May the source be with you, but remember the KISS principle ;-) Skepticism and critical thinking is not panacea, but can help to understand the world better
Financial skeptic
The more things change in the USA casino capitalism the more they stay the same
Cruise to Frugality Island for stock holding 401K Lemmings
Neoliberal economics (aka casino
capitalism) function from one crash to another. Risk is
pervasively underpriced under neoliberal system, resulting in bubbles small and large which hit the
economy periodically. The problem are not strictly economical or political. They are ideological. Like
a country which adopted a certain religion follows a certain path, The USA behaviour after adoption
of neoliberalism somewhat correlate with the behaviour of alcoholic who decided to booze himself to
death. The difference is that debt is used instead of booze.
Hypertrophied role of financial sector under neoliberalism introduces strong positive feedback look
into the economic system making the whole system unstable. Any attempts to put some sand into the wheels
in the form of increasing transaction costs or jailing some overzealous bankers or hedge fund managers
are blocked by political power of financial oligarchy, which is the actual ruling class under neoliberalism
for ordinary investor (who are dragged into stock market
by his/her 401K) this in for a very bumpy ride. I managed to observe just two two financial crashed
under liberalism (in 2000 and 2008) out of probably four (Savings
and loan crisis was probably the first neoliberal crisis). The next crash is given, taking into
account that hypertrophied role of financial sector did not changes neither after dot-com crisis of
200-2002 not after 2008 crisis (it is unclear when and if it ended; in any case it was long getting
the name of "Great Recession").
Timing of the next crisis is anybody's guess but it might well be closer then we assume. As Mark
Twain aptly observed: "A thing long expected takes the form of the unexpected when at last it comes"
;-):
This morning that meant a stream of thoughts triggered by Paul Krugman’s most
recent op-ed, particularly this:
Most of all, the vast riches being earned — or maybe that should be “earned” —
in our bloated financial industry undermined our sense of reality
and degraded our judgment.
Think of the way almost everyone important missed the warning signs of an impending crisis.
How was that possible? How, for example, could Alan Greenspan have declared, just a few years
ago, that “the financial system as a whole has become more resilient” — thanks to derivatives,
no less? The answer, I believe, is that there’s an innate tendency
on the part of even the elite to idolize men who are making a lot of money, and assume that they
know what they’re doing.
As most 401K investors are brainwashing into being "over bullish", this page is strongly bearish
in "perma-bear" fashion in order to serve as an antidote to "Barrons" style cheerleading. Funny, but
this page is accessed mostly during periods of economic uncertainty. At least this was the case during
the last two financial crisis(2000 and 2008). No so much during good times: the number of visits drops
to below 1K a month.
It was clear that 2017 stock market run was detached from fundamentals. Mostly speculative run. And the current stock market
decline could well happen three months aerler or three month later but it was in the cards. It is difficult to estimate the power of
inertia in such speculative runs. Also layoffs and decline of the standard liming of workers and lower middle class still can
continue to improve the balance sheet until "Yellow Vests" moment stops them.
Jobs created now are mostly "inferior" low paid or temp/contractor jobs and the numbers just mask the cruel reality of the USA
job market.
Which in reality is dismal, especially for young and old workers. several more or less paid specialties disappeared in 2018 due
to automation (cash office worker is one). automatic cashier is supermarkets are also now more visible. So spontaneous cases
of vandalism, killings of coworkers and other form of "action of desperation" (as well as the rate of death from opioids -- which is
yet another form of the same) would not be too surprising in such an atmosphere. Even with the power of the current national
security state. Trump is playing with fire trying to cut on food stamps and implementing some other action in this program of
"national neoliberalism" which is in internal policy is almost undistinguishable from neofascism. He risk facing "Macron
situation" sooner or later.
In any case at some point Minsky moment should arrive for the stock market. I am not sure that the current decline is that start
of such an event. It might be postponed further down the line for a year or two. But it will eventually come. We can
only guess what form it might take, but with the current Apple troubles and valuations of tech sector I think it might take the form
of something similar to dot-com bubble deflation No.2
I do not see Amazon, Google, Facebook and Microsoft and other tech high flyers completely immune to the stock crash of 50%
magnitude or more. For example, Google is overly dependent on advertising revenue which can grow only by strangulating small sites
owners which use it as the advertizing platform (which it successfully implements fro several years now). But at some point owners
might revolt and start dropping it for Microsoft or other platform. Facebook might face a backlash, if people understand that
selling data about them in the part of the business model, not an aberration.
One of the most unexplainable things that happened in 2018 was dramatic fall of oil prices in the Q4. This was quite surprising
(and destructive) after the period of little or no capital investment in the new fields for three years or so. Shale oil
production increases in the USA are only possible if junk bonds can be produced along with it. Junks bonds that will never be paid.
With the current debt load and prices below $50 most of the USA shale oil companies are zombies. Most if not all of thenm are losing
money. Only return of ~$70 oil prices can save them, if anything at all. WSJ touched this topic recently.
So this surprising fall of oil prices (from around $70 to around $43 WTI) looks connected to the speculations in the "paper oil"
market.
Financialization allows for oil price to be completely detached from fundamentals for a year or even two (Saudis need over $80 I
think to balance the budget, I think; this represents "fair price" as they are one of the three largest producers).
But you will never know this unless there are shortages at gas stations. The difference is covered by inflated statistics from
IEA and similar agencies as well as "paper oil" -- future contracts which are settled in dollars.
This is the reality of "casino capitalism" ( aka neoliberalism ) with its rampant and destructive financialization.
"...we had come to the stage where for our people what was needed was a real democracy; and of
all forms of tyranny the least attractive and the most vulgar is the tyranny of mere wealth,
the tyranny of a plutocracy."
Theodore Roosevelt, Autobiography
"Stand up for what you believe, even if you are standing alone."
"In sorrow we must go, but not in despair. Behold! we are not bound for ever to the circles
of the world, and beyond them is more than memory."
J.R.R. Tolkien
"We were promised sufferings. They were part of the program. We were even told, 'Blessed are
they that mourn,' and I accept it. I've got nothing that I hadn't bargained for. Of course it
is different when the thing happens to oneself, not to others, and in reality, not
imagination."
C.S. Lewis
"If the devil tells you something is too fearful to look at, look at it. If he says
something is too terrible to hear, hear it. If you think some truth unbearable, bear it."
G.K. Chesterton
"The barbarian hopes -- and that is the mark of him, that he can have his cake and eat it
too. He will consume what civilization has slowly produced after generations of selection and
effort, but he will not be at pains to replace such goods, nor indeed has he a comprehension of
the virtue that has brought them into being.
We sit by and watch the barbarian. We tolerate him in the long stretches of peace, we are
not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence; his comic inversion of our old certitudes; we
laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond, and on these faces
there are no smiles."
Hilaire Belloc
"In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they
would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and
that nothing was true. The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the
dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and
false, no longer exists."
"... The "movement conservatives" leader was Barry Goldwater who Trump's dad was a big supporter of, and Trump was raised in and among AND represents that faction of elite power. ..."
"... The LIEO or Rules Based Order is based on being closely allied with European elites against Russia to contain the Middle East and Central Asia (Iran and Afghanistan) based on Zbigniew Brzezinski's Grand Chessboard theory. ..."
"... The 1950's triangle of power was superseded by the oligarch's counter revolution that led to supranational trade institutions. Democracies were relegated to a secondary status and run by technocrats for the benefit of oligarchs until Donald Trump. He is a nationalist plutocrat; admittedly a lower level one, a NY casino owner who went bankrupt. Mike Bloomberg represents the other side, a globalist billionaire. Elizabeth Warren is a top level technocrat but no politician. ..."
"... The endless wars are fought to make a profit for the plutocracy and destabilize nations to make foreign corporate exploitation possible. That was why Hunter Biden was in Ukraine. The conflicts are not meant to be won. ..."
"... He makes stupid mistakes. Through the barrage of propaganda, reports of shell shocked troops, destroyed buildings and 11 concussion causalities from Iran's missile attack made it into the news. The military must be pissed. The aura of invincibility is gone. ..."
"... Donald Trump should be removed by the 25th amendment before he mistakenly triggers the Apocalypse. Except the 1% politician VP, Mike Pence, believes that the End of Time is God's Will and necessary for his Ascension. ..."
"... The power triangle theory is less in line with the facts than a simple duality: Wall Street & the MIC, you have to advance interests of both or you're out. ..."
"... Second, the 'meeting in the Tank' sounds like complete b.s. designed to sell books ..."
"... And the 'rules-based international order' rings very false as something that would be said with a straight face by real MIC insiders, which those generals are. ..."
"... Not only sick of wars, his mobster approach to foreign policy and allies is an embarrassment to RINO and Independents. ..."
"... Humanity is in a civilization war about public/private finance being fought by proxies and character actors like Trump. Maybe after this war is over, and if we survive, we can all communicate about the social contract directly instead of through proxy fronts. Do you want to live in a sharing/caring world or a selfish/competitive one?....socialism or barbarism? ..."
That Power Elite theory which was written in the 50s by C.W. Mills is incomplete for today
because in the 60s there was a split among the power elite between the new "movement
conservatives" and the old eastern bank establishment. The conservatives were more focused on
the pacific region and containing China, and the liberal establishment were more focused on
Europe and containing Russia.
The "movement conservatives" leader was Barry Goldwater who Trump's dad was a big supporter
of, and Trump was raised in and among AND represents that faction of elite power. In fact he
is the 1st president from that faction of the elites to hold the oval office, many people
thought Reagan was, but he was brought under the control of George Bush and the liberal
elites after taking office after he was injured by a Bush related person. The different
agendas of the the two factions are out in the open today with one being focused on
anti-Russia and the other being focused on anti-China. It has been like that since the
1960s.
The anti-China conservative faction which Trump represents (and which unleashed the VietNam
War) is screwing up the "rules based order" aka "Liberal International
Economic Order" aka Pax Americana which was set up after WWII at Bretton Woods and then
altered in the 1970s with the creation of the petrodollar and petrodollar recycling into
Treasury Bonds, by destroying the monetary scam they set up to control the world
It needed
the cooperation of the elites of Europe and elsewhere, which Trump and his faction doesn't
care about -- they only care about short term profits on Wall St.
The LIEO or Rules Based Order is based on being closely allied with European elites
against Russia to contain the Middle East and Central Asia (Iran and Afghanistan) based on
Zbigniew Brzezinski's Grand Chessboard theory. China trade is important for them, Russia is
their main enemy. ( War of the Worlds:
The New Class ). Trump and his movement conservative faction is ruining their world order
for their own short term gain on Wall St.
The 1950's triangle of power was superseded by the oligarch's counter revolution that led
to supranational trade institutions. Democracies were relegated to a secondary status and run
by technocrats for the benefit of oligarchs until Donald Trump. He is a nationalist
plutocrat; admittedly a lower level one, a NY casino owner who went bankrupt. Mike Bloomberg
represents the other side, a globalist billionaire. Elizabeth Warren is a top level
technocrat but no politician.
The endless wars are fought to make a profit for the plutocracy and destabilize nations to
make foreign corporate exploitation possible. That was why Hunter Biden was in Ukraine. The
conflicts are not meant to be won.
Donald Trump is way for over his head and getting old. His competent staff are in jail or
fired. Apparently no one told him about the thousands of ballistic missiles that can destroy
the Gulf States' oil facilities at will and make the buildup for the invasion of Iran
impossible. He makes stupid mistakes. Through the barrage of propaganda, reports of shell
shocked troops, destroyed buildings and 11 concussion causalities from Iran's missile attack
made it into the news. The military must be pissed. The aura of invincibility is gone.
Donald Trump should be removed by the 25th amendment before he mistakenly triggers the
Apocalypse. Except the 1% politician VP, Mike Pence, believes that the End of Time is God's
Will and necessary for his Ascension.
The power triangle theory is less in line with the facts than a simple duality: Wall Street
& the MIC, you have to advance interests of both or you're out.
Second, the 'meeting in the Tank' sounds like complete b.s. designed to sell books, with
an obvious sales strategy, as b said, of pleasuring both the pro/anti Trump sides of the
book-buying bourgeoisie.
And the 'rules-based international order' rings very false as
something that would be said with a straight face by real MIC insiders, which those generals
are.
Finally, whether Trump ridiculed the generals or not, that's a sideshow to entertain the
rubes. Trump's always been on side with the big picture Neocon approach essential to the MIC.
Their global dominance or chaos approach is essential to keeping military budgets gigantic
until 'forever'. True that Trump whined about endless wars as a 2016 campaign strategy, but
he was either b.s.-ing or at the time didn't get that they are part of the overall Neocon
approach he backs.
Not a very good analysis by b because this does not explain why 90 % of US corporate media
is hostile to Trump. This does not happen without significant elite support.
That Trump is backed by the military faction is something i have been saying often. But
there are forces within the government faction that dislike him, for example the CIA.
As for the corporate faction, it is not true that free money made them supportive of
Trump. Rather the faction is divided - between the globalist corporate faction, relying on
globalisation, including most tech companies, and US nationalist faction, such as local US
businesses, big oil, shale gas, etc.
Another point - jews have large influence within the US, and 80 % voted against Trump
regardless of his Israeli support. They again voted 80 % Dem in 2018. Having 80 % of US jews
against you means encountering significant resistance.
Demographically speaking, most women, jews, muslims, latinos, asians, afroamericans, lgbt
people, young people, etc. are strongly against him so i think that he will lose. Unless for
some reason they do not vote.
Even if he somehow wins again, this will lead to civil war like situation and extreme
polarisation in the US.
The US military, the various factions within the Deep State, political and corporate
cabals has the attitude of a spoiled 3-year-old: If I can't have it, I'll break it so it is
of little use to others.
Unfortunately, breaking other countries is just fine for the MIC... arms sales all around
and chaos to impede non-military commerce with other major power centers like Russia or
China.
Trump is the product of a dysfunctional family, a "greed is good" trust-fund social circle
and a sociopathic US bully/gun culture.
The fact "bone spurs" Trump weaseled out of the draft will also not play well with the
generals, let alone the grunts who suffer most from endless POTUS idiocy (not limited to
Trump, see Prince Bush/Bandar the 2nd)
All the more proof that most Western "democracies" would be better served with a lottery
to choose their Congressional and POTUS chair-warmers. Joe Sixpack could do a better job. A
200-lb sack of flour would do better than any POTUS since Kennedy.
your: "Trump can't start a war without ruling class backing any more than he can end the
wars if the rulers veto it."
May be, I think is, true in one sense. But Trump is far from the sole agent capable of
starting a war. War, as opposed to simple murder, involve 2 or more parties. Whatever the
intentions, the recent murders by drone in Baghdad hav,e it seems, brought Iran to consider
war exists now...and they have a nifty MAGA policy. On Press TV today they hosted an expert
who called for the execution of several exceptional American leaders...sounds like war to
me.
(Make America Go Away)
The system is so screwy and peopled by such uneducated and delusional people that it's
quite simple that they would do some stupid that that caused a war. Looks like war to me. I
await the horrors.
Decaying empires usually start wars that bring about their rapid ruin. Does it matter how
they do this?
............
The thesis of the triangle of elite factions is fascinating.
Walter recalls that JFK got the reports from Vietnam that said we were winning, while at
the same time Johnson got the true story. And also what happened then with the "correction"
of 1963 (their words) and the immediate change of war policy. Can't help an old guy from
remembering old folly. And noting that history repeats as farce.
The Iran affair is liable to coordinate with NATO. Lavrov spoke to the NATO preparations
today @ TASS...
Some say Trumpie screwed up the schedule, which goes hot in April as a showdown with the
Roooskies. I take that with a grain of salt. But I think the sources I've seen might be
right. They say that if Barbarossa had not been delayed, the nazis woulda won in Russia.
Screwups can be very important.
I can't see any way the US won't use atomic bangers. But maybe...
I agree with wagelaborer in comment #3 and worth a repeat of most of it
"Trump can't start a war without ruling class backing any more than he can end the wars if
the rulers veto it.
US foreign policy is not run by White House puppets.
The US trash-talked Saddam Hussein and starved Iraqis for 14 years, but didn't actually
invade until he started trading oil in Euros.
The US trash-talked Ghaddafi for decades, and even launched missiles which killed his
child in the 80s, but didn't destroy Libya until Ghaddafi decided to sell oil in dinars.
The US has trash-talked and sanctioned Iran for decades, but it was the threat of Iran and
Saudi Arabia making peace that pushed them to assassinate General Soleimani, as he arrived at
the airport on that diplomatic mission.
If Iran and Saudi Arabia make peace, and the Saudis drop the petro-dollar, the US Empire
crumbles.
It doesn't matter at all who is in the White House at the time, the Empire will never allow
that."
Humanity is in a civilization war about public/private finance being fought by proxies and
character actors like Trump. Maybe after this war is over, and if we survive, we can all
communicate about the social contract directly instead of through proxy fronts. Do you want
to live in a sharing/caring world or a selfish/competitive one?....socialism or
barbarism?
I think the "triangle of power" theory walks towards the truth, but is not the truth.
For starters, the USA is a very large and complex society. There are a lot of classes and
a lot of groups which clash and prop up each other all the time. The only consensus is that
it is and must remain a capitalist society, i.e. that capitalism must be preserved at any
cost.
That said, I see many interests involved, but a hierarchy, in layered form. Here's my
opinion on the state of the art of the USA right now:
1) at the highest level, there's the division between the most powerful members of the
capitalist class between what should be the American foreign policy strategy for the rest of
this century. It is divided between two different ideologies: russophobes (i.e. the
"establishment") and the believers of the "clash of civilizations" (i.e. the far-right,
sinophobes). The only thing that unites both groups is the conviction Eurasia should remain
divided, i.e. that Russia and China should not consolidate their newborn alliance. If that
alliance consolidates a century from now, then this contradiction will disappear, but
America's new enemy will be stronger than ever - possibly more powerful than the USA.
2) at the lower level, there's the division of the American people about how the spoils
that come from the imperial conquests should be better shared. This division manifests itself
in the battle between social-democracy and fascism. Neoliberalism is basically a rotten
corpse after 2008, but it is important to state it is not an ideology per se, but a political
doctrine, from which both American social-democracy and American fascism lend some
aspects.
3) at the vestigial level, you have many micro battles which shock with each other. For
example, the good part of the American middle class imploded Elizabeth Warren's support for
universal healthcare because they wanted to keep their class distinction as the class which
has access to healthcare through expensive health insurances (which are often directly linked
to distinct jobs they probably have) - but they still will vote Democrat, and probably will
support Warren as long as she's viable. In the far-right camp, there are those who want to
emphasize the fight against China must happen because China represents modern socialism,
while another part wants to fight China for the simple fact they want some jobs back. In the
deep state, there's the usual Pentagon vs CIA clash of philosophies about how to better
operate overseas. In the lobby industry, each one is fending for themselves.
In conclusion, my take is all of these conflicts have one ultimate cause: the
exhaustion of the American imperial system installed in 1945 . Capitalism doesn't know
national barriers; in 1945, the USA was both the industrial and financial superpower, but
capital must spread and expand or it dies. The Marshall Plan soon begun and, in two decades,
Germany and Japan - both spawns of the American post-war doctrine - directly threatened the
USA as the industrial superpower. It still managed to fend off these two nations with the
Plaza Accord (1985), but at a huge cost: outsourcing its own industrial capacity to China. In
2011, China definitely overcame the USA and now holds the belt of the industrial superpower.
It is now trying to be also the financial superpower, with the "opening up" reforms.
This generated a structural contradiction: the loss of the industrial superpower title
left the USA only with the financial superpower title. But the financial superpower title can
only be maintained, in a nation-State architecture, with increased submission of the rest of
the world - naturally, through violent means and financial sanctions.
However, that was not the way the USA was able to build its overwhelming post-war
alliance: it did so with nation building , i.e. the proverbial "carrot", the massive
investments in infrastructure and better living standards for Western Europe, Japan, Asian
Tigers and Australia. But without the industrial superpower title, the USA cannot maintain
its "alliance" (i.e. the empire), which reinforces its condition as the financial superpower
- which, in turn, increases its necessity to maintain the alliance (empire) which, in turn,
weakens more and more said alliance, which, in turn, increases even more its necessity to
maintain said alliance, and so on, in a downward spiral movement.
The result of this dialectical contradiction is that the USA will, over time, resort to
ever more violent methods to keep the corners of its empire whole, which will drive it ever
closer to an epic war against its ultimate enemy: socialism (China/Eurasia).
"And many of them may actually be as mind-blowingly stupid as he is as well and they don't
see what a problem it is to have such an arrogant moron running the world's only superpower.
If there's one thing right-wingers take as an article of faith it's that expertise is nothing
but a scam and the guy at the end of the bar can run the world better than the pointy-headed
elites. They got what they wanted."
Trump might be appropriate. The survivors, if any, will have more resources, as the ditch
he is heading into.
A slow death by Dims would be worse.
Your analysis nicely maps onto the Braudelian model of the phases of capitalism,
especially as articulated in the chapter by Arrighi and Moore in Phases of
Capitalist Development . They argue that the historical signal that the US had begun to
lose its hegemony in commodity production (M-C-M') was the Nixon shock/Oil Shock (1970-73).
They further argue that the inevitable shift to financial hegemony (M-M'), which has occurred
in every other phase (Genovese, Dutch, British), has taken place more quickly than the one
before it. As a result, they predicted (in 2001) very broadly that the terminal point of this
financial (self-)vampirism -- when the system reaches a point of complete contradiction --
would take place around 2020. One key difference they note between the US global regime with
all prior hegemonic orders is the reach and power of the military. The British Empire was
able to deploy its navy to support its hegemony only up to a point -- and then became a paper
tiger overnight. But the US military has not been deployed to any extent comparable to
1941-45. If it saw a real existential threat to dollar hegemony their military capacity would
postpone any collapse indefinitely -- and throw the world into utter chaos.
My question to you and all is this: where are we in the timeline between their loss of
industrial hegemony and the real crisis of their financial hegemony? Is this the decade of
hegemonic challenge and change -- and therefore war? And to what extent will Iran be the
trigger? Or will it be another GFC and de-dollarization?
"... Pompeo omitted a crucial part of this sentence: "deterrence to protect [the financial and energy hegemony of] America". ..."
"... a regular part of the MSM/cinema diet masticated by the general public that we have completely forgotten that the basic function of the armed forces is the pursuit of vested interests through superior violence. ..."
"... No qualms or BS 'deterrence', armies are for taking other people's stuff by force (land-grabs, etc). I would respect Pompeo a whole lot more (but not much more...) if he just once came out and said: "Iran is run by people who don't want us to take their stuff; we want to undermine them and replace them with paid yes-men who will let us take Iran's stuff. We will use violence and armed force to make this happen. ..."
"... But we have no intention of distributing this loot evenly among our citizens. Instead it will be paid as dividends to select shareholders and spent retooling the military for next poor bastards who stand up to us." ..."
Pompeo omitted a crucial part of this sentence: "deterrence to protect [the financial
and energy hegemony of] America".
While this might be obvious to us, the narrative that US foreign policy is about
protecting citizens, values and apple pie from 'bad guys' -- and indeed that the militaries
of all Western countries are benign police forces preventing ISIS from burning your old
Eagles albums and other violations of 'freedom' -- is such a regular part of the
MSM/cinema diet masticated by the general public that we have completely forgotten that the
basic function of the armed forces is the pursuit of vested interests through superior
violence.
It always seemed strange to me that the post-ww2 cinematic template for war-movies, and by
extension the basic plot of all reporting of western military activity in the media, always
represented the enemy as evil precisely because they use militaries in an instrumental
way (i.e for the purpose they were designed). The Germans, or for that matter the
Persians in 300 , or any baddies in war films, seek to extend and protect their
interests (real or imagined) by deploying armed forces.
The good guys are always identifiable through this idea of 'deterrence': "hey man, all we
want is just to live and let live, but you pushed us so we pushed back." Then one stirs in a
little 'preemptive deterrence': you looked like you were going to push so we acted. If we
'accidentally' go too far, it's because there is a deranged C-in-C: Hitler, or Xerxes, or
some other naughty boy who can be the fall-guy, scapegoat, etc.
To get serious we need to go back a very long way, to, say, the Iliad , which, like
all Greek (and Roman) literature, assumes as a premise (and it's tragedy) that the warrior's
basic function is to kill, pillage, rape and occasionally protect others from the same. But
mostly take by force .
No qualms or BS 'deterrence', armies are for taking other people's stuff by force
(land-grabs, etc). I would respect Pompeo a whole lot more (but not much more...) if he just
once came out and said: "Iran is run by people who don't want us to take their stuff; we want
to undermine them and replace them with paid yes-men who will let us take Iran's stuff. We
will use violence and armed force to make this happen.
But we have no intention of distributing this loot evenly among our citizens. Instead
it will be paid as dividends to select shareholders and spent retooling the military for next
poor bastards who stand up to us."
"... There was nothing particularly great in the Soviet educational system. Other than students, who were selected very competitively (often more than 10-30 people for one place in ordinary universities and 100-1000 in elite; yes, 1000 or more per one place was observed in theater specialties). ..."
"... Also, the motivation for study was pretty high: if you fail two times to be admitted to the university, you were drafted into the Red Army. If you were expelled for the bad academic rating (which was, I think, to fail more then two exams in one semester) -- the same call from the Red Army was waiting for you. ..."
"... translation of foreign books in the USSR was the only first-class enterprise (despite outdated equipment). It was first-class both in the selection and the speed of translation. For example, as Knuth mentioned, all three volumes of his books were translated into Russian within a very short interval. ..."
"... But I think students learn as much from each other as from professors, and if the level of the class was extremely high, the results were corresponding. In other words, poor university teachers did not harm them that much, and a lot what they learn, they learn on their own (except fundamental disciplines) -- kind of self-education buried within ;-). ..."
"... Also, rigid soviet system (you have a zero opportunity to select your own set of subjects for a degree) has one important advantage. It schools you to be determined and persisting, no matter what subject you were assigned. To be a real fighter, in some academic or non-academic sense. ..."
"... I think that the main reason for the high quality of Soviet engineers of this period was not the education the got, but the fact that talented people were nowhere to go; there was no "business path." That's why Berezovsky became an academic scholar and even reached the level of the Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Science ..."
"... The level of backwardness of computer science education in the 90th in the USSR was staggering. So the fact that there were so many talented programmers in the country, many of whom later found a well-paid job in the Western countries, was mostly due to the level of the talent of those few who managed to get into universities. ..."
"... Many problems with Soviet education persist in Russia. Andrei Martyanov looks at many problems of Russian society via rose glasses. Taking into account the current level of Russophobia, that's a noble stance, and I do not object to his exaggerations. ..."
The question even to compare the American to the Russian or former Soviet
educational system is delusional.
However, the US has understood something that the Russians and any decent people don't get:
The people are consumers. They should not be educated beyond the needed to use the most recent
applications on their electronic devices. Anything further carries the danger of having them
discontent and thus an inroad to the Western entity.
Also, a military is not there to win wars and subsequently have a headache about how to deal
with the conquered people. It is about wrecking far away places and providing opportunities to
claim invoices from the federal government.
Modern, hybrid warfare is not about applying this or that military means, but about
occupying the universities, courts and parliaments of the subdued people – finally
occupying their minds. And yes, to do so includes that the weaponry should look cool and
provide job opportunities for the hopeless youngsters of that amorphous mass formerly called
the nation.
The Russians, Chinese, Iranians will have to stay alert 24/7/365 not to fall into the abyss
of depravity that the Great Western Civilisation is offering to them. I am afraid, that the
threat is very real that in the end they will be worn down.
The question even to compare the American to the Russian or former Soviet educational
system is delusional.
Believe me or not, I would prefer the USA system of education (with all its warts) to the
Soviet system in the 70-90th without any hesitation. And with the same quality of students, the
USA would achive the same or better results.
There was nothing particularly great in the Soviet educational system. Other than students,
who were selected very competitively (often more than 10-30 people for one place in ordinary
universities and 100-1000 in elite; yes, 1000 or more per one place was observed in theater
specialties).
Soviet universities were as poor as church rats, which has one good side effect that they
were forced to concentrate more on classic subjects like physics and math, which do not require
expensive labs. So students got a solid background in math and physics. But that's about
it.
Also, the motivation for study was pretty high: if you fail two times to be admitted to the
university, you were drafted into the Red Army. If you were expelled for the bad academic
rating (which was, I think, to fail more then two exams in one semester) -- the same call from
the Red Army was waiting for you.
As emigrants from the USSR told me, programming courses were simply dismal, and graduates
essentially learned the craft of the jobs, not at universities.
Even math books were the second rate in comparison with the USA textbooks of the same
period.
They were written by a representative of so-called axiomatic schools and were extremely
boring and uninformative. But many good math books were translated (for example, Polia
writings) Actually, as I understand, translation of foreign books in the USSR was the only
first-class enterprise (despite outdated equipment). It was first-class both in the selection
and the speed of translation. For example, as Knuth mentioned, all three volumes of his books
were translated into Russian within a very short interval.
Academic degrees were also mostly fake (much like they are in the USA now ;-): one of my
friends told me that his Ph.D. from top Ukrainian University was counted only as a master
degree in the USA by the commission which studied his thesis (I believe in NYU)
But again, most good western books on tech subjects were translated and were somewhat
available. And if you compare Feynman lectures (which were also translated) to Soviet physics
textbooks, Soviet textbooks were not even competitive. Some "cutting edge" books was OK. But
very few.
