Hitmen Contracts to Bust COMEX

Major dislocations are coming. Tremendous disruptions are coming. Price discontinuities are coming. Price chart patterns might be rendered useless soon. Last week, the case for a grand Paradigm Shift was made, covering many elements in order to paint a mosaic. Taken in isolation, any one point is important in its own right, but not enough to convince of a structural change. Taken in entirety, the many points create a full picture that is more easily recognized. The ruinous events of the Wall Street banks last September and October surely served as an extreme event loaded with profound disruption. The Chinese have proceeded with a transition to yuan-based domestic banking, with an installation of yuan swap facilities around the world, with an ASEAN regional fund again supplied by yuan for flexible purposes, with permission granted to two Hong Kong banks to sell yuan-based bonds, with an admitted rise in significant gold bullion reserves, and with continued verbal battles over legitimacy of the USDollar as the global reserve currency. These Chinese initiatives in recent weeks, occurring rapidly, are serving as a collective extreme event with the potential for profound disruption. A gold-backed yuan currency would surely cause massive disruption in a climax merger of events. The barter system set up between Russia and Europe will bypass the US$-based settlement system, as will the barter system set up between Russia and China. The avoidance of contract settlement in USDollars would result in extreme disruption to the global banking system. The creditor nations are plotting to organize and launch alternative currencies, maybe to fortify existing currencies (like the euro or yuan or ruble) with a gold component, maybe also with a crude oil component. A challenge to the USDollar by asset-backed currencies would result in extreme disruption to the global banking system. The hidden nitroglycerine to the disruptions is the Russian military, and any pledges of support for nations attempted to force systemic changes. These are just some important examples of change agents.

All Paradigm Shifts result in extreme disruption. That is the essence of Paradigm Shifts. The entire table changes, like its shape, its seats, its location, even who sits at the table, and in particular who sits at the head of the table. Big disruptions are to come from the COMEX pit of corruption, the central nexus for controlling illicitly the price structure for gold, the USDollar, and the USTreasury Bonds. The COMEX in all likelihood is the weakest link in the US-UK chain of corrupted financial markets. For many months my view has been that gold fights the political battles, while silver gathers more than its share of rewards and spoils. Gold has a long history of experience fighting grand battles. It can be placed in dungeons, but not for more than a couple decades. The rot in financial systems without golden foundations forces gold to the surface!

THE HITMEN COMETH

It has come to my attention that several private parties have accepted contract assignments to neuter the COMEX and London Metals Exchange, to render ruin to its gold market.

That bears repeating from the rooftops.

MUTLIPLE HIRED HITMEN HAVE ASSIGNMENTS TO KILL THE COMEX GOLD MARKET.

That is the lynchpin to control the USDollar, the USTreasurys, and the corrupt mechanisms used by the New York and London syndicates. Their clear criminal behavior is beyond the reach of law enforcement, but they are not beyond the reach of hitmen. The USDollar has been in violation of the US Constitution since 1971, perpetuated by a renegade series of administrations. The global creditors for the USTreasury Bonds are so angry at the past suffered losses, the prospect of deep future losses, and the corruption laced throughout the US financial system, that they have hired third parties to kill off the US$-gold platforms, to destroy the burdensome banking ballast dominated by protected entrenched fraud experts, to lay waste to the vehicles used by the US-UK bond trafficking syndicate totally saturated with corruption, dishonesty, and collusion, replete with greed, totally absent conscience. They have systemically been dismantling the COMEX pillars and levers over the last several months, quietly and without fanfare, surely without publicity. If gold investors knew of their actions, they would become much bolder. Some want the bankers in their gunsights not to be warned. They await their fate with the Financial Grim Reaper. Their executions will be as swift as brutal.

The HITMEN have been hired, with highly lucrative contracts and wide berth in methods to be put to use. Their assigned task is to castrate the levered family jewels from some of the major players who illegally keep the gold price and silver price artificially low. The targeted victims know their awaited fate, and are presently defecating in their skivvies. A short list of banks facing the firing squad is already known, details for Hat Trick Letter members. Some detailed speculation will be devoted to the June HTL reports, since too controversial. This will be an evolving story, with new chapters soon written. The executions will be sudden. The missing US-UK levers will be immediate. Since last autumn, the global powers have aligned against Wall Street, even if the central bankers have supported it. If one wants to destroy a building, then weaken its pillars, cut a few support beams, then rush in a crowd of people, and wait for a turbulent storm. In the case of the COMEX, the wicked players will crowd the corrupted building. They will sink into ruin and then oblivion. They might become objects of mockery when they make noises from prison. If lucky, they will join Ken Lay from Enron fame in a remote Caribbean island where other favored operators live a secluded life, but a life nonetheless, complete with plenty of sunshine, fresh air, beaches, bikinis, and sailboats, but no intrusive cameras. Please, do not disturb the quasi-dead!

