The Next Great Bubble to Burst; The Right-Wing Message

I played a little with the stock market in the fall of '02 when I had some extra money to gamble with. I actually did pretty well, eventually. It was definitely a learning experience, and I learned a little about how people interact with the market. Well, ok... how online day-traders interact with the market, because it seemed very much that others were doing the exact same thing I was. Soon, I learned the 'trick'; I started looking for stocks in small companies that traded below $10, had a specific range of trades per day (about 500-1000), a recent upward trend, and a modest p/e ratio. I'd then wait for some small uptick in the price, and buy in a block of 100 at a time at a very slightly higher asking price thereby bringing the price up further. I'd do it few times at the right intervals and then, when there seemed to be enough upward momentum and the difference was significant enough, I'd start selling in large blocks. I found that I could make maybe a couple hundred bucks in a day if I had at least a few grand to work with. Obviously, I wasn't the only one doing it, and someone else was losing while I was winning. The important thing I understood from this was that the illusion of value and potential gains are what drove the price I was able to 'cash in' at. I did pretty well turning 10K into 16K over a couple of months using the technique, and some weeks weren't great while others were.

Those were (relatively) sunnier days.

Like nearly everyone else, all my extra funds had to go towards expenses, emergencies, and the higher costs of everything. The money just left, like it did for almost all of us, after the disaster of 'W' was foist upon us. Of course we can add the deregulation stacked up from the years prior to 2001, but let's face it; the shit really hit the fan in '01. (Not that I'm suggesting one face the fan at that particularly unfortunate moment)

Many bad things happened, of course, but it was the bubbles that seemed to be the most devastating overall to the economy.

My little trading experience gave me an appreciation for just what had happened when the .com bubble burst. From wikipedia;


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_bubble

Then, more recently, we saw the housing market take a massive fall. The rise was built on the perception that people would always pay their mortgage first even if that mortgage was not within their means. This allowed banks to devise what appeared to be 'iron-clad' financial 'derivatives'. Essentially they were motley little investment bundles with mortgage investment at their core. These looked better than gold on paper, and were sold at ever-increasing prices. Obviously, I don't know all of the very meticulous details, but the fat and short of it is this; "The value was based on faith"- a pretty typical market driver.

Well, as many predicted, this was another artificial bubble created by people who knew they were driving value through perception. Those people, at least, presumably, a large percent of those people, liquidated in timely fashion and left a whole swath of middle-class wannabe investors (read;'suckers') holding bags of pure shit.

*POP!*

And there, by the twisted grace of God and the markets in which we trust, we went.


So I'm sitting at my console raking through the news from Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, and Florida and something hit me, really, really hard;

They're cashing out!

Oh yes, I've seen this before. Only... I've seen it in the market. This is very different, and exactly the same.

Over the course of nearly thirty years value has been slowly, methodically, and very deliberately built up in a particularly pervasive, pursuasive, polemical, political, partisan position of petulance and pride... the 'Conservative Ideology'.

Over decades this ideology has been invested with false value. Framed on lies, covered in bias, and inflated by countless blowhards, this ideology has been bought into by millions of working class schleps with no real understanding of markets, let alone politics or social philosophy. The 'value' of this ideology is not, obviously, in direct currency, but rather an 'indirect' currency; LICENSE. With 'license', granted by the high level of deliberate ignorance which is the buy-in for this particular commodity, those who spent literally hundreds of millions of real dollars inflating the value of this mass-ignorance are at 'liberty' to act as they see fit and take what they want. In particular; the bill just passed in Wisconsin allows industry/billionaires to buy public property for pennies on the dollar. THIS is the ROI the forces behind the mass-mindscrubbing of America are going for... and they're doing it NOW. They have to. Wisconsin is the bellweather here. The waking up of the middle-class hasn't occurred yet. It's only just beginning. Those that have bought into the ideology are more likely to go 'all in' than they are to wake up. So watch for the giant spike in rhetoric selling more bankrupt bullshit coming from all media sectors. The attacks on NPR and PBS are part of the need to mitigate information that could deflate the value during this last big putcsh.

Watch for every sector where corporate interests intersect public policy. Look for the big rush to strip social programs and create a desperate and profitable low-cost work force. Keep an eye out for budget-busting measures that will force states and municipalities to sell off public assets. Be on guard for anything that will give corporations and billionaires a massive return on investment from their minions and their message.

They are about to cash in.

When they do, the bubble will burst, and hard. In the light of facing reality and seeing so many more millions of Americans than they've been told they 'surround' out in the streets, they will realize the worthlessness of the message on the airwaves. It might be years, or better; decades before more people so easily buy the Right-Wing Message again.