The professors and lectures (including professors large part of which were just incompetent
jerks, promoted due to nepotism or Communist party activities) deteriorated to the level that
was simply painful to watch. Some came to lectures completely unprepared or drank, or tried to
teach some completely bogus theories of their own invention. Many did not come at all sending
assistants.
My impression is that essentially, in 1990, Soviet science and education experienced the
same crisis as the Communist social system as a whole.
But I think students learn as much from each other as from professors, and if the level of
the class was extremely high, the results were corresponding. In other words, poor university
teachers did not harm them that much, and a lot what they learn, they learn on their own
(except fundamental disciplines) -- kind of self-education buried within ;-).
Also, rigid soviet system (you have a zero opportunity to select your own set of subjects
for a degree) has one important advantage. It schools you to be determined and persisting, no
matter what subject you were assigned. To be a real fighter, in some academic or non-academic
sense.
That was especially true as you also need to pass exams in Marxism philosophy and Political
economy to get a degree. Those subjects were frown upon, but in retrospect were useful:
students were forced to read classics, not junk like in neo-classical economics courses in the USA.
I think that the main reason for the high quality of Soviet engineers of this period was not
the education the got, but the fact that talented people were nowhere to go; there was no
"business path." That's why Berezovsky became an academic scholar and even reached the level of
the Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Science
The level of backwardness of computer science education in the 90th in the USSR was
staggering. So the fact that there were so many talented programmers in the country, many of
whom later found a well-paid job in the Western countries, was mostly due to the level of the
talent of those few who managed to get into universities.
Many problems with Soviet education persist in Russia. Andrei Martyanov looks at many
problems of Russian society via rose glasses. Taking into account the current level of
Russophobia, that's a noble stance, and I do not object to his exaggerations.
"... While the inequality gap between countries has closed over the last two decades, the gap within most developed countries has widened, leaving millions more vulnerable to a global downturn than they otherwise would have been. ..."
"... "In the UK, for example, the top 10% now control nearly as much wealth as the bottom 50%. This situation is mirrored across much of the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), where income and wealth inequality have reached, or are near, record highs." ..."
"... Having considered all of this, we'd like to present another scenario: if Trump loses in November, and the Fed regains the courage to raise interest rates now that President Trump isn't around to publicly browbeat and humiliate them, that might be enough to send markets into a tailspin, even if the Dems take the 'market friendly' road and nominate Joe Biden. ..."
The new head of the IMF, who took over from Christine Lagarde in November, warned that the
global economy could soon find itself mired in a great depression.
During a speech at the Peterson Institute, IMF Chairwoman Kristalina Georgieva compared the
contemporary global to the "roaring 20s" of the 20th century, a decade of cultural and
financial excess that culminated in the great market crash of 1929. According to the
Guardian, this research suggests that a similar trend is already under way , and though the
collapse might not be around the corner, when it comes, it will be impossible to avoid.
While the inequality gap between countries has closed over the last two decades, the gap
within most developed countries has widened, leaving millions more vulnerable to a global
downturn than they otherwise would have been.
In particular, she singled out the UK for criticism: "In the UK, for example, the top 10%
now control nearly as much wealth as the bottom 50%. This situation is mirrored across much of
the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), where income and wealth
inequality have reached, or are near, record highs."
... ... ...
This is further evidenced by the fact that, every time the Fed has tried to
wean the American economy off of rock-bottom interest rates or the central bank's
ever-expanding balance sheet, markets have reacted with fury.
Having considered all of this, we'd like to present another scenario: if Trump loses in
November, and the Fed regains the courage to raise interest rates now that President Trump
isn't around to publicly browbeat and humiliate them, that might be enough to send markets into
a tailspin, even if the Dems take the 'market friendly' road and nominate Joe Biden.
There is a deeper problem in this modern capitalist earth. Human relations are
deteriorating. Because of competitiveness, showing off, jealousy, materialism and
consumerism.
Modern humans are alienated human zombies who have no purpose in life except to
compete.
liar. Men no longer like women they only want teens, **** and casual sex
they detest actual women, don't want to settle down and make a family in their 20s with a
woman their own age - and wonder why at age 55 they are sitting on a bar stool alone with the
other men drinking too much
then they go to thailand and find some desperately poor 20yo who will marry them for a
passport
and then they wonder why as soon as citizenship comes through, the thai divorces their
sorry old arse and goes to make a new life for herself
then they're sitting alone and bitter age 60 hating all women
Prof. Robert Putnam is a sociologist from Harvard. He completed a massive study of
immigration in the 2000s which showed that immigration destroys societal trust and social
capital. Very little has been written about it, and the results of the study were summarized
in a Swedish English-language scholarly journal only--Putnam usually writes books that can be
comprehended by the intelligent lay reader. Someone who posts here wrote that the study was
available on Tor. Many studies with similar findings have been done since. If we ended
immigration, we might lessen the alienation in society today.
A representative of a globalist banking institution who "warned that fresh issues such as
the climate emergency and increased trade protectionism meant the next 10 years were likely
to be characterized by social unrest and financial market volatility."
But she does not mention the real causes of the problems, the bankster ponzi scheme
creating massive inflation or globalist corporations lowering wages by outsourcing jobs and
increasing immigration, while using debt to buyback stocks instead of capital investment.
Place another conniving spokesperson on the ignore list, along with the current and past
Fed Reserve representatives.
I hope y'all are ready for green communism after the engineered collapse.
"Kristalina Georgieva was born in Sofia into a family of bureaucrats.[15] Her father was a
civil engineer who supervised state road-building projects,[16] and her grandfather was a
prominent Bulgarian revolutionary Ivan Karshovski.[17]"
"Georgieva holds a PhD in Economics and an MA in Political Economy and Sociology from the
Karl Marx Higher Institute of Economics (now called University of National and World Economy)
in Sofia.[18][19] Her thesis was on "Environmental Protection Policy and Economic Growth in
the USA". She also did post-graduate research and studies in natural resource economics and
environmental policy at the London School of Economics in the late 1980s and at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology.[20]"
"Georgieva started her career at the World Bank Group in 1993 as an environmental
economist for Europe and Central Asia. Following this, she served in various positions in the
bank ultimately rising to become director of the Environment Department in charge of World
Bank's environmental strategy, policies, and lending. In this role she oversaw around 60% of
lending operations of the World Bank Group. From 2004 to 2007 she was the institution's
director and resident representative in the Russian Federation, based in Moscow.
She returned to Washington, D.C., to become director of Strategy and Operations,
Sustainable Development."
The US elite super rich benefits tremendously from their slave economies in Europe and
Japan. ECB Draghi a former Goldman Sachs always had a huge stimulus plan and staggering
amounts of asset purchases --the last was 2.9 Trillion Euros-- that at the end of the day
benefited the most the US and the US elite super-rich and Japan's BoJ Kuroda does the
same-thing.
The US elite super rich is delighted, the highly corrupt Trump administration made the
US elite super-rich richer and richer while the middle class gets poorer and poorer and
disappears.
This plan actually began with Reagan. Trump is just continuing (and accelerating) the
process.
Named after the widely-venerated "Oracle of Omaha," the Buffett indicator reflects Warren Buffett's
characteristically simple thinking about stock values. It's the total stock market capitalization of the United
States relative to U.S. GDP.
If the indicator gets too top heavy, with the total market value of stocks significantly exceeding the
productivity of the underlying companies, Buffett would say stock prices are due for a correction. The
historical returns of the stock market back him up on that.
Today the indicator is soaring at a harrowing record high.
The
Buffett Indicator is at a horrific historic high. | Source: Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
Just before the Dot Com Bubble collapsed,
total U.S. market cap stood at 146% of GDP
, according to the Federal Reserve's books. Right before the
Great Recession that began at the end of 2007, the U.S. market cap was 137% of GDP.
Warren Buffett has $128 billion in cash to burn and analysts can't figure out why he isn't spending it.
Buffett already explained why two decades and two recessions ago.
'Mr. Buffett On The Stock Market'
Warren
Buffett has seen it all. Judging by Berkshire Hathaway's balance sheet, he's not excited about stock prices
today. | Source: AP Photo/Nati Harnik
He argued that traders can profit from a bubble in the short term by selling equities to each other. But in
the final reckoning, stock values will average out to the ability of the underlying businesses to deliver
profits.
Or as Buffett once told shareholders at an annual Berkshire Hathaway meeting, investors aren't investing in
"lines that wiggle up and down on a graph."
His 1999 remarks spell doom after the stock market's bull run in 2019:
The fact is that markets behave in ways, sometimes for a very long stretch, that are not linked to value.
Sooner or later, though, value counts.
He summarized the nature of equities bubbles:
Bear in mind–this is a critical fact often ignored–that investors as a whole cannot get anything out of
their businesses except what the businesses earn. Sure, you and I can sell each other stocks at higher and
higher prices.
And described the hard limit on stock returns:
The absolute most that the owners of a business, in aggregate, can get out of it in the end–between now
and Judgment Day–is what that business earns over time.
If you go by the Buffett indicator, Wall Street is partying like it's 1999.
That's an unintended consequence of the flood of central bank liquidity. Systemic financial
regulations designed to recession-proof the economy are tailored for banks. The $3.2 trillion hedge fund
sector could be the weak point where the dam finally bursts.
the low-yield environment promotes an increase in portfolio similarities among investment
funds that could amplify any market sell-off..
All-time low bond yields have sent investors in search of higher returns in riskier assets.
A selloff of riskier securities in the asset management sector now poses a spillover threat to
the broader economy. That's terrifying given the amount of leverage in hedge funds.
When this happens on a massive scale, you have the subprime lending crisis. And the
resulting fallout in the mortgage-backed securities market. Then the subsequent credit crunch.
And a loss of investor confidence. And a Great Recession.
Regulation Spurred Hedge Fund
Risk
Taxpayers had to bail out banks that were "too big to fail." So regulations were passed to
keep banks upright in the future. But that's like squeezing a balloon. There's still the same
amount of air in the balloon. It just moves around.
The Wall Street Journal recently
gave some troubling examples . Here's some of the bad behavior in the asset management
industry today:
Funds are dabbling in riskier asset classes, including private markets, real-estate
projects, infrastructure financing and direct lending. Some are making riskier fixed-income
bets, buying volatile assets such as 100-year Argentine government bonds. Others are going
farther afield, investing in greenhouses and waste management.
It used to be fine for wealthy investors to put their own finances at risk. So long as
they're the only ones to take a hit if they lose their investment, that's part of the game.
But now they could be putting the rest of the economy at risk. And a central bank says that
central banks caused it. There are a lot of policymakers today
proposing to raise taxes on the wealthy to shore up the rest of the economy. Maybe just not
handing them so much money in the first place would be a good start.
Disclaimer: The opinions in this article do not represent investment or trading advice
from CCN.com.
"The one who does most to avoid suffering is, in the end, the one who suffers the most: and
his suffering comes to him from things so little and so trivial that one can say that it is no
longer objective at all. It is his own existence, his own being, that is at once the subject
and the source of his pain, and his very existence and consciousness is his greatest
torture."
Thomas Merton
"One reason we rush so quickly to the vulgar satisfactions of judgement, and love to revel
in our righteous outrage, is that it spares us from the impotent pain of empathy, and the
harder, messier work of understanding.
Let me propose that if your beliefs or convictions matter more to you than people -- if they
require you to act as though you were a worse person than you are -- you may have lost
perspective."
Tim Kreider
"The Pharisee took up his position and spoke this prayer to himself: 'O God, I thank you
that I am not like the rest of humanity -- greedy, dishonest, adulterous -- or even like this
tax collector over there."
"Neoliberalism sees competition as the defining characteristic of human relations. It
redefines citizens as consumers, whose democratic choices are best exercised by buying and
selling, a process that rewards merit and punishes inefficiency. It maintains that "the market"
delivers benefits that could never be achieved by planning.
We internalise and reproduce its creeds. The rich persuade themselves that they acquired
their wealth through merit, ignoring the advantages – such as education, inheritance and
class – that may have helped to secure it. The poor begin to blame themselves for their
failures, even when they can do little to change their circumstances.
It has played a major role in a remarkable variety of crises: the financial meltdown of
2007‑8, the offshoring of wealth and power, of which the Panama Papers offer us merely a
glimpse, the slow collapse of public health and education, resurgent child poverty, the
epidemic of loneliness, the collapse of ecosystems, the rise of Donald Trump. But we respond to
these crises as if they emerge in isolation, apparently unaware that they have all been either
catalysed or exacerbated by the same coherent philosophy; a philosophy that has – or had
– a name. What greater power can there be than to operate namelessly?"
George Monbiot
"Progress is a nice word. But change is its motivator. And change has its enemies."
Robert F. Kennedy
"`But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,' faltered Scrooge, who now began to
apply this to himself.
`Business!' cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. `Mankind was my business. The common
welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business.
The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my
business!'
It held up its chain at arm's length, as if that were the cause of all its unavailing grief,
and flung it heavily upon the ground again.
`At this time of the rolling year,' the spectre said `I suffer most. Why did I walk through
crowds of fellow-beings with my eyes turned down, and never raise them to that blessed Star
which led the Wise Men to a poor abode! Were there no poor homes to which its light would have
conducted me!'
Scrooge was very much dismayed to hear the spectre going on at this rate, and began to quake
exceedingly.
`Hear me!' cried the Ghost. `My time is nearly gone.'"
Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
"I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organisations, specifically banks
and others, were such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and
their equity in the firms."
Alan Greenspan, apologising for his disastrous, ideologically-biased policies promoting
financial deregulation , 23 October 2008
"Two souls, alas, are housed within my breast,
And each will wrestle for the mastery there...
To speak the truth, as truth to me appeared,
Caused noisy protest, I was hooted down.
Such unpleasant incidents occurred
I ran off, to be on my own,
into a wilderness. Utterly forsaken,
I fell into that devil's grip, and was taken."
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust
"Honest, industrious, peaceful citizens were classed as bloodsuckers, if they asked to be
paid a living wage. And they saw that praise was reserved henceforth for those who devised
means of getting paid enormously for committing crimes against which no laws had been [or could
be] passed. Thus the American dream turned belly up, turned green, bobbed to the scummy surface
of cupidity unlimited, filled with gas, went bang in the noonday sun."
Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You Mr. Rosewater
"Isn't it a riddle and awe-inspiring that things can be so beautiful, despite the horrors?
I've seen something wondrous peering through my joy in the beautiful, a sense of its
creator.
Only people can be truly ugly, because they have free will to separate themselves from this
song of praise. It often seems they may drown out this hymn with cannon thunder, curses, and
blasphemy. But I have realized they will not succeed. And so I want to throw myself on the side
of the victor."
Sophie Scholl
"Four sorrows are certain to be visited on the United States.
First, there will be a state of perpetual war.
Second is a loss of democracy and Constitutional rights as the presidency eclipses
Congress and is itself transformed from a co-equal 'executive branch' of government into a
military junta.
Third is the replacement of truth by propaganda, disinformation, and the glorification
of war, power, and the military legions.
Lastly, there is bankruptcy, as the United States pours its economic resources into
ever more grandiose military projects and shortchanges the education, health, and safety of
its citizens."
Chalmers Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire , 2005
"Do not be fooled into thinking that you will never suffer because you say that I dwell
among you. It is your delusion and lying words. Do you really believe you can steal, murder,
commit adultery, lie, and worship the gods of the world and those other new gods of yours, and
then come here and stand before me in my own house and say, 'We are safe', only to go right
back to all your lawlessness again? Do you not see that this house of yours, which you mark
with my name, has become a den of thieves?"
In The Rise and Fall of Great Powers , Kennedy shows that economic decline is what
causes such polities to fail. On top of all Hudson's material I've linked to today and over
the years, there's the occasional bit of truth shown by media via video, in this case
this
"Keiser Report" episode : "Capitalism Without Capital." The pertinent information and
argument are all presented in the first half of the program up to the break, which is all of
about 13-14 min. Those who've read Kennedy's work will note the connection to which I refer.
Those not knowing economics but having common sense can also understand the meaning of what's
being discussed.
The Ponzi Scheme that masquerades as the Outlaw US Empire's economy is entering its 12th
year. Note Hudson's remark from the linked discussion above: "A lot of 70 year-olds need
employment." They need jobs but aren't counted as unemployed just as millions of others.
Actual unemployment's still over 20%. To even attempt to make its citizenry whole, tens of
millions of jobs must be created--lets call it 60 million. For comparison, Clinton got almost
66 million votes in 2016.
Wall Street cannot be bailed out again. "Creative Destruction" must be allowed to take its
toll.
As many others here have pointed out in this and other threads, the scenario sketched by
Michael Hudson nicely lays out the fault-lines of US foreign policy. The history of reserve
currencies maps onto the history of empires quite nicely from the Athenian coinage decree
(date controversial, between 440-420 BCE), to the pound sterling. The novelty of the
capitalist eras (1450-present) is public debt and the relationship between currencies of
account and parcels of state securities (like T-bills). Hudson lucidly describes the
self-reinforcing cycle between fossil fuel denomination ('petro-dollars') and military
financing (with those dollars purchasing the treasuries which pay for the bombs). The
longer-term view, however, suggests that empires are protection rackets designed to direct
and skim capital flows . It is worth looking historically even at pre-capitalist
empires.
For example, the relationship between Rome's foreign-military policy and its interventions
in Spain and the Hellenistic East in the second century BCE was linked closely to a parasitic
expropriation of resources that eventually warranted greater and greater intervention and
direct control.
The US military needs to be seen in the same way; but this means that a gap opens up
between the popular (imaginary) view of its function (a Saving Private Ryan image held
by soldiers and citizens) and its real role as the enforcer of a global financial racket. In
Rome a similar kind of gap led in part to the breakdown of republican politics and the civil
wars of the late first century BCE -- and in the end the de facto monarchy of the
Augustan regime, where Senate and People quickly became relics and ceremonial forms masking
the reality of power.
It was not until Tacitus (80 years after Augustus' death!) that Romans could finally admit
it to themselves.
Have US political institutions reached that stage yet? Of course there are huge
differences between Rome and modern states (separation of civil and military sectors, the
existence of a bureaucracy, complex financial alchemy, etc), but the conflicts usefully
described here by b helpfully remind us of the very ancient function of organised militaries:
they either protect the racket, or, better still, they are the racket.
"It has been the longest bull market in modern history, enabled by massive Central Bank
intervention. But with trade wars raging, Brexit, Presidential impeachment over something,
etc., there remains a significant risk of a recession over the next 12 months.
If we look at the normalized change in the 10Y-3M curve minus normalized change in 10Y
yields, we can see a heightened recession risk. Lower yields and steeper curves are not a good
recipe. And then we have the decline in S&P 500 earnings estimates. Recession coming?"
Anthony Sanders, Confounded Interest
"Day by day the money-masters of America become more aware of their danger, they draw
together, they grow more class-conscious, more aggressive. The [first world] war has taught
them the possibilities of propaganda; it has accustomed them to the idea of enormous campaigns
which sway the minds of millions and make them pliable to any purpose.
American political corruption was the buying up of legislatures and assemblies to keep them
from doing the people's will and protecting the people's interests; it was the exploiter
entrenching himself in power, it was financial autocracy undermining and destroying political
democracy. By the blindness and greed of ruling classes the people have been plunged into
infinite misery."
Upton Sinclair, The Brass Check
"There is no clean way to make a hundred million bucks. Somewhere along the line guys got
pushed to the wall, nice little businesses got the ground cut out from under them. Decent
people lost their jobs. Big money is big power, and big power gets used wrong."
Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye
"The very banality and innocence of the first act only allowed the blow to fall afterwards
with more awful effect."
Robert W. Chambers, The King In Yellow
"There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself."
Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye
"Whoever commits a fraud is guilty not only of the particular injury to him who he deceives,
but of the diminution of that confidence which constitutes not only the ease but the existence
of society."
Samuel Johnson
"The world of finance hails the invention of the wheel over and over again, often in a
slightly more unstable version."
John Kenneth Galbraith
"Make no mistake about it, just as Lehman Brothers was set up to take the fall for
triggering the 2008 collapse, China is being groomed as the new scapegoat for the coming
crisis. But China's economic slump is only a symptom, not the disease.
The reality is that the repeal of Glass-Steagall ushered in the greatest wealth transfer
scheme in the history of America, allowing six mega banks in America to control the vast
majority of insured deposits, use those taxpayer-backed deposits to gamble for the house, loot
the bank from the inside by paying billions of dollars to select employees and customers and
then hand the gambling tab to the taxpayer when the casino burns down. This model is a
staggering headwind on both U.S. and global growth because it has created the greatest wealth
and income inequality since the Great Depression."
Pam and Russ Martens
"Each day we are becoming a creature of splendid glory, or one of unthinkable horror."
C. S. Lewis
"Congratulations to the Federal Reserve. You've successfully created the most extreme,
pre-collapse yield-seeking bubble in U.S. history! With lower return prospects than Aug 1929.
While encouraging a debt bubble where half of all 'investment grade' debt is one step above
junk."
John P. Hussman
"All the world marveled at this, and gave their allegiance to the Beast. And they worshiped
the dragon for giving such power to him. as they also worshiped the Beast. 'Who is as great as
the Beast?' they exclaimed. 'And who is able to resist him?' The Beast was allowed to commit
great blasphemies against God. And he was given the authority to do as he willed, but only for
forty-two months."
Revelation 13:3-5
"Democratic leaders must learn to talk about class issues again. But they won't on their
own. So pressure must come from traditional liberal constituencies and the grass roots, like
the much-vilified bloggers...
The more comfortable option for Democrats is to maintain their present course, gaming out
each election with political science and a little triangulation magic, their relevance slowly
ebbing as memories of the middle-class republic fade."
"At the end of the day, perhaps, the equity side of the U.S. external balance sheet should
be understood not by thinking of the U.S. as a giant and very successful private equity fund
that borrows to buy equity -- but rather as one giant corporate tax dodge for U.S. based
multinationals
If you think I am exaggerating, I would encourage you to take a look at the IRS data on the
location of U.S. corporate profits -- and the location of the taxes that American firms pay
abroad. U.S. firms are earning big profits in jurisdictions where they don't pay tax, and small
profits in jurisdictions where they do and in the process, reducing their U.S. tax bill as
well. That's real exorbitant privilege."
...if nothing had happened in the US-China trade war. Well, me might have gotten to where we
are supposed to be with the deal
..a honest question. In terms of the environment and global climate, is it a good thing that
farmers will be producing more monoculture grains, dairy, beef and pork for export?
"... Such is the extent of the shakeout in the U.S. shale industry that Permian Basin oil production is closer to peaking than many forecasts suggest, according to one energy investor. ..."
"... Adam Waterous, who runs Waterous Energy Fund, regards the sector's financial position as unsustainable after years of disappointing returns for investors and negative free cash flow. With capital markets now largely shunning shale producers, the impact will begin to show in oil and natural gas output from the largest U.S. oil patch, he said. ..."
Production from these selected top 9 US shale oil companies might be about to fall as shown
by decreasing quarterly crude oil production changes in chart. ExxonMobil (XOM) shale oil is
growing fast about 11% per quarter but probably not enough to offset declines from other
operators.
XOM data is taken from shaleprofile.com, averaging three months into a quarter, then
multiplying by 75% to get crude oil. 75% is used because Pioneer Natural Resources crude to
total shale oil is 75% and Pioneer operates in the Permian which is also XOM main basin.
Pretty sure shale profile reports crude plus condensate, for "oil" production. As the data
matches pretty closely with the EIA's tight oil estimates by play when Oklahoma output is
excluded (shaleprofile only reports Oklahoma output on the subscription service.)
In short, one should not assume 75% of what is reported at shale profile is the "crude"
portion of output. In fact all US output is reported as crude plus condensate, all the way
back to 1860.
There is also Chevron, BP, and Shell operating in US tight oil, all have deep pockets and
will be unaffected by the tightening up of the credit markets. In the past 2 years these 5
have doubled their tight oil output, though most of the increase occurred in 2018 when oil
prices were higher.
Output may drop, that in turn will lead to higher oil prices and higher tight oil output,
also the majors will be able to pick up cheap assets as smaller oil companies that have not
been financially prudent go bankrupt, that may accelerate the growth of tight oil output from
the majors as oil prices rise.
Liquids produced at natural-gas processing plants are excluded. Those are the NGPLs if
memory serves and are not NGLs which I think of as coming from NG at the well head.
In other words liquid from NG is listed two ways: The stuff obtained at the well head
(NGL) and the stuff obtained farther down the line at NG processing plants (NGPL), and the
latter is not included as oil. This is from my failing memory but so is my ability to find my
way home most of the time.
What some do not realize is that the natural gasoline (which condenses from the natural gas
stream at standard temperature and pressure of 1 ATM, 25 C) has always been included in the
crude plus condensate data in the US since 1860. The lower carbon chain products (C2, C3, C4)
are not liquids at STP, they are gases and remain in the natural gas stream until they are
separated at the natural gas processing plant. The definition given by the EIA is quite clear
on this point.
In the Permian basin, the ratio of crude to total oil (incl NGL) produced by Pioneer has
fallen from 81% at beginning of 2016 to 75% at the end of 2019. If this fall is similar for
other Permian producers then it may be harder to continue increasing Permian crude
production.
The comparison between oil production from shaleprofile.com and from Pioneer is very close,
as shown by the two green lines. For 2019Q3, shaleprofile production was 286 kbd compared to
290 kbd from Pioneer quarterly report. Note that both these numbers include crude, lease
condensate and NGLs. http://www.pxd.com/
I read an very interested report here on this forum where US geological Institute had
estimated break even prices for Thiere 6 to 1. Thiere 6 was categorizized as sweet spots with
more than 800 kbpd. As I remember this had break even cost 18 usd each barrel and to next
class you could aproximately multiplay it with 3. I believe this is much of the core
knowledge the Pioneer Mark Papa is estimated US future shale production at wich again is
related to change in rock quality. What we know is in 2014 -2015 I believe US could earn
money at least with some borrowings at 30 usd WTI , 5 years after tjey cant earn money at 60
usd WTI even with huge improvement in drilling efficiency that it is a reason to believe will
go much slower in future. Labour cost and all other will continue to increase. It might be
break even price in 2025 will be above 120 usd WTI iff Thiere 5 runs out as same as Tiere 6
the sweet spots. This mean we will be back to the situation before 2014 when the main source
off oil was offshore, and investment was there. It simply means US need to cut more cost in
shale oil, develop more oil from wells drilled in less quality rock but this challange might
be very hard to solve even for Exxon that is ramping up, the question will be if their
barrels are profittable at 42 usd WTI as they predict. Perhaps Mr. President could give tax
release, or simply start buy up the 1500 billion in depth that need to be payed next 4 years.
Some people may consider natural gasoline (which condenses from Natural gas in the lease
separators) as "NGL", I consider this this to be lease condensate and generally is is mixed
with the crude and sold with the crude. Perhaps Pioneer keeps a separate account of "crude"
and "condensate", in the US these are usually lumped together as C+C, most of the NGPL
produced in the US is Ethane (C2), Propane (C3), and Butane (C4), about 12% of the NGPL is
natural gasoline (C5), roughly 600 kb/d of a 5000 kb/d total output of NGPL. Note that the US
does not count the pentanes plus from NGPL plants as part of C+C output even though it is
chemically very similar to lease condensate. In Canada, for example the pentanes plus from
NGPL is added to C+C from the field, not sure why the US does things this way, Canada's
approach seems more sensible.
Such is the extent of the shakeout in the U.S. shale industry that Permian Basin oil
production is closer to peaking than many forecasts suggest, according to one energy
investor.
Adam Waterous, who runs Waterous Energy Fund, regards the sector's financial position as
unsustainable after years of disappointing returns for investors and negative free cash flow.
With capital markets now largely shunning shale producers, the impact will begin to show in
oil and natural gas output from the largest U.S. oil patch, he said.
"We think we are at or near peak Permian" production, Waterous said last week in an
interview. "The North American oil market has been grossly overcapitalized, which is not
sustainable."
Predicting peak Permian output for 2020 isn't a mainstream view. There's plenty of debate
about how much production growth in the West Texas and New Mexico patch may slow this year as
shale drillers slash capital spending, but the consensus is that supplies will rise, albeit
at a slower pace. Tai Liu, an analyst at BloombergNEF, said in a report Tuesday that the
pessimism may be overdone.
Just because there are newcomers I will re offer up a consideration.
If you have to have it, and you do have to have it, you are not going to let a substance
created from nothingness on a whim by the local Central Bank get in the way.
This is a peak oil blog, and that means scarcity. When something that you have to have is
scarce, then you are going to go get it. The concept of price is a parameter of value --
value that exists only in the imagination of counterparties. Oil moves food and your stomach
doesn't care about the imagination of counterparties. So don't be so sure that price
determines production. Or consumption.
Anybody notice that the price is rather a lot less than it was five or six years ago? How
does production compare to then?
"'There are known knowns. There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns.
That is to say, there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown
unknowns. There are things we do not know we don't know."
Economics is the study of how people allocate scarce resources for production,
distribution, and consumption, both individually and collectively.
Supply and demand is the amount of a commodity, product, or service available and the
desire of buyers for it, considered as factors regulating its price.
Watcher, we don't live in a perfect world of instant information and production.
" Over the past five years, the industry and its investors "mistook a massive structural
change for a simple cyclical event," he said. "It's impossible to continue to have uneconomic
production and capex.""
It is basic stuff. I can show you many time periods of increasing price that aligned with
increasing consumption.
And again, worst of all, you know I can show those time periods.
