Dominant Social Theme: The heck with this two-party stuff. Let's simply elect the best technocrat.
Free-Market Analysis: What an editorial at Huffington Post by Lynn Forester de Rothschild! In it, she makes the point that "some revelation is at hand" – and mostly likely it has to do with the reality of a genuine third-party challenge to put a candidate in the White House.
Is Ms. Rothschild suggesting Congressman Ron Paul is about to win the US presidency? (Not sure about this.) A close reading of the article, however, reveals something that may be even more radical. Ms. Rothschild is arguing for, wait for it ... "direct democracy." That is, electing candidates directly, by majority vote, at the federal level, presumably without the fuss of the current two-party system.
We've written about the dominant social theme of direct democracy before. The governor of New York, Michael Bloomberg – an elitist worker-bee if there ever was one – is a big supporter of an element of direct democracy, which includes the elimination of the two-party system.
But what is it REALLY? Well ... it is basically a full implementation of the USSR's communist system that died 20 years ago! The idea is that a technocracy of the elite can present candidates who are the most "competent" at administration. The corollary to this, of course, is that one must accept EVERY FACET of the CURRENT system to accept that one is voting purely for competence.
In other words, if people do not like the current corporatist/authoritarian/totalitarian/militarized state that is being constructed around them, they're simply plumb out of luck. That's because the candidates on this "best of all worlds" won't be running on how to CHANGE what's going on – only on how to administer it BETTER.
And who is Ms. Lynn Forester de Rothschild? The bio tells us that she is "CEO of EL Rothschild, LLC and the co-Chair of the 'Better Values, Better Markets' Task Force at the Henry Jackson Society in London." You can "follow her on Facebook, Twitter, and at LdeReport.com," we learn.
The views Ms. Rothschild expresses are inevitable, in our opinion. We've continually catalogued them and here they are once more – reinforced by an individual whose family is, in our estimation, the most powerful in the world.
Yes, it is likely the Rothschilds and other great banking families control tens or even hundreds of trillions via central banks around the world. It is likely the Rothschilds, among others, who are driving pell-mell toward what we consider the most horrible future of all – a one-world (new) order administered by central banking technocrats.
We've written literally thousands of speculative articles about this, by now. And we've also pointed out that modern history seems to have resolved itself around one question: whether the Internet Reformation itself (which is waking people up to what's going on) will cause enough people to resist those who are using the chaos and depression of the current world situation to campaign for more and more government and an ever-more centralized global economy, etc.
It's the "people versus the elites," as it always is. And the elites, as they always do, are attempting to provide tools that seemingly empower middle classes but actually only build up bigger and bigger government. Elites LOVE big government because they rule the world via mercantilism. No government, no government levers.
Without the mechanism of mercantilism, the rule of the many by the few becomes a lot more difficult. Enter many of the elite dominant social themes that we have been discussing in these modest pages throughout the past year. Ms. Rothschild, herself, touches on "transparency," on "direct democracy" and, of course, on "better values" (see bio, above). (For some of our articles just Google "transparency" or "direct democracy" and "Daily Bell.")
The idea, of course, is to ensure that any discussion of the FAILURES of government ends up providing an anodyne – that is a solution that INCLUDES MORE government. In other words, government is a terrible problem and the only solution is to increase it and make it better and more responsive – and larger and larger.
The absurd end result of such a point of view is an all-encompassing government stretching around the world with ever-vaster resources. The additional resources will be needed to police government itself. In other words, as the corruption grows, so the resources of government must grow. Here's some more from the article:
For the first time in our nation's history, popular dissatisfaction with both parties is reinforced by the existence of serious bipartisan organizations that will facilitate the effort of a non-aligned national figure to become president. Because of these two factors, the opportunity to mobilize what Tom Friedman calls "the radical center" has never been greater. Indeed, "some revelation is at hand."
The extent of voter dismay in America is astounding. According to an October 2011 Pew Research poll, only 11% of us are content with the federal government. In a 1958 National Election Study, 73% of Americans said that they "always" or "mostly" trusted the government to do the right thing. In contrast, in a New York Times/CBS poll taken in late October, only 10% of those polled expressed the same faith ... Both parties have lost support because of the gridlock caused by ideological divisions ...