The financial cartel dominated by the United States and United Kingdom is soon to suffer some serious blows. The list of their financial crimes is as magnificent as it is long. Its list of victims is as prominent as it is long. The harbored resentment is great by many global players. They waited patiently for the Obama Admin to install a new group, but the old group remains due to a revolving door from the same smoky club, dominated by Goldman Sachs once more. Their influence, if not bribery, of the USCongress is in continuation, sufficient for unwanted obsequious approval. The regulatory agencies are from the same encrusted chambers replete with stench. The Coup d'Etat of the USGovt financial offices has not changed with Obama, who sounds like a refreshing leader but who is actually a marionette under control by those who selected him, favored him with publicity, then enabled his election. Nothing has changed except the rhetoric of change and the pace on the path to bankruptcy for a few icon firms like General Motors and Chrysler, if not the desperate cries from the 50 states suffering from insolvency. More prominent failures will follow, since nothing has been remedied. The channeled funds directed to Wall Street firms continue unabated. The bread crumbs to Main Street and the people continue unabated. Even the war continues unabated. Forget not that Marie Antoinette once said "Let them eat cake" before the French Revolution and the Storming of the Bastille. Today, the Bastille is the entire USEconomy where insolvent Americans are stuck.

Some might wonder what was the turning point that resulted in hired hitmen to be under contract against certain US financial markets. Some might say the failures of Lehman Brothers, American Intl Group, and Fannie Mae. Not so! In my opinion, it was the invasion in the South Osettia region of Georgia in August 2008. The events around Georgia, with the United States Military deeply involved, along with a certain tiny mischievous ally nation, lit a fuse that set off a chain of events. In time, events led to orders given by high level powers, for the US fraud kings on Wall Street to swallow the medicine no later than first thing Monday morning on September 15th. When the Jackass inquired as to the nature of the urgency leading into that understood stated deadline date, no answer was given. The guess of the Bank For Intl Settlements was submitted by me, and it was confirmed. Other sources, the USTreasury Bond creditors, also applied the pressure, it was told. Rumor was thick that death threats had been delivered to certain Wall Street executives, such as Paulson. Thus the pressure passed on to the USCongress for passage of T.A.R.P. funds. The disbursement of those funds have not been made public partly because Wall Street (read Goldman Sachs) does not want the US people to be aware of payoffs for bond fraud under death threats. Also, the Congressional Inspector has cited a few dozen recommendations for criminal fraud investigations of the same T.A.R.P. funds. The US financial sector has become a den of vipers, no longer the bastion of gentlemen, but rather of syndicate bosses.

COMEX STRESS NEAR A BREAKING POINT

Sources from GATA (the Gold Anti-Trust Action committee) report growing distress for participants in the COMEX gold contracts, where a commercial party is very short and in deep trouble. They have sold more gold bullion than they can deliver. They are likely one of the big banks who violate the law with impunity, with USGovt sanctioned protection. By that is meant they routinely do not post 90% of the metal as collateral that they illegally sell. This is naked shorting by any other name. There are reports of grave concern over the upcoming June gold option expiration. If too many deliveries are ordered, then the commercial shorts would be under stress for exposure for naked shorting. They will eventually be caught in a bind and default on contracts. The important loaded monthly contracts are March, June, September, and December. The COMEX has tried to limit the ability of buyers to take delivery, running them around in circles, and entangling them in red tape, all clearly restraint of trade endorsed by the USGovt. Such rules are not in effect for cotton or soybeans or crude oil or pork bellies. After all, a financial crime syndicate has taken control of the USGovt, ever since Robert Rubin took charge at the USDept Treasury in 1992. His major project was to gut the nation of its gold, for the private profit of his friends. Recall Rubin came from Goldman Sachs. Rubin was the author of the Strong Dollar Policy which brought ruin to the nation. Hey, just my opinion!

Background inventory strain has come from unexpected sources. The Germans have demanded that gold bullion held in US custodial accounts be returned to their owners, with physical gold shipped back to Germany. The Dubai bankers have demanded that gold bullion held in London custodial accounts be returned to their owners, with physical gold shipped back to the United Arab Emirates. They are following the hired German counsel. In all likelihood, neither US nor London sources are in possession of all the gold held in those custodial accounts, since at least some of it probably was improperly leased. By that is meant without owner permission or knowledge. So an uproar could come soon with charges of gold bullion theft, or at least failure of fiduciary responsibility. Theft is a simpler description.

