May the source be with you, but remember the KISS principle ;-)
Neoliberalism
The ideology that dare not speak it's name is actually a New, More Dangerous, Form of Corporatism. It is completely and intentionally
based on lies, on deception. In reality this "religion of freedom" (redefinition of the meaning of the word "freedom" and sophisticated
speculation on it is at the center of neoliberal religion) is a coercive cult enforced by corrupt, deceitful financial oligarchy with
the explicit goal of milking the common people (aka "deplorables"). They have money to hire intellectual prostitutes (aka professors
of economics) to do the dirty job of creating elaborate mathness and neoclassic economy based smoke screen over the lies
Even though I agreed with him, I warned that whenever someone tried to raise the issue, he or she was accused of fomenting class
warfare. “There’s class warfare, all right, "Mr. Buffett said, “but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war,
and we’re winning."
I was a partner in a law firm where I was ultimately responsible for all civil litigation
we handled. I was continually shocked and disgusted by what I saw. It was incredible.
People's lives have absolutely zero value to these monsters at the top, who have gotten where
they are because they are so ruthless and selfish.
We, as a society, carefully select for these psychopathic types in all high-level
competitive endeavors where large sums are hanging in the balance. Their only loyalty is 1.)
to themselves; 2.) to the shareholders/partners, firmly in that order, and they are VERY
highly rewarded for it. That the commoner's well being holds no value to them aside from how
it can be exploited to their businesses' advantage, is a truism revealed and reinforced
daily. The Ford Pinto, Dalkon Shield and other horrifying high profile cases (from the era
when I practiced) come immediately to mind.
Pig Pharma is by no means alone in their utter disregard for the everyday man and woman,
it's just that we intuitively expect people in the medical field to want to heal the sick,
not prolong it. But as the Wall Street analysts remind the heads of Pig Pharma on a daily
basis: curing disease is a bad business model. Prolonging and worsening illness, just short
of death, is optimal. Just ask the lovely Sackler family.
Very sad to learn it's as bad or worse across the pond, but I guess that's to be
expected.
I suspect the worst of it exists in the military environment, where service men and women
are apparently routinely used as guinea pigs, and often completely unknowingly. But at least
they know when they sign up that they are 100% expendable ..
This note presents broad brush
illustrations from a simple accounting model of the impacts of the coronavirus epidemic on macroeconomic
balance, with emphasis on fiscal interventions. The premise is that supporting effective demand is essential
for sustaining economic activity. The covid-19 epidemic created mass unemployment by shutting activity down.
The resulting income loss undoubtedly reduced household consumption which makes up two-thirds of GDP. The
only way to restore consumption is for the government acting as the "borrower of last resort" to raise its
deficit and transfer the proceeds to households. A numerical example presented below suggests that an
increase of ten percentage points in the ratio of government net borrowing (spending on goods and services
plus transfers to households minus tax revenues) to GDP would do the trick.
The stimulus legislation now before Congress does not go far enough. Its size -- $2.2 trillion or ten
percent of GDP – is the right order of magnitude but the breakdown of spending is biased away from
households and toward business,
viz.
, payments that may flow more or less directly to households –
checks in the mail, more unemployment insurance, small business support, state and local government support,
and less than $100 billion to food stamps and disaster relief – come to $1.2 trillion or 5.7% of GDP.
Big business support in the form of loans and a range of other payments amounts to $800 billion or 3.8%
of GDP. No doubt, politics aside, some of this money will be usefully spent, but its contribution to
aggregate demand will be slow and indirect.
Before getting into the details of demand management, a few background observations are needed.
One is that both government and business have substantial debt overhangs. The simulations suggest that an
increase of about $3 trillion in the deficit of the government sector (close to the total built into the
various packages now in place or being enacted) is needed to offset the macro shock that the epidemic
creates. Outstanding Federal debt is $22 trillion. New issues of three trillion may be difficult for markets
to absorb.
Even worse, the corporate sector's outstanding debt is $10 trillion, five times total profits before
depreciation, interest, and taxes. Share buybacks, largely financed by borrowing and ranging in the upper
hundreds of billions per year, have been an important driver of growth of debt. The production side of once
dominant firms – think of General Electric and Boeing – has been hollowed out by financial engineering.
Politics will continue to be influenced by pressures to solve financial problems for firms created by their
past mistakes.
On the real side of the economy, over the last two or three decades the share of employment in sectors
with low real wages, productivity, and profits increased by around twenty percent. The share of profits in
national income grew at around 0.4% per year for five decades, mostly flowing through various channels to
households in the top one percent of the size distribution of income. Households at the bottom of the
distribution became especially vulnerable.
The major impact on economic activity will come from falling consumption of goods and services due to
income losses caused by businesses shutting down. Starting from an initial income level, household saving or
the difference between income and spending will shoot up with further multiplier effects on output. High
profit activities such as real estate rental and leasing, finance, and information will be protected.
Sectors with high employment and low wages and productivity such as retail, accommodation and food, and
other services will be hard hit (education and health will be the main exception). To offset the impacts,
fiscal demand creation by the government will be essential, with the required outlays depending on the size
of the consumption drop and other shocks such as lower private investment and exports.
We begin with details about differences across sectors, and go on to the macroeconomic effects of the
coronavirus epidemic on incomes and output.
Dual Economy
The shifts in the structure of production just mentioned created an American dual economy with prosperity
at the top and near subsistence living at the bottom. Table 1 presents details for sixteen sectors, ordered
from the higher to lower rows by decreasing estimates of payments per hour to labor (including "supplements"
or contributions for pensions and insurance).
Real wages and productivity vary over wide ranges. The same is true of sectoral profits. Real estate
takes the lion's share, followed by manufacturing, finance, business services, and information. Profits are
meager from retail on down the rows, while output and especially employment shares are relatively high. The
three sectors mentioned above -- retail, accommodation and food, and other services – provide around 46
million jobs, more than one-quarter of the 162 million total. Their labor payments amount to $263 billion,
about one percent of GDP of $21 trillion. This number can be contrasted with $600 billion of profits in real
estate. Incomes of low-wage workers do not matter
greatly in the grand macroeconomic scheme of things, but for them even a ten percent income loss would be
devastating.
Table 1: Structure of production in 2016
Wages and output used to
calculate wage rate per hour and productivity per hour are deflated by the GDP deflator (2019=100).
Shares of real output are deflated based on each sector's own industry price index (2009=100).
Macroeconomic Balance
Before turning to the impacts of covid-19, it makes sense to review previous macroeconomic shocks such as
the great recession and the smaller Trump tax reduction of 2018. A simple accounting scheme can be built
around "net borrowing" (NB) levels of four institutional sectors – households (HH), corporate business,
government at all levels, and the rest of the world.
For households and business, NB is equal to gross fixed capital formation plus changes in inventories
("investment") minus saving. For government, it is current spending on goods and services plus investment
minus the excess of tax receipts over fiscal transfers to households. Broadly speaking, foreign NB is the
current account surplus or exports minus imports. It is negative for the USA. In the jargon, investment,
government spending, and exports are demand "injections." HH and business saving, taxes minus fiscal
transfers, and imports are "leakages." Overall macroeconomic balance requires that the sum of NB levels
across sectors should equal zero (subject to a "statistical discrepancy" between estimates of spending and
incomes in the national accounts). Table 2 summarizes data for selected years. The "rates" are calculated
with respect to the relevant year's real GDP.
Table 2: Net borrowing behavior in the USA for selected years (levels in trillions of dollars at prices
of 2019, rates are relative to GDP)
Each year's "multiplier" is the inverse of the sum of the four leakage rates. The multiplier times the
sum of injections equals output.
In a further illustration, Figure 1 shows annual net borrowing rates in the form of a bar chart. High net
borrowing by the government in response to the financial crisis stands out. Even more striking at the far
right of the diagram is the fiscal response to the consumption loss due to the coronavirus as estimated in
Table 3 below.
Figure 1: Annual sectoral net borrowing (in the past and estimated for 2020)
The diagram and table show that business retained earnings usually provide the main source of saving,
with resources also coming from households and negative net borrowing by the rest of the world (positive net
lending to the US economy). The government is the principal net borrower, as underlined by its role in
recent macroeconomic events and especially now.
Recession and the Trump Tax Cut
The 2007-09 recession was precipitated by private sector retrenchment in wake of the financial crisis.
Household consumption was flat, while private investment fell by 30%. Household saving and business retained
earnings went up, meaning that the overall private saving rate rose from 19% to 22%. Output rose between
2007 and 2009. It would have dropped dramatically if the net government tax-minus-transfer rate had been
stable. But in fact it fell from 15% to 6% due to automatic stabilizers and the Obama stimulus package of
around 5% of GDP. The overall impact was that private net borrowing fell by 10.2% of output while government
borrowing went up by 8.6%. Reduction of the external deficit by 1.7% made up the difference.
In sum, the recession was not a disaster because of fiscal realignment. Causality ran from a private
sector shock to automatic and discretionary government responses. It went the other way for the more modest
Trump tax cut. The tax-minus-transfer rate fell from 11.6% to 10.7%, or about $185 billion. Output did go up
by 2.9%, but the increase would have been greater if there had been a strong business investment boom
instead of only a $320 billion increase. Lower business taxes were in large part distributed via dividends
and share buybacks to households at the top of the income ladder with high saving rates.
Both episodes show that changing government net borrowing plays a key role in macroeconomic adjustment.
More government spending on goods and services (unimportant in 2007-09) will also have to help absorb the
covid-19 shock
Coronavirus and Consumption
The biggest immediate impact of the epidemic is loss of economic activity as businesses shut down in a
"supply" shock. Unless they reopen rapidly, both payments to labor and profits will fall. Household
consumption makes up almost 70% of GDP and will drop accordingly.
As an illustration, we can consider a consumption decrease over 2020 of $1.5 trillion from a 2019 level
of $14.6 trillion, or 10% (a high but not unreasonable estimate). That amounts to seven percent of GDP.
Because they have low or negative saving rates, households hit by loss of low-wage jobs at the bottom of the
Table 1 ladder would be major contributors.
For households, saving basically equals income minus spending for consumption, (mostly) residential
investment, and taxes. A decrease in consumption translates into higher saving, or in Table 3 a jump of the
HH saving rate from 0.086 to 0.156. More saving means less demand creation so that output falls from 21.06
to 18.34 trillion dollars.
Table 3: Possible effects of the coronavirus shock
In a quirk of national accounting, HH net borrowing falls from -0.045 to -0.108, or net lending to the
rest of the economy rises to close to 11% of GDP. Presumably the higher "lending" would take the form of
paying off debt. In practice, that will not happen. The proper policy response would be a decrease in the
government's tax-minus-transfer rate from 0.101 to 0.031, taking the form of a $1.5 trillion transfer to
households, which could hold consumption spending and output stable over the year. Government borrowing
would rise by 7% of GDP, or from $1.56 to $3.03 trillion (compare the two rightmost bars of Figure 1). This
hypothetical percentage increase exceeds the actual change between 2007 and 2009 recorded in Table 2.
In other words,
the only way to maintain economic activity is for the government to borrow to
transfer money to households to support consumption.
Ideally, a few hundred billion could be targeted
specifically at the poorly paid quarter of the work force in the sectors in the lower part of Table 1, along
with poor households who don't receive labor income.
There are more potential complications. Table 2 shows that private investment fell by around 30% between
2007 and 2009. Lower capital formation along with stable profits drove up retained earnings so that business
net borrowing fell. Broadly similar shifts could be expected during the epidemic. Exports could decrease as
well. On the other hand, increased government spending on goods and services would raise aggregate demand.
In the rightmost column of Table 3, a plausible outcome would be a visible recession, despite government
borrowing of 17% of GDP, or $3.4 trillion.
Reality check
The initial impact of covid-19 has been to annihilate labor income through the loss of employment. The
challenge is to create demand to offset lost wages and consumer spending. The calculations herein are
illustrative at best, although government net borrowing in Table 3 is close to the total outlay of stimulus
packages approved by Congress. But there are further complications.
` As noted at the outset, more than three trillion dollars of new government debt is a non-trivial
increase over the $22 trillion outstanding. Advocates of Modern Monetary Theory suggest that the Federal
Reserve could absorb the new issues, adding to the 15% of government paper that it already holds. In the USA
such an experiment is yet to be run.
The Fed has offered to intervene massively to buy up corporate debt, which would also run up its balance
sheet. Nevertheless, bailouts for business will remain in political competition with transfers to households
in bottom tiers of the income distribution which really need the money. The Obama stimulus directed less
than half its outlays toward households. There could be better targeting under present circumstances.
Table 1 suggests that profits in some sectors could be taxed to help offset transfers. Real estate,
finance, and information jump to attention.
Timing matters. GDP over one year is the reference frame for Table 3. If, as is likely, job losses and
demand decreases are not offset over a shorter period, the effects on economic activity could be
devastating.
Finally, immediate direct action is needed to overcome supply shortfalls for vast amounts of new medical
and caretaker services, not to mention production of personal protective gear for caregivers.
Support from INET and help from Özlem Ömer are gratefully acknowledged.
One issue I take with this article is that it often classifies money as going to either labor or profits.
There is a third category – suppliers. In my experience payments to suppliers has dried up since the beginning
of the coronavirus shutdown. Whether because AP and AR aren't considered essential functions, because
businesses, even essential businesses, don't have enough cash to pay employees and suppliers, or because they
simply don't want to pay supplier. This is creating a cash crunch for businesses, who are cutting down on
discretionary activities like advertising and even turning away new sales out of fears new customers won't pay.
I have not seen any analysis on the impact of the loss of trade credit.
The importance of trade-credit has been ignored for decades. I had hopes that one positive effect of the
ultra-low interest-rates would have been that large customers would stop paying their suppliers so late. It
hasn't happened, banks love it as they force the small suppliers to go to the bank and borrow money at
high(er) interest-rate and the money lent out by banks would be the low(er) interest-rate provided by the
customer.
There is a risk now that the supply-chains freeze completely due to suppliers not being paid and suppliers
then stopping supply – either voluntaritly or due to going under. It might be necessary to legislate
and enforce
maximum payment terms.
What might possibly be happening is more and better automation of the AP/AR-functions. The current
automation is often so bad that it increases employment instead of what might be the intended reduction of
employment, the next automation (done by skilled professionals, not like now by when it is often done
talkers) might (in my opinion very likely) permanently reduce employment.
"Contrary to free-market catechism, the pursuit of profit frequently runs contrary to the
public's well-being. This is especially true in an industry devoted to inventing and
manufacturing health-giving and life-saving drugs."
More activity on the dark, unethical side of capitalism. There's an entire history of it,
opium wars, Atlantic slave trade, pornography, control of political agents through
pedophilia. The list does go on and strangely enough it's usually the same actors.
There is also a tendency to think newer=better. I've heard doctors and pharmacists complain
that patients will get offended when prescribed a cheaper, older drug. They want the best and
newest, they need and deserve it!
@Redneck farmer That is because advertising works. Drug companies being allowed to
advertise guaranteed that predators, such as the Sacklers, would want to own drug companies.
More activity on the dark, unethical side of capitalism. There's an entire history of it,
opium wars, Atlantic slave trade, pornography, control of political agents through
pedophilia. The list does go on and strangely enough it's usually the same actors.
johnbrewster@77
Here's a story from today's Toronto Star. It's a neoliberalism story and goes well with Pepe
Escobar's piece in Asia Times (see above for link)
Basically the Province of Ontario stockpiled everything need for the pandemic that SARs
warned them was bound to come.
Then, a couple of years ago, they destroyed the stockpiles including 55 million
facemasks.
Now there are no face masks to be found and medical staff, inter alia, are having to take
totally unnecessary risks.
Why did this happen? Because neo-liberalism is all about profits and fiscal austerity: as
soon as the masks got beyond their 'best before' date they were destroyed - so the
manufacturers could have another bite at the cherry and sell another 55 million masks. But
then, austerity, the need to finance tax cuts for the wealthy, stepped in so the orders were
not renewed. And people will die, horrible deaths, as a result.
PS to vk # 1. Please think again. Trump has been in a trade war with China for what? a couple
of years? AND, he specifically banned imports of medical supplies from China. Other posters
wave supplied links for this idiocy.
Trump's about as innocent as jack the ripper. You may just be seeing things relatively, as
ghouls like Elliot Abrahms and disgusting Pomposity make Trump seen like an amateur.
We know how the USofA has been over last months now harassing, blackmailing an' threatening
other countries NOT to adopt the chinese HUawei 5G technologies.
Many nations were threatened, UK, Berlin, Brazil etc
Now Germany the first vassal of the Empire, 'primus inter pares' has seemingly prohibited
the exportation of breathers to other countries - who of course need them most.
So what is globalism after all.
A nice idea the rich sell the morons, and tamed nations of the world. But which gets
zeroed as soon as their main interests are menaced.
VK,
The financialization of the US economy has deep roots, going back to the postwar boom, during
which western Europe and Japan began to outcompete US firms in world trade. By the mid 60s
the US was running trade deficits with west Germany and Japan. As a result, US dollars began
accumulating in central banks globally, with no purpose. When foreign governments began to
exchange their dollars for gold under the bretton woods agreement, Nixon abrogated the system
of fixed currencies backed by gold and refused to negotiate a new international monetary
system. A new structure of economic relations emerged: the US would slowly deindustrialize
because of a lack of competitiveness, it would run systematic trade deficits, but other
countries would lend their dollars back to Wall Street as well as to the Treasury Department
to fund the US federal deficit. This allowed financialization to take off.
The key point is that financialization is rooted in long-term dynamics of declining American
competitiveness vis a vis its principal rivals.
Some people have take a short term view of this process, believing it gives the US structural
power in the world system.
Over time, though, it has lead to structural economic weaknesses, grotesque inequality,
unpayable debt, and endless crises.
I dont blame Trump either. Of course they would bail out the financial market: that is all
america has left. The financial crowd since the Clinton era have been selling out everyone to
get rich. Now all they have left are the bail outs. Even their military is useless because
they cannot destroy china without hurting their american corporations that they keep propping
up. Poor bastards.
Overall corporate profits rose 2.2% year over year in Q4, but ended up exactly flat for the
whole of 2019. Most important, non-financial sector profits were down 2.1% year over year
in Q4 and down 3.1% in 2019 as a whole compared to 2018.
This shows that the US corporate sector was already in a profits slump before the virus
broke. Q1 2020 data should be revealing.
The trend in domestic non-financial corporate profits has been downwards for some time.
These profits at end 2019 were 21% below the level at the end of 2014.
In other words, the USA is managing to save its financial sector, but not its "real
economy". The USG moved mountains to keep profitability of the financial sector stable in
2019Q4, but the "real economy" (non-financial sector) fell almost at the same magnitude as
the financial sector's grew (-2.1%).
And this is not a punctual event: the American non-financial sector had a 21% lower profit
rate than it had in 2014 - and 2014 is still the post-crisis era, so they were not good
profits either.
If this trend continues, we should expect a long-term continuity of the
deindustrialization of the USA, increased militarization (so as to keep the USD standard),
and the domination of the so-called "gig jobs", where the working class is essentially
reduced to a "quick bucks", "pay to play" labor force.
"... Today supermarkets are playing a ground-zero role in our struggle to adapt to restrictions imposed by COVID-19. And grocery workers are bearing much of the the brunt of our anxiety and frustration, as we [who?] descend on depleted stores. ..."
"They were
careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back
into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let
other people clean up the mess they had made. -- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great
Gatsby
In the United States, #COVID-19 began with globalization and globalizers. One thing we can
be of is that grovery workers -- to whom the virus will "trickle down" soon enough -- didn't
create the conditions for it, or introduce it. Let's take a look at the grocery workers before
dollying back to the global. From the Los Angeles Times, "
Column: How coronavirus turned supermarket workers into heroes ":
Today supermarkets are playing a ground-zero role in our struggle to adapt to restrictions
imposed by COVID-19. And grocery workers are bearing much of the the brunt of our anxiety and
frustration, as we [who?] descend on depleted stores.
Without masks or barriers, employees are working long hours, risking infection and
battling exhaustion to do their jobs. They connect us to material essentials, like bread and
toilet paper. But they're also part of the social fabric that holds us together in unsettling
times.
That friendly chat with the guy restocking the egg case this morning might be my only
social interaction on this shelter-at-home day. And I feel better whenever I see my favorite
cashier at her register. There's something reassuring about the familiar in a world where
everything has changed.
Markets are about the only place we're still allowed to gather en masse. And their
employees -- pressed into service in ways they never expected -- are our new first
responders. They're apt to see us at our worst, and they aim to ease our strain.
"They're dealing with a public that's fearful, apprehensive and frustrated, and it gets
hostile," [said John Grant, a former meatpacker who is president of the union that represents
grocery employees in Southern California]. "This wasn't what they signed up for, but they
realize it's their responsibility. They've cursed how vulnerable they are, and yet they keep
going out of their profound dedication to their communities."
Funny thing. The people who "connect us to material essentials" are suddenly more important
than Senators and Represenatives (who can fly home), or all the MBAs in the head office, or the
CEOs. Heaven forfend they collectively decided to withdraw their labor!
"Vulnerable" as the grocery workers are, they didn't bring #COVID19 on themselves or us.
First, I'll look at how globalization made the "material essentials" to deal with #COVID19 so
hard to obtain. Then, I'll look at how globalizers were vectors for the diseases spread.
Globalization
The story of how the United States 1% deindustrialized American by moving our manufacturing
base offshore (mostly to China) is well known and I will not rehearse it here. From the New
York Times, " How the World's Richest
Country Ran Out of a 75-Cent Face Mask ":
The answer to why we're running out of protective gear involves a very American set of
capitalist pathologies -- the rise and inevitable lure of low-cost overseas manufacturing,
and a strategic failure, at the national level and in the health care industry, to consider
seriously the cascading vulnerabilities that flowed from the incentives to reduce costs.
(By "reduce costs," of course, we mean "increase profits.") The shortage of masks has been
the dominant narrative, but we don't make anything . If masks had not been "the long
pole in the tent," as project managers say, something else would have been or will be:
ventilators ,
gloves ,
nasal swabs for testing, extraction
kits and pipettes , reagents
, whatever. The real issue is not a shortage of this or that material essential, but a
forty-year policy of globalization, supported by the ruling class as a whole, that has led to a
shortage of all material essentials (and that's not even taking austerity and the
general gutting of public services into account). I have altered
the famous "flattening the curve" chart (here with "dotted line to show capacity") to show
the effect"
Lack of "material essentials" reduces our capacity ("How many very sick people hospitals can
treat"); it pushes the dotted line down. So we either have to flatten the curve further than we
would otherwise have to do, or we don't, and lose lives. Thank you, globalization! And with
that, let's turn to the globalizers.
Globalizers
By globalizers, I mean the 1% on down, plus the PMC (Professional Manager Class) who own and
manage our globalized system. One effect of globalization has been the vast expansion of air
transport and international travel, so that globalizers can do their jobs. And tha
t's how SARS-COV-2 was brought to the United States :
The man who would become Patient Zero for the new coronavirus outbreak in the U.S.
appeared to do everything right. He arrived Jan. 19 at an urgent-care clinic in a suburb
north of Seattle with a slightly elevated temperature and a cough he'd developed soon after
returning four days earlier from a visit with family in Wuhan, China.
(I'm not blaming any individual; I travel internationally myself, and there are many good
reasons to do it. But international air travel was the vector that brought the virus to the
United States. That is the system. I'm assuming Patient Zero travelled for professional
reasons, since Wuhan is an unlikely tourist destination.)
We can make a highly suggestive correlation between globalizers and COVID-19 if we look at
two simple maps. First, as
is well known , one of the main distinctions between the places that are " optimistic,
diverse, dynamic, moving forward " (i.e., globalizers) and the dull provincials in flyover
is the possession of passports. (A passport is a likely marker for the sort of person who asks
"Why don't they just leave?"; "front-row kids," in Chris Arnade's parlance, as distinguished
from, say, grocery workers, who he calls "back-row" kids.) Here is a map of passport ownership
by state:
The correlation is rather neat, don't you think? It makes sense that the first case was in a
globalist, passport-owning city like Seattle on the West Coast; and it makes sense that the
world capital of globalization, passport-owning New York City, now has a major outbreak.
If one hypothesizes, as I am doing, that COVID-19 will trickle from globalizers downward, we
might ask ourselves how that will happen. One answer, of course, is social interaction between
the globalizers themselves. The New York Times describes " Party
Zero: How a Soirée in Connecticut Became a 'Super Spreader ':"
About 50 guests gathered on March 5 at a home in the stately suburb of Westport, Conn., to
toast the hostess on her 40th birthday and greet old friends, including one visiting from
South Africa. They shared reminiscences, a lavish buffet and, unknown to anyone, the
coronavirus.
Then they scattered.
The Westport soirée -- Party Zero in southwestern Connecticut and beyond -- is a
story of how, in the Gilded Age of money, social connectedness and air travel, a pandemic has
spread at lightning speed. The partygoers -- more than half of whom are now infected -- left
that evening for Johannesburg, New York City and other parts of Connecticut and the United
States, all seeding infections on the way.
Westport, a town of 28,000 on the Long Island Sound, did not have a single known case of
the coronavirus on the day of the party. It had 85 on Monday, up more than 40-fold in 11
days.
It is the globalizers' ability to "scatter," in other words -- both internationally and
domestically -- that made them such effective vectors. The Westport hot-spot was innocent,
since nobody knew enough about COVID-19. Other examples are not innocent at all, where
globalizers infect all those around them by trying to escape the disease. The Hamptons example
is famous. From the New York Post, "
'We should blow up the bridges' -- coronavirus leads to class warfare in Hamptons ":
Every aspect of life, most crucially medical care, is under strain from the sudden influx
of rich Manhattanites panic-fleeing, bringing along their disdain and disregard for the
little people -- and in some cases, knowingly bringing coronavirus.
The Springs resident says her friend, a nurse out here, reported that a wealthy Manhattan
woman who tested positive called tiny Southampton Hospital to say she was on her way and
needed treatment.
The woman was told to stay in Manhattan.
Instead, she allegedly got on public transportation, telling no one of her condition. Then
she showed up at Southampton Hospital, demanding admittance.
"Someone else took a private jet to East Hampton and did not tell anybody 'til he landed,"
the resident says. "That's the most horrendous aspect. The virus is already here, and we
don't have any medical resources."
The frantic effort to find the ski trip participants has highlighted an uncomfortable
fact: It is people wealthy enough to travel outside the country who have brought the
coronavirus back to mostly poor Mexico. Yet if the disease spreads, it is those with the
least who will probably suffer the most.
"The virus is imported by people with the economic capacity to travel," wrote actor Tenoch
Huerta on Twitter. "Those who ask that everything be closed and all economic activity stop,
hurting the people who live day-to-day, why didn't they voluntarily isolate for three weeks
so as not to spread it? Or should only the poor be responsible?"
Idaho has 123 confirmed cases of COVID-19, according to the state's coronavirus website.
That includes 37 in Ada County and eight in Canyon County. Blaine County, where Sun Valley is
located, has the most confirmed cases at 52. Idaho's first case was reported 12 days ago, in
Ada County. The number of people tested in the state is now up to 2,188.
(Many of the cases around the state came from travel to Blaine County.)
Finally, Berkshire County, MA:
In my home area of Berkshire County, MA, the superrich from the city who own second
homes have come up en masse, buying up all the food and refusing to quarantine. The latter
means they will overwhelm an already insufficient healthcare system.
Of course, this rough-and-ready, anecdotal analysis is no substitute for formal, scientific
contact tracing. But I don't think, at this point, we will ever be able trace the original
outbreaks. And I didn't see anybody else making this argument, so I thought I'd throw it
against the wall and see if it sticks. All I can say is that when I think of the grocery
workers -- and all the workers -- in the Hamptons, Mexico, Idaho, and Massachusetts having
COVID-19 brought to them, I become very ticked off. For pity's sake, at least can we
practice social distancing by traveling only when it's essential?
"... The more I watch these moves by Pompeo the more sympathetic I become to the most sinister theories about COVID-19, its origins and its launch around the world. Read Pepe Escobar's latest to get an idea of how dark and twisted this tale could be . ..."
There are few things in this life that make me more sick to my stomach than watching
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo talking. He truly is one of the evilest men I've ever had the
displeasure of covering.
Into the insanity of the over-reaction to the COVID-19 outbreak, Pompeo wasted no time
ramping up sanctions on firms doing any business with Iran, one of the countries worse-hit by
this virus to date.
It's a seemingly endless refrain, everyday,
more sanctions on Chinese, Swiss and South African firms for having the temerity in these
deflating times to buy oil from someone Pompeo and his gang of heartless psychopaths disapprove
of.
This goes far beyond just the oil industry. Even though I'm well aware that Russia's
crashing the price of oil was itself a hybrid war attack on US capital markets. One that has
had, to date, devastating effect.
While Pompeo mouths the words publicly that humanitarian aid is exempted from sanctions on
Iran, the US is pursuing immense
pressure on companies to not do so anyway while the State Dept. bureaucracy takes its sweet
time processing waiver applications.
Pompeo and his ilk only think in terms of civilizational warfare. They have become so
subsumed by their big war for the moral high ground to prove American exceptionalism that they
have lost any shred of humanity they may have ever had.
Because for Pompeo in times like these to stick to his talking points and for his office to
continue excising Iran from the global economy when we're supposed to be coming together to
fight a global pandemic is the height of soullessness.
And it speaks to the much bigger problem that infects all of our political thinking. There
comes a moment when politics and gaining political advantage have to take a back seat to doing
the right thing.
I've actually seen moments of that impulse from the Democratic leadership in the US Will
wonders never cease?!
Thinking only in Manichean terms of good vs. evil and dehumanizing your opponents is
actually costlier than reversing course right now. Because honey is always better at attracting
flies than vinegar.
But, unfortunately, that is not the character of the Trump administration.
It can only think in terms of direct leverage and opportunity to hold onto what they think
they've achieved. So, until President Trump is no longer consumed with coordinating efforts to
control COVID-19 Pompeo and Secretary of Defense Mark Esper are in charge of foreign policy.
They will continue the playbook that has been well established.
Maximum pressure on Iran, hurt China any way they can, hold onto what they have in Syria,
stay in Iraq.
To that end Iraqi President Barham Salei nominated Pompeo's best choice to replace Prime
Minister Adil Abdel Mahdi to throw Iraq's future into complete turmoil. According to Elijah
Magnier,
Adnan al-Zarfi is a US asset through and through .
And this looks like Pompeo's Hail Mary to retain US legal presence in Iraq after the Iraqi
parliament adopted a measure to demand withdrawal of US troops from the country. Airstrikes
against US bases in Iraq continue on a near daily basis and there have been reports of US base
closures and redeployments at the same time.
This move looks like desperation by Pompeo et.al. to finally separate the Hashd al-Shaabi
from Iraq's official military. So that airstrikes against them can be carried out under the
definition of 'fighting Iranian terrorism.'
As Magnier points out in the article above if al-Zarfi puts a government together the war in
Iraq will expand just as the US is losing further control in Syria after Turkish President
Erdogan's disastrous attempt to remake the front in Idlib. That ended with his effective
surrender to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
It is sad that, to me, I see no reason to doubt Pompeo and his ilk in the US government
wouldn't do something like that to spark political and social upheaval in those places most
targeted by US hybrid war tactics.
But, at the same time, I can see the other side of it, a vicious strike back by China
against its tormentors. And China's government does itself, in my mind, no favors threatening
to withhold drug precursors and having officials run their mouths giving Americans the excuse
they need to validate Trump and Pompeo's divisive rhetoric.
Remaining on the fence about this issue isn't my normal style. But everyone is dirty here
and the reality may well be this is a natural event terrible people on both sides are
exploiting.
And I can only go by what people do rather than what they say to assess the situation. Trump
tries to buy exclusive right to a potential COVID-19 vaccine from a German firm and his
administration slow-walks aid to Iran.
China sends aid to Iran and Italy by the container full. Is that to salve their conscience
over its initial suppression of information about the virus? Good question. But no one covers
themselves in glory by using the confusion and distraction to attempt further regime change and
step up war-footing during a public health crisis, manufactured or otherwise.
While Pompeo unctuously talks the talk of compassion and charity, he cannot bring himself to
actually walk the walk. Because he is a despicable, bile-filled man of uncommon depravity. His
prosecuting a hybrid war during a public health crisis speaks to no other conclusion about
him.
It's clear to me that nothing has changed at the top of Trump's administration. I expect
COVID-19 will not be a disaster for Trump and the US. It can handle this. But the lack of
humanity shown by its diplomatic corps ensures that in the long run the US will be left to fend
for itself when the next crisis hits.
The WHO declared a pandemic 50 days later on March 11th.
Rumour in the markets has it WHO held out as long as possible to avoid triggering the
provisions of World Bank Pandemic Bonds, for which investors enjoyed relatively high coupon
rates in the current low interest-rate environment in exchange for running the risk of losing
their principal investment if a pandemic was declared in the window period.
Six million protection masks for Germany disappeared at the Kenya airport. They were valued
at a million dollars. Theft is suspected or that the manufacturer (Belgium) decided to
destroy them. Nothing is accidental in disaster capitalism.
I wonder whether those who seak war at all costs, are now trying to get us fighting for
masks and ventilators....
Seeing the comments at SST on the necessities of NYC major, it seesm to me that the same
people who seeks always confrontation is always ready to start a fight with its nationals for
whatever reason....
In Spain, as I am seeing, even counting with the inability and greed of those at the
helms, it seems to me that a "USSR 1990" effect on dissapearing health care items from the
market to then make them appear at multiple times their price could be happening right
now...
By blockading health care products, most proably the same people who have caused all this,
may seek that public health care collapsing gives a bad impression so as to get them
privatized once the country in depression.
Jen, yes, I am very familiar with the program as I have an acquaintance who helps usher in
very wealthy Chinese into Canada for a hefty fee.
That doesn't change the fact the Chinese are hated everywhere they go. This is very well
documented in the book entitled World on Fire, by a Chinese American author Amy Chua who also
wrote the book Hymn of the Dragon Mother.
She brags about how she pushes her children to achieve more in the second book.
In the first, she explains how her Chinese aunt was murdered by their Filipino servants
because the servants were badly treated. Now, you can tell me if the two have any relation to
each other.
Apart from TCM which the Chinese got from the Indians and developed, the entire Chinese
civilization needs to be scrapped and started over.
The Chinese "scrapped" their civilisation starting in the 1950s. By then it was on its
last legs anyway, after over 100 years of degradation from mass opium addiction brought by
the British, followed by decades of foreign interference and the consequences of that
interference: a messianic cult culminating in the Taiping rebellion in the 1860s and then the
Boxer Rebellion at the turn of the 20th century, among other things.
Amy Chua is just one person whose mother's family came from Fujian province in SE China
and settled in the Philippines, along with several other families from that part of China.
(Former Philippines President Corazon Aquino also had family from Fujian.) People living in
Fujian and Guangdong (the old Canton province) were exposed to more Western / European
influences than other parts of China. Fujian and Guangdong are also the areas where most
overseas Chinese communities living in SE Asia and the West, up to the 1980s, hailed
from.
So if you are talking about people in SE Asia and the West hating Chinese for their
behaviour, exemplified by the behaviour of Amy Chua to her own daughters and of her family to
its Filipino servants, and the behaviour of people in Hong Kong and Singapore with their
status-seeking and selfish materialist values, and their adherence to extreme Protestant
Christian beliefs, bear in mind where they learned their lessons.
@Anon
As for people with jobs supposedly not needing the relief checks, speak for yourself.
Completely out of touch with how much tens of millions of working Americans are living and
struggling, and not just the poor or minimum-wage workers by any means.
Middle-income and upper-middle-income people in many places are struggling with housing
costs and medical costs above all, and their situation generally is not improving in recent
years.
As a factual correction, the proposals on both sides are not for $1,000 per family; they
are for $1,000 or $1,200 or more to each adult, plus $500 for each child, and I'm glad they
are.
This would be a better use of taxpayer money -- or money conjured out of thin air by the
federal reserve -- than most of what the fed gov has been doing. That includes the vast sums
we have spent on unnecessary wars and occupations that are neither defensive nor
retaliatory.
Senator Rand Paul wisely proposed cutting war spending to help pay for the relief package.
We should go much, much farther than he proposed and slash hundreds of billions of dollars in
annual military spending and instead give it directly to US Citizens here at home.
We should also consider placing a permanent floor under Americans, not just a fleeting
relief package that ends when this virus quiets down. Very large cuts to the warfare state
and the welfare-state bureaucracy alike can provide funding for a substantial monthly
universal basic income for all US Citizens age 21 and over -- with less government borrowing
than we have now.
Public ownership of our God-given natural resources could provide another large source of
funding for the UBI -- without any government borrowing at all.
Of course, these ideas are too responsible for either Dems or Republicans to even debate.
Instead, they'll do a sensible and just thing, directly helping Americans rather than big
connected corporations and banks, but they'll recklessly borrow to do so.
There is a middle way and we should be negotiating it.
3/ Isn't chloroquine just a new name for Jesuit's (Peruvian) bark? Or quinine. The tonic
in gin and tonic?
4/ Tom Paine's 1796 pamphlet 'The English System of Finance' and Cobbett's 'Paper against
Gold' are coming into their own. What Disraeli called the Dutch system of finance is what is
collapsing, almost 500 years after it began. That was the contradiction in globalisation, one
that Rosa Luxemburg had pointed out more than a century ago: we have reached the limits of
constant expansion. And not just in environmental terms.
A User
Six months down the track, duopoly voting majority may perhaps be looking to do more than
vote for the duopoly, but that's only a maybe. It will take a lot of hardship to pull them
away from reality tv...meantime, your comment fits in here like another brick in the wall.
Another pissed off human having a winge.
Doing something... seems to me a group with structure, a plan and an endgoal is required
and this got out to the wider public. End goal needs to be something that would be accepted
by the reality tv watching public and step by step plan to get there...
We havn't hit bottom yet, still a long way from it. Any plan will have to match the situation
at the bottom and the way back. But first you gotta get two people to agree on a plan.
We are headed into the unknown. Like the first stages of the collapse of the soviet
union.
Putin when asked about Gorbochov and Yeltsin he just says "everyone knew we had to change
but nobody knew how to go about it."
Here is somewhat different because in the mainstream types, nobody knows we have to
change.
We are likely to go through something akin to the soviet nineties and only then will the
population know we need to change because the old ways failed.
Best to play it by ear until that point. Nothing can be done untill the wider population
realise that all they have known has failed and a different start must be made. I doubt too
many of our countries will have a Putin that can pull us out of the shit. And by a Putin, I
mean somebody that has a vision acceptable to the majority and comes to be trusted by the
majority and also has the nous and ability required.
I got the "flu" in November 2019 and I had the same symptoms as Coronavirus - I thought it
was going to kill me - and while I missed some work - work demanded me back - and so I worked
through some terrible times. Everyone at work was sick with different levels of symptoms. To
this day I have still not 100% recovered - but I am poor and have no health insurance - and,
well, everybody has been exposed for months so it doesn't even matter anymore. No one has
died - but everyone has a low level persistent respiratory illness.
Again: if nCOV was really already in the US in November - where was the surge in
hospitalizations? Regardless of age, ~20% of those who get it, get pneumonia or worse and
need hospital care.
We don't even have that right now despite a huge number of cases. Maybe the US and Germany
are different - we'll see in about 2 weeks.
One thing I think played a role that is not mentioned is Trumps business that he owns. He
owns hotels and casinos which will be devastated. Trump wont rule out government assistance
for himself.
For Trump to shut down the economy and produce an effective containment, he would have had
to do this knowing that his own business would be devastated.
@Anatoly
Karlin There is apparently a large colony (100.000) of Chinese workers in Lombardy, with
direct flights between Lombardy and Wuhan, so this Italian outbreak is not a coincidence.
Many Italians in Northern Italy sold their leather goods and textiles companies to
China. Italy then allowed 100,000 Chinese from Wuhan/Wenzhou to move to Italy to work in
these factories, with direct Wuhan flights. Result: Northern Italy is Europe's hotspot for
Wuhan Coronavirus
UK had a "herd immunity" strategy from the beginning. They made no real effort at
containment. British government allowed their people to become infected, and only
began to change course after public outrage.
@Felix
Keverich The large Chinese population in Italy has been completely ignored by the media,
in fact China itself seems to have been let completely off the hook. The focus is now on how
terrible Britain and the native British people are.
Someone even posted a Tweet above by a Vietnamese person trying to claim that BRITAIN of
all countries is responsible for the outbreak in Vietnam, I mean what kind of ridiculous
logic is that? Vietnam bloody BORDERS China, the origin and epicentre of the Coronavirus
outbreak, and the Vietnamese are trying to say Britain is the cause? It beggars belief.
less globalization outside North America/Europe/Japan/Australia
You are missing the point of globalization: manufacturing in cheap Third World countries
and rewarding the local compradors with a permission to migrate to the West. That's the deal,
that's what globalization is.
With NA-Europe-Japan all you get is tourism and travel. I would be surprised if we can at
this point convince Chinese and the other cheap labor countries to do the work and forgo the
hope of migration. It was a Faustian deal and those as we know end in hell.
@AP
Calm down, man and stop the stupid blaming game. It seems that your Banderite spin also
includes bashing Chinese which, on the second thought, should not be surprising as there is
only one paymaster. Perhaps you should specialize in Ukraine only and leave China to more
competent haters.
Compare Canada and Italy on Chinese residents: Canada has 5 times more Chinese than Italy
but 62 times less infection cases and 539 times less fatalities than Italy (as of March 16).
Furthermore France and UK have more Chinese than Italy.
What about tourists: In Canada 0.75 mil Chinese tourist but in Italy 3.5 mil Chinese
tourists. So it must be the tourists, right?
So compare Japan with Italy on Chinese tourists: 8.4 mil Chinese tourist in Japan vs. 3.5
mil Chinese tourists in Italy. How many cases in Japan?
So what I am trying to convey is that the expression of the epidemic in different
countries is not congruent with the number of Chinese residents or Chinese tourist.
We will never know where the patients zero (yes plural, there are many patients zero)
really came from. For various political reasons we will not be told and what we will be told
we must be skeptical about. I found interesting data about the first infected in British
Columbia that has huge rather affluent Chinese population. There were as many Iranians as
non-Iranians on the list.
In British Columbia cases 1 to 5 were from China though it does not appear they infected
others while cases 6, 7, , 12 and 14, 15, 19 were traced to Iran. Then the case 22 was from
Iran and also case 31. Case 32 was from Italy, case 35 was from Egypt and case 37 was from
Germany. So out of first 37 cases over 50% were people came form Iran, Egypt, Germany and
Italy. My point is that while Canada has huge Chinese population (1.7 mil) and gets 700,000
Chinese visitors per year it does not look like China was the main vector. In BC it is Iran
and Europe.