The theory fails. If you find even one instance where it is wrong, it fails. That's the
scientific method. The hypothesis is proposed. Experiments are observed. If even one fails to
support it, that's failure. That's how it's always worked.
There is no oh, but. Price is lower than 6 years ago and production is higher. 2010 to
2014 price rose from $95/b to $112/b. Consumption 2010 89 bpd to 2014 93 mbpd. I found that
without breaking a sweat.
The theory fails. Embrace a new one. And why be surprised? It's a substance whose value
derives from whimsy and counterparty imagination
So rigs and frac spreads continue to fall yet almost all experts predict continued LTO growth
. it would appear the day of reckoning is coming and the majors in the Permian will not save
the day .. wasn't everyone hoping for a pick up in rigs and spreads as budgets were meant to
be renewed in the new year
I think independents are finally getting it that they can't simply look to increase
production as soon as the POO goes up.
I think the change has solely been bought about by investors requiring a return on
investment, I'm not sure we can surmise that LTO producers will act as they have in the past,
I suspect it will take a sustained period of high POO before LTO producers open the spigots
it will create even more of a boom/bust scenario going forward ..
I agree with you Jack, a large increase in oil prices seems unlikely to have much boost in
LTO production for several years because banks will want significant loan payback before
increasing drilling budgets. Dennis' model is an excellent BAU projection, but we live in
more dynamic times than that imho. Banks will need a consistent high oil price to lend like
they did in the past. That seems unlikely given possibility for recession, war, EV adoption,
increased regulation from Democratic prez, etc.
Wall Street is obsessed with the shiny new thing and that is not FF production. Tesla's
share price now more than GM and Ford combined.
Debt mountain for shale producers 2020-2023. Maybe once they get past this mountain banks
will be ready to loan again and rig counts and frac spreads will increase. But only if
there's a consistently high oil price during this period so banks have confidence to lend and
debt is substantially reduced.
It's all about the Permian and has been for quite some time.
None of the other shale basins have enough rigs running to grow production
significantly.
The Bakken is probably the most economic besides the Permian, and it seems the operators
there are in maintenance mode with regard to production.
There are still 397 rigs running in the PB. That is still a large number. I suspect there
are more locations left there than in the remaining shale basins combined (not counting the
ones which produce mostly natural gas).
It takes rigs to drill wells and frak spreads to complete them. No, rigs and frak spreads
have not improved their efficiency that much in such a short time. And drillers and frakers
are not working that much faster.
What you are seeing, or are about to see, is a slowdown in completions. The frak
spreads that are being retired have obviously just finished completing a well. But they
will not be completing another one. That's why you see a lag between falling rig and frak
spread count and completions.
Hell, that's all we need Dennis. If the total number of national frac spreads fall then the
total completions, nationwide, will fall. If production falls everywhere except the Permian,
then that decline will offset any increase in the Permian.
Okay, we know that the lions share of frac spreads are for oil therefore???
I think you are way overplaying your hand with this efficiency stuff. Last time when rigs
and frac spreads declined, then production declined. Why should it be any different this
time?
The simple fact of the matter is: "The total number of frac spreads are falling".
Therefore completions will fall because retired frac spreads frac no new wells. Yes, it is as
simple as that. Saying the remaining frac spreads will be more efficient therefore
completions will not fall, is just wishful thinking at best, and total nonsense at worst.
Well said Ron losing frac spreads means that the maximum number of completions able to be
completed has decreased – the concept of increased efficiency is a red herring when
spreads have fallen 40%!in the past 6 months – spreads efficiency sure hasn't risen 65%
in the same time ..
I think we all agree once the worm turns in the Permian LTO production will decrease, I am
not sure producers will increase production as the POO rises they do have to pay back a lot
of debt and have shareholders to answer to who want a return ..
From what I have read there is always improvement of efficiency in operation regarding new
Buisinesses such as shale. This improvement is normaly linked to exsperiance, increased
volumes i.e. but typical it will slow down during time as much of the easy potential will be
taken out. I see this as drilling padds, skidding systems as same rig could drill more wells
without be dismantled and mounting again. Dere have also been improvements in latheral
lenghts, propant, and fluid . But as Slumberger wrote in 2019, they believed max latheral
lenght already is reach as if increased cost off equipment will be much higher and also risk
increase when operating atbthe limit, more tear i.e. There might still be improvements but
more slow than it have been. According to reports the break even price increase 4-5 times
each Tiere class, and I believe rock quality will be a main challange in years to come as
shale will need higher oil price to earn money, pay back ballons and dividends.
Let's see the next quarterlies from LTO producers noting the continued comments about being
profitable under $50. If Permian centric producers cannot profit on maintaining production
output we know Houston we have a problem going forward .. will the companies be able to stick
to using cash flows from continued operations only or will we see more excuses carted out
again .
Gail makes the case for an oil peak for 2018, predicting production down 1% in 2020 in a
low-price environment. Her take is worth a read even though she likes to go far out on a limb
with little support sometimes
Production from these selected top 8 US shale oil companies might be about to fall as shown
by decreasing quarterly crude oil production changes as in chart below.
very interesting graph it shows what is evident that independents are being forced into
financial discipline at last. I cannot see the majors picking up the slack regardless of what
the MSM say, why would they continue with the growth at all costs strategy which has caused
noting but carnage for the above 8 producers.
Can XOM do all the heavy lifting itself once the independent growth plateaus then falls is
the million $ question. My bet XOM will grow but in a sustainable way, the impact of the
Permian increase will be interesting to note in their quarterly how much has that growth cost
them is the question ..
If we look at Exxon/Mobil, Chevron, Conoco-Philips, Shell, and Total combined, they have
increased combined tight oil output from 400 kb/d to 840 kb/d in the past 2 years (Sept 2017
to Sept 2019). Most of this increase occurred from Sept 2017 to Sept 2018 when oil prices
were a bit higher, in the past 12 months output grew by only 155 kb/d. Oil prices matter, low
oil prices may kill tight oil output growth, if so, oil prices are likely to rise.
For my "medium oil price scenario" (maximum WTI price of $83/b in 2018$ reached in 2027),
we get about 195,000 total wells drilled, about 110,000 total horizontal tight oil wells get
completed from 2010 to 2030 (about 26,000 have been completed through November 2019) so
roughly 80k wells completed from Sept 2019 to Sept 2029 in scenario below.
Also link below has spreadsheet you can play with.
Changing row 4 changes completion rate to any rate that seems reasonable. Scenario ends in
2030 for this particular spreadsheet, you can use excel, google sheets, or some other
spreadsheet program, it is saved in microsoft excel format.
On prices remaining range bound, that depends in part of how quickly oil consumption
grows. From 1982 to 2018 the average rate of growth in annual oil consumption has been about
800 kb/d. My $83/bo model has US tight oil growing by about 385 kb/d over the next 7 years,
it is not clear that the rest of the World will be able to fill the 415 kb/d gap each year
(assuming the 800 kb/d C+C consumption growth continues for the next 7 years). That is why I
expect oil prices to rise.
There has been relatively low offshore oil investment over the past 5 years and this is
likely to start affecting World oil output soon, the bumps in output from Brazil and Norway
are likely to be offset by declines in other producing nations (Mexico, China, and UK) and it
is far from clear that we will see higher output from Iran, Venezuela, Libya, or Nigeria.
As always the future is difficult to predict and I am often wrong, so perhaps oil prices
will remain "range bound" in your preferred $55 to $65/bo range. If that is correct Permian
output will grow far more slowly, perhaps growing from 4 Mb/d to about 6 Mb/d. The low oil
price scenario has about 72,000 wells completed from Sept 2019 to May 2030 in the Permian,
about 52,000 wells in all other US tight oil basins for a total of about 124,000 wells for
the low oil price scenario over that period. The completion rate falls from 850 in 2030 to
zero in 2035 for the low oil price scenario and output falls from 8200 kb/d at the start of
2030 to 2600 kb/d at the end of 2035.
I think it unlikely oil prices will remain range bound when World oil output peaks in
2026, that is only 6 years away, growth in oil output will slow significantly starting in
2024 and oil prices are likely to rise (at the latest) by June 2023.
That is a lot of locations. Of course, not all locations are the same productivity
wise.
Incredible how much oil the Permian Basin has produced and will produce in the next
decade.
Interesting how many companies sold out most of their acreage in the PB in the late 1980s
and 1990s, thinking it was past its prime.
I know of a small operator that bought leases in the PB and drilled some good vertical
wells. Martin Co. I don't know what they paid, but I am sure it was a tiny fraction of the
$600 million they sold out for a three years ago.
QEP bought about 9,500 acres from them for $600 million. There was 1,400 BOPD of
production from vertical wells at the time of the sale.
I have been looking at the wells QEP has drilled on this acreage. I don't think $600
million for 450 hz locations was a good deal for QEP. There are some good wells, but not
enough of them.
Yes I agree, all locations will not have the same productivity, I use the average for all
wells drilled for any given month as I am interested in the entire industry, some operators
will have better wells than others, some of this is skill and some of it is luck, I simply
assume generic company X will have a well productivity distribution that will be similar to
the industry average, in practice this is not likely to be true, but if we think of the
entire Permian basin as being run by a single large oil producer (Big Permian Oil Company) it
would be approximately correct, if my economic assumptions are correct.
I also find it amazing how much tight oil has been produced (5.6 Gb so for for Permian
since Jan 2000) and will be produced ( a total of 29 Gb for my model from Jan 2000 to May
2030, and for longer scenarios out to Dec 2079, about 60 Gb URR for Permian basin alone.)
Mike Shellman thinks that is completely wrong, but if the USGS mean estimate is roughly
correct and my medium oil price scenario and other economic assumptions are correct, that is
what the model suggests might happen. Mike is not a fan of the USGS TRR estimates, their F95
estimate is 43 Gb for Permian Basin URR, my low oil price scenario is in line with that F95
TRR estimate, with a URR of about 37 Gb.
If the TRR is low, oil prices are likely to be higher and a higher percentage of the TRR
is likely to be profitable to produce. (For a low TRR scenario the EUR would decrease more
rapidly than my "medium" TRR assumption (the basis for my best guess estimates).
I assume new well EUR starts to decrease starting in Jan 2019. In Dec 2018, my model has
the average Permian well with an EUR of 378 kbo. Chart below shows how the model assumes the
EUR will change from Sept 2019 to May 2030 (end of model scenario) for the Permian scenario I
presented above.
Again this is a guess for how future EUR will change based on a TRR scenario (no
economics) with 255,000 wells and a TRR matching the USGS mean estimate of 75 Gb for the
Permian basin. The rate that the EUR decreases depends on the number of wells completed each
month. Chart is small, click on chart for larger chart.
So they paid 1.33 million per well, I agree the wells do not look very good, for a 2017
average well, QEP has cumulative output of 145 kbo, my basin wide average well has about 190
kbo at 24 months, so the QEP wells about 24% lower than average, yikes.
Patrick Laforet
•
19 hours ago This is an interesting article on the possible causes and motivations of the
downing of the Boeing in Iran. It's clear that when we ask the question "Who benefits greatly
from this event", we are forced to say the US. (Google translation is decent)
.
WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE UKRAINIAN BOEING KILLED (show down) IN IRAN
.
https://inforuss.info/chto-...
If you live is USA, (I moved a decade ago) and you have a medical procedure you need done. I
would recommend not procrastinating and getting it done soon.
8% expense growth (faster than GDP) is unsustainable.
The real problem with american health care is bad management. Hospitals have no idea how much
it takes to cure a patient, and they sell treatments instead of cures. They don't know how
much the treatments cost either, so they just make up numbers. Pharmaceutical companies
charge whatever they can get away with, as the price of insulin shows.
Patients need more protection and better coverage so that insurers are forced to keep the
healthcare providers honest. That is why insurers need to be forced to provide coverage.
Markets economics works because the guy who pays applies pressure to the guy who delivers the
goods. This idea needs to be applied to health care, and prices would get back in line with
other rich countries.
"... These anecdotal stories about Invitation Homes being quick to evict tenants may prove to be the trend rather than the exception, given Blackstone's underlying business model. Securitizing rental payments creates an intense pressure on the company to ensure that the monthly checks keep flowing. For renters, that may mean you either pay on the first of the month every month, or you're out. ..."
Tucker could have done a number on Trump friend Schwarzman too.Mark my words you're gonna have another melt down now that all the people who
lost their home and ended up in rentals stop paying their rent that is now 2 1/2 times what
their mortgage was.
This is another fake bubble being securitized and sold off. Just like putting people into
houses with ARMs who couldnt afford them when the rates went up, Scharzman will fill up his
rentals to 99% occupancy with special deals to sell them to investors, when the special deal
period runs out and the rent goes up people will move out looking for cheaper housing and the
securities wont be worth shit.
Blackstone Group , CEO Stephen A. Schwarzman Buys Houses in Bulk to Profit from Mortgage
Crisis
You can hardly turn on the television or open a newspaper without hearing about the nation's
impressive, much celebrated housing recovery. Home prices are rising! New construction has
started! The crisis is over! Yet beneath the fanfare, a whole new get-rich-quick scheme is
brewing.
Over the last year and a half, Wall Street hedge funds and private equity firms have quietly
amassed an unprecedented rental empire, snapping up Queen Anne Victorians in Atlanta,
brick-faced bungalows in Chicago, Spanish revivals in Phoenix. In total, these deep-pocketed
investors have bought more than 200,000 cheap, mostly foreclosed houses in cities hardest hit
by the economic meltdown.
Wall Street's foreclosure crisis, which began in late 2007 and forced more than 10 million
people from their homes, has created a paradoxical problem. Millions of evicted Americans
need a safe place to live, even as millions of vacant, bank-owned houses are blighting
neighborhoods and spurring a rise in crime. Lucky for us, Wall Street has devised a solution:
It's going to rent these foreclosed houses back to us. In the process, it's devised a new
form of securitization that could cause this whole plan to blow up -- again.
Since the buying frenzy began, no company has picked up more houses than the Blackstone
Group, a major private equity firm. Using a subsidiary company, Invitation Homes, Blackstone
has grabbed houses at foreclosure auctions, through local brokers, and in bulk purchases
directly from banks the same way a regular person might stock up on toilet paper from
Costco.
In one move, it bought 1,400 houses in Atlanta in a single day. As of November, Blackstone
had spent $7.5 billion to buy 40,000 mostly foreclosed houses across the country. That's a
spending rate of $100 million a week since October 2012. It recently announced plans to take
the business international, beginning in foreclosure-ravaged Spain.
Few outside the finance industry have heard of Blackstone. Yet today, it's the largest
owner of single-family rental homes in the nation -- and of a whole lot of other things, too.
It owns part or all of the Hilton Hotel chain, Southern Cross Healthcare, Houghton Mifflin
publishing house, the Weather Channel, Sea World, the arts and crafts chain Michael's,
Orangina, and dozens of other companies.
Blackstone manages more than $210 billion in assets, according to its 2012 Securities and
Exchange Commission annual filing. It's also a public company with a list of institutional
owners that reads like a who's who of companies recently implicated in lawsuits over the
mortgage crisis, including Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, UBS, Bank of America,
Goldman Sachs, and of course JP Morgan Chase, which just settled a lawsuit with the
Department of Justice over its risky and often illegal mortgage practices, agreeing to pay an
unprecedented $13 billion fine.
In other words, if Blackstone makes money by capitalizing on the housing crisis, all these
other Wall Street banks -- generally regarded as the main culprits in creating the conditions
that led to the foreclosure crisis in the first place -- make money too.
An All-Cash Goliath
In neighborhoods across the country, many residents didn't have to know what Blackstone
was to realize that things were going seriously wrong.
Last year, Mark Alston, a real estate broker in Los Angeles, began noticing something
strange happening. Home prices were rising. And they were rising fast -- up 20 percent
between October 2012 and the same month this year. In a normal market, rising home prices
would mean increased demand from homebuyers. But here was the unnerving thing: the
homeownership rate was dropping, the first sign for Alston that the market was somehow out of
whack.
The second sign was the buyers themselves.
"I went two years without selling to a black family, and that wasn't for lack of trying,"
says Alston, whose business is concentrated in inner-city neighborhoods where the majority of
residents are African American and Hispanic. Instead, all his buyers -- every last one of
them -- were besuited businessmen. And weirder yet, they were all paying in cash.
Between 2005 and 2009, the mortgage crisis, fueled by racially discriminatory lending
practices, destroyed 53 percent of African American wealth and 66 percent of Hispanic wealth,
figures that stagger the imagination. As a result, it's safe to say that few blacks or
Hispanics today are buying homes outright, in cash. Blackstone, on the other hand, doesn't
have a problem fronting the money, given its $3.6 billion credit line arranged by Deutsche
Bank. This money has allowed it to outbid families who have to secure traditional financing.
It's also paved the way for the company to purchase a lot of homes very quickly, shocking
local markets and driving prices up in a way that pushes even more families out of the
game.
"You can't compete with a company that's betting on speculative future value when they're
playing with cash," says Alston. "It's almost like they planned this."
In hindsight, it's clear that the Great Recession fueled a terrific wealth and asset
transfer away from ordinary Americans and to financial institutions. During that crisis,
Americans lost trillions of dollars of household wealth when housing prices crashed, while
banks seized about five million homes. But what's just beginning to emerge is how, as in the
recession years, the recovery itself continues to drive the process of transferring wealth
and power from the bottom to the top.
From 2009-2012, the top 1 percent of Americans captured 95 percent of income gains. Now,
as the housing market rebounds, billions of dollars in recovered housing wealth are flowing
straight to Wall Street instead of to families and communities. Since spring 2012, just at
the time when Blackstone began buying foreclosed homes in bulk, an estimated $88 billion of
housing wealth accumulation has gone straight to banks or institutional investors as a result
of their residential property holdings, according to an analysis by TomDispatch. And it's a
number that's likely to just keep growing.
"Institutional investors are siphoning the wealth and the ability for wealth accumulation
out of underserved communities," says Henry Wade, founder of the Arizona Association of Real
Estate Brokers.
But buying homes cheap and then waiting for them to appreciate in value isn't the only way
Blackstone is making money on this deal. It wants your rental payment, too.
Securitizing Rentals
Wall Street's rental empire is entirely new. The single-family rental industry used to be
the bailiwick of small-time mom-and-pop operations. But what makes this moment unprecedented
is the financial alchemy that Blackstone added. In November, after many months of hype,
Blackstone released history's first rated bond backed by securitized rental payments. And
once investors tripped over themselves in a rush to get it, Blackstone's competitors
announced that they, too, would develop similar securities as soon as possible.
Depending on whom you ask, the idea of bundling rental payments and selling them off to
investors is either a natural evolution of the finance industry or a fire-breathing
chimera.
"This is a new frontier," comments Ted Weinstein, a consultant in the real-estate-owned
homes industry for 30 years. "It's something I never really would have dreamt of."
However, to anyone who went through the 2008 mortgage-backed-security crisis, this new
territory will sound strangely familiar.
"It's just like a residential mortgage-backed security," said one hedge-fund investor
whose company does business with Blackstone. When asked why the public should expect these
securities to be safe, given the fact that risky mortgage-backed securities caused the 2008
collapse, he responded, "Trust me."
For Blackstone, at least, the logic is simple. The company wants money upfront to purchase
more cheap, foreclosed homes before prices rise. So it's joined forces with JP Morgan, Credit
Suisse, and Deutsche Bank to bundle the rental payments of 3,207 single-family houses and
sell this bond to investors with mortgages on the underlying houses offered as collateral.
This is, of course, just a test case for what could become a whole new industry of
rental-backed securities.
Many major Wall Street banks are involved in the deal, according to a copy of the private
pitch documents Blackstone sent to potential investors on October 31st, which was reviewed by
TomDispatch. Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan, and Credit Suisse are helping market the bond. Wells
Fargo is the certificate administrator. Midland Loan Services, a subsidiary of PNC Bank, is
the loan servicer. (By the way, Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, and PNC Bank are
all members of another clique: the list of banks foreclosing on the most families in
2013.)
According to interviews with economists, industry insiders, and housing activists, people
are more or less holding their collective breath, hoping that what looks like a duck, swims
like a duck, and quacks like a duck won't crash the economy the same way the last flock of
ducks did.
"You kind of just hope they know what they're doing," says Dean Baker, an economist with
the Center for Economic and Policy Research. "That they have provisions for turnover and
vacancies. But have they done that? Have they taken the appropriate care? I certainly
wouldn't count on it." The cash flow analysis in the documents sent to investors assumes that
95 percent of these homes will be rented at all times, at an average monthly rent of $1,312.
It's an occupancy rate that real estate professionals describe as ambitious.
There's one significant way, however, in which this kind of security differs from its
mortgage-backed counterpart. When banks repossess mortgaged homes as collateral, there is at
least the assumption (often incorrect due to botched or falsified paperwork from the banks)
that the homeowner has, indeed, defaulted on her mortgage. In this case, however, if a single
home-rental bond blows up, thousands of families could be evicted, whether or not they ever
missed a single rental payment.
"We could well end up in that situation where you get a lot of people getting evicted not
because the tenants have fallen behind but because the landlords have fallen behind," says
Baker.
Bugs in Blackstone's Housing Dreams
Whether these new securities are safe may boil down to the simple question of whether
Blackstone proves to be a good property manager. Decent management practices will ensure high
occupancy rates, predictable turnover, and increased investor confidence. Bad management will
create complaints, investigations, and vacancies, all of which will increase the likelihood
that Blackstone won't have the cash flow to pay investors back.
If you ask CaDonna Porter, a tenant in one of Blackstone's Invitation Homes properties in
a suburb outside Atlanta, property management is exactly the skill that Blackstone lacks. "If
I could shorten my lease -- I signed a two-year lease -- I definitely would," says
Porter.
The cockroaches and fat water bugs were the first problem in the Invitation Homes rental
that she and her children moved into in September. Porter repeatedly filed online maintenance
requests that were canceled without anyone coming to investigate the infestation. She called
the company's repairs hotline. No one answered.
The second problem arrived in an email with the subject line marked "URGENT." Invitation
Homes had failed to withdraw part of Porter's November payment from her bank account,
prompting the company to demand that she deliver the remaining payment in person, via
certified funds, by five p.m. the following day or incur "the additional legal fee of $200
and dispossessory," according to email correspondences reviewed by TomDispatch.
Porter took off from work to deliver the money order in person, only to receive an email
saying that the payment had been rejected because it didn't include the $200 late fee and an
additional $75 insufficient funds fee. What followed were a maddening string of emails that
recall the fraught and often fraudulent interactions between homeowners and
mortgage-servicing companies. Invitation Homes repeatedly threatened to file for eviction
unless Porter paid various penalty fees. She repeatedly asked the company to simply accept
her month's payment and leave her alone.
"I felt really harassed. I felt it was very unjust," says Porter. She ultimately wrote
that she would seek legal counsel, which caused Invitation Homes to immediately agree to
accept the payment as "a one-time courtesy."
Porter is still frustrated by the experience -- and by the continued presence of the
cockroaches. ("I put in another request today about the bugs, which will probably be canceled
again.")
A recent Huffington Post investigation and dozens of online reviews written by Invitation
Homes tenants echo Porter's frustrations. Many said maintenance requests went unanswered,
while others complained that their spiffed-up houses actually had underlying structural
issues.
There's also at least one documented case of Blackstone moving into murkier legal
territory. This fall, the Orlando, Florida, branch of Invitation Homes appeared to mail
forged eviction notices to a homeowner named Francisco Molina, according to the Orlando
Sentinel. Delivered in letter-sized manila envelopes, the fake notices claimed that an
eviction had been filed against Molina in court, although the city confirmed otherwise. The
kicker is that Invitation Homes didn't even have the right to evict Molina, legally or
otherwise. Blackstone's purchase of the house had been reversed months earlier, but the
company had lost track of that information.
The Great Recession of 2016?
These anecdotal stories about Invitation Homes being quick to evict tenants may prove to
be the trend rather than the exception, given Blackstone's underlying business model.
Securitizing rental payments creates an intense pressure on the company to ensure that the
monthly checks keep flowing. For renters, that may mean you either pay on the first of the
month every month, or you're out.
Although Blackstone has issued only one rental-payment security so far, it already seems
to be putting this strict protocol into place. In Charlotte, North Carolina, for example, the
company has filed eviction proceedings against a full 10 percent of its renters, according to
a report by the Charlotte Observer.
About 9 percent of Blackstone's properties, approximately 3,600 houses, are located in the
Phoenix metro area. Most are in low- to middle-income neighborhoods.
Forty thousand homes add up to only a small percentage of the total national housing
stock. Yet in the cities Blackstone has targeted most aggressively, the concentration of its
properties is staggering. In Phoenix, Arizona, some neighborhoods have at least one, if not
two or three, Blackstone-owned homes on just about every block.
This inundation has some concerned that the private equity giant, perhaps in conjunction
with other institutional investors, will exercise undue influence over regional markets,
pushing up rental prices because of a lack of competition. The biggest concern among many
ordinary Americans, however, should be that, not too many years from now, this whole rental
empire and its hot new class of securities might fail, sending the economy into an
all-too-familiar tailspin.
"You're allowing Wall Street to control a significant sector of single-family housing,"
said Michael Donley, a resident of Chicago who has been investigating Blackstone's rapidly
expanding presence in his neighborhood. "But is it sustainable?" he wondered. "It could all
collapse in 2016, and you'll be worse off than in 2008."
This is not surprising that this has happened. All of the de-regulation on Wall Street,
lobbied for by Wall Street has allowed this to transpire.
Congress does not even read the bills that they sign into law, let alone write them!
Many are written by ALEC American Legislative Exchange Council, the Chamber of Commerce,
the Realtor's assosiation, the Medical Industrial Complex, public employee unions, and
various other special interest groups!
Why is it a pressing issue to actively promote homosexuality? What is the point? That is
really strange! There is a difference between not actively discriminating and actively
promoting!
Are they trying to worsen the AIDS epidemic or lower the birth rate? It does not make
sense to be actively promoting and encouraging homosexuality.
@Colin
Wright There are many venture capitalist that are not Jewish.. Venture Capitalist don't
always advertise their wealth. Not everybody in Wall Street or the City of London is
Jewish.
I think it is important to separate the Jews from the Zionist , many in that
small group (Zionist) are Jewish and Christian but most Jews and most Christians are
neither Venture Capitalist nor Zionist. Time after time I have asked my Jewish friends are
you are Zionist, and most say they do not really know what Zionism is? Zionism hosts many
races among its members; in the states, Christian Zionism is big, maybe bigger even than
Jewish Zionism.. see Christian Zionism : The Tragedy and the Turning: the cause of our
Conflicts (on DVD) by http://www.Whit.org. .
Zionism is an economic system. Zionism is a winner take all system of Economics .
Zionism is like an adult version of the game called King of the Mountain. In such a game,
no one is allowed to play unless they first have sufficient resources to be counted, and
are then willing to and believe they are personally capable of defeating the then residing
well armed king (Oligarch). IMO, all Jews everywhere, would be well advised to avoid being
labelled a Zionist<=hence the reason ?
Zionism is not the same as Judaism, its not a race, its not a religion, its not even
a culture, it is an economic system with virus like attributes.
@Lot
You are quibbling. You are prevaricating. You are obfuscating.
Joyce has assembled a powerful case against a known cast of financial parasites. This
phenomena is hardly new. It brings to mind another financial scandal of a generation ago
that was chronicled in James B. Stewart's book 'Den of Thieves'.
The mega-wealthy swindlers of that era were also all Jews: Boesky, Siegel, Levine,
Milken, among others. Some twenty years later, another Wall Street Jew, Bernie Madoff,
succeeds in pulling off the biggest fraud in US history. There's a pattern here.
Yet all you can do, Lot, is deflect, denigrate, and deny.
Joyce is giving us more actual names. These are the actual perps as well as institutions
they hide behind. These ruthless predators collude with one another as they exploit the
labor of millions of gentiles worldwide, then shower Jewish causes and philanthropies with
their loot. Their tribal avarice is revolting. And insatiable.
Do you deny this phenomena?
Is it all just another 'anti-Semitic canard'?
You even claim [Joyce] is
"retarded and highly uninformed".
Retarded?
He's brilliant and persuasive.
Uninformed?
He's erudite and scholarly.
You, Lot, are demonstrating again devious tribal dishonesty. It's glaring, it's
shameful, and it's obvious. This is a trait I've observed in virtually all of your
writings. You invariably deflect and deny. But Jewish criminality is real.
Joyce aptly concludes:
[T]he prosperity and influence of Zionist globalism rests to an overwhelming degree on
the predations of the most successful and ruthless Jewish financial parasites.
This is a Jewish conspiracy to make Jews look terrible. Congress should slam the breaks
here. The de-regulation of the powerful combined with the over-regulation of the powerless
is criminally wreckless. Kind of like the friends don't let friends drive drunk approach.
Congress slam the breaks, yeah right, that'll happen! Lol!
@Colin
Wright Andrew Carnegie left behind institutions like Carnegie Hall, Carnegie-Mellon
University, and over 2500 Free Libraries from coast to coast, in a time when very little
was done to help what we now call the "underprivileged".
In fact, he gave away 90% of his massive fortune–about $75 Billion in current
dollars. Funding, in the process, many charities, hospitals, museums, foundations and
institutions of learning. He was a major benefactor of negro education.
He was a staunch anti-imperialist who believed America should concentrate its energies
on peaceful endeavors rather than conquering and subduing far-off lands.
Although they are even more keen to put their names on things, today's robber barons
leave behind mainly wreckage.