China is the biggest gold producer in the world now, but none of its output is directed to the open market. Russia is a significant gold producer also, but none of its output is directed to the open market either. A near default occurred in early April from a close call to Deutsche Bank on 850 thousand ounces of gold. The tarnished bankers at D-Bank dug up over a million ounces on the quick from the ready Euro Central Bank mine shifts in the nick of time. Never ignore the basic fact that COMEX lies through its teeth about the gold bullion in its vaults, since audits do not occur, some is leased (replaced by paper certificates), and some is committed in some fashion to very wealthy parties (unavailable). Far less gold bullion rests in COMEX vaults than is advertised. All signals point to serious strain in COMEX gold supply.

FEEDERS FOR GOLD FULLY LOADED

Two important feeder systems continue to be USDollar weakness and USTreasury Bond weakness. More important than these is the systematic ruin of the major global currencies generally, but a convenient chart is not offered to track it. Just note the near 0% official rates dictated by the failed franchised Politburos known as central banks in most countries, or the movement toward 0%. The USDollar has broken below important support at 81. Expect it to fall further after more dithering. The long-term USTreasury Note has suffered a fast rising surge in its bond yield. Its target from different perspectives is 4.1%, and right quick. These two highly favorable charts will power the gold price to new highs very soon. Nobody knows how soon, but soon. Rarely does one see both the USDollar and USTreasurys fall in value simultaneously. They are now, and will provide a jet assist to gold, which is held back only by COMEX corruption. Their illicit maneuvers are more obvious and desperate with each passing week. Someday their actions might even be on the news. The imminent Standard & Poors debt downgrade of the UKGilt (bonds from British Govt) hit the credit market last week like a bolt of lightning. My belief is that it might have short-circuited the US-UK financial foundation, and burned out some major circuit boards. The US and UK share Third World finance characteristics. If a Fourth World existed, the US would merit it.

(Click on images to enlarge)

The gold price is on the verge of a breakout to new nominal highs. The chart demands it. It needs only a trigger, in a land where potential triggers dot the charred landscape. A gold event will be unavoidable. Its chronic strain has derived from the extreme disparities between the physical market mired in shortage, versus the paper market with unlimited supply. The tail is wagging the dog here, as it has been for years, soon to end. The silver price will easily recover to the 17 level in a flash. It has already surpassed the February high. It is loading up for the next little surge to resistance that awaits at the 17-19 range. The potential sling shot momentum boost for silver will be powerful, enough to send its price to 30 with ease. Think pendulum.

NOW FACTOR IN DISRUPTIVE EVENTS, THE PRICE DISLOCATIONS, AND THE OVER-ARCHING PARADIGM SHIFT IN PROGRESS. THE GOLD PRICE COULD REACH 1300 SUDDENLY. WITH EXTREME CONTROVERSY FROM COMEX, LIKE DELIVERY DEFAULTS, PUBLICIZED CORRUPTION, AND EVEN FRAUD INDICTMENTS, THE GOLD PRICE COULD OVER-RUN THE 1300 TARGET AND HEAD FOR 1500 AND BEYOND. SILVER COULD AS A RESULT FOLLOW ITS WARRIOR BROTHER, HEAD PAST 20 IN A FLASH, AND PURSUE 30 EASILY.

Little attention has been given lately to one of the most reliable time-tested forward indicators of the gold price. The ratio of the 10-year USTreasury Note yield to the 2-year USTreasury Bill yield has always been highly reliable in predicting a move in the gold price. The simple chart of bond yields versus maturity years is known better as the Treasury Yield Curve. The ratio is more amenable to chart analysis.A breakout in the Treasury Yield Ratio is in progress. All benefits from the mid-March monetization announcement have vanished. If the 2-year bond yield remains near 1%, where it appears stuck, then the breakout target would indicate that the 10-year bond yield is heading to 4.1% at least. Yet another method targets 4.1% in the long bond yield. The presented ratio contains information on the future prospect of price inflation, in a reliable contrast of time perspectives. Knuckleheads who insist on pounding the Deflation Tables might want to check this indicator, and look at the crude oil price. It is $63 per barrel, not the $20-25 predicted by these lost troopers. Yo Mish Bro, can you spare me a deflating dime? The strict definition of money is useless anymore. The Shadow Banking system is an actual part of the real world, which you do NOT count.