One should consider a possibility whether virus introduction to Iran and the Middle East
did precede its introduction in China.
Now let's return to Italy. Most Chinese tourists go to Rome, Florence and Venice. These
cities were not affected as much as Lombardy where there is not that many tourists. So we are
told that Chinese workers could carry the virus. So look at Prato (in Tuscany near Florence)
which has the highest density of Chinese population in Italy. Wiki lists 11,882 (6.32%) for
Prato while the highest absolute number is Milan 18,918 (1.43%). The numbers are probably
outdated as most likely they do not include illegal residents.
"In a single day the positive cases of coronavirus in the province of Prato have
tripled: from 7 to 21 . It is the darkest day since the outbreak began. According to
what was announced in the afternoon of today, March 11, by the bulletin of the regional
council "
"Therefore, 314 patients are currently positive in Tuscany. This is the subdivision by
signaling areas: 71 Florence, 32 Pistoia, 21 Prato (total Asl center: 124), 43 Lucca, 40
Massa Carrara, 34 Pisa, 16 Livorno (total North West Asl: 133), 12 Grosseto, 37 Siena , 14
Arezzo (total Asl southeast: 63)."
So clearly the 2nd largest Chinese community in Italy (and first in density) with 21 cases
(out of 12,246 cases in Italy) did not contribute a lot to the corona virus outbreak in
Italy.
@AP
Calm down, man and stop the stupid blaming game. It seems that your Banderite spin also
includes bashing Chinese which, on the second thought, should not be surprising as there is
only one paymaster. Perhaps you should specialize in Ukraine only and leave China to more
competent haters.
Compare Canada and Italy on Chinese residents: Canada has 5 times more Chinese than Italy
but 62 times less infection cases and 539 times less fatalities than Italy (as of March 16).
Furthermore France and UK have more Chinese than Italy.
What about tourists: In Canada 0.75 mil Chinese tourist but in Italy 3.5 mil Chinese
tourists. So it must be the tourists, right?
So compare Japan with Italy on Chinese tourists: 8.4 mil Chinese tourist in Japan vs. 3.5
mil Chinese tourists in Italy. How many cases in Japan?
So what I am trying to convey is that the expression of the epidemic in different
countries is not congruent with the number of Chinese residents or Chinese tourist.
We will never know where the patients zero (yes plural, there are many patients zero)
really came from. For various political reasons we will not be told and what we will be told
we must be skeptical about. I found interesting data about the first infected in British
Columbia that has huge rather affluent Chinese population. There were as many Iranians as
non-Iranians on the list.
In British Columbia cases 1 to 5 were from China though it does not appear they infected
others while cases 6, 7, , 12 and 14, 15, 19 were traced to Iran. Then the case 22 was from
Iran and also case 31. Case 32 was from Italy, case 35 was from Egypt and case 37 was from
Germany. So out of first 37 cases over 50% were people came form Iran, Egypt, Germany and
Italy. My point is that while Canada has huge Chinese population (1.7 mil) and gets 700,000
Chinese visitors per year it does not look like China was the main vector. In BC it is Iran
and Europe.
One should consider a possibility whether virus introduction to Iran and the Middle East
did precede its introduction in China.
Now let's return to Italy. Most Chinese tourists go to Rome, Florence and Venice. These
cities were not affected as much as Lombardy where there is not that many tourists. So we are
told that Chinese workers could carry the virus. So look at Prato (in Tuscany near Florence)
which has the highest density of Chinese population in Italy. Wiki lists 11,882 (6.32%) for
Prato while the highest absolute number is Milan 18,918 (1.43%). The numbers are probably
outdated as most likely they do not include illegal residents.
"In a single day the positive cases of coronavirus in the province of Prato have
tripled: from 7 to 21 . It is the darkest day since the outbreak began. According to
what was announced in the afternoon of today, March 11, by the bulletin of the regional
council "
"Therefore, 314 patients are currently positive in Tuscany. This is the subdivision by
signaling areas: 71 Florence, 32 Pistoia, 21 Prato (total Asl center: 124), 43 Lucca, 40
Massa Carrara, 34 Pisa, 16 Livorno (total North West Asl: 133), 12 Grosseto, 37 Siena , 14
Arezzo (total Asl southeast: 63)."
So clearly the 2nd largest Chinese community in Italy (and first in density) with 21 cases
(out of 12,246 cases in Italy) did not contribute a lot to the corona virus outbreak in
Italy.
If this started in the USA and spread elsewhere the world would have good cause to
condemn the USA and to judge any subsequent efforts by Americans to help others as "the
least they could do."
Chinese shipments of medical goods are actually to the risk of the own population, where
hospitals are still recovering. While in some ways it is a blatant PR play, its quite a
significant cost amd self-risk that goes beyond "the least they could do."
Actual morality reinforces social solidarity, which is why our overlords have been attempting
to destroy it for so long. Social solidarity is the key to overcoming crises in general and
not just the present Covid 19 pandemic.
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Imagine if the congress approved a measure to form a public-private
partnership between the US Treasury and the Federal Reserve. Can you imagine that?
Now imagine if a panicky and ill-informed
Congress gave the Fed a blank check to bail out all of its crooked crony corporate and Wall Street friends,
allowing the Fed to provide more than $4.5 trillion to underwater corporations that ripped off Mom and Pop
investors by selling them bonds that were used to goose their stock prices so fatcat CEOs could make off
like bandits. Imagine if all that red ink from private actors was piled onto the national debt pushing
long-term interest rates into the stratosphere while crushing small businesses, households and ordinary
working people.
Now try to imagine the impact this would
have on the nation's future. Imagine if the Central Bank was given the green-light to devour the Treasury,
control the country's "purse strings", and use nation's taxing authority to shore up its trillions in
ultra-risky leveraged bets, its opaque financially-engineered ponzi-instruments, and its massive speculative
debts that have gone pear-shaped leaving a gaping black hole on its balance sheet?
Well, you won't have to imagine this
scenario for much longer, because the reality is nearly at hand. You see, the traitorous, dumbshit
nincompoops in Congress are just a hairs-breadth away from abdicating congress's crucial power of the purse,
which is not only their greatest strength, but also allows the congress to reign in abuses of executive
power by controlling the flow of funding. The power of the purse is the supreme power of government which is
why the founders entrusted it to the people's elected representatives in congress. Now these imbeciles are
deciding whether to hand over that authority to a privately-owned banking cartel that has greatly expanded
the chasm between rich and poor, incentivized destructive speculation on an industrial scale, and repeatedly
inflated behemoth asset-price bubbles that have inevitably blown up sending stocks and the real economy into
freefall. The idea of merging the Fed and the Treasury first appeared in its raw form in an article by
former Fed chairman Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen in the Financial Times. Here's a short excerpt from the
piece:
"The Fed could ask Congress for the
authority to buy limited amounts of investment-grade corporate debt The Fed's intervention could help
restart that part of the corporate debt market, which is under significant stress.
Such a programme
would have to be carefully calibrated to minimize the credit risk taken by the Fed
while still
providing needed liquidity to an essential market." (
Financial
Times
)
The Fed is not allowed to buy corporate
debt, because it is not within its mandate of "price stability and full employment". It's also not allowed
to arbitrarily intervene in the markets to pick winners and losers, nor is it allowed to bailout
poorly-managed crybaby corporations who were gaming the system to their own advantage when the whole deal
blew up in their faces. That's their problem, not the Fed's and not the American taxpayer's.
But notice how Bernanke emphasizes how
"Such a programme would have to be carefully calibrated to minimize the credit risk taken by the Fed". Why
do you think he said that?
He said it because he anticipates an
arrangement where the new Treasury-Fed combo could buy up to "$4.5 trillion of corporate debt" (according to
Marketwatch and BofA). And the way this will work, is the Fed will select the bonds that will be purchased
and the credit risk will be heaped onto the US Treasury. Apparently Bernanke and Yellen think this is a
"fair" arrangement, but others might differ on that point.
Keep in mind, that in the last week
alone, investors pulled a record $107 billion out of corporate bonds which is a market which has been in a
deep-freeze for nearly a month. The only activity is the steady surge of redemptions by frantic investors
who want to get their money back before the listing ship heads for Davey Jones locker. This is the market
that Bernanke wants the American people to bail out mainly because he doesn't want to submerge the Fed's
balance sheet in red ink. He wants to find a sucker who will take the loss instead. That's where Uncle Sam
comes in, he's the target of this subterfuge. This same theme pops up in a piece in the Wall Street Journal.
Check it out:
"At least Treasury has come around
to realizing it needs a facility to provide liquidity for companies. But as we write this, Mr. Mnuchin
was still insisting that Treasury have control of most of the money to be able to ladle out directly to
companies it wants to help. This is a recipe for picking winners and losers, and thus for bitter
political fights and months of ugly headlines charging favoritism. The far better answer is for Treasury
to use money from Congress to replenish the Exchange Stabilization Fund to back the Fed in creating a
facility or special-purpose vehicles under Section 13(3) to lend the money to all comers. "(
"Leaderless
on the Econom"
, Wall Street Journal)
I can hardly believe the author is bold
enough to say this right to our faces. Read it carefully: They are saying "We want your money, but not your
advice. The Fed will choose who gets the cash and who doesn't. Just put your trillions on the counter and
get the hell out."
Isn't that what they're saying? Of
course it is. And the rest of the article is even more arrogant:
"The Fed can charge a
non-concessionary rate, but the vehicles should be open to those who think they need the money, not
merely to those Treasury decides are worthy." (Huh? So the Treasury should have no say so in who gets
taxpayer money??) The looming liquidity crisis is simply too great for that kind of bureaucratic,
politicized decision-making. (Wall Street Journal)
Get it? In other words, the folks at
Treasury are just too stupid or too prejudiced to understand the subtleties of a bigass bailout like this.
Is that arrogance or what?
This is the contempt these people have
for you and me and everyone else who isn't a part of their elitist gaggle of reprobates. Here's a clip from
another article at the WSJ that helps to show how the financial media is pushing this gigantic handout to
corporate America:.
"The Federal Reserve, Treasury
Department and banking regulators deserve congratulations for their bold, necessary actions to provide
liquidity to the U.S. financial system amid the coronavirus crisis. But more remains to be done. We thus
recommend: (1) immediate congressional action . to authorize the Treasury to use the Exchange
Stabilization Fund to guarantee prime money-market funds, (2) regulatory action to effect temporary
reductions in bank capital and liquidity requirements (NOTE–So now the banks don't need to hold capital
against their loans?) .. additional Fed lending to banks and nonbanks .(Note -by "nonbanks", does the
author mean underwater hedge funds?)
We recommend that the Fed take
further actions as lender of last resort. First, it should re-establish the Term Auction Facility, used
in the 2008 crisis, allowing depository institutions to borrow against a broad range of collateral at an
auction price (Note–They want to drop the requirement for good Triple A collateral.) Second, it should
consider further exercising its Section 13(3) authority to provide additional liquidity to nonbanks,
potentially including purchases of corporate debt through a special-purpose vehicle" (
"Do
More to Avert a Liquidity Crisis"
, Wall Street Journal
)
This isn't a bailout, it's a joke, and
there's no way Congress should approve these measures, particularly the merging of the US Treasury with the
cutthroat Fed. That's a prescription for disaster! The Fed needs to be abolished not embraced as a state
institution. It's madness!
And look how the author wants to set up
an special-purpose vehicle (SPV) so the accounting chicanery can be kept off the books which means the
public won't know how much money is being flushed down the toilet trying to resuscitate these insolvent
corporations whose executives are still living high on the hog on the money they stole from credulous
investors. This whole scam stinks to high heaven!
Meanwhile America's working people will
get a whopping $1,000 bucks to tide them over until the debts pile up to the rafters and they're forced to
rob the neighborhood 7-11 to feed the kids. How fair is that?
And don't kid yourself: This isn't a
bailout, it's the elitist's political agenda aimed at creating a permanent underclass who'll work for
peanuts just to eek out a living.
In 2008-2009, the Federal Reserve bailed out the global banking system to the tune of $16 Trillion. But
American citizens were left to pay usurious rates of interest on $1 Trillion of credit card debt. And
American students had lost years of economic opportunity but their $1 Trillion dollars of debt could not be
discharged through bankruptcy.
This time the banks should stand behind the debtors at the government
troth.
It's hard to understand how holiday cruise shipping can be regarded as an essential business.
It is almost as hard to understand why a "Globalist Enterprise" should be spared its fate through the
generosity of of one country. Even harder to understand, why would that one country should bail out a
business, which had employed both tax-avoidance schemes as well as strategy import substitution and foreign
investment to improve its profits at the expense of that country.
Nationalism is better that globalism. The current crisis was not caused by globalism; but globalism has
drained from our country the means to respond to the crisis with the medicines and equipment that would
reduce its severity.
Not a single cent of government aid should go toward a person or an entity outside the United States and
it territories. Conditions should be placed upon such aid, so that the companies receiving it, must
domesticate their supply chains, and must produce and develop their products within the United States.
@anachronism
Make the universities discharge the student debt. It was their scam all along. They can begin by retrenching
their schools of the humanities and at least halving their administrative staff. And end building and sports
programs. The fat hangs heavy on that particular pig.
The student and the university should share responsibility equally. In
the future, the institution should be made a co-signor on any student loan; and the obligation to repay
the loan should be joint and several for both the institution and the student.
Bankruptcy provides the ex-student with the chance to start over and to escape the burden; but not
without consequences. This will discourage the ex-student, who is doing well financially and has the
means to service the debt, from just walking away.
1) The West was exposed, not only for not being able to handle a pandemic, but also for
having a ponzi scheme economy.
Having its citizens and its companies leveraged up to a point where America can collapse
with any amount of hardship badly exposes America as being exceptionally weak.
2) Decoupling of Asia from America. For the West to try and target the Chinese, there will
be fallout. It's not like white people bother to distinguish Chinese from Korean or Japanese
when they harass Asians they see.
This will have consequences in Asia as Asian countries will just focus on trading with
each other than have to deal with a hostile west.
3) America cannot exist in a multipolar world, it can only exist in a unipolar world that
it controls. So it will not just be a decoupling of China and America, it will be escalation
between America and China till one is left standing.
You can expect to see color revolutions in HK and Taiwan. Meanwhile China will have no
reason to show any restraint in fighting back. China could target the west in Iran,
Venezuela, or even in the US by tormenting color revolutions of it's own.
4) it is easy to say that America will just trade more with Europe, but how does that
work? Drug prices are already too high in America, so now America will pay even higher
prices?
Trading more with Latin America makes more sense to me, but I also don't think Latin
America is up to it.
5) I honestly don't think America will be the same country after the outbreak is over.
Things are already cracking early on, how will Americans pull together 3 months in?
How will America pull together if Trump pulls war time authority?
As stated in my
review of Don DeLillo's White Noise (1985), we live in a decaying society that is in
terror of death, and pathologically so. This pathology is rooted in mistaken beliefs that our
civilization is dying from, or could imminently die from, disease epidemics, climate
catastrophes etc., in the midst of willful and ignorant abdication of a future (via self-hate
and industrialized abortion) in favor of mass immigration, consumerism, and instant
gratification. Just as one has to confront death in order to truly live (or to become
"authentic" in Heidegger's philosophy), our society is in constant flight from death and thus
inevitably collapses into inauthentic decay. COVID-19, while not as lethal as media coverage
would suggest, is a reminder of our mortality and human fragility and will necessarily have a
jarring effect on a Western liberalism that has become increasingly distant from the
confrontation with death.
Life under liberal finance capitalism is largely one of illusion, in which the prospect of
real death is pushed far into the distance, both psychologically and culturally. Postmodern
Western liberal culture is largely one of perpetual adolescence, in which the primary virtues
are acting according to one's individual will, identifying oneself in a hyper-individualistic
manner, and expressing these identities via conspicuous consumption and behavior. We do not
"live towards" Death, with a sense of purpose and a feeling that we are part of a much grander
civilizational trajectory. We do not understand that Death has shaped our historical path, and
that it hangs over us in ways that should direct our actions in the present.
COVID-19, regardless of current confusion over its true mortality rate, is a corrective to
illusions that "progressive" Man has overcome Nature and can shape the world according to the
human image, and without consequences. Certainly throughout my own lifetime, I've grown
accustomed to assertions that life expectancy will continue to increase, and that there will be
an endless supply of innovations and social projects that will make the mechanics of life
easier and more productive.
One increasingly expects that one will live a long life, mostly in very good health. Such a
sense of security can breed all kinds of arrogance and fantasies, including the recent perverse
luxury of the delusion that one can simply decide to be this or that gender. This new virus,
however, presents the possibility, both in itself and its inevitable heirs, that Death is much
closer than we ever thought, and that for all our technological advancement and
self-congratulation, Nature need only tweak one molecule, so small our naked eyes could never
perceive it, and the grave opens before us. The Age of Fantasy is confronted with the ultimate
reality.
How the West responds to this realization will be a further cultural challenge. We have
grown equally accustomed to the idea that we have "advanced" morally as a society, and that we
have overcome some of the more "brutish" aspects of human existence that we perceive in the
past. But in a world of apparently increasing plenty, such notions can be hard to test. It's
always easy for a man with a full stomach to condemn the actions of the starving. The conceit
of the full-bellied West that it has overcome and surpassed itself and its past will now be
tested. I, of course, arise from a political and philosophical tradition that insists there is
no shame in the past. I see little or no place for morality in the struggle for survival. And I
also see the cracks already forming in the Western conceit. This society that is against "hate"
and prides itself on "coming together" is already struggling to stop people rioting
over toilet paper and bottled water. If civil order breaks down, will the proud feminists be
seeking their own resources, or hoping for a strong man to protect them? If the death toll does
rise dramatically, and if curfews and lockdowns are imposed and intensified, I ask: How well
will your beloved multicultural societies respond? If resources become scarce and tensions
rise, who will you trust? These tests are coming.
Economic and Political Fallout
Just days ago, JPMorgan
projected that a recession will hit the US and European economies by July, with US GDP to
shrink by 2% in the first quarter and 3% in the second, and Eurozone GDP to contract by 1.8%
and 3.3% over the same periods. Sudden cessation of economic activity through quarantines,
event cancellations, social distancing, and the almost complete shutdown of the tourist
industry will have both immediate and longer term consequences for national economies and
broader trade patterns. The mass closing of schools will expose pre-existing weaknesses in a
modern system that sees women funneled en masse into the work place while their children are
left in day cares or schools. According to numbers
from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than 70 percent of American mothers with children
under 18 work. Through the closing of schools alone, the impact of COVID-19 will almost
certainly have the greatest impact on the role of women in the workplace since World War Two,
with many forced to leave work and return to the home for an as yet undetermined amount of
time. How this will impact the businesses or public entities employing these women remains to
be seen, but it will undoubtedly cause significant difficulties and necessitate some level of
infrastructural change.
The outbreak of COVID-19 is also projected to test Western healthcare provision to the
limit. It's been particularly interesting that the outbreak in Italy effectively broke
the health system in Lombardy, widely regarded as one of the best in the world. Before the
outbreak, it was
remarked that:
The Lombardy healthcare system, characterised by quality and efficiency, is a model of
reference both in Italy and worldwide. With the benefit of private partnerships in fact, it
ensures its citizens and those who live in other regions or abroad have access to prime level
health care with all the advantages of a public system. Lombardy has 56 University
Departments of Medicine, 19 IRCCS (IRCCS means an institution devoted to excellence in
clinical care and research) which represent 42% of the national total, 47 Institutes and 32
Research Centres. As a result, Lombardy and in particular Milan have always attracted the
most renowned physicians in every field of expertise.
It took COVID-19 just four weeks to exhaust every hospital bed in Lombardy, force doctors
out of retirement and medical students to graduate early, and provoke the creation of 500
triage tents outside hospitals nationwide. The different, and ever-politicized, healthcare
systems of the United States and Great Britain are about to experience the most intensive test
in their respective histories.
One of the most outspoken figures from the medical profession on social media in recent days
is Eugene Gu , who has made
a point of attacking the profit-seeking nature of much of the American medical establishment.
Gu has argued that American medicine is essentially a pyramid scheme that profits those at the
top by artificially restricting the number of doctors produced by the system:
The medical school and residency system in the United States is completely broken compared
to other countries. Now that we are in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic, we need to
reflect upon an abusive system that hurts patients and seeks to make a few specialists filthy
rich. Even before the coronavirus, we created a huge physician shortage by limiting spots in
medical schools to inflate doctors' salaries the same way De Beers fixes the diamond market.
And we gutted primary care so that specialists like plastic surgeons and dermatologists can
get rich. I took an oath to "first, do no harm." I cannot just stand by and watch as the
corrupt cesspool we call our American medical system fails our patients while a few doctors,
insurance executives, and Big Pharma get filthy rich. Medicine should not be a for-profit
industry.
Whether or not one agrees with Dr Gu's perspective, the coming weeks and months will test
both American for-profit medicine and Britain's nationalized health system, and perhaps leave
long term political legacies for both.
Political consequences will also inevitably result from the approaches of individual leaders
to the crisis. Boris Johnson is risking his political future on a " herd immunity " strategy
that is radically different from the course of action pursued by other leaders. It's been
criticized as involving the sacrifice of the older generation for a slightly prolonged period
of economic normalcy and an entirely assumed future immunity among the young.
Donald Trump, meanwhile, is quickly trying to move on from a
highly dismissive initial response to the outbreak. In both cases, and throughout the West,
moderately "conservative" populism based on the celebration of finance capitalism and token
gestures on borders will be tested to the limit by increasing strains on all aspects of social,
political, and economic life. Trump, in particular, has managed to squeeze a lot of political
mileage out of the performance of the stock market. With stocks tumbling, and the American
healthcare system pushed to the limit, it remains to be seen whether Trump's drive to
make gay sex legal in Africa will be enough to keep his voters happy.
In another return of the Real, of course, COVID-19 is doing more to close borders than any
expression of political populism ever has. It was all well and good that "the world is a
village" when this involved cheap and cheerful vacations, but all it took was a few houses in
the throes of sickness for the rest of the villagers to wish there was somewhere they could
escape to. The global village is in shutdown. All humans might be equally susceptible to this
virus, but national borders, so often scorned until recently, now reveal they might have some
uses after all – just one of them being the invaluable opportunity to seal and control a
limited territory. How people grow accustomed to this renewed emphasis on border control may
leave a lasting political legacy for the West also. In any case, we can only hope it will.
The idea advanced on the last thread [by Vk and here @7 and 39 I think] that governments
should be organized around something different than economics is sound and worthy of
everyone's input, ideas and objections; discussion is needed and welcome.
International human to human discussion should take place. Human experience with nation
state globalism has shown just how vulnerable humanity is to organized and institutionalized
corruption; the actions of the leaders of individual nations have shown the nation state
system cannot be trusted.
The Covid 19 pandemic has reminded us all that we as humans <= have a right to a
government that is of our collective liking, we have learned that governments must serve the
best interest of the most persons, not special interest of a few. Governments which fail to
serve equal right, open access and equal chance to those it governs are prima facia
legitimates. Covid 19 brought the meaning of the principle of self-determination to the
forefront. Everyone's life is challenged by submicroscopic beast. It takes the cooperation of
all of us, to save most of us, and it takes the corruption of a few, to ruin it all, for most
of us.
Human rights come first, long before economics . No economic rationale can support
the delay or justify the cost of failure for those entrusted with the power to act, should
they fail to timely act with diligence on threat that human lives are in danger. Experience
suggest it is not possible to leave the power, function, and direction of government to those
whose responsibility it is to operate it <= something very different is needed.
Covid 19 was a wake up call , that makes real the unfulfilled and failed campaign
promises in a never ending trail of campaigns. Its time for everyone to insist on truth,
truth in media, truth in political campaigns, open book truth from those appointed to
government, and to bring everyone's troops home. Its time for nation states to stop
supporting the private oil and gas bandits, the MSM, or any other special interest, its time
to make a single global currency that bears no interest and that does not require repayment
of principal, its time for governments to stop arming belligerents, their own or those of
anyone else (gun control should be transformed into between governments, weapons control and
the persons of all humans everywhere should be equally armed), its time to stop one nation
instigating or supporting regime change in another, and its time to deny government leaders
from using the governments they lead, to enable private or corrupt profits. Every human has a
right to life, liberty and to pursuit of happiness: <=governments were instituted to
secure to mankind the enjoyment of the privilege of those rights; but it seems mankind has
been lax in making these governments conform to their privilege of existence.
A $0 military budget, and no interest, no repay currency could bring the credit
needed to create multi many places of employment, AWA fix ailing infra structures, improve
access to, even make access globally universal. It could improve the quality of education and
open to everyone<= fair play, access to capital (instead of venture capital expecting
reward of profit, how about advances of capital in search of human progress). which could
enable real progress on earth for mankind.
Its time to eliminate the dependency on, or even the existence of those monopolies
nation states like to create out of thin air by using their power to invent by rule of law,
powers that restrain true competition (license, privatized government ownership, special
authority, patents, copyrights, and the private property ownership).
It time to stop over hyped , Wall Street multi global type greed which only exist
because currency is used as control devise, instead of a facilitator. Nation states should
facilitate humans to interact, in ways transparent to the nation state boundaries (Its
economics, that encourages non sharing attitudes, that cause competitors to seek ways to use
governments to restrain human inter action). Humans should try to replace foreign products
with locally made goods and the foreign goods producers should be encouraged to make goods in
places where the goods have a demand because demand produces jobs and provides opportunity,
globalism organized to produce economic gains, often attempt to steal from locals the
benefits of demand created by the locals. The local province rule should apply: that is if
locals want to make it, multinationals should be denied. The billions saved to the global
economy in unexpended energy consumption (no transport cost), could bring prices of goods and
services to comparative advantage adjusted market price levels. I predict, the poor would
prosper because they would have an opportunity to contribute to our global human society, and
government would be re instituted to encourage and enforce equality for all to those it
governs. Governments should restrain and deny wealth, but they should encourage and
facilitate local competition. At one time people elected their representatives based on
performance in accord to those ideals. Currency that carries no interest and that never needs
to be repaid, challenges economic induced greed and redirects the efforts of mankind to
providing that which is needed.
In 1949 the income tax in USA governed America was layered into tiers (where different tax
rates were applied); the USA taxed those who made big bucks at 90% in its highest tier ..
Seem to recall Briton had something similar [100% of everything over $150,000 pounds of
taxable Income?]. From here => http://www.milefoot.com/math/businessmath/taxes/fit.htm
<=i made a table
year rate@personal taxable income level
1941 81% @$5,000,000
1942-1943 88% @$200,000
1944-1945 94% @$200,000 The tax limited to a 90% effective rate.
1946-1947 91% @$200,000 The tax limited to a 90% effective rate (85.5% >credits).
1948-1951 91% @$400,000 The tax limited to a 77% effective rate in 1948-1949, .
1952-1953 92% @$400,000 The tax was limited to an 88% effective rate.
corporate rate from http://www.milefoot.com/math/businessmath/taxes/fit.htm
I made a small table.
1942- 1945 40% > $50,000
1946- 1949 38% > $50,000
1950 42% > $25,000
1951 50.75% > $25,000
1952- 1963 52% > $25,000
1964 52% > $25,000
1965- 1967 48% > $25,000
1968- 1969 52.8% > $25,000
These numbers suggest a long winded story of useless corruption.
If you'd ever tried to set up a business here in the UK, you'd realise pretty quickly that
you are under complete and utter control of the government in every aspect and they own your
business by dint of the taxes and the loans you have to take out from their banker friends,
we have soft communism because the government owns you but pretends not to. Magna Carta is
dead and it's only possible resuscitation would be a Runnymede 2 Electric Boogaloo.
"... 1) Pompeo and Grenell reportedly arguing that coronavirus has created window of opportunity for a direct strike on a weak and divided Iran. ..."
"... Deputy Health Minister Alireza Raisian has criticized the #UK for not delivering millions of masks #Iran bought in preparations ahead of #Covid19 outbreak. The London govt. refused to deliver them citing US sanctions! Note that Germany took supplies meant for Switzerland, The US via the Italian Mafia (I suppose) gets masks from Bergamo. etc. ..."
I just think that the US "Intelligence" and most of the US Administration just haven't got it. I suppose when you are waiting
for the "rapture" anything that can add to the chaos is to be included.
1) Pompeo and Grenell reportedly arguing that coronavirus has created window of opportunity for a direct strike on a weak
and divided Iran. They were arguing about the severity of the strike.
2) Deputy Health Minister Alireza Raisian has criticized the #UK for not delivering millions of masks #Iran bought in preparations
ahead of #Covid19 outbreak. The London govt. refused to deliver them citing US sanctions! Note that Germany took supplies
meant for Switzerland, The US via the Italian Mafia (I suppose) gets masks from Bergamo. etc. Wonderful show of
world-wide solidarity.
Pompeo should hold his "rapture" in his hot little hand and .....
@supenau who make profits as well. I cannot remember exactly when insider trading for
them became legal but it should be no surprise to anyone paying the slightest bit of attention
that they're ALL doing it. That is one reason, at least in my semi-educated opinion, they did
not go after Trump for emoluments during Shampeachment, because THEY ALL DO IT.
That goes all the way to the White House, no doubt.
up 10 users have voted. --
Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur
Weeks before you had any inkling you were going to lose your job, Senator Kelly Loeffler
was selling off millions of stocks -- and *buying* stock in a teleworking company.
"... "Congress/staff who dumped stocks after private briefings on impending coronavirus epidemic should be investigated and prosecuted for insider trading," ..."
"... "Members of Congress should not be allowed to own stocks." ..."
"... "stomach churning," ..."
"... "For a public servant it's pretty hard to imagine many things more immoral than doing this," ..."
"... "Richard Burr had critical information that might have helped the people he is sworn to protect. But he hid that information and helped only himself." ..."
"... "If you find out about a nation-threatening pandemic and your first move is to adjust your stock portfolio you should probably not be in a job that serves the public interest," ..."
"... "calling for immediate investigations" ..."
"... "for possible violations of the STOCK Act and insider trading laws." ..."
"... Think your friends would be interested? Share this story! ..."
After the sale, NPR
reported
that he told a closed-door meeting of North Carolina business leaders that the virus
actually posed a threat
"akin to the 1918 pandemic."
Burr does not dispute the NPR report.
In a tweet on Saturday, former 2020 presidential candidate and Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard called for
criminal investigations.
"Congress/staff who dumped stocks after private briefings on impending
coronavirus epidemic should be investigated and prosecuted for insider trading,"
she wrote.
"Members of Congress should not be allowed to own stocks."
Congress/staff who dumped stocks after private briefings on impending
coronavirus epidemic should be investigated & prosecuted for insider trading (the STOCK Act). It
is illegal & abuse of power. Members of Congress should not be allowed to own stocks.
https://t.co/rbVfJxrk3r
Burr was not the only lawmaker on Capitol Hill to take precautions, it was reported. Fellow
Intelligence Committee member Dianne Feinstein (D-California) and her husband sold off more than a
million dollars of shares in a biotech company five days later, while Oklahoma's Jim Inhofe (R) made a
smaller sale around the same time. Both say their sales were routine.
Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Georgia) attended a Senate Health Committee briefing on the outbreak on
January 24. The very same day, she began offloading stock, dropping between $1.2 and $3.1 million in
shares over the following weeks. The companies whose stock she sold included airlines, retail outlets,
and Chinese tech firm Tencent.
She did, however, invest in cloud technology company Oracle, and Citrix, a teleworking company
whose value has increased by nearly a third last week, as social distancing measures forced more and
more Americans to work from home. All of Loeffler's transactions were made with her husband, Jeff
Sprecher, CEO of the New York Stock Exchange.
Meanwhile, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (New York) and Ilhan Omar (Minnesota) have joined the clamor of
voices demanding punishment. Ocasio-Cortez
described
the sales as
"stomach churning,"
while Omar reached across the aisle to side
with Fox News' Tucker Carlson in calling for Burr's resignation.
"For a public servant it's pretty hard to imagine many things more immoral than doing this,"
Carlson said during a Friday night monolog.
"Richard Burr had critical information that might have
helped the people he is sworn to protect. But he hid that information and helped only himself."
As of Saturday, there are nearly 25,000 cases of Covid-19 in the US, with the death toll heading
towards 300. Now both sides of the political aisle seem united in disgust at the apparent profiteering
of Burr, Loeffler, and Feinstein.
Right-wing news outlet Breitbart
savaged
Burr for voting against the STOCK Act in 2012, a piece of legislation that would have
barred members of Congress from using non-public information to profit on the stock market. At the
same time, a host of Democratic figures - including former presidential candidates
Andrew Yang
and
Kirsten Gillibrand
- weighed in with their own criticism too.
"If you find out about a nation-threatening pandemic and your first move is to adjust your
stock portfolio you should probably not be in a job that serves the public interest,"
Yang
tweeted on Friday.
If you find out about a nation-threatening pandemic and your first move
is to adjust your stock portfolio you should probably not be in a job that serves the public
interest.
Watchdog group Common Cause has filed complaints with the Justice Department, the Securities and
Exchange Commission and the Senate Ethics Committee
"calling for immediate investigations"
of
Burr, Loeffler, Feinstein and Inhofe
"for possible violations of the STOCK Act and insider trading
laws."
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
Qantas Airways: the flag carrier of Australia Qantas Airways Limited is the flag carrier
of Australia and its largest airline by fleet size, international flights and international
destinations
The crisis hit and Qantas sends home 20,000 workers or two thirds of its workforce of
30,000. Go home with no pay . The company management is proud of implementing such
measures to save the Australian icon.
Qantas, once a government owned entity, is a civilisational symbol of strength and prestige.
But with such behaviour, shouldn't we ask the question: what are these Strength and Prestige
built upon?
A group of economists and policy experts on Wednesday called on President Donald Trump to
immediately lift the United States' crippling sanctions against Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, and
other countries, warning that the economic warfare -- in addition to being cruel in itself --
is "feeding the coronavirus epidemic" by hampering nations' capacity to respond.
"This policy is unconscionable and flagrantly against international law. It is imperative
that the U.S. lift these immoral and illegal sanctions to enable Iran and Venezuela to
confront the epidemic as effectively and rapidly as possible," Columbia University professor
Jeffrey Sachs said in a statement just hours after the Trump administration intensified
sanctions against Iran, which has been devastated by COVID-19.
Promising to "smash" Venezuela's government during a "maximum pressure March," Trump has
imposed crushing sanctions that force Venezuela to spend three times as much as
non-sanctioned countries on coronavirus testing kits.
Bernhard when will Chump and his neo-confederates drain the swamp ? "ProPublica reported on
Thursday that republican Senator Burr sold off up to $1.56 million in stock on February 13th,
as he was reassuring the public about coronavirus preparedness. At the time, Burr and the
Intelligence Committee were receiving daily briefings about COVID-19.
Three weeks ago, the Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee privately
warned dozens of donors about the harrowing impact the coronavirus would have on the United
States, while keeping the general public in the dark.
In a secret recording obtained by NPR, North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr is heard giving
attendees of a club luncheon a much different message than most federal government officials,
especially President Trump, were giving the public at the time.
"There's one thing that I can tell you about this," Burr said, "It is much more aggressive
in its transmission than anything that we have seen in recent history." He added, "It is
probably more akin to the 1918 pandemic."
That pandemic claimed more than 600,000 American lives...
@FB I, too, have been disappointed in Tucker Carlson's China bashing. I have thought that
he was the best on FOX News, but now he is getting to be as bad as Sean Hannity.
We may never know the origin of the coronavirus. It is foolish to try and assign blame at
this point.
"... Both financial systems and economies were clearly crashing beginning in early September. Now the elites get to blame all the troubles on a virus ..."
Well, I think there's a certain amount of circumstantial evidence suggesting that the
Coronavirus outbreak may have been an American bioweapon attack against China (and Iran).
But if so, I'm *extremely* skeptical that the perpetrators ever intended or imagined that
it would leak back into the US and inflict the horrific economic and social damage that now
seems unavoidable. How to explain this lack lack of foresight?
The most obvious answer is that they were stupid and incompetent, but here's another
point to consider
In late 2002 there was the outbreak of SARS in China, a related virus but that was far
more deadly and somewhat different in other characteristics. The virus killed hundreds of
Chinese and spread into a few other countries before it was controlled and stamped out. The
impact on the US and Europe was negligible, with just a small scattering of cases and only
a death or two.
So if American biowarfare analysts were considering a Coronavirus attack against China,
isn't it quite possible they would have said to themselves that since SARS never
significantly leaked back into the US or Europe, we'd similarly remain insulated from the
Coronavirus?
Obviously, such an analysis was foolish and mistaken, but would it have seemed so
implausible at the time?
Well, I have only recently heard of a guy named Francis Boyle,a law professor out of the
Univ. Of Illinois. He is apparently an expert on bio-warfare treaties. He claims covid-19 is
manmade,period.
That is a very scary notion,from which most people will flee.
As I have accepted that 9/11 was "the usual suspects," I guess it is definitely possible.
@Ron Unz Maybe, but my take is an engineered market crash. This looks to me like a Nathan
Rothschild sort of trick (according to legend) – propagating fake news about Napoleon's
victory at Waterloo, crashing the markets, then snapping up the whole LSE for a penny to the
pound. If so, you have to admire it, the sheer genius, the psychopathic beauty of it all.
As a bonus, the Reichstag Fire also is an extremely efficient delivery system for the
eugenics payload – a very virulent strain that almost exclusively targets the social
burden (pensioners and already ill) while leaving alone the tax-farm base! Never in the
history of tax-farming have the sheeple been stampeded and fleeced so thoroughly! Bravo!
The US is the customer, with the enormous trade deficit. Trump has been hugely effective
with his tariff's policy in rehoming manufacturing to the US – a process that will
vastly accelerate thanks to the Corona virus outbreak.
I agree that 9-11 stink to high heaven and that PNAC are unmitigated bastards, but this
capitulation to China is balls.
@Ron Unz Stupidity is certainly an American Military essential behavior for promotion and
success in the current US Armed Forces.
But you can't have someone clever enough to create a Recombinant Designer Pathogen and be
in the US Military.
However, the psyops fucks would likely be ready to game the system should a natural
outbreak occur which would be called a Pandemic even when its not and make everyone of our
low quality leaders $hit their pants and go totally crazy. A mild fart with the claim its
poison gas would make the Stock Markets Collapse.
But if so, I'm *extremely* skeptical that the perpetrators ever intended or imagined
that it would leak back into the US and inflict the horrific economic and social damage
that now seems unavoidable. How to explain this lack lack of foresight?
This is the same issue with cyberwar viruses. One can infect computers in Iran, but with
the internet they may be passed onto the entire world, just like rap music.
But if so, I'm *extremely* skeptical that the perpetrators ever intended or imagined
that it would leak back into the US and inflict the horrific economic and social damage
that now seems unavoidable. How to explain this lack lack of foresight?
One word: Trump. Because he could very well lose his reelection bid if the pandemic causes
an economic recession which now seems highly likely given the stock market collapse.
Cui Bono ? The people OPPOSED to Trump, variously referred to as the "Deep State"
or the "National Security State" as described by Gore Vidal in his book which by the way
Julian Assange was holding while being hauled away from the Ecuadorian Embassy.
After Russiagate and Ukrainegate, THEY finally hit the bullseye with Coronagate.
This is a pretty good article. I'll probably link to it.
Some people think this is coming from City of London types. The US pursued a "strategy of
tension" with China that may have allowed third party actors to intervene and get them
fighting each other.
There has been some Bad Blood between British elites and China for awhile now. It's
not clear why.
In this scheme, the US is the patsy, the Oswald to take the blame.
The real gem in the whole article are the observations made by Yang himself:
YANG: That's what freaks me out about the whole thing. What we're doing is saying things
like, "Keep your social distance," and trying to stop the spread that way, which is fine.
But we have shit for data. Like, we don't know what the infection rate is. And so,
there's no reason we would ever be able to give the 'all-clear.' If you don't have any
data, this whole thing is a nightmare that doesn't end. When you close schools, what gives
you the all-clear to say, "OK, open them again"? Nothing. There's no data to compare it to.
This whole thing is a fear-based approach with no end in sight. There's no catalyst to ever
sound the all-clear. This whole thing is so fucked up.
YANG: I think the nature of that guidance has to be different, personally. I think they
need to be transparent about what kind of data we're relying on, to give people a sense of
the timeline. Right now, our sense of the future is so cloudy. And you get the sense the
president went from not taking this seriously to suddenly realizing its seriousness, and now
we're reacting in various ways to slow the spread of the virus. But then what? I would be
clearer as to what the timeline looks like, what data we're going to rely upon, how we're
going to get that data, what steps we're taking to increase testing capacity and just give
people a sense of the future.
We need to know now what the future can look like under different scenarios and then be
presented with what scenario we're in when that time comes. We've been on lockdown
for half a week. Right now, the American people don't have any visibility into whether it's
going to be four more weeks or four more months, and we don't know how those judgments are
going to determined. As president, I would say, "Look, here's the information, here's the
dashboard, here's what we're lining up, here's what we're hoping for, here's how
circumstances could change, and thank you for doing your part -- if you proceed with like
the rest of the country in flattening the curve and keeping things under this level, then
we can look forward to this. " You know, so we could actually have a sense of
accomplishment and purpose.
So here we have it, replicated throughout the whole of the Western world. An open-ended
clamp-down based on fear, with no timeline or road map, and no conditions set on when (or IF)
things will get back to normal.
For now, smells really fishy. Even if DS (Deep State) did not intentionally engineer this
circumstance, they are decisively and very swiftly exploiting it to exert extreme control
over everything .
@antibeast On the contrary, for the deep state Trump is the ideal puppet. Those
who are against Trump belong to the surface state , i.e. Democrats, Leftists in
general and the equally Leftist main stream media. Real policy in the US is only made by the
deep state .
Let me cut through all this speculative noise with Occam's Razor.
The virus is natural. The CCP elites are using it in exactly the same way the USG and EU
elites are. Both financial systems and economies were clearly crashing beginning in early
September. Now the elites get to blame all the troubles on a virus (which isn't actually
killing anyone in interesting numbers). Absent the WuFlu they'd all risk getting strung up
pretty soon. Now instead of being called out for the decade+ of ineptitude that lead to a
collapsing global bubble economy, they get to be praised as heroes that saved everyone from
dying.
Now that I've cleared up all that nonsense about a bioweapon and grand scheme to kneecap
China, I have to say that the "China inevitably taking over" narrative is rather ridiculous,
flu or not. Japan re-ascendant and taking back Manchokou is more believable. As the USA
washes its hands of these messes overseas and pulls back homeward, China is in the worst
position. All its neighbors hate it and will check it. China has been the #1 beneficiary of
Pax Americana this century. Well, Americans are rapidly losing interest in that project.
