BOOM Finance and Economics 10th December 2023 -- a Global Review
WEEKLY -- On Sunday -- All previous Editorials are available at LinkedIn and at https://boomfinanceandeconomics.wordpress.com/
CONQUERED FROM WITHIN -- DRIFTING TOWARDS THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE
LOSS OF TRUST IN THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA, THE POLITICIANS, THE CHURCHES AND THE JUSTICE SYSTEM
LOSS OF TRUST IN THE MEDIA
LOSS OF TRUST IN THE SYSTEM OF JUSTICE
THE END OF ROMANIA’S DICTATOR
THE GRUESOME END OF MUSSOLINI
THE UNITED KINGDOM – TYRANNY REVEALED?
THE DEATH OF MERIT – THE RISE OF INTOLERANCE
TESTIMONY FROM A READER
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CONQUERED FROM WITHIN -- DRIFTING TOWARDS THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE
BOOM touched on the subject of poor leadership in the Western democracies last week and has often referred to the subject in numerous editorials.
Specifically in regard to the USA, this quote from Dr Toby Rogers has been occupying BOOM’s mind lately. He said this when comparing his nation to the end of the USSR. BOOM is forced to agree.
“The similarities between the late 1980s USSR and present day USA are uncanny — the endless lies, the corruption, the hollowing out of institutions, the censorship, and the decrepit leadership that is despised by the public.”
Dr Rogers has a PhD in political economy from the University of Sydney in Australia and a Master of Public Policy degree from the University of California, Berkeley. He grew up in southern California. His bachelor's degree in political science is from Swarthmore College in Philadelphia. He seems eminently qualified to comment on the decline of his nation, the USA.
LOSS OF TRUST IN THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA, THE POLITICIANS, THE CHURCHES AND THE JUSTICE SYSTEM
In last week’s editorial, BOOM discussed the dramatic breakdown in the Canadian public’s trust in the major institutions of Canada. This was revealed by the recent poll commissioned by the Bank of Canada (the central bank) and referenced in a report titled “Digital Canadian Dollar Public Consultation Report”, dated November 2023. The survey received a high level of engagement from individuals across Canada, gathering a total of 89,423 responses.
Quote: “In the category dealing with “Complete Trust”, only 4 % of Canadians have complete trust in their financial institutions, 5 % in the central Bank of Canada, 3 % in the Government and only 1 % in major Technology companies.
But the shock is contained in the category “Completely Distrust”. Here, 74 % of the respondents completely distrust the Government of Canada, 58 % completely distrust the Bank of Canada, 46 % distrust their financial institutions and 61 % completely distrust the major Technology companies.”
These numbers are staggering. There is no other way to describe them. They display fulsomely a dramatic loss of trust in the federal government, the central bank, the financial institutions and the technology companies of Canada.
The Bank of Canada poll did not ask the public about loss of trust in the major churches. However, cognisant of the fact that the major churches universally supported the official Covid narratives and totalitarian policies of many governments worldwide during the last 3 years, BOOM would expect that a similar loss of trust would have been displayed if that question had been asked.
THE FOURTH ESTATE – LOSS OF TRUST IN MAINSTREAM MEDIA
But what about the so-called “Fourth Estate”, the mainstream media? The term Fourth Estate or fourth power refers to the press and news media both in explicit capacity of advocacy and implicit ability to frame political issues. The derivation of the term arises from the traditional European concept of the three estates of the realm: the clergy, the nobility, and the commoners.
A recent Gallup Poll in the United States dealt with this matter. Gallup reported, on 19th October, that a record number of Americans – 39 % -- now have “no confidence at all” in their mainstream media. Another 29% of U.S. adults have “not very much” trust.
Think about that – almost 70 % of Americans have either no trust at all or not very much trust in their mainstream media.
And Gallup reported that where trust still remained, that trust was at record low levels.
Quote: “The 32% of Americans who say they trust the mass media “a great deal” or “a fair amount” to report the news in a full, fair and accurate way ties Gallup’s lowest historical reading, previously recorded in 2016.”
Gallup produced this graph which they encourage you to download. It shows the steady erosion of trust since 1973.
GALLUP POLL
Here is more from Gallup’s 19th October report – Quote:
“Americans’ confidence in the mass media to report the news fully, fairly and accurately is at its lowest point since 2016 .... This low confidence reading for the fourth estate comes at a time when trust in each of the three branches of the federal government is also low.
In addition, Gallup in June found confidence readings in both TV news and newspapers that were near their historical lows and last December found a record-low-tying rating of the honesty and ethics of journalists.”
