EXPOSED: Angelina Jolie part of a clever corporate scheme to protect billions in BRCA gene patents, influence Supreme Court decision

May 16, 2013

Source: Natural News

Angelina Jolie’s announcement of undergoing a double mastectomy (surgically removing both breasts) even though she had no breast cancer is not the innocent, spontaneous, “heroic choice” that has been portrayed in the mainstream media. Natural News has learned it all coincides with a well-timed for-profit corporate P.R. campaign that has been planned for months and just happens to coincide with the upcoming U.S. Supreme Court decision on the viability of the BRCA1 patent.

This is the investigation the mainstream media refuses to touch. Here, I explain the corporate financial ties, investors, mergers, human gene patents, lawsuits, medical fear mongering and the trillions of dollars that are at stake here. If you pull back the curtain on this one, you find far more than an innocent looking woman exercising a “choice.” This is about protecting trillions in profits through the deployment of carefully-crafted public relations campaigns designed to manipulate the public opinion of women.

The signs were all there from the beginning of the scheme: Angelina Jolie’s highly polished and obviously corporate-written op-ed piece at the New York Times, the carefully-crafted talking points invoking “choice” as a politically-charged keyword, and the obvious coaching of even her husband Brad Pitt who carefully describes the entire experience using words like “stronger” and “pride” and “family.”

But the smoking gun is the fact that Angelina Jolie’s seemingly spontaneous announcement magically appeared on the cover of People Magazine this week — a magazine that is usually finalized for publication three weeks before it appears on newsstands. That cover, not surprisingly, uses the same language found in the NYT op-ed piece: “HER BRAVE CHOICE” and “This was the right thing to do.” The flowery, pro-choice language is not a coincidence.

What this proves is that Angelina’s Jolie’s announcement was a well-planned corporate P.R. campaign with carefully-crafted messages designed to influence public opinion. But what could Jolie be seeking to influence?

…how about trillions of dollars in corporate profits?

Upcoming U.S. Supreme Court decision to rule on patent viability for BRCA1 gene

Angelina Jolie’s announcement and all its carefully-crafted language had four notable immediate impacts:

1) It caused women everywhere to be terrified of breast cancer through the publishing of false statistics that drove fear into the hearts of anyone with breasts. (See below for explanation.)

2) It caused women to rush out and seek BRCA1 gene testing procedures. These tests just happen to be patented by a for-profit corporation called “Myriad Genetics.” Because of this patent, BRCA1 tests can cost $3,000 – $4,000 each. The testing alone is a multi-billion-dollar market, but only if the patent is upheld in an upcoming Supreme Court decision (see below).

StockCharts Myriad Genetics Angelina Jolie Spike EXPOSED: Angelina Jolie part of a clever corporate scheme to protect billions in BRCA gene patents, influence Supreme Court decision3) It caused the stock price of Myriad Genetics (MYGN) to skyrocket to a 52-week high. “Myriad’s stock closed up 3% Tuesday, following the publication of the New York Times op-ed,” wroteMarketwatch.com.

4) It drove public opinion to influence the upcoming U.S. Supreme Court decision to rule in favor of corporate ownership of human genes (see more below).

Women all over the world are being duped into supporting Angeline Jolie, having no idea that what she’s really doing is selling out women to the for-profit cancer industry. But to fully understand what’s happening, you have to dig deeper…

Myriad Genetics sees stock price skyrocket thanks to Jolie, and Obamacare will funnel billions their way

“Salt Lake City-based Myriad Genetics (MYGN) holds the patent on the test that determined the actress had an 87% chance of developing breast cancer, as well as the genes themselves,” wrote MarketWatch.com.

And that’s only the beginning. If the U.S. Supreme Court can be influenced to uphold Myriad’s patent, it could mean a trillion-dollar industry over just the next few years. Even more, Myriad Genetics is reportedly “ripe for mergers” according to the financial press, because it’s part of the super-hot human genome industry.

