Thad Beversdorf: Death of an Economy

thad-beversdorf-death-of-an-economy

Thad Beversdorf believes Corporatism prioritises short term profits above everything else.

I define corporatism as an economic model, such as our existing, that prioritizes short term profit maximization above everything else even consuming all other aspects of society to attain that goal.

Now in today’s world of continuously updated news, facts and figures it becomes almost impossible to gauge real progress.

We rarely ever hear about YoY results anymore let alone 5 year or 10 year results.

The Matrix Exposed – Thad Beversdorf – 5 Sept 2016 – FirstRebuttal.com
See: http://www.firstrebuttal.com/the-matrix-exposed/

This is not exactly a new idea.

To the west, America, he said, full of greedy fools fouling up their inheritance.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy – John le Carre – 1974

However, Thad Beversdorf has cranked the numbers.

So let’s look at the destruction of our modern society by way of corporatism, which is synonymous to the expansion of interest bearing private and public debt.

death-of-an-economy

The Matrix Exposed – Thad Beversdorf – 5 Sept 2016 – FirstRebuttal.com
See: http://www.firstrebuttal.com/the-matrix-exposed/

Thad Beversdorf clearly associates the decline in income, credit and consumption growth rates with the GATT Tokyo Round that concluded in 1979.

One thing to note is that income, credit and consumption growth rates all peaked immediately following Gatt Tokyo.

What I’m telling you is that this is not a coincidence but a consequence.

The Matrix Exposed – Thad Beversdorf – 5 Sept 2016 – FirstRebuttal.com
See: http://www.firstrebuttal.com/the-matrix-exposed/

General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was a multilateral agreement regulating international trade.

According to its preamble, its purpose was the “substantial reduction of tariffs and other trade barriers and the elimination of preferences, on a reciprocal and mutually advantageous basis.”


GATT was signed by 23 nations in Geneva on October 30, 1947 and took effect on January 1, 1948.

It lasted until the signature by 123 nations in Marrakesh on April 14, 1994 of the Uruguay Round Agreements, which established the World Trade Organization (WTO) on January 1, 1995.

The original GATT text (GATT 1947) is still in effect under the WTO framework, subject to the modifications of GATT 1994.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Agreement_on_Tariffs_and_Trade

Wikipedia is tight lipped about the GATT Tokyo Round negotiated during the Nixon [1969-1974], Ford [1974-1977] and Carter [1977-1981] administrations.

Tokyo Round: 1973–79

Reduced tariffs and established new regulations aimed at controlling the proliferation of non-tariff barriers and voluntary export restrictions.

102 countries took part in the round.

Concessions were made on $190 billion worth.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Agreement_on_Tariffs_and_Trade

This is probably because the GATT Tokyo Round enabled American corporations to start outsourcing [to developing economies] because import tariffs on manufactured goods were [on average] reduced to 4.7%.

The Tokyo Round – a first try at reforming the trading system

Conducted between 1973 and 1979 and with 102 participating countries, the Tokyo Round continued GATT’s efforts to progressively reduce tariffs.

The results included an average one-third cut in customs duties in the world’s nine major industrial markets, bringing the average tariff on manufactured products down to 4.7 per cent compared with about 40 per cent at the time of GATT’s creation.

The tariff reductions, phased in over a period of eight years, involved an element of harmonization, bringing the highest tariffs down proportionately more than the lowest.

The Roots of the WTO
Iowa State University of Science and Technology

http://www2.econ.iastate.edu/classes/econ355/choi/wtoroots.htm

In other words:

Globalised corporations began to hollow-out and loot developed economies after the GATT Tokyo Round was concluded in 1979.

The hollowing-out and looting of the American economy is well documented.