This reference is to another Gallup Poll released earlier on October 13th. In that report, Gallup said that trust in most institutions is at or near record lows.
Quote: “Gallup’s annual update on trust in government institutions and actors finds Americans have the most faith in local government (67%) and the least faith in the legislative branch of the federal government, or Congress (32%)…... less than half are confident in the executive and judicial branches of the federal government, elected officials and candidates for office, and in the federal government’s ability to handle both domestic and international problems.”
This graphic is from a website called VisualCapitalist. The data source used is Gallup.
TRUST THE MEDIA?
These are staggering revelations. Loss of the public’s trust in their institutions has become the norm in both Canada and the United States. And that loss of trust is growing over time.
How can these (relatively) civil societies maintain their civility if this loss of trust continues into the future? Can they rescue themselves?
LOSS OF TRUST IN THE SYSTEM OF JUSTICE
Sadly, the same progress in lack of trust seems to apply to the US Justice system. Trust in the American Justice system is sliding fast from an average of 66 % to below 50 %.
More from the Gallup Polls – Quote: “Trust in the judicial branch, usually one of the most trusted branches (averaging 66%), is furthest from its historical average, with its current 49% confidence rating 17 points below its typical rating since 1972.”
If less than 50 % of US citizens trust the courts and only 32 % have trust in the government and only 32 % in the mass media, then civil society is on a trajectory towards collapse and disorder.
In Canada, everything is worse. They may already be approaching a collapse of the social bonds that hold a society together. The Heads of Government have the most to lose in such a situation. History is replete with examples.
On 5th November, BOOM’s weekly editorial outlined what happened in The Netherlands in 1672 when the once very successful Prime Minister, Jacob de Witt and his brother were murdered in the street by an angry mob. The recorded history contains stories of their bodies being torn apart to allow the mob to fry some body parts before eating them.
THE END OF ROMANIA’S COMMUNIST DICTATOR – A DRUMHEAD COURT MARTIAL
In more recent history, there is the story of the execution of the Romanian communist dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife, Elena, in 1989 when the dictatorial, authoritarian, communist world of the USSR (the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) abruptly fell apart.
Ceausescu was the general secretary of the Romanian Communist Party from 1965 to 1989, and the second and last communist leader of Romania. He was also the country's head of state from 1967, and widely classified as a dictator, serving as President of the State Council and from 1974 concurrently as President of the Republic.
During the Romanian Revolution of December 1989, he and Elena were arrested, tried and immediately executed by firing squad. The People were anxious for justice to be done after decades of totalitarian control and abuse of their human rights.
The trial of Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu was held on Christmas Day, 25th December 1989, by an Exceptional Military Tribunal, a drumhead court-martial created at the request of a newly formed group called the National Salvation Front. A drumhead court-martial is a military court-martial held in the field to render summary justice for offences committed in action. The term is said to originate from drums used as improvised tables and drumheads as writing surfaces at fast-track military trials and executions.
The court-martial resulted in guilty verdicts and death sentences for Ceaușescu and his wife. The main charge was genocide. Romanian state television announced that he was responsible for the deaths of 60,000 people. Ceaușescu refused to recognise the tribunal, arguing its lack of constitutional basis and claiming that the revolutionary authorities were part of a Soviet plot. But he and his wife were taken from the room, marched to a wall and shot immediately by firing squad. The People had run out of patience with tyranny.
THE GRUESOME END OF MUSSOLINI – ANOTHER TYRANT
Benito Mussolini was the fascist dictator of Italy from 1922 until 1943 when he was deposed. As dictator of Italy and principal founder of fascism which he defined as the fusion of corporations with the State, Mussolini inspired and supported the international spread of fascist movements in the period from the end of World War one to the beginning of World War Two
His death came on 28th April 1945, in the final days of World War Two, when he was executed by an Italian partisan. His girlfriend, Clara Pettacci, died beside him. Angry crowds strung up his corpse, spat on it, stoned it, and otherwise desecrated it before finally laying it to rest.
The night after Mussolini’s death, a cargo truck carried 18 bodies into Milan’s Square of the Fifteen Martyrs. They were those of Mussolini, Carla Petacci and her brother and 15 suspected Fascists.
It was the same square where, a year earlier, Mussolini’s men had gunned down 15 anti-fascists in a brutal execution. That connection was not lost on the residents of Milan, who then took out 20 years of frustration and fury on the corpses. People began hurling rotten vegetables at the dictator’s corpse. Then, they took to beating and kicking it. One woman fired five shots into his head at close range. Then the angry mob strung them up upside down in a gas station.
