Following Kleptocrats' Forked Tongued Talking Points

For me, the kleptocrat's talking points can be spotted a mile away. Notice first that as part of the debt deal, unemployment extensions and the 2% payroll tax increase are indeed planned to going away. I posted repeatedly that this is about the only potential already scheduled austerity apparent in the debt deal.  But without batting an eye, minion Presidente Hopium is back at the teleprompter promising to inject these programs back into the agenda after the Congressional vacation. Whoops. There goes the $1.08-trillion CBO baseline FY 2012 deficit. Hopium will posture for "taxes on the rich" to offset this. Of course, the GOP kleptocrat talking points will be no new taxes for the plutocrats. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Ultimately, that means the par-for-the-course "reform" ends up being a kleptocrat tax break to money launder -- I mean repatriate -- foreign profits of multinationals back to the U.S. Here, they will pay a token toll booth fee to Uncle Sam. This won't create a single job in the U.S., as those companies are already deeply embedded in China and Asia, areas of the world that are well into bust mode. Nor will it help the revenue picture one iota, leaving thinking people to wonder, "Why did they spend so much energy on that one?"  This will balloon FY 2012 right back out.

One way you can know Presidente Hopium is B.S.'ing you: His lips are moving. If he wanted to go after rich kleptocrats, all he would have to do is beef up law enforcement and federal prosecutors. He could beef up the IRS and turn them loose on the real criminals. He could team up with states' Attorney Generals and engineer a steep bankster cram down on mortgage fraud. The possibilities on the judicial and administrative front are endless. These are all calls he can make. What does he do about it? Answer: He runs interference for his kleptcratic patrons while continuing to dish out his stale, canned Democratic talking points.

On the other side of the aisle, the klepotcrats' Republican agents are bringing out their hired guns to work over Aunt Millie's entitlements. Is the talk here about means testing or increasing the Social Security income ceiling a few notches? No. Instead, it centers around shaving benefits with cheap, tawdry inflation-reporting tricks.

Next, we see kleptcrats totally exaggerating the impact of the faux debt deal. JP Morgan for instance is going to explain away the cause of emerging economic weakness -- not as distortions and inflation caused by horrific monetary and fiscal policy, but because the Gumnut is (on paper) only going to run a $1.08-trillion deficit in FY 2012. Excuse me, but if the economy is so fragile that it has to incur trillions of dollars in government support rackets without which it will suffer a big drop in economic activity, then that is a highly unstable and unsustainable bailout-nation system from the get go. Here is the bottom-line indicator of government support, spending  and kleptocratic wash-rinse-repeat rackets to date: Another 1.1 million on food stamps during May.

Of course, this allows the kleptocrats to pitch their latest dynamite-strapped scam: QE3. Unfortunately, after two weeks of poor market action based on economic activity, the commodity market hasn't really alleviated in the manner Bernanke predicted. This is what happens when players use commodities for money instead of economic activity. The effect of this is toxic. Inflation doesn't appear to be cooling one iota except in the doctored numbers of the Fed and Government's Ministry of Truth sycophants.

While all this levity goes on, officials from the credit agencies are paraded out on the networks. They have these very nervous looks about them and spout out comments so unintelligibly that one should strongly suspect a "do you treasure your family" visit from Guito and Vito. The Moody's condition for a downgrade already looks set in stone:

[Moody's] In assigning a negative outlook to the rating, Moody's indicated, however, that there would be a risk of downgrade if (1) there is a weakening in fiscal discipline in the coming year; (2) further fiscal consolidation measures are not adopted in 2013; (3) the economic outlook deteriorates significantly; or (4) there is an appreciable rise in the U.S. government's funding costs over and above what is currently expected.
In an interview with The Associated Press on Tuesday, David Riley, managing director at Fitch, said, "There's more to be done in order to keep the rating in the medium-term."