Ian Walsh:
Which leads us to the sudden surge in the price of oil to $107 a barrel. On the face of it, this is crazy.
Yes, the US has had a bit of a recovery, but Europe is going hard core austerity. But this is the game the hot money is playing: they move out of bonds and into oil, out of oil and into bonds. $107/barrel oil means the US recovery (such as it is, which isn’t much) isn’t going to last much longer.
Being rich is about being liquid when everyone else isn’t, so you can buy up assets on the cheap.
When [IF] the rich are properly under control (ie. when you keep them terrified of government and the people, as they should be) they can’t create such buying opportunities, they have to wait for them….
Right now the rich can and are crashing asset prices by forcing countries into austerity through attacks on their currencies and control of their political elites. They then buy up assets for fire-sale prices.
These attacks …are deranged.
These attacks are about power: the global rich were bailed out after the crash, now they are using their hot money in attack after attack, demanding austerity, which will cause semi-permanent depression in those countries which accept it.
All of this is crazy.
The financial elites are on a plundering spree, gleefully using their power to force entire nations into poverty, blackmailing governments into huge payouts.