“The world’s largest maker of DNA testing and analysis tools, Life Technologies Corp. said that it is set to be acquired by Thermo Fisher Scientific for a record $13.6 billion,” writes MarketWatch.com. “A race that kicked into high gear more than 26 years ago is heating up, with foreign governments and corporations joining the U.S. in funding the quest to map all the human genomes. And even as the recent flurry of mergers and acquisitions in the genomics space has spurred returns, investors still have opportunities to profit from this multibillion-dollar industry.”

The higher Myriad’s stock price goes, the more profitable a merger becomes for its current owners. So Jolie’s P.R. stunt just happened to generate unknown millions of dollars in value for the very people who claim a patent monopoly over the breast cancer genes residing in the bodies of women. Coincidence? Hardly.

Obamacare mandates taxpayers pay for BRCA gene testing: yet another government handout to wealthy corporations

But here’s what’s even more crooked about all this: You know how Obama likes to talk “free market” but actually engages in so-called “crony capitalism” by handing out money to all his corporate buddies, Wall Street insiders and deep-pocketed campaign donors? Part of Obamacare — the “Affordable Care Act” — mandates that taxpayers pay for BRCA1 genetic testing!

Myriad Genetics, in other words, stands to receive a full-scale windfall of profits mandated by government and pushed into mainstream consciousness through a campaign of “medical terror” fronted by Angelina Jolie and the New York Times. Are you starting to see how this all fits together yet?

This is all one big coordinated corporate sellout of women, and it’s all being hidden by playing the “women’s power” card and using “choice” language to more easily manipulate women. Angelina Jolie, remember, is a key spokesperson for the United Nations, an organization already caught engaged in child sex slavery and drug running. Although Jolie obviously isn’t engage in that sort of behavior, her job is to covertly influence American women into supporting a carefully-planned, plotted and executed corporate profit campaign that turns women’s bodies into profits.

Here’s why the Supreme Court decision puts trillions of dollars at stake…

Details on the upcoming Supreme Court decision

The ACLU and the Public Patent Foundation filed a lawsuit in 2009, challenging the corporate ownership of human genes. Anyone who believes in women’s rights, human rights, civil rights or even the right to eat non-GMO foods should immediately agree thatcorporations should NOT be able to patent human genes and then use those patents to rake in billions of dollars in profits while stifling scientific research into those genes.

A question to all women reading this: Do you believe a corporation in Utah owns your body? If not, you should be opposed to corporate ownership of human genes. It also means you should oppose Angelina Jolie’s P.R. campaign because although she’s running a brilliant public relations campaign, behind the scenes her actions are feeding potentially trillions of dollars of profits directly into the for-profit human gene patenting industry that denies human beings ownership over their own genetic code.

The ACLU explains the basics of its lawsuit against Myriad Genetics as follows:

On May 12, 2009, the ACLU and the Public Patent Foundation (PUBPAT) filed a lawsuit charging that patents on two human genes associated with breast and ovarian cancer, BRCA1 and BRCA2, are unconstitutional and invalid. On November 30, 2012, the Supreme Court agreed to hear argument on the patentability of human genes. The ACLU argued the case before the U.S. Supreme Court on April 15, 2013. We expect a decision this summer.

On behalf of researchers, genetic counselors, women patients, cancer survivors, breast cancer and women’s health groups, and scientific associations representing 150,000 geneticists, pathologists, and laboratory professionals, we have argued that human genes cannot be patented because they are classic products of nature. The suit charges that thegene patents violate the First Amendment and stifle diagnostic testing and research that could lead to cures and that they limit women’s options regarding their medical care.

Got that? If the Supreme Court rules against Myriad Genetics, it will cause a multi-billion-dollar breast cancer genetic testing industry to collapse virtually overnight. This means a huge loss for not just Myriad, but also many other human gene corporations that wish to exploit the human body — including the bodies of women — for monopolistic profits. (All patents are government-granted monopolies.) Ultimately, trillions of dollars in corporate gene patents are at stake here.

Patenting human genes is huge business

Today, about 20 percent of your genes are already patented by corporations and universities. As the ACLU explains, “A gene patent holder has the right to prevent anyone from studying, testing or even looking at a gene. As a result, scientific research and genetic testing has been delayed, limited or even shut down due to concerns about gene patents.”