Jews are destroying the world. Everywhere they go, they leave behind nations in ruins. Look
at Europe, Africa and the Americas, Jews have left their ugly footprints. Corruption,
prostitution, drugs and human trafficking are their trade.
@anon
A combination of both I would say, although some would like to make it out that
Anglo-Saxons were the epitome of honour, they too resorted to morallly abject tricks and
swindles to acquire their wealth.
WASPs allowed Jews into their lands and both of them struck a sort of implicit contract
to work together to loot the world, when the word had been sucked dry, the conflict between
Jews and WASPs began and Hitler and the National Socialists were a last gasp attempt to
save the WASP side from being beaten, in the end higher Jewish verbal IQ gave them the
upper edge in the ability to trick people.
It is hard to feel sorry for WASPs, they struck a deal with the Jews centuries ago to
work together and were backstabbed, what is happening to these Third World countries will
now happen to WASP countries, it is poetic justice. Luckily the torch of civilisation will
continue by way of East Asia and Eastern Europe, who were true conservatives in that all
they wished was prosperity for their people in their own lands without any aggressive
foreign policy moves.
Basically, WASPs thought that they could win in the end, but they were out Jew'd and now
they are crying.
The one difference you will notice is that certain subsections of WASPs, notable the
British, actually did build infrastructure in the countries they looted, this to me was
borne out of a sense of guilt, so to be fair, WASPs were not as parasitic and ruthless as
Jews.
But in the end, the more ruthless wins. To quote the Joker
@Lot
Kyle Bass's fund is called 'Hayman', maybe because the MSM loathe the Bass family that
fellow Texican Bass is not related to. They are not the only ones aware of the drawbacks of
a name. Elliot is Singer's middle one.
The article bounces back and forth between two completely different fields: private
equity and distressed debt funds
If someone owes you money and you cannot collect, you factor the account, (sell it on)
and then people who are going to be a lot less pleasant about it will pay them a visit and
have a 'talk' with them. While it is good to have a domestic bankruptcy regime in which
innovation and entrepreneurship is encouraged– to the extent that people are not
routinely gaming the system–I don't see why Argentina should benefit. Singer became
notorious for what he did to Argentina after he bought their debt, and he is pretty upfront
about not caring who objects. Puerto Rico is neither foreign or protected by Chapter 9 of
the U.S. Bankruptcy Code so it is a borderline case, which is probably why the people
collecting that debt tried to hide who they were.
The way he took down Jonathan Bush and others led to Bloomberg dubbing Singer 'The
World's Most Feared Investor'. Singer buys into companies where he sees the management as
as failing to deliver maximum value to the shareholders, then applies pressure to raise the
share price (in Bush's case extremely personal pressure) that often leads to the departure
of the CEO and sale of the company. That immediate extra value for the shareholder Singer
creates puts lots of working people out a job. Because of Singer and his imitators, CEO's
are outsourcing and importing replacements for indigenous workers in those services that
cannot be outsourced. All the while loath to foster innovation that could bring about long
term growth, because that would interfere with squeezing out more and more shareholder
value.
Singer is less like a vulture than a rogue elephant that is killing the breeding pair
white rhinos on a game reserve, and they are going extinct. Well it's a good thing! Thanks
to Singer et al (including Warren Buffett) Trump got elected. According to someone in jail
with Epstein, he had an anecdote about Trump being asked by a French girl what 'white
trash' was, and Trump replied 'It's me without the money'.
Trump is now essentially funded by three Jews -- Singer, Bernard Marcus, and
Sheldon Adelson, together accounting for over $250 million in pro-Trump political money.
In return, they want war with Iran.
All to the good. Iran won't leave Saudi Arabia (serious money) alone so Iran is going to
have to be crushed as a threat to the Saud family like Saddam before it anyway. If the Jews
think they are causing it, let 'em think so.
https://www.unz.com/pgiraldi/trump-creates-a-new-nation/
When the Israelis occupy nearly all of the West Bank with Donald Trump's approval and
start "relocating" the existing population, who will be around to speak up? No one, as by
that time saying nay to Israel will be a full-fledged hate crime and you can go to jail
for doing so
Loudspeaker goes off " All Anti–Zionist Jews to Times Square ".
@Colin
Wright No judeophile, but it's 90% demagogic horsehit.
God forbid anybody should ever have to pay back money they borrow! Why, that's utterly
Jewish!
These so-called "vulture" funds didn't originate the debt. They simply purchased already
existing debt at deeply discounted prices either because the debt was already in default or
was at imminent risk of defaulting, which is why the debt sells at a heavy discount, since
existing debt holders are often happy to sell cheap and get something rather than hold on
and risk getting nothing.
What Joyce zeroes in on is these vulture funds' willingness to use all legal avenues to
force debtors to make good on their debts, including seizing the collateral the debtors
pledged when they borrowed the money. Joyce chooses to characterize this practice as
"Jewish," implying that gentile creditors would instead be overcome with compassion and let
the debtors off the hook and wear the loss themselves.
What Joyce regards as a defect of "vulture" funds, others might regard as an benefit.
The size of these funds, their legal expertise, and their political connections mean that
borrowers can more successfully be held to account. If I owned, say, Puerto Rican debt in
my retirement account, the chances that I could make Puerto Rico honor its obligations are
much slimmer.
None of this is to suggest that finance, as we today know it, is perfect and that it
couldn't be reformed in any way to make its operation more conducive to nationalistic
social values, only that anti-cap ideologues like Joyce weave lurid tales of malfeasance
out of completely humdrum market economics (which is precisely the same market economics
that Tucker Carlson learned about too, btw).
Mr. Joyce
Your obsession with us will prove to be your downfall.
Jewish people have always stood against tyranny against the working class, the poor and
other people of color.
The phrases and catch words that you used to vilify Jews are in many cases pulled from the
age old tropes used to demonize Jews for centuries and are anti-Semitic through and
through. They can't be overlooked nor hidden by claims of legitimate political
disagreements.
We know that it is not only the Jewish community that is at risk from unchecked
antisemitism, but also other communities that white nationalists target.
I find it very offensive that people like you continue to demonize us for no reason.
I dare you to hold a debate with me on this so called "Jewish Influence".
I am not even hiding my name here.
Looks like Iran is Catch22 for the USA: it can destroy it, but only at the cost of losing empire and dollar hegemony...
Notable quotes:
"... The United States is now turning on the screws demanding that other countries sacrifice their growth in order to finance the U.S. unipolar empire. In effect, foreign countries are beginning to respond to the United States what the ten tribes of Israel said when they withdrew from the southern kingdom of Judah, whose king Rehoboam refused to lighten his demands (1 Kings 12). They echoed the cry of Sheba son of Bikri a generation earlier: "Look after your own house, O David!" The message is: What do other countries have to gain by remaining in the US unipolar neoliberalized world, as compared to using their own wealth to build up their own economies? It's an age-old problem. ..."
"... The dollar will still play a role in US trade and investment, but it will be as just another currency, held at arms length until it finally gives up its domineering attempt to strip other countries' wealth for itself. However, its demise may not be a pretty sight. ..."
"... Conflict in the ME has traditionally almost always been about oil [and of course Israel]. This situation is different. It is only partially about oil and Israel, but OVERWHHEMINGLY it is about the BRI. ..."
"... The salient factor as I see it is the Oil for Technology initiative that Iraq signed with China shortly before it slid into this current mess. ..."
"... This was a mechanism whereby China would buy Iraq oil and these funds would be used directly to fund infrastructure and self-sufficiency initiatives and technologies that would help to drag Iraq out of the complete disaster that the US war had created in this country. A key part of this would be that China would also make extra loans available at the same time to speed up this development. ..."
"... "Iraq's Finance Ministry that the country had started exporting 100,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil to China in October as part of the 20-year oil-for-infrastructure deal agreed between the two countries." ..."
"... "For Iraq and Iran, China's plans are particularly far-reaching, OilPrice.com has been told by a senior oil industry figure who works closely with Iran's Petroleum Ministry and Iraq's Oil Ministry. China will begin with the oil and gas sector and work outwards from that central point. In addition to being granted huge reductions on buying Iranian oil and gas, China is to be given the opportunity to build factories in both Iran and Iraq – and build-out infrastructure, such as railways – overseen by its own management staff from Chinese companies. These are to have the same operational structure and assembly lines as those in China, so that they fit seamlessly into various Chinese companies' assembly lines' process for whatever product a particular company is manufacturing, whilst also being able to use the still-cheap labour available in both Iraq and Iraq." ..."
"... Hudson is so good. He's massively superior to most so called military analysts and alternative bloggers on the net. He can clearly see the over arching picture and how the military is used to protect and project it. The idea that the US is going to leave the middle east until they are forced to is so blind as to be ridiculous. ..."
"... I'd never thought of that "stationary aircraft carrier" comparison between Israel and the British, very apt. ..."
"... Trump et al assassinated someone who was on a diplomatic mission. This action was so far removed from acceptable behavior that it must have been considered to be "by any means and at all costs". ..."
"... This article, published by Strategic Culture, features a translation of Mahdi's speech to the Iraqi parliament in which he states that Trump threatened him with assassination and the US admitted to killing hundreds of demonstrators using Navy SEAL snipers. ..."
"... This description provided by Mr Hudson is no Moore than the financial basis behind the Cebrowski doctrine instituted on 9/11. https://www.voltairenet.org/article ..."
"... "The leading country breaking up US hegemony obviously is the United States itself. That is Trump's major contribution The United States is now turning on the screws demanding that other countries sacrifice their growth in order to finance the U.S. unipolar empire." ..."
"... The US govt. have long since paid off most every European politician. Thusly, Europe, as separate nations that should be remain still under the yolk of the US Financial/Political/Military power. ..."
"... In any event, it is the same today. Energy underlies, not only the military but, all of world civilization. Oil and gas are overwhelmingly the source of energy for the modern world. Without it, civilization collapses. Thus, he who controls oil (and gas) controls the world. ..."
"... the link between the US $$$ and Saudi Oil, is the absolute means of the American Dollar to reign complete. This payment system FEEDS both the US Military, but WALL STREET, hedge funds, the US/EU oligarchs – to name just a few entities. ..."
Introduction: After posting Michael Hudson's article "America
Escalates its "Democratic" Oil War in the Near East" on the blog, I decided to ask
Michael to reply to a few follow-up questions. Michael very kindly agreed. Please see our
exchange below.
The Saker
-- -- -
The Saker: Trump has been accused of not thinking forward, of not having a long-term
strategy regarding the consequences of assassinating General Suleimani. Does the United States
in fact have a strategy in the Near East, or is it only ad hoc?
Michael Hudson: Of course American strategists will deny that the recent actions do not
reflect a deliberate strategy, because their long-term strategy is so aggressive and
exploitative that it would even strike the American public as being immoral and offensive if
they came right out and said it.
President Trump is just the taxicab driver, taking the passengers he has accepted –
Pompeo, Bolton and the Iran-derangement syndrome neocons – wherever they tell him they
want to be driven. They want to pull a heist, and he's being used as the getaway driver (fully
accepting his role). Their plan is to hold onto the main source of their international revenue:
Saudi Arabia and the surrounding Near Eastern oil-export surpluses and money. They see the US
losing its ability to exploit Russia and China, and look to keep Europe under its control by
monopolizing key sectors so that it has the power to use sanctions to squeeze countries that
resist turning over control of their economies and natural rentier monopolies to US buyers. In
short, US strategists would like to do to Europe and the Near East just what they did to Russia
under Yeltsin: turn over public infrastructure, natural resources and the banking system to
U.S. owners, relying on US dollar credit to fund their domestic government spending and private
investment.
This is basically a resource grab. Suleimani was in the same position as Chile's Allende,
Libya's Qaddafi, Iraq's Saddam. The motto is that of Stalin: "No person, no problem."
The Saker: Your answer raises a question about Israel: In your recent article you only
mention Israel twice, and these are only passing comments. Furthermore, you also clearly say
the US Oil lobby as much more crucial than the Israel Lobby, so here is my follow-up question
to you: On what basis have you come to this conclusion and how powerful do you believe the
Israel Lobby to be compared to, say, the Oil lobby or the US Military-Industrial Complex? To
what degree do their interests coincide and to what degree to they differ?
Michael Hudson: I wrote my article to explain the most basic concerns of U.S. international
diplomacy: the balance of payments (dollarizing the global economy, basing foreign central bank
savings on loans to the U.S. Treasury to finance the military spending mainly responsible for
the international and domestic budget deficit), oil (and the enormous revenue produced by the
international oil trade), and recruitment of foreign fighters (given the impossibility of
drafting domestic U.S. soldiers in sufficient numbers). From the time these concerns became
critical to today, Israel was viewed as a U.S. military base and supporter, but the U.S. policy
was formulated independently of Israel.
I remember one day in 1973 or '74 I was traveling with my Hudson Institute colleague Uzi
Arad (later a head of Mossad and advisor to Netanyahu) to Asia, stopping off in San Francisco.
At a quasi-party, a U.S. general came up to Uzi and clapped him on the shoulder and said,
"You're our landed aircraft carrier in the Near East," and expressed his friendship.
Uzi was rather embarrassed. But that's how the U.S. military thought of Israel back then. By
that time the three planks of U.S. foreign policy strategy that I outlined were already firmly
in place.
Of course Netanyahu has applauded U.S. moves to break up Syria, and Trump's assassination
choice. But the move is a U.S. move, and it's the U.S. that is acting on behalf of the dollar
standard, oil power and mobilizing Saudi Arabia's Wahabi army.
Israel fits into the U.S.-structured global diplomacy much like Turkey does. They and other
countries act opportunistically within the context set by U.S. diplomacy to pursue their own
policies. Obviously Israel wants to secure the Golan Heights; hence its opposition to Syria,
and also its fight with Lebanon; hence, its opposition to Iran as the backer of Assad and
Hezbollah. This dovetails with US policy.
But when it comes to the global and U.S. domestic response, it's the United States that is
the determining active force. And its concern rests above all with protecting its cash cow of
Saudi Arabia, as well as working with the Saudi jihadis to destabilize governments whose
foreign policy is independent of U.S. direction – from Syria to Russia (Wahabis in
Chechnya) to China (Wahabis in the western Uighur region). The Saudis provide the underpinning
for U.S. dollarization (by recycling their oil revenues into U.S. financial investments and
arms purchases), and also by providing and organizing the ISIS terrorists and coordinating
their destruction with U.S. objectives. Both the Oil lobby and the Military-Industrial Complex
obtain huge economic benefits from the Saudis.
Therefore, to focus one-sidedly on Israel is a distraction away from what the US-centered
international order really is all about.
The Saker: In your recent article you wrote: " The assassination was intended to escalate
America's presence in Iraq to keep control the region's oil reserves ." Others believe that
the goal was precisely the opposite, to get a pretext to remove the US forces from both Iraq
and Syria. What are your grounds to believe that your hypothesis is the most likely one?
Michael Hudson: Why would killing Suleimani help remove the U.S. presence? He was the
leader of the fight against ISIS, especially in Syria. US policy was to continue using ISIS to
permanently destabilize Syria and Iraq so as to prevent a Shi'ite crescent reaching from Iran
to Lebanon – which incidentally would serve as part of China's Belt and Road initiative.
So it killed Suleimani to prevent the peace negotiation. He was killed because he had been
invited by Iraq's government to help mediate a rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia.
That was what the United States feared most of all, because it effectively would prevent its
control of the region and Trump's drive to seize Iraqi and Syrian oil.
So using the usual Orwellian doublethink, Suleimani was accused of being a terrorist, and
assassinated under the U.S. 2002 military Authorization Bill giving the President to move
without Congressional approval against Al Qaeda. Trump used it to protect Al Qaeda's
terrorist ISIS offshoots.
Given my three planks of U.S. diplomacy described above, the United States must remain in
the Near East to hold onto Saudi Arabia and try to make Iraq and Syria client states equally
subservient to U.S. balance-of-payments and oil policy.
Certainly the Saudis must realize that as the buttress of U.S. aggression and terrorism in
the Near East, their country (and oil reserves) are the most obvious target to speed the
parting guest. I suspect that this is why they are seeking a rapprochement with Iran. And I
think it is destined to come about, at least to provide breathing room and remove the threat.
The Iranian missiles to Iraq were a demonstration of how easy it would be to aim them at Saudi
oil fields. What then would be Aramco's stock market valuation?
The Saker: In your article you wrote: " The major deficit in the U.S. balance of payments
has long been military spending abroad. The entire payments deficit, beginning with the Korean
War in 1950-51 and extending through the Vietnam War of the 1960s, was responsible for forcing
the dollar off gold in 1971. The problem facing America's military strategists was how to
continue supporting the 800 U.S. military bases around the world and allied troop support
without losing America's financial leverage. " I want to ask a basic, really primitive
question in this regard: how cares about the balance of payments as long as 1) the US continues
to print money 2) most of the world will still want dollars. Does that not give the US an
essentially "infinite" budget? What is the flaw in this logic?
Michael Hudson: The U.S. Treasury can create dollars to spend at home, and the Fed can
increase the banking system's ability to create dollar credit and pay debts denominated in US
dollars. But they cannot create foreign currency to pay other countries, unless they willingly
accept dollars ad infinitum – and that entails bearing the costs of financing the U.S.
balance-of-payments deficit, getting only IOUs in exchange for real resources that they sell to
U.S. buyers.
This is the situation that arose half a century ago. The United States could print dollars
in 1971, but it could not print gold.
In the 1920s, Germany's Reichsbank could print deutsche marks – trillions of them.
When it came to pay Germany's foreign reparations debt, all it could do was to throw these
D-marks onto the foreign exchange market. That crashed the currency's exchange rate, forcing up
the price of imports proportionally and causing the German hyperinflation.
The question is, how many surplus dollars do foreign governments want to hold. Supporting
the dollar standard ends up supporting U.S. foreign diplomacy and military policy. For the
first time since World War II, the most rapidly growing parts of the world are seeking to
de-dollarize their economies by reducing reliance on U.S. exports, U.S. investment, and U.S.
bank loans. This move is creating an alternative to the dollar, likely to replace it with
groups of other currencies and assets in national financial reserves.
The Saker: In the same article you also write: " So maintaining the dollar as the world's
reserve currency became a mainstay of U.S. military spending. " We often hear people say
that the dollar is about to tank and that as soon as that happens, then the US economy (and,
according to some, the EU economy too) will collapse. In the intelligence community there is
something called tracking the "indicators and warnings". My question to you is: what are the
economic "indicators and warnings" of a possible (probable?) collapse of the US dollar followed
by a collapse of the financial markets most tied to the Dollar? What shall people like myself
(I am an economic ignoramus) keep an eye on and look for?
Michael Hudson: What is most likely is a slow decline, largely from debt deflation
and cutbacks in social spending, in the Eurozone and US economies. Of course, the decline will
force the more highly debt-leveraged companies to miss their bond payments and drive them into
insolvency. That is the fate of Thatcherized economies. But it will be long and painfully drawn
out, largely because there is little left-wing socialist alternative to neoliberalism at
present.
Trump's protectionist policies and sanctions are forcing other countries to become
self-reliant and independent of US suppliers, from farm crops to airplanes and military arms,
against the US threat of a cutoff or sanctions against repairs, spare parts and servicing.
Sanctioning Russian agriculture has helped it become a major crop exporter, and to become much
more independent in vegetables, dairy and cheese products. The US has little to offer
industrially, especially given the fact that its IT communications are stuffed with US
spyware.
Europe therefore is facing increasing pressure from its business sector to choose the non-US
economic alliance that is growing more rapidly and offers a more profitable investment market
and more secure trade supplier. Countries will turn as much as possible (diplomatically as well
as financially and economically) to non-US suppliers because the United States is not reliable,
and because it is being shrunk by the neoliberal policies supported by Trump and the Democrats
alike. A byproduct probably will be a continued move toward gold as an alternative do the
dollar in settling balance-of-payments deficits.
The Saker: Finally, my last question: which country out there do you see as the most capable
foe of the current US-imposed international political and economic world order? whom do you
believe that US Deep State and the Neocons fear most? China? Russia? Iran? some other country?
How would you compare them and on the basis of what criteria?
Michael Hudson: The leading country breaking up US hegemony obviously is the United States
itself. That is Trump's major contribution. He is uniting the world in a move toward
multi-centrism much more than any ostensibly anti-American could have done. And he is doing it
all in the name of American patriotism and nationalism – the ultimate Orwellian
rhetorical wrapping!
Trump has driven Russia and China together with the other members of the Shanghai
Cooperation Organization (SCO), including Iran as observer. His demand that NATO join in US oil
grabs and its supportive terrorism in the Near East and military confrontation with Russia in
Ukraine and elsewhere probably will lead to European "Ami go home" demonstrations against NATO
and America's threat of World War III.
No single country can counter the U.S. unipolar world order. It takes a critical mass of
countries. This already is taking place among the countries that you list above. They are
simply acting in their own common interest, using their own mutual currencies for trade and
investment. The effect is an alternative multilateral currency and trading area.
The United States is now turning on the screws demanding that other countries sacrifice
their growth in order to finance the U.S. unipolar empire. In effect, foreign countries are
beginning to respond to the United States what the ten tribes of Israel said when they withdrew
from the southern kingdom of Judah, whose king Rehoboam refused to lighten his demands (1 Kings
12). They echoed the cry of Sheba son of Bikri a generation earlier: "Look after your own
house, O David!" The message is: What do other countries have to gain by remaining in the US
unipolar neoliberalized world, as compared to using their own wealth to build up their own
economies? It's an age-old problem.
The dollar will still play a role in US trade and investment, but it will be as just another
currency, held at arms length until it finally gives up its domineering attempt to strip other
countries' wealth for itself. However, its demise may not be a pretty sight.
The Saker: I thank you very much for your time and answers!
Another one that absolutely stands for me out is the below link to a recent interview of
Hussein Askary.
As I wrote a few days ago IMO this too is a wonderful insight into the utterly complicated
dynamics of the tinderbox that the situation in Iran and Iraq has become.
Conflict in the ME has traditionally almost always been about oil [and of course Israel].
This situation is different. It is only partially about oil and Israel, but OVERWHHEMINGLY it
is about the BRI.
The salient factor as I see it is the Oil for Technology initiative that Iraq signed with
China shortly before it slid into this current mess.
This was a mechanism whereby China would buy Iraq oil and these funds would be used
directly to fund infrastructure and self-sufficiency initiatives and technologies that would
help to drag Iraq out of the complete disaster that the US war had created in this country. A
key part of this would be that China would also make extra loans available at the same time
to speed up this development.
In essence, this would enable the direct and efficient linking of Iraq into the BRI
project. Going forward the economic gains and the political stability that could come out of
this would be a completely new paradigm in the recovery of Iraq both economically and
politically. Iraq is essential for a major part of the dynamics of the BRI because of its
strategic location and the fact that it could form a major hub in the overall network.
It absolutely goes without saying that the AAA would do everything the could to wreck this
plan. This is their playbook and is exactly what they have done. The moronic and
extraordinarily impulsive Trump subsequently was easily duped into being a willing and
idiotic accomplice in this plan.
The positive in all of this is that this whole scheme will backfire spectacularly for the
perpetrators and will more than likely now speed up the whole process in getting Iraq back on
track and working towards stability and prosperity.
Please don't anyone try to claim that Trump is part of any grand plan nothing could be
further from the truth he is nothing more than a bludgeoning imbecile foundering around,
lashing out impulsively indiscriminately. He is completely oblivious and ignorant as to the
real picture.
I urge everyone involved in this Saker site to put aside an hour and to listen very
carefully to Askary's insights. This is extremely important and could bring more clarity to
understanding the situation than just about everything else you have read put together. There
is hope, and Askary highlights the huge stakes that both Russia and China have in the
region.
This is a no brainer. This is the time for both Russia and China to act and to decisively.
They must cooperate in assisting both Iraq and Iran to extract themselves from the current
quagmire the one that the vicious Hegemon so cruelly and thoughtlessly tossed them into.
Also interesting is what Simon Watkins reports in his recent article entitled "Is Iraq About
To Become A Chinese Client State?"
To quote from the article:
"Iraq's Finance Ministry that the country had started exporting 100,000 barrels per day
(bpd) of crude oil to China in October as part of the 20-year oil-for-infrastructure deal
agreed between the two countries."
and
"For Iraq and Iran, China's plans are particularly far-reaching, OilPrice.com has been
told by a senior oil industry figure who works closely with Iran's Petroleum Ministry and
Iraq's Oil Ministry. China will begin with the oil and gas sector and work outwards from that
central point. In addition to being granted huge reductions on buying Iranian oil and gas,
China is to be given the opportunity to build factories in both Iran and Iraq – and
build-out infrastructure, such as railways – overseen by its own management staff from
Chinese companies. These are to have the same operational structure and assembly lines as
those in China, so that they fit seamlessly into various Chinese companies' assembly lines'
process for whatever product a particular company is manufacturing, whilst also being able to
use the still-cheap labour available in both Iraq and Iraq."
and
"The second key announcement in this vein made last week from Iraq was that the Oil
Ministry has completed the pre-qualifying process for companies interested in participating
in the Iraqi-Jordanian oil pipeline project. The U$5 billion pipeline is aimed at carrying
oil produced from the Rumaila oilfield in Iraq's Basra Governorate to the Jordanian port of
Aqaba, with the first phase of the project comprising the installation of a
700-kilometre-long pipeline with a capacity of 2.25 million bpd within the Iraqi territories
(Rumaila-Haditha). The second phase includes installing a 900-kilometre pipeline in Jordan
between Haditha and Aqaba with a capacity of 1 million bpd. Iraq's Oil Minister – for
the time being, at least – Thamir Ghadhban added that the Ministry has formed a team to
prepare legal contracts, address financial issues and oversee technical standards for
implementing the project, and that May will be the final month in which offers for the
project from the qualified companies will be accepted and that the winners will be announced
before the end of this year. Around 150,000 barrels of the oil from Iraq would be used for
Jordan's domestic needs, whilst the remainder would be exported through Aqaba to various
destinations, generating about US$3 billion a year in revenues to Jordan, with the rest going
to Iraq. Given that the contractors will be expected to front-load all of the financing for
the projects associated with this pipeline, Baghdad expects that such tender offers will be
dominated by Chinese and Russian companies, according to the Iran and Iraq source."
Hudson is so good. He's massively superior to most so called military analysts and
alternative bloggers on the net. He can clearly see the over arching picture and how the
military is used to protect and project it. The idea that the US is going to leave the middle
east until they are forced to is so blind as to be ridiculous.
They will not sacrifice the
(free) oil until booted out by a coalition of Arab countries threatening to over run them and
that is why the dollar hegemonys death will be slow, long and drawn out and they will do
anything, any dirty trick in the book, to prevent Arab/Persian unity. Unlike many peoples
obsession with Israel and how important they feel themselves to be I think Hudson is correct
again. They are the middle eastern version of the British – a stationary aircraft
carrier who will allow themselves to be used and abused whilst living under the illusion they
are major players. They aren't. They're bit part players in decline, subservient to the great
dollar and oil pyramid scheme that keeps America afloat. If you want to beat America you have
to understand the big scheme, that and the utter insanity that backs it up. It is that
insanity of the leites, the inability to allow themselves to be 'beaten' that will keep
nuclear exchange as a real possibility over the next 10 to 15 years. Unification is the only
thing that can stop it and trying to unite so many disparate countries (as the Russians are
trying to do despite multiple provocations) is where the future lies and why it will take so
long. It is truly breath taking in such a horrific way, as Hudson mentions, that to allow the
world to see its 'masters of the universe' pogram to be revealed:
"Of course American strategists will deny that the recent actions do not reflect a
deliberate strategy, because their long-term strategy is so aggressive and exploitative that
it would even strike the American public as being immoral and offensive if they came right
out and said it."
Would be to allow it to be undermined at home and abroad. God help us all.
Clever would be a better word. Looking at my world globe, I see Italy, Greece, and Turkey on
that end of the Mediterranean. Turkey has been in NATO since 1952. Crete and Cyprus are also
right there. Doesn't Hudson own a globe or regional map?
That a US Admiral would be gushing about the Apartheid state 7 years after the attempted
destruction of the USS Liberty is painful to consider. I'd like to disbelieve the story, but
it's quite likely there were a number of high-ranking ***holes in a Naval Uniform.
The world situation reminds us of the timeless fable by Aesop of The North Wind and the Sun.
Trump et al assassinated someone who was on a diplomatic mission. This action was so far
removed from acceptable behavior that it must have been considered to be "by any means and at
all costs".
Perhaps the most potent weapon Iran or anyone else has at this critical juncture, is not
missiles, but diplomacy.
"Therefore, to focus one-sidedly on Israel is a distraction away from what the US-centered
international order really is all about."
Thank you for saying this sir. In the US and around the world many people become
obsessively fixated in seeing a "jew" or zionist behind every bush. Now the Zionists are
certinly an evil, blood thirsty bunch, and certainly deserve the scorn of the world, but i
feel its a cop out sometimes. A person from the US has a hard time stomaching the actions of
their country, so they just hoist all the unpleasentries on to the zionists. They put it all
on zionisim, and completly fail to mention imperialism. I always switced back and forth on
the topic my self. But i cant see how a beachead like the zionist state, a stationary
carrier, can be bigger than the empire itself. Just look at the major leaders in the
resistance groups, the US was always seen as the ultimate obstruction, while israel was seen
as a regional obstruction. Like sayyed hassan nasrallah said in his recent speech about the
martyrs, that if the US is kicked out, the Israelis might just run away with out even
fighting. I hate it when people say "we are in the middle east for israel" when it can easily
be said that "israel is still in the mid east because of the US." If the US seized to exist
today, israel would fall rather quickly. If israel fell today the US would still continue
being an imperalist, bloodthirsty entity.
