A Tale of Two Tweets

Tweet

I spotted these two Tweets from my Twitter followings, a week prior to Christmas week, coincidentally back-to-back and regarding important economic issues. See Twitter screen-dump below.

One of the Tweets is from the offices of one of my dear friends and the other is from the offices of my dubious ruler. I know which of them I wholeheartedly trust and admittedly fear more! Therefore, the reputation of the messenger is as significant and relevant as the message itself.

I think the discerning public should be aware of the importance of those economic-related Tweets. Here we’re not so much interested in the debate or pro’s /cons of ‘TTIP’ or for that matter about the ‘debt fraud’. Instead FPM are reading between the lines as to whom and which message and messenger is credible as a source of information. We know that Governments use propaganda to propagate its policy goals, as do companies but here we aim to interpret or frame the issues faithfully.

Through Dame Vivienne Westwood’s communications office and her campaigning / blog vehicle “Climate Revolution”, she is humanely warning us of fallacies and manipulation in the UK Government’s economic policies. This is done in this instance by the office disseminating a critical piece of journalism by The Guardian newspaper writer Seumas Milne. Now compare Mr Cameron, the UK Prime minister’s Tweet, which is also disseminating seemingly important information. Whereas The Guardian writer and Climate Revolution have a degree of independence of views by association; the ‘dummy guide’ to promoting TTIP produced by the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) is devoid of independence, as it is self-regulated by its industrial members and quasi-Government funded. 

FPM aims to strip out the financial / economic propaganda news to it bare rudimentary agenda. This we do by referencing highly informed undiluted new alternative media sources, such as NakedCapitalism.Com and ZeroHedge.com, and numerous others together with independent bloggers. They all contribute their added value knowledge in the phenomenon through the currently free-to-all World-Wide-Web aka. “www.”. By implication we have lost faith in the truth and integrity of mainstream media - MSM.

A Sham Too Far: Of TTIP

Briefly, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is yet another administrative bureaucratic sham that the USA is spearheading towards globalisation and imposing its single superpower status (also known as US hegemony) on the world. You can read more on this global agenda via Naom Chomsky’s “Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance” in this article here.

TTIP is clearly a sham as economic fundamentals (e.g. burgeoning national debts; China slowing as driver of global growth; austerity revolts etc) and geopolitical matters (e.g. Russia and Ukraine; E.U. breakup; Middle East wars, Immigration tensions) dictates urgency to shore-up a future of “business as usual” with rigorous new business rules in place. Otherwise nations are expected to implode under their debt and austerity burdens. Not least, the so called “PIGS” countries. 

FPM is currently actively monitoring an incineration event / catalyst in the “cradle of Western civilisation”. Greece is continuing amid turbulence, not only the ever erupting populous risings over the effective takeover of their country by the “Troika” and imposition of intolerable impossible economic terms of the ECB, IMF and EU bailout. Lest it be forgotten that the origins of Greece’s problems were caused by Goldman Sachs helping to hide its debts to gain membership into the EU club. Despite the EU bureaucrat rhetoric, yes, like a country club, a membership can be withdrawn or terminated by either party. Come on Greece (or Barcelona) set in motion de-globalisation and independence, what the “Bravefart Scots” chickened-out from recently in September!

What is wrong with a united world and a federated planet? As depicted in sci-fi “Star Trek” series for instance, one may plausibly ask? Greater union of nations under the current brand of neoliberal democracies ultimately and primarily will continue to serve the interests of the wealthy classes, who by definition own most of the resources and assets of our capitalistic society. At the exploited expense of the majority of the population, and not to mention the disharmony inflicted on our planet’s ecology through climate change. As if to provide empirical evidence of this FPM assertion we have only to observe the wealth inequalities over last 35 years and, through history. Great social wealth inequalities through lack of justice, corruption, dictatorships or other imbalances have tended to result in revolution (viz. litany of past revolts by the populous). The most profound and recent thorough research exposing this stark disparity in the wealth of the nation and its population is by Thomas Piketty (pronounced Tome-AH PEEK-a-tee) entitled “Capital in the Twenty-First Century”

The stark wealth inequality findings are so relevant that an excerpt of the book’s thrust is presented below, Read full book review here from The Guardian newspaper:

“…Piketty’s main argument is this: that invested capital – in the stock market, in real estate – will grow faster than income. The implications of that are deep: to have invested capital, you must have money already. If you rely on income, as most people do, you will likely never catch up to the wealth of people who are already rich. The 1% and the 99% enshrined by Occupy are not an anomaly of our time, Piketty’s research suggests. It’s a structural feature of capitalism. Piketty’s work – which has been in progress for over a decade – is a natural pairing with the Occupy movement, which also questions the premises of capitalism…”

Source: The Guardian, Heidi Moore, 21^st September 2014

Mr Piketty’s 700-page tome is not only the best selling book of 2014 and FPM’s Winter Seasonal gift recommendation, but academically supports the 3-prong creative-destruction financial enterprise mission of FPM and imbalances in financial services and in capitalism at large.

Back to the thrust of our argument, other than the reputation of the messenger: that TTIP and Globalisation consolidates the power and wealth among the existing plutocrats. The allure to low and middle income earners, the largest members of a nation, of joining that wealthy elite upholds the edifice of plutocracy intact, much in the same way as guard-dogs or heavy security protects the houses of the high net worth individuals. Or put another way, much like how better treated house servants / slaves were more loyal to their masters than their “field servants” (those who tilled the lands) during slavery and agriculture of the past.  FPM’s Evidence here articulated in Q&A format:

Q. If United Kingdom is the sixth wealthiest country in the world why are there food banks for poverty stricken millions and austerity for many millions more?

