Samizdat USA

A cloud of disillusion is upon us and is manifest under various disparate names – Antifa, BLM, Proud Boys, and others. And it’s likely the larger of the two current epidemics. The one is a physical virus that will largely fade after it runs its course. The other is a cancer eating away at our body politics that left unchecked will lead to dissolution or tyranny. The broad social discontent is not unfounded. The American middle class has been in decline for two generations. Between 2002 and 2012, in inflation adjusted dollars, for bottom 90% of family income fell from $34,067 to $30,439 while the top 10% saw an increase from $127,692 to $130,990. From that point the disparity accelerates to where at the very top family income nearly doubled. The top 0.01% income grew from $12,247,943 to $21,569,156. Since 2012 the imbalance has only gotten worse. The richest three Americans collectively have more wealth and the poorest 160 million Americans. Against that backdrop, at least a college...

  February 2, 2021  Somehow GameStop Short Squeeze almost perfectly describes the past twelve months. The common story line echoes that of David and Goliath where small investors take down a Wall Street hedge fund giant. We the People are David, and the giant is a rigged economy where the big players always win. The bigger story is one that exposes how fragile the system has become. The ongoing romance between industry giants and our governing authority has grown from a flirtatious Military/Industrial Complex into a fully consummated Wall Street/Beltway union. Only now the Wall Street interests are global multinational corporations and banks. Each serves the other, feeding off the native wealth of local economies.     Since the subprime of mortgage crisis of the late 1990s whole edifice has been supported by cheap money with consumer inflation held in check by outsourcing to the lowest global bidder. When Obama was inaugurated the total stock market capitalizati...