But if so, I'm * extremely * skeptical that the perpetrators ever intended or
imagined that it would leak back into the US and inflict the horrific economic and social
damage that now seems unavoidable. How to explain this lack lack of foresight?
Dr. Unz,
That's because -- if it indeed is a bio-weapon -- the value of the attack for this
particular case does not lie in the attack itself. The goal is the propaganda that can be
generated from the attack, i.e. the propaganda value . Words in general (and therefore
propaganda) have real-world material power. It affects people's thinking, which in turn
affects people's actions and behavior, which in turn have real-world consequences. Propaganda
of this sort would then utterly damage the world's perception of China, which could then
affect China's economic, diplomatic, and political dealings.
If the infection were contained within China's borders or within isolated parts of East
Asia, then not much of a big fuss could be made about it. The infection needs to spread for
it to have propaganda value. Note that Covid-19 has a very low fatality rate compared to SARS
or other recent infection outbreaks. Yet it is very infectious (meaning, many people getting
infected / high rate of infection). Covid-19 is a virus that is very infectious BUT has a low
fatality rate -- exactly the kind of virus you want if you wanted something to spread.
Also, the elites are willing to incur losses in the short-run. They'll weather whatever
short-run losses just fine, and they'll make up for it in other ways. The real people that
will get hit economically in a permanent way are the low-income, the middle-class, and even
the upper middle-class. The oligarchs won't.
What they're really concerned about is the long-run, and that's smart on them. They'll
have real losses in the long-run if China completes its rise. China is set to complete its
overall rise (not on everything, but just overall) in the probably the next 5 to 10 years.
Much of the indicators for this has been covered by that Godfree guy and by others. So
something must be done to stop it.
@Trinity And don't forget to add that such a magical cure – should it be created
– would become weaponized to exclude the usual suspects (Iran, Syria,
Taliban-Afghanistan, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, Iraq, possibly war-ravaged Libya and who
knows, even impoverished shee-thole nations like Haiti and African countries) from having
access to it. Also include the offer by Trump to German firm CureVac to move its Covid-19
vaccine research operations to the US so the vaccine could be used exclusively for Americans.
After Russiagate and Ukrainegate, THEY finally hit the bullseye with Coronagate.
And Coronagate contains just about as much reality as those other "gates" – the
experience of gateology tell us that once the story is up and runing,it does not matter, if
the back story resembles anything in the real world.
The Chinese at first might really have believed that they were under a bioweapons attack.
They would have kept it secret at first, not to further the panic.
After they had inflicted tremendous damage on their own economy they could not confess that
they had been taken in by a panic. So, they play along with the story that there really is a
dangerous virus around.
This way, they force the same debilitating countermessures on western economies. While they
can overcome the blow, European economies are so weak by now that they will fold. Which
leaves China even gaining from their gambit.
As for the US, it has long been established that the anti trumpers will stop at nothing
and blow their country to pieces ten times over, if it only carried a minimal chance of
hurting Trump.
It is China and the Zionists who will be cashing in on this. A hell of a combination.
@FlubberT his passage you have plagiarized is commonly misattributed to Cicero,
but it was penned by Taylor Caldwell in her 1965 work A Pillar of Iron , a fictional
novel about the Roman orator.
A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason
from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and he carries his
banners openly against the city. But the traitor moves among those within the gates freely,
his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government
itself. For the traitor appears no traitor; he speaks in the accents familiar to his
victims, and he wears their face and their garments, and he appeals to the baseness that
lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation; he works secretly and
unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a city; he infects the body politic so
that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to be feared.
-- Taylor Caldwell, A Pillar of Iron (1965) ch. 56
So if American biowarfare analysts were considering a Coronavirus attack against China,
isn't it quite possible they would have said to themselves that since SARS never
significantly leaked back into the US or Europe, we'd similarly remain insulated from the
Coronavirus?
The SARS virus may not be an apt comparison for the simple reason that it is far too
deadly apparently [I'm not a virus expert] viruses that kill a lot aren't successful because
the only way they can reproduce is through a host
Viruses live on a delicate balance, don't they? They have to be able to thrive without
killing their host.
Right. The ones that kill off their host quickly will disappear. With the SARS virus,
it's no surprise that killing 10 percent of its host, it wasn't able to establish itself
as a pandemic virus on this planet.
Are there any signs that this coronavirus will kill itself?
This one has a lower pathogenicity. The lower its virulence, the more likely it'll
become part of an endemic, part of a seasonal event. That's one of the big things that's
going to be a worry.
The US cannot win a trade war with China. It cannot win a nuclear war. It cannot
win a conventional land war. Yet from the neocon perspective it needs some kind of war ASAP
before China grows too strong.
Of course those are plain facts that are clear to thinking people very few of which will
be commenting on this particular website I notice the yowls of protest are already starting
on this thread brace for many more
Strategic analysts agree that the necessary prelude to ramped up US-vs.-China warfare
would be a decoupling of the US and Chinese economies. That decoupling is happening now,
thanks to coronavirus.
True again, and an important point I was surprised to see the often-sensible Tucker
Carlson going into full China bashing today calling exactly for this kind of economic
decoupling from China and encouraging Trump in his belligerent tone towards China
the Chinese authorities suppression of the initial medical analysis of the outbreak.
Total BS
These agit-prop China-bashing stories have been totally discredited by the great results
the Chinese have achieved very effective and very efficient let's see now how the US copes
[why do I have the feeling it won't be nearly as smooth ?]
"So the United States is run by lunatics, by psychopaths who are entirely capable of
launching World War 3 by way of a biological warfare attack on China and Iran, with the
Iran component presumably led by Israel. That's the most likely explanation for what we're
seeing."
This is the kind of rot Press TV publishes.
The US is run by lunatics who are absolutely devoid of empathy for anyone else, unless
it's their fellow war mongers or their colonial master, Israel.
The list of false flags the ruling US clique have used–to accomplish their
goals–go back to the Spanish-American war and have only gotten bloodier and more
sophisticated.
Take this excerpt from the PNAC declaration:
And advanced forms of biological warfare that can target specific genotypes may
transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool" (p.
60).
Don't know about UNZ readers, but creating bio-weapons that target specific genotypes
sounds like what took place in China, then Iran, where the virus mutated to target
Persians.
If you go to the PNAC doc and read the names of the directors, staff and signatories, it
reads like a Bar Mitzah guest list, that even has our old friend, former Pentagon
comptroller Rabbi Dov S. Zakheim listed. Wonder if the good Rabbi ever found those missing
Pentagon trillions?
The Israeli masterminded 9/11 false flag has been almost consecrated–like the
holocaust–and anyone who dares to question the official lies, stands to lose their
jobs, stature and be endlessly vilified for asking historical questions. Punitive
measures that Mr. Barrett has first-hand knowledge of.
Thank you Kevin Barrett for another informative article. Also thank you to UNZ for his
support!
I just have one simple comment for both of you. I love the other fat man and I think his last
name is something like Pimpeo! He expanded the US sanctions against Iran to include the
antiviral medications this past Tuesday! He justified his action to furthering "extreme
pressure" on Iranians and then he said the Iranian government is the corona virus in the
region! Meaning it has to be exterminated! Isn't Mr Pimpeo a real good person?
You may want to add the Pimpeo's action against the Iranians to the list of your
justifications that this virus was a man made virus and spread for evil reasons! Perhaps you
are giving the stupid planners and executioner of the plan more credit than they deserve by
saying that this plan may eventually save the western imperialism! As you said a bunch of
inept and incompetent people planned and executed the spread of this virus but it blew up in
their faces beyond their imagination. They just didn't realize that this virus can walk,
spread and ultimately not discriminating against anyone, weak and strong or rich and poor!
" I spent most of 2004 through 2006 blaming Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld for
9/11.
With 2020 hindsight I can now see that I should have interpreted 9/11 as a likely false
flag immediately, based on cui bono."
Better late than never. To anybody following that event on television back then, it should
have already been obvious by the end of that same day that this was a professionally planned
operation, based on the following clues:
• As the event was still unfolding, Ehud Barak was at BBC headquarters to provide the
desired narrative;
• George W. Bush was not immediately whisked away from elementary school by his
security agents.
• Symmetrical destruction of twin towers was inconsistent with consequences from a
plane impact;
• Third tower collapsed rapidly for no apparent or plausible reason except a
controlled demolition;
• Implausibility of emerging story involving coordinated Muslim hijackings with box
cutter blades;
• Repetitive (scripted) "New Pearl Harbor " mantra by newscasters preceded by
movie all summer long.
And a few weeks later it should have been obvious that the continuing molten metal and
bedrock at ground-zero was a lingering effect of the nuclear detonations below the three
buildings that precipitated their collapse. Even after so many years, some critics have still
been reluctant to acknowledge this particularly hideous aspect of the operation.
" The question of whether the virus is naturally evolved or man-made is still
open. "
A month ago Professor Boyle at University of Illinois publicly reported the findings from
the scientific literature, that the virus had obviously been manipulated to provide "gain of
function" properties, in other words, weaponized. In the meantime, virtually nobody in
alternative media believes the official story purporting that the virus evolved naturally
from animals.
However, had the virus been released intentionally during the Wuhan military games prior
to Halloween, then the mass epidemic effects would definitely have already been conspicuously
apparent by Thanksgiving, in late November, due to the rapid exponential infection rates in
such a huge metropolis, instead of at least a month later, toward the end of the year. So the
specific conspiratorial conjecture presented here – virus released in late October to
then cause maximum damage three months later while remaining exclusively constrained within
China– is already necessarily flawed and therefore implausible.
Since there has been so much talk over the past years, for instance by Alex Jones, of
plans to use the need to protect a population against a biological weapons attack as a
convenient pretext for governments to curtail everyone's freedoms and thereby condition
people to accept such measures, this now evolving scenario was surely in the back of many
people's minds. With such contingencies already in place, it is easy to presume that, once an
accidental release had actually occurred, those who advocated such a new type of
authoritarianism would not miss the opportunity to exploit the crisis in an attempt to shape
future events accordingly.
Yet this new event can also be effectively harnessed by those who oppose the many adverse
manifestations of " Globalism " (open borders facilitating mass migration, labor
arbitrage through outsourcing, interdependent international supply chains, authoritarian
government, curtailing public criticism through imposed censorship, disrupting social
cohesion, etc.), so that type of endeavor to resist these globalist trends would be a
worthwhile focus.
The big players, even as they are fighting one another, will agree that the current outbreak
is an excellent opportunity to test a few things and to increase their control over their
respective populations. Whether the virus came from a bat or a lab, they will take note, but
in the end it matters little as they are all engaged in the same neverending campaign of
theft and murder.
In the early 2000s, Kevin Ryan was the site manager at Environmental Health Laboraties. On
November 11, 2004, he wrote directly to Frank Gayle, the director of NIST's Twin Towers
investigation. The following week, he was fired. This is his story.
2.3 TRillion Dollars Missing from DOD Day before 9/11/ 2001
SEPTEMBER 10, 2001 Defense Business Practices
Secretary Rumsfeld and other officials talked with reporters about the need to refine the
Defense Department's business practices. An opening ceremony will kick off Acquisition
and Logistics Excellence Week.
Possibly the virus is an engineered product, I don't know, that is up to those with
bio-molecular expertise and experience. But released on purpose? A stretch to be sure given
the all too predictable consequences.
Engineered bat virus stirs debate over risky research
An experiment that created a hybrid version of a bat coronavirus -- one related to the
virus that causes SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) -- has triggered renewed debate
over whether engineering lab variants of viruses with possible pandemic potential is worth
the risks.
Looks like someone has been working behind your back.
Does anyone truly think that the nation that dropped multiple thousands of tons of Napalm
& Agent Orange on Vietnamese peasants, used Iraq for a weapons testing ground in 1991 and
ever since 2003, especially in Fallujah, where we murdered wholesale anyone left in town
after the Army brass told them to vamoose, then brought in bulldozers to bury the
evidence.
And the nation that is so tough, that it uses pimply-faced kids, sitting in an AC bunker
9,000 miles away and commands them to sic Hellfire missiles onto weddings, apartments,
mosques, hospitals and markets, do you really think that nation would stoop so low as to use
bio-weapons?
All this butchery is affecting someone, like our vets, whose conscience wouldn't shut
up, so over 60,000 committed suicide between 2008-2017
@AnonFromBeijing There is a theory that Christianity in the west has been co opted by the
Jews. Basically it means Christians who got twisted into serving jewish/zionist interests.
This process started as early as the start of the 20th century.
It is why you have 45% of the US population who consider Israel/ Jerusalem to be holy
land. They are evangelicals. They are the ones who put bush Jr and trump into the white
house.
I personally would consider every single war since 2000 has been for israels benefit,
maybe not wholely, but at least half.
Well, I think I'll take the liberty of republishing portions of a couple of my recent
comments from other threads for those who haven't seen them:
here's my analogy
Suppose two neighbors are feuding, and one of them has a psychopathic teenage son, who
sneaks out late at night and starts an arson fire next door to "teach them a lesson."
But the victimized family smells smoke, wakes up, and using heroic effort puts the fire
out with only fairly minor damage.
Meanwhile, the fire spreads back to the teenager's own house, and since the family is
too lazy and incompetent to bother doing anything, the house catches on fire and burns to
the ground, killing several relatives and leaving everyone homeless.
Under such a scenario, wouldn't it be more sensible for the attacked family to just
quietly gloat a little and maybe offer condolences rather than to plot further
vengeance?
If this was a bioweapon released by the Us. The US would most certainly have a
cure.
Well, that would make perfect sense unless elements of the American national security
establishment were criminal, crazy, and totally incompetent. However, they ARE criminal,
crazy, and totally incompetent.
Let's focus on an important point about which I think we can all now agree
According to official US government estimates published in the NYT, it's expected that
up to 1.7 million Americans will die from the Coronavirus. Actually, the true figure may be
far higher since they estimate that something like 200 million Americans will become
infected, and 200 million infections would probably lead to many millions of deaths.
Over the last couple of months, China locked down its entire country in quarantine and
stamped out the disease. South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan took immediate action to avert the
disaster, and have successfully avoided substantial fatalities.
Meanwhile, during the same period the American government was so incredibly stupid,
crazy, and incompetent that it did absolutely nothing, meaning that millions of Americans
may quite possibly die as a consequence.
So everyone can agree that the American government is so stupid, crazy, and incompetent
that millions of Americans may soon die.
Therefore, isn't it plausible that elements of a government so stupid, crazy, and
incompetent as to cause the deaths of millions of Americans might also be so stupid, crazy,
and incompetent as to have deployed a deadly bioweapon against China (and Iran)?
@Chroniccough I strongly recommend the work of Martin Armstrong. He forecast this thing 3
years ago – 10 March 2020. Here is his blog. He is a very wealthy man and is doing this
as a public service. I was a cynic to start with.
He is forecasting that after this drop, there will be a rise to a higher level than ever
before. He also forecast the current rise in the USD. Everyone else – especially in the
commentary in blogs such as this one – has been suggesting that the end of the dollar
was neigh.
Here is his letter today to Trump. He has advised heads of state for 40 years. He believes
Trump is receiving bad advice.
@Anonymous "I originally thought the Coronavirus was a bioweapon targeted against China.
But that doesn't make sense now that the virus has gone global and has hit US shores. "
Your reservations seem to be based on an assumption of competence of the perpetrators.
Worth looking at this thread by Swiss Propaganda Research which links to the recently
published data from Italy (amongst many other things) : https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/
Almost everyone who has died out there had at least one cause of comorbidity. They were
majoritively old and ill.
I've been critical of OffGuardian's line on the matter of the virus (i.e. that COVID response
is basically exaggerated beyond all proportion and is best considered as driven by media hype
and an undisclosed agenda) , but am now taking it seriously, as it appears to be at least
partially backed up by the Italian ISS data. Hat tip to them.
It took us years to put the 9/11 pieces together and realize the gargantuan Zionist
scam
When my mother in London phoned me to tell me that "something was happening in New York",
I got to see on TV the second building being hit. Later, when I saw huge chunks of matter
flying heavenwards, I realised that it was a controlled-demolition.
I studied civil engineering 50 years ago. Maybe they no longer teach engineers the Laws of
Motion of Isaac Newton. I don't know. But the silence by the engineering profession has been
deafening my ears ever since.
There is not need to analyze anything. The videos give the game away to any
scientifically-educated person.
@Malcolms_brother And pray tell, how the oligarchs will/or have escaped being infected?
Have they and their progeny been secretly vaccinated? With all flights being cancelled, how
are they going to bolt to their burrows.
The only way to tell is check on the fatality rate among the super rich in the days to come.
@Ron Unz The 200 million infection figure for the U.S. that you suggest is hyper-octane
hyperbole. Not sure where you got that number from or how. Whatever the original source,
that's clearly propaganda coming from them.
You do realize 200 mil would be nearly two-thirds of the U.S. population, no? The U.S.
population is 330 mil. The Spanish Flu never infected that many people, nor Swine Flu, nor
Bird Flu, NOR the SEASONAL FLU itself, nor this, nor that and so on and so forth.
I'd imagine the infection at it's very highest could be in the low single-digit millions,
but unlikely.
Also, the 5k to 5 mil deaths cited by Steve Sailer is also nonsense. Anything of such a
wide range tells you that the original person who came up with it really has no clue and is
just pulling a figure out of his backside.
If 5 mil deaths, that would mean more than 166 mil infected (166,666,666 to be more
exact), given a 3% fatality rate. That's way more than one-third of the U.S. population.
5k deaths is way more reasonable and more likely. That would mean 166,666 infections in
the U.S.
Let's take a look at the media of Israel. It will be interesting to see how many Jews die
– if any. Let's not forget that the Israelis are past masters at manipulating their
casualties of war and conflict.
To me, the number of "serious" cases is remarkably low – especially when compared to
Iran. I guess it is because Iranian doctors are so bad. /sarc
Jump of 96 sick people over day earlier, partially due to increase in number of tests
given; most patients doing well, 6 remain in serious condition
@AnonStarter When an author is trying to convert the public to what is very much a
minority view (in this post that a Deep State cabal is trying to start WW3 with a bioweapons
attack on China), his readers have a reasonable expectation that his education and
achievements or other qualifications validating his heterodox views will not be concealed by
use of a pseudonym, and indeed Barrett did not use one.
I was not the one who said Barrett is held in such low regard by public opinion that it is
counter productive for him to use his own name, and he is not worth neutralising even by
something that would attract little attention such as fraudulent IRS tax audit, framing for
having illegal pornography, wrongly diagnosed as a danger to himself and others or civil
suits of the type that silenced the Sandy Hook Truthers. You did, and you said that Barrett
lost his credibility by having already gone public under his own name as a 9/11 Truther
critical of Israel. I suggested that as someone unknown under his own name you could step up
and prevent WW3, but for the fact that your resume was far less impressive than Doctor
Barrett's.
advanced forms of biological warfare that can target specific genotypes may transform
biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool
Thanks for digging that up [from page 60 of the Project for the New American Century think
tank's 90-page report Rebuilding America's Defenses, which is summarized at the link you
posted ]
Although it may take several decades for the process of transformation to unfold, in
time, the art of warfare on air, land, and sea will be vastly different than it is today,
and 'combat' likely will take place in new dimensions: in space, 'cyber-space,' and perhaps
the world of microbes.
Nobody can look at this and say this isn't the work of madmen but fast-forward twenty
years since that insane screed was published, and those policies embarked upon, and where is
the US now ?
Losing badly on every single front, that's where just in the last several days the US
military has had to flee from some of their bases in Iraq, due to being rocketed by
increasingly hostile anti-occupation groups Afghanistan is a lost cause and the US has agreed
to a peace deal with the Taliban that amounts to the same kind of 'peace with honor'
capitulation as Nixon sought in Vietnam
The US military might which these neocon crazies assumed would reign supreme, has been
shown to be a paper tiger cowed and humiliated by an Iranian missile attack on a US military
base in Iraq in January that produced dozens of casualties
The US project for regime change in Syria has been thoroughly defeated its Saudi allies
are getting completely routed in Yemen Libya is completely out of reach now there is not a
single conflict that the US has started in the last twenty years that it is not completely
defeated [only Israel hangs on to its brutal apartheid occupied territory, but for how much
longer ?]
The dream of 'dominating' space relies on Russian rocket engines to put US spy sats and
other vital national security payloads into orbit because the US is incapable of producing
such technology on its own the so-called 'missile defense' system has proved a complete
papier-mâché joke, as North Korean missiles fly over the heads of dozens of
'missile defense' ships in the Sea of Japan
Didn't really take all that long for this grandiose wishcasting by the neocons to go up in
a puff of smoke, now did it talk about delusional
Of course much of this utter failure was completely predictable at the time and many did
forecast exactly such an unraveling of this
insane scheme
Gabriel Kolko, research professor emeritus at York University and author of Another
Century of War? (The New Press, 2002), in his article published in CounterPunch, and
William Rivers Pitt, in Truthout, respectively, argued that the PNAC's goals of military
hegemony exaggerated what the military can accomplish, that they failed to recognize 'the
limits of US power'
@Anonymous Or China discovered a new strain of Corona virus, which is nothing special
because it's a common flu virus which is always mutating, and they weaponized the idea
instead of he virus. They know in any given flu season a large percent of people will get a
Corona virus, which a test can pick up on, so if they do more
Testing, it will appear Cassie's are going up. They decide to put on a huge show with them
shutting down cities and building hospitals at lightning speed. This Fuels media hysteria,
not just in China, but globally. Iran eventually joins China and starts their own media storm
about Corona, maybe give some politicians and clerics an early retirement, but make sure the
news coming out is pure doom. Now the fear factor is getting real, and the media is non stop
Corona doom, drawing in everyone, right wing left wing and feeding on its own hysteria.
Italy, another global player who is friendly with China, starts reporting pandemonium. Never
mind the fact that average age of people dying is 80 and 99% had preexisting illness or
disease. Americans are panicking as usual, and in the process destroying their economy.
China/Iran/Russia sit back and laugh as America descends into self induced anarchy
@Quintus The U.S. is promoting generic chloroquine to fight WUHAN-19 virus. (1)
President Donald Trump promoted the use of the anti-malaria drug chloroquine at the
White House on Thursday, the purpose of which is to treat people infected with the
coronavirus.
"We're going to be able to make that drug available almost immediately," Trump said at
the White House press briefing on Thursday.
.
FDA commissioner Stephen Hahn said that under the president's direction he would move
quickly for a chloroquine clinical trial to test its ability to treat the coronavirus.
In the meantime, doctors can ask for experimental drugs to use to treat their patients
as part of a "compassionate use" program.
Normally 'experimental drugs' are cost prohibitive. However in this case, chloroquine is a
generic already used to fight malaria.
Now all Trump has to do is make sure GlobalistPharma is kept at bay while single drug
therapy is tried. No doubt the anti-Citizen CorporateLeft backing Quid Pro Joe will only want
to test a 'cocktail' that includes at least one high cost component.
, obvious, yet there are other elements of ambition. As you might well know, 2008 was no
less engineered. Again catering to the surplus US population, the wizardy might stick, to the
elites in other power centers of the world though, all this hoaxing looks misery.
Now for China, or Russia, all significant players, none would hold back and answers must
be in the make. All players know each other´s unlimited ambitions. Nothing new @any of
them. To our knowledge, there is no single serious plan to deploy technology, science and
social and political harnessing, economic sustainability, global population quality and
sustainable numbers tuning into a "vision" other then washed out models, conflictive stances,
base psychology. The ambition to play God, is not the same as assuming the responsibility of
the Gods.
To the credit of Putin and Xi, their public figures at the least look and feel more
consistent and reposed. The American elites, pulling out all tricks, pandering about look
ridiculous to the rest of the world. Covid-19 cannot change that. Re-assessing the accounting
is just not credible any longer. Existing historical models are inadequate, will allow for a
few more loops maybe, but then, either new lines of thought or bust.
The 200 million infection figure for the U.S. that you suggest is hyper-octane
hyperbole. Not sure where you got that number from or how. Whatever the original source,
that's clearly propaganda coming from them You do realize 200 mil would be nearly
two-thirds of the U.S. population, no?
Well, what do I know? I'm not a professional epidemiologist.
But the estimate of something like 200 million infected Americans came from an official
government CDC report that was published in my morning NYT. Right around then, Trump and all
the politicians in DC got all agitated and began proposing massive national measures.
The British government estimated that 60-70% of their own population would end up getting
infected, and the German government said pretty much the same thing. So the US CDC estimates
were hardly extreme outliers.
A highly contagious disease which is spread for 1-2 weeks before the illness becomes
apparent and to which no one has any immunity tends to increase exponentially. Someone
claimed that the doubling-time of Coronavirus infections in the US was around five days. So
what would stop 200 million people from getting infected?
@Sean Since when has Empire cared about how obvious they are? There is a long list of
wars, happy accidents murders and heart attacks where they offer the most transparent excuse
and ignore the tsunami of questions and accusations from the annoying populace. Their
contempt for Joe citizen has never been more apparent.
Sorry! Forgot to mention twofresh news items: 1. a French research group led by Didier
Roault issued an invitation to health professionals only to participate in testing the
anti-malaria agent hydroxichloroquine against corona virus because France and the Chinese
among others have found it very effective in preventing that new corona virus parasitic
infection. 2. The U.S. government offered $1 billion for control of Germany's top vaccine
manufacturer with the stipulation that all rights to its prospective cornna remedy would go
to the United State only. Smelling an "offer it couldn't refuse" the company alerted the
German government, which replaced the CEO who had been invited to the White House and said
the company was not for sale. It said any vaccine it makes would be for the whole world, not
for just one country.
So, there's aconnection between malaria drug develpment, a U.S. Army specialty since 1963,
and the corona virus vaccine race. Both malaria and corona come from blood parasites,
although the former is mosquito-borne. Looks now like the same class of drugs can also kill
two birds with one shot. Coincidence?
@Ron Unz -1- The most likely explanation is still natural. If a simple malaria drug
chloroquine is effective, that strongly suggests that WUHAN-19 is not a weaponized virus.
The other likely scenarios are:
-2- Escape from the Wuhan viral lab. Poorly paid workers need money for big holidays. If
an employee was likely to do something foolish, it is logical & unsurprising that the
WUHAN-19 escape would align with a holiday spending need.
-3- Indiscriminate Mass Attack on multiple nations -- U.S., China, etc..
. -3a- Erdogan dislikes both the U.S. & China. Plus he is crazy enough to infect the
world.
. -3b- Sociopath Khameni also has no restraint and would be willing to exterminate all life
on the planet.
. -3c- Non-State terrorist group, such as Islamic Jihad or Islamic State.
-4- Intentional Chinese false flag to blame the U.S.
. Far fetched, but still vastly more likely than the 0% chance of a U.S. attack. WUHAN-19
would have guaranteed world wide spread while allowing the Chinese government to appear to be
taking action.
_____
There is no plausible reason to believe the Trump administration ordered this attack.
The U.S. Trade Negotiating Team lead by Robert E. Lighthizer has been beating the helpless
Chinese totally senseless on every front. No one attacks a loser. The loser is already losing
.
A high spread choice, such as WUHAN-19 makes no sense. Any U.S. attack would have selected
something more easily contained in China.
If you believe that an Obama appointed traitor did this to over throw Trump, that should
be classified as an anti-U.S. attack even if the material was illicitly & treasonously
obtained from a U.S. facility.
Are you aware of the religious group/cult from China called the Falun Gong? They were
(past tense) a group of mutually-supporting, silently-conspiring Han Chinese who almost never
spoke of their affiliation with their "cult".
That they had their own specific religious practices was never a problem. If they had
stayed simply a religion, they would have been left alone.
But, it was noticed by wider Chinese society that they tended to collude with other Falun
Gong religious practitioners, and to be slowly and quietly placing their members into
influential and sometimes even powerful positions in wider Chinese society. Everything from
governments (local, provincial and even national), the educational system, the media, the
military, and industry and finance.
Of course, maybe the media and educational infiltration would not have gotten very far
given the Chinese "censors" and the . . . "thought regulators", but the attempt to infiltrate
and hijack society was clearly being made. The Falun Gong conspiracy had been patiently
operating in the shadows for quite a long time.
This finally incited alarm and fury among the masses and the leadership. The Chinese state
(through-out history) has always had strong safeguards against alien/foreign infiltration,
apart from the innate paranoia and suspicions of the people themselves.
So the PRC government swung into action , banning Falun Gong, arresting many
members at all levels (all the way to the National), throwing a huge number (a VERY huge
number, including families, it is said) into "re-education camps".
They forced, by various means (use your imagination), members of the group to turn each
other in. Every Falun Gong sympathizer was uncovered and stripped of influence. Teachers
pointed out officials, who pointed out businessmen, who denounced Party members, who turned
in PLA officers. An unknown number of executions followed, and rather more consigned to the
prison camps.
Falun Gong influence was thoroughly purged from Chinese life.
And that, IMHO, is the source of much of the championing of Falun Gong (some of whom
escaped) by the Western MSM, and its owners and controllers.
After all, if China can purge and then destroy people clearly their own
(full-blooded Chinese, albeit engaged in conspiracy against society), how could those very
clearly alien manage to subvert and manipulate the Chinese into being their slaves? And
how could China be destroyed from within?
The U.S. government offered $1 billion for control of Germany's top vaccine manufacturer
with the stipulation that all rights to its prospective cornna remedy would go to the
United State only.
This Fake Stream Media [FSM] lie was already thoroughly debunked days ago. (1)
German newspaper claiming that President Donald Trump wanted to secure exclusive
American access to a coronavirus vaccine has proven to be false, but only after the story
was repeated and spread by mainstream media outlets including Reuters, The Guardian, and
Business Insider.
Reuters later stealth-edited its story to incorporate official statements denying the
original newspaper report. But a New York Times journalist had already shared the Reuters
article before it was altered. An MSNBC producer also shared the story.
German media deceivers are no different than than the rest of the FSM. DW=CNN
@refl China/Iran weaponized common flu simply by putting on a great show. Shuttering
cities, building hospitals at lightning pace, imposing draconian travel bans and leaking
questionable videos. Iran does the same and sends some clerics and politicians to early
retirement. Max doom from their media, feeds into ours. Left or right, it's bipartisan fear.
Corona is one of the more common flu viruses, thousands get it every year, so slowly ramping
up testing specifically for that virus will inevitably lead to a perceived exponential spike
especially if you never compare it to other flues this year or last. Anyway, America destroys
their economy in the panic.
Your elite and your people deserve each other, just like master and slaves deserve each
other
LOL you're way too intelligent for this website, friend you will get bored here very
quickly I predict
Jew & Israel, have to serve the Anglo since Zionist have no backups no
hidings, some times function as scapegoats and get given up or set up by the Anglo to ease
the angry of common white or other elite.
That's pretty much it you will find plenty of these 'common white' here on this website
they're entire existence revolves around blaming the wrong people for their misery mostly
'commies' and Jews
'The public must be put in its place so that each of us may live free of the trampling
and roar of the bewildered herd.'
–Walter Lippman, Society in its Place
'You have to control people by control of beliefs and attitudes' [when the people] are
spectators not participants, then you'll have a properly functioning democracy the idea is
to try to control everyone they want to create an uninformed electorate which will make
irrational choices often against their own interests
–Noam Chomsky
So you see what has happened here is that the smart people [those with the intelligence
and the money and power] have basically created a completely fantastic parallel universe that
has nothing to do with reality [commies killed a gazillion people] that very effectively
steers the sheeple right into the box of rampant ignorance that the elite want them to
inhabit
The sheeple of course are weak-minded, unable to think for themselves, and simply
gravitate to easy solutions and scapegoats pre-manufactured for them by the intelligentsia ie
blame others, go and vent in this direction just don't blame us, your rulers, who are
the real source of your misery LOL
It is amazingly effective you will find on this very website proof of this at least a
thousand times a day it's like unruly children who are given toys on which they can take out
their frustrations, while the parents go about their business in peace and quiet
The ability of the biowarfare or biotec scientists to manipulate DNA or RNA to achieve a
particular result either in disease or ethnocentric targeting is wildly overestimated in the
press and otherwise.
It is hyped by Biowarfare "Experts" in governments seeking funding and in biotec by
scientists trying to IPO or sell themselves to big-pharma.
The ability of big pharma to do this is non-exisitent as they are monopolist bankers and
never invent anything despite the enourmos R&D budgets.
That an existing disease and possible candidate for biowarfare, could escape from the new
Wuhan lab, (certified 2015 and the only level 4 lab in China) is far more plausible, given
Chinese attitudes towards quality control rules and regulations.
Iran's intense interaction with China because of the sanctions over the past years has
facilitated spread through increased travel between Wuhan and Quom.
Some of the same Chinese trade facilatators traveled to Italy negotiating the belt and
road, which is a comedy heading to a unfortunate end despite however much Panda boy pays Pepe
to shill for him.
I don't see any plausible link to Israel here, but Bill Gates is mighty strange.
White Europeans have the dubious distinction of being hated and despised most
passionately by jews and this is why powerful jewish forces have been deliberately flooding
every single historic White European nation on Earth with millions of non-white aliens from
the third world.
This is the 'Great Replacement' agenda.
So the influx of millions of desperate folks willing to work for peanuts and thus drive
down the wages of ordinary Americans and Europeans in the turbo-capitalist system is not due
to any desire to profit on our labor but is simply motivated by the hate of Jews towards
whites ?
You decide if that passes even the most basic human logic ?
And these same indoctrinated fools, their heads filled with koolaid about the glory of
capitalism will stand up and actually defend the right of billionaires to just keep on
fleecing everybody
You will also see them railing most passionately against the 'Chicoms' even as China's
people continue to ascend to ever greater heights of prosperity, while their own beloved,
capitalism buries them ever deeper into bondage
Again, you decide whether these 'highly intelligent' white folks are shooting at the right
target LOL
@antibeast Too many of us assume these psychopaths in charge of our Idiocracy are
actually wise, knowledgeable and even honorable (mostly thanks to the loudest megaphone the
same psychopaths own and control to spread disinformation)
Psychopaths don't think that way – they are kind of like HIV in how they act
9-11 and Coronavirus is exactly something they would do – especially because it
seems anti-intuitive.
The same way blaming their victims for their crimes does – and that's why psychopaths
use these tricks to manage us.
Normal people find such behavior hard to believe – and that is exactly why
psychopaths and psychopathic 'cultures' use them.
It's all about confusing their victims before they try to destroy them completely.
it's a 100% predatory mindframe.
And don't forget most of these 'wealthy' (in money only perhaps) people got their wealth from
their equally dumb and clueless parents whose only skill also is kissing ass to their wealthy
parents so to inherit the ill-gotten $$.
After a few generation of such degenerated incompetent people in power – you end up
where we are now – Trump as a ruler of world's biggest idiocracy ever
jamesfetzer.org :"The only pandemic in
America is that of unbridled fear and a total lack of intelligent thought" By Gary D.Burnett
:
"Can the common flu cause people in America and worldwide to lose their minds and their
ability to think?Apparently that is the case , as Americans have gone insane over a monster
created in thin air called Coronavirus . I have anticpated a scenario such as this, and
written about it for a decade or more , but the response by the people of this country is
more ridiculous than even I could have imagined It is my belief that the regular flu is being
used as a cover for this fake virus and will serve to hide fault of a State-created economic
collapse Trump and his entourage are actually preparing the sheep for ongoing martial law."
M. Unz's analogy to domestic arson is appealing but inaccurate in this case. What we have
here is an act subject to two institutionalized legal processes: international criminal law
and state responsibility for internationally wrongful acts. These are two complementary means
of righting wrongs but they don't provide for either vengeance or gloating.
Since use of COVID-19 is an undeclared act of war, the international criminal law at issue
is that governing crimes against peace:
This is in a late stage of development, but formal acceptance of the code doesn't matter
because for the gravest crimes, the principle is, you should know better.
Now another way to handle CIA's germ warfare is to treat it as an internationally wrongful
act in breach of jus cogens. This provides for restitution, reparations, satisfaction, and
compensation with interest for the consequences of CIA use of COVID-19. The rules are
different, but they articulate with international criminal law because satisfaction may
involve prosecution of designated suspects (Robert Gates, Hayden, Haspel, etc.) The procedure
is analogous in function to domestic tort law.
M. Unz's analogy to domestic arson is appealing but inaccurate in this case Since use of
COVID-19 is an undeclared act of war, the international criminal law at issue is that
governing crimes against peace: Now another way to handle CIA's germ warfare is to treat it
as an internationally wrongful act in breach of jus cogens. This provides for restitution,
reparations, satisfaction, and compensation with interest for the consequences of CIA use
of COVID-19.
Well, first of all there's no solid evidence that the Coronavirus outbreak was a
biowarfare attack, and there may never be
But let's suppose a case is somehow made and reasonably proven. The consequences will have
been trillions of dollars of damage to the American economy, hundreds of millions of
Americans severely inconvenienced or financially damaged, and (if we're lucky!) maybe only
tens of thousands of American deaths. This would quite possibly be one of the worst national
disasters in our entire history.
If it were reasonably proven that certain individuals in the CIA or some other government
agency were responsible, do you think there would be enough pieces left of their bodies to
consider applying "jus cogens" or anything else??!!
Whether the virus was 'planned' (ie created) or not, it can be used for all sorts of
things:
1) Should it mutate, or, as it is, simply be handled completely incompetently, it may be
used to push global population down closer to the five hundred million 'sustainable' figure
which has long been touted by some powerful people and their hangers on.
2) To break the US economically by 'shutting everything down', and to thereby cause the
'Fall of Capitalism' (paralleling Communism's 'fall' thirty years ago), so that the two wings
of this manufactured and broadly controlled Hegelian Dialectic which has been at play since
1776 and 1789 can be pushed forward towards final 'synthesis' in global Multi-Culturalism,
and the establishment of a long sought after world state/empire.
[Not to worry, 'true believers' in Capitalism, as just as with Communism's purported
demise decades ago, there will still be gigantic chunks of Capitalism around, and probably
(just as now) it will remain in the superior position vis-a-vis the remnants of Communism,
the way it always has been. True believers in Communism will be allowed and encouraged to
think they are responsible for Capitalism's purported 'fall' as a consolation for thirty
years ago.]
3) Trump and Xi, as ultimately likely controlled opposition of each other, could very well
be used to steer the US/UK and China/Russia into WWIII. The almost cartoon like insistence of
Trump saying 'Chinese flu' of late could be a very small part of that at the moment, as is
China's recently suggesting the US military was behind the flu's introduction in Wuhan. In
any such war, as is now standard procedure, the US/UK would strive to have it at least appear
that China/Russia struck the first blow. WWIII, with probable massive casualties possibly far
out stripping the human losses of WWI and WWII, would work towards global depopulation. [See
#1 above]
4) A world war, one not going as well as initially expected, ie 'badly', combined with
economic collapse, would in certain ways recreate conditions parallelling late 1917 Russia in
the United States. This would further energize the already radicalized 'Bernie Bros' and much
of the Democratic party, and may tempt them to seriously consider revolutionary action, ie a
'Red October 2.0' type of event to seize power, to be followed by a vicious Russian style
'civil war'. This civil war would also work towards global depopulation. [See #1 above]
No doubt this virus can be used for other purposes as well.
As late in the day as it is, what can people do?
As individuals (and groups) people can stop buying into this manufactured and contrived
supposedly 'progressive' and 'enlightened' dialectic which has been at work between
Capitalism and Communism the past two hundred plus years, and offer something better, to both
yourself and others.
It shouldn't take much to have something a lot better, as this now centuries old hatred
driven dialectical 'cure' which has been offered humanity, and now has the peoples of the
world on the cusps of WWIII, is 'worse than the disease'.
@Alfred I agree. I'm an engineer also (electronics) and it took me a little longer to put
it all together, but not by much. My comment was directed more at the goobers than the
way-above-intelligence types like engineers. It's taken them a little longer (maybe a LOT
longer) but they're onto the truth, these days.
I have daily contact with a bunch of dirt-poor, uneducated white people and even they are
totally onto the "coronavirus" hoax. They ain't buying a word of it. Although they realize
that a lot of the shortages and product hoarding is simply a poor man's hedge fund, just in
case the virus is an engineered pathogen and is "somewhat" a concern. Better prepared than
not – and I can't fault that logic.
But panicked and hysterical they are definitely NOT.
@Ron Unz "So if American biowarfare analysts were considering a Coronavirus attack
against China, isn't it quite possible they would have said to themselves that since SARS
never significantly leaked back into the US or Europe, we'd similarly remain insulated from
the Coronavirus?"
Yes, except they seemed to willingly let it in. After the outbreak in China was officially
announced, planeload after planeload of potential virus carriers were landing in the U.S.,
U.K., Australia, Canada, and the E.U. countries every single day. I'm surprised there's
anybody left in China!
Now, if it was an American biowarfare attack, and considering what I said above, it could
be they developed the weapon to specifically target Chinese/Asian people. That might explain
why they willingly let them fly in, because they already knew it wouldn't do that much damage
to the host population.
SARS mainly attacked Chinese people. It would be interesting to know whether the people
being affected in the U.S. and Canada, for instance, are mainly Asians.
There is a key point about coronavirus being spread by not yet obviously ill people that was
made in Sean Carroll's podcast with Tara Smith yesterday. She also said that SARS is
completely different because the SARS virus is only shed from really sick people. So American
bioweapons experts would also understand that, and not expect the late 2002 outbreak of SARS
in China failing to spread all across the globe to be a guide to how a coronavirus epidemic
would behave.
Dr. Barret, in your article you cite a study that you quote (incorrectly) as saying: Other
sources claim "The spike glycoprotein of 2019-nCoV contains a cleavage absent in CoV –
showing that it was engineered rather than evolved." Indeed, the journal article itself does
not claim that it must have been "engineered rather than evolved". I'm agnostic on whether it
was engineered or evolved, but would urge you to remove "engineered rather than evolved" at
least from the hyperlinked part and leave it as normal text so that people do not mistakenly
assume that the article itself openly claims this
Blow back also serves a purpose.
Whether or not blowback was foreseen it serves as a scapegoat for Trump. The media that lies
about everything keep saying this will end Trump. I don't think so. The great economy he pats
himself on the back for is made of several trillion more dollars on our US credit card. Many
prognosticators predicted the bubble could not sustain till election. Many didn't want it to.
Now the air is out of the bubble and Trump can avoid blame at least to his supporters.
The shutdown is a massive power grab and anti-China propaganda. Governments of all sizes
and shapes assume the authority to shut down the economy on every level. This is the
2×4 to the head to get the attention of main street. At the same time China gets the
blame. It is so reminiscent of the 1930s when many diplomats like Joe Kennedy were highly
concerned about the western media vilification of Germany and Japan. Sure enough events were
manipulated to incite "the good war".
One thing is sure IMO. The virus did not come from a bat. Given the list of coinsidences
of location and timing, just months after the Globalist Event 201 I lean toward it not being
China's fault. That is China's opinion as well apparently. I for one don't really want
another good war.
