Terminal Absence of Leadership

By James West, original available here

I like Barack Obama. I like his sincerity, his thoughtfulness, his compassion, and his humanitarian priority. I like his calm resolve, and his humility. But I don’t think he’s going to succeed in staunching the hemorrhaging of the global economy that is now approaching all published definitions of “depression”.

Its not because of any shortcoming in his intellect, or leadership skills. It’s the fallible nature of the political system upon which the United States now runs, which shows a public democratic puppet government to the public, manipulated by a more powerful, malevolent, and loosely affiliated elite financial interest group of mixed national origin.

Just as giant collapsed stars billions of light years distant are discerned by their effect on more observable phenomena, this shadowy world can’t be pinned down by name or definition, because the casual nature of their association is key to their omnipotence. Its not that the leadership of Barack Obama is incapable – it’s the fact that such leadership is undermined at every turn when the public interests run contrary to those of this invisible cabal.

The scantly reported story on Bloomberg last week of two Japanese nationals arrested while trying to enter Switzerland with suitcases laden with US$134 billion worth of U.S. Treasury Bonds [article] is just the kind of event that causes just enough of a ripple in the dense fabric of media space to be discerned by astute observers as evidence of that top layer of colluders.

This class of humanity is our most dire threat. These are people who feel entitled to consume ten times the amount of real estate, fuels and fine foods than the rest of us, logging thousands of luxury air miles each year and contributing a similarly disproportionate effluent to befoul our collective ecology.

While the average citizen labors longer for less gain amidst the confounding distraction of endless marketing and unsustainable credit booby traps, these Nobs jet about from summer house up north to winter house down south, and east to west, as the fancy takes them.

This is not a rant against the rich. The rich are among the upper echelons of the average citizen on a global basis, and can be defined as those who have a house, sanitary plumbing, and a car at their disposal, compared to the vast majority of invisible starving in third world countries.

This is an indictment of the so-called leadership, who jets around as do the financial elite in the rarified air of the Entitled.

The alleged goal of globalization, at least if the superficial tag lines are to be believed, is to elevate the standards of living for all. What the tagline can’t reveal, and what the economists who are tenured to the service of globalized corporate and government interests fail to convey, is that the resource base of the world cannot support anything approaching the utopian standard of living touted by that lot.

Never mind Peak Oil…there’s ten times the amount of fossil fuels available in coal and gas than has been consumed since the industrial revolution still locked up in the earth. Not that extracting them and burning them are going to do us any favors in the long term.

More pointedly, what about Peak Seafood? We’ve already surpassed that, and there is no alternative. The threat of extinction for cod, sea bass, certain species of tuna, salmon, and other important economic fisheries imply a systemic degradation of the entire pelagic food chain that is inextricably entwined with the terrestrial one. Unfortunately, economics takes a decidedly non-holistic view of resource allocation, and we measure positivity only in terms of quarterly perpetual growth. The depletion of resources, the degradation of ecosystems, and the demise of indigenous cultures and peoples are all Page 9 material for the civilized world thoroughly enchanted with the love affairs of vapid pop and movie stars, themselves prodigious consumers of drugs, booze, food and air miles.

The existing so-called leadership in the developed world are employed in maintaining our obsession with the inane, so that they can aid and abet the fraudulent looting of the world by this top untouchable social layer.

Barack sets the poor example of conspicuous consumption he is thereby destined to serve through his perpetual peregrinations in Air Force One, distracting the attention of the populace from the pillaging underway by appearing to be required in the affairs of the Middle East and elsewhere.

Such disingenuousness is apparent to the growing throngs of American unemployed, and acts of civil warfare are on the rise, as desperate people resort to theft and violence to express their diminishing options for sustenance.

A couple of layers up the social food chain from workers and the unemployed, regulators reflect the absence of leadership through the ineffectual and patently corrupt stewardship of financial institutions as evidenced by the massive shorting that preceded by a long time the advent of bad news that could justify the impending demise of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers.

No investigation into that phenomena has materialized, and the destruction of faith in the natural influences of commodities versus commodities and the cost of capital unfolds on a daily basis in the rampant manipulation of gold, silver, oil and currency markets.

The fact that the Fed buys the Treasuries that are the source of its operating capital has now been enshrined in the daily Theatre of the Absurd that our financial system has become. It now is as regular a headline as who is likely to get voted off of Survivor or win the next American Idol.

Humanity now teeters on the brink of an accelerated extinction brought about by the total absence of leadership in terms of sustainable lifestyles and the equitable treatment. Worse, our leadership, as it exists, sets the unfortunate race to extinction by leading us in fraud, consumption, corruption and duplicity.

In that sad reality, its really not so much the absence of leadership that is terminal for humanity, so much as it is the enthusiastic leadership in the horribly wrong direction.

John Maynard Keynes, the pet economist of presidents and governments throughout the world, and the father of deficit government spending, famously intoned, "In the long run, we are all dead." It is the definition of 'long run' that remains a variable that could mean another 50 years, or another ten thousand. The difference will be determined by the strength of our leadership, or absence thereof.

James West
www.MidasLetter.com

My Commentary:

There are a number of good points in this article. The piece about the $134 billion in Treasury bonds (the GDP of New Zealand in a couple of suitcases) is particularly interesting. You can read more details here. That site questions whether the official story that the bonds were "fake" is true, or just a cover-up. This site presents things in a way that is more sympathetic to the official story. This site has photos of the bonds in the Italian police station.

The fact that there were not held and charged does indicate that the bonds were real. However, the standard of reporting on these sites is not good. Assertions are made, but no citations are given. These "statements of fact" cannot be accepted. The Financial Times of London reports that the two men were released. However, it is quoting an Italian blog that quotes a police commander.

The fact that hard facts on this story are hard to come by does suggest that it is being swept under the carpet.

Leaving that aside...

Another good point is his point that globalization (equal standard of living for everyone) and sustainability are fundamentally incompatible goals. I have been making this point for some time now. I am actually perplexed how people can harmonize the two ideas in their heads. See my articles about "nuking the Chinese" [this one for example] for more exposition on this untenable dilemma.

The idea that the current global leadership is either distracting people from the real issues or actively leading them in the wrong direction is one that I've explored previously, as is the idea that it is not a "homogenous conspiracy", but that there are multiple layers of leadership with different motivations and different perspectives on the situation. You can see this idea explored in my 2006 article "What's Really Going On?".

All-in-all, I think this is a very thought-provoking piece that raises interesting questions and avenues of investigation. It is not prescriptive, in that it does not advocate a particular course of action in response, but rather descriptive in that it describes the contemporary mundane situation, or at least some aspects of it.