This is an Old Interview But His Points Are Still Valid: Mr. Roberts Was Treasury Secretary Under Reagan
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https://youtu.be/bq6c7ul8R54
Paul Craig Roberts Interview July 10 2018 — US GOVERNMENT MOST CORRUPT ON EARTH #dr #paul #craig #roberts #paulcraig #drpaulcraig #paulcraigroberts #drpaulcraigroberts #economy #deepstate #politics #stockmarket #investing #finance #wellbeing Paul Craig Roberts is an American economist, journalist, blogger, and former civil servant. He is best known as a journalist specializing in economic affairs from an anti-establishment, liberal conservative perspective. He was the United States Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy under President Reagan in 2101.
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Greg Hunter interviewed Dr. Roberts on Dec. 17. 2014. Among the many points Roberts discussed here are ~ he thinks the only thing that explains the plunge in the Russian ruble is that it is being attacked by America. Roberts contends, “It is not a currency crash in the sense that there aren’t any economic reasons for the ruble’s fall. Unlike the United States, which has a massive trade deficit by which, if the currency markets weren’t rigged the dollar would be collapsing, the Russian economy has a trade surplus. Therefore, there is no pressure on its currency for weakening economic conditions.” Dr. Roberts continues, “This is not some independent action of supply-and-demand market forces. So, it’s either hedge funds, currency speculators like Soros, or it’s an Act of War on behalf of the United States government by the Federal Reserve or the Exchange Stabilization Fund. . . or possibly both, ie hedge funds working with the federal government.” Manipulating the markets, any market, is supposed to be illegal, but don’t count on the bankers going to jail. Dr. Roberts, with a PhD in economics, claims, “The big banks, the big Wall Street money, are essentially agents of the government. This is why they don’t get prosecuted. This is why they can break all kinds of laws, commit felonies and settle with a fine. This is what we’ve been watching in the financial arena. When these financial gangsters are caught, instead of being indicted and put on trial, they pay slap-on-the-wrist penalty ‘fees’.” Then its back to business-as-usual. How could the Russians retaliate? Dr. Roberts says, “If the Russians wanted to do payback, it would be very easy for them. The next time all of these contracts, paper gold contracts, are dumped on the futures market, the Russians need to go and buy them all up, then demand delivery ~ because there is no gold to deliver. The whole system would shudder and collapse. So, the Russians could cause a gold squeeze here anytime they want. . . . They would blow the lid-off and crack the system wide open because the US precious-metals market can’t make delivery on what it doesn’t have.” On war, Dr. Roberts says recent resolutions passed in Congress certainly point to it. Dr. Roberts explains, “These resolutions demonize Russia and define it as a great threat. They call on Obama to arm the Ukrainians so we can use the Ukrainians to fight Russia. In other words, we are going to fight Russia down to the last Ukrainian. Of course, the Ukraine can’t fight Russia. The whole purpose of this is to have the Russians slap them down, then we can go to the Europeans and say see, see the big bad Russians invaded and look how crazy wild and dangerous they are. You’re next. They will be in Berlin tomorrow. They’ll be in London by the end of the week. Paris will fall, and Rome will burn. We can’t wait to tell the Europeans this because the whole purpose of this is to completely break every kind of relationship, economic, political and cultural, between Russia and Europe. That’s what Washington’s goal is. That’s what it’s all about. This includes attacks on the ruble and sanctions. They are setting up a war that nobody can win, for what reason? For American superiority? You don’t have superiority if the world is awash in radioactive waste and there is nuclear winter. The climate has collapsed. The whole thing is an absurdity.” On the teetering economy and possible economic collapse, Dr. Roberts says, “We know something very serious is wrong. The only provision of Dodd-Frank that had any teeth was the provision that says if the big banks are going to be casinos and gamble on derivatives, they cannot do that in the depository institution where depositors have their accounts. They have to farm it out into subsidiaries. So, if the subsidiaries get into trouble, they won’t have access to depositors’ money. This was the only actual reform part of Dodd-Frank, which Citigroup managed to get repealed in the recent spending bill, so they can gamble on derivatives ~ and taxpayers and depositors will be on the hook for the losses. ie, socialized risk and public