@Ron Unz The economy was gonna tank anyway. When you have a "market" selling shares with
P-E ratios of 100 or more, common, what other possibility is there?
But "never let a good crisis go to waste" is the guiding M.O. of the zionists. Maybe they
just gave it gentle "push" and that was all it took.
I predict this is all just groundwork for something MUCH bigger in the near future. A
little pain and suffering to get us ready, IOW.
@SethF1968 The rest of the article does say it might not be true. I trust the Chinese to
be malicious, duplicitous scumbags, but I don't trust them to be competent with that. Given
two scenarios:
1. The Chinese are successfully engineering a bio-weapon that a careless scientist just
happens to get into his rice during lunch or,
2. The Chinese are trying to engineer a bio-weapon, doing a piss poor job of it and when it
escapes from the lab, it has the propensity to mutate dangerously like it's goddamn Resident
Evil,
I'll pick the latter. The CCP is a litany of continuous fuckups that would have been
handled decades ago if our own government wasn't filled with self serving degenerates and
tards.
Many thanks for your thought-provoking reply! If, M. Unz, by solid evidence you mean proof,
that may be true for now. The bill of indictment took a long time to complete in the case of
JFK and 9/11, but now the open-source evidence meets forensic standards, notwithstanding
state secrecy, Section 202, the operational files exemption, the Intelligence Identities
Protection Act, deference upon deference, the political questions doctrine, and all the other
legal pretexts CIA has set up to obscure attribution of its crimes. The cases are open and
shut but there's no way to prosecute CIA here at home, by design. The last time somebody gave
it a try (Church and Pike,) Don Gregg threatened martial law and that was that.
This case is different because the whole world has a beef. CIA's impunity setup don't work
so good offshore. The sovereign victims are already on the case.
I'm not sure Americans would tear em apart if they found out. Americans are the most
brainwashed population in the world. They make North Koreans look like Spinoza. The trick of
equating America and the government is sunk in deep. They fall for it every time. The trick
of confounding adverse information with foreign dictators works equally well on left and
right. (We all saw the left blame Putin for the Queen of Mena's 2016 party putsch because it
failed.) CIA will never be made to pay without outside pressure. It's a problem for the
world. Good thing they're on it.
@FlubberW hen you fail to attribute a quotation, and fail to enclose it within
quotation marks (or use the blockquote tag), it is plagiarism, irrespective of your
intentions or ignorance, either one.
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the verb "to plagiarize" means:
"to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one's own : use (another's
production) without crediting the source "
How To Avoid Plagiarism in Your Work:
1 Cite your source
When alluding to an idea or wording that's not your own, add a citation in your writing
that identifies the full name of the source, the date it was published, and any other
citation element that's required by the style guide you're adhering to.
2 Include quotations
If you insert a source's words into your writing, verbatim, one of the most simple yet
obvious ways to avoid plagiarism is by using quotation marks around the text to denote that
the words aren't your own. A direct quote should also cite the source so that readers know
who the quote is from.
I see you are having trouble with English in a number of ways, so perhaps it is not your
first language. Please take the opportunity to learn from the experience, and improve your
English.
I saw the planes hit that morning from desert suburbia AZ, then when they exploded (the
language in the news was "collapsed" but it is clear from direct visual intuition that they
went off something like "Roman candles") I was like "no way! They fucking exploded! "
It was obvious to me at the time that they were rigged." And yet, somehow I convinced myself
in the following months that the buildings had collapsed. I convinced myself after careful
study of the NYT that the buildings had suffered "progressive collapse". Complete
subservience of reason and sense to authority, and I was someone regarded as a renegade,
maverick, free-thinker.
By late 2002 my suspicions of the neo-cons had me thinking they'd cultivated and allowed the
terror attack to go through in order to reap the benefits. I started hearing theories about
controlled demolition at WTC and a missile at Pentagon I thought no way they would take the
associated operational risk (of exposure and justice), plus the NYT had convinced to
disregard my lying eyes A few years later I realized my mistake, saw research and
documentaries on the nano-thermite angle, WTC-7 etc
The moral of the story is how gullible and naive even a supposed high-iq independent
thinker can be.
And yeah, it's amazingly obvious that those buildings exploded/burned (nano-thermite) like
roman-candles.
The other moral of the story is just how dishonorable -- I think the term "cucked" is
popular these days -- a nation can be. Right in your face, and you do nothing, pretend you
didn't see it. All the conformists, people afraid of suffering for something.
Thanks for this great article! I know you from the time when Ahmadinejad was president of
Iran and when at Presstv was the possibility to leave comments. This changed with Rouhani but
I followed your writings also at VT.
I think this Covid-19 plot is especially designed to weaken China, but especially also
because China is a supporter of Iran, Iraq, Syria..the main countries of the resistance
against the greater Israel project.
The first person in Iran who died of "covid-19" was an 83 year old man after (!) a
covid-19 "quick test" was made.
Covid-19 is probably all over the world and especially to find in old people homes where the
inmates had recently a flu or those people with an acute flu.
Coronaviruses mutate permanently. It seems Covid -19 is an old mutation because its common
all over the world and people who have the antibodies actually dont need a vaccination to
create exactly those antibodies.
The special danger is when there is a mutation of this virus and you dont have the
antibodies.
This testing is nonsense!
Those tests are even dangerous because the poor people who are tested positive are told that
they have a deadly virus and this people tend to get in panic and fear, becomming
breathlessness and eventually get an acute pneumonia fibrosis which leads sometimes to
death.
Pneumonia fibrosis is not caused by a virus but by wrong breathing habits and bad air and
especially by panic breathing!
Once more I like to give the link to Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg a German lung medical doctor who
gives an excellent view into this insane virus hysteria.
I am a breathing therapist and worked on the front line also during the AIDS hysteria.
Kevin Barrett, I know you have still excellent contacts to presstv and It would make me happy
to help solving this nightmare in Iran.
Its seems to me there is a Chinese-American collaboration at work. Much of the apparent
conflict is fake wrestling. Leaders of countries need external enemies to control their own
citizens.
If you look at the research thats been done on corona viruses gain of function and corona
virus/ebola/zika virus vaccines you run into the same names a lot, Chinese scientists,
American scientists, Wuhan , UNC, Duke all funded by DARPA, NSAID, NIH , chinese military,
chinese cdc Bill Gates, etc, often in collaboration with each other. George Gao of China CDC
attended Event 201.
The goal is creation of Authoritarian states throughout the world modeled after China, as
elaborated in Lock Step. Moving away from the Global Village concept, each region/country
will duplicate the firewall China has built for internet to isolate its citizens from foreign
ideas and internal censorship, although the elites and multinationals corporations and
institutions will be united and interlocked. Travel between countries and foreign
residence/immigration will become more difficult for the non-elite. Walls will be built to
keep ordinary people in. Mandatory vaccinations and health care (medicare for
all-appropriately rationed) . Digital ID, enhanced tracking/surveillance. Robots will replace
illegal immigrant workers. Conditions will be ripe to implement the green economy, enforce a
cashless society and ration energy consumption through 5G/IoT and smart meters, and universal
income
The economic crash like all crashes was planned. As Mnuchin said, they are great buying
opportunities for the rich so as to accumulate more wealth at a discount (paper losses are
future tax breaks). Former CDC director sold half her Merck Shares on jan 13 for 9.11
million. Bezos sold off billions of Amazon stock, etc. Maybe they knew what was coming.
@cranc "We do not know if they died with Covid or from Covid."
Excellent point! If they are purposely looking to get the numbers of dead up, then they
died "from" Covid.
The regular flu went through my uncle's old-age home. Killed him and many others, just
pushed them over the edge, with pneumonia, just like Corona has.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2020-03-18/coronavirus-could-reshape-global-order
… ; some people say that we should take seriously what CFR's magazine Foreign
Affairs say in its articles. They give us clues what GFR's globalists are planing for our
world. Just as they set and ended communism in Central and Eastern Europe , they can end US
hegemony in the world. If they will decide it is China's tern to be in power, that it will
be.
This is a courageous, thought-provoking, article. It will take a while to piece this story
together, but for now, this theory is at least as likely as the official explanation. If
correct, this theory leads to a few interesting predictions. Among them:
1. No member of high standing of the Deep State, e.g., Gates, the Rockefeller Clan,
Netanyahoo, will die from this virus.
2. Per capita, there will be less fatalities in Israel than anywhere else.
I'm not sure Barrett pointed this out: The psychopaths in charge did not hesitate to
slaughter some 3,000 Americans on 9/11, nor any number of European allies during Operation
Gladio. Everyday, they have their police kill 3 Americans. They would be very willing,
perhaps even glad, to sacrifice millions of Americans–or people of any
nationality–to achieve their goals.
As Barrett notes, the parallels to 9/11 are indeed striking.
@A123 Two German cabinet members commented angrily on this matter. Either they are lying
or it's the media sources you quote. And why was the American CEO of the company suddenly
canned?
@Just Passing Through Ouch. Antimuslim comments will raise the hair on a pig. Ever notice
how the Muslims and the other Semites, the Jews led the impeachment/coup against Trump. These
two groups were completely united together with the Semite controlled old media, and yet,
commenters here call Trump their puppet.
Other sources claim "The spike glycoprotein of 2019-nCoV contains a cleavage absent in
CoV – showing that it was engineered rather than evolved." Perhaps readers more
familiar with the science than I am can arbitrate such disputes in the comments
section.
Yeah, I'll ajudicate the "dispute," you unspeakable dingus: the word "engineered" and the
phrase "showing that it was engineered rather than evolved" are not in the paper, and the
paper makes no assertion remotely like your misquotation. The paper merely notes how the
virus differs from other CoV viruses.
Unz review has really turned into something Alex Jones tier. Except with Steve Sailer and
Whitney Webb.
@Sean There is a key point about coronavirus being spread by not yet obviously ill people
that was made in Sean Carroll's podcast with Tara Smith yesterday. She also said that SARS is
completely different because the SARS virus is only shed from really sick people. So American
bioweapons experts would also understand that, and not expect the late 2002 outbreak of SARS
in China failing to spread all across the globe to be a guide to how a coronavirus epidemic
would behave.""
Sean, the Wuhan corona is far more contagious than either the SARS or MERS corona viruses.
People with the Wuhan shed large viral loads prior to the onset of disease and mild cases
will never get tested.
The Israeli masterminded 9/11 false flag has been almost consecrated–like the
holocaust–and anyone who dares to question the official lies, stands to lose their
jobs, stature and be endlessly vilified for asking historical questions. Punitive measures
that Mr. Barrett has first-hand knowledge of.
Good to remember that Dr Barrett is unambiguously proven to be right by the immutable laws
of Physics and Engineering:
– A September 2019 University of Alaska PhD thesis, using state-of-the-art civil
engineering design software, proved that WTC7 could have only been destroyed by controlled
demolition.
– Due to the witnesses around, it would have been impossible to bring and install
explosives into WTC7 during the time window after the collapse of the Twin Towers.
– Hence the explosives used to blow up WTC7 were already in place before the
alleged WTC "plane attack" onto the Twin Towers took place.
– Hence the perpetrators are those who had control the WTC7 and were represented by
Larry "Pull It" Silverstein.
It is even using the same numbers to start the game.
Purim this year was March 9-11.
March 9th Queen Esther fast, March 10 Purim, March 11 Walled city ( Jerusalem is one)
Purim
The World Health Organization declared it a pandemic on the last day of Purim –
walled city Purim – March 11, 2020. Ever since March 11, our MSM has been building up
more and more hysteria about this disease. It is literally another nine eleven, same number
game, promoted by our MSM.
The World Health Organization (WHO) today declared COVID-19 a pandemic, pushing the
threat beyond the global health emergency it had announced in January.
@SeanI was not the one who said Barrett is held in such low regard by public
opinion
Come now, Sean You did exactly this in your opening salvo.
I suggested that as someone unknown under his own name you could step up and prevent
WW3, but for the fact that your resume was far less impressive than Doctor Barrett's.
This would be quite humorous but for the fact that I haven't bothered to advance any
theories thus far.
I just enjoy the hissing sound your posts make after we punch 'em with a thumbtack. A
nice, short, sharp jab does the trick every time.
"And advanced forms of biological warfare that can 'target' specific genotypes may
transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool." The
Project for a New American Century, Rebuilding America's Defenses (September 2000)
That is interesting.
I was aware of the PNAC report and it's 'Pearl Harbor' comment, but had forgotten about
the bio warfare statement.
As a related aside, the very 'progressive' H G Well's in the circa 1935 movie Things to
Come has it that a future biological war will kill over half the world's population. To
humanity's rescue (and I kid you not as to the script's wording) will come a Mr John 'Cabal'
representing the 'new order' with it's 'freemasonry of science'.
Not to be outdone (I suppose) the also very 'progressive' Gene Roddenberry in 1968 had a
Star Trek episode (See links below) whose plot revolves around a parallel Earth which
in the distant past had a global biological war fought between Red China (Khoms) and the
United States (Yangs). The Chinese are victorious and over run the planet, while meanwhile
the shattered remnants of what had been the US is living out a stone age existance.
Yang vs Kohm ('Yank' vs 'Commie')
'The virus still exists.'
MCCOY: The infection resembles one developed by Earth during their
bacteriological warfare experiments in the 1990s. Hard to believe we were once foolish
enough to play around with that The virus still exists. Then over the years, nature built
up these natural immunising agents in the food, the water, and the soil.
"Yet from the neocon perspective it needs some kind of war ASAP before China grows too
strong."
That was the very reason Britain and France picked World War I with Germany. Germany was
becoming and economic power house, and the Brits and the French resented it. So they had to
slap Germany down before she became even stronger. It backfired on them until the U.S. came
in and pulled the chestnuts out of the fire for them. Will anyone pull the chestnuts out of
the fire for Uncle Sam? I doubt it.
Well, that would make perfect sense unless elements of the American national security
establishment were criminal, crazy, and totally incompetent. However, they ARE criminal,
crazy, and totally incompetent.
Love the capitalization "ARE". That'll really convince the rubes. Soon, the debate will be
reduced to the exchange of 'tis and 'tisn't for all the substance of the Unzian
thesis.
I studied civil engineering 50 years ago. Maybe they no longer teach engineers the Laws
of Motion of Isaac Newton. I don't know. But the silence by the engineering profession has
been deafening my ears ever since.
There is an astounding number of Engineering and Physics pieces of evidence which prove
beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Twin Towers were brought down by controlled
demolition.
But there is one fact which is so, so superior to any other evidence that it instantly
destroys the "risible work of fiction" known as the 9/11 Commission report:
– The WTC footprint radiated heat from the footprint of the demolished towers for
about 4 months, recorded by satellite infrared cameras.
– The amount of heat released was calculated, using the classic, centuries-old
exponential heat decay equation for heat transfer by free convection.
– A low estimate for the amount of heat realesed by the WTC was an astounding 10^15
Joules (one peta Joules).
– This amount of heat is equivalent to the energy produced over a month by a 900 MW
nuclear reactor.
In other terms, the amount of heat released by the WTC after its collapse was so high
that it was mandatorily of nuclear origin.
This is what the American people and the rest of humankind are up against: a bunch of
Zionist psychopaths deranged enough to use nuclear weapons in the heart of New York.
@Wyatt So you're saying these Chinese continuous fuckups ended decades ago if they could
have been handled decades ago, but the US fuckups are intrinsic to
their mad system of government, continue, can't be handled, Bush will never be hanged for the
naked aggression against Iraq? Is that what you mean?
@Delta G "But you can't have someone clever enough to create a Recombinant Designer
Pathogen and be in the US Military. "
Does not preclude such a person, clever and psychopathic, working as a civilian for the
military or intelligence.
I believe the focus on Who, should include those who operate above the national
governments. The type of individuals who have no allegiance, except to other elite families
and largely to profiting, without regard for human concerns.
Hence, the focus is on whether the USA or China, or a third nation, did it, is a
deliberate "look over there" misdirection.
The 9/11 equivalent would be the 9/11 families continuing to focus on suing the Saudi
government as the responsible party. No planes, no Saudis. What we do have is "five dancing
Israelis" and "Israeli art students running wires for an art project", along with Larry
Silverstein's "Pull It!".
The US Dollar is overdue for its demise.
The Petrodollar was just extending the inevitable reckoning.
We may be nearing the flash point of the French Revolution, the moment when the French
Treasury was discovered to be empty. USA is $23T in the hole and coincidentally the
Department of Perpetual War cannot account for $22T.
@Kim Riiiight as if the terror trilogy of the IMF, WB and IBS isn't "a debt trap for all
of those impoverished nations". I could be wrong but I think that your concern is that the
Anglo-American-Zionist Alliance which is more like SPECTRE than anything else is losing
global domination.
@Nonny Mouse At the final judgement all evil will suffer the second death and burn for
eternity. Matthew 10 28And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the
soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.
@FB I, too, have been disappointed in Tucker Carlson's China bashing. I have thought that
he was the best on FOX News, but now he is getting to be as bad as Sean Hannity.
We may never know the origin of the coronavirus. It is foolish to try and assign blame at
this point.
@Sean Defending one outstanding false-flag with another – how ingenious !
Just like using (if I'm not mistaken, habitually with some variations) logical
chains based on : "if you're not utterly destroyed (one way or another),
you just can't be the one telling the truth".
This is a mob logic, but you probably have to wait for a few more high caliber
false-flags
to be swallowed by the millions world-wide before it becomes absolutely legit.
@ΑΖ Do we have a price yet on how much it will cost to get vaccinated? As with
in six weeks more time, after a second three week sheltering spell, so we're all ready to get
back out on the streets and into the pubs as long as we're vaccinated, you see. Having been
scared the black plague is waiting at the door all this time, we'll rush to the vaccination
markets? Hundred fifty a shot maybe?
If anyone is interested in why the elites created the coronavirus, go to davidicke.com and watch his interview by london real, it is
2 hours of brutal truth.
@9/11 Inside job So, you read Winterwatch too. I think that Russ checks in here
sometimes. I've been reading his crime archives lately. There are some really interesting
articles on unsolved and memory holed crimes there.
@SBaker The Jews aren't Semites. They're unrelated to the ancient Hebrews, who became the
Palestinians. And the Iranians and Afghans and Malays aren't Semites. You sound pretty
clueless, SBaker.
Okay, the Jews insist they are Semites, but everything about them is fraud.
B is trying to "flatten the curve" of comprehending how fast our liberties are "vanishing"
(according to the New York Times). At least he won't be fining offending "bar flies" 13,000
something something.
New York Times is right. It will "vanish". "Our way of life". Because our reality is in
fact manufactured, including our "alternative" reality.
@follyofwar Well, as the Cheyenne used to say, "It's a good day to die". If the ones who
think they can rule over others push it too far," then the the sun will shine upon a good day
to die". I remember that line from the novel "Little Big Man".
It used to be part of the American ethos, the idea that it's better to die on your feet
than to live on your knees. Levon Helm wrote a line in a song in the '80s: "You give your
life to live your life". Some of us still see it that way.
@dimples A good many of those in the loop on an operation like this also have the skills
and opportunity to make a great fortune on a 1929, or worse, financial catastrophe. Don't
assume that blowback isn't anticipated or even welcome.
@JohnnyWalker123 Whoa! CA Gov. Newsom says that 25M Californians are expected to get
infected within an eight week period
Apparently, that figure may have been the projection prior to the statewide lockdown he
declared earlier this week. At least I really, *really* hope that's not what the experts
think will still happen after the lockdown.
25M California infections over a couple of months would totally collapse the health care
system, and probably result in at least a million deaths. In California alone. Over just a
few weeks. Projecting that out, we'd be talking about something like 10M dead Americans.
Suppose it did turn out that this was all unintended blowback from some "clever ploy" by
the Deep State Neocons to take China (and Iran) down a notch or two. Can anyone imagine what
people would do to them?
It seems the so-called National Bolsheviks, Third Positionists, Strasserites were
visionaries. Everything wrong with the world today is a result of Jewish finance capitalism
and degenerate post-modern liberalism.
Suppose it did turn out that this was all unintended blowback from some "clever ploy" by
the Deep State Neocons to take China (and Iran) down a notch or two. Can anyone imagine
what people would do to them?
If the NeoConDemocrats did this in an attempt to overthrow the Constitution, it would
guarantee GOP majority until the end of time.
The Globalist Left is certainly unhinged However risking a total forces CHINA-US nuclear
war?
Hillary prefers the (im)plausible deniability of eliminating individuals a defenseless
ambassador or prisoner or lawyer or reporter.
@JohnnyWalker123 That would be something like 20 million Californians. Note also
predictions from guests (John Ross, for one) on Sputnik Loud and Clear Radio (Tuesday and
Wednesday of this week) 2 million will die in the US by June of this year.
Now 2 mill figures out to about 10% of those getting infected will die (according to
Newsome), which is contradicted by various studies (some mentioned in this thread), including
that 15% of elderlies will die (or maybe it's only 8% and particularly those with
pre-existing conditions); 5% of people in their 50's; and .02% of children.
In short Gavin Newsom is being irresponsible with this kind of talk, but now we know why
the drastic shutdown has taken place in Northern California, no doubt following his alarmist
lead.
We drastically need scientific studies particularizing vs generalizing the dangers as to
which people, how, what, why, under what conditions/circumstances, instead of the hysterical
over-reaction now underway by our "leaders."
Check out the following from this thread (sorry to those who posted the following if I
don't mention you, and thank you very much for guiding me to them):
There are so many scenarios. I haven't read all of the comments, so what I'm about to say
may already have been touched on.
1. The virus happened naturally, transferred from a bat and eventually to humans.
2. The virus accidentally escaped the Wuhan lab.
3. The globalists did it. The globalists (the Chinese elite in concert with the U.S.
multinational corporate elite) don't want things to change as both groups of elites are
getting filthy rich off of the offshoring of jobs to China.
Trump is a nationalist. He is upsetting their apple cart as he's placing tariffs on the
goods manufactured in China by the U.S. multinational corporations, trying to force the U.S.
multinationals to come back home. They don't want to, so they manufactured the virus thinking
it would bring down the economy/stock market, thereby bringing down Trump.
China plays along, feigns ignorance, and accuses the U.S. of trying to infect their
citizens, Xi wears a mask. A few thousand old people dying is a small price to pay, in their
minds.
4. The U.S. multinational corporate elite did it alone, without China's knowledge, for the
same reasons as stated in #3, to throw a wrench in the works, purposely sink the economy.
With Trump gone, globalism could continue.
5. The U.S. did it alone, without China's knowledge. The U.S. globalists realize globalism
is ending and they have acquiesced to the U.S. nationalists. They are angry that China has
not followed through with their part of the original deal, which is that China gets the
offshored jobs, their elite get rich, and they get money to modernize, but she must open up
more to the U.S. corporations and financial firms, which she has been reluctant to do.
6. The nationalists did it in order to bring down globalism, put an end to it once and for
all. Once people realize that supply lines (especially pharmaceuticals) thousands of miles
away is a recipe for disaster, they'll scream for things to be changed. Trump has said he
likes President Xi and the Chinese people, this is nothing personal, but he wants the jobs to
return.
7. China did it alone. The Chinese elite realize that globalism is ending, and they know
the Chinese citizens will blame them for the loss of their jobs. The Chinese elite worry that
the citizens will wonder why they've become filthy rich and they haven't. The Chinese elite
plant the virus, but blame it on the U.S.
8. The world elites, in collusion with the central banks, have blown massive financial
bubbles.
They realize they can't continue blowing the bubbles any bigger, but they don't see any way
out without being blamed. They plant the virus in order to bring down the world economy,
deflate the bubble. The virus takes the blame, not them. China blames the U.S., the U.S.
blames China, some old people are sacrificed, and they raise a glass to the devil.
Suppose it did turn out that this was all unintended blowback from some "clever ploy" by
the Deep State Neocons to take China (and Iran) down a notch or two. Can anyone imagine
what people would do to them?
I would hope that people would treat such individuals with compassion. Recognize that we
all make mistakes. Their plans for these microbes never involved the suffering and death of
millions of innocent people and simply got out of control. Certainly a stern letter of
admonishment should be added to their files. But their names should not be made public.
Mar 19, 2020 Corona crazy, strengthen your immune system
With between 90 to 99 percent of people who get this Corona virus recover , this virus
panic will pass, the loss of freedoms will continue, strengthen you immune system.
04/16/2010 100 Years of US Medical Fascism
One hundred years ago today, on April 16, 1910, Henry Pritchett, president of the Carnegie
Foundation, put the finishing touches on the Flexner Report. No other document would have
such a profound effect on American medicine, starting it on its path to destruction up to and
beyond the recently passed (and laughably titled) Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act
of 2010 (PPACA), a.k.a., "Obamacare." Flexner can only be accurately understood in the
context of what led up to it.
@Ron Unz This study from respected epidemiologists at Imperial College London has
forecast death rates for various scenarios of suppression and mitigation measures relating to
the Covid-19 pandemic.
While there are far too many parameters at play to reach figures with reasonable
certainty, they have calculated that doing nothing to mitigate the pandemic would result in
81% of the US and UK population being infected after a course of 3 months of spreading
epidemic, resulting in "only" 2.2 million and 0.5 million deaths respectively.
The non-linear relation is due to the US' larger geographic scale.
I guess that the fascist NeoCons won't be too concerned killing "only" 2,2 million
Americans, considering how many are already being genocided with drugs.
ATMs are cranking out crisp new Steve Mnuchin $20 paper.
A lot of planning went into these "unintended" events, and yes, I believe some influencers
have enough hate in them, that they've been nursing as well as gaming for years, that a
trigger was aimed and pulled deliberately, not accidentally.
Kevin Barrett wrote a pretty good essay, but I would not have used the term/concept Black
Swan.
Suppose it did turn out that this was . . . some "clever ploy" by the Deep State Neocons
to take China (and Iran) down a notch or two. Can anyone imagine what people would do to
them?
What would they do, Ron? Write a stern letter to their congressman?
Vote for Biden instead of Trump?
Hang Mark Dubowitz in effigy and get tossed in jail for it?
This Forum is the only place I know that people even write about, um, redressing certain
injustices. I'm one of your biggest fans so no disrespect, but where has that gotten us?
@JohnnyWalker123 I believe that Gavin Newsom is another 33rd degree mason whose
fingerprints seem to be all over this "faux pandemic '/psyop or a "hoax " according to
Trump(Knights Templar/Scottish Rite freemason ?)
see: "Coronavirus Hoax World Tour hits California -Gavin Newsom 33 Masonic hoax!" bitchute.com
President John Quincy Adams warned Americans about the secret oaths of the Freemasons but his
warnings have been forgotten.
@Wyatt Looks like somebody's really forgetting the Korean (direct mano-a-mano),
Indo-China (proxy fight) and Vietnam Wars (proxy fight) in which the "West" attempted
to handle the "CCP fuckups".
They were starving and dirt-poor back then, so it should have been a piece of cake, each
time.
And Every.Single.Time, the result was bloody failure, and humiliation.
And today's China isn't the China of the 1960s, or of our younger years, or even of 10
years ago – oh hell no. Kinda makes one THINK, eh?
@FB 'Highly intelligent' folks can also think in terms of "both and" instead of only
"either or". White entrepreneurs can desire more cheap labor out of irresponsible greed,
while at the same time Jews can promote mass non-White immigration out of hatred for Whites.
You see Jews in politics and media do just that, while selfish White entrepreneurs welcome
it. The Jewish problem is always a problem of Jewish destructive behavior in cooperation with
immorality of some Gentiles.
@Ron Unz Too many Americans are stuck on Pax Americana la la land and will never admit
something so grave to American status. We saw exactly this during 9/11.
@Ron Unz It was just yesterday (Wednesday) that Newsom said his "modeling" predicts 56%
of Californians will be infected. Thus, it was said WITH distancing already in effect. Newsom
wants the hospital ship Mercy to be moored in LA.; his 56% was probably a sales pitch to
influence the mooring-location decision. BTW, speaking of the hospital ship, the
number-of-beds figure being given is fallacious. I looked at images of the wards of the
Mercy, and the patients are packed together. Images of coronavirus wards in hospitals show a
wide spacing of patients.
This Forum is the only place I know that people even write about, um, redressing certain
injustices. I'm one of your biggest fans so no disrespect, but where has that gotten
us?
Then the blowback will come from outside the US, Solonto.
I don't know whether you realise how the rest of the world is feeling at the moment:
people are stunned as if the Apocalypse has come. They are worried about their very survival,
and things are only going to get worse because the containment, lockdown, military special
powers will likely extend for weeks and months ahead, as it will take months to gain control
over the epidemic.
The Chinese have officially accused the US to have, at a minimum, covered up early
Covid-19 infections that took place in America several weeks before the epidemic broke out in
Wuhan.
Separate Japanese and Taiwanese epidemiologists have previously determined that only the
US had the five strains of Coronavirus that could have generated the Covid-19:
The Chinese have scientists, military might and a powerful voice in the concert of
nations.
They are respected and credible, because they respect others' sovereignty and help in time of
crisis.
They won't passively stand accused of a crime committed by the US Zionist NeoCons, and for
which the whole world will soon want to hold somebody accountable for.
I don't mean Argentina vs China, or anything like that.
I mean where both sides have a lot of money, or power, or both.
Today's coronavirus black swan, like 9/11, has all the characteristics of a trauma-based
mass-mind-control op.
Not only do I agree, but I think it's so obvious that it's exasperating that, after all
we've been through, it even needs to be pointed out. But it does.
It has already been used to demonize China in the same way 9/11 was used to demonize
Islam: Just as we were supposed to hate the crazy suicidal Muslims yearning for harems of
afterlife virgins, we are now supposed to feel disgust for Chinese slurpers of bat
soup.
Here I respectfully disagree.
What Jewish Supremacy Inc. did after September 11th was,
1. Blame Islam
2. Shame Americans* for Blaming Islam
A better example of control through crazy-making would be impossible to imagine.
And it's exactly what they're doing now.
1. Blame China
2. Shame Americans for Blaming China
*or anyone else who refused or refuses to bow before the alter of Politically Correct
Identity Politics (two tools essential to Full Spectrum Dominance).
As we have already seen, the consequences are immense.
Because if that kind of crazy-making is effective it's totally demoralizing. As learned
helplessness sets in people won't even defend themselves. As happened in Italy, and not just
Italy.
But there are other discernible patterns well worth pointing out.
1. Destroy The Evidence
2. Control The Narrative
3. Enforce The Law (on anyone looking for evidence to question the narrative)
Victimize – Blame Victim – Play Victim
Demonize Dissent and Pathologize Opposition
And all ending in what I've come to call the Supremacist Waltz
What makes a supremacist is not just making claims ("Our Superiority Is Absolute", or "We
are the Chosen") or demands. No. It's that they have the power to effectuate the demands that
support their claims.
And what are the demands they have the power to effectuate?
1. to be placed above criticism
2. loved unconditionally
3. blindly obeyed
It's The Rule of Man over The Rule of Law
It's a Culture of Blind Obedience over a Culture of Individual Conscience
It's Tyranny over Freedom
Hence The Great Replacement, accompanied by chants and taunts like "We Will Replace
You!"
In other words, Full Spectrum Dominance.
But, there's a snake in this garden.
The kind of power they're interested in is fundamentally destablizing.
All top down authoritarian power destablizes social-institutions.
From the point of view of cultural history this is exactly why cultures emerged in the
Western world that promoted democratic forms of governance. Because authoritarians cultures
are ultimately so extraordinarily destructive and unsustainable. Like this one is. Isn't it
obvious?
And, from the point of view of the bottom line, prolonged and profound social instability
disrupts and even halts economic activity.
When that happens there's no alternative.
This is why civilization itself was created. Because any civilization's primary objective
is and must be the circumnavigation of the use of force.
This is why what we're really witnessing is nothing less than
The Pyrrhic Victory of Jewish Supremacy Inc.
Because JSI's rise to power has been in direct proportion to the collapse of the very
social-institutions that power controls. Pride Before The Fall, indeed.
And the reason is easy to see and devoid of any complexity or glamour.
JSI is no good at social-management.
And make no mistake about it, social-management is at its core an adaptational strategy,
as are our social-institutions.
So, if we blow this, we're in no position to laugh at the dinosaurs for getting themselves
extinct.
After all, they lasted a lot longer than we have so far.
Assuming the human race has a chance (in itself rather doubtful) perhaps its time to turn
their words against them and say,
Treason Against Jewish Supremacy Inc. Is Loyalty To Humanity
Do we really need to ask them for permission to care about our children's future?
@Kevin Barrett Gideon Polya seems to be an "expert" in extreme exaggeration. From your
link :
" In 2013, he published, "American Holocaust, Millions Of Untimely American Deaths And
$40 Trillion Cost Of Israel To Americans,"[2] and tallied $30 trillion based on "A $125
trillion cost associated with 15.6 million preventable American deaths since September
2001, of which about $30 trillion can be attributed to US fiscal perversion supporting
Apartheid Israel "
$30 trillion of costs to Israel, 15,6 millions of dead Americans he deserves the Nobel
price for exaggeration!
"Yet from the neocon perspective it needs some kind of war ASAP before China grows too
strong."
Will anyone pull the chestnuts out of the fire for Uncle Sam? I doubt it.
If we attacked first, if WE essentially commit a Pearl Harbor-style aggression against a
competitor (a competitor , not an enemy – very big difference), we
would deserve to lose.
Maybe the
"Other-Dimensional/Space-Time/Genetic/Nano-tech/Robotic/AI/Alien/angels/gods/Spirit-Beings/from
The Future" (whew – that's a mouthful) will save us.
@Richard B I disagree. Jews are fanning anti-Asian sentiment as a scapegoat for economic
collapse, virus, all the bullshit they created. Asians receive zero protection in this
system, it's only reserved for the right minorities. It's a shame the so-called Holocaust
never happened, I might have had some beautiful lampshades by now.
@Digital Samizdat"For the first time in my life, not only did I truly understand our
history, but even the very current events transpiring before my eyes.
And that's how I became a Nazi."
Dont worry, nobody cannot avoid becoming a "Nazi" once he understands our history and sees
the current events. The Germans were the only white tribe warning what was in store for
us.
Franklin himself would be a Nazi, if these evil Germans had not entered his beloved
Holland.
@Franklin Ryckaert There may be 'both' instead of 'either' but there is also the word
'mostly' which is what applies here
John McCain used to go around saying that Americans wouldn't do farm labor if you paid
them fifty bucks an hour as if that is somehow obscene rather than a good living wage, so
naturally Mexicans need to be imported to do that work even Trump recently said recently that
we need more legal immigrants because we have too many jobs
And this in a country where a King Bezos gets tens of millions in tax 'holidays' from
states and municipalities falling over each other to host the King's new HQ, as he flees from
Seattle to avoid paying taxes [I guess the folks punching a clock at Boeing should pick up
the tab for schools, roads and everything else that the King's Amazon employees use ?]
But nobody says boo about that nor any of the other plutocrats paying no taxes [even
Warren Buffet has said it has gone too far, noting that he pays less tax than his secretary
]
Fact is it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that mass immigration is simply the
other half of offshoring of factories they are both part and parcel of labor arbitrage and
the larger agenda of beggaring ordinary folks
There has been a concerted effort to wipe out the middle class for the last forty years
now when are these 'highly intelligent' American sheeple going to wake up ?
The Chinese people's living standard is going nowhere but up, while Americans are headed
for the toilet all of this is mostly due to capitalism, and the idiotic support for
this wretched system by fools who don't understand what's good or bad for them
I suggest you watch the Noam Chomsky doc I posted today industry is ten percent of the
economy, while banking is 30 union membership has gone from 30 to practically nothing why did
this happen ?
Nothing happens without a cause, and the cause is that the plutocracy and oligarchy
decided in the 1970s to start rolling back the freedoms and standard of living that the
people had gained under the New Deal starting with getting rid of Nixon, who was in fact the
last New Deal president and brought a lot of good things into being
We can vividly see that timeline here, showing the share of the richest 0.1 percent of
total wealth, over the last 100 years
I believe the focus on Who, should include those who operate above the national
governments.
As someone one famously said, "It doesn't matter who hires the assassin. Focus on who pays
for the bullets."
To remain objective and informed is quite a daunting task lately, but not something
one should think lightly of or entertain thoughts of giving up altogether. There's only one
way: forward.
@Trinity See that's why jews like that guy don't go into beer joints in the south. In a
beer joint, the method of debate is different from what they have on TV talk shows. About the
time the guy started his spiel, he'd get KTFO or at least hit from three different directions
at once.
Southerners don't play that shit in their own beer joints. The rule is that someone saying
something snotty is fair game for punching. It sounds uncivilized, but it does tend to keep a
conversation more civil.
Fortunately for the Privately owned FED , the United States Treasury Department (and its
Bureau of Printing and Engraving) still has printing presses , ink and paper .
And it lends the money, so, in the end, we, the ' footing-the-bill ' suckers pay
for it anyway. Like you say, it can't be emphasized enough Privately owned FED
should be mutually exclusive [of course it isn't]. What a swindle. When will it end and who's
going to end it?
@SBaker "It's beyond dispute that the novel coronavirus officially known as
COVID-19originated in Wuhan, China."
No, it's being disputed every day. That "beyond dispute" phrase is what retards like Mike
Pompeo use to try to shut down a discussion in which he's getting his fat ass kicked.
"The degree of hypocrisy and divisiveness displayed by the MSM at a time of national
crisis is simply unacceptable."
Now, I'll bet you a beer that you stole that idiotic line from somebody like Sean Hannity.
Look, S, the MSM created this fake 'national crisis'. Without the MSM, there would be no
crisis.
I hope somebody pulls that flagstaff out of your butt for you. It's making you say the
most ridiculous things.
@Justsaying haha. EXCELLENT QUESTION. Answer: HELL NO. But then again not a single damn
POTUS in the last 100 years would have the sack to say it. One poster called it the "Jew Flu"
which is hilarious.
Didn't we have the Spanish Flu and the Ebola Virus? How about poor Lou Gehrig, they named
a whole disease after one man. haha. ( stole those examples from the David Duke radio show at
DavidDuke.com . Git-r-Done.
We may never know the origin of the coronavirus. It is foolish to try and assign blame
at this point.
Exactly but that is exactly the first reaction of a lot of dumb people blame China even
though it is now clear that they have done an absolutely remarkable job in containing this,
whatever its source
@Delta G First of all, why couldn't they just have released a naturally occurring virus
as a bioweapon?
But more importantly, out of all the people who have died in Italy, only two did not have
serious other diseases, heart problems and cancer, that was killing them anyway. I think that
there is something fishy going on here.
There is a common idea behind all the various theories that attribute the pandemic to
government action, ruling class planning or financial manipulators.
And that is the idea that the ruling class/establishment/tptb,1%-call them what you will-
are all powerful, wise, though evil, and capable of defeating any popular resistance.
The people claiming now that the virus was unloosed to enable an attack on Iran, those who
claim that it was produced as a smokescreen to obscure the collapse of the financial system,
those who see it as a means to steal away our last liberties and to knock a dying democracy
on the head, even those who see it as an out of control experiment , if you look at their
posts in the past, are generally going to be found to be the same people who thought that the
US military could not be defeated, that Syria was bound to fall, that Venezuela and Cuba were
toast. And that Hezbollah and Ansarullah stood no chance against the vast forces arrayed
against them.
The idea is always the same: the Empire is indefatigable, the greedy mediocrities who run
it (many of them public figures whose characters are daily open to examination) have foreseen
all possibilities. Resistance is useless. We are all doomed.
In fact, as people who don't have the leisure to indulge themselves in these gloomy
excuses for inaction and apathy are always demonstrating, the imperial regime is not only
brittle and riven through with corruption but run by talents selected in an anti-meritocratic
way. The reason that Petraeus, for example, rose to the top of the US military machine was
that he was a slimy careerist of the sort we have all come across, and, if we have been doing
our duty, trod on, in our lives: as a General he was clueless, unoriginal and, because he was
immoral and cynical, quite unable to understand how Iraqis would react to his crude terrorist
methods. Unfortunately he was caught out by his lust; had he maintained a respectable image
he would probably, by now, be into his second term as President and making Trump look
competent.
And what is true of the Pentagon is equally true of those running the US economy, Wall St
and the banking system: they are utterly witless. Look around you for the fruits of their
wisdom.
In fact the entire political class of the US, ably assisted by its clownish puppets
elsewhere, has brought the system that they worship to the brink of dissolution. Class rule
teeters on the edge of massive uprisings.
And this is not-I have already taken up too much space and time- because the pandemic was
planned but because despite its predictability, the near certainty that the seven good years
would be followed by plagues and famines, they could not restrain themselves from dismantling
the safety nets-from flood controls to food reserves to healthcare services designed to be
able to expand when needed to deal with emergencies.
(In the Canadian county in which I live the Public Health Unit founded in the aftermath of
the First World War and the 'flu epidemics, was shut down, to save money, last year. Most of
its functions were left to chance and the marketplace to fulfil. And now we have a
pandemic.)
Instead the entire system is riddled with the weaknesses that usurious practises impose:
there are empty hospitals in the Pennines because local health authorities cannot both pay
interest on PPP loans and meet the payrolls of medical staff. So, following the logic of
capitalism-first pay interest- local taxes, designed to maintain public health, are diverted
to the money lenders. And then there is the cost of monopolised drug purchases.
And that is symptomatic of the entire system, in all its aspects: education, including the
work needed to provide scientific and medical personnel, is crippled in the same way, by high
fees, by capital costs swollen by interest payments, by professions designed to hoard rather
than spread knowledge.
The entire system is corrupt and collapsing. And that is why,particularly in the "West"
where mass indoctrination has long been part of the culture, it is necessary to recognise
that it is not going to take much in the way of mass energy to bring the whole thing down.
And to replace it with real democracy.
The virus may not have been created in a laboratory but as a minimum it should be studied to
learn more about its origin and spread. At the present time we only hace circumstantial
evidence but it point in one direction. Certain facts are worth considering:
2)The Wuhan wet-market is not the first source of the coronavirus;
2) SARS-CoV virus was being studied and experimented on at a US Bioweapons lab at Fort
Detrick. In August 2019, it was cited for unsafe conditions that may have led to
contamination of wastewater;
3) The US sent over 300 military personnel to the World Military Games in Wuhan in late
October 2019;
4) Four foreign military participants came down with an unknown respiratory illness during
the games;
5) Genetic studies conducted in Taiwan and Japan indicate that the ancestral form of
SARS-CoV-2, the COVID-19 coronavirus does not occur in China but is found in the US and
elsewhere.
African swine fever is also spread by man-made means even if it is not in itself man-made.
Criminal elements spread it with
drones The longer it takes to track down the origin even if the Chinese reportedly
monitor everything, the more suspicious it becomes.