To the fools, dolts, and morons out there who cling to notions of recovery and Green Shoots, bless your heart. Hope has clouded your minds. Once more you believe the liars and purveyors of propaganda, after being nearly fatally burned. You must believe in the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, and the Tooth Fairy. You should not be in charge of investment funds, but rather of crayon supply cabinets and Beanie Baby collector items. The Case Shiller housing price index this week reported a 19.1% annual decline in 1Q2009 from Q1 last year. Foreclosures in April were up 32% over last year, as the nightmare continues. That is 1 in 374 homes with mortgages in America in some process of foreclosure. A relentless decline in home prices erases household wealth, and the source of consumer spending. Consumer confidence is ephemeral and baseless. The mortgage rate has just gone above the pre-March levels, when the USFed announced they would monetize $1050 billion in both USTreasury Bonds and USAgency Mortgage Bonds. The benefit has been erased. Today's underwater mortgage is tomorrow's foreclosure, made worse by job losses. The FDIC this week reported a 25% rise in non-current loans in 1Q2009 from Q4 of last year. Greater bank losses will come, much like floods follow hurricanes. And lastly, give credit to the USGovt statrats in their busy laboratories. They decided to ramp up the Q2 Gross Domestic Product by including all USGovt rescue funds for the big banks, including the diverse funds from the many liquidity facilities. All those funds will go directly into the GDP for Q2 as a special line item. Expect a miraculous economic recovery in the second quarter, based in vapor. The stock rally since March was based in accounting fraud. These are true American innovations, but too bad they are not exportable! They are not, since they have no value.

The Post-American Apocalypse

In Fareed Zakaria’s book, The Post American World, we find some apt criticisms of American behavior (and Western behavior in general). “In past crises,” he wrote, “the West played the part of the stern schoolteacher rebuking a wayward classroom. The lessons they imparted now seem discredited. Recall that during the Asian financial crisis the United States and other Western countries demanded that the Asians take three steps – let bad banks fail, keep spending under control, and keep interest rates high. In its own crisis, the West has done exactly the opposite on all three fronts.” Here Zakaria brilliantly exposes our unwillingness to face the music. We think somehow that we are the exception to the rule. This is because our collective character has been spoiled. It has long been my contention, that because we are “spoiled,” our culture has become a process of leveling as described in Søren Kierkegaard’s essay “The Present Age.”

The spoiled adult, like the spoiled child, doesn’t want to do the right thing. Furthermore, he hates his better, revolts against authority, and embraces the path of self-destruction. He doesn’t want the rules applied to him. Resentment, said Kierkegaard, “becomes a constituent principle of want of character, which from utter wretchedness tries to sneak itself a position, all the time safeguarding itself by conceding that it is less than nothing. The ressentiment which results from want of character can never understand that eminent distinction really is distinction.” Here is our crisis in a nutshell. We want to sneak ourselves a position. As Zakaria pointed out in his book, Americans have borrowed 80 percent of the world’s surplus savings, “using it for consumption.” In other words, he explained, “we are selling off our assets to foreigners to buy a couple more lattes a day.”

We told ourselves that because we won the Cold War we could begin a spending spree. We reached that blessed state described by Francis Fukuyama as “the end of history.” But in reality, the KGB and the Russian nuclear missiles never really went away. Zakaria recognizes the Cold War was the beginning of our arrogance, and our extreme addiction to debt, but he remains clueless about the consequences of the revival of Russian power. He does not see what is hidden beneath the surface. Communists are now nationalists – or national socialists – who have embraced capitalist means in order to achieve the end of capitalism. They do not admit to being Marxists, full of resentment against “that eminent distinction” that “really is distinction.” They call themselves democrats. They win elections under various false flags. They participate the in the process of leveling on their own terms.

I am reminded of a quote from James Burnham’s book, Suicide of the West. Burnham wrote: “I have stated as my underlying hypothesis the proposition that liberalism is the ideology of Western suicide. My Americanized procedure might suggest narrowing the proposition to: liberalism is the ideology of American suicide. On two grounds I think that the wider assertion may be retained: first because … American liberalism is only a local variety of an ideology (and historical tendency) present in … the other Western nations; and second, because Western civilization could not survive as a going concern, as more than a remnant, without the United States. I take it as too obvious to require discussion that, if the United States collapses or declines to unimportance, the collapse of the other Western nations will not be far behind….” (Italics added.)

