Common Cents

Keys to the Commons

Ralph Murphy

(9/15) The Treasury Department Issued a warning the national debt would climb over three trillion dollars on the year if it has to act on Congressional spending requests. That would approximate the tax shortfall of just over two trillion dollars auditors concluded was overcharge each of these past two fiscal years. The same spending level patterns have been tried in varied bills from the Cares Act to Climate Change to Infrastructure bills all trying the same yield, apparently to restore lost programs that failed legal reviews to overt justification. Many were linked to foreign official and non official or non government organizations. The systemic or overt and costly programs do seem tied to United Nations affiliates as well as sovereign powers who assumed their functions. The cost has to be reviewed as Treasury is effectively saying it won’t be paid.

Sovereign cash flows post World War Two have involved several complex arrangements of varied scrutiny to return and source funding. In the aftermath of the conflict a transfer system had been devised in a 1945 Bretton Woods accord of 29 nations that established a General Agreement in Trade and Tariffs (GATT) as well as it’s fund guarantor or International Monetary Fund (IMF) both UN agencies. The accord established a system of price and output guarantees primarily linked to commodity goods as food or mining in cartel arrangements with minimal changes in supply or demand anticipated from the relatively primitive members. In the event of foreign exchange differences based on domestic factors such as overprinting the IMF money would fill the gap.

The markets again were relatively slow growth and output predictable. Demand would remain stable void of an artificial disequilibrium like a legal ban or irregular inflation that would distort the price or output of conventional price brokers. The GATT system encouraged the primitive commodity suppliers to remain compliant with income and market guarantees but limited chance for advancement and didn’t dabble in social policy that would afford bonding to free access in complex systems or training. The Americans and Germans dominated the emergent industrial west with pockets of production to other regions reflecting similar work ethic and application to relevant scale.

If monied there was a two track aspect to the system . It guaranteed their virtual sole provision of the larger enterprise output as manufacturing hubs but they had to pay the IMF quotas and couldn’t alter the commodity cartel pricing linked to GATT.

With the ostensible end of the Cold War in the Soviet Unions demise by 1991, the IMF became something of a bailout fund and the former communist bloc and newer emergent Russians had joined or were beneficiaries. The quota system became also a loan guarantee regimen and spending or obligations increased to over $600 billion in accessible funds. There was also a General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) of 1995 that expanded the GATT to a service sector program or one of sales void of a tangible product as output, like education or finance sales. GATs yielded to the World Trade Organization, also a United Nations organ, and sought to harmonize or lower trade barriers of its members but stalled over agriculture quotas that were linked to the older GATT it incorporated as a replaced subsidiary.

The problems again were the institutionalized transfers had become perceived earnings, especially of the former communist nations but also colonial appendages of wealthier western powers. England or France often were beneficiaries of other transfer payments tied to western banking in covert payments replenished by taxes or the Treasury departments. That brings focus to the perceived threat to losses of three trillion dollar in debt Congress wants spent this year in the older tax arrangement. The Treasury department cannot or will not pay it to reports, which signals a curious rift between governing functions as it doesn’t appear Congress can overtly get the money. That seems to indicate they’re void of procurement power and begs the question "who is in charge?" as we’ve avoided massive inflation. It registered in line with growth at about .06% and would be double digits if simple printing were allowed to fill the hollow bills.

It seems from the eventing the legislature is no longer trusted with that type fiscal authority and should be recognized in that light. The program scrutiny revealed cost irregularities that became too high to tolerate and an alternate group has become evident that shows structural maturity and equilibrium the random bill payments of previous years didn’t afford. There are really very few functions absolutely required of that regulatory body. Stable currency is among them as is security so as to enable opportunity by talent or interest to gravitate toward an accommodative region and not merge them given alternate orientation or systemic need.

The currency, and security guarantees against hostile penetration void of steering campaigns to any single special interest which can dominate the press or projection appear mentionably important. An obvious case in point is the health care group now pushing the COVID-19 virus as a viable threat when we all know it’s just a simple one of many flu strains The restrictions and masks thrust measures supported by a last gasp World Health Organization with intelligence support as inexplicably they haven’t been able to turn on their internal problem. I have exposure to them by employment and osmosis. It was heavily penetrated by post Cold War with mission creep and anomie by foreign and domestic interests void of security interests.

There was a Chinese and other liberal lobby as well as a narcotics support wing that worked with entertainers and often the military. Their methods were relatively old style trade craft and crude but they did dominate much of the social sphere in offensives also linked to arbitrary bank access. There is now a strictly high tech group well armed and emergent that seems opposed to the Chinese or British entertainer ones or the Russian drug links. They have tech savvy and monied support but are a bit weak in social as really don’t address it. It seems the COVID-19 group is fanned by the Chinese lobby and none of the others have turned on them yet, although they could as the group so weak otherwise.

As it plays into Congress, if they have any role of substance these days it’s linked to low funded social projects and the immersion is probably relatively optional as no real security backing or money supports them to real project analysis.

The United Nations itself does have to be reviewed in light of their intrusive and not confined intermediary role in domestic programs linked to its too varied commitments. There are fifteen independent agencies that take on private sector functions that have been linked to pivotal cartel interests from postal groups. the plane industry, telecommunications, labor and the commodity markets and that are enforced by treaty or extraneous understandings that cause costly imbalances to payment or output. that series of circumstance wouldn’t exist with simple enforced bilateral accords. Haiti, for example, in recent years accepted Brazilian peacekeepers amid a UN force commitment to stabilize it and found their sugar exports lost to the Brazilian growers in the same time frame.

If money is involved and the investment is impersonal history shows losses will be high if left to a trust regimen. If the private sector can and does provide a service, a ruling authority should take a "hands off" approach unless theft or damage are issues. Then it becomes a conventional law concern. The UN groups went the exact opposite direction, the current ghost regime that’s vetoing Congress isn’t paying the under the table loans tied to prior IMF type bailouts and that leaves some frustrated opportunists who long benefited from the low scrutinized programs. Treasury seems to be saying "make it legal", and Congress intimating they can’t.