As intelligent seeming people begin to reveal that they lack certain faculties of deductive reasoning, we at letthemfail continue to meet our obligation: to establish the difference between reality and fantasy, as we have so many times before.

The principle concern in the debate always centers on the tendency to label people who see design where others see circumstance as “conspiracy theorists”. And the counter argument is that people who fail to comprehend the nature of conspiracy are in denial, seeing only circumstance where others see design. 

Specifically, in reference to the current global macro-economic persepective, many people still see our economic and financial world as a byproduct of chaotic, uncoordinated events. Despite the continuing wealth gap, they see no evidence that one class conspires to exploit another, and/or that the exploitive class is powerful enough to shape macro-economic outcomes.

In the case of Gonzolo Lira, to use his own words:

There is this weird, rather obsessive insistence on blaming “The Powers That Be” among a fairly large segment of people following the markets and the current situation. Whatever happens, expressions like “TPTB” or “the rich and powerful” get tossed around to explain all sorts of events, often mutually contradictory.

Often, clear and rather obvious policy mistakes—like for instance QE-2—rather than being analyzed at face value and deemed mistakes qua mistakes, are meta-analyzed and re-analyzed, until finally someone of this particular worldview claims that the “mistake” is actually not a mistake at all, but rather a cunning move by The Powers That Be which will aid these shadowy “powerful forces” in their attempts to gain control—control of the entire world!

In the case of Lira, we must pause to address what appears to be a disconcerting departure from rational thought, and we will surely return to this observation in the hope of explaining it, but first we must address the subject matter of the argument, because Lira is otherwise a fairly respectable author, and we would not want to dismiss him altogether simply due to a behavioral tendency which also affects a large segment of the population.

As to the argument itself, I accept that the term macro-economics refers to ”trends in the economy as a whole”, and I define his argument as an attempt to disprove that certain “powers” are able to influence or control these trends. Let us assume from Gonzo’s own words above that he either argues that no such powers exist, or that if they do, they are not powerful enough to affect macro-economic trends.

And I obviously find that position easily discreditable:

1) Fact: The Federal Reserve withheld information requested in the Bloomberg FOIA request for 2 years, citing that such information would “spook the markets”. We finally learn that the FED lent 3.3 trillion to international banks, some of whom received portions of the publicly scrutinized 700 billion TARP bailout. The DOW hardly slips below 12000 in response, recovers quickly then resumes the free money rally.

Perhaps Gonzo argues that the recipients of these 4 trillion dollars in loans are simply lucky. It’s really just a case of being the right kind of bank at the right time. Nothing was “planned” and they could no more “make this happen” than the Rothschilds could somehow profit from the Battle of Waterloo. Government didn’t perform the public TARP sideshow as a mere diversion from the much larger secret FED bailout. In fact, Paulson probably had no idea what Bernanke was orchestrating.

And the FED was simply mistaken about spooking the markets … but that’s the reason they fought to withhold this information for two years. There is no conspiracy between the bailout queens and the FED, they just happen to be the FEDs largest shareholders so of course the FED wants to help them if they get into trouble. These aren’t the powers we’re looking for … move along …

2) Fact: As the world barely averted a global economic catastrophe in 2008 (or so we are told) in which the Fed and Congress moved to bailout systemic banks (publicly and secretly) with trillions of dollars (which they didn’t have in reserve to lend) the FASB changed corporate accounting rules so that insolvent banks could claim record profits and their CEOs took home record bonuses.

I guess Gonzo argues for that same dumb luck here again. The banks didn’t “cause” the crisis, or even see it coming. They just do what profit-driven banks do: profit from fraudulent asset bubbles until they burst. Coincidentally the FED sustained its unprecedented ZERO rate interest policy, which (accidentally by the way) happens to foster asset bubbles.

Then when the banks accidentally bankrupted themselves, they were really expecting to be taken into receivership, and their CEOs jailed. But instead, corporate accounting rules were (coincidentally) changed – just another unrelated bad policy move – and wouldn’t you know it, Wall Street hauls in a windfall and nobody gets prosecuted – sonofabitch, they lucked out again.

3) Fact: Bilderberg meetings take place year after year in posh locations under CIA-class security. They are known to be attended by the wealthiest and most powerful people in the world, including central bankers and high ranking government officials. The topics and discussions held in the meetings are never revealed to the public.

I suppose Gonzo argues that nothing is being planned here that can shape macro-economic trends. There is no coordinated effort to align and increase power or wealth. They themselves cannot be considered “the powers that be” because whatever it is they are discussing cannot overcome the economic chaos of market forces and policy blunders anyway. They are probably just setting up new charities and discussing world peace.

There is no master plan to centralize power being discussed here, it’s just natural that banks become systemic through consolidations, and that nations are consolidated into economic unions.

4) Fact: For years, nearly every financial regulator at the Federal level was a former executive at an international financial institution: Geithner, Rubin, Paulson, Dudley, Feldstein, Tyson, Gutierrez, Shirzad, Markowitz, Patterson, Sachs, Zelicow, Gensler, Froman, Lew, Bolton, Steel, Altman, Orszag, Gramm, Emanuel, Daley, Kashkari.