The wisdom of Burnham is not the wisdom of Zakaria. Of course, the latter does not say that the post-American world will be a world where the United States “collapses or declines to unimportance.” He doesn’t believe that such a collapse is occurring. Zakaria’s optimism intrigues me, because it seems so utterly unrealistic – lacking in foresight. My view is closer to Burnham’s view, closer to a traditional “balance of power” view. You cannot upset the superpower balance with impunity. If today’s economics of catastrophic leverage was encouraged by the fall of the Soviet Union, it is no coincidence that the Great Crash coincides with the reemergence of the Soviet successor state. Zakaria does not see the danger in what is presently transpiring. He sees the “rise of the rest” as opposed to the “decline of the West.” This is a pleasant interpretation, and we hope it is correct. Western civilization isn’t disintegrating, he argues. The rest of the world is merely catching up. It is a positive process if we establish a cooperative spirit and the right global institutions. But is this analysis really credible? Is it not tinged with utopianism?

Nations may cooperate, may form leagues or collective security organizations, but alien civilizations and cultures aren’t going to melt into each other under the auspices of the global market. In larger historical and global terms, such a process involves conquest and war as well as market forces. Sovereign power remains something unto itself, reserved for nations and princes. So-called “democracy” has always been a precarious stand-in, replacing the feud of armed men with the feud of words and ballots (i.e., unarmed men). Here a rule-based game has replaced the old power-and-violence game. It is logical to assume, that once the rule-based game effectively nullifies itself through its own progressive and steady derangement, there necessarily occurs a reversion to the power-and-violence game.

From the warlord we derive patriarchy, monarchy and aristocracy – bringing an end to feminism, democracy and egalitarianism. This reversal of the present order seems rather inevitable to me. Does anyone really believe, given the extent of history stretched out behind us, that the tenuous experimental formations of the moment stand any chance of long-term success? In doing what we have done, we are flying blind into the future. A Great Crash is what we should expect. At present this is inconceivable because we haven’t accepted what is happening before our eyes. As Zakaria points out, we refuse to let failing banks fail, keep spending under control and interest rates high. We have not taken seriously Joseph Schumpeter’s joke that modern capitalism is merely the decaying form of Feudalism. The seeming paradox has been neglected, namely, that liberalism itself was erected on illiberal supports, and has long sought to remove those supports; in other words, to commit suicide as Burnham painstakingly outlined.

Zakaria writes of future progress beyond the nation state. He writes of international institutions carrying humanity forward without a thought for the disappearance of old-style religious belief, or old-style aristocratic culture. I cannot help seeing this “vision” of the future as a deriving from that same self-indulgence that currently props up failing banks, spends trillions in bailout packages, and drops interest rates. There can be no institution worthy of the name that can escape its fate by such methods. And furthermore, the market cannot homogenize humanity the way a dairy homogenizes milk. We are not simply economic creatures. Our identity extends to family, creed and nation. George Washington was a general, not a social democrat or a Wall Street speculator. His task was not to homogenize. It was to oppose force with force.

Think of your favorite fairy tale, with its happy ending. History is not a fairy tale. If some episode in history seems to end happily, don’t be deceived. Happiness in history is a precursor to unhappiness. Nations that achieve great victories – Rome over Carthage or Greece over Persia – experience an inward decline as they devolve into civil war. As it happens, the United States won a great victory in 1945 and achieved great prosperity. This happiness is the source of our present malaise, which must lead us to an unprecedented political crisis. Because America is a superpower an international crisis is also engendered. Sophisticated observers in Russia and China know what I’m referring to. The unraveling of a society, a nation or civilization is a periodic occurrence in history. It has happened before and will happen again. It has happened to others, and it will happen to us. As Oswald Spengler predicted, we are passing from capitalism to Caesarism. There is something natural in the logic of this passage. The reversion to the armed man as supreme arbiter is not preferable, but merely inevitable given that human nature becomes spoiled by too much success. We should be reminded that nations are born in blood and renewed in blood. We do not like this. We don’t want it. But everything we are doing plays to this tragic passage. This is not a nice thing to say, and not a pleasant thing to acknowledge, but it partakes of a more realistic sense of history than mildly embracing internationalism and vaguely suggesting a move in the direction of unilateral nuclear disarmament as Zakaria does when he suggests (on p. 241) that American “credibility” depends on such moves.

If we realize what we are against, we can mitigate the danger. If we go on dreaming of a bright future, we are going to be caught short.

(J.R. Nyquist)

Buying Brand Obama

Barack Obama is a brand. And the Obama brand is designed to make us feel good about our government while corporate overlords loot the Treasury, our elected officials continue to have their palms greased by armies of corporate lobbyists, our corporate media diverts us with gossip and trivia and our imperial wars expand in the Middle East. Brand Obama is about being happy consumers. We are entertained. We feel hopeful. We like our president. We believe he is like us. But like all branded products spun out from the manipulative world of corporate advertising, we are being duped into doing and supporting a lot of things that are not in our interest.

