The Ultimate Power Grab - Douglas Castle's Applied Intelligence Report | THE INTERNATIONALIST PAGE

Wednesday, July 07, 2010

The Ultimate Power Grab - Douglas Castle's Applied Intelligence Report

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The Ultimate Power Grab.

The Global Futurist at http://TheGlobalFuturist.blogspot.com

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Dear Colleagues, Members and Friends:

It is one thing to be victimized by a cleverly-disguised, subtle takeover of control...a plan or scheme of great engineering, elaborate progressive steps, and a formidable attempt at misdirection, distraction or obfuscation. It is much sadder to watch sovereign nations, deeply in debt due to years of systemic inefficiency, thievery and tremendous waste grope at the shrinking wallets of their citizens, states and businesses to pick up the tab so that they may continue their policy of empowering and enriching themselves.

Throughout the community of industrialized nations, governments are creating new agencies to "solve the problems" created by the old ones; they are trying to nationalize, federalize and control smaller geograpical subunits (already starved), businesses (except those who can afford it) and individuals to grab whatever funds they can to keep themselves afloat at the expense of their victimized constituents.

These big sovereigns are not serving or solving -- they are stealing in able to sustain themselves at the expense of the very citizenries which entrusted and empowered them. They only know how to take -- and they offer nothing in return except for specious rhetoric, steaming piles of teleprompted fertilizer about the "national security," "terrorist threats," and "protecting the people whom they are charged to 'serve'.

The one-time "slaves" have become the new masters. The one-time hosts have become the new parasites, metastasizing at an alarming rate, and with an instatiable appetite for money. They will either disregard laws or create new laws (and enforcement protocols) to get it. This effect is multiplied by the increased intertwining relationships and blurred lines between the highest levels of government and those corporate giants and financial institutions which are simply, to quote Man Of The Year Ben Bernanke, "Too Big to Fail."

Entrepreneurs and emerging enterprises which have not received the "Too Big To Fail" stamp of immortality are being starved of resources and being audited, harrassed and choked out of business...discouraged, burdened, scrutinzed andf beaten into submission only to increase the market share of the insatiable goliaths who are sleeping with their unholy respective governments.

Without united entrepreneurial and activistic intervention the futurescape will be a bleak sci-fi scenario where a few giant olympians, in fortified quarters and armed to the pointed teeth, will be looking over a poverty-infested sea of the disenfranchised and doomed. I give this particular scenario five to eight years to become reality, unless there is an uprising which is serious enough to stop the trajectory of this voracious , amoral juggernaut which we have let grow, unpruned and untamed.

Then again, I should just bring you, gentle readers, up to date on the reality of what is occurring in the industrialized nations as I write this [this may well put a bit of a shiver up your spine]:

1. Federal governments are seizing legislative, regulatory and enforcement power from states and provinces;

2. As governments become increasingly concerned about the violence that often follows hunger and betrayal, they are tightening up on the law-abiding citizens' right to keep and bear arms. Of course, gun stores are now beseiged by old and new clients trying to get guns and ammunition in order to protect home, property and family. Criminals, both independent and government-sanctioned, are continuing to get unlimited access to weaponry, detection and defense sytems that would make any drug lord jealous -- are they are getting them through the traditional channels;

3. BP (British Petroleum) has created, and continues to sponsor, the greatest environmental and ecological catastrophe in the history of all of Humanity. They have been chastened by some politicians. But they are still the principal supplier of fuel to the militaries of several world powers. Look for very expensive and scarce seafood, decimated tourism, tarball-tossing competitions, a wordwide potable water shortage, and, as a bonus, along with the incredible inflation in prices of all basic and monopoly-run services and essential supplies within the next two fiscal quarters, look for oil to be back at in excess of $150 per barrel, with gasoline (in the US) priced at in excess of $5.00 per gallon at the pump. Think of all of those neanderthals who took their "cash for clunkers" and bought Humvees...Humvee housing might become a real possibility in certain trailer parks. Haitian-style tent cities might begin cropping up in parts of the Urban US.

4. Expect interest rates (the ones actually charged) by banks to increase dramatically, credit guidelines to become impossibly stringent, and conventional bank lending to all but dry up. Credit card abuses will continue. There will be an increasing number of homes available for sale throughout the civilized world due to a combination of economic depression and abandonment, but this supply will not be absorbed by the market regardless of the seeming "bargain potential" due to the fact that mortages will be very difficult to obtain. Foreign investors, prinicipally Asian, will be snapping up a great deal of real estate and other properties in the United States. At a 30% incremental savings rate, these people have savings and cash, while (whilst) the US citizens are borrowing as best they can to simply cover current living expenses.

5. Expect many large private companies and medium-sized publicly-traded companies, trusts and other entity forms in all of the industrialized nations to become increasingly popular targets of Asian acquirors who tend to be strategic, controlling buyers, and not merely passive investors.

Economies which are held together by credit, impulsive consumption and propaganda often meet this type of fate. Watch, over the next few years (2010 - 2013) as companies, jobs, talent, minds, fortunes and the tax base flee the G-8 Nations and head to other established and emerging nations in a flight to safety and quality. After this expatriation phase, and some panicked border closings and limitations on travel, things should really heat up.

As they say in China (translated to English here), "May you live in interesting times."

I promise that you will.

Faithfully,

Douglas Castle