The Deeper Story behind the Assassination of Soleimani
This article, published by Strategic Culture, features a translation of Mahdi's speech to
the Iraqi
parliament in which he states that Trump threatened him with assassination and the US
admitted
to killing hundreds of demonstrators using Navy SEAL snipers.
This description provided by Mr Hudson is no Moore than the financial basis behind the
Cebrowski doctrine instituted on 9/11.
https://www.voltairenet.org/article
I wish the Saker had asked Mr Hudson about some crucial recent events to get his opinion
with regards to US foreign policy. Specifically, how does the emergence of cryptocurrency
relate to dollar finance and the US grand strategy? A helpful tool for the hegemon or the
emergence of a new currency that prevents unlimited currency printing? Finally, what is
global warming and the associated carbon credit system? The next planned model of continuing
global domination and balance of payments? Or true organic attempt at fair energy production
and management?
With all due respect, these are huge questions in themselves and perhaps could to be
addressed in separate interviews.
IMO it doesn't always work that well to try to cover too much ground in just one giant
leap.
I have never understood the Cebrowski doctrine. How does the destruction of Middle Eastern state structures allow the US to control Middle
East Oil? The level of chaos generated by such an act would seem to prevent anyone from controlled
the oil.
Dr. Hudson often appears on RT's "Keiser Report" where he covers many contemporary topics
with its host Max Keiser. Many of the shows transcripts are available at Hudson's website . Indeed, after the two Saker items,
you'll find three programs on the first page. Using the search function at his site, you'll
find the two articles he's written that deal with bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, although I
think he's been more specific in the TV interviews.
As for this Q&A, its an A+. Hudson's 100% correct to playdown the Zionist influence
given the longstanding nature of the Outlaw US Empire's methods that began well before the
rise of the Zionist Lobby, which in reality is a recycling of aid dollars back to Congress in
the form of bribes.
Nils: Good Article. The spirit of Nihilism.
Quote from Neocon Michael Ladeen.
"Creative destruction is our middle name, both within our own society and abroad. We tear
down the old order every day, from business to science, literature, art, architecture, and
cinema to politics and the law. Our enemies have always hated this whirlwind of energy and
creativity, which menaces their traditions (whatever they may be) and shames them for their
inability to keep pace. Seeing America undo traditional societies, they fear us, for they do
not wish to be undone. They cannot feel secure so long as we are there, for our very
existence -- our existence, not our politics -- threatens their legitimacy. They must attack
us in order to survive, just as we must destroy them to advance our historic mission."
@NILS As far as crypto currency goes it is a brilliant idea in concept. But since during the
Bush years we have been shown multiple times, who actually owns [and therefore controls] the
internet. Many times now we have also been informed that through the monitoring capability's
of our defense agency's, they are recording every key stroke. IMO, with the flip of a switch,
we can shut down the internet. At the very least, that would stop us from being able to trade
in crypto, but they have e-files on each of us. They know our passwords, or can easily access
them. That does not give me confidence in e=currency during a teotwawki situation.
One thing that troubles me about the petrodollar thesis is that ANNUAL trade in oil is about
2 trillion DAILY trade in $US is 4 trillion. I can well believe the US thinks oil is the
bedrock if dollar hegemony but is it? I see no alternative to US dollar hegemony.
The lines that really got my attention were these:
"The leading country breaking up US hegemony obviously is the United States itself. That
is Trump's major contribution The United States is now turning on the screws demanding that
other countries sacrifice their growth in order to finance the U.S. unipolar empire."
That is so completely true. I have wondered why – to date – there had not been
more movement by Europe away from the United States. But while reading the article the
following occurred to me. Maybe Europe is awaiting the next U.S. election. Maybe they hope
that a new president (someone like Biden) might allow Europe to keep more of the
"spoils."
If that is true, then a re-election of Trump will probably send Europe fleeing for the
exits. The Europeans will be cutting deals with Russia and China like the store is on
fire.
The critical player in forming the EU WAS/IS the US financial Elites. Yes, they had many
ultra powerful Europeans, especially Germany, but it was the US who initiated the EU.
Purpose? For the US Financial Powerhouses & US politicians to "take Europe captive."
Notice the similarities: the EU has its Central Bank who communicates with the private
Banksters of the FED. Much austerity has ensued, especially in Southern nations: Greece,
Italy, etc. Purpose: to smash unions, worker's pay, eliminate unions, and basically allowing
US/EU Financial capital to buy out Italy, most of Greece, and a goodly section of Spain and
Portugal.
The US govt. have long since paid off most every European politician. Thusly, Europe, as
separate nations that should be remain still under the yolk of the US
Financial/Political/Military power.
I have a hard time wrapping my head around this but it sounds like he is saying that the U.S.
has a payment deficit problem which is solved by stealing the world's oil supplies. To do
this they must have a powerful, expensive military. But it is primarily this military which
is the main cause of the balance deficit. So it is an eternally fuelled problem and solution.
If I understand this, what it actually means is that we all live on a plantation as slaves
and everything that is happening is for the benefit of the few wealthy billionaires. And they
intend to turn the entire world into their plantation of slaves. They may even let you live
for a while longer.
I didn't know this until I read a history of World War I.
As you know, World War One was irresolvable, murderous, bloody trench warfare. People
would charge out of the trenches trying to overrun enemy positions only to be cutdown by the
super weapon of the day – the machine gun. It was an unending bloody stalemate until
the development of the tank. Tanks were immune to machine gun fire coming from the trenches
and could overrun enemy positions. In the aftermath of that war, it became apparently that
mechanization had become crucial to military supremacy. In turn, fuel was crucial to
mechanization. Accordingly, in the Sykes Picot agreement France and Britain divided a large
amount of Middle Eastern oil between themselves in order to assure military dominance. (The
United States had plenty of their own oil at that time.)
In any event, it is the same today. Energy underlies, not only the military but, all of
world civilization. Oil and gas are overwhelmingly the source of energy for the modern world.
Without it, civilization collapses. Thus, he who controls oil (and gas) controls the
world.
That is one third of the story. The second third is this.
Up till 1971, the United States dollar was the most trusted currency in the world. The
dollar was backed by gold and lots and lots of it. Dollars were in fact redeemable in gold.
However, due to Vietnam War, the United States started running huge balance of payments
deficits. Other countries – most notably France under De Gaulle – started cashing
in dollars in exchange for that gold. Gold started flooding out of the United States. At that
point Nixon took the United States off of the gold standard. Basically stating that the
dollar was no longer backed by gold and dollars could not be redeemed for gold. That caused
an international payments problem. People would no longer accept dollars as payment since the
dollar was not backed up by anything. The American economy was in big trouble since they were
running deficits and people would no longer take dollars on faith.
To fix the problem, Henry Kissinger convinced the Saudis to agree to only accept dollars
in payment for oil – no matter who was the buyer. That meant that nations throughout
the world now needed dollars in order to pay for their energy needs. Due to this, the dollars
was once again the most important currency in the world since – as noted above –
energy underlies everything in modern industrial cultures. Additionally, since dollars were
now needed throughout the world, it became common to make all trades for any product in
highly valued dollars. Everyone needed dollars for every thing, oil or not.
At that point, the United States could go on printing dollars and spending them since a
growing world economy needed more and more dollars to buy oil as well as to trade everything
else.
That leads to the third part of the story. In order to convince the Saudis to accept only
dollars in payments for oil (and to have the Saudis strong arm other oil producers to do the
same) Kissinger promised to protect the brutal Saudi regime's hold on power against a restive
citizenry and also to protect the Saudi's against other nations. Additionally, Kissinger made
an implicit threat that if the Saudi's did not agree, the US would come in and just take
their oil. The Saudis agreed.
Thus, the three keys to dominance in the modern world are thus: oil, dollars and the
military.
Thus, Hudson ties in the three threads in his interview above. Oil, Dollars, Military.
That is what holds the empire together.
Thank you for thinking through this. Yes, the link between the US $$$ and Saudi Oil, is the
absolute means of the American Dollar to reign complete. This payment system FEEDS both the
US Military, but WALL STREET, hedge funds, the US/EU oligarchs – to name just a few
entities.
I should make one note only to this. That "no man, no problem" was Stalin's motto is a myth.
He never said that. It was invented by a writer Alexei Rybnikov and inserted in his book "The
Children of Arbat".
Wow! Absolutely beautiful summation of the ultimate causes that got us where we are and, if
left intact, will get us to where we're going!
So, the dreamer says: If only we could throw-off our us-vs-them BS political-economic
ideology & religious doctrine-faith issues, put them into live-and-let-live mode, and see
that we are all just humans fighting over this oil resource to which our modern economy (way
of life) is addicted, then we might be able to hammer out some new rules for interacting, for
running an earth-resource sustainable and fair global economy We do at least have the
technology to leave behind our oil addiction, but the political-economic will still is
lacking. How much more of the current insanity must we have before we get that will? Will we
get it before it's too late?
Only if we, a sufficient majority from the lowest economic classes to the top elites and
throughout all nations, are able to psychologically-spiritually internalize the two
principles of Common Humanity and Spaceship Earth soon enough, will we stop our current slide
off the cliff into modern economic collapse and avert all the pain and suffering that's
already now with us and that will intensify.
The realist says we're not going to stop that slide and it's the only way we're going to
learn, if we are indeed ever going to learn.
Thank you for this excellent interview. You ask the kind of questions that we would all like
to ask. It's regrettable that Chalmers Johnson isn't still alive. I believe that you and he
would have a lot in common.
Naxos has produced an incredible, unabridged cd audiobook of
Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. One of Gibbon's observations really resonates
today: "Assassination is the last resource of cowards". Thanks again.
Just two companies in the US -- Johnson & Johnson and Microsoft -- still have a
pristine, triple-A rating , the researchers noted. While sales of both the safest,
triple-A rated bonds and the riskiest "high-yield" bonds have been declining over the past
five years, there has been a dramatic rise in the amount of triple-B rated bonds that sit on
the lowest rung of the investment-grade ladder, just above high-yield.
You don't need to be Warren Buffet to know J&J and Microsoft are blue chips. The problem
is: how much rotten are the triple B? Financial expertise has degenerated to who know which is
the not-so-rotten-papers instead of knowing which are the most promising investments for the
progress of humanity, free market etc. etc. Having a guy spying for you behind the scenes
became more valuable than being a rocket engineer with a suma cum laude at MIT.
Russia, Iran and China are doing well in biding their time. The whole capitalist system is
ripe for another "corrective" recession somewhere between 2020-2023.
--/-
2. The giant of giants of the Asian Paper Tiger is in trouble:
Samsung was hit by a series of difficulties in 2019, with chip stockpiles bloating and prices
falling
[...]
But the figures beat expectations, analysts said, with chip demand starting to improve and
strong smartphone sales.
So, the Samsung's profit took a nose dive and still this was good news?
Who cares about "expectations"? In capitalism, either you're profiting enough or you aren't.
You can't just move the goal posts like that.
If it happened to some SOE in China, those "experts" would've already be souding the
trumpets of Apocalypse, calling for a complete privatization of the system and the mass suicide
of every CCP member - you know, because "the system doesn't work".
Those two Rijksbank laureates (there's no Nobel Prize of Economics, that's a fantasy term)
are two pseudo-scientists, but the numbers are too clear:
India's gross domestic product has been on a downward spiral for six consecutive quarters,
finishing at 4.5% in the September 2019 quarter. Private consumption, which contributes about
60% to the gross domestic product, is growing at 5.7% in 2019-20, much below the rate for the
previous financial year when it grew at 8.1%.
The National Statistical office has now forecast that India's gross domestic product
growth will hit a 11-year low of 5% in 2019-20, down from 6.8% in the previous year.
People who are reading this blog for enough time know that India cooks the books,
essentially doubling its own GDP growth figures. That means a 5% GDP growth in India actually
means 2.5% (maybe even 2.0%).
India promised the world and its own people it would become a superpower by 2020. They have
357 days left.
Yep. The Chinese agree with me: climate change was the main factor responsible for the
scale, durability and vastness of this year's epic bushfires in Australia. Drier eucalyptus
forests turn even a kid with a matchstick into a deadly eco-terrorist; a lightning bolt into a
massive volcanic eruption.
The Australian government itself agrees with me and the Chinese:
Bushfires are natural to the Australian ecosystem, and they happen every summer - what is up
to debate is the scale and vastness of this years' bushfires. The Australian right-wing, backed
up by the Murdoch media, should not try to pull a Nero and try to blame a random group of
innefective ecologists in a shameful witchhunt.
--/-
5. Age segregation in the UK seems to be serious business:
Britain is one of the world's most age-segregated nations, with the generational divide
increasing over the last decade, according to a new report which calls for urgent action to
address the "age apartheid" dividing the country. [...] According to the report, divisions
have increased as a result of the housing market, with the concentration of wealth now firmly
in the hands of older people. They tend to live in towns and rural areas, while the young are
sucked in by city life.
Nice curiosity if you're into that sociology stuff.
I agree that, today, protecting the Dollar Standard is the main national security
objective of the USA. That is so because issuing the universal fiat currency is a
conditio sine qua non of keeping the financial superpower status.
I also agree that the Petrodollar is the base that sustains the Dollar Standard.
But I disagree with the rest:
1) the Cold War didn't begin in 1945, but in 1917 - right after the October Revolution.
There's overwhelming documental evidence of that and, in fact, the years of 1943-1945 was the
only break it had. Until Stalingrad, the Western allies were still waiting to see if the USSR
and the Third Reich could still mutually anihilate themselves (yes, it is a myth the Allies
were really allies from 1939, but that's not a very simple demonstration);
2) in the aftermath of WWII, the USA emerged as both the industrial and financial
superpower in the capitalist world (i.e. the West). But this was an accidental - and very
unlikely - alignment of events. The USA always had imperial ambitions from its foundation
(the Manifest Destiny), but there's no evidence it was scheming to dominate the world before
1945. The American ascension was more a fruit of the European imperial superpowers destroying
themselves than by any American (or Jewish, as the far-right likes to speculate) design;
3) the USSR had nothing to do with Bretton Woods. BW was a strictly capitalist affair. And
it could not be any difference: the USSR was a socialist country, therefore, it didn't have
money-capital (money in the capitalist system has three functions: reserve of value, means of
exchange and means of payment). The only way it had to trade with the capitalist half of the
world was to exchange essential commodities (oil) for hard currency, with which it bought
what it needed for its own development (mainly, high technological machines which it could
copy and later develop on). So, the USSR didn't "balk" at BW - it was literally impossible
for it to pertain to the agreement.
Michael Hudson is not the only one who's come to understand that maintaining the
reserve-currency status of the US dollar (the "dollar hegemony") is the primary goal of US
foreign policy. Indeed, it's been the primary goal of US foreign policy since the end of
World War II, when the Bretton Woods agreement was put into effect. Notably, the Soviets
ended up balking at that agreement, and the Cold War did not start until afterwards. This
means that even the Cold War was not really about ideology - it was about money.
It's also important to note that the point of the "petrodollar" is to ensure that
petroleum - one of the most globally traded commodities and a commodity that's fundamental to
the global economy - is traded primarily, if not exclusively, in terms of the US dollar.
Ensuring that as much global/international trade happens in US dollars helps ensure that the
US dollar keeps its reserve-currency status, because it raises the foreign demand for US
dollars.
I agree that, today, protecting the Dollar Standard is the main national security
objective of the USA. That is so because issuing the universal fiat currency is a
conditio sine qua non of keeping the financial superpower status.
I also agree that the Petrodollar is the base that sustains the Dollar Standard.
But I disagree with the rest:
1) the Cold War didn't begin in 1945, but in 1917 - right after the October Revolution.
There's overwhelming documental evidence of that and, in fact, the years of 1943-1945 was the
only break it had. Until Stalingrad, the Western allies were still waiting to see if the USSR
and the Third Reich could still mutually anihilate themselves (yes, it is a myth the Allies
were really allies from 1939, but that's not a very simple demonstration);
2) in the aftermath of WWII, the USA emerged as both the industrial and financial
superpower in the capitalist world (i.e. the West). But this was an accidental - and very
unlikely - alignment of events. The USA always had imperial ambitions from its foundation
(the Manifest Destiny), but there's no evidence it was scheming to dominate the world before
1945. The American ascension was more a fruit of the European imperial superpowers destroying
themselves than by any American (or Jewish, as the far-right likes to speculate) design;
3) the USSR had nothing to do with Bretton Woods. BW was a strictly capitalist affair. And
it could not be any difference: the USSR was a socialist country, therefore, it didn't have
money-capital (money in the capitalist system has three functions: reserve of value, means of
exchange and means of payment). The only way it had to trade with the capitalist half of the
world was to exchange essential commodities (oil) for hard currency, with which it bought
what it needed for its own development (mainly, high technological machines which it could
copy and later develop on). So, the USSR didn't "balk" at BW - it was literally impossible
for it to pertain to the agreement.
Correction: the three functions of money in capitalism are reserve/store of value, means
of exchange and unit of account . I basically wrote "means of exchange" twice in the
original comment.
Hello! Michael Hudson first set forth the methodology of the Outlaw US Empire's financial
control of the world via his book Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American
Empire in 1972. In 2003, he issued an updated edition which you can download for free
here .
If you're interested, here's an interview he gave while in China that's autobiographical
. And here's his most recent Resume/CV/Bibliography , although it doesn't
go into as much detail about his recent work as he does in and forgive them their debts:
Lending, Foreclosure, and Redemption From Bronze Age Finance to the Jubilee Year , which
for me is fascinating.
His most recent TV appearances are here and here .
Bingo! You're the first person here to make that connection aside from myself. You'll note
from Hudson's
assessment of Soleimani's killing he sees the Outlaw US Empire as using the Climate
Crisis as a weapon:
"America's attempt to maintain this buttress explains U.S. opposition to any foreign
government steps to reverse global warming and the extreme weather caused by the world's
U.S.-sponsored dependence on oil. Any such moves by Europe and other countries would reduce
dependence on U.S. oil sales, and hence on the U.S's ability to control the global oil spigot
as a means of control and coercion. These are viewed as hostile acts.
"Oil also explains U.S. opposition to Russian oil exports via Nordstream. U.S. strategists
want to treat energy as a U.S. national monopoly. Other countries can benefit in the way that
Saudi Arabia has done – by sending their surpluses to the U.S. economy – but not
to support their own economic growth and diplomacy. Control of oil thus implies support for
continued global warming as an inherent part of U.S. strategy....
"This strategy will continue, until foreign countries reject it. If Europe and other
regions fail to do so, they will suffer the consequences of this U.S. strategy in the form of
a rising U.S.-sponsored war via terrorism, the flow of refugees, and accelerated global
warming (and extreme weather)."
@Cynica #38
Financially, the US dollar as reserve currency is enormously beneficial to the US
government's ability to spend.
And oil has historically been both a tactical and a strategic necessity; when the US was
importing half its oil, this is a lot of money. 8 million bpd @ $50/barrel = $146B. Add in
secondary value add like transport, refining, downstream industries, etc and it likely
triples the impact or more - but this is only tactical.
Worldwide, the impact is 10X = $1.5 trillion annually. Sure, this is a bit under 10% of the
$17.7T in world trade in 2017, but it serves as an "anchor tenant" to the idea of world
reserve currency. A second anchor is the overall role of US trade, which was $3.6T in 2016
(imports only).
If we treat central bank reserves as a proxy for currency used in trade, this means 60%+ of
the $17.7T in trade is USD. $3.6T is direct, but the $7 trillion in trade that doesn't impact
the US is the freebie. To put this in perspective, the entire monetary float of the USD
domestically is about $3.6T.
USD as world reserve currency literally doubles (at least) the float - from which the US
government can issue debt (money) to fund its activities. In reality, it is likely a lot more
since foreigners using USD to fund trade means at least some USD in Central Banks, plus the
actual USD in the transaction, plus corporate/individual USD reserves/float.
Again, nothing above is formally linked - I just wanted to convey an idea of just how
advantageous the petrodollar/USD as world trade reserve currency really is.
In my golden days, I did manufacturing throughput analysis, cost modeled parts, and
reviewed component and transportation distribution. I am curious. Forget all that
neoliberal stuff . . .
Ohh, those golden days
Measurement has its place and is the cornerstone of science, but it is not equal to
pattern recognition. And when applied to social phenomena with their complexity it is
more often a trap, rather then an insight.
You need to understand that.
Deification of questionable metrics is an objective phenomenon that we observe under
neoliberalism.
A classic example of deification of a questionable metric under neoliberalism is the
"cult of GDP" ("If the GDP Is Up, Why Is America Down?") See , for example
For example, many people discuss stagnation of GDP growth in Japan not understanding
here we are talking about the country with shrinking population. And adjusted for this
factor I am not sure that it not higher then in the USA (were it is grossly distorted by
the cancerous growth of FIRE sector).
So while comparing different years for a single country might make some limited sense,
those who blindly compare GDP of different countries (even with PPP adjustment) IMHO
belong to a modern category of economic charlatans. Kind of Lysenkoism, if you wish
That tells you something about primitivism and pseudo-scientific nature of neoliberal
economics.
We also need to remember the "performance reviews travesty" which is such a clear
illustration of "cult of measurement" abuses that it does not it even requires
commentary. Google has abolished numerical ratings in April 2014.
Recently I come across an interesting record of early application of it in AT&T at
Brian W Kernighan book UNIX: A History and a Memoir at late 60th, early as 70th.
Something is really fishy here. Dynamic IP address is reassigned only if you do not switch on you computer on for several days,
which is not very probable for Krugman. Otherwise it is glued to this device and is difficult to highjack without installing
malware on the computer or router. and he should have static IP anyway, he is not some poor shmuck and can
afford extra $10 a month to have.
Two devices with the same IP on the network are usually automatically detected and it is
difficult to use them for download, as during this time the second device will lose Internet connection completely and the
problem will be detected by the ISP support.
So the only option is that somebody installed backdoor malware on Krugman computer and used his harddrive for storage. That's
an extremely improbable scenario, unless he visited some grey site himself.
Russia is planning level production for the next 4 years.
"As far as the production cuts are concerned, I repeat once again, this is not an
indefinite process. A decision on the exit should be gradually taken in order to keep up market
share and so that our companies would be able to provide and implement their future projects. I
think that we will consider that this year."(2020)
Meanwhile, Russia's energy ministry is assuming that the country's total output is to
average around and slightly above 11.2 million barrels per day until 2024. In other words, it
is not building any cut into its plan.
Russia's peak month, so far, was December 2018 at 11,408,000 barrels per day. The average
daily production for 2018 was 11,115,000 bpd. Average production for 2019 was 11,211,000 bpd.
This is the level they hope to hold for the next 4 years.
Russia's production increased by an average of 96,000 barrels per day in 2019. They are not
expecting any further increase at all. They just hope to hold at 2019 levels for another four
years. I think they will be very lucky if they manage that.
Point is, the world's largest producer, the USA, will likely peak in a few months. The
world's second-largest producer, Russia, is admitting they have peaked. The world's
third-largest producer, Saudi Arabia, has very likely peaked though they do not admit it. OPEC
likely peaked in 2016, *Iran and Venezuela notwithstanding.
*Iran peaked in 2005 at 3,938,000 bpd. My Venezuela records only go back to 2001 when they
produced 2,961,000 bpd. However, they peaked several years before that. However, neither is
producing at maximum capacity today due to political problems. However both are clearly in
decline regardless of political problems keeping them from producing flat out.
If we are at peak oil right now we are damn close to it.
The Russian Chart below is C+C through December 2019.
Ovi, the data in my chart above is from the official Ministry of Energy web site,
converting tons to barrels at 7.33 barrels per ton: MINISTRY OF ENERGY OF
RUSSIAN FEDERATION
In December, total oil and gas condensate stood at 11.262 million bpd, up from 11.244
million bpd in November, according to the data.
Those are the exact numbers I used in my chart above. And yes, 2019 was a new high,
exactly as I stated in the post above. Its yearly average beat the 2018 yearly average by
90,000 bpd.
Concerning 2020 average, it could not be stated any clearer than this:
Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak expects Russian oil and condensate production
of between 555 million tonnes and 565 million tonnes in 2020, or 11.12-11.32 million bpd
using a conversion rate of 7.33 barrels per tonne of oil.
Got an exemption for condensates at the OPEC meeting, though this was not discussed in
the press conference.
Achieving another cut of 70,000 b/d in first quarter appears to be beyond its
capability, given past statements.
Russia is planning level production for next 4 years.
And is prepared for oil prices to drop to $25-30 per barrel.
You wrote: I found this statement interesting, in that if they can't increase
production, and are at max, why are they worried about market share.
I really don't understand that question. If they plan on producing 11.2 million barrels
per day for the next four years, then they should be worried about their market share.
Whether they can or cannot produce more than that is beside the point.
"U.S.
Economic Warfare and Likely Foreign Defenses" provides numerous methods besides simply
the cessation of dollar use for international commercial transactions. Along with watching
the "Debt Wish 2020" vid linked above, I also suggest reading/watching this program . And lastly, I
suggest reading this analysis
here , although it only tangentially deals with your question.
High-yield bonds (avoid the oil patch), emerging-markets bonds and dividend-paying stocks
such as real estate investment trusts and utilities are good places to hunt for yield. Funds to
consider include Vanguard High Yield Corporate ( VWEHX ),
yielding 4.5%, and TCW Emerging Markets Bond ( TGEIX ),
yielding 5.1%. Schwab US Dividend Equity ( SCHD , $56), a
member of the Kiplinger ETF 20 list of our favorite ETFs, invests in high-quality dividend
payers and yields just over 3%. Spath, at Sierra Funds, is bullish on preferred stocks. IShares
Preferred and Income Securities ETF ( PFF , $37)
yields 5.5%. (For more ideas, see Income
Investing .)
Suppose my outlook for the bond market is either wrong, or at best, premature. Bond yields
could fall next year, or just stay relatively flat. That's why it usually makes sense to own
more than one bond fund.
Vanguard Intermediate-Term Tax-Exempt Investor ( VWITX ,
$14.41) should hold up pretty well if rates rise only a small amount in 2020, and it could
trounce the other funds in this article if rates fall.
VWITX's duration is 4.9 years. That means if bond yields rise by one percentage point, the
fund's price should decline by 4.9%. That wouldn't be fun for investors, but it would hardly be
catastrophic, especially when you factor in the yield.
Like most Vanguard bond offerings, Vanguard Intermediate-Term Tax-Exempt Investor is plain
vanilla, and that's OK. It sticks almost entirely to high-quality municipal bonds. Its weighted
average credit quality is a sterling AA.
VWITX also has been a decent performer, at an annualized 3.1% total return over the past
five years.
Rome and the whole pagan world had gone mad, and Caesar was swimming in blood.. .
"Four sorrows are certain to be visited on the United States.
First, there will be a state of perpetual war.
Second is a loss of democracy and Constitutional rights as the presidency eclipses Congress and is itself transformed from
a co-equal 'executive branch' of government into a military junta.
Third is the replacement of truth by propaganda, disinformation, and the glorification of war, power, and the military legions.
Lastly, there is bankruptcy, as the United States pours its economic resources into ever more grandiose military projects
and shortchanges the education, health, and safety of its citizens." Chalmers Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire, 2005
"Seneca had made the bargain that many good men have made when agreeing to aid bad regimes. On the one hand, their presence strengthens
the regime and helps it endure. But their moral influence may also improve the regime's behavior or save the lives of its enemies.
For many, this has been a bargain worth making, even if it has cost them -- as it may have cost Seneca -- their immortal soul."
~James Romm, Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero
"If you are wise and understand God's ways, prove it by living an honorable life, doing good works with the humility that comes
from wisdom. But if you are bitterly jealous and there is selfish ambition in your heart, don't hide the truth with boasting and
lying. For jealousy and selfishness are not God's kind of wisdom. Such things are worldly, carnal, and demonic. For wherever there
is jealousy and selfish ambition, there you will find disorder and evil of every kind." ~James 3:13-15
Good point Afghanistan. The newly appointed General Ghaani was active in Afghanistan. As he
is famimiar with the place, that may well be where he decides to retaliate.
The introduction of manpads would be no less significant an impact on the occupying force as
it was when the Soviet's were there when the SEE EYE AYE showered the Afghani's with
Stingers. It completely changed the modus of the Soviet army once they were introduced.
Helicopters became dangerous to be in and could no longer fly near the ground. Good
observations though, the assassination of Assad could prove to be magnitudes greater a spark
than any of us could imagine. I hope for the sake of, among the many, the Christians he's
been protecting from the foreign merc's. that he stays safe. He must keep a low profile and
let's hope the S400's will take care of any Predator drones that try to fly the Damascus
airspace.
It seems US (or perhaps Israel) didn't give you time enough to think about what could be the
next move (breaking news from Sputinik, 23:30 GMT): vehicle convoy carrying Iraqi PMF leaders
hit by airstrike, 6 dead at least.
Thanks for posting this. I wonder if Soleimani consciously ( on many human and beyond human
levels) wanted to offer the Yanks a "target" (a type of sacrifice, namely himself) that was
just too big to ignore, knowing that the stupid enemy would take the bait, and having a
secure knowledge that his death would set in motion a chain of events that will (underline
will) result in the final terrible fall of the US, and Israel. Stupid American "leaders",
right now, they are dancing in idiotic joy, saying foolish words for which we will pay, also
knowing what the future holds: the death of countless people, throughout not only the Middle
East, but here in the US as well. Yes, I do hate them for what they have unleashed.