Now for the bad news;

It doesn't mean the wingnuts, teabaggers, freepers, neo-cons, and ignorant, sports-fan mentality 'conservatives' will actually divest themselves of their bankrupt beliefs.
No, this particular product was certainly designed to leave everyone high and dry except for the very wealthy, but they built something special into it, something for which I can think of no allegorical quality in the market except maybe one; When the holders of mortgage-backed derivatives were left with shit, they were told to blame the homeowners. Not high energy prices, not the rise of food prices, not the credit bubble that we'd been living on, no... they blamed the economic victims rather than the market that created them. That's a BIG problem. Sure, in the case of those holding junk derivatives, they tried to dump them, but in the case of the holders of what will be proven a worthless ideology, they will look desperately for someone else to blame than themselves... and continue to hold on as hard as they can. When this bubble is 'liquidated', the blame will be laid at the feet of those who for so long painstakingly dissected this ideological instrument and so desperately tried to warn our fellow Americans of its worthlessness.

That would be 'liberals', and pretty much every aware and educated person that recognized what's been happening (Which, as far as the right is concerned, are also liberals).

We need, right NOW, to get this message to as many people as we can. I wish this was merely an academic exercise, but it's happening in real time. I have no illusions that any RW rageaholics will listen at all. They're too vested in their world. But, if we want to avoid what could be a messy, or even bloody civil conflict, we have to wake as many people up to the Divide and Conquer strategy that is being used against the American people.

It could take several years, it could take much, much less if we're hit with the reality of energy crisis and climate destabilization, but When this bubble implodes, millions of Americans, stunned and afraid, will turn on their fellows. UNLESS they can be shown what's being done to all of us now. The very least we can do is try. The price for the cure will be much, much higher than the cost of prevention... especially now.

I know this is not pretty or fun to ponder, but I will confess to one thing; I have my own little bubble, and I'm vested in it against all better judgement; it's Hope.

... And I think that's a sound investment right now.

...in Madison yesterday, a whole lot of people already get it. The trick is to keep them energized, keep them active.

Thanks for you presence if so. Thanks for your observations even if not. I'm hopeful that we'll keep a handle on this. I hope that every time teabaggers show up and realize they're outnumbered 100:1, it starts to dawn on them that maybe they're not being told the truth.

This is serious right now. The underpinnings of our future are under assault. The rest will wake up, but not until so much damage has been done. The best we can hope for is a bloodless fight.

...around 70, with a sign that said (paraphrasing) "my patients can't afford their meds"???

Pushing 40. :P

Must be nice to be 20 too. It's all relative, I guess.

...Supreme Court Justice told the other, "Oh, to be 80 again."


"A man's only as old as the woman he feels." Groucho Marx

He was so good for Germany and everything would have been great if it weren't for those damn Jews! :sarcasm:

There are many in that diehard 30% who support Republicans no matter what. They will go grumbling to their graves that it was the damn socialists and Obama the African who did them in.

Milton Mayer's book from the 50's (now a free e-book), "They Thought They Were Free?"

http://ebookee.org/They-Thought-They-Were-Free-The-Germans-1933-45_890001.html

I'd been hearing about it for a while and downloaded it this weekend. Halfway
through now.

To make a "Star Wars" analogy, it's sort of like the Prequel to what's been
happening lately.

Only the propaganda techniques of our Overlords are so much more sophisticated
than what they fell for back then.

Psy Ops techniques perfected after decades of experimental, 3rd World
laboratory trials. Plus the "Bad Cop/Good Cop" dynamic that continually
reinforces the same lessons, by playing off the "mainstream media"
against the RW Noise Machine. Who are both playing for the same team,
to narrow the scope of debate and encourage auto-censorship. Defining
the boundaries of acceptable speech, and acceptable thought.

thanks for the reminder.

across the country. It is their last gasp.

They are like Saddam Hussein pocketing what he can, while setting the oil fields on fire.

Those at the top of the GOP world will move into an "exile" on their private islands. Most of their foot soldiers, will be consumed.

From what I understand, they've already started creating these 'floaty islands' so they can move around and not be tagged.

What will really be fun to see in such an eventuality is the uber-wealthy finding out what 'supply-chain vulnerability' means. They won't want to start living modestly no matter where they are, but they will learn.

They just can't understand that in their ideal world; everyone loses.

As their ideology collapses under its own weight, their denial tells them to kick it into overdrive. This is why ideologies are dangerous. When an ideology fails, the adherents are so completely wedded to it that they self destruct out of denial.