The message is clear: as politicians become more partisan and less effective at governing, the electorate is ready for a radical restructure of our election system itself. Voters are refusing to be held hostage to the self-interests of either party. Thankfully, in true American fashion, our civic society has built the tools to meet the challenge; for the first time in our history, the means exist to level the electoral playing field for an independent candidate.
A not-for-profit organization, called Americans Elect is establishing ballot access in all 50 states for the candidates for president and vice president in 2012 who will be nominated directly by the people in an online nominating process. The sophisticated website of Americans Elect allows registered voters a revolutionary new way to nominate a bipartisan ticket to occupy the White House. To date, the website has over 300,000 delegates, more than 50 times the number that participate in both the Democratic and Republican Party conventions (in full disclosure, I sit on the Leadership Board for Americans Elect).
Perhaps she is kidding? Perhaps it is all a bad joke? Not at all. She writes of a similar movement, as well, called "No Labels." This is, we learn, "a political organization of Republicans, Democrats and Independents working on the grassroots level to support bipartisan and pragmatic politicians and policies. The group has 180,000 members and on December 13th is holding an open meeting at the Capital to unveil a comprehensive congressional action plan."
And here is another eloquent (and in our view blood-curdling) statement she makes toward the end of the article. "Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks, is leading a movement of business leaders and political donors to end the hyper-partisanship in Washington that could be the bedrock of financing for a viable independent, bipartisan ticket for 2012. Simply, both the political environment and the tools are in place for a total disintermediation of our political duopoly."
Oh, good. The two-party system was horrible enough. In its place, we shall substitute the worst of all worlds – a one-party system. Yet, Ms. Rothschild seems a true believer.
Toward the very end of the article she sums up her points with eloquent intensity: "If activated, the 'radical center' is bigger and stronger than all the vested interests and the extremists in the political parties, in the media, in the streets and in the guts of Washington. All that is needed is for them to mobilize with 'passionate intensity.'" Hm-mm. Say, isn't she talking about OWS? Or are we too paranoid?
Sure, there are many in the wide-world of blogging who consider our modest and uncontroversial website a disseminator of nothing more than conspiratorial notions dressed up as free-marketing thinking. And yet ... we make no apologies.
We believe our paradigm is the correct one and purely from an investing point of view those who use it have known about the potential for serious and serial failures in many if not most of the power elites' fear-based promotions literally years before they took place.
The lies of global warming, the failure of the EU, the endless unraveling of the Chinese economy, the demise of the moral justifications for central bank ... we predicted each possibility months or years before there were any real-world clues that they were actually going to take place.
And by following the elites' propaganda, we started writing about "transparency" and "direct democracy" long ago. We warned that, faced with information about government corruption and mendacity, the elites would have to do something to ensure the continuation of the meme and the march toward world government.
Since reducing government is anathema to them, they will have to come up with another solution. We predicted that instead of reducing government, the elites would try to use the Internet (humankind's most powerful modern tool) to promote government transparency and direct democracy. Hey, that's "hot."
The upcoming Pecora-style Hearings that we have been writing about recently (should they occur), will be positioned as a government clean-up of corruption that may extend to Fedgov itself. Meanwhile, the memes of direct democracy will be promoted through a variety of suddenly emergent think tanks, groups, educational and political facilities, etc. Occupy Wall Street is likely one faux-facility intended for this promotion.
Kudos, by the way, to Robert Wenzel for picking up on this article by Lynn Forester de Rothschild as soon as it came out. We're pleased to see that Wenzel, like some other acute libertarian viewers of the modern scene, seems to be using the tools of directed history to analyze what is ACTUALLY happening to our world.
Conclusion: We have no idea whether Ms. Rothschild's perspective on direct democracy and government transparency will win the proverbial day or if the Internet Reformation itself will undermine it. But we do know that if one tracks the unfolding memes – like breadcrumbs – the trail is very plain to see. No, not conspiracy. Reality. Source