What, for all our faith and hope, has the Obama brand given us? His administration has spent, lent or guaranteed $12.8 trillion in taxpayer dollars to Wall Street and insolvent banks in a doomed effort to reinflate the bubble economy, a tactic that at best forestalls catastrophe and will leave us broke in a time of profound crisis. Brand Obama has allocated nearly $1 trillion in defense-related spending and the continuation of our doomed imperial projects in Iraq, where military planners now estimate that 70,000 troops will remain for the next 15 to 20 years. Brand Obama has expanded the war in Afghanistan, including the use of drones sent on cross-border bombing runs into Pakistan that have doubled the number of civilians killed over the past three months. Brand Obama has refused to ease restrictions so workers can organize and will not consider single-payer, not-for-profit health care for all Americans. And Brand Obama will not prosecute the Bush administration for war crimes, including the use of torture, and has refused to dismantle Bush’s secrecy laws or restore habeas corpus.

Brand Obama offers us an image that appears radically individualistic and new. It inoculates us from seeing that the old engines of corporate power and the vast military-industrial complex continue to plunder the country. Corporations, which control our politics, no longer produce products that are essentially different, but brands that are different. Brand Obama does not threaten the core of the corporate state any more than did Brand George W. Bush. The Bush brand collapsed. We became immune to its studied folksiness. We saw through its artifice. This is a common deflation in the world of advertising. So we have been given a new Obama brand with an exciting and faintly erotic appeal. Benetton and Calvin Klein were the precursors to the Obama brand, using ads to associate themselves with risqué art and progressive politics. It gave their products an edge. But the goal, as with all brands, was to make passive consumers mistake a brand with an experience.

"The abandonment of the radical economic foundations of the women’s and civil-rights movements by the conflation of causes that came to be called political correctness successfully trained a generation of activists in the politics of image, not action," Naomi Klein wrote in "No Logo." Obama, who has become a global celebrity, was molded easily into a brand. He had almost no experience, other than two years in the Senate, lacked any moral core and could be painted as all things to all people. His brief Senate voting record was a miserable surrender to corporate interests. He was happy to promote nuclear power as "green" energy. He voted to continue the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He reauthorized the Patriot Act. He would not back a bill designed to cap predatory credit card interest rates. He opposed a bill that would have reformed the notorious Mining Law of 1872. He refused to support the single-payer health care bill HR676, sponsored by Reps. Dennis Kucinich and John Conyers. He supported the death penalty. And he backed a class-action "reform" bill that was part of a large lobbying effort by financial firms. The law, known as the Class Action Fairness Act, would effectively shut down state courts as a venue to hear most class-action lawsuits and deny redress in many of the courts where these cases have a chance of defying powerful corporate challenges.

While Gaza was being bombarded and hit with airstrikes in the weeks before Obama took office, "the Obama team let it be known that it would not object to the planned resupply of ‘smart bombs’ and other hi-tech ordnance that was already flowing to Israel," according to Seymour Hersh. Even his one vaunted anti-war speech as a state senator, perhaps his single real act of defiance, was swiftly reversed. He told the Chicago Tribune on July 27, 2004, that "there’s not that much difference between my position and George Bush’s position at this stage. The difference, in my mind, is who’s in a position to execute." And unlike anti-war stalwarts like Kucinich, who gave hundreds of speeches against the war, Obama then dutifully stood silent until the Iraq war became unpopular. Obama’s campaign won the vote of hundreds of marketers, agency heads and marketing-services vendors gathered at the Association of National Advertisers’ annual conference in October. The Obama campaign was named Advertising Age’s marketer of the year for 2008 and edged out runners-up Apple and Zappos.com. Take it from the professionals. Brand Obama is a marketer’s dream. President Obama does one thing and Brand Obama gets you to believe another. This is the essence of successful advertising. You buy or do what the advertiser wants because of how they can make you feel.

