"David Barr, [a restaurant owner]...has 23 stores with 421 employees, 109 of whom are full-time. Of those, he provides health insurance to 30. His total cost is $129,000 per year [about $4300 per employee], and his employees pay $995. Under 'Obamacare', he'll have to provide health insurance for all 109 full-time employees at a cost of $444,000 per year. The $315,000 increase is more than half his annual profit, after expenses. If he chose to pay the fine instead, his healthcare costs would still increase by $89,000 per year."

-- Bob Livingston article

The solution? Hours will be cut, workers will be laid off, small businesses will close, and consumer prices will go up. The ignorant and the unemployed will continue to vote for socialist politicians that promise the most "benefits", just like they did this time, which will only accelerate the collapse of the productive system.

Why is our so-called healthcare so expensive and inefficient to begin with? Why is everyone forced to buy "insurance" instead of a simple and affordable pay-as-you-go system? Because of government interference and protected cartels in every aspect of the business, from medical school to mortuary. Healthcare has been transformed from an honorable profession into a protection racket.

"When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion -- when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing -- when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors -- when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you -- when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice -- you may know that your society is doomed."

-- Ayn Rand, "Atlas Shrugged", 1957

The IMF has been crushing developing countries with austerity for nearly 60 years since inception. It was CREATED to do this, so Europeans shouldn't be surprised that this mechanism is now finally being tried on them. It is part of the larger manipulation of a power elite that wants to reduce the power of nation-states and usher in global governance [under their control]... The job of Europe's great commercial bankers was to lend the European PIGS into bankruptcy. The job of Europe's great unions is to introduce social chaos into Europe. Out of chaos, order."

-- The Daily Bell

"The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences... The apex of the system was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basle, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world's central banks which were themselves private corporations. Each central bank . . . sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world."

-- Carroll Quigley, "Tragedy and Hope", 1966, pg 324

"[The Obama administration] wasted $3 billion of taxpayer funds on the 'Cash for Clunkers' debacle [in 2009]... After that miserable failure, they realized the true secret to selling vehicles is to give them away to anyone that can scratch an X on a loan document, with 0% interest for 60 months... The surge in auto sales is being completely driven by doling out more loans for a longer time frame to deadbeat borrowers. Subprime auto loans now make up 45% of all car loans and the vast majority of all used car loans... It's amazing how many cars you can sell when you aren't worried about getting paid...

Ben Bernanke is screwing the prudent savers...in order to subsidize the bankers that destroyed the country so they can make auto loans to the same people who took out the zero-percent-down, interest-only, no-doc mortgage loans in 2005... Until the bad debt is purged from the system and saving takes precedence over spending, the country will stagger and ultimately fall under the weight of its immense debt... The 'crack-up boom' approaches."

-- Jim Quinn article

"The boom can last only as long as the credit expansion progresses at an ever-accelerated pace. The boom comes to an end as soon as additional quantities of fiduciary media are no longer thrown upon the loan market. But it could not last forever, even if inflation and credit expansion were to go on endlessly. It would then encounter the barriers which prevent the boundless expansion of circulation credit. It would lead to the 'crack-up boom' and the breakdown of the whole monetary system."

-- Ludwig von Mises, "Human Action", chapter 20

It seems evident that the oligarchs who control the banking system intend for this to be the outcome.

There may be no such thing as a "free lunch", but there is such a thing as making someone else pay for it. The question is, how long can the game continue before it finally collapses?

"Money taken from workers and investors* and transferred to the non-working spenders is not "income". It is [merely] redistribution from producers to non-producers... Government transfer payments have doubled as a proportion of "income" in the last forty years. The increase since 2000 has been accelerating, up 122% in 12 years versus the 55% increase in GDP. The slight drop since 2010 is the result of millions falling off the 99 week unemployment rolls [after living at taxpayer expense for two years].

Luckily, it is increasingly easy to leave unemployment and go on the dole for life. The number of people being added to the SSDI (disability) program has surged by 2.2 million since mid-2010, an 8.5% increase... Applications are swelling with disabilities like muscle pain, obesity, migraine headaches, mental illness (43% of all claims) and 'depression'... It's like hitting the jackpot, as 99% of those accepted into the SSDI program never go back to work... The SSDI program, costing $132,000,000,000 per year, is now projected to go broke in 2016."

-- Jim Quinn article

Note that the chronically unemployed and the marginally disabled are not the only freeloaders. The paper shuffling, gun-toting "workers" in government bureaucracies are entirely dependent upon transfer payments. Most "investors", bankers, brokers, lawyers, politicians, etc. likewise siphon off vast amounts of wealth without producing anything of real value.

