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https://www.oftwominds.com/blognov20/overcapacity11-20.html

Don't Blame Covid: The Economy is Imploding from Over-Capacity and Corrupt Cartels 

Here's the fantasy: if we stop the shutdowns, the economy will naturally bounce back to its oh-so wunnerful perfection of Q3 2019. This is a double-dose of magical thinking and denial. The U.S. economy was unraveling in 2019 from 11 long years of Fed-induced over-capacity in almost everything (except integrity, competition, transparency and social cohesion) and the bone-crushing burden of corrupt, greedy cartels that have the nation by the throat.

The reality nobody dares mention is that thanks to 20 years of the Federal Reserve's easy money, there's rampant over-capacity everywhere you look: there's too many cafes, bistros, restaurants, fast-food outlets, hotels, resorts, AirBnBs, unprofitable Tech Unicorns, airline flights, Tech startups, office towers, retail space, malls, absurdly overpriced apartments for rent, storage facilities, delivery services, office sublets, colleges, attorneys, unemployed workers with multiple credentials--the list of too much, too many is endless.

Thanks to the Fed, the most profitable venture was borrowing to increase capacity, then borrow some more to extract the phantom value created by the greater capacity. Nobody cared if the office tower remained mostly empty; the money was made in building it and extracting its "value" via debt, not operating a legitimate enterprise.

This Fed-created house of cards was never sustainable, or healthy, as all the incentives to add capacity were perverse. The illusion that every mall, office tower, retail space, college, apartment building, etc. would be filled was only plausible as long as consumers and zombie corporations were borrowing and spending more than they earned.

That was never sustainable, but rather than look at the systemic set-up of an insanely predatory, fragile debt bubble resting precariously on over-capacity, the status quo is blaming Covid and lockdowns. The problem isn't the pin, it's the bubble that was begging to be popped by something, anything.

Recall that bubbles pop on their own, even without a pin. Japan's debt / stock / real estate bubble popped in 1989 without a pin; prices just stopped going up and then started falling, all by themselves.

The other reality no one dares mention is the stranglehold of corrupt cartels that have long outlived their purpose, and now exist solely to enrich insiders and lenders and the wealthy few who own the student loan debt, mortgages, etc.

The entire higher-education cartel was an unaffordable, unsustainable racket eight years ago when I wrote my book The Nearly Free University. Now the racket is finally unraveling, and the insane over-capacity, insanely high costs and lack of value in the credentials are coming home to roost.

The healthcare system is another example of a sprawling system of cartels that's long overdue for a reckoning / unraveling. The fortunes being minted bought more than enough political power to keep the corrupt, predatory machine well-greased with federal money, but that doesn't mean the system is actually providing healthcare effectively or efficiently or in a sustainable fashion.

Now we have multiple Big Tech monopolies bleeding the nation dry, and Big Tech is rushing to flood Washington D.C. with lobbyists and campaign contributions so nobody messes with its parasitic, destructive layers of monopoly.

The entire American economy was a gigantic bubble of corrupt Fed-funded skims, scams, rackets, monopolies and cartels, and it was finally bursting in 2019. The Fed, oh-so protective of its ever-greater and more destructive bubbles, rushed to mask the rot by inflating the greatest bubble of all time: Forget GOAT, Look at GBOAT: The Greatest Bubble Of All Time (November 6, 2020).

Now that the bubble has burst, the hope is that removing the pin will magically restore the burst bubble. Sorry, it doesn't work that way. The bubble has already burst and cannot be magically made whole and re-inflated.

It was never sustainable or healthy, and its collapse was inevitable. The way forward is obvious: stop the Fed from blowing ever-larger bubbles and eliminate cartels and monopolies. But that will require ending the absurd farce of pay-to-play "democracy" that enables the debt / asset bubbles and cartels / monopolies. 

