When do I see a turnaround in the stock market?
Monday, March 17, 2008 | (e_arnow) Is this Spam?Chalmers Johnson, who was a consultant to the CIA and State Department for many years, has written a series of books. A longtime conservative Republican, he was delighted when the Soviet Union fell, thinking we could now enjoy a "peace dividend". Does anybody remember that?
He then by happenstance learned of an incident at one of the many US military bases in Okinawa, where a girl was raped by a US Serviceman. Okinawans have been pleading for years for the bases to close.
So Johnson started to look into the role of the military in American life. President Eisenhower himself warned in his final address about the unwarranted influence of the Military Industrial Complex.
Johnson's research has resulted in the conclusion that the network of well over 700 US military bases all over the world, with their enormous economic and social costs, will result in four things.
1. A culture of lies. (Think WMD and scare tactics leading up to Iraq war just for starters)
2. Unending wars (McCain says we'll be in Iraq for 100 years. We have already been occupying Germany since WWII. Why are our soldiers still there, no Nazis and no USSR?)
3. A police state. Think about the humiliation just to take an airplane trip, plus massive surveillance, secret recording of your private phone conversations all it total violation of the Bill of Rights)
4. BANKRUPTCY. which gets to the heart of the question. If conservatives like Johnson and Ron Paul, and liberals like Dennis Kucinich, are all essentially censored. When Bear Stearns, which created its toxic CDO's etc gets bailed out and the brokers and officers get huge bonuses, whereas Spitzer is hounded from office for having some hanky panky but was actually going after these corporate crooks, I would say that we have a series of interlocked and serious problems, which are threatening to crash the economy.
Can the Stock Market rally? Sure. There were several big rallies between the 1929 crash and the low in 1933. Since 2000, though the Dow has gone nowhere and the Nasdaq is still way under water.
So is this question one of a short term rally, or a real economic turnaround, where the egregious imbalances in the economy are addressed?
When ALL foreign military bases are closed and the money that should be building America comes home rather than feeding a politician's dreams of empire.
When the police state and prison apparatus that sees the US with a higher prison population than Communist China ( with five times the population) is dismantled.
When the $2.3 Trillion missing from Pentagon expenditures (that was just as of 2001) is recovered.
When students who study hard are supported with high quality free education, as is the case in highly productive countries like Norway and Finland, instead of being turned into debt slaves by student loans or worse, forced into becoming mercenaries to kill people 10,000 miles away.
When the Glass Steagal Act, repealed in 1999, which was designed to prevent the type of corruption and self dealing that Wall Street has engaged in these past few years is restored.
When the secret prisons and torture chambers run by shadowy entities associated with the government are shut down, and the Bill of Rights is respected and enforced.
At that point you will see the stock market have a real turn around, based on integrity and a society based on building not destroying.
Until then, it will just be more of the same. Political, social and economic bankruptcy, just as Chalmers predicts and just what we see unfolding before our eyes.
