We’ve Been Downgraded by the Downgraded

By TRB

Standard and Poor, the financial services company, that bastion of capitalism at its most suspect, the very same folks who promoted and backed a sky scraper full of junk bonds to retirement funds and pensions are now back to tell the U.S. that its massive debt puts it in a position of harm over its economic future. That's a bit like having the thief who stole your car tell you that it's low on oil.

The Dow Jones, equally bummed out by S&P's apparent new-found interest in fiscal responsibility, and its low expectations for the U.S. economy, fell 140 points. We have all of these deficit dodos running around saying the sky is falling when it already crashed to the earth back in 2007 when Bush was in office. He got back to his home town, leaving the U.S. government with a deficit of $5.6 trillion. Obama stepped into office in 2008 in just enough time for these too-big-to-fail financial thieves to come crawling to his door.

"Please turn the printing presses on at the FED Mr. President. Please make it right for us or we will crash every bank, retirement fund and 401k in this country. So what's it going to be Mr. President.?"

That's right, the thieves never gave Obama a chance. It was like he was held up in the middle of the day in the whitest house on the street. And the too-big-to-fail (more like too-big-to-feel) people stole our children and our grandchildren's futures just like that. Suddenly the budget deficit was exploded from five trillion to 11 trillion almost overnight. The exact same thing, only, accounting for the lack of brains involved or uninvolved in the last President - probably worse would have happened under Bush.

At the end of Obama's second term it is estimated that the budget deficit will be at $20 trillion. The Republicans say this doesn't have to happen. In fact, they have said so on the record many times, that if their austere programs are enacted, they might be able to bring that$20 trillion figure all the way down to $19 trillion.

But they are not making any promises.

Now it is sincerely hoped that during the debt ceiling debate (Obama wants to raise the debt ceiling so we can print more money to cover our expenses) the Republicans and the Democrats can get a little closer and maybe come up with a budget, just like their job description calls for. But there's a very wild card thrown into the mix this year.

It calls itself the Tea Party, it is chockfull of people who believe just about everything ever uttered mixed in with a group of people who don't believe anything ever said. Put them together and you have the zaniest bunch of people ever seen in the United States. Hell the No Nothing Party knew a lot more than these people.

So now the U.S. economy has been downgraded by the downgraded. This isn't even a comic book story or the funny pages. This is the news.

So what do we have to do immediately to get this nation back on the right economic path? Well, first we have to stop spending hundreds of billions on weapons for wars, also costing hundreds of billions. Wars about nothing. We are going broke while we fight wars over absolutely nothing.

Nothing.

And meanwhile Steve Jobs, that American genius of new technology, heads off to China to award them the contract to manufacture his new book-reading device. This device, it is believed will put both Borders Book Store and Barnes and Noble bookstore out of business completely within 20 or 30 years. So Jobs not only hands this invention of his off to the Chinese instead of allowing Americans to make it, but the device itself, purely by its function, will steal American jobs as well.

What a patriot this Steve Jobs guy is.

Some economists now believe the American corporation, hand in hand with America's corrupt trading policies will simply continue to outsource American jobs, basically to starve a certain economic class out until it is willing to accept wages more in line with those of China. If this sounds fantastic to you, I suggest you begin reading the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times on a more regular basis. It can clearly be seen in those pages. The dots can be connected. There is a design to all of this suffering. This isn't being caused by natural forces.

First off, haven't you ever thought it was strange that there is no debate whatsoever in the entire Republican Party around the issue of jobs? Here we are with this double-digit unemployment and Republicans barely ever mention jobs. The Democrats don't talk about them either. Could it be they don't expect to get back any of those millions of jobs the U.S. has lost over the past ten years?

That is exactly what it is. Where would these jobs come from? American corporations are making their investments overseas. The U.S. government is broke. Even the much ballyhooed alternative energy industry looks now like it's going to settle in China.

Now before we sign off here we have to look towards two more immoral developments on Wall Street. In recent times they have begun to bet on items that were almost off-limits in the past, or at least didn't seem as though they could provide a sustainable market in which to gamble in derivatives and futures and all that gobbledygook which just means they have found a way to make billions by making your life more miserable and meaningless.

Wall Street now bets more than ever on oil. And sure enough, their actions have caused the price of a gallon of gas in America to skyrocket. Wall Street has discovered a way to make money by raising your gasoline prices and thereby raising the price of any product that travels to you via a petroleum fuled vehicle.

But truly the worst is what Wall Street has done to food prices here and around the world. That's right, they are betting prices will rise and an investor's frenzy is going on right now on Wall Street over food, the very thing that keeps humans alive.

Between 2010 and 2011 wheat has risen 69 percent.

Between 2010 and 2011 soybeans have risen 36 percent.

Between 2010 and 2011 beef is up 39 percent.

Corn has risen 50 percent.

At present over 1.2 billion people in the world are hungry and are making $1.25 a day or less every week. And those food prices just continue to rise. More Chinese are eating beef than ever. Did you bet on that? If you did, you won. In China food is actually experiencing economic inflation or food inflation as they call it. India and China are the two growing food markets.

We live in a nation where people make money only when people in other nations' starve.

Could you spend that money if you had it?

(Editor's Note: Thank you to the World Bank and The World Bank Development Prospect Group for the up-to-date figures in this article.)