As above, so below

The title of this blog is a popular adage that describes a theory about the universe. It is commonly thought to apply to the physical aspects and deals with the idea of how the imprints within a tiny cell are replicated on a larger scale on the planet or universe or whatever larger body you are comparing it to.

I have become aware of the fact that this is also the case in other aspects of life such as politics. Whether this is by accident or design, I will leave you to decide.

However many people including me, believe the physical manifestation of this principle is driven by unseen powers. I don’t think it is a huge leap for too many of us today to believe the same is true of the political manifestations of this principle albeit by powers from an entirely different and darker side of the universe or our imaginings.

By now you are probably thinking, “Yep the old codger has really gone off his rocker this time.” And of course you are probably right, but that still doesn’t mean I am not also right.

We have all just breathlessly been watching the charade playing out in the US over their debt restructuring. Well the media have been breathless about it, anyway. Anyone would think there was nothing more important in the world at the moment, and I am sure there will be some reading this who think that is so, also. But I am here to put a proposition to the doubters and an affirmation to those who have suffered the ignominy of being labelled ‘conspiracy theorists’ in the most derogatory sense of that title.

I say the recent US economic melodrama is just that; a melodrama for which the script was written many decades earlier and which has been carefully choreographed and directed over the last few months since the last series.

It is fair to say this show has probably had its last showing with this cast and it will be a little while before we get the re-runs with another cast. The reason for this is that we have all seen the show two or three times lately and if they ran it again it would not work so well. Everybody today knows the ending already and it would be a bit like a magic trick being played out over and over; eventually the audience will suss out how you are doing it.

You doubters out there will have to bear with me for a moment while I say something the conspiracy guys and gals already know. Nothing much in politics, and especially in political economics, happens by accident. Powerful and shadowy figures have been controlling our everyday lives for centuries and they continue to do so. I don’t believe they are lizard people although that might be an appropriate name for them as their moral profile is pretty low to the ground and they are nothing if not cold blooded, so perhaps in an allegorical way they are lizard people.

The point is that the Americans never had any intention of going bankrupt. It was never going to be the case that Congress would not reach a ‘settlement’ that would see the money tap turned on again. It was deliberately staunched for a brief period so that those in power could benefit.

If you think that is too preposterous to believe, consider this. Every time the US has reached this ‘crisis point’ lately the Dow Jones has plummeted and because as everyone always says, “When the US sneezes, the world catches a cold,” so have the other major stock exchanges.

But once the deal to turn the money on again is reached, lo and behold the Dow and all its faithful little followers go back up again. As I have often said, if you want to figure out why something that seems illogical is happening, follow the money. This case is no different.

Ask yourself who would stand to benefit from this and the most obvious reply is that it is the money men (men as in mankind rather than specifically males).

If you were a person with oodles of cash who wants to make oodles more then of course it is great for you to have a marketplace where you can control prices and pick your times to buy and sell your investments to maximise your profit. This is not rocket science; it is simply what a prudent investor attempts to do, and for the most part, good luck to them. However if somebody has climbed inside the fruit machine and tampered with the workings so that the three crowns come up every time for them while you and I get a couple of lemons in our spin, then that is criminal.

So what I am saying is that the money men arranged this little melodrama so that when they gave the signal for the US Government to stage their little show and markets dropped they could whip around and snap up all the dirt cheap investments. Then once they had bought enough and before anyone twigged what was going on, they gave the signal for a press release to go out saying Congress had reached a consensus and the stocks would shoot back up again. They would then be able to quit them either immediately or more likely gradually over the next little while, having made an enormous profit. It is insider trading of the most vile and cynical form and the sort of thing that would send mere mortals to jail and rightly so.

But before my fellow countrymen start saying that is an American phenomenon, I would remind them of the title of this blog and that bit about sneezes and colds. Oh and of course our current PM’s background and his taste for the nether regions of the US administration.

We have our own little mini-series playing out right here in dear little Aotearoa/Godzone (that’s New Zealand to the rest of the world).

Ours is called the housing market crisis and the official libretto describes a place where too many wasteful peasants have attempted to rise above their station by daring to aspire to home ownership. The banks have colluded with both the landed gentry (the LG) and the peasants by lending what the LG call too much money to the naive peasants who “don’t really understand these things and can’t manage their meagre finances.” This has left the curtain open for the next scene.

We are told this has led to a high level of indebtedness and a low level of savings as a nation. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to anyone that the high cost of living and the low levels of wages for the majority of the population are actually the reasons few are saving. It is impossible to save when all of your income has to go out on the basic necessities of life.

However the three wise men, Larry, Curly and Mo (Jianqi, Bill Nospeakada, and Steven Joysoflivingoffthetaxpayer) have wisely (how else) decided that the solution lies in allowing fewer people to qualify for home loans and ultimately to jack up interest rates.

This is supposed to make home ownership easier for the average Kiwi and boost the economy and by trickle-down to the lives of those who are struggling. Just how they have managed to sell such a preposterous concept really speaks volumes about the average voter.

Of course the fact home loans will be harder to come by is hardly likely to benefit the first home buyer unless he or she is the offspring of someone extremely wealthy, one of the one percent on a decent wage, a highly successful criminal or a Lotto winner.

Making home ownership harder to achieve will only lead to a greater demand for rental properties and guess who can afford to buy these? Making interest rates go up might seem counter-productive to that, but when you factor in the ability of wealthy people who buy rental houses as an investment to offset many of their costs against their tax liability and jack up rents to cover higher interest rates, you can see that it won’t particularly bother them.

Ultimately such measures will result in an even smaller group of people owning all of the property which they will then be in a position to control, deciding how much of it they sell and what prices they sell it for.

So are our Three Stooges stupid? Not on your life. They are the ones with the financial means to be as mean as possible to those less fortunate than themselves and they are not reluctant to use those means to be mean.

Given Jianqi’s eagerness to roll over and have the FBI rub his tummy over Kim Dotcom it is easy to see how the Northern Hemisphere influence has influenced this latest policy.

Yep, it’s definitely as above, so below and not a single coincidence in sight.