Category Archives: Poli-Econ

Hidden behind the 5,554 page TPP Trade Deal is one very simply fact; Trade Pacts are not about opening markets, exporting goods or even an economic lift for the working public. They are and have only ever been about strategic infestation, the establishment of order by a dominant influence over another.

Obama will tell you that the TPP will open new opportunities for U.S. Agriculture (just one of hundreds of examples), but fail to tell you that the U.S., since the passage of NAFTA/CAFTA, has now, for the first time in its history, become a Net Importer of Agricultural Products. Where once the U.S. was a gross exporter of avocados, U.S. Farmers were forced to cut output as an indirect subsidy to sources south of the border. Given the closure of 60k+ manufacturing facilities over the last 20 years, the rabidly understated unemployment rate (evidenced by the lowest in 30 years labor participation rate) and the GDP Growth rates – due principally to inflation and growth in government spending – what exactly is it that the U.S. generates in fungible product for export (other than military hardware)? What could possibly be produced in sufficient quantities and consumed by so-called foreign markets that could even begin to quench the revenue-thirst of the Federal & State Government let alone the economic needs of middle-America and/or reverse the seemingly unstoppable economic decline?

No, the TPP as well as the upcoming Pacts with the E.U. and each of the treaties at least as far back as the Clinton Administration (WTO/GATT) have proven themselves to be absolutely devastating to the American Public. The so-called global-economy is a pure fabrication, a manufactured rouse masking itself behind a condition that has always existed however, on far more distinct and functional terms.

True, economies function best where true free-trade exists and it is also true that trade functions most efficiently when an order/medium of exchange occurs. However, in its contemporary iteration Free-Trade is not at all about Trading Freely, but more so compartmentalization, on a global scale, of an economic order that is not vested or attached or beholden to a region it freely exploits. Free Market Economic Principals do not exist and for one very simple reason: Capitalists abhor competition and so they buy Political Influence to insure that it doesn’t exist.

You want to see what so-called Free Trade has done to the American People? Take a look at the parallel that exists between cumulative growth in Trade Deficits (at least since 1990) and the growth in Government Spending; take a look at the Domestic Capital Investment by U.S. Industry and compare it to the shuttering of plant capacity, factual Unemployment numbers/Labor Participation Rates and the depression in real-term Wages.

The Numbers tell the truth while the Politicized Rodents lie! One incontrovertible truth remains: All economies are local (not Global) for one very simple reason; it’s precisely the point where demand originates. Destroy or disable the origins of where demand (and the capacity to feed it) originates and you have no economy. You have the U.S. where the entire system is now built and survives (to the extent that it does) entirely on the manipulation of inflationary forces. The belief that economic growth/expansion occurs due to rising prices. It’s really quite simple and most, unfortunately, regrettable!

Curtis C. Greco, Founder