cost making lucrative private profits possible. (A lot of dumb-as-rocks self-avowed ‘conservative’ Americans note these kinds of oligarchic, corporate scams, swindles and rigged-game frauds, then think they’re being oh-so-clever and upright to virtue-signal warn about them as the terrible danger signs of ‘Communism’.) Why would you do that (maneuver the repeal of reform prohibitions) unless you had a lot of derivatives trouble, Roberts asks. “It could easily be the oil derivatives. . . The banks can gamble all they want and they are covered by the FDIC, which has no money. . . This gives the banks access to depositors’ money. . .” This is utterly sick, reckless and depraved, showing the United States government to be the most corrupt government on earth, far, far more corrupt than Russia or China. Roberts points out that the reform-feature shouldn’t have been placed in a legislative spending-bill in the first place. The entire US economy is teetering like a house of cards on enormous mountains of debt, which provides a cap on how much the FED can raise interest rates. As sanctions drive Russia out of the US treasury market, and poor performance discourages foreign investments, the US debt and securities markets will be under increasingly destabilizing and downward forces ~ as the economic fundamentals just aren’t viable. Just imagine, this interview occurred over FOUR YEAR AGO! Nothing has improved since, quite the opposite, as the corporate-praetorian-Mafia Trotskyite oligarchs, the nominal ‘leaders’ of the US/UK Empire franchise, keep kicking the can down the road … HALF of twenty-something college grads with tens of thousands of dollars of student-loan debt, are jobless and living at their parent’s homes … In a vigorous, well-ruled civil society economy, they could, would and by-damn SHOULD be on career-tracks and filling-out the housing and jobs markets … (more in the video) (The following are my acerbic comments, not Roberts’) : But America’s vital manufacturing, production, industrial base has been stripped, sold-off, outsourced and offshored ~ thanks to Reagan-Bush era neoliberal ‘laize-fair’ policies intended to ‘liberate’ the creative potential of capital. Like, with innovative corporate-raiding financed with junk-bonds, asset-stripping and trading-in on decades of community respect, goodwill and Blue-chip credibility, pillaging corporate-business cash-reserves of their pensions and cashing-in on vast untapped credit-reserves to fund CEO and upper-management bonuses, vacations, 3rd-party backdoor ‘loans’ and golden parachutes, while laying-off loyal, seasoned and experienced work-forces, … The innovation-precedent of bank bail-outs was introduced after the Savings and Loan debacle crashed and burned, and the ‘irrational exuberance’ (as the FED’s leering-loon Greenspan put-it) of the stock-market ran out of steam, capsized and foundered … ~ yeah, what a real ‘hero’ Reagan (followed by the deeeepstate mole Bush and the Reagan-democrat fad groupieism ie Clinton) was to the ‘moral majority’ conservative champions of private-property and neocon dominionism, as finance-debt dependency and casino-disasterism capitalism replaced family-farms and small-town sufficiency, and as the American blue-collar legacy of unionized high-wage skilled workforce productivity and core manufacturing heavy industries was supplanted by the malarkey of NAFTA prosperity and pie-in-the-sky bunkum, as the middle-class’s bluecollar backbone was stepped-on, thrown under the bus and broken, and the engine that drove America’s prosperity for almost 40 years was run flat-out and hot too long, out-of-gas and oil, left-for-dead and abandoned alongside dead-end street, about a half-mile from the intersection of nowhere road and can’t get there from here boulevard … ~ a scene that now memory recalls, reminding us of how far we’d come from then, back when America actually had integrity, decent useful value-added home-grown goods, service-with-a-smile-and-flourish, plenty of help-wanted, career-track keep-a-familiy-going union-benefit jobs, affordable rents and mortgages, and needed products we could/did market, innovate and export, instead of filling (and endlessly paying for) cost-plus gov contracts and wars, flogging a supply-chain wet-dream of military arms, killing-machines and weapons, promoting debt-instruments, amateur anal-porn and insurance, unsecure and wonky financial products, besotted hollyweird lolla-palooza productions, ethically-bankrupt religion, high-grade addictions and morally debauched pop culture fetishism … As Pooh would say, We have met the enemy and … somehow without knowing just how or why, ended-up feeling vaguely bemused yet lucky to be hired to work for them, twice-as-hard and just as long-again for one-half the pay, and with no overtime, time-off or benefits. Progress, c est la vie, eh? ~ ; )
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