The world has changed many times, and it is changing again. All of us will have to
adapt to a new way of living, working, and forging relationships. But as with all change,
there will be some who lose more than most, and they will be the ones who have lost far too
much already. The best we can hope for is that the depth of this crisis will finally force
countries -- the US, in particular -- to fix the yawning social inequities that make large
swaths of their populations so intensely vulnerable.
No doubt global elites present a united front to protect their common interest in
maintaining the petrodollar and international banking system, insofar as it supports their
individual interests. However, other than that shared interest, the elite are rife with
factions -- both domestically and especially internationally.
Incredibly globalization as a system seems to have mostly disappeared in 6 weeks. There
are closed frontiers, no more container ships, the ports are empty, no flights and the malls
are closing.
It's not clear where the US public are going to get their electronics, clothing and other
Walmart items unless everything rebounds 100%. If there's no rebound, then it starts to look
like some kind of watershed event equivalent to WW1.
If elites and their interests are the foundation of the NWO, then right now they seem to
be all over the place.
– The globalists want a strong dollar which they ensure with the dollar's reserve
currency role (particularly the petrodollar). The dollar is doing fine now as a refuge, but
with oil approaching $20 a barrel it doesn't look like such a great link longer term, and
what use is a reserve currency when there's no trade?
– Globalism is based on ZIRP (Zero Interest Rate Policy) to keep the West consuming
and allow the issuance of massive debt. Now international bond markets are hesitating in the
face of more massive international issuance to deal with the economic fallout of the
Coronavirus. Interest rates only have to rise to their historic averages to collapse the
whole thing.
– The LGBT, SJW crowd find that racism, diversity and generally anti-White
propaganda has become a non-issue. Everything has become Coronavirus which is actually sort
of equalizing , and putting the focus on what the government needs to do to protect all the
public including Deplorables (unusual turnaround).
– Frontiers are closing with the cheap labour/ multicultural crowd having gone
quiet.
– Many globalist interests are facing bankruptcy as demand disappears, new share and
bond issuance is blocked, credit disappears and a myriad of counterparty risks (finacialized
opaque derivatives) turn into counterparty failures.
– The general inability of Western government elites to handle all these combined
events. Monetary policy doesn't work in a ZIRP environment so they may just resort to
"Helicopter Money" but with shortages of goods this is guaranteed to feed directly into
inflation.
Altogether a remarkable change of direction in a very short time.
@Miro23Coronavirus is certainly a useful way to deflate a speculative bubble. The virus gets the
blame rather the Dumpers in the Pump and Dump cycle. -- Miro23
But, given the precarious state of the global financial system, wouldn't any black swan of
sufficient magnitude suffice to accomplish both deflation and take the blame?
No doubt global elites present a united front to protect their common interest in
maintaining the petrodollar and international banking system, insofar as it supports their
individual interests . However, other than that shared interest, the elite are rife with
factions -- both domestically and especially internationally.
Which explains Tom Dye's assertion that one of the critical roles of the Counsel on
Foreign Relations (CFR) is conflict resolution between competing elite factions. Or, in other
words, I am having a bit of difficulty with the currently popular theory that a
unified, omnipotent and near infallible global elite is behind everything single thing that
happens on the world stage
Fully in agreement with b here. Instead of shovelling money at banksters and corporate
scammers to prop up the collapsing market, the Fed, ECB and other central banks should give
the cash to people who need it and will use it to buy things and stimulate the economy.
This pandemic is demonstrating once again that the global neoliberal economy is a fragile
Potemkin construct that breaks down at the slightest tension. Finance capitalism is a busted
flush, a blatant scam to line the pockets of the 1% at everyone else's expense. And when the
going gets really tough they will sacrifice all of us to save their cowardly avaricious
asses. Governments need to represent the interests of citizens, not central bankers and the
obscenely wealthy. That means putting the well-being of people first, not spending trillions
to "save" the stock market aka "the economy."
As the disease spread around Asia and then the world, however, the news focus gradually
shifted, so that now many are questioning the wisdom of having so unthinkingly globalized
everything and made so many industries -- including the medical industry -- dependent on a
place like the People's Republic of China. "What is it like to shoot oneself in the foot?" is
yet another question that has been bubbling up uncomfortably these past few weeks.
Outsourcing the medical equipment and pharmaceutical supply chain to a hostile communist
dictatorship with perhaps the worst public health record on the planet is the equivalent of the
Army Corps of Engineers' having put the emergency generators for the storm pumps at the
bottoms of the levees, where they would be the first to flood during a hurricane. But
globalists, like government engineers, are incapable of learning from mistakes. In fact, in
their minds, disasters serve perversely to confirm the advisability of their follies. Which
leads normal people to wonder, "What is going on in the globalist's mind?"
What, in other words, is it like to be a globalist? This is a question worth asking, because
the answer will determine very much in the months and years ahead. Unless we can figure out how
the globalist looks at the world, we will continue to be at his mercy, and will continue to
face pandemics and crises that are the precipitate of his ideology. We have got to understand
who these people are who have taken over our every doing, our every coming and going.
Otherwise, we will keep getting done in by them.
... ... ...
Jason Morgan is associate professor at Reitaku University in Kashiwa, Japan.
"But globalists, like government engineers, are incapable of learning from mistakes.
"
Is this supposed to be a serious statement? The piece is clearly written for the
amusement of people for whom he has very little respect otherwise it would not contain so
many nonsensical generalization. I dare he or anyone to provide a definition of a
"globalist" which does not make nonsense of that claim.
Outsourcing the medical equipment and pharmaceutical supply chain to a hostile
communist dictatorship with perhaps the worst public health record on the planet is the
equivalent of the Army Corps of Engineers' having put the emergency generators for the
storm pumps at the bottoms of the levees, where they would be the first to flood during a
hurricane.
I really would like to know what is Professor Morgan's specialty. He should know that
China is not a Communist country. Just because they choose to call themselves that doesn't
mean that a professor anything remotely connected to politics, government or economics
would be fooled. And where one puts a factory to manufacture goods, bears no relationship
whatsoever with how that country deploys those goods among its own population. The piece is
not serious. It is political entertainment. And for those who assume that criticizing the
rigor of a piece is the same as supporting whatever the piece is attacking, I am 100%
against what the writer seems to mean when he refers to "globalism". I personally consider
our monied class who shipped American jobs wherever they could find semi-slave labor to be
literally traitors. So, I have very strong views on "globalism". I just dislike the
disrespect shown by writers who think that they can write any nonsense, once they show that
they hate the same things that their audience hates, all in the search for cheap applause.
Writers should treat their readers like thinking beings, not like an audience at a
bullfight who are expected to howl with applause once you wave the red flag around and shed
enough blood.
That won't do, either, though. China is a place, too! In swoops the World Health
Organization (the aptly acronymed WHO?): it's COVID-19 now.
A much more serious comment would be about how China bullied WHO into expressing far
more confidence in China's published numbers that it had any basis for expressing. How it
lavished praise on China's handling of the outbreak rather than South Korea's excellent
management in their country. But educated people know what WHO is and the excellent work
they do all over the world. Of the millions of lives they have saved all over the world.
And that they are empowered by the governments of the world to name new viruses. That every
decent person in the world knows that country names attached to diseases can generate
persecution of people which is not a good thing, regardless against whom it is directed.
The WHO did not name the virus at the request of China. That is one of its normal
functions.
This piece is nothing short of absurd hate mongering.
Owned by World's Richest Man Jeff Bezos, Whole Foods Wants Workers to Pay for Colleagues'
Sick Leave During Coronavirus Pandemic
Remember when Jeff Bezos, whose company owns Whole Foods, said he was so freakin' rich he
didn't know how to spend his money so, heck, he'd start a space program? https://t.co/PjLe6MpQc8
"... Kleinknecht also spares little on showing just how disengaged Reagan was, and how rich tycoons used this to their advantage. At the same time, along the lines of Paul Kennedy in "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers," Kleinknecht notes that, even before Reagan's election, these tycoons were already more corporate raiders, looking to make money off various forms of cooking or tricking out company books, than they were corporate builders reinvesting in their companies. ..."
This title is from an award-winning journalist, a major work of reporting and history that
shatters the myth of Ronald Reagan. Since Ronald Reagan left office - and after his death
especially - his influence has loomed over American life. Singled out for his 'courage, his
kindness, his persistence, his honesty, and his almost heroic patience in the face of
setbacks', a number of conservatives, from the late William Buckley to his former speechwriter
Peggy Noonan to Republican nominee John McCain have looked to Reagan as a figure to regenerate
the American conservative tradition as the Bush White House stumbles through crisis and
scandal. This carefully calibrated image is a complete fiction, however.
The Reagan presidency was epoch-shattering, but not - as his propagandists would have it -
because it invigorated private enterprise, toppled the Berlin Wall or made America feel strong
again. Rather what gives Reagan such an awesome legacy is that he presided over the dismantling
of one of the greatest social experiments in human history-an eight-decade period of reform in
which working people were given an unprecedented sway over US politics, economy, and culture.
Reagan halted this forward march toward democracy almost overnight.
In "The Man Who Sold the World", journalist William Kleinknecht explores Middle America and
shows how Reaganism put the poor and working class back on the margins of everything except the
basest popular culture. This scathing indictment of the Reagan legacy is the first
comprehensive book to deal seriously with Ronald Reagan's place in contemporary America. Just
as Americans are trying to grapple with the legacy of George W. Bush, "The Man Who Sold the
World" shows how poorly we understand Reagan's.
Paul , Reviewed in the United States on October 11, 2016
If only more people knew the extent of the damage this man did to our country! I don't
have time to write a long review, but this book takes an exhaustive look at every spectrum of
the domestic policies that this laissez-faire, trickle-down, invisible hand of the free
market president unleashed on Americans. And it doesn't even touch on Iran-Contra or the
multiple despotic dictators he propped up or supported in Central America. 8 people found
this helpful
Helpful
Amazon
Customer , Reviewed in the United States on March 7, 2013
Since studying business and law in graduate school, every search for solutions to our
policy problems has led me back to the changes made under Reagan. The sad truth is, his
presidency was probably the most destructive in our history. If only more people would open
their eyes to the truth about what he did to our society and our economy. Both our social
battles and our declining economy are his legacies.
S.
J. Snyder , Reviewed in the United States on April 9, 2010
Since a lot of conservatives like to claim Reagan did so much to help small towns' Main
Street, and since Reagan himself pitched myths about that, Kleinknecht starts the book off with
a brilliant conceit.
He actually visits Reagan's small-town birthplace of Dixon, Ill., and talks to people there
about how it has changed since 1980. That includes people who say they'll only talk to him if
not asked to comment negatively on Reagan - which is, itself, an indirect negative comment on
Reagan!
Kleinknecht then supplements that with data from the Department of Labor, Department of
Commerce, etc., showing just what Reagan did do to, and NOT "for," Dixon and by extension,
other small towns.
Kleinknecht also spares little on showing just how disengaged Reagan was, and how rich
tycoons used this to their advantage. At the same time, along the lines of Paul Kennedy in "The
Rise and Fall of the Great Powers," Kleinknecht notes that, even before Reagan's election,
these tycoons were already more corporate raiders, looking to make money off various forms of
cooking or tricking out company books, than they were corporate builders reinvesting in their
companies.
Kleinknecht then goes beyond that, showing that many conservatives, including economist
Hayek (Hey, Milton Friedman, you didn't study him well enough!) warned about the perils of such
unbridled "capitalism."
At a time when "conservatives" today bash lower-middle-class people for paying little to
know income tax, while failing to point out massive companies like Reagan sponsor GM do the
same on the corporate side, this reminder that conservativism is more than, and different from,
what some talking heads today claim, is important.
That said, Kleinknecht cuts Jimmy Carter a bit too much slack and Bill Clinton a lot too
much. I'm reminded of one of Clinton's first lies, IMO, where he said, with mock surprise, (not
exact quote), "You mean my economic program is hostage to the bond market?" Yes, he was
cleaning up parts of the Reagan deficit mess old man Bush hadn't fully tidied. But, he was too
close to Jackson Stephens to really be surprised. Ditto for Congressional Democratic
leadership, beyond the increasingly frail Tip O'Neill, in the Reagan era. (This means you, Jim
Wright.)
This really is, though, at least a 4/5 star book. Ignore the 1-star reviews.
Everything the CDC has been doing has been shocking. As a health care provider I just
don't want to even look at their recommendations anymore: their information is months old and
not based in science, let alone current research on COVID-19.
Local colleges have been shutting down but forcing instructors to go to the schools
– that's not social distancing. And many are still having students in EMT, nursing,
psychology, physical therapy, and other health sciences, go to their clinicals, where they
will be exposed without adequate personal protection equipment. This is because of the CDC.
And admin's greed for money.
My local community college, after implementing/pleading with students to incorporate
careful hygiene and social distancing into their time on campus, and seeing minimal
compliance, decided to make ALL lecture classes online access for the next 3 weeks (at
least). We have no known Covid-19 cases in the COUNTY. (But since testing is not extant, or
common, no one knows what the true situation is.)
The goal of moving to online class instruction is to minimize the number of students (15K
total) on campus and limit contact with older instructors, counselors, and other staff. Lab
classes (PE, Science) will continue under strict personal contact protocol. The solution is a
compromise between health issues and the need for students to complete 80% of course
curricula to get transferable college credits. We'll see if the gamble works out.
Closing K-12 schools is a "no win" situation. Some parents want them closed, others don't.
In Los Angeles the school district decided to close from pressure by the teachers labor
union. Again, few kids understand/implement the protocols of social distancing and smaller
home groups may be the better option (for some). Meals for disadvantaged students will
continue at the LAUSD (~500K students), but they will be drive-thru pick-up.
It appears the pandemic could bring even the invincible US to its knees.
+ The for-profit health care system in the US is already starting to
crack under the pressure and the virus hasn't even really hit yet
+ Pence promised 8 million tests by the end of the week, but according to Lamar Alexander:
"We are going to work as hard as we can to push this administration to continue to ramp up the
number of tests but the reality is..they do not yet have the tests available and can't give us
a date." South Korea, where the virus appeared about the same time it did in US, is testing
10,000 a day and has been for nearly a month.
+ Your country under neoliberalism: The CDC tested only
77 people this week for coronavirus.
+ Here in Oregon, the state health lab only has the capacity to perform
80 tests a day but that's still more than the CDC did all week.
+ Another sign of the impending crisis (and that ObamaCare was a disaster): The number of
hospital beds in the US has fallen by 5% over the last ten
years .
+ The US (pop. 330 million) has fewer hospital beds than Italy (pop. 60 million) and South
Korea (pop. 51 million). And many of those are unaffordable for most people. Winning!
+ Larry Kudlow, who missed the great recession, "The virus is contained!"
+ On Weds night Sanjay Gupta asked CNN's Don Lemon to read the CDC's coronavirus testing
stats off of his phone.
ZERO tests conducted today by CDC.
A grand total of 8 tests conducted by other public health agencies across the
country.
EIGHT.
+ The Republican Governor for Ohio Mike DeWine confirmed on Thursday that only 1,000 tests
are available to 11.69 million citizens who live in the Buckeye State. He further said that
projections are that more than 100,000 Ohioans will be infected with the coronavirus
+ The projections for NYC are sobering, to say the least
+ Rebecca Nagle: "Look, I fully support banning travel from Europe to prevent the spread of
infectious disease. I just think it's 528 years too late."
+ Matt "Gas Mask" Gaetz, one of the most ridiculous buffoons in a Congress filled with them,
voted against paid sick leave. Now he's taking
it , because he was exposed to COVID-19.
+ The Cuban health care system, whose doctors are even now in China testing interferon-based
drugs against the virus, is going to look better and better to people in the US, as the
COVID-19 does its thing here. Even the Miami Cuban nutcases may be singing Fidel's praises
before this is over .
+ Maybe Jay Inslee (who promised tests would be "free") is a " snake
" after all
Maybe Inslee (who promised tests would be "free") is a "snake" after all
+ The Senate won't take up House coronavirus bill until after its recess. "The Senate will
act when we come back and we have a clearer idea of what extra steps we need to take," Sen.
Lamar Alexander told reporters What if they never come back? One can hope
+ Why the Senate is refusing to act on COVID-19: "A key sticking point in the talks appears
to be GOP demands to include Hyde amendment language in the bill to prevent federal funds from
being used for abortion " Priorities, priorities
+ Joe Biden: "I don't like the Supreme Court decision on abortion. I think it went too far.
I don't think that a woman has the sole right to say what should happen to her body." (Biden
said this
in 2006 , not 1976.)
+ The World Health Organization has announced that dogs cannot contract Covid-19. Dogs
previously held in quarantine can now be released. WHO let the dogs out! (The jokes will only
get worse, as the virus spreads.)
+ To wit: Always scrub your hands like you just shook hands with the President
+ Come back, Marianne, your country (if not your lamentable party) needs you!
Uh, maybe we should cancel that order for 100 B-21 Raiders all equipped with nuclear bombs
at the rate of $560M each, and use the money instead to pay for free testing and coronavirus
treatment We need to change our thinking about all this, do it quickly, and speak it
loudly.
"What on earth prompted you to take a hand in this, doctor?"
"I don't know. My my code of morals, perhaps."
"Your code of morals. What code, if I may ask?"
"Comprehension."
+ According to Amazon's rankings, Camus' The Plague is now #7 in the Self-Help &
Psychology Humor category, which is an irony Camus himself probably couldn't have gotten away
with. A viral pandemic is apparently what it takes to get Americans to read French
existentialist literature
+ "Carbon Joe" Biden's entire climate change plan is budgeted at $1.7 trillion. The Fed just
dropped that much
on Wall Street in a single day without any public input
+ And they said we "can't afford" national health care!
Uh, maybe we should cancel that order for 100 B-21 Raiders all equipped with nuclear bombs
at the rate of $560M each, and use the money instead to pay for free testing and coronavirus
treatment We need to change our thinking about all this, do it quickly, and speak it
loudly.
Just to underline the incompetency of neoliberalism, the Jack Ma Foundation has just
donated 500,000 testing kits and 1 million masks to America. One guy on twitter said-
'Many will welcome this. Some will see it as an insult. The real insult is that the
richest country in the world has waged war on science and as a result is finding itself
helpless..'
The real tragedy is this. Iran has been covering up the large number of their Coronavirus
deaths in the past few weeks until satellite images showed mass burial sites outside their
cities. Through gross negligence, the US has also been covering up the infiltration of
Coronavirus in America and trying to cover it all up in the same manner.
So in a few months time, will the Russian and Chinese be releasing images of mass burial
sites on the American mainland that the Trump government will seek to hide?
The EU and USA were notable in their absence. To be fair, the EU has promised assistance,
but the Germans and Lagarde are still stumbling around with the conditions that they want to
attach.
Neoliberal overlords don't give up easily.
I think it's safe to say the new crisis just killed the Schengen Treaty. That ridiculous
document which guaranteed freedom of movement across the European Union finally hit something
it couldn't bully, COVID-19. Regardless of whether you believe the pandemic is real or not, the
reaction to it is real and is having real consequence far beyond the latest print of the Dow
Jones Industrial Average.
The lockdown of Italy isn't a temporary thing. Oh, the suspension of free movement is
temporary, but it portends something far bigger.
It's the beginning of the real political balkanization that's coming to the European Union
over the next few years. Old enmities and prejudices have not been stamped out under the boot
heel of oppressive legislation coming from a bunch of disconnected technocrats in Brussels.
They have only been suppressed.
Because when there are existential threats there's no time or desire to virtue signal about
how we're all one big happy dysfunctional family. 1 minute ago The
thing is most people at Zerohedge have no idea about the reality in Germany and the other
European countries and the psychicological robustness of its people. This crisis is nothing
compared to the catastrophies of the 20th century. In times of challenge one can see who is
strong and effective and acting in solidarity. And this is it what the extended Euroland is
going to show soon. A masterplan for Euroland how to overcome this Corona problems. It takes
time to adopt but things do move already in the right direction. Banning travel is a harsh
measure but the right thing in this situation.
The economy will take a deep dip but there will be no catastrophy. Even when Deutsche Bank
should go down that would impact the situation only in the financial markets. But luckily
Euroland has a worldclass manufacturing and agricultural sector, plus there is the ECB owned by
Eurolands member states.
So there is money, there is food, there is production, there are raw materials as well as
energy available from Russia,.. Europe is world leader in renewable energy and recycling of
waste materials., ..
So nothIng to worry about in principle. Its only one real danger, the Anglo Saxon Jewish
dominated financial sector and the MIC which is still dreaming about world domination. I hope
their dream is shattered soon. 12 minutes ago Thanks Tom..
But we won't comment and why?
Because the cause of the crisis is still not being addressed..
Corona of virus is simply an accelerant to a serious problem..
And that's all we'll say... 43 minutes ago Old enmities and prejudices have not been
stamped out .... This has been said a thousand times across EU social media and
comments in national press in developed member states. Particularly during Brexit. That the EU
was flawed from the start in imagining the ******, pretend EU would ever; by adopting developed
EU rules and regulations, even begin to match up to the Real EU. Pretend EU would only ever
pretend - many nothing more than 1st generation democracies. So the elite in the ****** EU hand
picked who was to lead that ministry or council and then all levels of locally elite society
and their friends and families were greased by jobs in the bloated public sector. Now Germany
is supposed to keep this "Noses in the Trough" nonsense going!
It is mind blowing to realise the damage to the EU the 'Contra os Bretoes' EU retards have
done in victimising the British! The UK - an advanced G7 country with many centuries of history
of sorting out, at great loss to its citizens and economy, European squabbles - long before the
US was encouraged to get involved as well.
UK Remainers need to focus their efforts on the ****** EU crashing (or being crashed) out
and the UK rejoining the EU and helping make the EU work the way it was sold to us British
decades ago. 44 minutes ago
Feudal-Vassalism it is, extended into https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neocolonialism
The situation in Greece has been for about a decade worse off than in Gaza.
As Otto von Bismarck noted "God has a special providence for fools, drunkards, and the
United States of America."
That's a reason for hope.
But there are multiple reasons for despair (hoarding epidemics has shown how
brainwashed people are with neoliberal rationality)
The neoliberal society with its twisted guiding philosophy of radical individualism
and competition combined with a supremacist "that could never happen here" attitude
quickly falls into panicked chaos when reality kicks in and reveals the society's
underlying vulnerabilities.
Countries with weak social safety nets and an ideological opposition to social
responsibility are extremely vulnerable to systemic breakdown when their societies are
hit with unexpected stress.
That is what we see in the USA. This virus is revealing just how ineffective the
neoliberal Social Darwinism ("every man for himself") ethic (aka "neoliberal
rationality") is and how deeply in denial and out of touch with reality these societies
are. Including first of all neoliberal politicians (aka Washington swamp rats)
Casino capitalism economics is fragile and huge shocks are possible.
The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by
expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding
values
. It is separate from the newsroom.
Most American restaurants do not offer paid sick leave. Workers who fall sick face a simple
choice: Work and get paid or stay home and get stiffed. Not surprisingly, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
reported in 2014 that fully 20 percent of food service workers had come to work at least once in the previous year "
while
sick with vomiting or diarrhea
."
As the new coronavirus spreads across the United States, the time has come for restaurants,
retailers and other industries that rely on low-wage labor to abandon their parsimonious resistance to paid sick leave.
Companies that do not pay sick workers to stay home are endangering their workers, their customers and the health of the
broader public.
Studies show
that paying for sick employees to stay home significantly reduces the spread of the seasonal flu. There's
every reason to think it would help to check the new coronavirus, too.
Michael Hudson: [00:00:00] There's recognition that commercial banking has become
dysfunctional and that most loans by commercial banks are either against assets – in
which case the lending inflates the prices of real estate, stocks and bonds – or for
corporate takeover loans.
The economy's low-income brackets have not been helped by today's financial system. Here in
New York City, red lining and a visceral class hatred by high finance toward the poor
characterized the major banks. From the very top to the bottom, they were very clear they were
not going to lend to places with racial minorities like the Lower East Side. The Chase
Manhattan Bank told me that the reason was explicitly ethnic, and they didn't want to deal with
poor people.
A lot of people in these neighborhoods used to have savings banks. There were 135 mutual
savings banks in New York City with names like the Bowery Savings Banks, the Dime Savings Bank,
the Immigrant Savings Bank. As their names show, they were specifically to serve the low-income
neighborhoods. But in the 1980s the commercial banks convinced the mutual savings banks to let
themselves be raided. Their capital reserves of the savings banks, was just looted by Wall
Street. The depositors' equity was stripped away (leaving their deposits, to be sure). Sheila
Bair, former head of the FDIC, told me that the commercial banks' cover story was that they
were large enough to provide more capital reserves to lend for low-income neighborhoods. The
reality was that instead, they simply extracted revenue from these neighborhoods. Large parts
of the largest cities in America, from Chicago and New York to others, are underbanked because
of the transformation of commercial banks from providers of mortgages to emptiers-out, just
revenue collectors. That leaves the main recourse in these neighborhoods to pay-day lenders at
usurious interest rates. These lenders have become major new customers for Wall Street bankers,
not the poor who have no comparable access to credit.
Apart from the savings banks, of course, you had the post office banks. When I went to work
on Wall Street in the 1960s, 3 percent of U.S. savings were in the form of post office savings.
The advantage, of course, is that post offices were in every neighborhood. So you actually had
either a local community banking like savings banks – not like today's community banks,
which are commercial banks, lending largely to real estate speculators to capitalize rental
apartments into heavily mortgaged co-ops with much higher financial carrying charges – or
you had post offices. You now have a deprivation of basic bank services in much of the economy,
combined with an increasingly dysfunctional and predatory commercial banking system.
The question is, what's going to happen next time there's a bank crash? Sheila Bair wrote
about after the 2008 crash that the most corrupt bank was Citibank – not only corrupt,
but incompetent. She had wanted to take it over. But Obama and his Secretary of the Treasury,
Tim Geithner, acted as lobbyists for Citibank from the beginning, protecting it from being
taken over. But imagine what would have happened if Citibank would have been become a public
bank – or other banks that are about to have negative equity if there is a downturn in
the stock and bond and real estate market. Imagine what will happen if they were turned into
public banks. They would be able to provide the kind of credit that the commercial banking
system has refused to provide – credit to blacks, Hispanics and poor people that have
just been red-lined in what is becoming a financially polarized dual economy, one for the
wealthy and one for everyone else.
Walt McRee: [00:04:10] Well, power in that realm, of course, lies with the banking
cartel. They look at public banks as a threat. They hate competition of any sort, it seems.
Michael Hudson: [00:04:18] Of course it is a threat.
Walt McRee: [00:04:22] And even when we say, Michael, that we're not going after the
business you're already doing because you aren't lending to small, medium enterprises and so
forth – we want to take on the infrastructure that you don't want to fund, but they still
are pushing back. How will we be able to get past that?
Michael Hudson: [00:04:40] I think you should say that of course you're not going to
take business away from them, because the public community bank or government-owned bank would
not make corporate takeover loans or speculative derivative bets. It would not create the
dysfunctional credit and debt overhead that has been expanding ever since 1999 when the Clinton
administration changed the banking rules.
The problem is that the big commercial banks don't want the productive kind of loans that
public banking would make. For instance, the reason they didn't want to extend credit to the
Lower East Side or the Hudson Yards west side of New York was they wanted to sort of drive out
their residents and gentrify it, by providing the money to the big developers who socially
bulldoze these neighborhoods. Their policy is to kick out as many low-income renters or owners
as they can, and replace them by raising rents from like $50 a month to $5,000 a month. That's
what's happened on the Lower East Side from the time I first lived there to what rents are
today.
There is a fight of the economy's unproductive sector against people who want to use credit
in a productive way that actually helps the economy. I think it's a fight between good and
evil, at least between the productive and unproductive economy, between economics for the
people and economics for the One Percent.
ORDER IT NOW
Ellen Brown: [00:06:14] I wonder, though, if the Fed is going to even allow the banks
to collapse again, with what they just did with the repo market. They can step in at any time
to save anybody. I don't know that Congress, even has a say in it. What do you think?
Michael Hudson: [00:06:30] I think that's right. I've talked to Paul Craig Roberts
and we discuss whether they can just keep on keeping these zombie banks alive. Can they keep
the over-indebted zombie economy alive by the Federal Reserve manipulating the forward stock
and bond markets to support prices? It doesn't actually have to buy stocks and bonds beyond the
$4 trillion it's already put into Quantitative Easing. It can simply make manipulate the
forward market. That doesn't really cost any money until the big crash comes. So I think one
should have a discussion over what President Trump says is a boom that that he's created, with
the stock market going up. Does that mean that the economy is getting richer? Are we fine with
commercial banking the way it is, so that we don't need public banking?
I think you have to expose the fact that what's happened is artificial state intervention.
What we have in the name of free market support of the banks is not a free market at all. It's
a highly centralized market to support the predatory financial sector's wealth against the rest
of the economy. The financial sector's wealth takes the form of credit to the rest of the
economy, extracting interest and amortization, while making loans simply to increase asset
prices for real estate and financial securities, not put new means of production in place to
employ labor. So you have to go beyond the public banking issue as such, and look at the
political context. Ultimately, the way that you defend public banking is to show how the
economy works and how public banking could play a positive role in the economy as it
should work.
Ellen Brown: [00:08:14] Can you explain what you meant by forward lending? I mean,
they don't have to
Michael Hudson: [00:08:19] It's not forward lending, it's buying long. For the stock
market's Dow Jones average, they'll contract to buy all its stocks or those in the S&P 500
in one month, or one week or whatever the timeframe is, for X amount – say, 2% over what
they're selling today. Well, once the plunge protection team issues a guarantee to buy, the
market is going to raise the bid prices for these stocks up to what the Fed and the Treasury
have promised to pay for them. By the time the prices go up, the Fed doesn't actually have to
buy these stocks, because everybody's anticipated that the Fed would buy them at this 2 percent
gain. So it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. We're dealing with a government run by the banks and
the creditor powers to artificially raise asset prices, on credit. This has kept alive a system
that represents itself as creating prosperity. But it's not creating prosperity for the 99
Percent. Public banking would aim at prosperity for the 99 Percent, not just for the One
Percent.
Ellen Brown: [00:09:46] I'm writing about Mexico's AMLO, who is now who has just
announced in January that he will be building 2,700 branches of a public bank in the next two
years. He's expecting 13,000 branches ultimately, so it will be the largest bank in the
country. His reasoning is just what you're saying, that the banks have failed and have not
serviced the poor. His mandate is to help the poor, and he can't do that if they don't have
banking services.
Michael Hudson: [00:10:17] Is that national?
Ellen Brown: [00:10:18] Yes, all across the country.
Walt McRee: [00:10:22] "Loprabrador", AMLO. So we know that a public monetary source
is a public utility. Our vision is to create a network of local and state public banks. That
leads us to the view that what we really need to be targeting is the Federal Reserve, to
ultimately turn it into a publicly-owned entity. Is that folly or
Michael Hudson: [00:10:55] I think the way to get people to support this is if they
understand how the Federal Reserve was created. A few years ago I published an article in an
Indian economic journal (I think it's on my website), about how the Federal Reserve was
created.
[1] "How the U.S. Treasury avoided Chronic Deflation by Relinquishing Monetary Control to Wall
Street," Economic & Political Weekly (India), May 7, 2016. Available on Naked
Capitalism an michael-hudson.com. There was a fight by Wall Street led by J.P. Morgan.
America had a central bank until 1913 – the Treasury. Until 1913 the Treasury was
doing everything that the Federal Reserve began to do. The idea of creating the Federal Reserve
was to take power away from the Treasury. The Treasury wasn't even allowed to be on the board
as an owner of Federal Reserve stock. The idea was to take decision-making away from
Washington, away from democratic politics, and insulate the financial system from the
democratic political system by turning control over to the corporate financial centers -- Wall
Street, Chicago, and the other Federal Reserve districts. They were the same districts as those
that the Treasury already had divided the country into. Remember, these were the decades
leading up to World War I when there was a social democratic revolution from Europe to the
United States. A guiding idea was to democratize banking.
Wall Street very quickly developed a counter strategy to this. And the counter strategy was
the Federal Reserve. You're welcome to republish my article on your site. You and I both aim to
reverse the counterrevolution mounted against classical economics and social democracy. The
entity you're talking about would probably be under the aegis of the Treasury. You'd be putting
the economy back in the direction that the world was moving before World War I derailed these
efforts.
ORDER IT NOW
You talk of nationalizing the Fed. I know people don't like the word nationalizing. How
about thing de-privatizing or de-Thatcherizing the Fed? You have to represent the Fed as having
stolen economic and financial policy away from the public domain. It became part of the
neoliberal project taking form in Austria in the 1930s. You're trying to restore the classical
economic vision of productive versus unproductive credit, productive versus unproductive labor,
and public money as opposed to private money. These distinctions were erased by the censorial
neoliberal counter-revolution.
It's not that you're radical, that these people had a radical revolution to carve away the
financial system from democracy. And you're restoring the classical vision of democratizing,
re-democratizing finance and banking.
Walt McRee: [00:14:12] I want to thank you for saying that, Michael, because
de-privatizing the Federal Reserve is so much more accurate and powerful. You'll recall that we
kind of exchanged a phrase when I said "institutionalized deception.". I think that's really
important. But let's say that prior to that, Stephanie Kelton gets in there, or somebody from
the MMT crowd gets into a new administration prior to de-privatizing the Fed. Does MMT have a
place to play or to emerge in that environment?
Michael Hudson: [00:14:55] Of course, and here's the role: You can leave the
commercial banks to do what they're doing, but you're not going to provide Federal Reserve
credit for them to load down the economy with unproductive debt. The question is, if you're
going to create real community banking via a public banking sector, where will it get the money
to lend out? How do we provide money to the red-lined areas of the economy to actually finance
tangible capital investment and people's living needs, not just predatory lending? The way that
MMT comes in is much like the Chicago plan for one hundred percent reserves. These community
banks will need Treasury-created depository credit beyond the deposits they raise in their
local areas.
They need more money. MMT will provide credit to these banks in exchange for their loan
originations of a productive character, on terms that borrowers can afford, with realistic
mortgages also to build public housing. The new Fed that we're talking about will be a major
depositor and will provider of the capital deposits and reserves to the banks. Right now, it
has provided $4 trillion of Quantitative Easing credit to the banks, not to put into the
economy but only to inflate the stock and bond market and make housing more expensive. Wouldn't
it be much better to provide credit to community banks that actually would make credit
available for productive economic purposes – and not for takeover loans, stock buybacks
and asset speculation?
Productive credit was what everybody expected banking to develop in the late 19th century.
Germany and Central Europe were leading the way. It was called Middle Europa banking, as
opposed to Anglo-American banking. (I discuss this contrast in Killing the Host .) That
was essentially following the classical model, as everybody expected banking to evolve prior to
World War I.
Ellen Brown: [00:17:29] Cool. That's totally what I also wrote about in my latest
book. The Federal Reserve is where you should be getting credit, so you don't have to borrow it
from somewhere else. Everybody thinks this whole repo thing is so contrived. It's
re-hypothecated. One party owns the collateral at night, the other party owns it during the
day. It's all just bluff to make it look like they borrowed something that wasn't really there.
So let's just acknowledge that all money is just credit. And like you say, if you have a good
loan, a good project to be monetized, that's the whole point of a bank. It will turn your
future productivity into something you can spend in the marketplace. And the central bank is
there to provide the credit.
Michael Hudson: [00:18:21] That's right.
Ellen Brown: [00:18:22] Turn it into dollars.
Michael Hudson: [00:18:24] That's right. My way of describing it is to look at
history, to show that this is not a utopian idea. It is what made German and Central European
banking so much more productive in the decades leading up to World War I. So we actually have
historical examples of good banking versus bad banking. But the predators won in the end.
Ellen Brown: [00:18:53] Well, regarding this whole repo thing, one big problem we
have with our public banks is the 110 percent collateralization requirement in California. How
is a bank supposed to make loans if it has to use its deposits to buy securities –
something safe and yielding low interest to back the deposits? It seems to me that what the big
banks do – and I think we could do it, too – is to take those deposits and buy
federal securities at 1.5 percent, and then they turn around and use the securities as
collateral in the repo market, where they pay 1.5 percent. In other words, they earn 1.5
percent and they pay 1.5 percent. So it's a wash. They get their money for free. I think we
could do that, too. Or are only certain players allowed to play that game, and we can't jump
in?
Michael Hudson: [00:19:50] Well, you're the lawyer. Of course they could do it. I
think one of the things that you and other progressives have recommended is that the Fed should
stop paying money to the banks for their reserve deposits. Stop giving them the free giveaway.
If you want to say, "We're against the largest welfare recipients in the country. They're not
the people you think. They're the Wall Street banks. These hypocrites want to cut back Social
Security to balance the budget. They want to cut back medical care and social services, and
make themselves the only welfare recipients."
Ellen Brown: [00:20:30] Right, agreed. But if we just stand on our high horse and say
this has to change, nothing will happen. We could do it ourselves and just show what you're
doing in contrast to what they're doing
ORDER IT NOW
Michael Hudson: [00:20:44] You're asking for symmetry. They're making us carry a big
load on our back, that they don't have to carry. They're loading the dice in their own favor.
You want to unload the dice and stop the insider favoritism. You correctly represent the banks
as being insiders. You have to say, "Look, these insiders are trying to keep a monopoly." You
could use the anti-monopoly legislation that's been on the books since Teddy Roosevelt's time.
You have a lot of legal power to break up the big banks. You could treat them like I think they
could treat the pharmaceutical companies if Bernie gets in.
Walt McRee: [00:21:44] Monopolies are being challenged by the shadow banking
industry. New forms of payment exchange technologies seem to be eating away at that singular
source of credit. What's your prognosis for how that's going to evolve? Will the big banks find
a way to clamp down on that ultimately?
Michael Hudson: [00:22:05] Are we talking about cryptocurrency?
Walt McRee: [00:22:07] That would be one example, yes.
Michael Hudson: [00:22:10] Well,. you can't stop people from gambling. People think
that buying a cryptocurrency is like buying an Andy Warhol etching. Maybe it'll go up in price
if a large number of people want it. But basically, it's junk. It's very speculative. It's
certainly not stable. It goes up and down. One day there may be a solar flare that's going to
wipe out all the bank records for these things. But there is no way to stop people from doing
something that seems to be silly or gambling. You certainly will not insure them. So you will
not give them any protection against loss. You also will want to insulate the economy from
having any transactions in crypto, in these alternative money things that pose a big threat of
loss. They are not real money, because the government will not accept payment of
cryptocurrencies as taxes or for public goods and services. The government will only accept
specified forms of money. You can create any kind of swap or bet. If you want to create the
equivalent of a racetrack on horses. You can do it, but that's a financial racetrack. I think
there may be taxes on racetracks. They were unregulated for a long time. But Hollywood movies
showed that there's a lot of criminalization going on there.
Walt McRee: [00:23:59] We were all amused, well, maybe a little wondering about Max
Kaiser. Ellen and I and Tyson Slokum had some time with him over there just before you were at
his Brooklyn studio, but Max is into Bitcoin in a big way, and he sees it as the new gold.
Michael Hudson: [00:24:20] He told me that a lot of people watch his show because
they're gold bugs or they are interested in Bitcoin. I think he's tried to take a neutral view
of it, certainly in our personal conversations. He's not a gold bug and he's not a Bitcoin or
other bug. But he said that a lot of people want to find out about it, so he has guests on his
show telling people, "Here it is, take your choice." It's part of the new speculative financial
landscape, just like swamps are part of landscape for Florida real estate. So he's going to
cover the whole spectrum. Reuters produces his shows, and the audience wants to hear about
this. So he talks about what they want to hear.
Ellen Brown: [00:25:20] I think he actually does promote Bitcoin. He's heavily
invested in it and he was one of the originals, so he's obviously made a lot of money on
it.
Michael Hudson: [00:25:29] Okay.
Ellen Brown: [00:25:29] I think he agrees that it can't be a national currency. It's
too slow, too expensive, and too environmentally unfriendly. But like you say, it has been a
good investment, just like fine art or something that, if people want it, the value goes up.
Plus, there's a big black market for it, for trading and things that you don't want the
government to know about.
Michael Hudson: [00:25:57] It's a real phenomenon. I know people who benefited from
Andy Warhol. So he saw the phenomenon and he seems to have made money, but when Steve Keen and
I and others got together with him for a couple of days two months ago, the topic never came up
in discussion.
But gold did. I wonder where the gold of Libya went, for instance. Apparently it was all
taken and I understand the US gave it to ISIS. Hillary said it had to go to ISIS to act as our
Foreign Legion. We gave them Libya's weapons. Some of the gold must have just been taken by the
CIA and State Department for dirty tricks for its black operations. Certainly, America wants to
prevent any other country or large gold possessor from having enough gold to try to reinstate
it as a means of settling balance-of-payments deficits. America runs a large military deficit,
so at a certain point, the more money it spends abroad for its 800 military bases, the more
gold it would lose. Just like in General de Gaulle's time during the Vietnam War, although
actually Germany was taking more gold than France. So America wants to keep the dollar at the
center of the world financial system. That really was why it went to war with Libya, because
Libya was one of the first countries to de-dollarize and move its currency toward gold. So
you're having a group of countries – Russia, China, Iran and others – add gold to
their reserves instead of dollars. You're having a de-dollarization move throughout the world
to break free from the US ability to do what it did do Iran.
When Iran borrowed in dollars under the Shah, it used Chase Manhattan Bank as its paying
agent. It put enough money into the account to pay its foreign debts service. But then the
State Department told Chase to screw Iran and refuse to turn over the payment. Now that the
Shah wasn't running Iran, once Chase refused to turn over the payment and froze Iran's account,
that meant that Iran went into default on the entire dollarized foreign debt. It was liable for
a huge amount of capital.
ORDER IT NOW
That was a warning for the rest of the world that no government could safely put its money
in an American bank or an American bank branch, or in a British branch that would act as a
subsidiary of the Pentagon. Because if you do, the bank can simply force you into default at
any time, just like the US CIA can come in and use electronic weaponry to destroy your bank
payment-clearing system. That's why the threat of cutting Russia and China and other countries
off from the Swift Interbank Clearing System led Russia to develop its own clearing system.
With a flick of a switch it can begin to work anytime United States tries to cut Russia off
from the SWIFT payments system. So you're having the whole world de-dollarize very quickly. And
right now the question is what Europe will choose. Are Germany and other countries going to
become part of the de-dollarized system, or remain part of the dollar area?
This is part of the fight against using the IT chips and the communications chips from
Huawei. Huawei did not put US spyware into the system. The United States says that if it can't
have a phone system and communications system that it can control by spyware and use to blow up
your economy, your public utilities, your electrical systems, then you're our enemy, because we
feel insecure without this control. When President Trump said that Huawei was a threat to US
national security, he meant that we don't feel secure unless we have the power to destroy any
economy that acts in any way that is independent of the United States – because you might
do something we don't like. This is the most aggressive concept of security that one could
imagine. So of course the rest of the world is seeing its own national security as having a
financial dimension. The financial dimension is to create a monetary and financial system that
minimizes connections to the dollar except to the extent of having to buy and sell dollars to
stabilize foreign exchange rate.