This means that when corporations own patents on human genes, it stifles scientific research while granting that corporation a monopoly over the “intellectual property” encoded in your own DNA! (How criminal is that? You decide…)

What this means is that if the Supreme Court rules against Myriad, it would set a precedent that would dismantle the entire human gene patenting industry, affecting trillions of dollars in future profits.

This, I believe, is the real reason behind Angelina Jolie’s announcement. It seems designed to invoke women’s emotional reactions and create a groundswell of support for corporate-owned genes, thereby handing these corporations a Supreme Court precedent that will ensure trillions in future profits. It’s a for-profit PR stunt that tries to trick women into supporting a corporate system of patents and monopolies that claims, right now, to own portions of the bodies of every woman living today.

While most media outlets have no clue about the patent issues at stake here, theDetroit Free Press took notice, saying:

“The Hollywood star’s decision to get tested for a breast cancer gene mutation, undergo a double mastectomy and then write about it calls attention to a case now pending before the court. The justices have just weeks to decide if Myriad Genetics’ patent on the two genes that can identify an increased risk of breast and ovarian cancer is legal. Critics complain that the company’s monopoly leaves them as the sole source of the $4,000 tests needed to determine each woman’s risk.”

Lying with statistics: Jolie’s 87% risk exaggeration

There’s more to this story than just the patents on BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes. Angelina Jolie is also using blatantly misleading statistics to terrify women into thinking their breasts might kill them.

In the NYT op-ed piece, Jolie claims her doctor told her she has an “87% risk” of developing breast cancer. But what she didn’t tell you is that this number doesn’t apply to the entire population: it’s actually old data derived almost exclusively from families that were previously documented to have very high risks of breast cancer to begin with.

A study published on the National Human Genome Research Institute website and conducted by scientists from the National Institutes of Health reveals that breast cancer risks associated with BRCA1 genes are significantly lower than what’s being hyped up by Jolie and the mainstream media.

In fact, in a large room of 600 women, only ONE will likely have a BRCA mutation in her genetic code. The actual incidence is 0.125 to 0.25 out of 100 women, or 1 in 400 to 1 in 800. I used 600 as the average of 400 and 800.

And out of that 1 in 600 women who has the mutation, her risk of breast cancer is only56 percent, not 78 percent as claimed by Jolie. But 13 percent of women without the BRCA mutation get breast cancer anyway, according to this scientific research, so theincreased risk is just 43 out of 100 women.

So what we’re really talking about here is 1 in 600 women having a BRCA gene mutation, then less than half of those getting cancer because of it. In other words, only about 1 in 1200 women will be affected by this.

Yet thanks to people like Jolie and the fear-mongering mainstream media, women all across the nation have been terrified into believing their breasts might kill them and the best way to handle the problem is to cut them off!

This, my friends, is the essence of doomsday fear mongering. This issue affects less than one-tenth of one percent of women but is being riled up into a nationwide fear campaign that just happens to feed profits into the for-profit cancer diagnosis and treatment industry, not to mention the monopolistic human gene patenting cartels.

That’s the real story of what’s happening here. Don’t expect to read this in the New York Times.

Corporate media refuses to mention real prevention and treatment options

cancer controls women 400 EXPOSED: Angelina Jolie part of a clever corporate scheme to protect billions in BRCA gene patents, influence Supreme Court decisionAs part of the breast cancer fear mongering and treatment scam now being run across the mainstream media, nearly all media sources are prohibiting any mention of holistic or natural options for treatment or prevention.

Sure, the media talks about “options,” but all those options just happen to lead back to the for-profit cancer industry. As an example, read this story by ABC News, part of the lying mainstream media that misinforms women and pushes a corporate agenda:

If you do test positive for BRCA, you have options, and you don’t necessarily have to go the Jolie route. Some women choose not to have surgery. Instead, they increase cancer surveillance with imaging tests. These include regular mammograms to test for breast cancer, and regular pelvic sonograms and blood-tests to watch for ovarian cancer.

