No need for the long introductory lead in here folks, you have heard it from me too many times by now. Today's story is yet another proof point that things are moving right. In it, a board member of VW has now said, without being pressured to, that some of the VW staff acted "criminally" in the emmissionsgate matter.
Yes, folks, contrition and truth telling are absolutely required by the herd at this point and the oligarchs totally get it. From now on there will be no air cover for liars and cheaters if they get caught. Mgt won't stop them doing what needs to be done but they will no longer risk themselves getting between wrong dooers and their just punishments which will increasingly include real jail time for white collar crimes like gaming the emissions tests.
As I explained long before there were any apparent signs that it was coming, the oligarchs would provide air cover for their minions and their centurions if they thought they could keep a lid on things. Note that the only time that this is actually easy is when the herd is in George Carlin's "nobody seemed to notice, nobody seemed to care" mode.
But with the waning prosperity brought on by diminishing and now negative returns on debt funded GDP growth, the herd is suddenly worried and thus it suddenly cares. The herd only appears stupid when it has a fully belly and bright hopes for the future. At times like that you could blow up three buildings in NYC in a single day and the herd would just accept the first explanation that came along and then just sit around and mumble about it for a couple weeks before getting back to the business of blissful grazing. There would be no call for real investigations or witch hunts to roll heads. No, there would just be memorial services in which politicians would cry fake crocodile tears in order to garner votes and the herd would eat it up with a stick and then basically act like nothing happened 2 months later. You know, just what happened during the obvious building implosions (all 3 of them) that happened on 9-11-01.
Those times, folks, those times are gone now. And it will be a long time before they return. Not months, not years. Decades. Watch and see. This conservative wave is the beginning of a reversal in herd mood that began a full Kondratiev cycle ago (i.e. 80-100 years ago).
In any case, today the oligarchs are throwing their minions under the bus and then grandstanding before the crowds saying things like, "bad people should get jail time", etc. as if they believed in that morality. These guys are just saying what the herd wants to hear before the herd turns its sights on the board itself for allowing this crap to go down.
But if you thrown the gardener and the maid under the bus too often, one of those times you are going to mess with the wrong minion. They will know things that you didn't think they knew and they will use this knowledge to buy down their penalty. This is how criminal organizations always fall: from within after all the sheeple they could lay hands on are already sheared. When there is nobody else left to screw the value out of, the criminal organization turns inward and the infighting becomes spectacular. Stuff they never let the common man see comes tumbling out of the closet like a bar room fight tumbles out into the street.
It's coming and I got my front seat and my popcorn. I have been waiting for this for a long time.
When the scandal blew up, one thing that surprised me was the prompt admission of wrongdoing by VW. Usually, when a corporation, especially a giant one, firstly reacts by denying the accusations or at least evading responsibility. Then, if the scandal doesn't go away, eventually a qualified confession comes forward.
ReplyDeleteNot so in this case though. VW promptly confessed to the cheating even as pressure hadn't even raised yet.
But it should be pointed out that this board member is a politician, since the German state of Lower Saxony owns 20% of VW. This is the case of the state being accomplice in the breaking of laws. Not unusual, for the main business of the state is to provide coverage for its favored clients. What Herr Lies (why are their names ever so telling?) is doing is snitching on his partners in crime and protecting his institution, lest it be caught doing what is the opposite of what its marketing tells us is the reason why we the people should consent to its power, namely, protecting the weak from the powerful. Well, when the state is itself powerful, who's to protect the weak? Instead of consent, the only way to protect the weak is that they get strong.
The state of Lower Saxony, as any member of the board, is fully guilty and such search for leniency by staying the obvious must be rejected. We'll see if the worm has turned this far already.
Seems a bit early for this yet since, as you mentioned, the board was quick to turn on its minions.
ReplyDeleteMore likely, one of the minions will not go down quietly taking one for Herr Gipper and will begin to squeal like a stuck PIIG. You have been on this blog readership since the beginning so you will understand the reference here. I asserted a long time ago that France and Germany were playing the vendor finance scam and that in the end they were going to be uncovered as just a big of a pig as the PIIGS. This attempt to boost sales/exports is exactly the kind of thing you would expect from someone who had borrowed too much money in order to build cars for export.
BTW, I missed the name catch on Herr Lies. Sometimes these names seem like they come right out of a Buckaroo Banzai sequel.