Rest In Peace, Soleimani. You very well may achieve far more in death that you attained in
your eventful life.
Sitting in coffee shop in Chicago listening to Americans. The general sentiment is they had
it coming and Iran should be nuked.
Glass parking lot is the desired end.
This sentiment is bottom to top in America. Measured response? No way can Iran 'measure' a
response.
More generally the sentiment is that a little war in Iran, a few nukes, is not even a big
thing. Football scores more important.
"Sitting in coffee shop in Chicago listening to Americans. The general sentiment is they had
it coming and Iran should be nuked.
Glass parking lot is the desired end."
That's pretty much the picture i get from reading responses in UK MSM, not only from
English, but many giving American addresses. They are all pretty much thoroughly brainwashed,
believing as gospel the lies they've told, and still think that they are the "White hatted,
good guys, who do good things for the places they bomb and invade".
it seems they will be supportive of an attack on Iran, and if their maniac "leaders", the
basement crazies who got out of the basement, realise this, it increases substantially the
chances of a "hot" war. In that case, should it escalate out of control, your Chicago coffee
deadheads will get the Glass parking lot they want. It just wont be in the ME. Or Russia.
They can have their very own, in their own back yard.
Yes I also noticed this, what I believe is most depressing is how dumb people are.
Trump/White house tell alot of lies which then become the truth for alot of his supporters
and he also manage to get MSM where he wants, because MSM do not seems to care either, they
are on-board when it comes to war.
And yes additional to that, a clear psychological operation going on to get the propaganda
out.
I try to counter it on social media, I hope everyone here also do the same.
Its about conditioning people that its the new normal. Anything goes, "do as thou wilt".
So long as it serves the interests of our masters. With no fear that MSM or alt media can or
will provide sustained or effective criticism, and the corruption of religious or secular
morals among the population thanks to hollywoods cultural marxism/propaganda and corruption
of christianity , they can get support among the people for just about anything. People can
be made to believe anything. The past 100 years has proven that beyond all doubt. With all
doubt now removed they can show their true colors and this will be accepted as the new
normal.
The problem with the US is most everyone in the US military, US citizenry, and US government
believe their own Exceptionalism propaganda and act accordingly. Attacking the PMU units of
the Iraqi army was certainly an unwise decision, but killing Qassem Soleimani and Abu Mahdi
Al-Muhandis is an act of complete moronic insanity!
The United States launched a war of aggression, the supreme crime, upon Iraq in 2003, based
on blatant lies, and are still there. Prior to that, they helped foment the war between Iraq
and Iran, then attacked Iraq in 1991, and on top of the overt warfare there was the economic
sanctions warfare. The death and maiming and poisoning of millions of Iraqis has been the
American contribution to Iraq, over the last several decades. What for? How has this helped
the United States? Or Europe? The main advocates for this supreme criminality has been the
Israel lobby, Israel, and the supporters of Israel.
The American Apache helicopters are still buzzing around over Baghdad, dealing out terror
and intimidation and death. The murder by the United States of yet more Iraqi soldiers and
officials recently has been largely absent from the propaganda narratives. But could those be
'the final straw'?
As far as Trump's 52 target threat, this comes after the apparent please don't escalate
and we'll make a deal - good cop-bad cop routine.
The 52 number was used to remind mind-controlled Americans that the evil Iranians
outrageously took 52 Americans hostage. American's don't just take people hostage; they give
them orange suits and torture them, unless they kill them. Apart from murdering and maiming
by the millions, they even stage fictional killings, like Osama bin laden, to entertain the
zombies, and stick out their chests, hand out medals and the like.
A central premise of conventional media wisdom has collapsed. On Thursday, both the
New York Times
and
Politico
published
major articles reporting that Bernie Sanders really could win the Democratic presidential nomination. Such acknowledgments
will add to the momentum of the Bernie 2020 campaign as the new year begins -- but they foreshadow a massive escalation of
anti-Sanders misinformation and invective.
Throughout 2019, corporate media routinely asserted that the Sanders campaign had
little chance of winning the nomination. As is so often the case, journalists were echoing each other more than paying
attention to grassroots realities. But now, polling numbers and other
indicators
on
the ground are finally sparking very different headlines from the media establishment.
Those stories, and others likely to follow in copycat news outlets, will heighten the energies of Sanders supporters and
draw in many wavering voters. But the shift in media narratives about the Bernie campaign's chances will surely boost the
decibels of alarm bells in elite circles where dousing the fires of progressive populism is a top priority.
For corporate Democrats and their profuse media allies, the approach of
disparaging
and
minimizing Bernie Sanders in 2019 didn't work. In 2020, the next step will be to trash him with a vast array of full-bore
attacks.
Along the way, the corporate media will occasionally give voice to some Sanders defenders and supporters. A few
establishment Democrats will decide to make nice with him early in the year. But the overwhelming bulk of Sanders media
coverage -- synced up with the likes of such prominent corporate flunkies as Rahm Emanuel and Neera Tanden as well as Wall Street
Democrats accustomed to ruling the roost in the party -- will range from condescending to savage.
When the Bernie campaign wasn't being
ignored
by
corporate media during 2019, innuendos and mud often flew in his direction. But we ain't seen nothing yet.
With so much at stake -- including the presidency and the top leadership of the Democratic Party -- no holds will be barred. For
the forces of corporate greed and the military-industrial complex, it'll be all-out propaganda war on the Bernie campaign.
While reasons for pessimism are abundant, so are ample reasons to understand that
a
Sanders presidency is a real possibility
. The last places we should look for political realism are corporate media outlets
that distort options and encourage passivity.
Bernie is fond of quoting a statement from Nelson Mandela: "It always seems impossible until it is done."
From the grassroots, as 2020 gets underway, the solution should be clear: All left hands on deck.
Elections aren't real. Democrats will nominate Joe Biden to lose the election. Trump will remain as fascist
strongman and the dems will continue to blame his neoconservative policies on his white trash constituency.
Bernie serves a few important functions.
1. he keeps the radicals from leaving the plantation and going 3rd party.
2. his promotion of progressive policies will make Biden less popular and help him lose to Trump
3. Bernie and his "socialism" can then be blamed for losing the election to Trump
Unfortunately this comment will be buried in this monstrosity of a thread- now at over 300 comments
with only about a third of them having a much relevance.
You might consider re-posting in reply
to one of the foremost comments. Your simple realism will certainly not be well received during the
campaign hallucinations.
I've often wondered how it is people could believe the elections could have any positive and
lasting impact on their lives if they have been through a couple of cycles. Do they not also wonder
how it is that these election (marketing) campaigns now stretch out for well over a year nowadays
demanding everyone's political attention, energy and resources. To say it is a colossal waste does
not quite capture the enormity of the mind job being to people.
Your simple realism will certainly not be well received during the campaign hallucinations.
Yeah, yeah, sure, sure. You "realists" who are true believers that you have the Truth and have a calling to
preach the Truth absolutely must stand against the unwashed masses who claim that your "reality" isn't even
intersubjectively verifiable, much less dialectical & material [eta
& historical
].
I quite enjoyed what SteelPirate/LaborSolidarity had to say about you attempting to gain a vanguard
following by trolling lib-prog sites.
Never pay attention to anyone who claims what's "real" and what isn't. Politics certainly doesn't
exist in the realm of an objective, concrete, physical, naturalistic, materialistic reality which is
shared by a consensus of rational observers. At best, politics deals with intersubjectively verifiable
social phenomena. Thus, politics is mostly idealistic in the belief that each mind generates its own
reality.
This realization is the topic of intersubjective verifiability, as recounted, for example, by Max Born
(1949, 1965)
Natural Philosophy of Cause and Chance
, who points out that all knowledge, including
natural or social science, is also subjective. p. 162: "Thus it dawned upon me that fundamentally
everything is subjective, everything without exception. That was a shock."
Noam Chomsky on Bernie Sanders's Chances of Success- "...the chances he can be elected are pretty small."
(Waiting with bated breath for copious downvotes by those who hate the truth and hate reality).
Most of who support Sanders know that his presidency will involve an uphill battle. Chomsky is
being realistic.
But there really is no better option for meaningful change working within the
political system than supporting Sanders. it is also important to note that "Our Revolution" has
energized many young activists, encouraging them to continue the fight. This goes beyond politics
to social and economic issues. If Sanders leaves us with a movement, this may turn out to be more
important than the presidency in the long run.
Keep working for effective moral and economic justice and democracy!
Well, I have said this several times, it's not the microscopic left that you need to convince, it's
the majority of self-identifying Democrats not supporting Sanders that you need to convince. I am
repelled by the Democratic Party, but there are millions who identify as Democrats and many are
proud of it. You need to convince them, not us.
Yes, although I don't think that those who support a Leftist agenda--whether you actually call them
Leftists or not--are quite so microscopic a group as you imply. But you don't need to convince me
or most others here (probably) that Sanders isn't perfect, or that it will be difficult for him to
be elected president. We already know; we simply consider him the best option within this context
of voting.
Have you ever thought of turning your approach to systemic commentary (which is valid
and interesting, BTW, I'm not discounting it) around and saying what candidates you support-- in
this context being discussed of voting-- instead of which ones you don't? And then explaining why
such support would be effective?
I would say that what is wrong with the world is more a fault of the economic and political
system than of Sanders alone--who not only plays small part in causing what is wrong, but a
significant part in trying to correct it. Yes, he works within the system. That is a given. It may
be, as Chris Hedges thinks, that there is no hope working within the system. But Noam Chomsky's
approach also bears serious consideration that even Hedges doesn't discount. Voting will only be a
small part of what brings about change, but it may make some slight difference--if you can stomach
it. And it only takes a small amount of time.
"In a system of immense power, small differences can translate into large outcomes."
I don't see much of an argument that Sanders will be no better as president than Trump (and if
you think so, I'd like to hear you argue it). I suspect you find the compromise unpalatable. I can
understand that. I, too, draw the line at a certain point. I couldn't vote for HRC.
Yes, Sanders isn't perfect. Chomsky also said another important thing: "We're all compromised."
Everyone who is a citizen of the US is compromised, and bears some measure of responsibility for
the military interventions undertaken by our government. Perhaps we should renounce our
citizenship, refuse to pay taxes, etc. But most of us don't -- not even those of us committed to
activist work in other ways -- significant ways -- to make things better.
But you don't need to convince me or most others here (probably) that Sanders isn't perfect
-for me it isn' that he's not perfect, it's that I think he sucks
"In a system of immense power, small differences can translate into large outcomes."
-funny, that's a favorite line of Democrats
I get that, but it doesn't negate that Sanders's chances are next to nil.
Your suggestion of me signaling whom I support would fall on deaf ears around here. I have said
this many times- I will probably for the Green Party candidate or the Socialist Equality Party
candidate. If only a Democrat and Republican appear on the ballot then I would refuse to vote even
if I had to pay a fine. I am not in the habit of telling anyone whom to vote for unless asked.
Before a 3rd can succeed, the fantasy that the fix can come through the Democrats needs to be
destroyed. Not to worry, in due time it will be obvious.
My guess/bet is that
V4V
believes that the truth "We're all compromised" doesn't apply to him.
He sees himself as a truth-knower and a truth-teller.
He won't commit to logical argumentation.
He'll preach the truth to you.
I saw this video long ago--and agreed with it. But though Sanders' chances are small, they're still
vastly larger than the NONEXISTENT chances of success of the purist, "Born to Lose" left. Why not just
admit that you've totally given up and simply like to spent your time bitching and criticizing those of
us with some (albeit small) hope?
simply like to spent your time bitching and criticizing those of us with some (albeit small) hope?
-straw man
That isn't what I do because I couldn't care less whom Democrats support and vote for. Typically, I post
some unpleasant truth about Sanders, like his lackluster polling numbers or his support for neoliberal
warmongers and sit back and watch the ad hominems and downvotes roll in. I am not normally on the attack, I am
usually on the receiving end.
I admit that I see this forum as a form of entertainment. I admit I have zero expectation that someone to my
liking will be elected president and that the system is going to change anytime soon. Do I believe it possible?
Yes, I believe it is possible, I just don't believe it possible using the corrupt, Democratic Party as a
vehicle and that's where we differ.
And that the crux of our issue- you believe the Democratic Party can be used a vehicle to convert the
CIA/Wall Street/War Inc. Democrats into the peoples' party, and I do not. If the needed changes are ever to
arrive, it will be in spite of the Democrats not because of them. I hope you stick around because in due time
I'll be telling you, "Told ya so."
The problem with your position is that, unlike Sanders, you don't seem to understand that a third
candidate party candidate hasn't a snowball's chance in hell of being president unless if s/he
somehow gets more electoral votes that
both
the major parties combined. If not, it goes to
the house, and in the current partisan atmosphere, would be decided for the candidate of the House
majority.
The major parties have a death-grip on the presidency while the electoral college exists.
You don't seem to understand that Sanders has a snowball's chance in hell of being the Democratic
Party candidate for many reasons including the DNC arguing in court it is a private corporation and
can legally rig primary and the trusty superdelegates for Biden.
What I propose is a movement
outside the Democratic Party in inside it. I believe any attempt to reform the Democratic Party is
doomed to fail. All this whistling in the dark over Sanders is a distraction and a kicking the can
down the road to the time you Democrats
finally
realize it isn't going to work. You
obviously didn't learn it in 2016, and I would be surprised if you learn it once Sanders tanks and
begins campaigning for Biden just like he did Clinton. I will promise this, I'll say, "I told ya
so" in a matter of months. That's okay, play it again, Sam.
People believe they need others to tell them what to do and give them the illusion somebody cares about
them and has their best interests at heart. That's an archetype in the brain that goes back to our
baby/childhood when we were dependent on our caregivers for sustenance, comfort and life itself.That's
where the original concept of needing "leaders" comes from. But, what happens is psyco/sociopaths see
this weakness in humanity and force their way to the top, to herd and exploit the gullible sheeple for
their own agendas and selfish interests. No matter who rises to the top, she/he got their through the
same system that's been going on since tribes had their chief; chief's lieutenant and witch
doctor/shaman. Those three keep the tribe in line with their own desires. Chief through brute force, his
lieutenant through information and witch doctor through religion and "spiritual" services; and all three
require tribute and fees from the rest of the tribe. So, you will see, regardless of who the next POTUS
will be, that same structure, although more complex today, will repeat itself. New boss/old boss, same
ol' same ol'. All power has to be returned to the people at the local level before Wash. starts WWIII.
But, if that happens, at least we won't have to worry about global warming with a nuclear winter after
the bombs drop.
In Q2 2019, thanks to the LNG supply glut and converging prices, the EU's LNG imports jumped
by 102 percent on the year, with Russia accounting for 19 percent of LNG imports, second only
to Qatar with 30 percent, and ahead of the U.S. with 12 percent, the European Commission's
Quarterly Report on European Gas Markets
shows .
Between January and November, LNG imports into Europe including Turkey hit a record high,
beating the previous record from 2011, the EIA said in its latest natural gas update. The U.S.,
Russia, and Qatar boosted their LNG supplies to Europe this year, and the U.S. beat Russia in
volumes supplied to Europe in the latter part of the year, EIA data shows.
While Russia and the U.S. compete for gas market share in Europe, the U.S. hit Russia's Nord
Stream 2 project with sanctions this month, delaying the completion of the project with at
least several months.
Following the announcement of the sanctions, Switzerland-based offshore pipelay and subsea
construction company Allseas
immediately suspended Nord Stream 2 pipelay activities.
Also
The agreement between Gazprom and Naftogaz provides for the rejection of new claims, withdrawal of claims, payment by the
decision of the Stockholm arbitration-Miller
MOSCOW, Dec 21-RIA Novosti. Gas transit through Ukraine in 2020 will be 65 billion cubic meters, and 40 billion in 2021-2024, said
the Head of "Gazprom" Alexey Miller.
In turn, the Minister of energy of Ukraine Oleksiy Orzhel noted that the tariff will increase due to a decrease in pumping volumes.
The agreement provides for the rejection of new claims, the withdrawal of claims and the payment of about 2.9 billion dollars on the
decisions of the Stockholm arbitration court.
In addition, Gazprom and Naftogaz will sign an agreement to settle mutual claims under existing contracts. With Kiev, the Russian
company will sign a settlement agreement to withdraw the claim of the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine.
The European Commission in the framework of the new agreement on gas cooperation guarantees the compliance of transit with EU
standards, the Ukrainian side-the independence of the regulator, protection of the interests of the transit customer, predictability
and economic feasibility of tariff formation.
MOSCOW, Dec 21-RIA Novosti. "Gazprom" and "Operator of GTS of Ukraine" on Saturday are preparing in Vienna inter-operator agreement
signed on Friday between Russia and Ukraine Protocol of the contract on gas transit and settlement of mutual claims is already
working, told reporters the representative of "Gazprom".
Workers aged 65 and older will be responsible for more than half of all UK employment
growth over the next 10 years and almost two-thirds of employment growth by 2060, according
to new figures.
Since 2008, we've been witnessing a "reverse stagflation", i.e. low unemployment with low
wages (a phenomenon which is impossible according to modern bourgeois economic theory).
The reason for this is what I mentioned earlier: no more technological progress and
negative birth rates. The USA is still benefitting from mass immigration from Central
America, but this demographic bonus won't last for much: now even the Third World countries
are barely above the minimum 2 children per woman (including most of Latin American nations).
Only a bunch of African nations (which have high mortality rates either way, so it doesn't
matter) and India still have the "demographic bonus" in a level such as to be
capitalistically viable.
This problem is not new in cotemporary history. It happened once: in the USSR.
In the 1970s, only 6% of the Soviet population was necessary to produce everything the
USSR needed, so the only solution available was to expand the economy extensively, i.e. by
reproducing the same infrastructure more times over.
The problem with that is that the USSR had reached its limits demographically. Its
population growth entered into stagnant to negative territory. Decades passed until the point
where it didn't even matter if they came up with a revolutionary technology, since there were
simply not enough children to teach and train to such new tech. Add to that the pressure from
the Cold War (which drained its R&D to the military sector), and it begun to wither
away.
Now we can predict the same thing is happening to capitalism. Contrary to the USSR, the
capitalist nations had the advantage of having available the demographic bonuses of the Third
World - specially China - to maintain their dynamism even when some countries like Japan and
Germany reached negative birth rates. Now China's demographic bonus is over and also much of
Latin America. To make things even worse for the capitalists, China managed to scape the
"middle income trap" and go to the route of becoming a superpower, thus adding to the
demographic strains of the capitalist center.
The solution, it seems, is to do pension reforms and force the old people back to work.
France is going to destroy its pension system; Brazil already did that; the USA was a pioneer
in forcing its old population to work to the death; Italy destroyed its pension system after
2008; the UK is preparing the terrain now that its social-democracy is definitely
destroyed.
As always I find your application of Marxist critique succinct and correct. This coming
decade, with its unravelling of the financialization phase of our current phase of capitalism
(i.e the US consolidation phase following British imperialism, c.1914-2020s), will be its
terminal decade. The signal that we had entered the financialization phase were the shocks of
1970-73, and the replacement of industrial manufacture (i.e. money>commodity>money+x,
or M-C-M') with finance/speculation (i.e. money>money+x, M-M') has unfolded more or less
according to Marx's analysis in Capital vol.3. This is as much a crisis of value
creation as anything else. In Australia (where I am) the process is particularly transparent:
we have almost no manufacturing sector left and so we exchange labour-value created in China
for mineral resources and engage in the ponzi-scheme of banking and property speculation,
which produces no value whatsoever. Either way the M-C-M' phase in Australia has vanished and
government dedicates itself to full-spectrum protection of the finance economy and mining.
All the while a veneer of productivity is created by immigration, which destroys cities
(because there's no infrastructure to accomodate them), inflates prices and creates the
illusion of 'growth'. This is propped up by a media who perpetuate xenophobia by creating
panic about refugees (5%) while saying zip about the fact that Australia only has economic
growth at all because we bring in 250K new consumers every year. This collapsing
financialization phase will only accelerate this decade and we will wake to find we don't
make anything and have crumbling 1980s-era infrastructure: Australia will suffer badly as the
phase plays out, not least because of a colonial-settler looting mentality around the
'economy' that persists at every level of government.
What I like about the point you're making in your post (#32) is the wider expansive
question of productivity -- or, how do we continue to produce value? It is often overlooked
that Marx sought to liberate human beings from expropriative labour of every kind (which
occurred as much under the Soviets as it does today); this means that capital's aorta
connecting labour to value via money must be severed (rather than the endless attempts to
reform capitalism to make it 'fairer' etc, a sell-out for which Gramsci savaged the union
movement). The relation between work and value must be critiqued relentlessly. To salvage any
kind of optimism about the future we need to invest all our intellectual energy in this
critique and find a radically new way of construing the link between time, labour and value
that does not include social domination.
In the meantime the scenario to which you have drawn our attention -- the parasitic
vampirism now attacking the elderly and the retired -- is an inevitable consequence of our
particular moment in late capitalism, hurtling at speed toward a social catastrophe of debt,
wealth inequality, neo-feudalism and biopolitical police state, all characterized by an image
of 70-year-olds trudging to work in an agony of physical suffering and mental meaninglessness
which will end in a forgotten grave.
Normal cyclical patterns have gone missing , and may not be coming back anytime soon...
The U.S. economy has experienced its slowest recovery from a recession in the post-World War
II era, and the longer it lasts the more evidence there is that normal cyclical patterns are
missing. And their absence means market participants shouldn't rely on them to divine the
economy's future.
Consider the myriad developments that are atypical, or even the reverse of normal economic
and financial market behavior. The Federal Reserve shifted from easing credit to tightening
following past downturns, with its target federal funds rate normally raised within a year or
so of the recession's trough, eventually precipitating the next economic contraction. This
time, the central bank kept its policy rate at the recessionary low of essentially zero until
Dec. 2015, 78 months into the recovery . And then, after nine quarter-percentage point
increases, it reversed course early this year with three rate cuts.
Far from the Fed's normal worries about an overheating economy and inflation, the central
bank frets that low and even declining consumer prices will spawn deflationary expectations.
Buyers will hold off in anticipation of lower prices. Inventories and excess capacity will
mount, forcing prices down. The price cuts confirm suspicions and purchases are delayed even
further, sparking a deflationary spiral. The glaring example is Japan, with deflation in most
years in the past two decades and tiny real GDP annual growth of 1.1%.
Also, despite the plunge in 30-year fixed mortgage rates from 6.8% in July 2006 to the
current 3.7%, rate-sensitive single-family housing starts have been muted. They fell from a 1.8
million annual rate in January 2006 to 350,000 in March 2009 as the subprime mortgage market
collapsed, but have only recovered to 940,000.
Mortgage lending criteria have tightened and prime-age first-time homebuyers don't have the
necessary downpayments. The net worth of households headed by 18-to-34-year-olds dropped from
$120,000 in 2001 to $90,000 in 2016, a 44% decline adjusted for inflation. Also, they learned
from the last recession that for the first time since the 1930s, house prices nationwide can
fall.
In past business recoveries, the U.S. household saving rate fell as consumer spending grew
faster than incomes. In this expansion, it's the reverse, leaping from 4.9% to 7.9% in
November, retarding spending.
Past postwar recessions spawned financial problems, but nothing like the 2008 crisis. The
government's reaction was equally severe with the enactment of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act and
other stringent regulations for financial institutions that are only now being slowly
relaxed.
In earlier business upswings, a drop in the unemployment rate of anything like the plunge
from 10% in October 2009 to the current 3.5% would have spawned massive wage inflation. This
time, real wages are barely growing.
Globalization transported many high-paid manufacturing jobs to China. With the growing "on
demand" economy -- think Uber Technologies Inc. -- many people trade flexibility in working
hours for low pay. The payroll jobs that are being created are mostly in low-wage sectors such
as retailing and leisure & hospitality.
For years, foreign policy was bipartisan and expanding trade was considered highly
desirable. Now, globalists have been overcome by protectionists, spurred by voters upset over
stagnant purchasing power and rising income and asset inequality in G-7 countries. Trump's 2016
election along with the U.K.'s "Brexit" from the European Union are among the results. Then
there's also the demise of global trade deals, which are being replaced by bilateral agreements
or no pacts at all.
The U.S.-China trade dispute will no doubt persist because China, with a declining labor
force as a result of its earlier one child-per-couple policy, needs Western technologies to
grow and achieve its worldwide leadership ambitions. But the U.S. is opposed to the technology
transfers China wants.
The dollar's slide from 1985 until 2007 encouraged U.S. exports, curbed imports and gave
U.S. multinationals currency-related boosts to profits. Since then, the dollar index has
rallied 33% amid a global demand for haven assets. And it should continue to, given the
relatively faster growth of the U.S. economy, its huge, free and open financial markets and the
lack of meaningful substitutes for the greenback.
Disinflation has reigned since 1980, but real interest rates were positive until the last
decade. But for 10 years now, real 10-year Treasury note
yields have been flat at zero (see my Nov. 19, 2018 column, "Zero Real Yields Are Tripping
Up Investors"). This and the flat yield curve have pushed state pension funds and other
investors far out on the risk curve in search of real returns, bidding up stocks to vulnerable
levels.
Earlier, the Fed was run by Ph.D. economists who clung to widely-held theories even though
they didn't work. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell is proving to be much more practical, backing away
from rigid Fed policies such as the 2% inflation target and a zero-bound policy rate as well as
unsuccessful forward guidance.
In this different economic climate, it's hard to time the end of the current recovery.
Still, it will end, due either to Fed overtightening or a financial crisis, like the 2000
dot-com blow-off or the 2007-2009 subprime mortgage collapse. In the current excess
supply-savings glut-deflationary world, it's likely a recession will unfold due to a shock
before the Fed overtightens.
No financial crises are in sight, but there are possibilities such as excess debt in China
and among U.S. businesses, a trade war escalation, consumer retrenchment resulting in
widespread deflation, and disappointing corporate profits measured against sky-high stock
prices. Watch for specific imbalances, not typical past patterns.
"... I don't even know what capitalism means anymore. It doesn't seem like it's an actual free market system. Seems like it is slavery for the little guy, and parasitism for the rich. Maybe we should ditch the word capitalism for usuryism. ..."
"... That scary thought has crossed my mind, too, Art. I've even started wondering if this whole impeachment circus is really part of an elaborate plot to guarantee Trump's re-election. I mean, would Pelosi's insane actions make the slightest sense otherwise? And everyone has noted how this is such a 'Jew coup,' haven't they? It all looks so suspicious ..."
"... It looks like it was Browder who killed Magnitsky, so that he can't spill the beans. And then in an act of ultimate chutzpah played the victim and promoted Magnitsky act. ..."
You and other whites here are like the bad guys in every horror movie ever made, who gets shot five times, or stabbed ten,
or blown up twice, and who will eventually pass -- even if it takes four sequels to make it happen -- but who in the meantime
keeps coming back around, grabbing at our ankles as we walk by, we having been mistakenly convinced that you were finally dead
this time. Fair enough, and have at it. But remember how this movie ends. Our ankles survive.
YOU DO NOT.
Talk about deflection. Any nation, empire, culture or civilization wherein the Jewish collective gains critical mass and ultimately
absolute power turns into a real horror, not a movie. The Jews may be said to be the true prototype of the "bad guys in
every horror movie", since they can only be gotten rid of by very rigorous means taken in the healthiest and most vigorous cultures
and societies. Indeed, antisemitism itself is the healthy immunological reaction of a flourishing culture, and its lack thereof
the pathology of a moribund one.
Woke Christians of European provenance have nothing to envy the Jew (the archetypal Jew) over. We realize that the true measure
of success is not primarily monetary or the fulfillment of cheap ambitions, but a spiritual and cultural one. On the contrary,
the Jewish hatred against Christian Europe and the civilization that it constructed is engendered out of sheer envy and malice,
because Jewry understands that is would never be capable of constructing anything similar, and never has. In all of the arts,
Jewry has produced nothing of note.
This is not to say that individual Jews have not made contributions to the arts and sciences, but they have done so only by
participation in gentile culture, not qua Jews. Jewry only tears down and deconstructs; it is not creative in the sense of high
art, and can thrive only in the swamp of gentile decadence and moral putrefaction. Whatever Jewry touches, it turns to merde.
@Anon specifically
push them away from materialism and desire for money and power, even at the expense of others. That is the exact point
of religion (self-improvement) btw, so the next question is – is the Jewish religion effective?
At which point, the Jewish ideology becomes the wolf in the hen house – because it fails to tame the human away from such materialistic
desire (as it btw claims it does best).
Should the hens be allowed to point out what they see as a wolf? Yes.
That the supposed wolf then obfuscates and justifies their actions by pointing to others, mostly, betrays that it is, in fact,
a wolf.
I have become totally disenchanted with the SEC. Stupid, Evil, Crazy! It would not surprise me if they are the ones that have
been terrorizing me, with stupid, evil, crazy chants through appliances after illegallly implaced RFIDs, microchips, or sensors
illegally implanted in my ears and nose that started after my first phone was hacked in 2017! Can't expect stupid people not to
be stupid, evil people not to be evil, and crazy people not to be crazy! They were just born that way!
"The US will become minority white in 2045 Census projects " :
"During that year [2045] whites will comprise 49.7 per cent of the population in contrast to 24.6 per cent for Hispanics ,
13.1 per cent for Blacks , 7.9 per cent for Asians and 3.8 per cent for multi-racial populations " Are these projections good
or bad for the "Jewish people " ?
