These were annual Nazi party gatherings of perhaps a million people and soldiers, vast seas of shining faces gushing with orgasmic enthusiasm for their God and savior, the Fuhrer. Gigantic flags carried by a thousand goose-stepping junkers marching to the tune of martial music by Wagner.
These days, spectacles like that are practically dull. We see them all the time at football games, pop music concerts, political rallies, and “million man” marches on Washington DC. Yawn.
The Bad Hangover Rally
Nuremburg is also where they had the trials of all the Nazi elite for “crimes against humanity.” There is a modern counterpart to this, too: Secret meetings of leading economists who plot their next steps every year in how to keep the unwashed masses in a state of perpetual “irrational exuberance” spending more than they earn, borrowing more than they should, and getting their rocks off on “conspicuous consumption” of things they don’t need or really even want.
75% of the U.S. economy is based on consumer spending, so
75% of economist’s efforts are devoted – well, to keep consumers spending. I.e., going into more debt, but there’s a more sinister aspect to all of this rancid consumerism.
Fedgate
While you and I pay 10% minimum on our credit cards, giant banks get to borrow money (the money they lend to us) at 0.25% interest.
Or, these big banks can borrow billions from the Federal Reserve and just use it to buy U.S. Treasury bills, and we the taxpayers then pay them a cool 3-4% interest every year. Easy money!
My favorite is the Fed’s $1 trillion per year program to print money to manipulate the markets so bond interest rates remain at near zero. The stock markets love it – a continuous sugar (cocaine!) high that’s lasted five years so far – but seniors living on fixed income investments get screwed out the wazoo.
Whose idea was it to put the mega banks in charge of regulating the banking industry? Who gave the Too Big To Fail banks permission to print $10 trillion in dollar bills? Not even the Nazis were dumb enough to put the foxes in charge of the chicken coop.
Who’s going to charge the Fed and their big bank cronies with crimes against humanity?