Celebrity culture has leeched into every aspect of our culture, including politics, to bequeath to us what Benjamin DeMott called "junk politics." Junk politics does not demand justice or the reparation of rights. Junk politics personalizes and moralizes issues rather than clarifying them. "It’s impatient with articulated conflict, enthusiastic about America’s optimism and moral character, and heavily dependent on feel-your-pain language and gesture," DeMott noted. The result of junk politics is that nothing changes – "meaning zero interruption in the processes and practices that strengthen existing, interlocking systems of socioeconomic advantage." It redefines traditional values, tilting "courage toward braggadocio, sympathy toward mawkishness, humility toward self-disrespect, identification with ordinary citizens toward distrust of brains." Junk politics "miniaturizes large, complex problems at home while maximizing threats from abroad. It’s also given to abrupt unexplained reversals of its own public stances, often spectacularly bloating problems previously miniaturized." And finally, it "seeks at every turn to obliterate voters’ consciousness of socioeconomic and other differences in their midst."

An image-based culture, one dominated by junk politics, communicates through narratives, pictures and carefully orchestrated spectacle and manufactured pseudo-drama. Scandalous affairs, hurricanes, earthquakes, untimely deaths, lethal new viruses, train wrecks—these events play well on computer screens and television. International diplomacy, labor union negotiations and convoluted bailout packages do not yield exciting personal narratives or stimulating images. A governor who patronizes call girls becomes a huge news story. A politician who proposes serious regulatory reform, universal health care or advocates curbing wasteful spending is boring. Kings, queens and emperors once used their court conspiracies to divert their subjects. Today cinematic, political and journalistic celebrities distract us with their personal foibles and scandals. They create our public mythology. Acting, politics and sports have become, as they were during the reign of Nero, interchangeable.

In an age of images and entertainment, in an age of instant emotional gratification, we do not seek reality. Reality is complicated. Reality is boring. We are incapable or unwilling to handle its confusion. We ask to be indulged and comforted by clichés, stereotypes and inspirational messages that tell us we can be whoever we seek to be, that we live in the greatest country on Earth, that we are endowed with superior moral and physical qualities, and that our future will always be glorious and prosperous, either because of our own attributes, or our national character, or because we are blessed by God. Reality is not accepted as an impediment to our desires. Reality does not make us feel good. In his book "Public Opinion," Walter Lippmann distinguished between "the world outside and the pictures in our heads." He defined a "stereotype" as an oversimplified pattern that helps us find meaning in the world. Lippmann cited examples of the crude "stereotypes we carry about in our heads" of whole groups of people such as "Germans," "South Europeans," "Negroes," "Harvard men," "agitators" and others. These stereotypes, Lippmann noted, give a reassuring and false consistency to the chaos of existence. They offer easily grasped explanations of reality and are closer to propaganda because they simplify rather than complicate.

Pseudo-events—dramatic productions orchestrated by publicists, political machines, television, Hollywood or advertisers—however, are very different. They have, as Daniel Boorstin wrote in "The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America," the capacity to appear real even though we know they are staged. They are capable, because they can evoke a powerful emotional response, of overwhelming reality and replacing reality with a fictional narrative that often becomes accepted truth. The unmasking of a stereotype damages and often destroys its credibility. But pseudo-events, whether they show the president in an auto plant or a soup kitchen or addressing troops in Iraq, are immune to this deflation. The exposure of the elaborate mechanisms behind the pseudo-event only adds to its fascination and its power. This is the basis of the convoluted television reporting on how effectively political campaigns and politicians have been stage-managed. Reporters, especially those on television, no longer ask if the message is true but if the pseudo-event worked or did not work as political theater. Pseudo-events are judged on how effectively we have been manipulated by illusion. Those events that appear real are relished and lauded. Those that fail to create a believable illusion are deemed failures. Truth is irrelevant. Those who succeed in politics, as in most of the culture, are those who create the brands and pseudo-events that offer the most convincing fantasies. And this is the art Obama has mastered.

A public that can no longer distinguish between truth and fiction is left to interpret reality through illusion. Random facts or obscure bits of data and trivia are used to bolster illusion and give it credibility or are discarded if they interfere with the message. The worse reality becomes—the more, for example, foreclosures and unemployment skyrocket—the more people seek refuge and comfort in illusions. When opinions cannot be distinguished from facts, when there is no universal standard to determine truth in law, in science, in scholarship, or in reporting the events of the day, when the most valued skill is the ability to entertain, the world becomes a place where lies become true, where people can believe what they want to believe. This is the real danger of pseudo-events and why pseudo-events are far more pernicious than stereotypes. They do not explain reality, as stereotypes attempt to, but replace reality. Pseudo-events redefine reality by the parameters set by their creators. These creators, who make massive profits peddling these illusions, have a vested interest in maintaining the power structures they control.