Nov 22, 2013 Thomas DiLorenzo – The Revolution Of 1913
From the Tom Woods show Loyola economics professor Thomas DiLorenzo discusses three events from 1913 that greatly escalated
the transmogrification of America from the founder's vision (limited government) to its current state (unlimited government).
@Lot sons of
Abraham name their businesses after themselves (I'm sure this will insincerely be attributed to some fear of native kulaks' repressed
urge-to-pogrom, even in Finland or Japan.) The other is an observation made by an associate of a famous Austrian landscapist:
even merely remarking on their origins causes these guys mental distress.
Here in the melting pot, the difference couldn't be any starker. You can make small talk with any flavor of goy based on it:
that's a Polish name, isn't it? Yeah, how did you know! Try this one with Levy or Nussbaum down at The Smith Group or The
Jones Foundation and watch them plotz.
Jews have always weaponized usury. Long before Christianity, Jews operated the East/West mechanism on donkey caravan trade
routes. Silver would drain from the West, and Gold would drain from the east, while Jewish caravaneers would take usury on exchange
rate differences. This operated for thousands of years.
Haibaru donkey bones have been discovered outside of Sumer. The Aiparu/Haibaru (Hebrew) tribes were formed as merchants operating
between city states. In those days, psychopaths and criminals would be excommunicated from civilized city states, and would take
up with the wandering merchant tribe.
Why do you think the Jew is always interested in owing the money power? Why do you think the Jew perpetually stands outside
the walls of the city state, plotting its destruction?
History tells us things, and we had better listen. That is – real history, not what you learned in (((public skool))). There
are two ways to deal with the Jew: 1) Remove him from your country. 2) Limit him.
Limiting was done by Byzantium under Justinian. The Jew was limited FROM money counting/banking; limited from participation
in government; limited from access to pervert young minds – especially as school teachers and professors.
It takes a King or Tsar who cares about his population, and is willing to eject or filter out toxins from the body politic.
(((Democracy))) is a failed form of government, whereby monied Oligarchs control the polity by compromat and pulling strings.
You are not going to be able to vote your way out of the Jew problem.
@Ilya G Poimandres
edina. Ergo, Wahabbi Islam and the Takfiri's are doctrinaly correct, while Judaizer Christians (those that worship the old
testament) are out of alignment and heretics.
Judaism is actually a new religion that came into being after 73 AD, when the verbal tradition (Caballa) became written down
into Talmud.
Our Jewish friends have always been practicing usury, going back to since forever.
Our Jewish friends, I count as worse that Islamics. However two wrongs don't make a right. Islam badly needs reform or to be
expunged. Talmudic Judaism is by far the worst religion on the planet, and its adherents must malfunction by definition.
@Onebornfree
You are missing something because you are unwilling to adapt and learn with new information. This makes you an ideologue.
Libertarianism IS A JEWISH CONSTRUCT.
There are no such things as free markets. Money's true nature is law, not gold. Money didn't come into being with barter and
other nonsense lolbertarians believe.
Most of the luminaries that came up with "libertarian" economics are Jews, and it is a doctrine of deception. The idea is to
confuse the goyim with thoughts and ideas that make them easy pickings.
A determined in-group of predators operating in unison, will take down an "individual" every-time.
Don't expect anything to improve with Jay Clayton as SEC Chair, and his wife and her father Gretchen Butler Clayton who was
CEO of CSC and mysterious WMB Holdings which share the same address in addition to many Goldman Sachs divisions. Gretchen was
employed by Goldman Sachs as an attorney from 1999-2017. Many companies affiliated with the Panama Papers share the same address
as well.
Jewish people have treated me better than my own White Euro family.
Jews are tribal, gee what a surprise after 1000's of years of people trying to wipe them out . and so their charity is within
the tribe, but there is no charity within the tribe among Whites.
Jews, along with Asians and at least some Africans, believe in not just climbing the ladder, but in actually helping others
– at least family – up it also. Whites believe in climbing the ladder and then pulling it up after them.
I was explaining to a friend recently: My (relative) has proven that if I showed up at their door, starving, they'd not give
me a cheese sandwich, while in my experience, strangers have been overall a fairly kind lot and a stranger, 50/50, might. Therefore,
while I find the idea of robbing or burning down the house of a stranger abhorrent, I don't mind the idea so much when it involves
a person who's proven to be cold and evil.
For more on this, see the book Angela's Ashes. The Irish family could have stayed in New York where they were being befriended
by a Jewish family. There was a ray of hope. The Irish kids, at least, would have been fed, steered into decent schooling, etc.
But foolishly they went back to Ireland, to be treated like utter dogshit by their fellow White family and "people".
Most of the predation going on in the US and worldwide is being done by WASPS who are using Jews as a convenient scapegoat.
Finally! An intelligent criticism of Trump for a change. So tired of the brainless Democrat/MSM impeachment circus.
They make me feel like a reflexive MAGAtard just for defending the constitution, logic, etc., from their never-ending stream of
inanities. Meanwhile, the real problem with Trump is not that he's Hitler; it's that he's not Hitler enough!
I am also so tired of Zionist-loving cucks bleeting on about the evils of the CRA without ever considering the role played
by the (((profiteers))) who lobbied such policies into law in the first place. Realize that what Paul Singer does for a living
used to be illegal in this country up until recently. That's right: US bankruptcy law used to forbid investors from buying up
debt second-hand at a discount and then trying to reclaim the entire face value from the debtor. But I see all kinds of
people even on this thread blaming the victim instead -- 'Damn goyishe deadbeats!' Whatever
What Singer and the other Jewish vultures engage in is not productive, and isn't even any recognisable form of work or business.
It is greed-motivated parasitism carried out on a perversely extravagant and highly nepotistic scale. In truth, it is Singer
and his co-ethnics who believe that money can be printed on the backs of productive workers, and who ultimately believe they
have a right to be "showered by free stuff promised by politicians."
@anon maintain
your honor, and manners and still succeed. Jews take the easy low road of deception and cheating. WASP take the higher road of
harder work and ethical business practice.
"Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation and I" care not who makes its laws"
That is what Mayer Amschel Rothchild said in the 1750s. Now, is it a stretch of my imagination to believe the Central Banks
of the West, all Jewish controlled, would unfairly favor their 'own' when issuing or disbursing the money they are permitted to
create.
We are not allowed to audit the Federal Reserve, so we know not what they do with it beyond what they tell us. In 2016 it was
discovered that between the year 1999 and 2016 well over $23 trillions had been stolen from just 2 departments of our government,
the DoD and HUD. (Someone should look at NASA). Is it possible the seed money, for not only Venture capitalists schemes but also
buying governments and law makers, has been diverted, shoveled out of the back door of these corrupt central banks and into the
hands of their fellow jews?
Anyway, the more exposure articles like this get the closer we get to ending their reign.
@Mefobills
he pressure will only be towards violence – for any nation or faith!
Judaism has monopolized for millennia though, and still acts as a victim. Different kettle of fish.
Also, you can debate the positives and negatives of Islam with a Muslim (not as a rabid ignoramus of course – you must be polite,
and have learnt something, as well as be open to learning more). Almost every debate with a Jew about Judaism has started with,
continued with, and ended with name calling for me however.
Judaism fails as a religion because it does not encourage the practitioner to look at themselves when confronted with error,
Islam still does imo.
Your statement: "Jews actually collaborated extensively in the imposition of tyranny on the working class in Eastern Europe
from 1917 to 1991" not only applies to Europe, but the united States of America as well.
1. Re Sidney, Nebraska: Maybe I'm missing something but wasn't it Cabela's owners, for example co-founder and chairman Jim
Cabela, who sold Cabela, not Elliot Management (Singer et al)? I gather Elliot Management owned only 11% of the company. Was that
enough to force them to sell?
2. The article confuses honest straightforward loans with tax farming and government corruption. Loans can be very useful,
e.g. for a car to get to a job, or for a house so you build up equity instead of paying rent.
According to the Talmud, we goyim are not the descendants of Adam and Eve, like the Jews. No, we are the bastard progeny
of Adam's first wife, Lilleth, who eloped with the demon Samael. So we goyim are really all half-demons and therefore we are an
abomination in the sight of Jew-hova, and we get what we deserve at the hands of his 'chosen people'.
@Colin Wright
to get carried away with this. Figures such as Andrew Carnegie, while impeccably gentile, were hardly paragons of scrupulous
ethics and disinterested virtue.
Andrew Carnegie built something that made life better for people. Making steel is a beneficial thing.
These evil vulture Jews build nothing – they make people poorer. They suck the wealth out of people who have little. They know
100% what they are doing.
Jesus expressed anger against the money changers on the temple steps.
It is OK for you to have natural human feelings and be angry at these Jew bastards.
@anon ith him
on this trip. It was an awful experience – consistent with all the books I read on psychopaths and also that book Jewish History,
Jewish Religion, the weight of 3000 years
Another very wealthy American mother of a friend asked her South African friends (also jews) to help her book trips in South
Africa (and they of course recommended only their Jewish friends) – it's their son who told me this.
So a lot of backstabbing, cultural nepotism and actively (but in a hidden way as most psychopaths like to do) they do at wakening
and isolating their host. That's their only advantage – not intelligence (at least in my experience )
I don't even know what capitalism means anymore. It doesn't seem like it's an actual free market system. Seems like it
is slavery for the little guy, and parasitism for the rich. Maybe we should ditch the word capitalism for usuryism.
@Ilya G Poimandres
o – including offensive war. I used the term political authority on purpose, because Islam is more than just a religion, it
is a political-theocratic construct that is all-encompassing.
There may not be a specific verse allowing aggressive violence, but there is something going on based on the data. (I admit
to being a lay-man and not an expert on minutia of Islam. I don't want to go there based on what I already know to be true.)
In Christianity, if there are calls for aggressive violence it is OUT OF ALIGNMENT because of super-session. Christian adherents
who do this are Judaizers, and have to use the old testament for justification.
'Everywhere they go, they leave behind nations in ruins. "
-- They always find the willing local collaborators ready to make a big profit. Who can forget Dick Cheney, the Enemy of Humanity?
The same kind of unrestricted criminality and amorality lives on in Tony Blair the Pious.
The fact that this Catholic weasel and major criminal Tony Blair is still not excommunicated tells all we need to know about
the Vatican.
Assange is rotting in a prison, while Tony Blair and Ghislaine Maxwell are roaming free. The Jewish connections pay off.
@J Adelman
s as "strong advocates for a robust and close relationship with Ukraine," the Democratic senators declared, "We have supported
[the] capacity-building process and are disappointed that some in Kyiv appear to have cast aside these [democratic] principles
to avoid the ire of President Trump," before demanding Lutsenko "reverse course and halt any efforts to impede cooperation with
this important investigation
And yet Trump pulls the Jews ever closer. A ruling race of ubermenschen now.
'No reason'.
Can you imagine what American Blacks and savage Hispanics let alone whites are going to do if the US economy craters like the
Russian economy, and everything is transferred to the banks?
Yeah . fine idea. I've always maintained there are two uses of the word "capitalism" industrial capitalism or competition of
ideas vs. financial capitalism, the Darwinian struggle for the most ruthless bankster to rig the "markets" most efficiently.
Whether we give it new terminology I don't care much . but I sure wish people would understand the difference, one way of another
!
@alex in San Jose
AKA digital Detroit as extended, and had aunts and uncles and cousins, who lived in the general area for centuries, then there
would be a network to fall back on.
See slaughter of the cities by Jones:
And yes, the FIRE sector and impetus behind the destruction of your extended family was JEWISH. The breakdown of neighborhoods
and ethnics was on purpose.
The Jew is anti-logos, and whatever he touches he destroys. (There are exceptions of course – but these people no longer possess
a negative Jewish spirit.)
Sorry your family was destroyed. When whites become un-moored they don't know how to act.
Quite bizarre post. First,he makes a half ass defense of Jew character.(Weinstein, Epstein don't represent jews! Well, they
kind of do. Any jew who is called to accounts for his crimes automatically does not represent jews! )
if you think it's wrong to buy or try to collect on defaulted debt, what is the alternative set of laws and behavior you
are recommending? If debts can simply be repudiated at will, capitalism cannot function.
Capitalism includes money. You can't separate the risks in lending from other risks. Bad investors should be punished and good
investors rewarded. Resources should be well allocated. Otherwise it's not capitalism.
These insane Boomers seem to think that there is a Jewish coup underway to remove Trump because of all the things that Jews
are saying in Jewish publications and every single person involved being Jewish and stuff.
@Germanicus
About the Carnegie donated "Peace Palace" in The Hague, presently the seat of the In ternational Court of Justice:
Germanicus claims:
They are a function of Empire in Hague, who protect empire criminals, and assume a non existent legitimacy and jurisdiction
as a private entity to take down empire opponents.
Such as this ruling for instance:
Guardian 3 Oct.2018:
International court of justice orders US to lift new Iran sanctions
Mike Pompeo indicates US will ignore ruling, after judges in The Hague find unanimously in favor of Iran
"What Joyce regards as a defect of "vulture" funds, others might regard as an benefit. "
-- Of course. I hope you did not miss the fact that the Jewish vulture funds -- ruthless, unethical, and leaching on goyim
-- contribute to the Jewish Holocaust Museum.
Is not it touching that the same bloody destroyers of nations demand from the same nations a very special reverence -- out
of ethical considerations, of course -- towards the Jewish victims of WWII? But only Jewish victims.
All others were not victims but casualties. See Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Ukraine. See the unlimited hatred of ziocons towards
Russia.
" but maybe a few leftist thinkers would receive a much needed electric shock if they were to see the JQ framed in marxist
terms " – I would not count on the effect of the electric shock on the leftist thinkers. The role of Jewish Bolsheviks in
the Cheka, NKVD, GULAGs, genocides by famine has been known from the very beginning and yet it left no impact on the leftist thinkers.
Browder's case is really interesting. http://www.ihr.org /jhr/v17/v17n6p13_Michaels.html
"According to Harvard University scholar Graham Allison, who is also a former US assistant Secretary of Defense, ordinary
Russians have experienced, on average, a 75 percent plunge in living standards since 1991 -- almost twice the decline in Americans'
income during the Great Depression of the 1930s. But in the midst of this widespread economic misery, a small minority has grown
fabulously wealthy since the end of the Soviet era."
"Although Jews make up no more than three or four percent of Russia's population, they wield enormous economic and political
power in that vast and troubled country. "At least half of the powerful 'oligarchs' who control a significant percentage of the
economy are Jewish," the Los Angeles Times has cautiously noted. (See also: D. Michaels, "Capitalism in the New Russia," May-June
1997 Journal, pp. 21-27.)"
It's interesting how the appeal of Eduard Topol to Jews in Russia is now starting to echo Jewish calls in the United States
for Jews to stop the path they are currently on.
Here is the complete text of Topol's extraordinary "Open Letter to Berezovksy, Gusinsky, Smolensky, Khodorkovsky and other
Oligarchs," translated for the Journal by Daniel Michaels from the text published in the respected Moscow paper Argumenty i Fakty
("Arguments and Facts"), No. 38, September 1998:
Magnitsky and Bill Browder is also really interesting.
It turns out that a large measure of the Russiagate story arose because Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, who traveled
to America to challenge Browder's account, arranged a meeting with Donald Trump Jr. and other Trump campaign advisers in June
2016 to present this other side of the story.
Then we had Democrats actually literally word for word doing what they accuse Trump of doing in Ukraine.
"It got almost no attention, but in May [2018], CNN reported that Sens. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.)
and Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) wrote a letter to Ukraine's prosecutor general, Yuriy Lutsenko, expressing concern at the closing
of four investigations they said were critical to the Mueller probe. In the letter, they implied that their support for U.S. assistance
to Ukraine was at stake. Describing themselves as "strong advocates for a robust and close relationship with Ukraine," the Democratic
senators declared, "We have supported [the] capacity-building process and are disappointed that some in Kyiv appear to have cast
aside these [democratic] principles to avoid the ire of President Trump," before demanding Lutsenko "reverse course and halt any
efforts to impede cooperation with this important investigation."
What's the first rule of Communist and Satanist Saul Alinsky? Always accuse your opponents of what you are doing.
Imagine having a Grandfather as the literal Chairman of the American Communist Party, and all the amazing lessons you would
learn about political maneuvering and ideology.
And it's amazing.
Browder's story is that Russian officials stole his companies seals and then fraudulently formulated a tax avoidance scheme
with a complete paper trail that they fabricated against him in totem. Precisely matching the amount of money he was trying to
remove from their country, like those other Jewish Oligarchs who imposed conditions that were multiples worse then even the American
depression.
When under oath it turns out that Magnitsky wasn't even a lawyer at all, and didn't go to law school. Why did the media owned
by Mormons of course keep saying that Magnitsky was Browder's lawyer?
Why did the Russians fraudulently fabricate a paper-trail for another Jewish Oligarch to steal money out of Russia? Just like
they colluded with Trump when a Russian lawyer sought to explain what happened. Because that totally happened.
Maybe the problem isn't Capitalism. Maybe, when even the ur-Shabbos goys at National Review are shaking their head and washing
their hands like Pilate, maybe it's a different problem.
Yet Trump holds these people ever close to his beating heart.
And then there are all these connections to Jeffrey Epstein that are like an explosion linking all these people.
Poor old Russia. Even Putin isn't worse then what came before.
t class is not tied to any territory has been observable since 1960.
I don't have time now to look up how many of 199 directors are Jews . but I know enough of the economic history of various
countries to know that Jews were the first business and finance globe trotters,,,,.from Spain to Amsterdam, France to Africa ,
etc.etc. Jew were first hired as reps and facilitators by the gentile business owners especially because of their breather tribal
contacts in many countries ..that was their stepping stone to becoming transnational capitalist themselves.
Understanding our global capitalist ruling elite and who they are is not rocket science
Yet more evidence is piling up that Donald J Trump is the Great Betrayer. A man who had the biggest mandate in post war history
to clean up the Swamp that is D.C., reform Immigration to save America and reform the economy for American workers. He has squandered
all of it while pandering to Jews.
When the Donald is revealed as the Great Betrayer where will Jews run? Yes, they have several back up plans. Patagonia, Ukraine
and Israel.
Imagine that. They have their own country and 2 back up plans. It is really tough being a hated, oppressed minority.
being much more cautious in their borrowing since the borrowing cost is so high.
Instead, this current arrangement basically uses bond funds to put up a false front, telling a debtor they can borrow at 2%
when the real rate should be at 20% given the known risks, then the debtor goes crazy borrowing because it's so cheap to borrow,
and when they can't pay back, the bond gets sold to the vultures who come collecting at 20% or they seize assets.
This is no different than the subprime mortgage crap, except now that is regulated so they go after sovereign debt and corporate
debt instead. These vultures need to go die period.
This is a great, concise overview of Canadian media influence by the "silent" Jewish overlords via Golden Tree.
I tried copy/paste of your comment on CBC, but it did NOT last 2minutes before being suspended!!
I am sorry to have used your comment without your permission, but I am going to "misspell" some words to defeat the algorithm
to get your message across.
@Lot e, and
these golfy-sounding names (Elliot, Monarch, GoldTree, OakTree, Canyon, Tilden Park) fit the perception. We whites receive the
society's hate for the wealth disparities created by high finance.
4. No, it is not difficult to do finance differently. Every other investor has higher patience for poor countries in Central
America and Africa, and they all look at Elliot with confused scorn.
And, things would probably run fine without hyper-aggressive multi-billionaires in pushing the courts to f- over those who
default on debts they owe to the maximum degree. Japan and Norway do quite fine with businesses that are run by gentle and humble
goys who feel ashamed at the thought of getting "too rich."
You will be thrown out.
You will have to choose between Israel, Ukraine and Patagonia. No one else will take you.
You have destroyed our politics, media and economy.
You are not respected.
You buy compliance with money.
You have bankrupted the U.S. dollar with debt pursuing Israel's enemies.
Ben Franklin and the American revolution was almost put in a similar pinch by the Amsterdam banker Jean DeNeufville. In a letter
to John Adams, 14 December 1781*, Franklin explained that DeNeufville wanted as security for a loan "all the lands, cities, territories,
and possessions of the said Thirteen States, which they may have or possess at present, and which they may have or possess in
the future, with all their income, revenue, and produce, until the entire payment of this loan and the interests due thereon."
Franklin considered that "extravagant" but Newhouse rejoined, "this was usual in all loans and that the money could not otherwise
be obtained". Franklin retold in this lengthy letter, "Besides this, I was led to understand that it would be very agreeable to
these gentlemen if, in acknowledgment of their zeal for our cause and great services in procuring this loan, they would be made
by some law of Congress the general consignee of America, to receive and sell upon commission, by themselves and correspondents
in the different ports and nations, all the produce of America that should be sent by our merchants to Europe."
Talk about shooting the moon
While Wikipedia says DeNeufville was Mennonite, Franklin concluded with this colorful -- and bitter -- remark , "By this time,
I fancy, your Excellency is satisfied that I was wrong in supposing John de Neufville as much a Jew as any in Jerusalem, since
Jacob was not content with any per cents, but took the whole of his brother Esau's birthright, and his posterity did the same
by the Canaanites, and cut their throats into the bargain; which, in my conscience, I do not think Mr. John de Neufville has the
least inclination to do by us while he can get any thing by our being alive. I am, with the greatest esteem, etc., ✪ B. Franklin."
Perhaps it was just an expression based on an earlier stereotype?
*Bigelow, 1904. The Works of Benjamin Franklin, Vol. 9 Letters and Misc. Writings
@steinbergfeldwitzcohen
o to Uganda and Ugandans were willing, but NO Zion had to have Palestine, and they got it through war, deception, and murder.
It was funded by usury, as stolen purchasing power from the Goyim.
The fake country of Israel, is not the biblical Israel, and it came into being by maneuverings of satanic men determined to
get their way no matter what, and is supported by continuous deception. Even today's Hebrew is resurrected from a dead language,
and is fake. Many fake Jews (who have no blood lineage to Abraham), a fake country, and fake language. These fakers, usurers,
and thieves do indeed have their eyes set on Patagonia, what they call the practical country.
I've been to TOO. However I can't bring myself to start commenting on a white nationalist website. I will admit I am unable
to articulate this discomfort presently.
As to your point about Marx – I actually forgot about his work on the JQ. The Saker, who is a columnist on this site, referenced
Marx's essay on the JQ some time ago. I must have not read the whole thing or I'd have remembered it. I didn't know that Marxism
originated with anti-Semitism, but that is fascinating. I have encountered some Marxists in my time and they focus exclusively
(predictably) on the cis-white-male patriarchy, or whatever occupies their brainwashed minds after an Introduction to Gender Studies
class.
@Anon repudiated
at will, capitalism cannot function."
Is this children's capitalist theory class time? throwing around some simple slogans for a susceptible congregation of future
believers?
Should be quite obvious that people, groups of people, if not whole nations , can be forced and or seduced into depths by means
of certain practices. There are a thousand ways of such trickery and thievery, these are not in the theory books though. In these
books things all match and work out wonderfully rationally
Then capitalism cannot function? Unfortunately it has become already dysfunctional, if not a big rotten cancer.
@J Adleman
Ezekiel 21:25 25 'Now to you, O profane, wicked prince of Israel, whose day has come, whose iniquity shall end
Jeremiah 5:9 Shall I not punish them for these things?" says the LORD. "And shall I not avenge Myself on such a nation as this?
As Jesus said which of the prophets have you not killed or persecuted? The truth hurts. As for me I do not hate Jews ..I feel
terribly sad for a people that are capable of greatness and squandered the gifts given to them by God. Are you a holy nation?
Don't make me laugh. Repent. Your time is coming. No more running and hiding. Deception will no longer save you only acceptance
of the Messiah.
he can't be bargained with,he can't reasoned with,he doesn't feel pity,remorse,or fear " In other words – a 'culture' as a
PSYCHOPATH it's a well-oiled psychopath support group
Hey! Don't mention anything a Jew ever did, especially usury, or else the entire cult will go up in a holocaustal mushroom
cloud of emo nasal whining. In Judaism you've got a fanatical sect that systematically selects and brainwashes its members to
inculcate extreme values of two Big Five personality axes: high neuroticism and low intellect (where intellect means open-mindedness.)
Note the existential crisis triggered by a straightforward lecture from The Society for the Study of Unbelievably Obvious Shit.
Of course Israel is holocausting the Palestinians. This is what happens when the founding myth of a nation is, We wiped em
all out and then they wiped us almost all out so now we gotta wipe em all out etc., etc., etc.
@J.W. en a
narcissist and a psychopath is that the former need people to like them whereas psychopaths genuinely could not care less (although
they learn early that acting as if they do can be very helpful , as can always trying to elicit sympathy etc).
As I noticed while reading a few books on psychopathy (I was inspired to after reading Steve Job's biography) – their whole 'culture'
is structured as a (collective ) PSYCHOPATH.
It seems that (collectively) they cannot care about others even if they wanted to. Due to their sickness
I am not saying they are all that way – but overall their 'culture' seems to be that way
The Sacklers occupy a hoity-toity rung in the philanthropy universe, as they have given enough $$$ to Harvard for H to paste
their name on its museum housing I believe its whole Asian art collection.
Students have now protested Harvard's high-profile gift of probity and cultural status to the Sacklers via, literally, an "Aushangerschild"
on a major university museum. Harvard protests back: Jeez, if we don't take the Sacklers' dough we might be obliged to stop taking
the dough from Exxon, etc.
@Anon ou are
right that loans should be repaid – it is immoral to allow a well connected mafia to change all the laws and remove protections
while pushing up prices of everything because it suits the lender (who has a licence to print).
They basically lend money that does not exist and get interest for that. So the more sheeple are tricked into borrowing the better
for them, but the worse for everyone else
They should not be allowed to bribe politicians to remove all the protection that was there since 1920s I think.
It's a marriage from hell: easy to bribe Anglosheep meets the masters of predatory bribing who own the printing press
That stupid cuck Trump just got impeached by the House. Thats a good lesson to everybody how much good Jew-ass kissing does
for you .you get stabbed in the back anyway lol
Couldn't have happened to a more deserving and treacherous scumbag!
But he should have been impeached for his treachery to the constitution and to the American people for his slavish devotion
to all things Jewish!
True, but irrelevant. The Jews that matter don't read the Talmud or believe in "Adam and Eve."
It's 2020. The Jewish religion is "The Holocaust" and we're all "Nazis."
Frankly, it's these traditional religious notions of "anti-semitism" that get in the way of understanding what is, at the core,
an ethnic issue. It's Sheldon Adelson, the Zionist entity in Palestine, and the ADL that are the problem, not some looney-tunes
rabbi living in Brooklyn.
The other side of the explanation is the lacking of reaction of the victim, the american people. The least that the people
that loot the world trough and with the USA power should do, is ,at least ,let us,the american people, a free ride.
Not illegal in the Talmud either but most certainly illegal in all of the countries that DynCorp was caught profiting from
this type of business. For some reason they never seem to suffer for their exposure suggesting that they may be wielding the same
influence that Epstein had over our elected officials.
We dont have to get back to the Singer of this world but to our own politicians ,that allowed them to do this to us,and to
the world.In this kind of abusive realtionship the 2 sides are to blame.
@Just passing through
h and then moved over to the West with their newfound gains, buying up properties, forcing prices up for the natives. The
western corporations not only wanted cheap products to export back to the U.S., but they were also developing a whole new market
– Chinese consumers who would buy their products as well. Double plus good!
And once in the West, the Chinese and the Indians stick to their groups. They hire their own, promote their own, do business
together. A lot of corruption, money laundering, cheating, taking advantage of and bending laws. Rule of law? Code of ethics?
Morals? Do unto others? They never learned it. Opportunistic dual citizens.
I would not count on the effect of the electric shock on the leftist thinkers. The role of Jewish Bolsheviks in the Cheka,
NKVD, GULAGs, genocides by famine has been known from the very beginning and yet it left no impact on the leftist thinkers.
It unfortunately has not had much of an effect on a lot of people in the West, who remain ignorant or in denial of the role
played by Jewish Bolsheviks in historic mass murders and totalitarian repression.
Waiting for the Hollywood movie to tell the story.
This is why you need to start with Zarlinga, as there is no BS to lead you astray. Hudson tends to drill the bulls-eye too.
There is so much deception in the field of money and economy, that it is easy to get caught up in false narratives, like one-born
free libertarianism. Usury flows fund the deception, even to the point of leaving out critical passages in translations, such
as in Aristotle's works. Or, important works are bought up and burned.
Michael Hudson is the leading economist resurrecting Classical Economics. Reading all of Hudson and Zarlinga will take some
time and effort, but it is good to take a first step.
@Anon According
to Wikipedia : " The armed rebellion of the Mau Mau was the culminating response to Colonial rule . Although there had been previous
instances of violent resistance to colonialism , the Mau Mau revolt was the most prolonged and violent anti-colonial warfare in
the British Colonial colony. From the start the land was the primary British interest in Kenya ."
Just as the Kenyans suffered the consequences of British colonialism , the "Palestinians will suffer
the consequences of Zionist colonialism until Israel's original sin is boldly confronted and justly remedied "
foreignpolicyjournal.com
distinction of Jewish investors versus gentile investors – on average, of course – is their use of bribery to get the force
of government behind them. Rather than taking a bet about some group being able to pay back some bonds and letting the chips
fall where they may, Jews start bribing or influencing politicians to force that group to pay back the bonds.