The common factor in each case is government interference, enabling and protecting non-productive activity that would otherwise not be possible, and preventing the opportunity for productive activity that would otherwise be possible in a voluntary society.

UPDATE: In Britain, someone has figured out a simple scheme to reduce the welfare rolls and extract some "community service" labour at the same time. It's not exactly a free market solution, but better than the status quo.

"Unemployed benefit claimants will be forced to carry out unpaid work if they refuse to turn up for two interviews or drop out of work programmes... Those who refuse to take part, or agree but then fail to turn up, have their unemployment benefit stopped for a minimum of three months... Figures show that 20 per cent of those ordered to take part in four-week community projects stop claiming immediately and another 30 per cent are stripped of their benefits when they fail to turn up."

-- London Daily Mail

"In essence, we're headed towards economic and financial bankruptcy. But.... what's happening today is much more serious than an economic bankruptcy... We're talking about psychological and spiritual bankruptcy... America is not the first to start with moral failure and move on to economic failure. In all the examples history provides, economic bankruptcy and political tyranny are invariably preceded by moral bankruptcy...

It's been said that power corrupts, and that's true. But it's more to the point to say that the corrupt seek power... From the perspective of political morality, I'd say the most useful dichotomy may be people who want to control the material world vs. those who want to control other people."

-- Doug Casey

There are three basic personality types: producer, parasite, and predator. Producers are the builders and sustainers of society, always under attack by parasites and predators. If left unchecked, the latter eventually overwhelm the former and the society collapses.

Each of these types operates with a completely different set of moral values. The notions of "right" and "wrong" which appear self-evident to the producer simply do not apply to either the parasite or the predator. The producer finds it difficult to comprehend this and therefore fails to devise adequate defenses. The moral arguments against fraud, theft, rape, and murder which are effective restraints within the producer class are simply scorned and derided by the others who see them as signs of weakness and vulnerability in their prey.

Skilled predators maneuver themselves into positions of dominance, with support from their ignorant parasite allies. Together they work to destabilize the producer herd for easier feeding. Is it any wonder that society always appears on the brink of chaos?

"Jeffrey Sachs is tipped to be the next president of the World Bank, and pledges to tackle global poverty... He is based at Columbia University's Earth Institute and acts as an adviser to the UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, on how to achieve the millennium development goals, which set the world targets on poverty, education and health...

As a consultant in the late 1980s and early 1990s while an academic at Harvard, he advised Poland, then Russia, on their economic reforms... The consequences were disastrous, enriching a tiny coterie of oligarchs who bought up public assets on the cheap, and driving Russia towards defaulting on its debts."

-- London Guardian article

For more on the Earth Institute and the U.N. / Rockefeller "sustainable development" agenda, see our articles "Culling the Herd" and "The Earth Charter". Follow the links for related timelines, other articles, and the websites of the various organzations.

The restructuring of Russia succeeded in concentrating wealth and power in the hands of a chosen minority, some of whom have since emigrated to London and Tel Aviv. This is considered "disastrous" only by outsiders who are not members of the club.

"Shielded by the credibility of a Harvard advisory team [including Jeffrey Sachs] handpicked by Lawrence Summers, Moscow saw a mid-1990s credit crisis used to shift the ownership of state-owned assets to a handful of Russians. At the time, Summers was serving as Under Secretary for International Affairs...

[The] advisers urged that funds be borrowed from oligarch-controlled banks. As collateral, Moscow pledged shares in state-owned oil companies, the crown jewels of the Russian economy. When the loans defaulted, the shares were sold to those same oligarchs in rigged auctions. Portrayed as "privatization" by Summers and Harvard's accommodating advisers,...Mikhail Gorbachev estimates that the oligarchs stripped $1 trillion from Russia's struggling economy...

Summers succeeded Robert Rubin as Treasury Secretary in 1999, marking their success in repealing Depression-era laws that banned the merger of banks, brokers, insurance firms and investment banks. A former co-chairman of Goldman Sachs, Rubin joined CEO Sanford Weill at Citigroup, the first financial institution to fully embrace the Rubin-led repeal."

-- Jeff Gates, 2008-11

UPDATE: In late March, Obama made the surprise appointment of Jim Yong Kim to replace outgoing World Bank president Robert Zoellick.

Nathaniel Rothschild says sauna with Lord Mandelson was purely pleasure, not business

"Lord Mandelson visited a sauna in Siberia with a Russian oligarch and Nathaniel Rothschild, one of Britain's richest men, where they were thrashed with birch leaves and plunged into an ice bath together, the High Court heard yesterday...