The Nazis were getting slaughtered on the Eastern Front, and the Allies were/had taken the Western Front. Earlier, Hitler had doubled-down on their losing strategy in the USSR. They were sending everyone, including the elderly and children off to the meat grinder that was the Eastern Front. During those last days, Hitler ordered the the German Army to start destroying all of the shelters, bunkers - anything that could have protected the German people during that war. He felt the German people deserved to be destroyed for not fulfilling his "Thousand Year Reich"

Different assholes, same strategy

K&R and bookmark. Would like Robert Reich to read this...

I remember him. Wonder what he'd think. If anyone wants to reprint or forward this, I have no problem with it.

What area are they cashing in on? Specify industry please.

To be specific; Legislation allowing Koch Industries to outright buy public land just passed in Wisconsin. This could not have happened with an informed populace. This happened because of a long-term and maintained investment in a message that essentially has people believing bullshit.

The message that 'unions are bad for America' is absolutely a lie... and provably so. Unfortunately, the poor dumb bastards that watch Fox News believe the lie that's been told to them over and over. They've 'bought into it'. With so many buying an inflated message, the ideology appears to have value. That value, however, is complete illusion. The bubble will 'burst' when the reality of what the corporations are doing starts to dawn on the rest of the middle class. That's when the ideology will be more easily recognized as garbage. But by then, corporations will have advanced many profit-taking initiatives.

I'm not sure I can make it more clear.

Buying former government assets is asset accumulation. They are scrabbling to buy new industries: public schools, energy, waste water, etc. I don't think that will create a bubble unless they make the industries PUBLIC with stock options.

What I think they will do is: purposefully wreck it (strip it, foreign investment, consolidate) or resell at an outrageous price back to the government. It's all their private money from untraded businesses if it's not publicly traded.

The wastewater & energy is to important to have sub-business for controlling the dumping of chemicals from their other holdings & routing more electricity/energy to their other plants.

I agree they are buying industries that are former government controlled, but that doesn't mean that mainstream America will ever make the connection that they are privately held.

There is idiots out their that don't even know that social security & medicare are from the government.

Ask yourself this: *Why would Koch who uses bleach/chemicals for it's products want a waste water plant. Would they want it privately held or publicly held? Do they want the EPA? Do they want to reduce State EPA standards. Is Walker getting a job after governor at one of the companies?

You are on the right track, but this rabbit hole is deep. It isn't just about bubbles & crashes or creating wealth through the creation & destruction of an industry. It can be for the expansion of an existing one, to protect the one they have.

That is why I asked you to make it more clear.

And NO the public will never know; we don't own the media & they will own the schools.

It's a public perception bubble, created to give license to the very wealthy. They will own everything until the collapse. Then things will go one way (fascism) or another.

Only because I've had numerous conversations with conservative friends and family - and to them, corporations are GOD and can do no wrong. It appears to be very much a cult mentality. Massive denial. There's always a justification for something a corporation does. Even with BP - which absolutely floored me. If they haven't woken up yet, after the financial meltdown, the BP spill, I don't think they ever will. Especially given that so many watch Fox exclusively. In which case, they're not gaining any new or accurate awarenesses to alert them that they're even stuck in a bubble.

It's like they'd gladly bet their lives that the kool-aid isn't spiked rather than risk learning that they might have been wrong about things.

For some of those 30% repub supporters, race is the reason.

blame afterward will be irrelevant - they will have had their dreams of the eternal god (corporations) who will protect them totally shattered. It is called learning the hard way. For the rest of us hopefully our knowledge will help us have a softer landing. What I am hoping (probably a fantasy) is that Democrats will build a real news network (KO & Al?) that can get the news out to as many as possible.

And I agree with the Doctor - I want to live to see the people who caused this mess learn that their world died with ours.

when state governments have to sell off water, sewer, energy, trash services and they are buying them up.

that stock market bubbles are built on a flimsy notion of "value" that isn't really in the shares in being bought and sold on the market, so too is the "value" of the right wing ideology a false bubble, in the sense that people heve been lured into believing in the value of the ideology, when in reality it is valueless, like a house built on sand.

But during the time that the ideological bubble was strong, a lot of people bought into it, and they gave cover to those who were funding the creation of the ideological bubble, so TPTB could use the foolish beliefs of those they had duped to enable them to suck the country's (the world]s) economy dry for their own benefit.