However, time after time after time, the only segment of society that fails to realize any benefit from any policy is middle class America.

corporate-profits

Hidden Agenda Perpetrated by Congress and the Fed in One Chart
Thad Beversdorf – 25 Aug 2016 – FirstRebuttal.com

See: http://www.firstrebuttal.com/hidden-agenda-perpetrated-by-congress-and-the-fed-in-one-chart/

The number of American manufacturing jobs [aka The Goose That Laid The Golden Egg] are currently hovering [in absolute terms] at levels last seen in 1946 and in relative terms [as a percent of total employment] manufacturing jobs are an endangered species.

us-manufacturing-jobs

The Decline Of Manufacturing – The FRED Blog – 21 April 2014
See: https://fredblog.stlouisfed.org/2014/04/the-decline-of-manufacturing/

This hollowing-out and looting of the American economy after 1979 was aided and abetted by the lowering of interest rates in a vain attempt to hide the decline.

effective-federal-funds-rate

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FEDFUNDS

Unsurprisingly, Federal Debt [as percent of Gross Domestic Product] began to grow inextricably soon after the GATT Tokyo Round was concluded in 1979.

federal-debt

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEGDQ188S

America began to change in many others ways after the 1979 GATT Tokyo Round.

Trust and confidence in the American mainstream media has halved since 1979.

“Over the history of the entire trend, Americans’ trust and confidence hit its highest point in 1976, at 72 percent, in the wake of widely lauded examples of investigative journalism regarding Vietnam and the Watergate scandal,” Mr. Swift said.

American trust in news media falls to lowest level in history: Gallup poll
The Washington Times – Jennifer Harper – 14 Sept 2016

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/sep/14/gallup-poll-american-trust-in-news-media-falls-to-/

The average age of members of Congress has risen steadily since 1981.

average-age-of-members-of-the-us-congress

See: https://malagabay.wordpress.com/2016/09/12/the-geriatric-games/

Incarceration rates rose after 1981 and slavery became big business.

incarcerated-americans

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States

Penal labor in the United States, when intended as a form of slavery or involuntary servitude, is explicitly allowed by the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

This form of legal slavery is only allowed when used as punishment for committing a crime.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_labor_in_the_United_States

There are over 900,000 inmates working out of the 2.4 million prisoners in the country.

Meanwhile, large corporations, such as Victoria’s Secret or AT&T, are allowed to sell work contracts to state and federal prisons that outsource work to earn them billions of dollars.

‘Incarcerated Workers’ stage nationwide prison labor strike 45 years after 1971 Attica riot
RT.com – 10 Sept 2016

https://www.rt.com/usa/358870-prison-protests-work-strike/

And [very curiously] it was around this time that gay stopped meaning “light-hearted and carefree”.

gay

http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=gay

Thad Beversdorf believes “the economic future is menacing”.

What we are about to see is that for those not already in retirement and especially for those just entering the real economy today the economic future is menacing and most will not survive it.

The Matrix Exposed – Thad Beversdorf – 5 Sept 2016 – FirstRebuttal.com
See: http://www.firstrebuttal.com/the-matrix-exposed/

Personally, I believe that “economic future” arrived in 2008 when interest rates flat-lined.

death-of-an-economy-trend

federal-funds-effective-rate-weekly

Either way: The economic future is menacing and the GATT Tokyo Round was [in retrospect] a terminal Stairway to Heaven for the American economy.

pension-breakdown

Top 25 Corporate Pension Plans Alone Are Underfunded By Over $225 Billion
ZeroHedge.com – Tyler Durden – 22 Aug 2016

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-08-22/top-25-underfunded-corporate-pension-plans-are-225bn-underwater

social-security-deficit

Obama’s Latest Whopper – Let’s Raise Social Security Benefits!
ZeroHedge.com – Tyler Durden – 3 June 2016

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-06-03/obamas-latest-whopper-lets-raise-social-security-benefits

UPDATE 7 Dec 2016

While hourly compensation has gone up 60% since 1970, when adjusted for inflation it has declined.

If this is prosperity, then what does stagnation look like?

hourly-earnings

Our “Gaslight” Economy – Charles Hugh Smith – 6 Dec 2016
http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com.es/2016/12/our-gaslight-economy.html

This entry was posted in Economics, History. Bookmark the permalink.

12 Responses to Thad Beversdorf: Death of an Economy

  1. Pingback: Voices from the Three Empty Quarters | MalagaBay

  2. malagabay says:

    Toward A New World Order? – ZeroHedge.com – Tyler Durden – 10 Nov 2016
    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-11-10/toward-new-world-order

  3. malagabay says:

    Charles Hugh Smith highlights that the situation for wage slaves started to deteriorate in the early 1970s when Richard Nixon unilaterally abandoned the direct international convertibility of the United States dollar into gold.