Lord Mandelson travelled to the region on Jan 30, 2005 as a guest of Mr. Rothschild, scion of the banking dynasty, and Oleg Deripaska, the billionaire owner of Russia's biggest aluminium plant. Also present was Peter Munk, a Canadian gold magnate, and Sebastian Taylor, a friend of Mr Rothschild...

Lord Mandelson flew to Russia on Mr Rothschild's private jet after meeting him at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland... [The group] took Mr Deripaska's private jet to Abakan in Siberia, where he has business interests and a vast estate...

Mr Rothschild said: "The whole point of the Siberia trip was that we went there, spent a nanosecond at the [aluminium] smelter, we then went to the most delightful banya. We were beaten by a 25-year-old banya keeper man, who has spent his life perfecting the art of banya. Then we jumped into ice-cold water. It is the best way in the world to beat jet lag and everything else. It was incredibly enjoyable. Everyone woke up the next day feeling revitalised and excited about the day."

-- London Telegraph

Lord Mandelson was Britain's European Commissioner for Trade at the time of this little "pleasure trip". According to the Pink News, he's a homosexual who considers himself a role model for other politicians to emulate. I'm sure the oligarchs would agree.

Mining industry billionaires Rothschild, Munk and Deripaska are also partners in the exclusive "Porto Montenegro" yacht club project. All of them, including Lord Mandelson, were guests at Rothschild's multi-million dollar birthday bash held there last summer.

However, servants like Mandelson would do well to take a lesson from poor Saif Gaddafi, who had his own lavish birthday party in Montenegro in 2009. A graduate of the London School of Economics with a Ph.D. in global governance, he was once groomed and entertained by these same "friends" -- just before the brutal overthrow and sacking of his family fiefdom.

UPDATE: Nat Rothschild sued the Daily Mail over their reporting of this story, but the court rejected his claim for damages. The paper has now printed another story, with photos.

"Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else...

Thus, the public has two hopes, and Government makes two promises - many benefits and no taxes. Hopes and promises, which, being contradictory, can never be realized.

Now, is this not the cause of all our revolutions? For, between the Government, which lavishes promises which it is impossible to perform, and the public, which has conceived hopes which can never be realized, two classes of men interpose - the ambitious and the Utopians...

And the people believe, and the people hope, and the people make a revolution!

These two promises are for ever clashing with each other; it cannot be otherwise. To live upon credit, which is the same as exhausting the future, is certainly a present means of reconciling them: an attempt is made to do a little good now, at the expense of a great deal of harm in the future. But such proceedings call forth the spectre of bankruptcy, which puts an end to credit.

What is to be done then?"

-- Frederic Bastiat, "Government", 1848

"My fear...is that the financial system itself has somehow slipped all human control -- that it has become the preserve of a profoundly anti-democratic, super-rich elite, and that it girdles the planet like some alien entity from an H.G. Wells novel. The digitised financial machine does not work for us: we work for the machine. And I do not believe that our political leaders have the faintest idea how to bring it under control."

-- Robert Harris

Indeed, we work for the machine, and "our political leaders" are selected to ensure its continued operation. The entire system, which appears chaotic to outsiders, is already under control -- including the occasional episodes of "panic" and "collapse".

"It was in Western Europe especially that the conception of the organized and disciplined World-State as a revolutionary objective ultimately grew to its full proportions. At first it grew obscurely... It needed the financial storm of the years 1928 and 1929 and the steadily progressive collapse of the whole world's economic life, of which this storm was the prelude, to give the World-State prophets the courage of their convictions."

-- H.G. Wells, "The Shape of Things to Come", 1933

"Kweku Adoboli, 31, of Ghana (see photo) who was privately educated in Britain and is the son of a retired UN worker, is accused of being responsible for the biggest loss [$2.3 billion] ever accrued by a single trader based in London... UBS is understood to have discovered the huge loss late on Wednesday afternoon... Within three hours, detectives had entered the HQ of UBS and had also arrested Adoboli, who according to sources was a 'work-hard, play-hard' trader who enjoyed the company of a series of attractive women at his flat in Whitechapel, East London."

-- London Daily Mail

The infamous "City of London" has sunk to new lows. What respectable Swiss banker would lend this African party animal $2,300,000,000 just to place bets at the roulette table? Maybe UBS was feeling lucky after getting its recent taxpayer-funded bailout. Or maybe there was someone with inside info on the other side of the bet.

Do we really need any more examples to prove that these "traders" and the firms they work for represent an amoral parasite class which produces nothing of value for the rest of society? Unbelievable!