But now they see that people are starting to wake up. In WI, many people who voted for Walker and the Rs are thoroughly disillusioned. Some True Believers will never give up the RW ideology, but enough people will be disillusioned that TPTB realize they have to cash in now. By that he means that they must do a grab and run--grab as much as they can as fast as they can before the people completely wake up, since WI is just the beginning of the awakening. By the time the people are fully awake, it will be too late for regular people to salvage anything, because of all the hurried cashing in TPTB are doing right now to make sure that they end up with all the wealth and power.

In the same way that those who know what's what in the stock market cash in and get out of the market when the bubble is about to burst, so too are the ones who have deliberately inflated the ideological bubble rushing to suck up as much as they can as fast as they can during this limited window of opportunity before enough people wake up to make it impossible for them to dupe the majority any more.

Well... at least more concisely. ;)

Perfect summation. Thanks.

tutor at all levels in a wide variety of subjetcs, as well as having about 450 articles on a variety of subjects spread across my 10 websites. I have been told that I have a knack for helping people understand complex ideas.

Your idea is cool--a very useful way of looking at what is happening right now--and I would like to see it spread around. The more people who understand it, the more likely it will be spread around.

There is an underlying assumption here that once something is sold / stolen that it must be bought back or that there is nothing we the people can do, that we are helpless. I would like to remind everyone that we could nationalize tangible assets and that we could demand that the money be returned. The USA still has the largest market in the world and the most powerful military. If they want access to the market they need to play fair. As for the latter, google operation hammer of god and imagine what we could Congo the unrepentant rich should they decide to be uncooperative.

As much as I like the OP it is still steeped in the myth that we can't do anything - tha capitalism, unrestrained and corrupt and corporate/corpulent cannot be challenged. And for this reason I mourn because America is filled with the faithful. And the faithful will not stop until America resembles Jonestown.

the powerful, wealthy people who are "cashing in" on the RW ideology are doing so because they think that if they can do one last smash and grab, they will get away with just about everything. There's a good chance they are right about that, but the more we are aware of what they are trying to do, the less likely it is that they will get away with it.

Frankly a lot of us and giving up and moving on. Something can be done about this. Nothing will be. American's are weak, not because they are, but because they believe they are. They have stopped standing up for principles and started standing up for profits decades ago.

I don't believe that the US can survive. Balkanization seems inevitable. And while letting the small minority of people who already know this is happening know yet again, I don't see it making any tangible difference. It is a given, IMHO, that the US is done as an empire and perhaps as a republic. The only questios are what will be left that will be worth saving, where will it be, and who will be in those parts of the US worth salvaging.

John Edwards was right when he talked about 2 america's. He clearly identified and analysed the class war and put it in worlds that the country could understand. Most choose not to listen because the puritan patrol decided that getting his weenie sucked or whatever was a commentary on the policies he proposed. The man was flawed. His ideas were not. And in typical american fashion we dumped the bathwater and throttled the baby.

So what's the point? Progressives need to position themselves to pick up the pieces (or have their kids / grandkids) pick up the pieces. That is the best we can hope for unless we are willing to fight the rich with terminal persuasion.

and shits it out somewhere safe.

Where could we possibly store that much toxic waste?

Seriously though... There were once good ideals among conservatives. There may be some Eisenhower-esque qualities worth salvaging.

Hitler made sure his elite followers were completely vested in his world by getting them to commit war crimes. A sociopath will get a pawn to become vested in his world by giving wings to an issue 'what the pawn hates most abvout themselves and cannot deal with' to the sociopath's enemy. Then the sociopath's enemy is forever the pawn's enemy.

"vested" is a great word to describe the gop/neocon/teabag base. They have been given a different creation myth and emotional life than the rest of Americans. What other ways were you thinking the 'base' is vested in their world?

You filled in a few missing pieces that help me understand what is actually going on here in Wisconsin as well as across the nation.

I had termed the situation as the "end game" for the corporatists who own the country. And yet, I can't see the end game as anything but self-destructive andultimately a loser for the monied class.

I say this because the entire corporate culture depends on a realatively affluent middle class of consumers...people who have money to buy things....The United States is the hub of consumerism and if that goes away the corporatists will have to depend on a new middle class in SE Asia or elsewhere to suck money out of.

They can't decimate the united states without decimating themselves...but that's what they're trying to do...

I must be missing something...

comes to mind. This is something that even the poorest of poor must have. The people will not be able to stop buying until they are totally broke.

that's what bothers me....then what?

What happens when people are no longer able to consume?

Do we then go back to the feudal system where we all labor to provide riches for our "lords" in exchange for subsistence?

That's where I think this is heading....and it scares the bejeesus out of me.

happened to the poor in Argentina. Didn't they have to privatize everything in order to pay IMF loans?