Nowhere in this article does ABC News mention ways to suppress the BRCA1 gene by, for example, eating raw cruciferous vegetables containing Indole-3-Carbinol (I3C), a potent anti-cancer nutrient that halts breast cancer in its tracks. Nowhere does ABC News mention vitamin D which prevents nearly 4 out of 5 cancers of all types, including breast cancer.

Nope, the “options” being pushed by mainstream media are nothing more than mammograms, surgery, radiation and chemotherapy — all owned and run by the for-profit cancer industry that feeds on women and exploits their bodies for profit.

Nor is their any discussion of the total scam of the “pink ribbons” cancer cure industry which is primarily focused on giving women cancer through “free mammograms.” As any scientist or physicist already knows, mammograms cause cancer because they emit ionizing radiation directly into the breast and heart tissues. Get enough mammograms done and sooner or later they will detect breast cancer because they caused it! To date,1.3 million women have been harmed by mammography.

Thanks, Angelina, for keeping the wool pulled over the eyes of women everywhere while selling out to for-profit, monopolistic, corporate interests that incessantly seek to exploit women for profit.

Photo credit: PEOPLE Magazine cover, used under Fair Use for public commentary and education.

Also read:
How Angelina Jolie was duped by cancer doctors into self mutilation for breast cancer she never had

Angelina Jolie inspires women to maim themselves by celebrating medically perverted double mastectomies

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Obama Fires IRS Boss — Who Was Leaving Anyway…

May 16, 2013

 Source: Fox

President Obama announced Wednesday that acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller would resign in the wake of the agency scandal in which conservative groups were targeted — though Miller was apparently set to step down anyway.

An official close to Miller told Fox News, shortly after Obama’s brief announcement, that the IRS chief was “set to resign the position of acting commission as of early June.” He was planning to leave the IRS entirely a “couple of months later, regardless of the current controversy,” the source said.

These details were not mentioned by the president as he announced Wednesday evening Miller was resigning. Obama spoke following a meeting with Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew  and other top department officials in which they reviewed a highly critical inspector general’s report on the practice. The report concluded poor management allowed agents to improperly target Tea Party and other groups for more than 18 months, starting in 2010.
Obama said Lew asked for the resignation and Miller agreed, after being on the job since November 2012.

“Americans have a right to be angry about it, and I’m angry about it,” Obama said from the White House. The president is expected to name a new acting commissioner later this week.

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Benghazi Hearing Reveals Administration Incompetence And Lies

May 9, 2013 by  

 Benghazi Hearing Reveals Administration Incompetence And Lies

UPI
The House Oversight and Governmental Reform Committee heard testimony Wednesday on the terrorist attacks on the diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya.

House Republicans took the Barack Obama White House to task with renewed vigor on Wednesday over charges that the Administration orchestrated a shameful cover-up of the Benghazi, Libya, terror attack in September.

Two attacks on the U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi occurred within hours of one another on Sept. 11, resulting in the deaths of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. Upon review by a committee consisting of former top diplomat Thomas Pickering and retired Gen. Mike Mullen, it was determined that management and leadership failures at the State Department and gross lack of security at the embassy were major factors in the fatal attacks.

Democratic lawmakers time and again have accused Republicans of politicizing the attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya, but information revealed in the Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing this week highlights a certain level of Administration culpability in the fatally botched government response as the attacks unfolded. Even more damning for top Administration officials is information revealed in the Wednesday hearings that provides further evidence of a cover-up attempt.

Here are some highlights from the hearing.

Democrats doubled down attempts to divert blame from the Obama White House and State Department.

Representative William Lacy Clay (D-Mo.) said that budget cuts were responsible for the tragic outcome.

The State Department told Benghazi whistle-blowers not to speak to Congressional investigators.

Gregory Hicks, former deputy chief of mission for the United States in Libya, told members of Congress that the State Department made very clear that it didn’t want him to give his account of the Benghazi attack to lawmakers — even though he was in direct contact with Washington and the consulate at the time of the attacks.

Everyone knew it was a terror attack, and response teams that could have ended the attack promptly were ordered to stand down.

