Money. And the banks and investors and very rich who profit from it all.
This began when BushCo created debt to "pay" for what have become endless war budgets, which also profit the very rich. Debt is slavery, and its after-effects can be used to destablize entire currencies and countries. (Edit: actually, before that with Reagan and his handlers looking to destroy unions and the middle-class.) When they are in enough trouble, you'll suddenly find new plans to deepen the cuts to the non-rich, which is a double-dip called "austerity". The rich took the money in the first place, then they take it again by further hurting the non-rich. The "wars", the bank and wall street "bailouts" (read: handouts) were part one to create destablization. This is now part 2: not stopping handouts to the rich while cutting the non-rich to shreds. There is a definite double-standard occurring and we've already seen its continuing results in Greece, etc.
Neocon Paul Wolfowitz was in charge of the World Bank for a minute; goes to motive and connections. Have you read "Confessions of an Economic Hitman"? "The Shock Doctrine"? Gotta break some eggs if you want to make an omelette. Just look at Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Ireland, and more, and know that it is now in effect here, and therein lies the potential for further bank/plutonomy take-over via puppets in positions of power as well as the rise of any "emergency" government replacements such as the neo-NAZI "Golden Dawn" party. Inconvenience people enough and they'll beg for whomever promises a solution, to be in power. Even if they're electing the ones who caused the problems in the first place.
Herbert Walker Bush helped make President Carter look a fool through multiple extra-partisan actions, including through family friends OPEC, an embargo which hit Americans squarely in their Personal Convenience. Surprise, Americans then wanted change, =any= change, and Saint Reagan waltzed right in. Enron pulled the exact same tactic upon California, meeting with Schwarzenneger prior to purposely causing "rolling blackouts" in the CA power grid, pushing Californians in their Personal Convenience, causing them to demand Change, ANY change, which allowed Schwarzenneger to waltz right in. He immediately began attacking nurses, fire fighters, infrastructure, pensions, slashed CA mental health care by 60% in a single stroke of the pen...beware disaster as it can be a purposeful setting of the stage, a stacking of the deck, to provide for a pre-planned outcome. "Creating causes and conditions."
And Enron were an enormous W. Bush contributor/supporter who were among the first to begin buyouts of water supplies, which now involves many companies including Citigroup and also the Bush family proper.
This is all about the bankster behind the curtain. And of course the people have forgotten that THEY are the power and all of these KLOWNS merely represent us. Until it's no longer klowns but only banksters. Because right now they're setting the stage, creating the causes and conditions, through which to turn us into Greece.
References:
"Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room", book or film
"Confessions of an Economic Hitman"
The Citigroup "Plutonomy" memo, "The Plutonomy Symposium, Rising Tides Lifting Yachts"
Analysis of the above memo including links regarding Goldman Sachs installing Prime Ministers (Italy) and more, how banks and wall street have been continuously bailed out and propped up via taxpayer dollars regardless of "sequester", that the actual US economy is driven by the top 20% and not the rest of us, that technology revolution aids Plutonomy, such as the spy tech industry and its $1 trillion budget; water privatization, etc.:
http://occupyobservations.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-leaked-2006-citigroup-plutonomy-memo.html
An AMAZING visualization of wealth inequality in America (VIDEO)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022452445
Who or what exactly enables "austerity", or "sequestration"?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022445620
12 Ways the Sequester Will Screw the Poor
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022446153
Study Confirms Tea Party Was Created by Big Tobacco and Billionaire Koch Brothers
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022446064
America faces more than a dozen deadlines, all caused by billionaires and wealth transfer
I’ve had an article in draft for some time — “The 16 Deadlines Facing America” — that details each deadline, describes the dangers, and states why each faces an end-point rather than just a periodic fluctuation... I’ve identified 16 of these game-over situations facing America today, situations from which there is the possibility of no recovery — not the certainty, but the possibility. As I was working on that article though, looking especially what it would take to reverse each trend, I realized it’s really only one story writ 16 times on 16 separate canvasses.http://americablog.com/2013/02/america-faces-more-than-a-dozen-deadlines-all-caused-by-billionaires-and-wealth-transfer.html
That story? The song of the predator class, the rich and the rest — “All your money are belong to us.”
Here they are, numbered in no particular order, but grouped:
1. Accelerating transfer of wealth to the .001% (“the billionaires”)
2. Accelerating transfer of manufacturing out of the country
3. Marginalization or destruction of effective labor unions
4. Destruction of the middle class (i.e., the consumer class)
5. Capture of government by billionaires of both parties
6. Capture of the Republican Party by anti-Constitutional billionaires via Tea Party-financed candidates
7. Constitutional changes, including changes in practice to rule of law and an ever-widening circle of elites with immunity from prosecution
8. Creation via trade agreements of a transnational state that enshrines corporate sovereignty
9. Permanent war and a permanently expanding military
10. Permanently expanding national security state, including militarization of police, widespread spying and punishment for political crimes
11. The ticking time bomb of increasing numbers of returning untreated war-damaged battle-trained veterans
12. Oil dependence without recognition of oil as a soon-to-be-depleted energy source
13. Deterioration of the environment, largely due to oil and carbon dependence, among other causes
14. Destruction of the integrity of our food supply
15. Destruction of public education
16. Climate catastrophe and the collapse of human populations and level of civilization
My bottom line, and the surprise discovery, is that every single one is driven by one common cause — internationalist billionaires.
FORMER GOLDMAN BANKER: You Should Know The Ugly Math Behind Your Credit Card Debt
http://www.businessinsider.com/compound-interest-and-credit-card-debt-2013-2
And I'm not even touching upon military-industrial complex profits from the never-ending war budget...guess I will:
Halliburton bills taxpayers $45 per case of soda, $100 per bag of laundry
http://www.halliburtonwatch.org/news/whistleblower_hearings_denied.html
Note the word taxpayers. We are hosts to parasites and they are killing us.