The peasants will still be needed to run things, but when the overseer turns away, for some reason the machine just keeps breaking down.

Each player (corporation, wealthy selfish asshole, etc.) can't see that if they just continue to burn everything in the way of their personal enrichment that the whole shebang will be burned up. They will wind up with a pile of gold bars in a wasteland if they are "successful".

my original premise...now I'm thinking feudal system...

It could be the delusional "prize" they're going for, but it's not either a likelihood or any more than a fantasy. Outside their realm of expertise, they're pretty ignorant.

You may be right. They're already going after the teachers, next the 'intelligensia'.

I wondered why there was has been such a spectacular ramping-up in the speed of right-wing theft & crime lately. Your post explains it well.

Kind of like stopping a tank though.

to live long enough to see our country taken back by the progressives.

We need a Teddy Roosevelt or FDR now!!!!!

"Those damn poor people getting mortgages they had no intention of paying off!"

That message was planned out well ahead of time.

I wish I could invest in the hope thing. I just can't.

You put it into words far better than I could.

working poor in this country already know nothing is going to happen. I think now that people are losing jobs, and their homes then maybe things will start to change. People have got to put their social beliefs on the side because they are voting on that issue alone. I think the lower middle class that are voting on social issues haven't been hit hard yet. When they will they will go back to the democratic party.

Thank you for sharing your story. It supports my point of view, that it has looked like a giant money laundering racket. The prices are manipulated so properties, companies and resources incrementally are taken away from the owners because what we own has been made into a commodity. Our health, education and welfare have been made into commodities as well with this value system.

Yea I agree with you, we all have to befriend our neighbors. I have been working to strengthen the ties with conservatives in my own family, just because. I do it without talking about politics or religion--it CAN be done.

I feel sorry for the small companies (the real ones) that thought people were investing in their product and people instead of just running up the stock price to make a few bucks.

It's flat out disgusting. Again, no offense because as you said, everyone was and probably still is doing it. I wouldn't be surprised if your scheme's algorithm is now included as standard with eTrade software.

In my case, I picked stocks that the technique would work on, stocks which happened to be prone to that kind of manipulation. For that reason, it's highly unlikely we were messing with anyone's retirement fund. The bull trading tends to have very little long-term effect on a stock. A few players just twanged it like a rubber band and some won and some lost.

Now, those on the inside who deliberately deceive investors and use insider knowledge are playing dirty, and they tend to do real damage to the value of a stock and the portfolios of regular investors. Bear investors look for stocks that are less susceptible. It's when investors get aggressive and look for high returns in their portfolio that they tend to get screwed.

Still and all, the market is rigged against the majority of investors.

but I think you are right. Great post.

the RW radio propaganda machine that the ignorance and alternate reality depends on has been given a free speech free ride- that must stop.

those stations need to be picketed and their local sponsors need to be shamed until those stations go bankrupt or offer better balance, either at teh local management level or the parent GOP level, which is subsidizing a lot of it but still relies on local sponsors to pay overhead.

and their radio gods need to be relentlessly exposed as racist liars and fools working for billionaires-not the little guy as they claim.

We seeing the cycle all over again... again.

Many of the teabaggers could end up homeless and hungry, but they'd still fall to their knees and worship the rich.

Thank you for all the time and thought you put into this. I'm going to bookmark it so I can reread it again. Stunning and scary.

land, land, land. I won't put another stinkin dime in the market ever again. All my spare change is in my credit union, all my former investment $$ is in property around me. I wouldn't trust them with my last dirty dishrag.

This is precisely what happened after the failure of the bank in Austria that ushered in the Hitler era in Germany. Anyone on the left was fair game for the government forces. Innocent but inconvenient people were simply killed. The concentration camps was just the "final solution." Before Hitler started putting people in concentration camps, the ranks of the liberals had been systematically decimated. By the time the camps were opened, there were too few liberals to object or even to question loudly enough to be heard.

I have been warning about this all along. Finally it seems others are seeing the pattern that is emerging.

This is the time to develop networks that are invisible and non-violent but that support liberal ideas. Even more important than protecting and quietly disseminating liberal ideals and solutions to our problems is the task of finding ways to communicate with people that are non-violent, easily accepted by people of good will and honest.

Something in line with the right's inability to see who the bad guy is. The piece in entitled The Right Keeps Getting Mad At The Wrong People

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2011_03/028446.php

... "tax cuts for the rich and deregulation were supposed to bring us this glorious economy. How is that working out for you, bubba?"

The Dems should be shouting this from the rooftops, but all I hear is crickets.