Excerpted from Hicks’ testimony:

When I got to the Tactical Operations Center, I told people that the ambassador — that I had just talked to the ambassador and what he said. At the time, John Martinec was on the phone with Alec Henderson in Benghazi, the RSO there, and I asked one of our D.S. agents who — what number did I reach Ambassador Stevens on.

And he said, “Oh, that’s Scott Wickland’s telephone.” Scott Wickland was Ambassador Steven’s agent in charge, his personal escort for that night, and was with him in the villa during the attack. So I asked — when John Martinec got off the telephone, I asked him what was going on. And he said that the consulate had been breached, and there were at least 20 hostile individuals armed in the — in the compound at the time. So I next called the annex chief to ask him if he was in touch with the Benghazi annex to activate our emergency response plan.

He said later, describing steps taken before two separate stand-down orders were issued by Administration officials:

I also discussed with the annex chief about mobilizing a Tripoli response team, and we agreed that we would move forward with a — chartering a plane from Tripoli to fly a response team to Benghazi to provide additional reinforcements. The defense attache was also reporting through his chain of command, back to AFRICOM and to the joint staff here in Washington about what was going on in the country.

The State Department’s public relations following the terror attacks were baffling to many people involved.

“I was stunned. My jaw dropped. And I was embarrassed.” Hicks said, describing his reaction to Ambassador Susan Rice’s five national television appearances blaming a YouTube video for the attack.

The White House dismissed the hearings.

White House press secretary Jay Carney dismissed the Benghazi hearing as a political stunt during a briefing Wednesday.

“This is a subject that has, from its beginning, been subject to attempts to politicize it by Republicans when, in fact, what happened in Benghazi was a tragedy,” he said.

The press secretary also justified White House manipulation of facts regarding the terror attacks by saying edits to talking points relating to the event made by top Administration officials were for “stylistic” purposes.

“The fact that there are inputs is always the case in a process like this,” Carney said. “Edits made by anyone at the White House were stylistic and not substantive. They corrected the description of the building… from consulate to diplomatic facility. Ultimately, this all has been discussed and reviewed and provided in enormous levels of detail by the administration to congressional investigators. The attempt to politicize the talking points again is part of an effort to chase after what isn’t the substance here.”

No word yet on whether or not Merriam-Webster will alter the definition of “stylistic” to mean “of or relating especially to ass-covering lies.”

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 Benghazi Hearing Reveals Administration Incompetence And Lies Staff writer Sam Rolley began a career in journalism working for a small town newspaper while seeking a B.A. in English. After learning about many of the biases present in most modern newsrooms, Rolley became determined to find a position in journalism that would allow him to combat the unsavory image that the news industry has gained. He is dedicated to seeking the truth and exposing the lies disseminated by the mainstream media at the behest of their corporate masters, special interest groups and information gatekeepers.

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Source: Only President Could Have Given Stand Down Order During Benghazi Attack

May 8, 2013

Source: Freedom Outpost

Petraeus Benghazi probe 220x220 Source: Only President Could Have Given Stand Down Order During Benghazi Attack

A little over a month after the September 11, 2012 attacks in Benghazi, that left four Americans dead, then CIA Director David Petraeus denied that the CIA issued any type of stand down orders to those requesting to assist in Benghazi, leaving only one person that could have given such an order. This came as it was revealed that there were people on the ground with targets painted and air support overhead and the strike was called off. Even former House Speaker Newt Gingrich claimed that that it was rumored that emails from the National Security Adviser’s office told a counterterrorism group to sand down (by the way, this would be part of the reason for the piece yesterday on Ben Rhodes). Now Breitbart is reporting that a source with intimate information about what took place on the ground in Benghazi on the night the U.S. Consulate and the CIA annex was attacked by terrorists is confirming that only the President of the United States, or someone acting on his authority, could have prevented Special Forcesfrom helping the Americans who were under assault.

Kerry Picket writes,

According to the source, when the attack on the Consulate occurred, a specific chain of command to gain verbal permission to move special-forces in must have occurred. SOCAFRICA commander Lieutenant Col. Gibson would have contacted a desk officer at the time, asking for that permission.

