founded in the ‘90’s. It has morphed into the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI) launched by Kagan, Edelman and Senor. They advocate for regime change in Iran and a more confrontational stance with Russia. They are opposed to cuts in military spending.

Berman’s article goes on to quote Merrill Goozner, who wrote in the Fiscal Times “Romney’s plan to increase military spending coupled with tax cuts would require shrinking domestic spending to levels not seen since the Great Depression-before programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid began and would likely throw the US economy back into recession.”

“How do you get out of this state of interminable war?” asks Lawrence Wilkerson former chief of staff to Colin Powell. Certainly not with Mitt Romney and his foreign policy advisors advocating for more war.

Almost two thirds of the country believe the Iraq war was a mistake, yet Romney’s foreign policy advisors disagree with and advocate against the wishes of a majority of the voters.

Right now the largest US embassy is in Iraq, employing 16,000 contractors. To be fair, Obama wants to reduce that number to 8,000, but still, that’s a lot of jobs for small town USA.

Another term for Obama will not end perpetual war. It’s written in stone, no president can change it. That’s the real point, the decision has been taken out of the hands of the president and the voters. The empire marches on, while the neocon crowd cheers for more blood.

Too big to fail or too small to matter?

A Credit Default Swap (CDS) is insurance on loans to insure the lender of payment if default occurs, it’s called hedging, and on Wall Street, they’re easy to buy. First, the companies take out a loan from the bank, then the banks who loan the money and sell the CDS’ buy or sell stock in the borrowers’ company which manipulates the price of the stock and the value of the company.


JPMorgan Chase lost $2 billion in six weeks with depositors money on CDS’. So who’s defaulting on their payments and why aren‘t we hearing about it?

The Volcker Rule in the Dodd/Frank law which recently passed allows for hedging of risk, but doesn’t allow banks to use depositors money to make high risk bets, since the deposits are insured by the federal government. CEO and Chairman Jamie Dimon urged traders in their London office to take more risk and at the same time saying he didn’t know what was going on, he had people he trusted. Now he’s calling the practice an “economic hedge.” The new definition of a bankers’ casino bets gone bad.

The real risk eliminator on Wall Street has been the US Government, bailing out banks since Nixon was president. Subsequently, and with the implicit backing of the US tax payer, risk knows no bounds on Wall Street. It’s a different story on Main Street, make a bad bet and you lose, no hedging for us. Yet Jamie Dimon won’t even so much as lose his job making bad bets with depositors’ money, as “moral hazard” has been eliminated for big banks too big to fail. But it‘s still held as a major obstacle against a reduction of principal amongst those too small to matter, or can’t afford the lobbyists.

Matt Taibi of Rolling Stone magazine said of Wall Street Bank Goldman Sachs, that they’re a “giant squid on the face of humanity”. It’s all the banks, they have become one giant financial system herding people and governments into giving them global fortunes and international power.

Housing Crisis Threatens Stagnation

Free market fundamentalists instituted the ideology that unfettered free markets would self correct, maintain financial stability and demand for workers, this led to the banking crisis which caused millions of Americans to be trapped in housing debt. The banks blame the people, it’s their own fault. But this distracts from the reality that housing debt is one of the main reasons the US economy is not improving.

Even the Federal Reserve is saying the people need help. Ben Bernanke lowered mortgage interest rates to jolt the economy, but as William Greider states; “Bankers, investors and especially Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, were preventing homeowners from taking advantage of the reduced rates.” “They threw up various obstacles to refinancing…”

Reducing principal is imperative to improving the economy; William Greider quotes the Fed “Because foreclosures are so costly, some loan modifications can benefit all parties concerned, even if the borrower is making reduced payments.”

William Dudley president of the NY Fed and Goldman Sachs alumnus said “most people in trouble, are victims of bad luck-they bought their house at the peak of market prices or they became unemployed through no fault of their own. “Punishing such misfortune accomplishes little.” But punish it we do, rights for the average homeowner have been diminished along with the value of their homes.

William Greider writes the current Obama administration “protected the bankers and other financial players who have resisted the painful reckoning needed to unfreeze the housing sector”.

Government won’t do anything about the housing crisis created by the banks. The Federal Reserve says the people need help, so where is that talking point on the campaign trail?

The Fed warns, “If nothing changes in the housing market, adjustments “will take longer and incur more deadweight losses, pushing housing prices still lower and thereby prolonging the downward pressure on the wealth of current homeowners and the resultant drag on the economy at large.”

All the candidates can do is blame each other along party lines. This administration is not helping people and the next administration is not going to help the people.

The Federal Reserve actively came out and said it strongly urges the banks for the lowering of mortgage interest rates and reduction of principle on underwater loans, either that or this blanket of debt will continue to smother the economy and diminish the wealth of homeowners, prolonging stagnation.

Neither candidate can or will eliminate this choke hold on the economy.