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https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/2019/09/12/george-carlin-dumb-americans-transcript/

Full transcript of George Carlin's "Dumb Americans," excerpted from "Life is Worth Losing, his 13th live comedy stand-up special, performed at the Beacon Theatre in New York City for HBO  

" These people, these people are efficient, professional, compulsive consumers. It’s their civic duty. Consumption. It’s the new national pastime. Fuck baseball. It’s consumption. The only true lasting American value that’s left. Buying things. Buying things. People spending money they don’t have on things they don’t need. MONEY THEY DON’T HAVE ON THINGS THEY DON’T NEED. So they can max out their credit cards and spend the rest of their lives paying 18 percent interest on something that cost 12.50. And they didn’t like it when they got it home anyway! Not too bright, folks. Not too fucking bright.

But if you talk to one of them about this. If you isolate one of them, you sit them down rationally, and you talk to them about the low IQ’s and the dumb behavior and the bad decisions. Right away they start talking about education. That’s the big answer to everything. Education. They say “We need more money for education. We need more books. More teachers. More classrooms. More schools. We need more testing for the kids”. You say to them, “Well, you know, we’ve tried all of that and the kids still can’t pass the tests”. They say, “Don’t you worry about that. We’re going to lower the passing grades”. And that’s what they do in a lot of these schools now. They lower the passing grades so more kids can pass. More kids pass, the school looks good, everybody’s happy, the IQ of the country slips another two or three points and pretty soon all you’ll need to get into college is a fucking pencil. Got a pencil? Get the fuck in there, it’s physics. Then everyone wonders why 17 other countries graduate more scientists than we do. “EDUCAATION”. Politicians know that word. They USE it on you. Politicians have traditionally hidden behind three things, the flag, the Bible and children. “No child left behind. No child left behind.” Oh, really? Well, it wasn’t long ago you were talking about giving kids a head start. Head start. Left behind. Someone is losing fucking ground here.

But there’s a reason. There’s a reason. There’s a reason for this. There’s a reason that education sucks. And it’s the same reason that it will never ever. Ever be fixed. It’s never going to get any better. Don’t look for it. Be happy with what you got. BECAUSE THE OWNERS OF THIS COUNTRY DON’T WANT THAT. I’m talking about the real owners now. The real owners. The big, wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians… they’re irrelevant. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. YOU DON’T. YOU HAVE NO CHOICE. YOU HAVE OWNERS. THEY OWN YOU. THEY OWN *EVERYTHING*! They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, and city halls. They got the judges in their back pocket. And they own all the big media companies so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear!

THEY’VE GOT YOU BY THE BALLS! They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying, lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else. But I’ll tell you what they don’t want. They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well-informed. Well educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. That’s against their interest. That’s right. They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago. They don’t want that. You know what they want? They want OBEDIENT WORKERS. OBEDIENT WORKERS. People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork and just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits. The end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it.

And now, they’re coming for your SOCIAL SECURITY MONEY. They want your fucking retirement money. They want it back! So they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street! And you know something, they’ll get it… they’ll get it ALL from you sooner or later… because they own this fucking place! It’s a BIG CLUB…AND YOU AIN’T IN IT! You and I are not in the big club! By the way, it’s the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long beating you over the head. And their media telling you what to believe, what to think and what to buy… The table is tilted. Folks. The game is rigged and nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. Good. Honest. Hard- working people. White collar. Blue collar. It doesn’t matter what color shirt you have on.

Good, honest, hard-working people continue… these are people of modest means. Continue to elect these rich cocksuckers who don’t give a fuck about them. THEY DON’T GIVE A FUCK ABOUT YOU! THEY DON’T CARE ABOUT YOU. AT ALL. AT ALL. AT ALL! Yeah. You know. And nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. That’s what the owners count on. The fact that Americans will probably remain willfully ignorant of the big red, white and blue dick that’s being jammed up their assholes every day. Because the owners of this country know the truth… It’s called the American dream. Because you have to be asleep to believe it. "

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKUaqFzZLxU

George Carlin - The big club