    Labor’s share of the national economy has been declining for 46 years:

    The Great Con: Political Correctness Has Marginalized the Working Class
    Charles Hugh Smith – 17 Nov 2016

    http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com.es/2016/11/the-great-con-political-correctness-has.html

    The Nixon shock was a series of economic measures undertaken by United States President Richard Nixon in 1971, the most significant of which was the unilateral cancellation of the direct international convertibility of the United States dollar to gold.

    While Nixon’s actions did not formally abolish the existing Bretton Woods system of international financial exchange, the suspension of one of its key components effectively rendered the Bretton Woods system inoperative.

    While Nixon publicly stated his intention to resume direct convertibility of the dollar after reforms to the Bretton Woods system had been implemented, all attempts at reform proved unsuccessful.

    By 1973, the Bretton Woods system was replaced de facto by a regime based on freely floating fiat currencies that remains in place to the present day.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_shock

  4. malagabay says:

    The View From Under The Bus – Adam Taggart – 22 Nov 2016
    PeakProsperity.com
    https://www.peakprosperity.com/blog/103564/view-under-bus

  5. malagabay says:

    Americans Not In The Labor Force Soar To Record 95.1 Million: Jump By 446,000 In One Month
    ZeroHedge.com – Tyler Durden – 2 Dec 2016
    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-12-02/americans-not-labor-force-soar-record-951-million-surge-446000-one-month

    Beyond Income Inequality
    OfTwoMinds – Charles Hugh-Smith – 2 Dec 2016
    http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com.es/2016/12/beyond-income-inequality.html

  6. malagabay says:

    Virtue-Signaling The Decline Of The Empire – 27 Feb 2017
    Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog

    http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com.es/2017/02/virtue-signaling-decline-of-empire.html

  7. malagabay says:

    Another perspective…

    So, if you acknowledge for the sake of argument that government debt is not actual national income, the following graph is how the U.S. economy looks like excluding stimulus.

    This is Actual GDP excluding artificial stimulus.

    We Are Already In Depression (If Borrowing Money Is Not Income)
    Via Baker & Company Advisory Group
    Zero Hedge – 28 Sept 2017

    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-09-28/we-are-already-depression-if-borrowing-money-not-income

  8. Pingback: Frank Zappa: Flakes | MalagaBay

  9. Yry says:

    Nice round up of most instructive graphs and diagrams applying
    to the US, Europe and should I say South America, more so in the
    light of current events in the Western sphere.
    Welcome article, thank you Tim.

  10. malagabay says:

    Since the world was taken off the gold reserve system way back in 1971, a new age of “post-industrialism” was unleashed onto a globalized world. Humanity was given a new type of system which presumed that both our nature and the cause of value itself were located in the act of consuming. The old idea that our nature was creative, and that our wealth was tied to producing, was assumed to be an obsolete thing of the past… a relic of a dirty old industrial age.

    Under the new post-1971 operating system, we were told that the world would now be divided among producers and consumers.

    The “have-not producers” would provide the cheap labor which first world consumers would increasingly rely on for the creation of goods they used to make for themselves. “First world” nations were told that according to the new post-industrial rules of de-regulation and market economics, that they should export their heavy industry, machine tools and other productive sectors abroad as they transitioned into “white collar” post-industrial consumer societies. The longer this outsourcing of industries went on, the less western nations found themselves capable of sustaining their own citizenries, building their own infrastructure or determining their own economic destinies.

    In place of full spectrum economies that once saw over 40% of North America’s labor force employed in manufacturing, a new addiction to “buying cheap stuff” began, and a “service economies” took over like a cancer.

    Chinese Boogey Man?
    (An Examination of Modern Psychological Warfare)
    The Canadian Patriot – Matthew Ehret – 17 Dec 2020

    https://canadianpatriot.org/2020/12/17/who-is-creating-a-new-chinese-boogey-man-an-examination-of-modern-psychological-warfare/

    The British Hand Behind America’s Colour Revolution: Soros and Lord Malloch Brown
    Canadian Patriot Press – 10 Dec 2020

    https://canadianpatriot.org/2020/12/10/the-british-hand-behind-americas-colour-revolution-soros-and-lord-malloch-brown/

  11. Pingback: Decline and Droop | MalagaBay

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