Ellen Brown: [00:31:31] There's a lot of talk, even among central bankers, that we
need to get off the dollar as a global reserve currency. But it seems to me that gold is also
manipulatable. I mean, it's not the ideal I had envisioned a system where instead of reserves
being a thing, like dollars or gold that you can actually trade, it would just be a measure,
like a yardstick. You would be able to compare one currency to another according to what you
could buy with it. Like you'd have a whole basket of things that everybody uses in every
country. And now that they report that kind of stuff, it wouldn't be all that hard to get the
figures and, you know, just compare and say, well, your dollar will be worth so many pesos in
Mexico or whatever. That was my idea, but what do you think?
Michael Hudson: [00:32:27] That would meet one of the criteria of money, which is as
a measure of value, but it would not do at all for international money. You have to have some
means of constraint. In other words, suppose the United States continued to run another
military budget deficit like it did in the Vietnam War. There is no way that you could use the
balance of payments as a constraint on the policy of deficit countries, which are usually the
military aggressors. The whole idea of going off gold was that under the gold standard no
country can afford to make war, because if you go to war your currency collapses. In 1976,
Herman Kahn and I went to the Treasury and – this is to answer your question. He put up a
map of the world and said, "These are the countries – Scandinavia, Western Europe, the
United States – that don't believe in gold. They're all politically stable social
democratic countries. They have faith in government. No look at these others here's the rest of
the world – India, South America, Africa and most of Asia. these are people that believe
in gold. Why do they believe in gold, but not the Protestant cultural area? Well, they don't
have faith in government. They don't trust governments. They want some option that is
independent of government. Gold is not only to bribe the border guards if they're escaping from
somewhere. They want to be free of governments that have been captured by anti-democratic,
predatory forces."
He said if you tried to think of what you would make that is an alternative to the dollar
that people could understand, well, for thousands of years, people have decided that gold and
silver. (I'm sure that you could add platinum and palladium.) So they have been the ultimate
means of settlement, and hence of international monetary constraint.
Gold isn't to be used as money. It's not to be used as a normal means of payment. What it is
to be used for is as a balance-of-payments constraint on the ability of countries to run up
chronic deficits that are mainly military in character. So I called our presentation "Gold: the
Peaceful Metal." Well, needless to say, the Treasury didn't go for that, because they said that
we had just explained how super-imperialism works via the dollar. So they didn't go back to
gold. We lost that argument.
Ellen Brown: [00:35:34] Isn't the reason we went off gold standard, though, that
there simply isn't enough gold and that we wound up leveraging it, and
Michael Hudson: [00:35:42] No, there's plenty of gold. There wasn't enough gold to
pay for the military deficit. Every month the dollars we spent in Vietnam would be turned over
to the banks in Indo-China. They were French. They'd turn the dollars over to Paris and General
de Gaulle would turn in these dollars for gold. We had to pay in gold for the military deficit,
which was the entire source of the US balance-of-payments deficits in the 50s, 60s and into the
70s. America went off gold so that it could afford to wage war without the constraint of losing
its control over the international monetary system.
Ellen Brown: [00:36:29] We went after gold domestically because it didn't work. I
mean, you had to use fractional reserve lending
Michael Hudson: [00:36:35] Yes, of course gold doesn't work domestically. It's
certainly not an appropriate domestic money supply. I'm only talking about it for settlements
among central banks internationally.
Ellen Brown: [00:36:49] But you said it's not to be traded. But if you don't, how do
you settle your balance of payments?
ORDER IT NOW
Michael Hudson: [00:36:53] It can be traded. There is a market. And you began by
saying, quite correctly, that gold prices are manipulated. Well, right now the US and the
central banks are manipulating its price to keep it low, in the same way that they're
manipulating the stock and bond market by buying forward. Except in the case of gold, they're
selling forward. If they keep agreeing to sell gold at a very low price, people will see that
if they can buy gold at this low price, why should they buy it at a higher price today, as the
price will fall and be driven down. So, yes, gold is manipulated downwards today by the U.S.
– essentially the plunge protection team acting internationally to keep the price of gold
down to discourage other countries and populations from buying it is protection against
collapse of the financial system.
So we're back to the fact that the financial system is dysfunctional. In a functional
financial system, you wouldn't need domestic reference to gold. You'd have a domestic financial
system that works fine without gold. Gold is what you have when the financial system becomes
dysfunctional and there's a breakdown.
Ellen Brown: [00:38:21] Well, it almost seems like you need some sort of global
regulator. But that's like a one-world government, which we all freak out about.
Michael Hudson: [00:38:28] You certainly don't want a one world government. Right now
all the plans for world government are neoliberal. They aim essentially to limit, to break up
democratic government regulation of corporate business, mining and monopolies. The idea of a
one-world government is to destroy any democratic government's ability to make its own laws in
the interests of labor or society. You would have a parallel government of wealth, government
of property. It's what the University of Chicago calls the Law and Economics regime. And this
is, this is fascism on an international scale. And there is a wonderful book by Quinn Slobodian
in 2008, Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Nationalism , showing how these
plans were developed by fascists in the 1930s and by the fascist promoters at the University of
Chicago. The fascist promoters were people like Hayek and von Mises and the Geneva economists
around the League of Nations. So when they say they're anti-government, they're really
anti-democracy. They're for an iron-fisted government by big business, big mining and big oil
– and most of all, by big banks. That is the reason why people don't trust an
international government. It would be an international iron fist of fascism, the way the
current maneuvering of the financial classes and the rentier classes and the neocons
have arranged things.
Ellen Brown: [00:39:56] Well, I totally agree. It's quite frightening. We want
sovereignty for all our little nations, and even our little cities, states and so forth. But it
seems to me, how do you get everybody to work together? For example, Venezuela has the debt
problem that any country has that's heavily in debt to foreigners, or to vulture funds or
whatever. There's not a universally recognized court that you can go to. And, you know,
everybody agrees. It does seem like on some level we need some sort of collaborative effort
where we all agree on the rules.
Michael Hudson: [00:40:33] Absolutely right. Now, of course, the United States would
not recognize any international court. So, again, you'd have all the rest of the world
belonging to the court, and the United States as the outlier. It's like you're the healthy body
and we want to parasitize you. And it will not recognize the court. My Super-Imperialism
reviews the history of this policy.
But you're right: There should be a court that would recognize such things as odious
debt for governments. Venezuela's problem is that under the dictators that the Americans had
installed by assassination and force, Venezuela had pledged its oil reserves as collateral for
its international bonds. That gives a vested interest in the creditors to make it default and
grab its oil reserves and its investments in the United States, the oil distributors it bought.
So, yes, you do need a set of international rules for writing down bad debts. That means an
alternative to the IMF. You need an anti-IMF. Instead of acting on behalf of the creditors
imposing austerity on countries, you should create an organization representing society. And s
the interest of society is to grow. Instead of promoting austerity like the IMF does, it would
promote prosperity. Instead of financing the US government dollarization and giving US control,
it would be part of the de-dollarization group.
So you'd have a pro-growth group of nations – of the world economy – using
finance for growth and development with productive credit. You'd also have the United States
providing predatory credit, austerity, cutting back Social Security, cutting back Medicare and
having a polarizing economy that is shrinking and will end up looking like Greece or Argentina.
The rest of the world would follow more productive and less oligarchic financial policies. That
should ultimately be our global dream. But there's been little preparation for that. The
financial sector's neoliberals have o put together an almost conspiratorial Law and Economics
lobbying group to promote the Trans-Pacific Partnership and World Trade Organization rules
blocking governments from imposing anti-pollution fines or regulating monopolies or closing tax
havens. If you fine an oil company for polluting, the government is obliged under this
international law to pay the oil companies what they would have earned if they would have
continued to poison the environment. This is
Ellen Brown: [00:43:41] Shocking.
Michael Hudson: [00:43:41] Definitely. This is an international deathwish.
Ellen Brown: [00:43:45] Agreed. Totally agreed.
Walt McRee: [00:43:47] We've been speaking with economist Michael Hudson. Our thanks
to him for being on this program again. And you'll be hearing more from Michael on future
editions of It's Our Money.
Walt McRee: [00:43:59] Well, that's it for this edition of It's Our Money with Ellen
Brown. Thanks to our guests or sponsors, Public Banking Associates, and to you for listening.
Be sure to check out Ellen's latest writings on the economy and the changing world of money by
visiting ellenbrown.com. And for more information on public banking, visit
PublicBankingInstitute.org. For information on how local and state governments can obtain
professional insight and council about public banks from key national experts, visit
PublicBankingAssociates.com. I'm Walt McRee. See you next time on It's our Money with Ellen
Brown.
Notes
[1] "How the U.S. Treasury avoided Chronic Deflation by Relinquishing Monetary Control to
Wall Street," Economic & Political Weekly (India), May 7, 2016. Available on Naked
Capitalism an michael-hudson.com.
@dc.sunsets "This is why those who promise to "Plan" economic prosperity are liars and
fools, for they have the PRETENSE of knowledge, nothing more. "
Of course, this point is true -- but its posed as an absolute. No government can "plan" an
entire economy -- we know this from the failings of the USSR etc. But nor can economies be
totally unplanned. The US is not an unplanned economy: its an economy planned by the 1% for
the 1%.
Modern economies are "mixed". There is coordinated planning between the public & private
sector.
Sadly the US Gov' has renounced its responsibilities to "plan". Had the US Gov "planned" it
would never have allowed key industries, knowledge & talent to be off shored to China.
Such off shoring was a private plan by the 1% for the 1%. Worked well -- for them.
Adding complexity to an already far too complex system merely hastens blow out of
distributions that are skewed fat tails and stressed to a breaking point of systemic failure.
Greenspan purposely built a complex financial empire of asset inflation to replace Volcker's
fiscal prudence & macroprudential professionalism system wide.
Once Greenspan has locked in the asset inflation regime & deregulated Glass-Steagall
Act it was off to the races on a credit card for the largest parasite in the financial empire
governing by force.
On September 10th 2001 Donald Rumsfeld announced to the world that the ever incompetent
Pentagon had misplaced $1.3 trillion USD of taxpayer money. On September 11th 2001 Donald
Rumsfeld took part in a clandestine covert US Military operation to assassinate all of the
principle investigators & forensic Chartered Accountants that were about to uncover the
crimes taking place under Donald Rumsfeld's directorship as Pentagon executive.
The USA has always been a system of fraud by stealth of US Military force thugsterism
& all out fascist behaviour.
As modern civilization's shelf life expires, more scholars have turned their attention to
the decline and fall of civilizations past. Their studies have generated rival explanations of
why societies collapse and civilizations die. Meanwhile, a lucrative market has emerged for
post-apocalyptic novels, movies, TV shows, and video games for those who enjoy the vicarious
thrill of dark, futuristic disaster and mayhem from the comfort of their cozy couch. Of course,
surviving the real thing will become a much different story.
The latent fear that civilization is living on borrowed time has also spawned a
counter-market of "happily ever after" optimists who desperately cling to their belief in
endless progress. Popular Pollyannas, like cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker, provide this
anxious crowd with soothing assurances that the titanic ship of progress is unsinkable.
Pinker's publications have made him the high priest of progress. [1] While civilization circles
the drain, his ardent audiences find comfort in lectures and books brimming with cherry-picked
evidence to prove that life is better than ever, and will surely keep improving. Yet, when
questioned, Pinker himself admits, "It's incorrect to extrapolate that the fact that we've
made progress is a prediction that we're guaranteed to make progress." [2]
Pinker's rosy statistics cleverly disguise the fatal flaw in his argument. The progress of
the past was built by sacrificing the future -- and the future is upon us. All the happy facts
he cites about living standards, life expectancy, and economic growth are the product of an
industrial civilization that has pillaged and polluted the planet to produce temporary progress
for a growing middle class -- and enormous profits and power for a tiny elite.
Not everyone who understands that progress has been purchased at the expense of the future
thinks that civilization's collapse will be abrupt and bitter. Scholars of ancient societies,
like Jared Diamond and John Michael Greer, accurately point out that abrupt collapse is a rare
historical phenomenon. In The Long Descent , Greer assures his readers that, "The
same pattern repeats over and over again in history. Gradual disintegration, not sudden
catastrophic collapse, is the way civilizations end." Greer estimates that it takes, on
average, about 250 years for civilizations to decline and fall, and he finds no reason why
modern civilization shouldn't follow this "usual timeline." [3]
But Greer's assumption is built on shaky ground because industrial civilization differs from
all past civilizations in four crucial ways. And every one of them may accelerate and intensify
the coming collapse while increasing the difficulty of recovery.
Difference #1: Unlike all previous civilizations, modern industrial civilization is powered
by an exceptionally rich, NON-renewable, and irreplaceable energy source -- fossil fuels. This
unique energy base predisposes industrial civilization to a short, meteoric lifespan of
unprecedented boom and drastic bust. Megacities, globalized production, industrial agriculture,
and a human population approaching 8 billion are all historically exceptional -- and
unsustainable -- without fossil fuels. Today, the rich easily exploited oilfields and coalmines
of the past are mostly depleted. And, while there are energy alternatives, there are no
realistic replacements that can deliver the abundant net energy fossil fuels once provided.
[4]
Our complex, expansive, high-speed civilization owes its brief lifespan to this one-time,
rapidly dwindling energy bonanza.
Difference #2: Unlike past civilizations, the economy of industrial society is capitalist.
Production for profit is its prime directive and driving force. The unprecedented surplus
energy supplied by fossil fuels has generated exceptional growth and enormous profits over the
past two centuries. But in the coming decades, these historic windfalls of abundant energy,
constant growth, and rising profits will vanish.
However, unless it is abolished, capitalism will not disappear when boom turns to bust.
Instead, energy-starved, growth-less capitalism will turn catabolic. Catabolism refers
to the condition whereby a living thing devours itself. As profitable sources of production dry
up, capitalism will be compelled to turn a profit by consuming the social assets it once
created. By cannibalizing itself, the profit motive will exacerbate industrial society's
dramatic decline.
Catabolic capitalism will profit from scarcity, crisis, disaster, and conflict. Warfare,
resource hoarding, ecological disaster, and pandemic diseases will become the big profit
makers. Capital will flow toward lucrative ventures like cybercrime, predatory lending, and
financial fraud; bribery, corruption, and racketeering; weapons, drugs, and human trafficking.
Once disintegration and destruction become the primary source of profit, catabolic capitalism
will rampage down the road to ruin, gorging itself on one self-inflicted disaster after
another. [5]
Difference #3: Unlike past societies, industrial civilization isn't Roman, Chinese,
Egyptian, Aztec, or Mayan. Modern civilization is HUMAN, PLANETARY, and ECOCIDAL.
Pre-industrial civilizations depleted their topsoil, felled their forests, and polluted their
rivers. But the harm was far more temporary and geographically limited. Once market incentives
harnessed the colossal power of fossil fuels to exploit nature, the dire results were
planetary. Two centuries of fossil fuel combustion have saturated the biosphere with
climate-altering carbon that will continue wreaking havoc for generations to come. The damage
to Earth's living systems -- the circulation and chemical composition of the atmosphere and the
ocean; the stability of the hydrological and biogeochemical cycles; and the biodiversity of the
entire planet -- is essentially permanent.
Humans have become the most invasive species ever known. Although we are a mere .01 percent
of the planet's biomass, our domesticated crops and livestock dominate life on Earth. In terms
of total biomass, 96 percent of all the mammals on Earth are livestock; only 4 percent are wild
mammals. Seventy percent of all birds are domesticated poultry, only 30 percent are wild. About
half the Earth's wild animals are thought to have been lost in just the last 50 years. [6]
Scientists estimate that half of all remaining species will be extinct by the end of the
century. [7] There are no
more unspoiled ecosystems or new frontiers where people can escape the damage they've caused
and recover from collapse.
Difference #4: Human civilization's collective capacity to confront its mounting crises is
crippled by a fragmented political system of antagonistic nations ruled by corrupt elites who
care more about power and wealth than people and the planet. Humanity faces a perfect storm of
converging global calamities. Intersecting tribulations like climate chaos, rampant extinction,
food and freshwater scarcity, poverty, extreme inequality, and the rise of global pandemics are
rapidly eroding the foundations of modern life.
Yet, this fractious and fractured political system makes organizing and mounting a
cooperative response nearly impossible. And, the more catabolic industrial capitalism becomes,
the greater the danger that hostile rulers will fan the flames of nationalism and go to war
over scarce resources. Of course, warfare is not new. But modern warfare is so devastating,
destructive, and toxic that little would remain in its aftermath. This would be the final nail
in civilization's coffin.
Rising From the Ruins?
How people respond to the collapse of industrial civilization will determine how bad things
get and what will replace it. The challenges are monumental. They will force us to question our
identities, our values, and our loyalties like no other experience in our history. Who are we?
Are we, first and foremost, human beings struggling to raise our families, strengthen our
communities, and coexist with the other inhabitants of Earth? Or do our primary loyalties
belong to our nation, our culture, our race, our ideology, or our religion? Can we put the
survival of our species and our planet first, or will we allow ourselves to become hopelessly
divided along national, cultural, racial, religious, or party lines?
The eventual outcome of this great implosion is up for grabs. Will we overcome denial and
despair; kick our addiction to petroleum; and pull together to break the grip of corporate
power over our lives? Can we foster genuine democracy, harness renewable energy, reweave our
communities, re-learn forgotten skills, and heal the wounds we've inflicted on the Earth? Or
will fear and prejudice drive us into hostile camps, fighting over the dwindling resources of a
degraded planet? The stakes could not be higher.
Notes.
[1]
His books include: The Better Angels of Our Nature and Enlightenment Now: The Case
for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress.
Craig Collins Ph.D. is the author of " Toxic Loopholes "
(Cambridge University Press), which examines America's dysfunctional system of environmental
protection. He teaches political science and environmental law at California State University
East Bay and was a founding member of the Green Party of California.
"... This is a transformational moment in history that will allow American politics to socialize and turn away resolutely from the anti-government stupidity represented by Trump and all the anti-New Deal elements among the elite predators that have dominated politically since Reagan. It is a mistake to chose Biden, chief author of the Patriot Act, business-as-usual candidate, corporate lackey, weasel. ..."
This is a transformational moment in history that will allow American politics to socialize
and turn away resolutely from the anti-government stupidity represented by Trump and all the
anti-New Deal elements among the elite predators that have dominated politically since
Reagan. It is a mistake to chose Biden, chief author of the Patriot Act, business-as-usual
candidate, corporate lackey, weasel.
Bernie is the only rational choice, but the American
people are not rational, and do not yet understand the urgency of a radical left turn. Much
suffering will be the result and a radical right turn could occur, although disenchantment
with the blithering idiocy of Donald Trump has already deprived him of any chance of
re-election. The virus is going to take him down before profound political embarrassment.
He's a dead man walking.This may be true of Bernie & Biden as well, but I say this
without prejudice.
The Chinese clearly knew the character of this virus before it became apparent to the
world. They did not react so swiftly or dramatically to earlier outbreaks like SARS, swine
flu, avian flu and etc. They had prior knowledge of the potential of nCov2019. The US did
not.
Why do we have a National Security Council or a Department of Homeland Security if they
cannot read the writing on the wall? It was an accidental release of a weaponized virus. The
US should have taken a cue and reacted with similar conviction shown by the CCP. But we have
no leadership worth a shit.
Our representative republic has suffered an embarrassment in this failure to protect the
people while a so-called national enemy, a communist dictatorship, has demonstrated more
effective leadership and greater capability to protect its people. This is more than an
embarrassment. It is an indictment of our political system.
It is time to turn sharply left to social democracy.
At some point, systems flip from being
complicated, which is a challenge to manage, to being complex.
Complexity is more than a
challenge because it opens the door to all kinds of unexpected crashes and events.
Their behavior cannot be reduced to their component parts. It's as if they take on a life of their
own.
Complexity theory has four main pillars.
The first is the diversity of actors. You've got to account for all of the actors in the
marketplace. When you consider the size of global markets, that number is obviously vast.
The second pillar is interconnectedness. Today's world is massively interconnected through the
internet, through social media and other forms of communications technology.
The third pillar of complexity theory is interaction. Markets interact on a massive scale.
Trillions of dollars of financial transactions occur every single day.
The fourth pillar, and this is the hardest for people to understand, is adaptive behavior.
Adaptive behavior just means that your behavior affects my behavior and my behavior affects yours.
That in turn affects someone else's behavior, and so on.
If you look out the window and see people bundled up in heavy jackets, for example, you're probably
not going to go out in a T-shirt.
Applied to capital markets, adaptive behavior is sometimes
called herding.
Assume you have a room with 100 people. If two people suddenly sprinted out of the room, most of
the others probably wouldn't make much of it. But if half the people in the room suddenly ran outside,
the other half will probably do the same thing.
They might not know why the first 50 people left, but the second half will just assume something
major has happened. That could be a fire or a bomb threat or something along these lines.
The key is to determine the tipping point that compels people to act. Two people fleeing isn't
enough. 50 certainly is. But, maybe 20 people leaving could trigger the panic. Or maybe the number is
30, or 40. You just can't be sure. But the point is, 20 people out of 100 could trigger a chain
reaction.
And that's how easily a total collapse of the capital markets can be triggered.
Understanding the four main pillars of complexity gives you a window into the inner workings of
markets in a way the Fed's antiquated equilibrium models can't. They let you see the world with better
eyes.
People assume that if you had perfect knowledge of the economy, which nobody does, that you could
conceivably plan an economy. You'd have all the information you needed to determine what should be
produced and in what number.
But complexity theory says that even if you had that perfect knowledge, you still couldn't
predict financial and economic events. They can come seemingly out of nowhere.
For example, it was bright and sunny one day out in the eastern Atlantic in 2005. Then it suddenly
got cloudy. The winds began to pick up. Then a hurricane formed. That hurricane went on to wipe out
New Orleans a short time later.
I'm talking about Hurricane Katrina. You never could have predicted New Orleans would be struck on
that bright sunny day. You could look back and track it afterwards. It would seem rational in
hindsight. But on that sunny day in the eastern Atlantic, there was simply no way of predicting that
New Orleans was going to be devastated.
Any number of variables could have diverted the storm at some point along the way. And they cannot
be known in advance, no matter how much information you have initially.
Another example is the Fukushima nuclear incident in Japan a few years back. You had a number of
complex systems coming together at once to produce a disaster.
An underwater earthquake triggered a tsunami that just happened to wash up on a nuclear power
plant. Each one of these are highly complex systems -- plate tectonics, hydrodynamics and the nuclear
plant itself.
There was no way traditional models could have predicted when or where the tectonic plates were
going to slip. Therefore, they couldn't tell you where the tsunami was heading.
And the same applies to financial panics. They seem to come out of nowhere. Traditional
forecasting models have no way of detecting them. But complexity theory allows for them.
I make the point that a snowflake can cause an avalanche. But of course not every snowflake does.
Most snowflakes fall harmlessly, except that they make the ultimate avalanche worse because they're
building up the snowpack. And when one of them hits the wrong way, it could spin out of control.
The way to think about it is that the triggering snowflake might not look much different from the
harmless snowflake that preceded it. It's just that it hit the system at the wrong time, at the wrong
place.
Only the exact time and the specific snowflake that starts the avalanche remain to be seen. This
kind of systemic analysis is the primary tool I use to keep investors ahead of the catastrophe curve.
The system is getting more and more unstable, and it might not take that much to trigger
the avalanche.
To switch metaphors, it's like the straw that breaks the camel's back. You can't tell in advance
which straw will trigger the collapse. It only becomes obvious afterwards. But that doesn't mean you
can't have a good idea when the threat can no longer be ignored.
Let's say I've got a 35-pound block of enriched uranium sitting in front of me that's shaped like a
big cube. That's a complex system. There's a lot going on behind the scenes. At the subatomic level,
neutrons are firing off. But it's not dangerous. You'd actually have to eat it to get sick.
But, now, I take the same 35 pounds, I shape part of it into a sphere, I take the rest of it and
shape it into a bat. I put it in the tube, and I fire it together with high explosives, I kill 300,000
people. I just engineered an atomic bomb. It's the same uranium, but under different conditions.
The point is, the same basic conditions arrayed in a different way, what physicists call
self-organized criticality, can go critical, blow up, and destroy the world or destroy the financial
system.
That dynamic, which is the way the world works, is not understood by central bankers. They don't
understand complexity theory. They do not see the critical state dynamics going on behind the scenes
because they're using obsolete equilibrium models.
In complexity theory and complex dynamics, you can go into the critical state. What look like
unconnected distant events are actually indications and warnings of something much more dangerous to
come.
So what happens when complex dynamic systems crash into each other? We're seeing that right now.
We're seeing two complex systems colliding into each other, the complex system of
markets combined with the complex system of epidemiology.
The coronavirus spread is a complex dynamic system. It encompass virology, meteorology, migratory
patterns, mass psychology, etc. Markets are highly complex, dynamic systems.
Financial professionals will use the word "contagion" to describe a financial panic. But that's not
just a metaphor. The same complexity that applies to disease epidemics also apply to financial
markets. They follow the same principles.
And they've come together to create a panic that traditional modeling could not foresee.
The time scale of global financial contagion is not necessarily limited to days or weeks. These
panics can play out over months and years. So could the effects of the coronavirus.
Summary: President Trump just announced his support for a full payroll tax holiday for
the remainder of calendar year 2020, which PWBM projects would cost $807 billion.
Households in the bottom 20 percent of incomes -- those households with the highest
willingness to spend their tax savings -- would receive about 2 percent of the total tax
cut, limiting the policy's stimulus potential.
But Penn Wharton's analysis might be based on unrealistically optimistic assumptions
–
see the comments in the replies to this tweet.
Don't forget the employer's half is also waived. Nice subsidy to business while helping
cripple the Social Security funds for ultimate privatization. Doesn't do anything the
unemployed, those laid off or fired as they pay no taxes. Now, if it were retroactive for a
year or two, that'd be different.
The explosion of hate and blame and fear flying around online with regard to this pandemic
is more than alarming and ultimately useless and damaging. In a way it scares me more than
the flu itself at the moment because of the implications of how it will hinder our ability
to cooperate and deal with this.
That's a good point. Western society with its twisted guiding philosophy of radical
individualism and competition combined with a supremacist "that could never happen here"
attitude quickly falls into panicked chaos when reality kicks in and reveals the society's
underlying vulnerabilities. Countries with weak social safety nets and an ideological
opposition to social responsibility are extremely vulnerable to systemic breakdown when their
societies are under unexpected stress.
This virus is revealing just how ineffective the neoliberal social Darwinist "every man
for himself" ethos is and how deeply in denial and out of touch with reality these societies
are. Additionally, the house of cards that makes up the global economy has been in crisis
mode since 2008, when it was bailed out by massive money printing in the US and EU and China
pumping billions of dollars into the economy to keep it afloat, simply can't handle any
additional stressors without going into breakdown mode.
In this kind of situation where clear headed cooperation and mutual effort are required
the opposite happens and people go into panic and finger pointing mode looking for some
external enemy to blame. Just imagine what will happen if global warming turns out to be as
serious as many are predicting.
It may one day be said that the coronavirus delivered the death blow to the New World Order,
to a half-century of globalization, and to the era of interdependence of the world's great
nations.
Tourism, air travel, vacation cruises, international gatherings, and festivals are already
shutting down. Travel bans between countries and continents are being imposed. Conventions,
concerts, and sporting events are being canceled. Will the Tokyo Olympics go forward? If they
do, will all the anticipated visitors from abroad come to Japan to enjoy the games?
Trump has issued a one-month travel ban on Europe.
As for the "open borders" crowd, do Democrats still believe that breaking into our country
should no longer be a crime, and that immigrants arriving illegally should be given free health
care, a proposition to which all the Democratic debaters raised their hands?
The ideological roots of our free trade era can be traced to the mid-19th century, when its
great evangelist, Richard Cobden, rose at Free Trade Hall in Manchester on January 15, 1846,
and rhapsodized: "I see in the Free Trade principle that which shall act on the moral world as
the principle of gravitation in the universe -- drawing men together, thrusting aside the
antagonism of race, and creed, and language, and uniting us in the bonds of eternal peace."
In the pre-Trump era, Republicans held hands with liberal Democrats in embracing NAFTA,
GATT, the WTO, and most favored nation trade privileges for China.
In retrospect, was it wise to have relied on China to produce essential parts for the supply
chains of goods vital to our national security? Does it appear wise to have moved the
production of pharmaceuticals and lifesaving drugs for heart disease, strokes, and diabetes to
China? Does it appear wise to have allowed China to develop a virtual monopoly on rare earth
minerals crucial to the development of weapons for our defense?
In this coronavirus pandemic, people now seem to be looking for authoritative leaders and
nations seem to be looking out for their own peoples first. Would Merkel today invite a million
Syrian refugees into Germany no matter the conditions under which they were living?
Is not the case now conclusive that we made a historic mistake when we outsourced our
economic independence to rely for vital necessities upon nations that have never had America's
best interests at heart?
Which rings truer today? We are all part of mankind, all citizens of the world. Or that it's
time to put America and Americans first!
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles That Made
and Broke a President and Divided America Forever. To find out more about Patrick Buchanan and
read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at
www.creators.com.
Which leaders have been speaking of ways to reverse the ways of globalism and how close are
they to obtaining power? This is going to require a changing of the elites fro mthe ones
who are and will continue to push this form of globalism to the ones that are willing to
switch to a new system.
(there will always be an elite. It's just a question of which ones you let wield power
as not all of them are the type that we carry.)
Unfortunately a ton of people are still espousing open borders globalism. This includes a
large number of visible elites, the vast majority, in fact.
The best thing that could happen is that those who espouse such dangerous ideas are held to
account by nature. Let them get sick with the Wu flu, let them be unable to attain
medication because China has restricted exports to us. Let's see what they think after they
have finally begun to experience the ramifications of their ideological thinking.
The elites will ALWAYS have access to medication they need. Most of them will NEVER
"experience ramifications" in any way more than minor inconveniences.
Considering that you can get from New York City to Tokyo in under 24 hours, and that there
are no major city on the Planet that cannot be reached from the lower forty-eight in under
48 hours, how do you intend to reverse globalism? Ban airplanes, telephones and the
internet-based communications?
It's no different from the Republicans in the US Senate:
Emergency Sick Leave Bill blocked from vote by Senate Republicans--Profit over People yet
again.
Why has Italy not try very hard to scale up hospital bed capacity for the surge of cases
over the last several days? They have deployed a military hospital but it doesn't look like
it's making a big dent. Instead reports are now coming in of abandoning very old people or
those with prior conditions to die largely unattended.
In Wuhan, 16 big barracks were built to treat the seriously sick. Why doesn't Italy
requisition schools, move in equipment from the rest of the country, deploy doctors from
other regions, call other EU member states for help?
Does it have something to do with the difficulty of getting things done even in
emergencies in modern bureaucratic states?
Italy: neo-liberal economic worship, all government bad, all private sector good,
corruption good, banks worshipped as faultless guardians but actually kleptocrats.
China: socialism with a mild capitalist twist, government good, private sector ok,
corruption to be rooted out, banks established and policed for the public good (mostly).
Modern bureacratic states function well when government is respected and well resourced
intellectually and financially. Italy has been gutted by the Thatcherite and US model of deep
coercion and destruction of its socialist roots. Ditto USA and UK and the five eyes cheer
squad. New entries to job markets are propagandised to avoid the state employment.
There are many nations in the world with modern functional bureaucratic states. As you can
see China and perhaps Russia appear to be in that team. Perhaps some of the Scandinavian
states, maybe Portugal. France abandoned its respect for the centrality of State service
provider decades ago and Mitterand appears to have been an effective assassin on behalf of
the neo-liberal economic monsters in France.
I'm sure in your comparison of Italy and China, you forgot to mention the infiltration of
the Mafia (as in the real Mafia of La Cosa Nostra, La Camorra, 'Ndrangheta and maybe some
others I've missed) in Italian national and regional governments, and the horrific levels of
air pollution in the Po Valley region where COVID-19 hotspots like Milan are located.
Perhaps also the Vatican and the Roman Catholic Church and their links to the financial
industry in Italy are also a problem.
The epidemic that has so far spread to half of US states, infecting over 1,000 Americans and
killing 31...
At least 10 states have declared emergencies as of Wednesday, and disease experts are
throwing up their hands, urging the administration to take real-life events more seriously.
...Centers for Disease Control director Robert Redfield agreed that critical regions of the
US are beyond the reach of containment, sliding into the " mitigation " stage, and
blamed the botched rollout of test kits to local health workers.
The availability of
accurate tests for Covid-19 has become a major sore spot, with official reassurances colliding
with uncooperative reality in full view of the public. Secretary of Health and Human Services
Alex Azar insisted on Tuesday that " millions " of tests were available, even as the
CDC urged healthcare providers to save tests for symptomatic patients already hospitalized and
" medically fragile individuals ."
In at least one case
, federal officials warned a Seattle lab against testing flu swab samples for coronavirus in
January, before the epidemic was widely reported, losing critical response time –
mirroring the " crime " the Trump administration has tried to pin on China.
And some have warned that the US' inability to handle an outbreak is more dire than either
side realizes. During a House Appropriations Committee hearing on Tuesday, a Republican
congressman from Washington, the first Covid-19 hotspot to flare up in the US, demanded to know
why his constituents were unable to get their test results while his fellow congressmen had no
problem getting tested just days after coming into contact with an infected person at a DC
political conference. A CDC representative admitted " there's not enough equipment. There's
not enough people. There's not enough internal capacity. There's no surge capacity ." To
conserve tests, the CDC has told healthcare providers to " use their judgment " and
consider " epidemiologic factors " before using up a valuable resource.
Existing flaws in the US healthcare system have exacerbated the testing problem. The CDC has
refused to set up standalone testing centers, placing COVID-19 screening out of the reach of
the many Americans who don't have primary-care physicians and rely on walk-in clinics and
emergency rooms for their healthcare. Just 8,500 Americans had been tested as of Monday,
according to the CDC, and federal officials told reporters some 75,000 tests had been sent out
to public health laboratories on top of one million sent to hospitals and other sites. The
real-life infected numbers in the country are thus likely much higher than what is being
reported.
Control measures have varied wildly across local governments and institutions and even
within cities. Over 1,000 schools have closed nationwide, and cities and counties from Santa
Clara, California to Westchester, New York have banned large gatherings. The National
Institutes of Health's Anthony Fauci called on others to follow suit during a congressional
hearing on Wednesday, announcing " we would recommend that there not be large crowds. If
that means not having any people in the audience when the NBA plays, so be it. " Asked if
" the worst " was yet to come, Fauci answered unequivocally: " bottom line, it's
going to get worse. "
Even as new Covid-19 cases in China dwindle to near zero and cases in Italy, Germany, and
other European countries surge, the US has not stepped up screenings of passengers from those
countries at airports accordingly. Instead, the administration has continued to congratulate
itself on " saving lives " by halting flights from China weeks ago.
About testing: who makes testing kits, how reliable they are, what is the cost?
Seems that in USA there is a shortage, and the normal behavior of providers of medicines
and other medical goods is extremely rapacious. For example, Gilead company found a cure for
hepatitis C. In the first year of sales, they got more than 5 billion dollars because of
enormous prices they demanded. In about 2 years almost all urgent cases were cured, which is
fine, and competition emerged.
Unless forced, these companies will provide nothing at cost, only with enormous markup. If
you want to get, say, 10 miilion kits that hypothetically cost 250 dollars to make, they
would charge at least 10 billion. Actually, the price/cost multiples have no limit at all, as
in Gilead case. In the face of that, Administration should use emergency powers to impose
cost controls. Manufactures could be threatened delicately to ramp-up the production if they
are not willing to do it just from civic sense of duty. That would violate the most precious
human rights, i.e. the rights of billionaires. Not the American way.
Posted on March
11, 2020 by Yves Smith Yves here. While this
article has a lot of helpful suggestions, it does not acknowledge that public health is a state
and local, not a Federal matter. The Federal government can intervene only by invoking
emergency authority, which in every case I can recall, has been done only when asked (begged)
by the relevant authorities. Thus I cannot see the Federal government taking the lead with
coronavirus on the medical front, as much as that is desperately needed. Look, for instance, at
how
it was New York State that imposed a containment area around coronavirus hot spot New
Rochelle , and how New York State has started making its own hand sanitizer.
By Marshall Auerback, a market analyst and commentator. Produced by
Economy for All , a project of the Independent Media Institute
The coronavirus will eventually pass, but the same cannot be said for the Panglossian
phenomenon known as "globalization." Stripped of the romantic notion of a global village, the
ugly process we've experienced over the past 40 years has been a case of governmental
institutions being eclipsed by multinational corporations, acting to maximize profit in support
of shareholders. To billions of us, it has resembled a looting process, of our social wealth,
and political meaning. Governments that wanted to stay on top would have to learn to master
soft power to learn to be relevant in a globalized world, mostly acting to smooth transactions
and otherwise stay out of the way.
In a globalized world, nation-states were supposedly becoming relics. To the extent that
they were needed, small national governments were said to equate to good government. This
hollow philosophy's main claims now appear badly exposed, as the supply chains wither, and the
very interconnectedness of our global economy is becoming a vector of contagion. In the words
of author David Goodhart, "We no longer need the help of rats or fleas to spread disease -- we
can do it ourselves thanks to mass international travel and supply chains."
To be sure, there were many warning signs that called into question our hitherto benign
assumptions about globalization: the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98 (during which the Asian
tiger economies were decimated by unconstrained speculative capital flows), the vast swaths of
the Rust Belt's industrial heartlands created by outsourcing to China's export juggernaut, the
concomitant rise in economic inequality and decline in quality of life in industrialized
societies and, of course, the 2008 global financial crisis. Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz
described many of these pathologies in his book Globalization and Its Discontents, as did
economist Barry Eichengreen, who lamented that "the nation state has fundamentally lost control
of its destiny, surrendering to anonymous global forces." Both noted that globalization was
severing a working social contract between national governments and their citizens that had
previously delivered rising prosperity for all.
Those who would argue that the inexorable march of globalization cannot be reversed should
consider the parallel during the early 20th century. Globalized economic activity and free
trade were dominant before the onset of World War I; in 1914, trade as a proportion of global
GDP stood at 14 percent. Needless to say, two world wars, and the Great Depression (which
brought us the Smoot-Hawley tariffs), reversed this trend. The Cold War sustained
regionalization and bifurcated trading blocs. Its end, and China's accession into the World
Trade Organization (WTO), ushered in a new high-water mark in globalized trade.
But while it is true that viruses do not respect national boundaries, nothing has blown
apart the pretensions of this New World Order as dramatically as the coronavirus, a pandemic
now assuming global import, as international supply chains are severed, and global economic
activity is brought to a screeching halt. We are increasingly seeing the hollow political
content at the core of supranational entities such as the EU, structured more to comfort merged
investor groups than strengthen public health systems.
Speaking of Europe, while the coronavirus started in China, its most long-lasting impact
might be in the EU, as it has dramatically exposed the shortcomings of the latter's
institutional structures. Take Italy as the most vivid illustration: The spread of COVID-19 has
been particularly acute there. Being a user of the euro (as opposed to an issuer of the
currency) the Italian national government risks exposing itself to potential national
bankruptcy (and the vicissitudes of the volatile private capital markets) if it responds with a
robust fiscal response, absent the institutional support of Brussels and the European Central
Bank (which is the sole issuer of the euro). According to MarketWatch, "Italy needs a €500
to €700 billion ($572 billion to $801 billion) precautionary bailout package to help
reassure financial markets that the Italian government and banks can meet their debt payment
obligations as [the] country's economic and financial crisis becomes more fearsome."
The tragic case of Italy (where the entire country is now in full quarantined lockdown)
provides a particularly poignant example of the gaping lacunae at the heart of the eurozone.
There is no supranational fiscal authority, so the Italian government has been largely left to
fend for itself, as it is trying to do now, for example, providing income relief by suspending
payments on mortgages across the entire country. Here is a perfect example of where European
Central Bank support for the Italian banking system would go a long way toward mitigating any
resultant financial contagion. But so far, as Wolfgang Munchau of the Financial Times has
noted, the ECB remains in "monitoring" mode. Indeed, the eurozone as a whole lacks the
institutional mechanisms to mobilize on a massive, coordinated scale, in contrast to the U.S.
and UK, and eurozone finance ministers remain incapable of agreeing on a coordinated policy
response.
Other eurozone countries may no longer be complacent about the threat posed by COVID-19, but
their national governments are more focused on the need to stockpile their own national
resources to protect their populations. Italy remains particularly vulnerable to the ravages of
this virus, as it has an aging population, so if coronavirus runs rampant through the country,
it could potentially crash the nation's entire hospital system, as this account by an Italian
doctor suggests.
EU solidarity, showing cracks on issues ranging from finance to immigration, increasingly
resembles every country for itself.
Defenders of the EU may well retort that health care is designated as a "national
competency" under the Treaty of Maastricht. But how does one expect national competencies to be
carried out competently in an economic grouping devoid of national currencies (the key variable
as far as supporting unconstrained fiscal capacity goes)? Additionally, the evil of decades of
Brussels-imposed austerity has meant there aren't enough hospital beds, materials and staff
anywhere in Europe, let alone Italy. This might well represent the death knell for a European
project based on aspirations for an "ever closer union."
In spite of the manifest incompetence of the Trump administration, the U.S. at least has
institutional mechanisms in place via the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Federal
Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to provide Americans with clear, credible instructions
devoid of political spin.
As Professor James Galbraith has persuasively argued, the U.S. government has the capacity
to "establish a Health Finance Corporation on the model of the Depression-era Reconstruction
Finance Corporation. Like the RFC, which built munitions factories and hospitals during and
after World War II, the HFC should have broad powers to create public corporations, lend to
private companies (to fund necessary production), and cover other emergency costs. Even more
quickly, the National Guard can be deployed to deal with critical supply issues and to
establish emergency facilities such as field hospitals and quarantine centers." Likewise,
Senator Marco Rubio has "sought to expand what's called the Economic Injury Disaster Loan
program, which allows the Small Business Administration to start lending money directly instead
of just encouraging banks to do so," as Matt Stoller has written.
Parenthetically, this represents a marked break with historic GOP policy, which for the most
part has accepted the embedded assumptions inherent in globalization.
And while traditional monetary policy tools such as interest rate cuts are hardly adequate
to stem a supply shock, Galbraith also points to the ability of the Federal Reserve to offer
emergency financial support to help American companies through the worst of the coronavirus
outbreak, by "buy[ing] up debt issued by hospitals and other health-care providers, as well as
working to stabilize credit markets, as it did in 2008-09." Andrew Bailey of the Bank of
England has made similar recommendations to the UK government.