The old production-oriented culture demanded what the historian Warren Susman termed character. The new consumption-oriented culture demands what he called personality. The shift in values is a shift from a fixed morality to the artifice of presentation. The old cultural values of thrift and moderation honored hard work, integrity and courage. The consumption-oriented culture honors charm, fascination and likability. "The social role demanded of all in the new culture of personality was that of a performer," Susman wrote. "Every American was to become a performing self." The junk politics practiced by Obama is a consumer fraud. It is about performance. It is about lies. It is about keeping us in a perpetual state of childishness. But the longer we live in illusion, the worse reality will be when it finally shatters our fantasies. Those who do not understand what is happening around them and who are overwhelmed by a brutal reality they did not expect or foresee search desperately for saviors. They beg demagogues to come to their rescue. This is the ultimate danger of the Obama Brand. It effectively masks the wanton internal destruction and theft being carried out by our corporate state. These corporations, once they have stolen trillions in taxpayer wealth, will leave tens of millions of Americans bereft, bewildered and yearning for even more potent and deadly illusions, ones that could swiftly snuff out what is left of our diminished open society.

The Investment Climate in 2059

While visiting the court of Attila the Hun in A.D. 448, a Roman diplomat named Priscus was greeted by a barbarian who suddenly began speaking Greek without an accent. Priscus couldn’t believe his ears. The man was dressed as a Hun, lived as a Hun and fought alongside the Huns. How could this possibly be?

The man’s story was simple: he had been born in Greece, had moved to Viminacium on the Danube, became a merchant and married a very rich wife. Then, one day the barbarians overran the frontier. They plundered the town, scattered its inhabitants, and took him into captivity. Adapting to new circumstances he worked and fought for the Huns, earned enough money to buy his freedom, married a barbarian wife, had children, and was welcome at the table of a leading barbarian chief. “He considered his new life among the [Huns] … better than his old life among the Romans,” wrote Priscus.

The Greek-turned-barbarian explained that the Huns had more leisure time than Romans, and weren’t constantly harassed by worries. In time of war, Romans were more likely to die because their safety depended on cowardly generals “who cannot support the conduct of war.” Even worse was the condition of Roman subjects in peace time, “for the exaction of taxes is very severe, and unprincipled men inflict injuries on others,” he said, using the wealth they have stolen to bribe judges and exempt themselves from legal penalties.

This reminds me of a passage in The Consolation of Philosophy, where Boethius argues that political power has a sinister aspect. It supposedly imparts dignity and importance. But there is nothing intrinsically good in this. If it was good, he noted, it would “never fall into the hands of evil men, since incompatible things do not usually associate…. There is no doubt, then, that for the most part it is evil men who hold the offices….”

“Power,” wrote Boethius, “does not make a man master of himself if he is imprisoned by the indissoluble chains of wicked lusts; and when high office is bestowed on unworthy men, so far from making them worthy, it only betrays them and reveals their unworthiness.” Such is true of individuals as well as nations. Rome’s great power over the ancient world enervated and corrupted civilization until it rotted and collapsed. And so, we should not be surprised if life under the barbarians was preferable to life under the corrupt judges and tax collectors of the late Empire.

It is interesting, in light of this, to think of our own civilization. Today’s individual enjoys wealth and power unknown to previous generations. We have the power to travel great distances in a short time. We have instantaneous communications, the accumulated learning of the centuries at our fingertips, but the scope of our thinking is narrow and our minds more ignorant than ever. The power of modern civilization has not made us better people. Instead of bestowing worthiness on us, our wealth and technology merely reveal our unworthiness.

We think that we are more sophisticated than our grandfathers. But we are less sophisticated, by far. Our descent into darkness is best demonstrated by listing old artists beside new artists; by listing old statesmen beside new statesmen; by comparing the lives of our grandparents to our own. The sociologist notices that more children are born outside of marriage, that epidemic cheating has taken our schools by the throat, that we have incompetence in business and government, that we find banality and ignorance on all sides. What conclusion can he draw? The powers and advantages of modern life haven’t made us worthy. They merely serve to amplify and accelerate our unworthiness.

I am amazed by those who think the U.S. economy is going to recover, that global peace is attainable, that American liberties are going to survive American barbarism. Look at our culture today: men are no longer men, and women are no longer women; capitalists no longer uphold free market principles; constitutional government no longer adheres to the Constitution; enemies are treated as friends. Nobody reads the signs. Nobody sees what is coming. Look at the birthrate among Europeans. Look at the abandonment of European culture. Look at the Muslim birthrate. Europe will be Islamic in fifty years. Long before that, the Russians and Chinese will achieve nuclear dominance of the globe. What do you think the investment climate will be in 2059?