A. The answer is simple. Wealth of the nation is disproportionately held by few billionaires and some millionaires due to politically inefficient income and tax distribution.

This wealth is also in the form of capital assets i.e. mere accounting notation based on notional value of assets such as property prices.  The proletariat or the majority of the population without income-earning assets are then left to subsist on a hand-to-mouth existence , which is bank debt and salary/wage income.

That is, the proletariat are asked to live on the wealth of the nation that has not been siphoned-off or otherwise accumulated by the top-heavy asset owners. In his epochal book “1984”, George Orwell described “most people” as those who are not Party Members, as “Proles” i.e. outside of the system.

"Prole" is short for Proletariat. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, the proles are the section of society that are unaware of the dystopian elements of their world. They are distracted by simple, unimportant matters such as the lottery, and are more concerned with emotions as opposed to politics. They make up 85% of the population within Nineteen Eighty-Four, and could potentially overthrow Big Brother. Winston believes this will happen one day, when they wake up to their situation and take action.

Under the false premise of benefiting small and medium enterprises (SMEs), TTIP will through thin-end-of-the-wedge result in handing over greater power to the ruling classes of wealth owners. They in essence naturally want to preserve their status quo by stipulating future rules for businesses and corporations which make them more powerful than Governments and its people, in instances. To read about this piece of the TTIP on “Investor State Dispute Settlement - ISDS” see here. An important part of TTIP negotiations, where so far both Germany and France have objected to any legal challenge to sovereign legislation.  Thrust of TTIP would exacerbate the wealth inequalities we have now, and at the same time bind people and nations into unbreakable servitude to corporations through their dependence on incomes and debt obligations. As if we are not already.

At FPM we have alluded to the end-cycle of free market capitalism, after a 35-year period of industrial deregulation, started during the rule of Thatcher-Reagan Era of the 1980’s. Please notice the UK-USA axis of the cordial in the then “transatlantic partnership” with pretext about “Special Relationship”; which initiated deregulated financial / capital markets in 1987, euphemistically termed “Big Bang” and other so-called industrial liberalisation policies in the foresworn lie of consumer benefits, including opening the skies and allowing airline carriers to compete for routes, and so on and so on. This parochial or blinkered business decision alone has a) increased immigration tensions and in relation b) ramped up carbon-emission footprints of air passengers. FPM in May this year, responsibly highlighted such global corporative excesses and irresponsibility leading to inequalities of “unbound capitalism” into the new millennium. The regulatory or legislative framework permitting such legal follies are enshrined through stealth laws, such as are passed without proper public consultation, harangued by public relations communication and other “jobsworth” proponents.

The secretive TTIP negotiations would aim to bring into the capitalists’ debauched party, formerly socialist and communist countries of the enlarged and growing European Union - EU. FPM feel that globalisation of this proportions would effectively make countries increasingly interconnected in their risks and somewhat homogeneous in national culture and identity. Similar to the way we have McDonalds restaurants all over the globe currently; while lacking individuality in high streets and in towns.  

The recent financial crisis is the best and vivid example of these impending global connectivity risks. Which TTIP legislatively will bind us irrecoverably into Mutually Assured Destruction  - M.A.D system. The housing and bubble financial crisis started in the USA and spread globally via the international financial markets. A global economic crisis which we are still feeling the fall-out from, with ever more national debts accumulated in some countries to prop-up a notionally blown-up capital-value bubble. Capitalism is still on its knees.  This wrought financial crash and its orchestrated bail-out represents the greatest transfer of wealth from the public sector to the private sector, i.e. taxpayers wealth to asset-wealthy individuals and their multinational businesses. A.I.G, General Motors and other large corporations should have foundered in the same way Lehman Brothers blew-up; as unbalanced assets and liabilities of their accounts book made them insolvent from their financial divisions’ folly in capital market shenanigans with “toxic assets”. 

Yet “private profit and social loss” was allowed to systemically prevail as justified with tags such as “Too Big Too Fail - TBTF”. Such malfeasance would then be the permanent hallmark of globalisation with USA at the helm. There is another way! The evidence for this is the long-process of economic stagnation until wealth is redistributed to the satisfaction of greater majority of the population. Is the mass of unemployment made of people who cannot find work, or those who have become disillusioned with paying taxes? Government control of wealth distribution on behalf its people, who were expecting a fair and just socio-economic political system, have monumentally been let down. The humdrum politicians’ masters have always been the corrupting powerful lobbyist through mass media manipulation and funded by… yep you guessed it, the plutocrats. This is an inflextion 

Endorsing TTIP would be like the angel “Gabriel” showing the future of things to come in a world without James Stewart, as portrayed in the movie “What a Wonderful Life”. That future was bleak and it would be so for the citizens of America and Europe if bi-lateral TTIP agreements are made by such giant blocks of countries in the interest of business. We are heading by degrees to “1984” with Big Brother being American hegemony.

However, we should not hope to leave such happy-endings or dystopias only in the realm of films and books but actively intervene in the external reality and oppose the resolve of “jobsworth” bureaucrats and vested orchestrators in the TTIP negotiations. Please signal YOUR opposition to TTIP and over-reach of USA hegemony to your MP by spending a few minutes on the internet. I simply put “Avaaz TTIP Protest” into an internet search engine and “the world's largest and most effective online campaigning community for change” Avaaz.com allowed me to sign a petition here, in resistance to TTIP. Simple, active and effective and meaningful! Another action would be to notice FPM’s financial savvy experience to oppose the UK’s prime minister’s view by Tweet. On the other hand FPM have not countered our friend’s Tweet about the “debt fraud”. Needless to say most of the financial community is aware, or at least should be aware of the sham of debt and austerity, and NEVER believe a politician’s official mythology.