Even with the measures proposed by Galbraith, Bailey and Rubio, virtually all Western
economies, having largely succumbed to the logic of globalization, are now vulnerable, as
supply chains wither. China, the apex of these offshored manufacturing supply chains, is in
shutdown mode. Likewise South Korea and Italy. Worse, there appears to be a singular lack of
understanding on the part of many multinational companies as to how far these supply chains go:
"Peter Guarraia, who leads the global supply chain practice at Bain & Co, estimated that up
to 60 per cent of executives have no knowledge of the items in their supply chain beyond the
tier one group," reports the Financial Times.
A "tier one" company supplies components directly to the original equipment manufacturer
(OEM) that sets up a global supply chain. But as is now becoming increasingly recognized, there
are secondary-tier companies, which supply components or materials to those tier-one companies.
When goods are widely dispersed geographically (instead of centered in a localized industrial
ecosystem), it is harder for executives to have full knowledge of all of the items in their
respective companies' supply chains, so the deficiencies of the model only become apparent by
the time it is too late to rectify.
In the U.S. specifically, the mass migration of manufacturing has seriously eroded the
domestic capabilities needed to turn inventions into high-end products, damaging America's
ability to retain a lead in many sectors, let alone continue to manufacture products. The
country has evolved from being a nation of industrialists to a nation of financial rentiers.
And now the model has exposed the U.S. to significant risk during a time of national crisis, as
the coronavirus potentially represents.
There is no national redundancy built into current supply networks, with the most
problematic consequences now evident in the pharmaceutical markets. Countries such as China or
India are beginning to restrict core components of important generic drugs to deal with their
own domestic health crisis. This has the potential to create a major crisis, given that the
U.S. "depend[s] on China for 80 percent of the core components to make our generic medicines,"
writes Rosemary Gibson in the American Conservative. She also notes that "generic drugs are 90
percent of the medicines Americans take. Thousands of them, sold at corner drug stores, grocery
store pharmacies, and big box stores, contain ingredients made in China." Constraints on
production, therefore, intensify as more and more of the manufacturing process pertaining to
the drugs themselves is geographically globalized. And in regard specifically to
research-intensive industries, such as pharmaceuticals or biotech, the value of closely
integrating the R&D with manufacturing is extremely high, and the risks of separating them
are enormous.
These are by no means new problems. We've been dealing with supply-side shocks emanating
from hyper-globalization for decades, and the response of Western policymakers has largely been
in the form of fiscal or monetary palliatives that seldom address the underlying structural
challenges raised by these shortages. To the contrary: democratic caveats to globalization have
been characterized as inefficient frictions that hinder consumer choice.
For now, we should start by reducing our supply chain vulnerabilities by building into our
systems more of what engineers call redundancy -- different ways of doing the same things -- so
as to mitigate undue reliance on foreign suppliers for strategically important industries. We
need to mobilize national resources in a manner akin to the way a country does during wartime
or during massive economic dislocation (such as the Great Depression) -- comprehensive
government-led actions (which runs in the face of much of today's prevailing and increasingly
outdated economic and political theology). In other words, the revival of a coherent national
industrial policy.
To save the global economy, paradoxically, we need less of it. Not only does the
private/public sector balance have to shift in favor of the latter, but so too does the
multinational/national matrix in manufacturing. Otherwise, the coronavirus will simply
represent yet another in a chain of catastrophes for global capitalism, rather than an
opportunity to rethink our entire model of economic development.
But but but ."redundancy", which engineers like, is in direct conflict with "efficiency",
which economists revere. Think of how many "smart" appliances we can invent and market if we
don't have to make health-care and manufacturing robust again.
Cheetah paradox. The fastest land animal, but often dies if injured as can't hunt and has
no fat to speak off to take it through lean times.
NC has discussed number of times that you can't have "efficiency" and "reduncancy". Of
course, if your drive is short-term profit, it requires efficiency, and redundancy is just a
cost.
The smarter companies that have built redundancy, will be the predators left once the
injured cheetahs die off.
does my little farm/doomstead count?
multiple redundancies has been a large part of The Goal for a long time.
as for actual businesses, no except maybe for the more esoteric sectors of FIRE .are
"exotic financial instruments" redundant?
"just in time", "warehouse on wheels", as well as globespanning supply lines have worried
me since i learned of them.
"efficiency" as a weapon, that eventually gets turned on oneself.
My favorite tale of redundancy going away was the oxygen system on commercial airliners.
In the past it had 3 or 4 independent redundant systems built in and cost around $20k per
seat, and then the cost cutters came up a single digital oxygen system costing only around
$500 per seat.
Yes: Ford and General Motors. If you cannot buy from one company, there are alternatives. The companies are single
points of failure. The combination of multiple single point of failure provide redundancy and
resilience.
Supporting the Historical US concept of "truce busting" and encouraging competition in all
markets.
Indeed. As an both an engineering (core mobile network infrastructure) and an econ
graduate (PPE and life long interest) this has been an (perhaps, the) issue for me over the
last 30 years. There are many ways in which redundancy and resilience have been degraded. Not
least in terms of people with the combination of deep technical understanding and problem
solving skills.
Baking in fragility in the name of efficiency. Efficiency? Well maybe, but only on a short
enough timeline. And timelines have been getting shorter (to validate 'cost cutting').
I don't like to be a smart-fanny and do appreciate the thinking and expertise that shines
through this fine essay. I learned an enormous amount and feel better prepared to argue the
subject.
But the second half of that last sentence
" the coronavirus will simply represent yet another in a chain of catastrophes for global
capitalism, rather than an opportunity to rethink our entire model of economic
development."
taken by itself, makes everything before it, well redundant. of course it will.
and and and .the "tax planning" departments at majorco international will be crying on
about all their masterful overseas tax siloing now having to come apart by having to actually
re-shore production oh the pearl clutching to come .
I usually like reading Auerback's posts but in this exceptional case I had to stop reading
at about the 10th paragraph or so. It is the case that in the heat of the moment we are not
having good reaction and fear is driving us a little bit mad.
Leaving our personal phantoms
and demons to ride free when we should be carefully thinking on our personal safety and the
fate of the social structures that sustain us is not good idea. For instance, identifying
Italy as the core of the problem is IMO a misrepresentation of facts. A small city in
Northern Italy was, just by chance, the first place in EU where the outbreak started showing
all its virulence and it took us by surprise because we were all in denial.
Not only in the
EU, a few days ago Mr. Strether left a link in his Water-cooler citing American economists
saying that the US would probably not be reached by the epidemics. As an example on how in
denial we have been, take a look at this letter
sent to the editor of eurosurveillance the 21st of January by physicians from Marseille
asking why so much fear about the new disease when they had tested and identified 0 Covid
cases in their hospitals while we should focus on flu or rhinovirus. It is almost certain
they are now regretting having this letter sent.
Though M. Auerback IMO rigthly crtitizices the fragmentation of the institutional and
political framework in the EU, in comparison with the all powerful globalized supply chains,
I cannot agree more, I also think he is missing how the institutional response is being
organised. After the initial denial, the response to the emergency is necessarily reactive
(think of equipments in short supply). In Madrid we are just about 7 days behind of Italy in
epidemics development and I can see the same phenomenon here. We are starting to see that we
could soon be in short supply of treatment equipment in hospitals. Schools and universities
are closed starting today and large gatherings prohibited and yesterday some panic scenes in
supermarkets were seen, just like in Italy. The government has programmed a set of measures
that are going to be implemented as their necessity is seen such as delaying tax or mortgage
payments, and some other help with a focus in small companies and autonomous workers. Both
Italy and Spain will almost certainly give a kick in the ass to austerian stupidity and do
things necessary to try to mitigate the damage and I bet there won't be any EU institution
denying whatever support needed because, ya know, the BCE and other institutions will realise
their survival is at risk if they try to be too orthodox in an emergency situation. So far,
IMO, the biggest mistakes have been made in China from the very beginning of the outbreak to
the brutal quarantines imposed. I think that in the EU, keeping open borders was good
reaction.
We will see how this unfolds in the US. This said, I wish the best for Americans of both
Americas, Asians, Oceanians, Europeans etc. I hope that authorities around the world have
good reaction with this emergency.
Good comment, I agree. I've been offline for a bit, so forgive me if mentioned already,
but early irruption of the virus in Italy is no mere accident. Chinese groups have bought up
Italian luxury brands and then imported thousands of Chinese sweatshop migrants to preserve
the coveted Made In Italy label while keeping costs low. Same arrangements in Spain I think,
but you would likely know better than I.
For so long as people can't be arsed about where their food clothing and shelter really
comes from, there will always be loopholes devised by the unscrupulous. The arbitrage
toothpaste is very hard to put back in the tube.
I greatly enjoy Auerback's (and Hudson's) work although I am no socialist (to my mind,
today's bankster or McKinsey wanker simply becomes tomorrow's third deputy minister for
banana bending – regardless, it's still a small club and most of us ain't in it).
But in order for nations, however defined, to regain self-sufficiency, cartelization of
labor enforced in law is going to have to become a thing again, whether it's via
unionization, craft guilds or certification (credentialism by any other name would smell as
sweet).
One question: Why does Thomas L. Friedman, author of The World is Flat , extolling
the glories of globalization, still have a job paying no doubt tens if not hundreds of
thousands of dollars a year, while many better informed and infinitely more prescient NCers
have trouble putting groceries on the table?
Why does Friedman still have a job after all of his globalization cheer leading and war
mongering?
Answer: Because he writes what his bosses want him to write.
In the upside-down world of USA media, people who give good advice (Chris Hedges and Phil
Donahue on the Iraq War) get fired, while those who give bad advice (Friedman on almost
everything) keep their jobs.
The contempt Friedman has for people may be illustrated by his "Suck on this" comment
directed at innocent Iraqis who he judged needed to see US military power directed against
them.
This is the USA, where harmful media people are brought down by sex-scandals (Charlie
Rose, Chris Matthews) not by the quality of their media work.
I don't get the article's point about a fractured EU response vs a coordinated American
response. CDC has been torched by budget cuts and the nurses association in the USA –
didn't they say few hospitals have any plans in place for an outbreak? Each country is going
to have it's own challenges – good show on Joe Rogan this week and goes into 45% of
Americans are obese – a big risk factor when combating Covid-19.
Also a revelation was
nearly all generic drugs use in America are sourced from India and China.
EU borders have been very fluid for decades, its not an easy thing to shut down for any
reason and yes a lot of the response has been reactionary.
So back to Globalisation – there are risks, this is the price.
Globalisation is not the same as trade. Trade, it's sometimes hard to recall, was originally
"I'll swap you what you want for what I want." So the English exported wool, for example, and
imported silks and spices. Globalisation is an attempt by an insane MBA student to
restructure the world economy to be maximally "efficient" without concern for externalities.
Globalisation is going down for sure, but of course it will take a lot of perfectly
respectable trade with it.
I'm also getting a bit tired of reading that viruses "don't respect national borders." Of
course, if there were groups of independently moving viruses, travelling through Europe on
their little feet, they wouldn't think to contact the authorities when they cross national
borders. But viruses have to be transported by something, usually people, and people (as in
China recently) can be required to respect borders. Already there are signs that Free
Movement in Europe is coming under strain (Slovenia closed its border with Italy yesterday)
and judging by the violent reactions of the "no borders" lobby, they are worried that it may
be one of the many types of collateral political damage.
One other thought: this epidemic may be the first in living memory where the PMC, politicians
and media figures are disproportionately affected. (I can't think of a single case of a
politician who's ever died of flu). The PMC etc. travel a lot more, get out a lot more and
mix a lot more with foreigners. When there's no cure, some of them – CEOs, Ministers,
media pundits, bankers – are going to die. What then? Already, the more contacts you
have, especially with other countries, the worse things will be. Lawyers will find courts
closed, consultants will find organisations less ready to consult them, business junkets and
conferences will be cancelled, holidays postponed and upper middle-class parents will find
that Tarquin and Miranda are unexpectedly at home because the European School in Florence has
been closed. Some things will be very hard to bear.
The changes coming on account of the virus will be substantial, and if we're all sitting
on the sofa, afraid to leave the house for a year, supply chains will be rusty @ best when
Coronavirus finally makes off for parts unknown, or pretty much wrecked.
There are very few among us who can afford to miss work and paychecks, and not only that,
but those crazy preppers for once are 100% correct (why they don't concentrate on food
primarily, is a mystery) in that everything we eat comes from somewhere else typically.
The extraordinary plum of the USD being the worlds' reserve currency looks to be in
trouble too, and in a weakened state of things, might just turn into any other fiat monetary
instrument.
The internet will change as well, with much of the world stuck in place, i'd expect
traffic on here to explode, in that I can't think of a better time waster.
There's also the aspect of the Coronavirus hangover even after it departs, survivors won't
let loose of their newfound way of living so easy.
I will never forget reading the Wikileak where the US state department was strong-arming
an African government on behalf of Shell Oil. It drove home for me the reality that
governments and corporations both serve their wealthy elite masters, and don't even pretend
to serve the people they ostensibly represent.
That made me realize it's always been this way.
I was in high school when NAFTA went through. I remember reading all the dire warnings
from people opposed, and all the glowing thoughts from those in favor. Now, in hindsight, it
has been much worse for everyone except the wealthy. The dire warnings weren't dire
enough.
Coronavirus isn't a black swan. People have been predicting a pandemic would strike a blow
to globalization for a long time. The companies suffering from their short-sightedness FULLY
DESERVE what they're getting. I'm sure hoping the fallout hits the corporate landscape
hard . Let's see some naked capitalism in action.
Your comment reminds me of Smedley Butler's 'War is a Racket' from about 100 years ago. It
was true then and its true now. And I'm talking about government practices in general, not
just war: You could take 'War' out of the title and replace it with anything else the
american government does these days and it would still hold true.
"The companies suffering from their short-sightedness FULLY DESERVE what they're
getting."
They do indeed. That is why they are lobbying the White House for bailout
economic assistance funds. It would be a real stinker if they are bailed out with tax dollars and the average citizen
is forced to pick up their own medical and time-off-the-job tabs.
I should have clarified, I'm an American living in the United States. That said, it bothers
me. The absolute lack of any detectable level of courage or fortitude in the face of
diversity (hard times) is just stunning. Old people die. Everyone dies over time. Viruses
like the flu or SARS, or COVID-19 accelerate that process from time to time. It's just what
viruses do. There is no cure for either death or viruses. If you want the biblical "Ye shall
surely die."
The worst estimates of "excess deaths" in the U.S. is currently 480,000. Let's call it
605,000. 605,000 out of a population of 310 million is a death rate of 0.2%. Point two
percent. If this was a deer heard and the managers were assured that the virus did no other
damage and that the point two percent would be overwhelmingly composed of the aged and infirm
they would consider intentionally introducing the virus to other herds that were too
large.
The panic and cowardice is doing more damage than the disease. The level of fear and panic
and the lack of dignity about a life process that you know or should have known was coming
for as long as you were sentient is just appalling. The whole society is pusillanimous.
There's just no other conclusion. It's outrageous compared to the whole of human history. No
other generation in history panicked so much over so little.
/div>
Paul Bogdanich@111
America society is not organized to deal with crisis on its own soil at a community based
level due to globalization and the warfare economy that you are well aware of.
First, the closing down of schools is a good example as the increase in poverty among the
99% has resulted in schools having to take on providing food to a large segment of children. It
is even worse for the children who are homeless in America while millions of dollars a day go
to overseas wars. In New York City along there are about 110,000 homeless children. America has
no means to deliver such food aid to children except through school attendance! Even worse is
that most of this food is ultraprocessed junk and food like substances as required by the
corporate food industry.
Second, most workers must continue to show up even if sick or they face going bankrupt
and are already deep in debt to the banks. This creates another petri dish for transmission of
the virus which is otherwise going to happen due to a lack of food supplies, except in Mormon
and similar communities.
Third, About half of Americans have one or more serious medical conditions, most of which
are due to either bad diet (hypertension, heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, etc.)
or drug use (alcohol, tobacco, or hard drugs).
Fourth, Americans are generally sedentary and cocooned indoors leading to vitamin/hormone
D3 deficiencies and toxic organics exposure in home products.
Fifth, we have a sick care system in the US that tries to maximize revenue flow to
medical corporations through excess drug distribution and other symptom treatments (think snake
oil salesmen in the old west). Once again, prevention via better diet is the correct but
unprofitable choice. See books such as "food fix" and "The Hacking of the American Mind" for
further details.
Sixth, oil people who will die generally have deficient immune systems which make them
susceptible to secondary infections and lung inflammation responses. Strategies to improve
immune response are not profitable compared to vaccines and thus lots of old people will
die.
Seventh, as hospitals rapidly fill up with patient with coronavirus secondary infections
anyone with injuries or disease conditions (e,g, gall bladder and appendix infections will have
a much higher chance of dying). As some 97% of prescription drugs are imported from China there
will be dramatic shortages.
Eighth, even with calling out the national guard, there will be a large increase in crime
as America has over million gang members who are generally well organized. Pity those who
cannot defend themselves.
Ninth, collapse of the food and other essential services distribution over several months
will contribute to violence and perhaps starvation, especially among pets and farm
animals.
Tenth, since most political leaders in the US attended the AIPAC and CPAP conferences,
where they were exposed to infected individuals, they will have a much higher infection rate,
especially since they tend to be old and in bad health. The collapse of government decision
makers will lead to local communities having to sink or swim.
You are correct about the lack of courage in Americans. More importantly, response to a
crisis is 80% mental Americans generally are unwilling to give up their comfort and conformity
mindset.
Do not know why anyone would want to serve in the US military. Seems like you now
recognize your mistake.
Paul Bogdanich@111
America society is not organized to deal with crisis on its own soil at a community
based level due to globalization and the warfare economy that you are well aware of.
First, the closing down of schools is a good example as the increase in poverty among
the 99% has resulted in schools having to take on providing food to a large segment of
children. It is even worse for the children who are homeless in America while millions of
dollars a day go to overseas wars. In New York City along there are about 110,000 homeless
children. America has no means to deliver such food aid to children except through school
attendance! Even worse is that most of this food is ultraprocessed junk and food like
substances as required by the corporate food industry.
Second, most workers must continue to show up even if sick or they face going bankrupt
and are already deep in debt to the banks. This creates another petri dish for transmission
of the virus which is otherwise going to happen due to a lack of food supplies, except in
Mormon and similar communities.
Third, About half of Americans have one or more serious medical conditions, most of
which are due to either bad diet (hypertension, heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure,
etc.) or drug use (alcohol, tobacco, or hard drugs).
Fourth, Americans are generally sedentary and cocooned indoors leading to
vitamin/hormone D3 deficiencies and toxic organics exposure in home products.
Fifth, we have a sick care system in the US that tries to maximize revenue flow to
medical corporations through excess drug distribution and other symptom treatments (think
snake oil salesmen in the old west). Once again, prevention via better diet is the correct
but unprofitable choice. See books such as "food fix" and "The Hacking of the American Mind"
for further details.
Sixth, oil people who will die generally have deficient immune systems which make them
susceptible to secondary infections and lung inflammation responses. Strategies to improve
immune response are not profitable compared to vaccines and thus lots of old people will
die.
Seventh, as hospitals rapidly fill up with patient with coronavirus secondary
infections anyone with injuries or disease conditions (e,g, gall bladder and appendix
infections will have a much higher chance of dying). As some 97% of prescription drugs are
imported from China there will be dramatic shortages.
Eighth, even with calling out the national guard, there will be a large increase in
crime as America has over million gang members who are generally well organized. Pity those
who cannot defend themselves.
Ninth, collapse of the food and other essential services distribution over several
months will contribute to violence and perhaps starvation, especially among pets and farm
animals.
Tenth, since most political leaders in the US attended the AIPAC and CPAP conferences,
where they were exposed to infected individuals, they will have a much higher infection rate,
especially since they tend to be old and in bad health. The collapse of government decision
makers will lead to local communities having to sink or swim.
You are correct about the lack of courage in Americans. More importantly, response to a
crisis is 80% mental Americans generally are unwilling to give up their comfort and
conformity mindset.
Do not know why anyone would want to serve in the US military. Seems like you now
recognize your mistake. /div
Italy's economy will be crushed, but the bankers will still get their money. In fact, it's
another opportunity to impose further 'austerity' on Italy (as neoliberal economics abhors
spending on government services), and to force Italy to take out more loans from Germany and
France.
Another big bonus is that the virus will primarily kill old people, which means that
European governments can pay out less retirement pensions and welfare benefits in the future.
Neoliberal economics is the big winner here.
The epidemic that has so far spread to half of US states, infecting over 1,000 Americans and
killing 31...
At least 10 states have declared emergencies as of Wednesday, and disease experts are
throwing up their hands, urging the administration to take real-life events more seriously.
...Centers for Disease Control director Robert Redfield agreed that critical regions of the
US are beyond the reach of containment, sliding into the " mitigation " stage, and
blamed the botched rollout of test kits to local health workers.
The availability of
accurate tests for Covid-19 has become a major sore spot, with official reassurances colliding
with uncooperative reality in full view of the public. Secretary of Health and Human Services
Alex Azar insisted on Tuesday that " millions " of tests were available, even as the CDC
urged healthcare providers to save tests for symptomatic patients already hospitalized and "
medically fragile individuals ."
In at least one case
, federal officials warned a Seattle lab against testing flu swab samples for coronavirus in
January, before the epidemic was widely reported, losing critical response time –
mirroring the " crime " the Trump administration has tried to pin on China.
And some have warned that the US' inability to handle an outbreak is more dire than either
side realizes. During a House Appropriations Committee hearing on Tuesday, a Republican
congressman from Washington, the first Covid-19 hotspot to flare up in the US, demanded to know
why his constituents were unable to get their test results while his fellow congressmen had no
problem getting tested just days after coming into contact with an infected person at a DC
political conference. A CDC representative admitted " there's not enough equipment. There's
not enough people. There's not enough internal capacity. There's no surge capacity ." To
conserve tests, the CDC has told healthcare providers to " use their judgment " and
consider " epidemiologic factors " before using up a valuable resource.
Existing flaws in the US healthcare system have exacerbated the testing problem. The CDC has
refused to set up standalone testing centers, placing COVID-19 screening out of the reach of
the many Americans who don't have primary-care physicians and rely on walk-in clinics and
emergency rooms for their healthcare. Just 8,500 Americans had been tested as of Monday,
according to the CDC, and federal officials told reporters some 75,000 tests had been sent out
to public health laboratories on top of one million sent to hospitals and other sites. The
real-life infected numbers in the country are thus likely much higher than what is being
reported.
Control measures have varied wildly across local governments and institutions and even
within cities. Over 1,000 schools have closed nationwide, and cities and counties from Santa
Clara, California to Westchester, New York have banned large gatherings. The National
Institutes of Health's Anthony Fauci called on others to follow suit during a congressional
hearing on Wednesday, announcing " we would recommend that there not be large crowds. If
that means not having any people in the audience when the NBA plays, so be it. " Asked if "
the worst " was yet to come, Fauci answered unequivocally: " bottom line, it's going
to get worse. "
Even as new Covid-19 cases in China dwindle to near zero and cases in Italy, Germany, and
other European countries surge, the US has not stepped up screenings of passengers from those
countries at airports accordingly. Instead, the administration has continued to congratulate
itself on " saving lives " by halting flights from China weeks ago.
Two. Low wage workers and people without a paid sick day have to continue to work to
survive. Studies prove people without paid sick days are
more likely to go to work sick than workers who have paid sick leave. And workers without
paid sick days are much more likely to
seek care from emergency rooms than those with paid sick leave.
Three. About 30
million people in the US do not have health insurance, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation . Nearly half say they
cannot
afford it . They are unlikely to seek medical treatment for flu like symptoms or seek
screening because they cannot afford it.
Four. Staying home is not an option for the homeless. There are about 550,000 homeless people in the US,
according to the National Coalition
for the Homeless . Homeless people have rates of diabetes, heart disease, and HIV/AIDS at
rates
three to six times that of the general population, according to the National Alliance to
End Homelessness. Shelters often provide close living arrangements and opportunities to clean
hands and clothes and utensils are minimal for those on the street. Homeless people have
higher rates of
infectious, acute and chronic diseases like tuberculosis.
The 2008 crisis put in the spotlight the psychopathic level of greed, vice, apathy and
short-sightedness from those who wanted to play into the City of London and Wall Street casino
houses. Get rich quick and don't care who you screw in the process, after all, at the end of
the day you're either a winner or a loser.
Since the general public tends to consist of decent people, there is a widespread difficulty
in comprehending how entire economies of countries have been hijacked by these piranhas. That
we have hit such a level of crime that even people's hard earned pensions, education,
health-care, housing etc. are all being gambled away LEGALLY.
Looking upon investment bankers today, one is reminded of those sad addicts in the casino
who are ruined and lose everything, except the difference is, they are given the option to sell
their neighbour's family into slavery to pay off their debt.
It is no secret that much of the "finance" that goes through the City of London and Wall
Street is dirty and yet despite this recognition, there appears to be an inability to address
it and that at this point we are told that if we tried to address it by breaking up and
regulating the "Too Big to Fail" banks, then the whole economy would come tumbling down.
That is, the world is so evidently run by criminal activity that at this point we have
become dependent on its dirty money to keep afloat the world economy.
Faced with the onrushing collapse of the financial system, the greatest Ivy League trained
minds of the world have run into a dead end: the bailouts into the banking system that began
this past September have prevented a chain reaction meltdown for a few months, but as the
liquidity runs out so too will the ideas on where the money justifying bank bailouts will come
from.
With these dead ends, we have seen the lightbulb go off in the minds of a large strata of
economists who have been making the case in recent years that valuable revenue can yet be
generated from one more untapped stream: the decriminalisation and legalisation of vice.
Hell, the major banks have already been doing this covertly as a matter of practice for
generations so why not just come out of the closet and make it official? This is where the
money is at. This is where the job market is at. So let us not "bite the hand that feeds
us"!
But is this truly the case? Is there really no qualitative difference how the
money is generated and how it is spent as long as there is an adequate money flow?
Well it is never a good sign when beside the richest you can also find the poorest just a
stone's throw away. And right beside the largest financial center in the world, the City of
London, there lies the poorest borough in all of London: Tower Hamlets with a 39% poverty
rate and anaverage family income amounting to less than£ 13,
000/year .
A City within a City
" Hell is a city much like London "
– Percy Bysshe Shelley
Although Wall Street has contributed greatly to this sad situation, this banking hub of
America is best understood as the spawn of the City of London.
The City of London is over 800 years old, it is arguably older than England herself, a nd
for over 400 years it has been the financial center of the world.
During the medieval period the City of London, otherwise known as the Square Mile or simply
the City, was divided into 25 ancient wards headed each by an alderman. This continues
today . In addition, there existed the ominously titled City of London Corporation, or
simply the Corporation, which is the municipal governing body of the City. This also still
continues today .
Though the Corporation's origins cannot be specifically dated, since there was never a
"surviving" charter found establishing its "legal" basis, it has kept its functions to this day
based on the Magna Carta. The Magna Carta is a charter of rights agreed to by King John in
1215, which states that " the City of London shall have/enjoy its ancient liberties ".
In other words, the legal function of the Corporation has never been questioned, reviewed,
re-evaluated EVER but rather it has been left to legally function as in accordance with their
"ancient liberties", which is a very grey description of function if you ask me. In other
words, they are free to do as they deem fit.
And it gets worst. The Corporation is not actually under the jurisdiction of the British
government. That is, the British government presently does not have the authority to undermine
how the Corporation of the City chooses to govern the largest financial center in the
world . The City has a separate voting system that allows for, well, corporations to vote
in how their separate "government" should run. It also has its own private police force and
system of private courts.
The Corporation is not just limited to functioning within the City. The City Remembrancer,
which sounds more like a warped version of the ghost of Christmas past, has the role of acting
as a channel of communication between the Corporation and the Sovereign (the Queen), the Royal
Household and Parliament. The Remembrancer thus acts as a "reminder", some would even say
"enforcer", of the will of the Corporation. This position has been held by Paul Double since
2003, it is not clear who bestows this non-elected position.
Mr. Double has the right to act as an official lobbyist in the House of Commons, and sits to
the right of the Speaker's chair, with the purpose of scrutinising and influencing any
legislation he deems affects the interests of the Corporation. He also appears to have the
right to review any piece of legislation as it is being drafted and can even comment on it
affecting its final outcome. He is the only non-elected person allowed into the House of
Commons.
"The City is the only area in the country in which the number of workers significantly
outnumbers the residents and therefore, to be truly representative of its population, offers a
vote to City organisations so they can have their say on the way the City is run."
However, the workers have absolutely no say. The City's organisations they work for have
a certain size vote based on the number of workers they employ, but they do not consult these
workers, and many of them are not even aware that such elections take place.
If you feel like you have just walked through Alice's Looking Glass, you're not alone,
but what appears to be an absurd level of madness is what has been running the largest
financial center in the world since the 1600s, under the machinations of the British
Empire.
Therefore the question is, if the City of London has kept its "ancient liberties" and has
upheld its global financial power, is the British Empire truly gone?
Offshore Banking: Adam Smith's Invisible Hand?
Contrary to popular naïve belief, the empire on which the sun never sets (some say "
because God wouldn't trust them in the dark ")
never went away .
After WWII, colonisation was meant to be done away with, and many thought, so too with the
British Empire. Countries were reclaiming their sovereignty, governments were being set up by
the people, the system of looting and pillaging had come to an end.
It is a nice story, but could not be further from the truth.
In the 1950s, to "adapt" to the changing global financial climate, the City of London set up
what are called "secrecy jurisdictions". These were to operate within the last remnants of
Britain's small territories/colonies. Of Britain's 14 oversea territories, 7 are bona fide tax
havens or "secrecy jurisdictions". A separate international financial market was also created
to facilitate the flow of this offshore money, the Eurodollar market. Since this market has its
banks outside of the UK and U.S., they are not under the jurisdiction of either country.
By 1997, nearly 90% of all international loans were made through this market.
What is often misunderstood is that the City of London's offshore finances are not contained
in a system of banking secrecy but rather of trusts. The difference being that a trust
ultimately plays with the concept of ownership. The idea is that you hand over your assets to a
trustee and at that point, legally those assets are no longer yours anymore and you are not
responsible for accounting for them. Your connection to said assets is completely hidden.
In addition, within Britain's offshore jurisdictions, there is no qualification required for
who can become a trustee: anyone can set up a trust and anyone can become a trustee. There is
also no registry of trusts in these territories. Thus, the only ones who know about this
arrangement are the trustee and the settler.
John Christensen, an investigative economist, estimates that this capital that legally
belongs to nobody could amount to as high as $50 trillion within these British territories.
Not only is this not being taxed, but a significant portion of it has been stolen from sectors
of the real economy.
So how does this affect "formerly" colonised countries?
There lies the rub for most developing nations. According to John Christensen, the combined
external debts of Sub-Saharan African countries was $177 billion in 2008. However, the wealth
that these countries' elites moved offshore, between 1970-2008, is estimated at $944 billion,
5X their foreign debt. This is not only dirty money, this is also STOLEN money from the
resources and productivity of these economies. Thus, as Christensen states, "Far from being a
net debtor to the world, Sub-Saharan Africa is a net creditor" to offshore finance.
Put in this context, the so-called "backwardness" of Africa is not due to its incapability
to produce, but rather that it has been experiencing uninterrupted looting since these regions
were first colonised.
These African countries then need to borrow money, which is happily given to them at high
interest rates, and accrues a level of debt that could never be repaid. These countries are
thus looted twice over, leaving no money left to invest in their future, let alone to
put food on the table.
Offshore havens are what make this sort of activity "legal" and rampant.
And it doesn't stop there. Worldwide, it is estimated that developing countries lose $1
trillion every year in capital flight and tax evasion. Most of this wealth goes back into the
UK and U.S. through these offshore havens, and allows their currencies to stay strong whilst
developing nations' currencies are kept weak.
However, developing nations are not the only ones to have suffered from this system of
looting. The very economies of the UK and U.S. have also been gutted. In the 1960s and onward,
the UK and U.S., to compensate for the increase in money flow out of their countries decided
that it was a good idea to open their domestic markets to the trillions of dollars passing
through its offshore havens.
However, such banks are not interested in putting their money into industry and
manufacturing, they put their money into real estate speculation, financial speculation and
foreign currency trade. And thus the financialization of British and American economies
resulted, and the real jobs coming from the real economy decreased or disappeared.
Although many economists try to claim differently, the desperation has boiled over and
movements like the yellow vests are reflections of the true consequences of these economic
policies.
We have reached a point now where every western first world country is struggling with a
much higher unemployment rate and a lower standard of living than 40 years ago. Along with
increased poverty has followed increased drug use, increased suicide and increased crime.
A Stable Economy based on Freedom or Slavery?
According to the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) report in
2017 , the UK has by far the highest rate of drug overdose in all of Europe at 31% followed
by Germany at 15%. That is, the UK consists of 1/3 drug overdoses that occur in all of
Europe.
The average family income in the UK is presently £28, 400. The poverty rate within the
UK is ~20%.
The average family income of what was once the epicentre of world industrialisation,
Detroit, has an average family income of $26, 249. The poverty rate of Detroit is ~34.5%.
What is the solution?
Reverse Margaret Thatcher's 1986 Big Bang deregulation of the banking system that destroyed
the separation of commercial banking, investment banking, trusts and insurance for starters. A
similar restoration of Glass-Steagall in the USA should follow suit, not only to break up the
"Too Big to Fail" banking system but to restore the authority of nation states over private
finance once more. IF these emergency measures were done before the markets collapse (and they
will collapse), then the industrial-infrastructure revival throughout trans-Atlantic nations
can still occur.
Let us end here by hearkening to the words of Clement Attlee, UK Prime Minister from
1945-1951:
" Over and over again we have seen that there is another power than that which has its
seat at Westminster. The City of London, a convenient term for a collection of financial
interests, is able to assert itself against the government of the country. Those who control
money can pursue a policy at home and abroad contrary to that which is being decided by the
people. "
"... by the time Hayek came to write The Constitution of Liberty, the network of lobbyists and thinkers he had founded was being lavishly funded by multimillionaires who saw the doctrine as a means of defending themselves against democracy ..."
"... He begins the book by advancing the narrowest possible conception of liberty: an absence of coercion. He rejects such notions as political freedom, universal rights, human equality and the distribution of wealth, all of which, by restricting the behaviour of the wealthy and powerful, intrude on the absolute freedom from coercion he demands. ..."
"... Democracy, by contrast, "is not an ultimate or absolute value". In fact, liberty depends on preventing the majority from exercising choice over the direction that politics and society might take. He justifies this position by creating a heroic narrative of extreme wealth. He conflates the economic elite, spending their money in new ways, with philosophical and scientific pioneers. ..."
"... Bill Clinton and Tony Blair did not possess a narrative of their own. Rather than develop a new political story, they thought it was sufficient to triangulate . In other words, they extracted a few elements of what their parties had once believed, mixed them with elements of what their opponents believed, and developed from this unlikely combination a "third way" ..."
"... It was inevitable that the blazing, insurrectionary confidence of neoliberalism would exert a stronger gravitational pull than the dying star of social democracy. Hayek's triumph could be witnessed everywhere from Blair's expansion of the private finance initiative to Clinton's repeal of the Glass-Steagal Act , which had regulated the financial sector. ..."
"... The paradoxical result is that the backlash against neoliberalism's crushing of political choice has elevated just the kind of man that Hayek worshipped. Trump, who has no coherent politics, is not a classic neoliberal. But he is the perfect representation of Hayek's "independent"; the beneficiary of inherited wealth, unconstrained by common morality, whose gross predilections strike a new path that others may follow. The neoliberal thinktankers are now swarming round this hollow man, this empty vessel waiting to be filled by those who know what they want. ..."
"... Hayek told us who we are, and he was wrong. Our first step is to reclaim our humanity. ..."
"... Hayek softened his opposition to monopolies and hardened his opposition to trade unions. He lambasted progressive taxation and attempts by the state to raise the general welfare of citizens. He insisted that there is "an overwhelming case against a free health service for all" and dismissed the conservation of natural resources. It should come as no surprise to those who follow such matters that he was awarded the Nobel prize for economics . ..."
"... By the time Thatcher slammed his book on the table, a lively network of thinktanks, lobbyists and academics promoting Hayek's doctrines had been established on both sides of the Atlantic, abundantly financed by some of the world's richest people and businesses , including DuPont, General Electric, the Coors brewing company, Charles Koch, Richard Mellon Scaife, Lawrence Fertig, the William Volker Fund and the Earhart Foundation. Using psychology and linguistics to brilliant effect, the thinkers these people sponsored found the words and arguments required to turn Hayek's anthem to the elite into a plausible political programme. ..."
The book was The Constitution of Liberty
by Frederick Hayek . Its publication, in 1960, marked the transition from an honest, if
extreme, philosophy to an outright racket. The
philosophy was called neoliberalism . It saw competition as the defining characteristic of
human relations. The market would discover a natural hierarchy of winners and losers, creating
a more efficient system than could ever be devised through planning or by design. Anything that
impeded this process, such as significant tax, regulation, trade union activity or state
provision, was counter-productive. Unrestricted entrepreneurs would create the wealth that
would trickle down to everyone.
This, at any rate, is how it was originally conceived. But by the time Hayek came to
write The Constitution of Liberty, the network of lobbyists and thinkers he had founded was
being lavishly funded by multimillionaires who saw the doctrine as a means of defending
themselves against democracy . Not every aspect of the neoliberal programme advanced their
interests. Hayek, it seems, set out to close the gap.
He begins the book by advancing the narrowest possible conception of liberty: an absence
of coercion. He rejects such notions as political freedom, universal rights, human equality and
the distribution of wealth, all of which, by restricting the behaviour of the wealthy and
powerful, intrude on the absolute freedom from coercion he demands.
Democracy, by contrast, "is not an ultimate or absolute value". In fact, liberty depends
on preventing the majority from exercising choice over the direction that politics and society
might take. He justifies this position by creating a heroic narrative of extreme wealth. He
conflates the economic elite, spending their money in new ways, with philosophical and
scientific pioneers. Just as the political philosopher should be free to think the
unthinkable, so the very rich should be free to do the undoable, without constraint by public
interest or public opinion.
The ultra rich are "scouts", "experimenting with new styles of living", who blaze the trails
that the rest of society will follow. The progress of society depends on the liberty of these
"independents" to gain as much money as they want and spend it how they wish. All that is good
and useful, therefore, arises from inequality. There should be no connection between merit and
reward, no distinction made between earned and unearned income, and no limit to the rents they
can charge.
Inherited wealth is more socially useful than earned wealth: "the idle rich", who don't have
to work for their money, can devote themselves to influencing "fields of thought and opinion,
of tastes and beliefs". Even when they seem to be spending money on nothing but "aimless
display", they are in fact acting as society's vanguard.
Thatcherism and Reaganism were not ideologies in their own right: they were just two faces
of neoliberalism. Their massive tax cuts for the rich, crushing of trade unions, reduction in
public housing, deregulation, privatisation, outsourcing and competition in public services
were all proposed by Hayek and his disciples. But the real triumph of this network was not its
capture of the right, but its colonisation of parties that once stood for everything Hayek
detested.
Bill Clinton and Tony Blair did not possess a narrative of their own. Rather than
develop a new political story, they thought it was sufficient to
triangulate . In other words, they extracted a few elements of what their parties had once
believed, mixed them with elements of what their opponents believed, and developed from this
unlikely combination a "third way" .
It was inevitable that the blazing, insurrectionary confidence of neoliberalism would
exert a stronger gravitational pull than the dying star of social democracy. Hayek's triumph
could be witnessed everywhere from Blair's expansion of the private finance initiative to
Clinton's repeal of the Glass-Steagal Act , which had regulated the financial sector.
For all his grace and touch, Barack Obama, who didn't possess a narrative either (except
"hope"), was slowly reeled in by those who owned the means of persuasion.
As I warned
in April, the result is first disempowerment then disenfranchisement. If the dominant ideology
stops governments from changing social outcomes, they can no longer respond to the needs of the
electorate. Politics becomes irrelevant to people's lives; debate is reduced to the jabber of a
remote elite. The disenfranchised turn instead to a virulent anti-politics in which facts and
arguments are replaced by slogans, symbols and sensation. The man who sank Hillary Clinton's
bid for the presidency was not Donald Trump. It was her husband.
The paradoxical result is that the backlash against neoliberalism's crushing of
political choice has elevated just the kind of man that Hayek worshipped. Trump, who has no
coherent politics, is not a classic neoliberal. But he is the perfect representation of Hayek's
"independent"; the beneficiary of inherited wealth, unconstrained by common morality, whose
gross predilections strike a new path that others may follow. The neoliberal thinktankers are
now swarming round this hollow man, this empty vessel waiting to be filled by those who know
what they want. The likely result is the demolition of our remaining decencies, ->
->
beginning with the agreement to limit global warming .
Those who tell the stories run the world. Politics has failed through a lack of competing
narratives. The key task now is to tell a new story of what it is to be a human in the 21st
century. It must be as appealing to some who have voted for Trump and Ukip as it is to the
supporters of Clinton, Bernie Sanders or Jeremy Corbyn.
A few of us have been working on this, and can discern what may be the beginning of a story.
It's too early to say much yet, but at its core is the recognition that – as modern
psychology and neuroscience make abundantly clear – human beings, by comparison with any
other animals, are both
remarkably social and
remarkably unselfish . The atomisation and self-interested behaviour neoliberalism promotes
run counter to much of what comprises human nature.
Hayek told us who we are, and he was wrong. Our first step is to reclaim our
humanity.
Hayek softened his opposition to monopolies and hardened his opposition to trade unions.
He lambasted progressive taxation and attempts by the state to raise the general welfare of
citizens. He insisted that there is "an overwhelming case against a free health service for
all" and dismissed the conservation of natural resources. It should come as no surprise to
those who follow such matters that he was
awarded the Nobel prize for economics .
By the time Thatcher slammed his book on the table, a lively network of thinktanks,
lobbyists and academics promoting Hayek's doctrines had been established on both sides of the
Atlantic, abundantly
financed by some of the world's richest people and businesses , including DuPont, General
Electric, the Coors brewing company, Charles Koch, Richard Mellon Scaife, Lawrence Fertig, the
William Volker Fund and the Earhart Foundation. Using psychology and linguistics to brilliant
effect, the thinkers these people sponsored found the words and arguments required to turn
Hayek's anthem to the elite into a plausible political programme.