I suppose Gonzo argues that former Wall Street executives are simply the best candidates for the job of regulating Wall Street. Of course they are going to gradually deconstruct regulations enacted during the great Depression (which by the way also had nothing to do with the “powers that be” back then) and of course that’s going to lead to the same conditions which led to the first Depression. But there was certainly no coordinated plan or effort to get these former Wall Street execs into regulatory positions so as to enable the rich and powerful to profit from unrelated changes to macro-economic trends. Let’s just call it incest by coincidence, not by design.

5) Fact: The Trilateral Commission exists. It’s membership, like the Council on Foreign Relations before it, consists of what we crackpot conspiracy theorists sometimes (erroneously) refer to as “the powers that be”. These are current and former policy officials, multi-national CEOs, Foundation and Think Tank executives and other extremely powerful and wealthy individuals. In his book, With No Apologies, Barry Goldwater describes the Commission as follows:

The Trilateral Commission is international and is intended to be the vehicle for multinational consolidation of the commercial and banking interests by seizing control of the political government of the United States. The Trilateral Commission represents a skillful, coordinated effort to seize control and consolidate the four centers of power – political, monetary, intellectual and ecclesiastical.

The Commissions founders have repeatedly (and publicly) announced their intention to create a supranational “world government” superior to the outdated concept of the sovereign nation-state.

I suppose that Gonzo considers Senator Goldwater another one of those weird “obsessors” who derives conspiracy from circumstance. Gonzo argues that Goldwater is wrong and that the Trilateral Commission is powerless against the forces of policy blunders and market chaos. Whatever they’ve been doing these last 35 plus years is simply not about manipulating global macro-economic trends to the benefit of the “powers that be” … which they are unqualified to represent.

They probably suffer delusions of grandeur brought upon by their immense wealth. Even if they could contrive a supranational world government, they’d never become ”the powers that be”, maybe just “the powers that wanna be”.

6) Fact: Obamacare, a 2100 page doctrine which no policy maker claims to have been able to fully digest before being called upon to pass it (including those putting forth the legislation) was entered into law, despite considerable public opposition, and has now become the subject of ongoing controversy and confusion, waivers, appeals, attempts to repeal and judicial review up to and including a pending final Supreme Court decision.

I’m not sure how Gonzo can respond to this. Because — and I’ve been meaning to point this out for a while now — if none of these lawmakers even read the bill, how in the fuck can they have written it? Has anybody thought about that? If the legislators trying to pass Obamacare didn’t write it, who did? Obama? Does anyone actually believe that Obama crafted Obamacare? And if not, who? Well, it certainly wasn’t the powers that be, and they certainly had nothing to do with its passage.

Did this 2100 page document fall from the sky? Was Obama compelled by the burning bush to pass it? It seems, Gonzo, that with this one, the counter-argument proves the argument. Just who wrote Obamacare and who declared that it be passed first and read later (besides Pelosi)? It may have been a policy blunder to pass it, but who the fuck actually wrote it?

CONSPIRACY DENIAL IS “IN”

I could go on and on about the denial, or the failure to deduce intelligent design behind a series of extremely unlikely coincidences, all serving to increase the consolidation of power and wealth, against all laws of probability, but I really hope I don’t have to. We had been making so much progress understanding our own human nature, and our world, and how it all works and where we all fit in. We don’t need to accept the present reality, but I thought we had made progress understanding it at least. Yet … this denial from otherwise rational thinkers persists.

And I think it persists because the truth is in fact so hard to accept. If we were to accept the truth about ourselves, and our country, and our leaders, and the world around us … the ugliness might become unbearable. If we were to accept that key politicians are corrupt, and that Wall Street owns them and that through the Fed, the banks control our country as a stepping stone to controlling the world, people would lose sleep at night.

If we were to accept that the “the powers that be” could control U.S. monetary policy, in order to ensnare our nation in a web of debt, robbing the productive working class of its wealth, and increasing the ever widening wealth gap between them and the “powerless” we might be labeled conspiracy theorists.

But even though the names and faces of Gonzo’s “shadowy forces” may be obscured, the institutions which do their bidding are not. They are quite easy to identify and are listed right here.

We deny the “powers that be” because they make us powerless. That can be problematic at first, but remember … our nation was founded upon a Declaration of Independence from the “powers that be”. It is always an option to revolt against an unjust central power, and history reveals that the outcome of one such a revolution gave the people so much power that they forever changed the world with their economic system, and their Republic.

Such power and freedom in the hands of the working class would surely upset generational banking dynasties and established power structures. Surely they would do something to undermine it, and restore their feudal dominion … if only they really existed.

I suspect that the Rothschilds consider Rockefellar a more or less “nouveau riche” braggart who has not learned the lesson that Nathan imparted many centuries ago when he bragged about his puppets on the throne. With so many hundreds of trillions at stake, the so called “powers that be” keep a much lower profile these days.

So low you might not think they even exist.

After all, if they don’t exist, who do the people rise up against? Mistakes and Chaos?

Such are the weird obsessive ramblings of the conspiracy theorist.

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