MUSSOLINI STRUNG UP
THE UNITED KINGDOM – TYRANNY REVEALED?
All of this begs the question – has history repeated? Do authoritarian, fascist tyrants in disguise now run the UK, the USA, Germany, France, Scandinavia, the European Union? Switzerland? Has tyranny conquered the so-called Western democracies? Is this leading to economic stagnation, loss of institutional trust and inevitable social decline? The fall of the advanced economies? The end of civil society and “democracy” (whatever that is)?
By way of example, in the UK, we have the population becoming poorer and poorer while the elites live in luxury. Economic stagnation has now persisted for more than two decades. Here is a chart of economic growth in the UK over the last 25 years. Ignore the huge recession in 2020 precipitated by the tyrannical, autocratic Covid panic and fear campaign and the rebound in 2021. The rest looks awful. Economic stagnation writ large. During that period, the population of the UK has grown by 10 million from around 58 million to 68 million. The second chart shows the total GDP over the last 50 years. It illustrates, again, the dramatic lack of economic expansion over the last 20 years, despite 10 million more people.
UK GDP GROWTH OVER 25 YEARS
UK GDP OVER 50 YEARS
And it’s all getting worse, not better. A recent study, by the Resolution Foundation and the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics, showed that UK living standards are 3% below their peak in 2020, and are continuing to fall. The poverty is rapidly becoming manifest.
“The UK has now seen 15 years of relative decline, with productivity growth at half the rate seen across other advanced economies,” according to the research, titled “Economy 2030 Inquiry”.
If you think of the British Prime Ministers over that period, you are left uninspired. The list reads – Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss (for only 50 days, unelected), Rishi Sunak (unelected). Would you hire Boris Johnson to run your small family business or to manage the affairs of your local town council?
Last week, BOOM referred to another list from a previous editorial, equally uninspiring.
Think of Biden, Macron, Rutte, Von Der Leyen, Stoltenberg, Draghi, Trump, Clinton, Ardern, Trudeau. For them all, politics seems to be more about self promotion than just about anything else. They are all self obsessed, absorbed with their "global" agendas and essentially blind to the concerns of the common people under their gaze while caught up in a world of celebrity.
This whole discussion begs many questions – Have these people been carefully chosen, selected, groomed and promoted? Have the nations of the Western advanced economy democracies been corrupted from within as part of a grand plan? If so, who is running that plan?
To answer the many questions, BOOM turns to the definition of Fascism that has traditionally been regarded as “right wing”. Wikipedia defines it in this manner.
“Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement, characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.”
However, the Western advanced economy democracies seem to have become dominated by a peculiar form of fascism which differs in only a few aspects to this definition.
Perhaps it could be described as --
A Fascism of the far-left, authoritarian, globalist, a political ideology and movement, characterised by dictatorial leaders, centralised autocracies, militarism, the forcible suppression of opposition, censorship, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation or race and strong regimentation of society and the economy.
THE DEATH OF MERIT – THE RISE OF INTOLERANCE
Professor James Allan is the Garrick Professor of Law at Queensland University in Australia. He recently wrote an article on The Death of Merit published in Spectator Australia and in the Daily Sceptic.
“Last week the Vice-Chancellor of the Queensland University of Technology – be clear readers, not my University of Queensland – announced that QUT was going to remove all references to ‘merit’ from its hiring policy. The new approach would factor in gender, ethnicity and departmental balance. This is what societal decline looks like. That is politics all the way down (and as an aside, balance will not include any spots for conservatives I can assure you).”
He opened the article with this paragraph.
Quote: “Tolerance and merit. These abstract concepts have been two of the great legacies of Western culture. They drive freedom, competition and wealth. But both are under incredible threat from those who prefer to see the world in terms of identity politics – this is the basic notion that the most important thing about any individual is the group to which he or she belongs. It’s not one’s ability to work hard or her moral character or his resilience or even one’s unique beauty or brains that matter. Nope. It’s the sort of reproductive organs you bring to the table. Or your skin pigmentation. Or the religion you practise. Or that your kind arrived somewhere first. That’s the core of identity politics and it has infected politics, the universities, the corporate world, the churches, the entirety of the Human Resources sector. Heck, the whole of the myriad DEI bureaucracies are based on identity politics.”
DEI stands for “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion”
In economics (and finance), things work until they don’t. Do your own research. Make your own conclusions. BOOM does not offer investment advice.
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