Buy some bonds, charge outrageous fees, bribe officials in some form or other, get govt to force the payment of bonds and outrageous
fees. Rinse and repeat. Jews have been doing this in some form aor another for 1500 years. It's why the peasants get a tad angry
at both the Jews and their bribed politicians/nobility.
Trump is in league with the Jews? Yeah, who isn't? Obama's lips are still sore from kissing Jewish Wall Street bankers' asses
(notice that none of them went to jail). Same with the Clinton's.
You can get politicians to pass all sorts of laws in your favor if you've got enough dirt on them. After all, your side owns
the media, Hollywood, academia, the courts, the banks.
If dirt doesn't work, you can always threaten to impeach them in order to get what you want.
But Trump is also revealing every last dirty one of them (accidentally or on purpose). People see them now.
J Adelman comes out swinging. He's such a tough guy. But does he make sense? Does he care if he makes sense? The writer is
talking about those Jews who are vulture capitalists. He's not talking about every Jew. Isn't it a little odd that nearly all
of these funds are run by Jews? Can your corrupt mind accept that fact and address the question? Or are you going to bore us with
your religion and by that I mean your obsession with anti-semitism, which is your religion.
'Hmm -- The day after Trump in inaugurated for his second term -- will Iran be in his crosshairs? We need to think very
seriously about that!
My guess is Iran is in the crosshairs. Trump probably promised he'd start the war as soon as he was elected the first time
-- but he putzed around, and now it's almost 2020. Adelson et al are pissed -- but Trump's got a point. If he starts the war
now the unknown Democrat will win -- and do you trust their word instead? They just gotta trust Trump. Let him get reelected
-- then he'll come through.
This is one of those cases where I'll be happy to be proved wrong -- but such is my suspicion.
Stop splitting hairs. Is this the best you can do? Are you one of Lot's cronies? I don't normally address petty matters of
this kind but Joyce is describing a multitude of sins and misconduct orchestrated by various Jewish financiers around the globe.
It is not merely one phenomenon; thus, 'phenomena' fits. Go troll someone else.
Typical Jew baiting article. Mitt Romney isn't a "Jew" Ashish Masih isn't. Many more examples of gentiles taking advantage
of their brothers. May as well consider the Walton family of Wal-Mart to be vultures as well since they benefit the most from
this system, they're so called Christians, not Jews.
The problem is capitalism. Author seems to suggest that a moral economic system has been corrupted. The system was designed
in an era of widespread slavery folks. Its an immoral system that requires theft, slavery, war, immigration, all the things you
hate, to survive. The system is working exactly as it is designed to work. Exploit workers, the environment and resources, shift
all the profits from workers to the owners of capital, period. Welcome to the late stage, it eats and destroys itself
From the days of the colonists slaughtering the Injuns and stealing their land. The days of importing African slaves, and indentured
servants. The days of child labor and factory owners hiring Pinkertons to gun down workers who protested shitty wages and working
conditions. The good ol days of the gilded age. Now the age of offshoring to China or some other lower wage nation. Overthrowing
leaders not willing to let their resources and people be plundered and enslaved, driving refugees to our borders fleeing violence
and poverty. Importing H1B workers to drive down wages. It was always a corrupt system of exploitation/theft/slavery. This is
nothing new and doesn't require "Jews" to be immoral.
And all these so called "Christians" like Pastor Pence approve. Usury and capitalism run amok. I'm sure Jesus is smiling down
on all these Bible toting demons who allow their fellow man to be exploited by the parasites. Sad!
Good for Tucker. He has his moments I'd watch his show if he wasn't a partisan hack. But that will never happen working for
Fox or any other corporate media.
Trump loves his daughter and she is married to a Jew. If they're not getting their way, I could see them telling Trump: "Sad
what happened at the Pittsburgh synagogue, isn't it? Sure hope nothing like that happens to your daughter."
I don't envy Trump. He not only is up against the Democrats, but he is also fighting the globalist neocons in his own party.
Both parties want open borders and more war, something Trump does not believe in. As far as I can see, he's throwing them bones
in order to shut them up. If he gets elected again, which I think he will, we might see a different Trump. Who knows.
Rather amusing to read our resident Jewish apologists carrying on about the absolute sanctity of the necessity of collecting
debts to the functioning of the capitalistic system. These nations and corporate entities that are now in thrall of the Wall Street
Jews , were herded into debt by that other faction of the capitalist system, the dealers in easy money. Snookering the rubes into
lifelong debt, telling them that money is on the tap, promoting unsustainable spending habits and then let the guillotine come
down, for the vultures to feed on. They are two sides of the same coin.
Its damned funny that the rich Jews nowadays are absolutely addicted to usury, rentier activities, and debt collection, when
the Bible itself condemns such activities. But they are our elder brothers in faith according to some.
Carnegie was a Protestant. The Protestant cancer serves it's Jewish masters. Read 'The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit' by E. Michael
Jones. There is definitely a revolutionary nature to the international Jew just as there is to their Protestant dupes. Jewish
nature is to subvert the natural order and the west was built by the guidance of LOGOS. The Catholic Faith created by God guided
the creation of the west. These Jewish exploits are a result of the Wests rejection of its nature and its enslavement
1. rich or poor, creditor or debtor, in the final analysis, ultimately, all will become equal in the grave. the filthy rich
might decide to lay their corpses in coffins made of gold, but it will be in vain. the sorrows and the joys of this fleeting world
shall quickly pass like the shadow.
2. talmudics feel the need to accumulate money in order to have sense of security since they were stateless for two millennia.
paradoxically, amount of wealth is indirectly proportional to a sense of security, provoking backlash from aggrieved host people.
3. establishment of State of Israel did not reduce the need for the accumulation but has only heightened it since now talmudics
feel the need to support it so that she could maintain military superiority over neighbouring threats.
4. as long as Palestinians are not free and Israel does not make peace, talmudics will continue to meddle in American politics.
if you don't want to save the Palestinians for the sake of humanity and truth or justice, at least you should do it for your own
sake.
5. loan sharking, vulture whatever, etc., is the ugliness of big capitalism with capital C, what is beyond sickening is the promotion
of sodomy. if one becomes poor or homeless, it's a pity. to go against nature is an abomination.
6. by using such words as "homosexual" you have accepted the paradigm of the social engineers and corruptors, and are therefore
collaborating with them. words have consequences since that is how we convey ideas unless you own Hollywood and can produce your
own moving pictures too.
7. talmudics is a better word than as a great American scholar says, since people who promote sodomy are absolutely opposed to
the Torah (O.T.). those who still struggle to follow it couldn't care less what happens to benighted goyim, only becoming reinforced
in pride of their own purity as opposed to disgraced nations. thus, practically, they too are talmudics, alien to the spirit of
the ancient holy fathers and prophets of Israel. the word "Orthodox" has been stolen and now has lost all meaning or it means
the exact opposite of what it originally meant.
8. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Matthew 5:5
Well there's nothing wrong in principle about specialists in valuing distressed debt and managing it nuying such debt and using
the previously established mechanisms for getting value out of their investment. So the problem is how they go about enforcing
their rights and the lack of regulation to mitigate hardship in hard cases.
Still it is notable that it should, overwhelmingly be a Jewish business and such a powerful medium for enriching Jewish causes
and communities at the expense of poor Americans.
George Bush needed Tony Blair's support to attack Iraq , Donald Trump now has the support of Boris Johnson to attack Iran :
"Boris Johnson refuses to rule out military intervention on Iran ." metro.co.uk
It is said that the "deep state " removed Theresa May from office as she was "too soft" on Iran . As you suggest the attack
will not happen until Trump's second term unless, in the meantime , there is a false flag attack like 9/11 which can be blamed
on the Iranians .
While Whites theoretically still have the numbers to affect/determine the outcome of elections, a majority of Whites usually
stay home because they are tired of the 'evil of two lessers' choice they are offered -- even voting for Trump got them little/nothing.
I said nothing of an electoral solution to America's problems the problems will not be solved that way.
That scary thought has crossed my mind, too, Art. I've even started wondering if this whole impeachment circus is really
part of an elaborate plot to guarantee Trump's re-election. I mean, would Pelosi's insane actions make the slightest sense otherwise?
And everyone has noted how this is such a 'Jew coup,' haven't they? It all looks so suspicious
What our Jewish friends have done to Argentina, through maneuvering the elections, killing dissidents, and marking territory,
is a cautionary tale to anybody woke enough to see with their own eyes.
@Mefobills
mo.. maybe other than when 100% of the Ummah agree on something, I read that could remove a surah of the Quran, like a voice of
God. That rhymes nicely imo.
Of course how to judge which ruling to use? I agree, it brings in a casuistry into the faith that generally helps to confuse..
I don't know much about it though yet.
I think Islam preaches a decent message, but the average practitioner is open to misinterpret it quite a bit. This is a failing
of the teaching.. but I think Mohammed's message was corrupted like Christ's message pretty much straight after his death. Gospel
of Thomas and Tolstoy's rewrites all the way for something closer imo.
@sally n in
iniquity, and that is where your eye should gaze, not necessarily at the FED or any central bank.
The debt money system and finance capitalism is state sponsored usury, and is a Jewish construct.
Vulture capitalism is simply vultures buying up or creating distressed assets and then changing the law, or using force to
then collect face value of the debt instrument or other so called asset. Vultures will use hook or crook to force down what they
are buying, and hook or crook to force up what they are selling. God's special people can do this because when they look in the
mirror, they are god, and are sanctioned to do so.
Maybe the vulture should replace the bald eagle as America's favorite bird since our dear shabbos goy President Trump and cohorts
are undermining the First Amendment and trying to make it a crime to criticize Jews and/or Israel. Oh and don't think I am promoting
the other Zionist and their shabbos goy on the demshevik side. The Jew CONTROLS both sides and "our" two party system has become
Jew vs. Jew, not republican vs. democrat. Lenin said that the best way to control the opposition was to lead it and (((they)))
are at it AGAIN.
@Ilya G Poimandres
zies, who twist scripture. Judaism, especially Talmudic Judaism is Kabala and utterances of the sages, and it morphs and changes
over time. For example, after Sabatai Sevi, the Kol-Neidre was weaponized, and this construct is used by today's Zionists to wreak
havoc. Before Sabatai, there was Hillel, who weaponized usury.
Yes, I agree about Christianity changing quite a bit. In the first 300 years it was much different than today, especially after
the Arien controversy was settled by Constantine's maneuvering of Bishops at council of Nicea. For example, before; reincarnation
was part of Christian doctrine, and after; reincarnation was excluded.
I have long maintained that libertarianism/capitalism is really like a kind of Calvinism for atheists. Calvinists used to assume
that, since whatever happened was God's will and God's will was invariable good, then whatever happened was good. Likewise, many
modern cucks seem to have just substituted The Market for God. Morally speaking, it all lets man off the hook for anything that
results–especially when those men happen to be Jewish financiers!
No, boys and girls, The Market is not inherently good. It requires that a moral system be superimposed on top of it in order
to make it moral.
@Anon k of
this MI6 asset (and potential killer) who tried to fleece Russia, you probably can benefit from watching a movie by Nekrasov about
him. See references in:
It looks like it was Browder who killed Magnitsky, so that he can't spill the beans. And then in an act of ultimate chutzpah
played the victim and promoted Magnitsky act.
There is no defending these jewish malefactors. It has been pointed out that immorality is a disposition to be found in every
ethnicity. The problem is that the jews with that disposition are more clever than folks from other ethnicities with the same
dispostion. Being more clever, they are outstandinly better at depradation. I don't see how and why the recognition of the existence
of evil jews justifies the author's hatred of jews as a whole.
Colin, I'm going to assume this is a rhetorical question, as there is not one example that would cause you to suspect there
is really any doubt about the types of organizations that the Sacklers are donating their ill-gotten wealth to.
@Digital Samizdat
ocities, including the murder of civilians, predominantly Jews and Poles under the Nazi German administration. The term
Banderites was also used by the Bandera followers themselves, and by others during the Holocaust, and the massacres of Poles
and Jews in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia by OUN-UPA in 1943–1944.
@Digital Samizdat
and infest England, is not well understood by the average Goy.
Our modern world is a direct line back to this big-bang event. Christian Zionism goes back much further in time than to just
Cyrus Scofield and Darby. Our Jewish friends in Amsterdam were even publishing bibles at great expense, to then push the narrative
that the "people of god and old testament" deserve to return to England.
(The usurers had been previously kicked out of England by King Edward in 1290. The usurers had been plying their game, and
"putting house to house" to where English citizens were being dispossessed from their own lands.)
@Anonymouse
y Jewish as were the Bolsheviks of a hundred years ago, and they have greatly benefited from the political immunity provided by
this totally bizarre inversion of historical reality. Partly as a consequence of their media-fabricated victimhood status, they
have managed to seize control over much of our political system, especially our foreign policy, and have spent the last few years
doing their utmost to foment an absolutely insane war with nuclear-armed Russia. If they do manage to achieve that unfortunate
goal, they will surely outdo the very impressive human body-count racked up by their ethnic ancestors, perhaps even by an order-of-magnitude
or more.
@Mefobills
ted into being seen as the greatest victims, a transformation so seemingly implausible that future generations will surely
be left gasping in awe.
Aided by no small part by chutzpah. The uncanny ability to ability to call black white and to call good evil. With no cultural
love of truth to anchor them in reality. Thus detached, they are free to invent an alternate reality. I wonder if they do not
suffer from cognitive dissonance. They seem genetically protected from it.
They are actually self-deluded and want to infect the rest of us with their visions of victimhood.
@Realist ;
votes these greedy corrupt politicians into office? Hint: It is Whites who are the majority.
My first comment to you was #256 -- again "for the record": I did not give enough of a damn about you or your idiotic
statement ("Stupid Whites are responsible for allowing this to happen") to comment/reply to you before you mentioned voting
.
"LOL"
And I don't appreciate it when people attribute specific words, views, or thoughts to me that I did not express
-- make a note of it, asshole.
Descendants of this immigration wave are the liberal jews pushing the jew coup against Trump. This is why they are from Ukraine
(former pale of settlement area) or Russian haters.
To my mind, Trump is a Christian Zionist and has naturally allied with Bibi and the Zionist religious factions, such as Chabbad/Likkud.
Since U.S. has been fully infiltrated, then having Mossad and its agents on your side, is a strategy to keep from being suicided
by the deep state, like JFK.
I'm willing to give Trump some lee-way, given the circumstances of our current reality.
Only when operating within the confines of Western Christian culture, or forced into western education by the Tsars, did Jews
break free to be productive. And even then that production came at high cost to the host societies.
In other words, a good argument can be made, that if Jews had never infiltrated into Western Civilization, then said Westerners
would have been much better off.
Sorry if real history is butt-hurting.
Today's Iran is another model on how to deal with the Jew problem. Jews are limited there in the same way as was done in Byzantium.
@Colin Wright
ow" href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/12/18/impeachment-what-lies-beneath/">over at CounterPunch
So here's my entirely speculative tea-leaf reading: If there's a hidden agenda behind the urgency to remove Trump, one that
might actually garner the votes of Republican Senators, it is to replace him with a president who will be a more reliable and
effective leader for a military attack on Iran that Israel wants to initiate before next November. Spring is the cruelest season
for launching wars.
His story is that the Israelis consider Pence to be more reliable. Who knows
No wonder that the majority of Jews do not want to live in the Jewish State. too many Jews there.
They are quetching about antisemitism while attacking the western civilization -- from the assault on the First Amendment to the
cheerleading for more wars for Israel in the Middle East.
No one keeps the Jews from joining their brethren in Israel. There is no need to sing "Next year in Jerusalem." Enough already.
Just go there -- and stay there.
@Mefobills
ons that distract us from seeing the top of the pyramid. However, it would appear that Marx finally gets to finance in Volume
Three of Capital. I could read the whole thing myself, but I would rather simply ask you what you think. How do you reconcile
Marx the Illuminati Jewish agent with Marx the perspicacious critic of capitalism? Where were his real loyalties? Did he stick
the dynamite at the end of his magnum opus instead of at the beginning in order to hide it from his finance masters, whom he knew
would never actually read that far? Was he attempting to assuage a guilty conscience by sneaking the truth into a footnote?
@annamaria
are quetching about antisemitism while attacking the western civilization -- from the assault on the First Amendment to
the cheerleading for more wars for Israel in the Middle East.
The complete lack of shame it takes to act like this is amazing to me. Also the hubris it would take. Though if you see yourself
as a chosenite, those behaviors fit.
Apparently if you hang around then long enough, the behavior is contagious. Biden's shady Ukrainian dealings, which are 100%
real are being denied and instead projected onto Trump. It's infecting our politics. The shabbos goy are emulating their masters.
@redmudhooch
ts since the cave but that is not capitalism. Capitalism is Usury – profit for the sake of profit independent of usefulness,
welfare, community, lifestyle.
.
And as was argued by the great German economist/sociologist Werner Sombart, Capitalism was really invented by Jews However as
E Michael Jones has argued, Protestantism – particularly Anglo Calvinism- was a backsliding of Christianity into Jewish materialism
– the spiritual basis for capitalism. So everything seemingly goes around and around. Capitalism cannot be blamed solely on the
Jews but Jews can never be abstracted from the evils of capitalism. We have to keep both balls in the air
Grab a small piece of paper. Add some fancy, symbolic stuff to it, like a fire-breathing dragon, with big, burning eyes, named
' Nimajneb , the faerie overlord, that hovers over an upside-down pyramid. Oh, and you'll need a number, let's say, '100.'
Done. Print it out. Walk to the nearest person, say, "I've got here a $100 bill," and see what happens
Yet, the FED can take the same little piece of paper, sprinkle some magic dust on it, et voilà, you've got your $100 greenback
[aka IOU $100 banknote].
Money makes the world go round?
Spin out of control into a state of utter madness, I'd say.
@Buddy can
read through economic history or texts and spot the lies and fakery. So where does that leave the average layman to turn and not
be hoaxed?
Sorry it is so hard out there to navigate. I commend you for trying. I'm feeling pressure to write a book, because even Hudson
does not initiate people from level zero up to someone advanced enough to resist the hoaxers.
Richard Werner is pretty good, but you have to navigate around his favoritism of private banking. Money is law.. and he doesn't
want to acknowledge that. This is what you run into, and the only way is for you to navigate as best you can and see if things
ring true.
Real science has been suppressed and removed from the public sphere. Or it's been perverted for mass surveillance and social
command and control and dual systems.
I fully believe that execrable demons like Soros never die because they're getting baby blood from orphans passed through some
heinous engine into their vile bodies.
Meanwhile, we're forced to deal with nonsense like anthropogenic climate change, string theory, dark matter and other Jewry
the sole purpose of which is to centralise power over mind and body in the hand of Jews and Masons.
The Zionist racial bigotry behind S447 was foreshadowed by Israel Singer of the World Jewish Congress in 1996:
"More than 3 million Jews died in Poland and Poles will not be the heirs of Polish Jews. We will never allow it. We will
harass them until Poland is ice covered again. If Poland fails to satisfy Jewish demands, it will be publicly humiliated and
attacked internationally . – secretary general of the World Jewish Congress"
Notice the guy's last name – Singer. This is another form of Jewish mafia vulture capitalism, using any means to hurt the masses.
What is S447?
Section 3 of Act 447, the provision for heirless property, is the part that reveals the law's intent. Under existing laws,
heirless property becomes the property of the state. After WW2 there was a lot of property without owners (whether owned by
Poles or Jews), and it has been sold ever since. This law has the potential to cause national havoc, as the vast majority of
Poles own their own homes. Even in the relatively cosmopolitan capital of Warsaw, 79% of city-dwellers own their homes and
apartments.
Under S447, any Polish-Jew or descendent of said Polish Jew can lay claim to property to property deemed heirless and sold
after the war, thus all land that can be claimed to have been owned by Jews before 1939 will be transferred to the global Jewish
diaspora. If this law is put into practice, approximately 30% of Warsaw homeowners will be forced to pay "rent" to random Jews
claiming to be Holocaust survivors or their descendants in New York City and Tel Aviv.
How would this "law" work in Poland?
Under S447, any Polish-Jew or descendent of said Polish Jew can lay claim to property to property deemed heirless and sold
after the war, thus all land that can be claimed to have been owned by Jews before 1939 will be transferred to the global Jewish
diaspora. If this law is put into practice, approximately 30% of Warsaw homeowners will be forced to pay "rent" to random Jews
claiming to be Holocaust survivors or their descendants in New York City and Tel Aviv.
Trump was "impeached" for not giving arms freely to ZUS controlled Ukraine. The arms have been used to shell and kill civilians
in East Ukraine. Yet, Trump should be impeached for pushing this Jewish Mafia vulture like capitalism on Poland.
Pressure from the US government is only reason this law is even being considered. While Donald Trump appeals to the West
and Polish patriotism in his speeches, his government's actions say something radically different. Last February, US Secretary
of State Mike Pompeo demanded the Polish state pass this law. Last August, the American congress urged more pressure on the
Polish state to get S447 through.
"Tucker Carlson's recent attack on the activities of Paul Singer's vulture fund"
Yup, the bricks and mortar outdoor gear shops, Cabela's + Bass Pro need 2 HQs. Nebraska could have stopped it but instead chose
farm subsidies, forever war, and pensions for government workers. To have that much spending excess in the government spending
you need high efficiency from the civilian sector.
The reaction in Nebraska seems to be a big yawn. My guess is Cabela was constantly trying to reduce their state and local taxes,
at some point keeping the low wage retail jobs while dumping the high wage HQ jobs made sense, short term, so they sold Sidney
NB down the river.
Candidate targets Sasse on Sidney response, other issues
"Nobody tried anything," was the compaint(sic) Innis heard on his visits to the struggling community.
Well mefo let me tell you a funny story.This guy i know made some nasty comments about jews and not long after he got cancer.His
doctor,a jewish cancer specialist put him back on his feet.
Know what the funny part is.He still makes the same comments.
Few escaped the pervasive prejudice, however. In the early 1900s, Dr. Paul Ehrlich, a German Jew who discovered a treatment
for syphilis and is considered the father of chemotherapy, popularized the term "magic bullet" to describe a medical compound
that would "aim exclusively at the dangerous intruding parasites" yet not "touch the organism itself."
But though Dr. Ehrlich was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1908, he was not made a full professor at a university until 1914, a
year before he died. (That posting was at the University of Frankfurt, in the year of its founding.) In the 1930s, as the Nazis
came to power, his name was removed from textbooks and taken off Frankfurt's street signs. Paul-Ehrlich-Strasse regained its name
only after World War II.
@ANZ of bankers
and religious fanatics or a land-based theocratic toy-state of Israel.
It is the spirit of parasitism that is "infectious" and works against patriotism. Hense the local profiteers, from Rumsfeld
to McCain, Biden, Brennan, Pelosi, Rubio and the likes who have been hastening the demise of the US for the immediate monetary
compensation tied to the allegiance to the Jewish cause. The zionized NYT and the presstituting stink tanks the Atlantic Council
(affiliated with the openly subversive Integrity Initiative), American Enterprise Institute and such have been working openly
against the US interests and for ziocon interests.
"Herzyl admired the Germans of the day, and wanted Jews to be like the German's he so admired. Herzyl thought that if Jews
had their own country of Zion, they would settle down and become normal people."
-- The dream was an illusion. When the meme "is it good for the Jew?" beats all and any moral principles, then the world gets
a nation of thieves and murderers quetching non-stop about their eternal victimhood. Pathetic.
From the position of the USA Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright pushed for the bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
in 1999, when NATO planes bombed without a UN mandate. She also supported the jihad in Bosnia during 1992-1995, and the manipulation
of the facts about Srebrenica, but also personally earned from the privatization of Kosovo Telecommunications. She should,
therefore, bear the consequences of her political decisions and acknowledge responsibility for the bloodshed, in which thousands
of civilians were killed.
But in fairness, the Koch brothers are no damn good for the nation either.
No, they are (were) not. However, they also got a lot of negative media attention while these Jewish vulture capitalists
have mostly been given a pass. Also, whites are about 55% of the population while Jews are about 2%.
@silviosilver
er because the debt was already in default or was at imminent risk of defaulting, which is why the debt sells at a heavy
discount, since existing debt holders are often happy to sell cheap and get something rather than hold on and risk getting
nothing.
If A enters into a contract with B to borrow money, and then fails to be pay it back to B, why should C be able to come in
and buy the debt from B and expect to be paid back? A entered into a contract with B, not C. And why should C expect to be able
to employ the machinery of state coercion to force A to honor a contract that A didn't even make with C in the first place? Mr. Anon , says:
December 21, 2019
at 7:37 pm GMT
@Thales the Milesian
ters sent representatives to a small central government. This form of government was usurped in 1913, by the "money powers,"
and these money powers use elections as a veneer to sanction their behind the scenes rule.
Here is another quote from the Ivan the Terrible article, which sums things up:
n 1601, just a few years after Ivan's death, Russia was starving, leaderless and under attack. Again, under elite rule,
with no ruling monarch, Russia was plunged into years of war and violence. Fighting oligarchy has been the traditional job
of any monarch and is the ultimate purpose of government.
@Robjil olves
to the "were so smart" and look at the medical advances, nobel prizes, etc. we've contributed.
Conveniently left out of account, is that these advances would have been done anyway in their absence. The goyim do possess
the intelligence and fortitude to solider on without jews in our midst, and in-fact, when jews are absent from our civilizations,
advancement accelerates.
The best thing for a jew to do is turn his back on the tribe, and re-join humanity.
To any Jew reading this . walk away from the tribe. Man-up and get some intestinal fortitude, leave the parasite method behind
you, and join humanity.
I'm feeling pressure to write a book, because even Hudson does not initiate people from level zero up to someone advanced
enough to resist the hoaxers.
Have you considered writing articles? Series of articles could later on become raw material for a book. Perhaps easier path
to take and could perhaps provide useful feedback along the way.
It sure looks like you could write far more informative and interesting articles than many writers here on Unz because of your
broad perspective. The big picture is always more interesting and I agree with you about the importance of the subject.
@Mr. Anon d
by these degenerate types of people in order to take illicit gains.
In the U.S., (I'm an American), these usury flows funnel into the press – to where the press becomes owned, so that these Oligarchic
interests can continue to take rents and unearned income through their various schemes.
I might add, our intelligent UNZ readers, have noticed that the U.S. mainstream press is predominantly Jewish owned. Intelligent
people notice patterns are some of us are unwilling to look away. No amount of deception through the mainstream press can reduce
the revulsion moral people instinctively feel when watching vultures operate.
@Bookish1 ing
whiteness has never been more urgent.' By Mark Levine"
When challenged for apparently encouraging genocide, Levine and his cronies answer that "whiteness", as they are employing
the term, is merely an accidental property as opposed to an essential quality. So stripping an organism of its whiteness will
not diminish it to any significant degree, does not threaten its very existence, merely prunes it into a more acceptable shape.
And yet when some poor misguided soul has the temerity to put up a sign saying "It's Okay To Be White", the Mark Levines of
the world have a cow. Suddenly, "white" is not a mere accidental quality at all.
The Koch Brothers (what's left of them; one died recently) are industrialists. They build things people want. They are innovators.
Yes, the Koch Brothers are filthy rich but they employ tens of thousands of people in the US alone.
Most importantly, the Koch Bros. are not parasitic, money-skimming extractors or wealth like the vulture capitalists described
by Joyce.
@Mefobills
s and schemes. The advantage of their technique is that it does not leave a positive trace but a negative trace. It is much more
difficult to notice absence than presence. You can't see all the money that is constantly being vacuumed out of the economy. It
doesn't leave a visible hole. And since none of us has ever witnessed firsthand what a rent-free economy might actually look like
(since they are not allowed to exist), we internalize the belief that such an economy goes against natural law, when in fact the
contrary is true.
Is there any way for you to link to more of your writing without giving away your identity?
Paul Ralph Ehrlich (born May 29, 1932) is an American biologist, best known for his warnings about the consequences of population
growth and limited resources.[2][3] He is the Bing Professor of Population Studies of the Department of Biology of Stanford University
and president of Stanford's Center for Conservation Biology.
Under S447, any Polish-Jew or descendent of said Polish Jew can lay claim to property to property deemed heirless and sold
after the war, thus all land that can be claimed to have been owned by Jews before 1939 will be transferred to the global Jewish
diaspora.
Let's make a variant of the Polish S447 applicable to Palestinians and find out how much the illegal occupiers of Palestine
like to see 'justice.'
@mcohen eir
factories full of low IQ but compliant workers. 3) The finance banking class who want new debts to pay off old debts. New Debtors
help fund a new debt cycle. 4) New people through population replacement, destroy the history and cohesion of the host country.
By de-racinating and destroying the host people, then Plutocrats can continue with their thefts unchallenged.
The debt money cycle is something like a pyramid, where it sucks upward toward plutocracy. Plutocrats and Oligarchs then emit
hypnosis and propaganda through the owned press to maintain their status. The funnel, or bottom of the pyramid wants new debts
and new debtors.
how do entities like Puerto Rico get so far in debt in the first place? so many problems because of what appeared to be
incompetent and comatose government.
Yes, ultimately the blame must lie with the voters: they picked douche, when they should have picked turd.
@Daniel Rich
l, Germany and Russia were both strangled. The US's turn is now. The US wants to strangle Poland too with this s447 law. Trump
should have been impeached for pushing this law on Poland.
Pressure from the US government is only reason this law is even being considered. While Donald Trump appeals to the West
and Polish patriotism in his speeches, his government's actions say something radically different. Last February, US Secretary
of State Mike Pompeo demanded the Polish state pass this law. Last August, the American congress urged more pressure on the
Polish state to get S447 through.