That desk officer would have called Marine Corps Col. George Bristol, then in command of Joint Special Operations Task Force-Trans Sahara. From there, Bristol would have made contact with Rear Admiral Brian Losey, then Commander of Special Operations Command Africa. Losey would have contacted four-star General Carter Ham, commander of U.S. AFRICOM at the time.

“Ham answers directly to the President of the United States,” said the source. It wasn’t a low-level bureaucrat making the call, the source adamantly added.

We know that Barack Obama sent a letter to Congress indicating that he did not make a singled phone call on September 11, 2012. However, just days later, Obama’s Press Secretary Jay Carney said Obama called then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at approximately 10pm EST.

In fact, Carney told reporters, “Like every president before him, he has a national security adviser and deputy national security adviser. He was in regular communication with his national security team directly, through them, and spoke with the secretary of state at approximately 10 p.m. He called her to get an update on the situation.”

Again, Obama was being coached by his national security team, which includes national security deputy Ben Rhodes.

Pickett says that the source explained, “I have a hard time thinking it was Hillary alone. Hillary may have tried to circumvent the counterterrorism board and deal with this. I think in order for her to tell General Ham, ‘No, you’re not going to get involved,’ she would have had to talk to the president. The president would have had to say, ‘No, take your commands from Hillary.’ He would have had said something, because Ham does not work for the Department of State; he works directly for the president.”

Today we will begin getting some answers as whistleblowers in the Benghazi scandal, Mark I. Thompson, Gregory Hicks, and Eric Nordstrom, begin their testimony before Congress.

 

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Why America Fell So Far … So Fast

May 7, 2013

Source: Washington’s Blog

All Empires Crash Soon After They Reach Their Peak

Thomas Edison said, “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.”   And because I love my country, I frequently criticize America’s shortcomings in the hopes of making her better.

But the truth is that the United States is not unusual … it is just like all other empires which have hit their peak and then quickly crashed.

We noted in 2008:

Political insider and veteran reporter Kevin Phillips has documented that every major empire over the past several hundred years has undergone a predictable cycle of collapse, usually within 10 to 20 years of its peak power.

The indications are always the same:

- The financialization of the economy, moving from manufacturing to speculation;

- Very high levels of debt;

- Extreme economic inequality;

– And costly military overreaching.

We wrote in 2009:

In 2000, America was described as the sole remaining superpower – or even the world’s “hyperpower”. Now we’re in real trouble (at the very least, you have to admit that we’re losing power and wealth in comparison with China).

How did it happen so fast?

***

How Empires Fall

Paul Farrel provides a bigger-picture analysis, quoting Jared Diamond and Marc Faber.

Diamond’s book’s, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, studies the collapse of civilizations throughout history, and finds:

Civilizations share a sharp curve of decline. Indeed, a society’s demise may begin only a decade or two after it reaches its peak population, wealth and power…

One of the choices has depended on the courage to practice long-term thinking, and to make bold, courageous, anticipatory decisions at a time when problems have become perceptible but before they reach crisis proportions

And PhD economist Faber states:

How [am I] so sure about this final collapse?

Of all the questions I have about the future, this is the easiest one to answer. Once a society becomes successful it becomes arrogant, righteous, overconfident, corrupt, and decadent … overspends … costly wars … wealth inequity and social tensions increase; and society enters a secular decline.

[Quoting 18th century Scottish historian Alexander Fraser Tytler:] The average life span of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years progressing from “bondage to spiritual faith … to great courage … to liberty … to abundance … to selfishness … to complacency … to apathy … to dependence and … back into bondage”

[Where is America in the cycle?] It is most unlikely that Western societies, and especially the U.S., will be an exception to this typical “society cycle.” … The U.S. is somewhere between the phase where it moves “from complacency to apathy” and “from apathy to dependence.”

In other words, America’s rapid fall is not really that novel after all.

How Consumers, Politicians and Wall Street All Contributed to the Fall

On the individual level, people became “fat and happy”, the abundance led to selfishness (“greed is good”), and then complacency, and then apathy.

Indeed, if you think back about tv and radio ads over the last couple of decades, you can trace the tone of voice of the characters from Gordon Gecko-like, to complacent, to apathetic and know-nothing.

On the political level, there was no courage in the White House or Congress “to practice long-term thinking, and to make bold, courageous, anticipatory decisions”. Of course, the bucket-loads of donations from Wall Street didn’t hurt, but there was also a religion of deregulation promoted by Greenspan, Rubin, Gensler and others which preached that the economy was self-stabilizing and self-sustaining. This type of false ideology only can spread during times of abundance and complacency, when an empire is at its peak and people can fool themselves into thinking “the empire has always been prosperous, we’ve solved all of the problems, and we will always prosper” (incidentally, this type of false thinking was also common in the 1920′s, when government and financial leaders said that the “modern banking system” – overseen by the Federal Reserve – had destroyed instability once and for all).

And as for Wall Street, the best possible time to pillage is when your victim is at the peak of wealth. With America in a huge bubble phase of wealth and power, the Wall Street looters sucked out vast sums through fraudulent subprime loans, derivatives and securitization schemes, Ponzi schemes and high frequency trading and dark pools and all of the rest.

Like the mugger who waits until his victim has made a withdrawal from the ATM, the white collar criminals pounced when America’s economy was booming (at least on paper).

Given that the people were in a contented stupor of consumption, and the politicians were flush with cash and feel-good platitudes, the job of the criminals became easier.

A study of the crash of the Roman – or almost any other – empire would show something very similar.

We pointed out in 2010 that more empires have fallen due to reckless finance than invasion.  (Whichever side of the stimulus-austerity debate you agree with, spending walls of money on things which neither help people or stimulate the economy is idiotic.)

Inequality was – indeed – .   In fact, inequality in America today is twice as bad as in ancient Rome , worse than it was in in Tsarist Russia,Gilded Age America, modern Egypt, Tunisia or Yemen, many banana republics in Latin America, and worse than experienced by slaves in 1774 colonial America.

Finacialization? Yup, we’ve got that in spades …  Economist Steve Keen has also shown that “a sustainable level of bank profits appears to be about 1% of GDP”, and thathigher bank profits leads to a ponzi economy and a depression).  But government policy has been encouraging the growth of the financial sector for decades:

financial+and+nonfinancial+sectors+ +compensation+Les+Leopold Why America Fell So Far … So Fast

Corruption? Check … the government and big banks are all wallowing in a pig sty ofcriminal fraud.  The economy has been hollowed out due to looting and fraud. And our institutions are .  They are so corrupt and oppressive that people are more afraid of the government than of terrorists.

The bigger the bubble, the bigger crash … and we’ve just come out of the biggest bubble in history.

Costly military overreaching?  Definitely…

The war in Iraq – which will end up costing between $5  and $trillion dollars – was launched based upon false justifications. Indeed, the government apparently planned both the Afghanistan war (see this and this) and the Iraq war before 9/11.

It is ironic that our military is what made us a superpower, but our huge military is bankrupting us … thus destroying our status as an empire.

Empires which fight “one too many wars” always collapse:

“Just one more surge!” — The Indus

“Just one more surge!” — The Kushan

“Just one more surge!” — The Scythians

“Just one more surge!” — The Parthians

“Just one more surge!” — The Saffarid

“Just one more surge!” — The Ghaznavid

“Just one more surge!” — The Ghorid

“Just one more surge!” — The Timurid

“Just one more surge!” — The Hotaki

“Just one more surge!” — The Durrani

“Just one more surge!” — The Aryan

“Just one more surge!” — The Persians

“Just one more surge!” — The Sassanids

“Just one more surge!” — The Hephthalites

“Just one more surge!” — The Huns

“Just one more surge!” — The Mughals

“Just one more surge!” — The Arabs

“Just one more surge!” — The Turkic

“Just one more surge!” — The Hazaras

“Just one more surge!” — The Khwarezmids

“Just one more surge!” — The Mongols

“Just one more surge!” — The British

“Just one more surge!” — The British (again)

“Just one more surge!” — The British (Yet again)

“Just one more surge!” — The USSR

“Just one more surge!” — The United States

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