EF Schumacher quoted "seek first the kingdom of God" in his epilogue of "Small Is Beautiful:
a study of economics as if people mattered". This was written in the early 1970s before the
neoliberal project bit in the USA and the UK. The book is laced with warnings about the
effects of the imposition of neoliberalism on society, people and the planet. The predictions
have largely come true. New politics and economics needed, by leaders who place at the heart
of their approach the premise, and fact, that humans are "by comparison with any other
animals, are both remarkably social and remarkably unselfish". It is about reclaiming our
humanity from a project that treats people as just another commodity.
And persistent. J.K. Galbraith viewed the rightwing mind as predominantly concerned with
figuring out a way to justify the shift of wealth from the immense majority to an elite at
the top. I for one regret acutely that he did not (as far as I know) write a volume on his
belief in progressive taxation.
Millions see no benefit from the wealth generated by these 'entrepreneurs', that is the nub
of the matter. 'Trickle-down' economics is the biggest lie of my lifetime: (DOB 1951).
Albert Einstein said, "capitalism is evil" in his famous dictum called, "Why Socialism" in
1949. He also called communism, "evil", so don't jump to conclusions, comrades. ;)
His reasoning was it distorts a human beings longing for the social aspect. I believe
George references this in his statement about people being "unselfish". This is noted by both
science and philosophy.
Einstein noted that historically, the conqueror would establish the new order, and since
1949, Western Imperialism has continued on with the predatory phase of acquiring and
implementing democracy/capitalism. This needs to end. As we've learned rapidly, capitalism
isn't sustainable. We are literally overheating the earth which sustains us. Very unwise.
Einstein wrote, "Man is, at one and the same time, a solitary being and a social being. As
a solitary being, he attempts to protect his own existence and that of those who are closest
to him, to satisfy his personal desires, and to develop his innate abilities. As a social
being, he seeks to gain the recognition and affection of his fellow human beings, to share in
their pleasures, to comfort them in their sorrows, and to improve their conditions of life.
Only the existence of these varied, frequently conflicting, strivings accounts for the
special character of a man, and their specific combination determines the extent to which an
individual can achieve an inner equilibrium and can contribute to the well-being of
society."
Personally, I'm glad George and others are working on a new economic and social construct
for us "human beings". It's time we leave the predatory phase of "us versus them", and
construct a new society which works for the good of our now, global society.
The problem is that both you and Monbiot fail to mention that your "the spontaneous order
of the market" does not recognize externalities and climate change is outside Hayek's
thinking - he never wrote about sustainability or the limits on resources, let alone the
consequences of burning fossil fuels. There is no beauty in what he wrote - it was a cold,
mechanical model that assumed certain human behaviour but not others. Look at today's
money-makers - they are nearly all climate change deniers and we have to have government to
reign them in.
Good, short and concise article. But the FIRST NEOLIBERAL MILESTONE WAS THE 1973 COUP D'ETAT
IN CHILE, which not surprisingly also deposed the first democratically-elected socialist
government.
Neoliberalism is the theory of capitalism in decline. A failed system that cannot produce
growth or rising living standards for the majority. A system run by the IMF, the EU and other
undemocratic bodies. And Mr Monbiot says we should stay in the neoliberal EU!
here here, all the Austrians and those of central European descent (Friedman) are paranoid
about the ascent of government and unfortunately it both colours their views and distorts
their thinking. A recent reading of Friedman's "Capitalism and Freedom" confirmed my view
that there was a lot of weak logic and quite poor intellectual thinking overall applied, tho
in its day it would have resonated.
A great article and explanation of the influence of Hayek on Thatcher. Unfortunately this
country is still suffering the consequences of her tenure and Osborne was also a proponent of
her policies and look where we are as a consequence. The referendum gave the people the
opportunity to vent their anger and if we had PR I suspect we would have a greater turn-out
and nearly always have some sort of coalition where nothing gets done that is too hurtful to
the population. As for Trump, again his election is an expression of anger and desperation.
However, the American voting system is as unfair as our own - again this has probably been
the cause of the low turn-out. Why should people vote when they do not get fair
representation - it is a waste of time and not democratic. I doubt that Trump is Keynsian I
suspect he doesn't have an economic theory at all. I just hope that the current economic
thinking prevailing currently in this country, which is still overshadowed by Thatcher and
the free market, with no controls over the city casino soon collapses and we can start from a
fairer and more inclusive base!
The system that Clinton developed was an inheritance from George H.W. Bush, Reagan (to a
large degree), Carter, with another large assist from Nixon and the Powell Memo.
Bill Clinton didn't do it by himself. The GOP did it with him hand-in-hand, with the only
resistance coming from a minority within the Democratic party.
Trump's victory was due to many factors. A large part of it was Hillary Clinton's campaign
and the candidate. Part of it was the effectiveness of the GOP massive resistance strategy
during the Obama years, wherein they pursued a course of obstruction in an effort to slow the
rate of the economic recovery (e.g. as evidence of the bad faith, they are resurrecting a $1
trillion infrastructure bill that Obama originally proposed in 2012, and now that they have
full control, all the talk about "deficits" goes out the window).
Obama and the Democratic party also bear responsibility for not recognizing the full scope
of the financial collapse in 2008-2009, passing a stimulus package that was about $1 trillion
short of spending needed to accelerate the recovery by the 2010 mid-terms, combined with a
weak financial regulation law (which the GOP is going to destroy), an overly complicated
health care law -- classic technocratic, neoliberal incremental policy -- and the failure of
the Obama administration to hold Wall Street accountable for criminal misconduct relating to
the financial crisis. Obama's decision to push unpopular trade agreements didn't help either.
As part of the post-mortem, the decision to continuing pushing the TPP may have cost Clinton
in the rust belt states that went for Trump. The agreement was unpopular, and her shift on
the policy didn't come across as credible. People noticed as well that Obama was trying to
pass the measure through the lame-duck session of Congress post-election. With Trump's
election, the TPP is done too.
Another nasty neoliberal policy of Reagan and Thatcher, was to close all the mental
hospitals, and to sweeten the pill to sell to the voters, they called it Care in the
Community, except by the time those hospitals closed and the people who had to relay on those
institutions, they found out and are still finding out that there is very little care in the
community left any more, thanks to Thatcher's disintegration of the ethos community spirit.
In their neoliberal mantra of thinking, you are on your own now, tough, move on, because you
are hopeless and non productive, hence you are a burden to taxpayers. Its been that way of
thinking for over thirty years, and now the latest group targeted, are the sick and disabled,
victims of the neoliberal made banking crash and its neoliberal inspired austerity, imposed
of those least able to fight back or defend themselves i.e. vulnerable people again!
If you claim that the only benefit of private enterprise is its taxability, as you did,
then why not cut out the middle man and argue for full state-directed capitalism?
Because it is plainly obvious that private enterprise is not directed toward the public good
(and by definition). As we have both agreed, it needs to have the right regulations and
framework to give it some direction in that regard. What "the radical left" are pointing out
is that the idea of private enterprise is now completely out of control, to the point where
voters are disenfranchised because private enterprise has more say over what the government
does than the people. Which is clearly a problem.
As for the rest, it's the usual practice of gathering every positive metric available and
somehow attributing it to neoliberalism, no matter how tenuous the threads, and as always
with zero rigour. Supposedly capitalism alone doubled life expectancy, supports billions of
extra lives, invented the railways, and provides the drugs and equipment that keep us alive.
As though public education, vaccines, antibiotics, and massive availability of energy has
nothing to do with those things.
As for this computer being the invention of capitalism, who knows, but I suppose if one
were to believe that everything was invented and created by capitalism and monetary motives
then one might believe that. Energy allotments referred to the limit of our usage of readily
available fossil fuels which you remain blissfully unaware of.
Children have already been educated to agree with you, in no small part due to a fear of
the communist regimes at the time, but at the expense of critical thinking. Questioning the
system even when it has plainly been undermined to its core is quickly labelled "radical"
regardless of the normalcy of the query. I don't know what you could possibly think left-wing
motives could be, but your own motives are plain to see when you immediately lump people who
care about the planet in with communist idealogues. If rampant capitalism was going to solve
our problems I'm all for it, but it will take a miracle to reverse the damage it has already
done, and only a fool would trust it any further.
Then we can put the entire Washington Consensus to bed and never have to hear any of these
awful names we've been hearing on our tellies for the past 30 years. Giant meteors at the
hotel where Soros is holding his neoliberal huddle would be nice.
Liberalism itself is, to an extent, based on judgment and ritual humiliation, as shown by a
few moments spent flipping through <I>The New Republic and other chronicles of their
bourgeois aspirations. Whatever this brave new world without neoliberalism shall be, there
are parts of this totalizing ideology called liberalism that taking with us seems to lead
only to this same drama a few generations hence. Perhaps liberalism itself is toxic to
political economy, under the theory that what it has brought is exactly what it brings, and
that its influence may be better preserved in social libertinism than economic libertinism.
Communism didn't collapse, so much as neoliberalism took its scalp. Context matters here, and
the West can't pretend it wasn't torturing, raping and murdering to make that happen.
A vote for Trump, Boris, Farage and Aaron Banks is a vote against neoliberal ism?
Seriously?
Even these chaps realise that money is made from the 'little guy' and if the little guy is
deprived of a reasonable income and the opportunity to spend it as he/she wills, then the
'big guys' eventually lose out as well.
The strategy adopted by all the corporative elites has been to import labour from
countries which care about health and education for the masses and whose residents are happy
to take low wages and UK government top ups in the form of tax credits and child benefits.
After all, the wage differentials ensure they can educate their own children privately in
their home countries and they can return home at any time for private health care when
necessary.
The leaders of the EU have done all they can to ensure a more even distribution of wealth
amongst member states. But in fact it suits no one except their wealthy cronies, who can pick
and choose where they pay their taxes (or not). Migrants don't want it - they are happy to
earn relatively high wages elsewhere and spend it in their own relatively impoverished home
countries; and the native population of the wealthier countries don't want their own
standards of living eroded by unfair competition from migrants.
The system is unsustainable long term and everyone knows it. If they weren't aware of what
was happening before the Cameron negotiations, they certainly were when they saw the
reaction, and the greed, of the Polish Minister in particular. Brexit happened becasue of
Cameron's failure.
The Trump triumph is more difficult to understand. He seems to have picked up on Farage's
rhetoric and applied it to the US (particularly in regard to Mexican migrants undercutting
local wages and the apparent need for fences along the borders). I am not convinced however
that the US as a federal superstate faces the same problems as the EU - which is currently a
hybrid intergovernmental organisation / federal superstate, or rather in transition from the
former to the latter. However if the US is the exemplar or the model into which the EU is
morphing then it is best to stop the process right now.
People can't be expected to work like this. No wonder we have trouble recruiting NHS
staff. Who wants to be 'employed' by a two-person company? Shocking.
Also, somebody – and I don't care who it is – needs to get on top of the tax
evasion and, now, National Insurance evasion by these companies. Billions are being lost. And
to think you're quibbling about the cost of a few imaginary women having babies.
Bernie Sanders, writing in the Boston Globe less than a month before the US election,
mentioned 'one family (the Waltons) having more wealth than the bottom 42 percent of our
population'. Does anyone know who this family is, as I have never heard of them? Those who
think it is the famous family from the American TV series of the same name need not reply.
Well the rich did make a secret of it. Neoliberalism is the pattern that connects policies
that roll back state social support and roll out pro-market 'solutions' with pseudoscientific
economic explanations. The rich funded the considerable network of think tanks that took the
neoliberal agenda to governments as the new truth, and the cover story was that there would
be growth that lifts all boats. It hasn't happened. Instead we have inequality and stalled
growth, but the new medicine 'austerity', continues to be neoliberal.
Neoliberal v Neoclassical economics – what's the difference?
By Claire Connelly
Economics & Finance |
Bookmark to dashboard
Neoliberalism and neo-classical economics are often terms that are used
interchangeably by various economists and financial writers, but actually, there are important differences between
the two. We've had some requests from readers to make that distinction more obvious, so here goes
Neo-classical economic theory puts 'man' as a rational human being at the heart of the
economic system, extrapolating the functions of the economy based on optimised behaviour of rational, well-informed
individuals trading with one in another in what is effectively a barter system (which as I'm sure we all know by now,
never actually existed
).
It is based on the
general equilibrium model
pioneered by late 19th century economist
Leon Walras
, of the
Lausanne School. Ironically, neoclassical economics guarantees full employment because it models a system with no
frictions or inconveniences like trade unions, minimum wage laws or imperfect information. Also false.
It also guarantees that society will find an optimal allocation of resources on its
own, so long as markets are competitive, and there are no externalities, like pollution, which go unaccounted for.
Neoclassicists are concerned about monopoly power, neoliberals are not. Neoclassicists
believe it merits government intervention and regulation. Neoliberals, do not.
It is possible to be a neoclassical without being a neoliberal.
The most important thing to understand is that neoliberalism is a post-war political
movement that grew out of
the Mont Pelerin Society
, a
thought collective that formed a consensus not to put the market at the centre of the state, but to take it over
completely. Its entire objective is to co-opt economics and subvert the public interest to suit the needs of powerful
capitalist institutions and the politicians, economists, financiers, philosophers, bankers, think-tanks and media
organisations that support them.
Neoliberalism is associated with laissez-faire economic liberalism and was pioneered by
economist Milton Friedman & Friedrich Hayeck, but as the economic historian, Philip Mirowski points out, this is a
deliberate deception to trick people into thinking it is concerned about market equilibrium.
It is the doctrine by which white collar crime has been allowed to prosper unprosecuted
while governments of wealthy nations like the US and UK have abdicated their responsibility for employment, health
care, education and the general well-being of the populations they are supposedly elected to serve. In their minds,
government exists only to maintain property rights, defend capitalists and maintain price stability, (which
apparently doesn't count as intervention when it works in the favour of the wealthy).
We
are what we eat, well, in free market terms anyway
Whilst
90% of the US media (film, TV and radio) is controlled by only 6 companies.
Unlike neoclassicists and neoliberals, heterodox economists and other post-Keynesians, reject the notion of general
equilibrium. They believe the economy evolves through non-equilibrium states over time. Heterodox economists believe
governments need to introduce instability-thwarting mechanisms to stabilise the economy, maintain full employment,
and retain social equity.
"Free-market economists may want you to believe that the correct boundaries of the
market can be scientifically determined, but this is incorrect," writes institutional economist, Ha-Joon Chang, in
his book
23 Things They Don't
Tell You About Capitalism
.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/J7m9wfFnH6o
"If the boundaries of what you are studying cannot be scientifically determined, what
you are doing is not a science," writes the Cambridge University economist.
"Recognising that the boundaries of the market are ambiguous and cannot be
determined in an objective way lets us realise that economics is not a science like physics or chemistry, but a
political exercise."
In other words, a strong economy requires constant time, attention, assessment, and
when it is called for, intervention. The rules will not always be the same, nor the causes. But it helps to start
with an understanding
of the role and purpose of
government spending
and
taxation
.
Further Listening
Listen to this interview economic historian Philip Mirowski who delves into the further
nuances of these economic mindsets.
Claire Connelly
Claire Connelly is the lead writer of Renegade Inc. An award-winning freelance journalist, speaker, and
founder of subscription journalism experiment, Hello Humans.
Specialising in economics, technology and policy, Connelly is working on her first book due out in 2018.
With more than a decade of experience under her belt, Claire has written for leading publications
including The Australian Financial Review, The Saturday Paper, ABC, SBS, Crikey, New Matilda, VICE &
others. She is the co-host of The Week In Start-Ups Australia, and features regularly as a commentator on
TV and radio shows including Radio National's Download This Show, ABC's The Drum, Ten's The Project, and
more.
Latest posts by Claire Connelly
(
see
all
)
What were Hayek's contributions to capital theory? Just wondering. I have never
encountered a single person who speaks of "neoliberalism" (a term we ourselves never use to describe what we
believe) who has read a single word of Hayek's economic work. Or who even knows who Ludwig von Mises is.
(Whenever the two economists mentioned are Milton Friedman and F.A. Hayek, I know
I'm dealing with somebody who hasn't read anything.)
Reply
But of course you have read everything and know all, right Tom ? What
specifically is wrong with this account ? If you can't dispute anything within the piece why do you attempt
to dismiss it out of hand by implying without a shred of evidence what someone has or hasn't read ? How
could you possibly know what someone has read or hasn't ?
Reply
What actually is "capital theory", Tom. Why don't you use the term
'neoliberalism?
Why do you think Claire hasn't heard of Mises and why would it be important anyway? Mises and the Austrian
School are part of the problem that the article refers to.
Reply
Sorry. I just don't believe even smart people can manage markets. That's the
nature of markets: they are individual. If you haven't read Von Mises or Hayek, you're missing out on the
thinking of two very smart people. It is hard for me to embrace the idea that – because a market doesn't seem
to function as a person might want it to – persons should be given authority to govern those markets in a way
that suits them. That, in itself, distorts the market.
Reply
I am responding to an article by you in today's The Automatic Earth about the
vengeance of capitalism. I could not get the response area to work so that is why I am coming to you this way.
You write eloquently and I see the creation of increasing suffering due to a form
of capitalism and class privilege in America and globally. I have read and listened to Keen, Hudson and Kelton.
From my review they all approach the ability of a nation that controls their own currency as an ability to
create an unlimited amount of money to use to reduce human suffering with no discussion of the ultimate end
game if we continue to do so.
There is a lot of suffering now and because of climate change, increasing
usurping of jobs by technology and global resource depletion and more a lot more suffering may be coming our
way.
How much money are they (and you) thinking of creating?
What are the implications of creating money at a much more rapid pace than we
have been with no upper limits in sight?
What are the upper limits of money creation? How would we know?
Our present system of capitalism and privilege is like a drug. It feels good at
the start but kills us in the end,
I am fearful that an addiction to the unlimited or substantial and on going use
of money created from thin air will do the same.
What say you?
PS: Please accept with compassion all the typos that are probably in this note.
Reply
You keep forgetting that having the ability to create money also gives you the
ability to destroy that same money. What is collected in tax revenue is destroyed. More money is issued to
create infrastructure. The deficit in a country that can create it's own currency is really just a ratio of
what is collected(destroyed) and what is created(spent).
Now ask yourself what happens when you quit destroying money and keep right on creating it
Reply
The aim of distinguishing neoclassical and neolilberal is of merit. The interview
with Mirowski makes clear, however, that that are numerous strands of neoliberalism that overlap with each
other, with some drawing on neoclassical arguments, and others having a different starting point. But it is not
clear to me that all of them agree on the market fundamentalism, which is generally regarded as the defining
characteristic of neoliberalism. Was Joseph Schumpeter a neoliberal? His ideas about entrepreneurship have
probably done more to make monopoly respectable than the parallel work of von Mises. Schumpeter's thought has
entered the mainstream in the U.S. via Peter Drucker, who thought the modern corporation was the engine of all
forms of human progress. In Germany, Ordo-liberalism was another form of neoliberalism that called for a strong
state. Was this self-contradiction? What I find frustrating in most discussions on the Left of these thinkers
is the inability or unwillingness to recognize the ***partial*** validity of their ideas. On the particular
subject of government interference to protect against monopoly power, it was Gabriel Kolko, a socialist, who
first showed in 1962 that Progressives were responsible for the national monopolies that emerged around 1900.
Even now, progressives fail to comprehend the many ways in which regulation benefits big business and stifles
small business. Designing regulations that do more social and environmental good than harm is much harder than
most progressives seem to recognize. Analyzing the sociology and politics of neoliberal organizations, as
Mirowski does, gets us no closer to finding way to create effective government programs that do not
simultaneously feed the leviathan of an expansive state. I would very much like to know which heterodox
economists are actually addressing the tough problems we face rather than defining the boundaries between
neoclassical thought and their own domain..
Reply
There are a very large number of errors in this piece. Fundamentally, what is
described as "neoclassical economics" is actually just one model, Walras' circa 1870 general equilibrium model.
If one defines neoclassical economics as equivalent to that one model, then there has never been a single
neoclassical economist, as absolutely no one limits attention to that one model.
The body of research most actual economists would describe as "neoclassical
economics" encompasses an enormous body of work which posits that some social phenomena can be understood as
emergent results of individual, intentional behavior. That research includes literally thousands of papers
studying the phenomena the author wrongly believes are simply excluded by assumption, such as unemployment,
unions, minimum wage laws, and imperfect information. There is an entire field, Public Economics, devoted to
the study of "the role and purpose of government spending and taxation."
The idea that government can and should "introduce instability-thwarting
mechanisms to stabilize the economy, maintain full employment, and retain social equity" is also, contrary to
the article's assumptions, very much part of mainstream, neoclassical thought, and has been for almost a
century.
After having implicitly defined mainstream economics as solely the study of a
single 1870 model, the article then also misrepresents heterodox economics. Notably, the Marxian economist
(less than 1% of all economists) such as Chang do not "reject the notion of general equilibrium". Marxian
analysis is explicitly grounded in general equilibrium, both in Marx's work and in modern neo-Marxian form, and
can be expressed in the same analytical framework as the Walrasian model (see for example:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/1911113?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
).
The article is correct that neoliberalism is a strain of political thought, and
not economics at all: they're not even the same type of thing, much the same thing. That's all the article
ought to say -- it gets everything about what economists think, and what neoclassical economics is, really, really
wrong.
Chris Auld
Department of Economics
University of Victoria
Reply
Most though not all mainstream economics is neoclassical economics.
Neoclassical economics is based on marginalism, or optimising behaviour,
expected utility theory, and either implicit or explicit general equilibrium analysis. The economy, in the
absence of frictions, would behave like a stable equilibrium system. In a macroeconomic sense, this is the
basis of all versions of the neoclassical synthesis, including second generation dynamic stochastic general
equilibrium models.
These models all have Walrasian and Wicksellian roots. They all assume
optimising behaviour. They always adopt the ergodic hypothesis and these days adopt rational expectations
formation. Not only that, they have all been constructed in defiance of what we know about the history and
nature of money; they all ignore ontological uncertainty, in the Keynesian sense; they all exclude genuinely
endogenous financial instability and crisis; they are biased towards an essentially technological
explanation of income distribution; they all incorporate a natural or non-accelerating inflation rate of
unemployment; they all exhibit long run money neutrality; they all incorporate an efficient markets approach
to financial markets.
There are of course elements of what some would regard these days as
mainstream economics which don't fit under the neoclassical banner. However, for the most part, mainstream =
neoclassicism.
The greatest divide between neoclassical economics and genuine (i.e. not
'new') institutional economics, is the F-twist of Milton Friedman – the notion that unrealistic axiomatic
foundations in some sense don't matter, and neither does an approach which does not naturally incorporate
realistic institutions.
Of course, economists using a neoclassical frame have things to say about
unemployment, minimum wages, etc. But, as Hyman Minsky put it, "The game of policy making is rigged; the
theory used determines the questions that are asked and the options that are presented. The prince is
constrained by the theory of his intellectuals."
You accuse the author of errors, and I think you are ungenerous – and, more
importantly – incorrect. My advice to you is to read Steve Keen's best-seller 'Debunking Economics'. You
could even read my 'Economics for Sustainable Prosperity'. If you read these two books, you will be much
more aware of the limitations of neoclassical economics, and the rich insights available from the many
economists who have worked, and who are working today, outside the neoclassical frame.
Reply
Perhaps you will find them useful in understanding why it's questionable that
neoclassical economics has anything useful to say about financial stability.
Steve Payson, an US economics practictioner of long standing, will talk about his
book 'How Economics Professors Can Stop Failing us' which provides an eye-opening expose on economics
professors that will surely shock anyone who is not familiar with the topic, and even some of those who are
familiar with it. Ellen Quigley has recently completed her research into economics education in the UK and will
provide a perspective on our local profession.
Our mission is to explain how we reached this moment in history to prevent it from
repeating itself. Again. By considering options not previously considered, readers, creators, entrepreneurs, business
and community leaders can make better, more informed and empowered decisions, so we can all begin to think differently
about our personal and public financial stability.
Mr. Market has finally digested that the world isn't prepared for coronavirus and the US is
particularly poorly set up to cope, thanks to our fragmented public health system and
overpriced, privatized and less than comprehensive health care. That bad situation is made
worse by the CDC being short on resources and hamstrung further by the Trump Administration's
PR imperatives.
At a minimum, the market rout may force the Administration to go into overdrive on real
world responses, but I doubt it has the capacity. For starters, Pence is badly cast as a crisis
manager. But as we'll discuss briefly, the US has such hollowed out capacity on the medical
front that a better response would have needed to start weeks ago to have much hope of blunting
outcomes.
The US' best hope is that hotter weather will slow the infection rate, but that's not coming
soon enough to rescue the Eastern corridor or the West Coast from San Francisco Bay north from
serious propagation till at least mid May (and San Francisco doesn't get all that hot except
when the weather gets freaky).
While the energy sector is now the third smallest in the S&P 500, a change from a
decade ago when the industry made up 11% of the benchmark, tumbling oil prices is yet another
risk for traders to contemplate.
"If WTI falls into the low $30s and stays there, it's going to cause lay-offs in the oil
patch and stresses in the high yield market -- like it did when oil fell dramatically in
2015," said Matt Maley, an equity strategist at Miller Tabak & Co.
Real World Situation Ugly
The US is still in Keystone Kops mode. We don't have remotely enough coronavirus tests being
done. We have no idea when we will have enough test kits ready. No one is even talking about
how to implement a system like the drive by tests in South Korea which is not only efficient
but even more important, greatly reduces risks to patients and doctors versus having to show up
in a waiting room. We have lots of ad hoc measures, like conferences cancelled, businesses
ordering travel bans, some schools halting classes (most
recently Columbia University ).
But too many people are operating on a business as usual basis, including Congress. An
estimated 2/3 of its members attended the AIPAC conference, where two a participants tested
positive for coronavirus (oddly, the press has taken little note). An attendee at CPAC, a large
conference for conservatives, also tested positive for coronavirus, but only
two Congresscritters are self-quaranting .
I myself looked with some amazement at the reorganization of the entire hospital in the
previous week
I still remember my night shift a week ago spent without any rest, waiting for a call from
the microbiology department. I was waiting for the results of a swab taken from the first
suspect case in our hospital
Well, the situation is now nothing short of dramatic The war has literally exploded and
battles are uninterrupted day and night. One after the other, these unfortunate people come
to the emergency room. They have far from the complications of a flu. Let's stop saying it's
a bad flu. In my two years working in Bergamo, I have learned that the people here do not
come to the emergency room for no reason. They did well this time too. They followed all the
recommendations given: a week or ten days at home with a fever without going out to prevent
contagion, but now they can't take it anymore. They don't breathe enough, they need oxygen
.
Now, however, that need for beds in all its drama has arrived. One after another, the
departments that had been emptied are filling up at an impressive rate. The display boards
with the names of the sicks, of different colors depending on the department they belong to,
are now all red and instead of the surgical procedure, there is the diagnosis, which is
always the same: bilateral interstitial pneumonia
I can also assure you that when you see young people who end up intubated in the ICU,
pronated or worse, in ECMO (a machine for the worst cases, which extracts the blood,
re-oxygenates it and returns it to the body, waiting for the lungs to hopefully heal), all
this confidence for your young age goes away And there are no more surgeons, urologists,
orthopedists, we are only doctors who suddenly become part of a single team to face this
tsunami that has overwhelmed us.
The cases multiply, up to a rate of 15-20 hospitalizations a day all for the same reason.
The results of the swabs now come one after the other: positive, positive, positive. Suddenly
the emergency room is collapsing. Emergency provisions are issued: help is needed in the
emergency room. A quick meeting to learn how the to use to emergency room EHR and a few
minutes later I'm already downstairs, next to the warriors on the war front. The screen of
the PC with the chief complaint is always the same: fever and respiratory difficulty, fever
and cough, respiratory insufficiency etc Exams, radiology always with the same sentence:
bilateral interstitial pneumonia. All needs to be hospitalized. Some already needs to be
intubated, and goes to the ICU. For others, however, it is late. ICU is full, and when ICUs
are full, more are created. Each ventilator is like gold: those in the operating rooms that
have now suspended their non-urgent activity are used and the OR become a an ICU that did not
exist before. I found it amazing, or at least I can speak for Humanitas Gavazzeni (where I
work), how it was possible to put in place in such a short time a deployment and a
reorganization of resources so finely designed to prepare for a disaster of this magnitude
.Nurses with tears in their eyes because we are unable to save everyone and the vital signs
of several patients at the same time reveal an already marked destiny. There are no more
shifts, schedules.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard has another fine piece on the coronavirus outbreak. He flags that
the UK is very poorly situated to handle it, with only 1/6 the ICU beds per capita of South
Korea. As an aside, the US has 10x as many per capital as the UK but read the Bergamo piece
again. The entire hospital has been turned into a coronavirus ward. Lord only knows what
happens to accident victims .are some hospitals in each region being set aside for regular
emergency care?
Data from China suggest a death rate of 15pc for infected cases over the age of 80. It is
8pc for those in their seventies, and 3.6pc in their sixties (or 5.4pc for men). No elected
government in any Western democracy will survive if it lets such carnage unfold .
Unfortunately, the early figures from Italy seem to be tracking Hubei's epidemiology with
a horrible consistency. The death rate for all ages is near 5pc. While there may be large
numbers of undetected infections – distorting ratios – Italy has tested widely,
much more than Germany or France.
For whatever reason, the Italian system seems unable to save them. The death rate is six
times the reported rate in Korea, even adjusting for age structures. Is it because the
Italian strain has mutated into a more lethal form (we don't yet have the sequence data) or
because Europeans are genetically more vulnerable?
Is it because Italy's nitrogen dioxide pollution is the worst in Europe (the UK is bad
too), leading to chronic lung inflammation? Is it the chaotic administration that led to a
catalogue of errors in the hotspot of Codogno? If you think Britain's NHS has been starved of
funds, spare a thought for Italy, Portugal, Spain, or Greece .
The US is about to face its grim reckoning. It has the best health care in the rich world
– and the worst. Pandemics exploit the worst.
Let's tease out AEP's line of thought. The US is sorely wanting in operational capacity
despite being able to provide top flight care for certain types of ailments.
US hospitals are now overwhelmingly run by MBAs. It's difficult to conceive of them being
able to execute the sort of rapid reordering of space and duties described in Bergamo. It's not
simply that the top brass is too removed from the practice of medicine to have the right
reflexes. Unless ordered to do so, they will also be loath to devote enough resources to
tackling the disease. When a crisis hits, they won't be allowed to charge (in their minds) for
coronavirus services. They'll want to preserve as much hospital capacity for "normal" full
ticket services as possible. They might rationalize that by arguing that they don't want to
risk more of their staff's health than necessary.
But even worse, remember that most hospitals no longer control much their staffing. They've
outsourced specialist practices like emergency room doctors .and those have been bought up by
private equity. If you think private equity won't exploit this crisis for their gain, I have a
bridge I'd like to sell you.
One possible silver lining to this probable tragedy is if the US medical system performs as
badly as it appears likely to is that it might finally end the delusion that there's a lot
(aside from individual doctors and nurses) in the current system worth saving. The broad public
needs to make sure that their crisis does not go to waste.
The response is reasonably good considering the size of the bureaucracy they have to move.
... Let us hope both sides put aside the nonsense for a while and get it together.
Unfortunately they don't have a bureaucracy. Since neo-liberal economics and the fifty
plus year assault on the government sector, they have a partisan employment service instead.
Little skill or intelligence, a century of wisdom erased, no capacity to act and totally
ossified in manoeuvrability.
To trust in any meaningful bureaucracy to motivate, let alone move, you would have to look
for a state that values human rights, trusts its citizens and scientists and administrators
and refrains from denigrating public medicine and health services.
Good luck finding that effective and resourced public medicine in the USA right now.
Everyone here talking badly about our national health system while we have one of the
healthiest and oldest population in the world. Nothing it's collapsing here and we are doing
our best, something that I'm not sure can be said about other Nations.
We have many positives because here, in Italy, we test a lot of people and for free. How much
does it cost to be tested in US? Are you sure that a very expensive health care system, like
the one in US, can handle this virus better than our free for all health care system?
In a couple of months you'll get the answer, don't worry.
Good luck to everyone from Italy.
Andrea
"Should big corporations get another bailout then ."
Of course corporations will be made whole again just like in 2008. Yet they will continue
spouting that Medicare for All is an evil socialist program - the very thing that would allow
all people to get taken care of and at least helping contain the spread. The Democrat
leadership in the House is now looking at a $350 billion corporate bailout ( how will they
pay for it) - yet are viciously against Medicare for All and Bernie. A new Yale Study shows
Medicare for All will prevent 68,000 unnecessary deaths and will save $450 billion - each and
every year. And of course Trump also would like to cut health programs and social security.
Trump and Pelosi are both on the same donor team - it is like professional wrestling working
for the wealthiest against the workers.
I am seeing how irresponsible people at certain blogs where they have themselves as
oustanding intelligent people, probably only thinking in ther shares´ value, are
spreading disinfo in the same sense of that twitted by Trump.
Laissez faire will not work. In certain European countries private hospitals are already
deriving their Covid-19 cases to the public system ( of course the government should act asap
on this taking extraordinary measures to force them absorbe their clients or even requsition
their beds for a public health emergency as it is this one ). This only will accelerate the
rate of lack of ICU beds and respirators.
There are already Twitter threads by health personel as the one linked by b, estimating
the exponential grow will easily come of this epidemics.
A Spanish doctor in Madrid was already saying that the time will come where triage will be
needed to prioritice who accedes to the respirators/ICU beds once the health system
overwhelmed...I only hope those irresponsibly denying this is a global pandemic emergency and
spreading disinfo through their media to be the first discarded by triage, as they are only
making things worse, along with guarantor of their tax cut Trump. I bet them there will be a
respirator for Trump, but for them, that is in the air.
In Madrid, after the huge demonstrations of Women´s Day yesterday, new cases have
jumped to the rate of Italy. Today all schools and universities closed in the same city.
Heads shoukd be already rolling.
Then, we are not counting on the possibility that thing here will not go so orderly than
in China. In Italy, to the public health crisis, they add a probably public order one, with
several revolts in jails because of restriction of visits...
Just some hours ago some dozens of inmates of a prison in Foggia were running free in the
streets taking advantage to commit crimes as they go out robbing cars and menacing commercial
activity...
Probably as a result, already the whole Italy closed, there is no more red zones,
prohibited to move throughout the peninsula. 60 million people.
For those irresponsibly claiming from the same blogs that this will cease with the good
weather, people are reporting from Argentina where today there was around a hot summer day,
that there are increasing cases there.
Harvarad University and the WHO have already discarded this epidemics will behave like the
estational flu..
In the hospitality industry in Australia, paid sick leave is available to full-time and
part-time employees. The man employed at the Grand Chancellor Hotel in Hobart (in Tasmania)
was likely employed as a casual. He is known to be a student in his 20s and is currently in
isolation at hospital.
"... Don't come to work sick. You will spread your gross germs around, make everyone else
sick (including customers!) and you'll be pretty useless anyway. Australians recognise that
it's in all our best interests if you STAY THE HECK HOME while you're unwell, and that's
why you've got the option of paid sick leave if you're employed on a full time or part time
basis.
If you're employed on a casual basis, you're entitled to unpaid sick leave. You are
supposed to subsist during your illness on all the lavish savings you've accrued from your
extra four-bucks-fifty-five-an-hour in casual loading. This is clearly problematic, and a
lot of young casuals are forced to attend work sick out of economic necessity ..."
It is likely that many if not most COVID-19 cases in several countries so far have also
been spread by people working in health, hospitality and other related service industries
where most workers are on casual or temporary contracts with either unpaid sick leave or no
sick leave.
"The number of tests is large because the nation has a large number of people suspected to
have caught coronavirus. However, the government is declaring a victory by turning it the
other way around," Hong said on his Facebook.
All the evidence indicates South Korea is just following the capitalist modus operandi of
chasing the rabbit: it is only testing the people who are already showing symptoms. There's
no evidence those containers with fast food tests are working on a significant scale: there
are a lot of factors that make a random individual in South Korea to stop in one of them to
get itself tested; just making them freely available is not enough. Besides, just because an
individual who stopped by the container tested negative, it doesn't mean it won't get
infected after, as it will go back to its daily routine (because capitalism can't stop, it
needs to keep its wheel spinning).
I don't trust the capitalist numbers around the world for one simple fact: they don't have
the means to test everybody and to stop their own economies in order to preserve the
non-infected from being infected in the near future. An illustrative example of this can be
observed in the Czech Republic, which went from just five cases on March 3rd (three on March
1st) to 40 on March 10th - one of the new infected having just arrived from Italy. Those
numbers indicate Czech Republic did absolutely nothing to stop the epidemic, and that they
probably have much more than those 40 - they just haven't tested enough.
"the US is particularly poorly set up to cope, thanks to our fragmented public health
system and overpriced, privatized and less than comprehensive health care. That bad situation
is made worse by the CDC being short on resources and hamstrung further by the Trump
Administration's PR imperatives."
Basically, it is expected that Europe manages the crisis less badly.
It has been interesting watching Dr. John Campbell's growing realisation & some shock
that everything is not well with the US healthcare system & he has received some abuse
but also support from Americans for his growing criticism.
His listing as requested of his 2 degrees & Phd, never mind his long front line
experience & his books I think shut some up for perhaps thinking that he was only a
nurse, but perhaps he shouda gone to NakedCapitalism.
Neoliberalism destroys solidarity; as the result it destroys both the society and individuals
Notable quotes:
"... Thirty years of neoliberalism, free-market forces and privatisation have taken their toll, as relentless pressure to achieve has become normative. If you're reading this sceptically, I put this simple statement to you: meritocratic neoliberalism favours certain personality traits and penalises others. ..."
"... On top of all this, you are flexible and impulsive, always on the lookout for new stimuli and challenges. In practice, this leads to risky behaviour, but never mind, it won't be you who has to pick up the pieces. The source of inspiration for this list? The psychopathy checklist by Robert Hare , the best-known specialist on psychopathy today. ..."
"... the financial crisis illustrated at a macro-social level (for example, in the conflicts between eurozone countries) what a neoliberal meritocracy does to people. Solidarity becomes an expensive luxury and makes way for temporary alliances, the main preoccupation always being to extract more profit from the situation than your competition. Social ties with colleagues weaken, as does emotional commitment to the enterprise or organisation. ..."
"... Bullying used to be confined to schools; now it is a common feature of the workplace. This is a typical symptom of the impotent venting their frustration on the weak – in psychology it's known as displaced aggression. There is a buried sense of fear, ranging from performance anxiety to a broader social fear of the threatening other. ..."
"... Constant evaluations at work cause a decline in autonomy and a growing dependence on external, often shifting, norms ..."
"... More important, though, is the serious damage to people's self-respect. Self-respect largely depends on the recognition that we receive from the other, as thinkers from Hegel to Lacan have shown. Sennett comes to a similar conclusion when he sees the main question for employees these days as being "Who needs me?" For a growing group of people, the answer is: no one. ..."
"... A neoliberal meritocracy would have us believe that success depends on individual effort and talents, meaning responsibility lies entirely with the individual and authorities should give people as much freedom as possible to achieve this goal. ..."
"... the paradox of our era as: "Never have we been so free. Never have we felt so powerless." ..."
An economic system that rewards psychopathic personality traits has changed our ethics and our personalities
'We are forever told that we are freer to choose the course of our lives than ever before, but the freedom to choose
outside the success narrative is limited.'
We tend to perceive our identities as stable and largely separate from outside forces. But over decades of research and therapeutic
practice, I have become convinced that economic change is having a profound effect not only on our values but also on our personalities.
Thirty years of neoliberalism, free-market forces and privatisation have taken their toll, as relentless pressure to achieve has
become normative. If you're reading this sceptically, I put this simple statement to you: meritocratic neoliberalism favours certain
personality traits and penalises others.
There are certain ideal characteristics needed to make a career today. The first is articulateness, the aim being to win over
as many people as possible. Contact can be superficial, but since this applies to most human interaction nowadays, this won't really
be noticed.
It's important to be able to talk up your own capacities as much as you can – you know a lot of people, you've got plenty of experience
under your belt and you recently completed a major project. Later, people will find out that this was mostly hot air, but the fact
that they were initially fooled is down to another personality trait: you can lie convincingly and feel little guilt. That's why
you never take responsibility for your own behaviour.
On top of all this, you are flexible and impulsive, always on the lookout for new stimuli and challenges. In practice, this leads
to risky behaviour, but never mind, it won't be you who has to pick up the pieces. The source of inspiration for this list? The psychopathy
checklist by Robert Hare , the best-known specialist on psychopathy today.
This description is, of course, a caricature taken to extremes. Nevertheless, the financial crisis illustrated at a macro-social
level (for example, in the conflicts between eurozone countries) what a neoliberal meritocracy does to people. Solidarity becomes
an expensive luxury and makes way for temporary alliances, the main preoccupation always being to extract more profit from the situation
than your competition. Social ties with colleagues weaken, as does emotional commitment to the enterprise or organisation.
Bullying used to be confined to schools; now it is a common feature of the workplace. This is a typical symptom of the impotent
venting their frustration on the weak – in psychology it's known as displaced aggression. There is a buried sense of fear, ranging
from performance anxiety to a broader social fear of the threatening other.
Constant evaluations at work cause a decline in autonomy and a growing dependence on external, often shifting, norms.
This results in what the sociologist
Richard Sennett has aptly described
as the "infantilisation of the workers". Adults display childish outbursts of temper and are jealous about trivialities ("She got
a new office chair and I didn't"), tell white lies, resort to deceit, delight in the downfall of others and cherish petty feelings
of revenge. This is the consequence of a system that prevents people from thinking independently and that fails to treat employees
as adults.
More important, though, is the serious damage to people's self-respect. Self-respect largely depends on the recognition that we
receive from the other, as thinkers from Hegel
to Lacan have shown. Sennett comes to a similar conclusion
when he sees the main question for employees these days as being "Who needs me?" For a growing group of people, the answer is: no
one.
Our society constantly proclaims that anyone can make it if they just try hard enough, all the while reinforcing privilege and
putting increasing pressure on its overstretched and exhausted citizens. An increasing number of people fail, feeling humiliated,
guilty and ashamed. We are forever told that we are freer to choose the course of our lives than ever before, but the freedom to
choose outside the success narrative is limited. Furthermore, those who fail are deemed to be losers or scroungers, taking advantage
of our social security system.
A neoliberal meritocracy would have us believe that success depends on individual effort and talents, meaning responsibility lies
entirely with the individual and authorities should give people as much freedom as possible to achieve this goal. For those who believe
in the fairytale of unrestricted choice, self-government and self-management are the pre-eminent political messages, especially if
they appear to promise freedom. Along with the idea of the perfectible individual, the freedom we perceive ourselves as having in
the west is the greatest untruth of this day and age.
The sociologist Zygmunt Bauman neatly summarised the
paradox of our era as: "Never have we been so free. Never have we felt so powerless." We are indeed freer than before, in the sense
that we can criticise religion, take advantage of the new laissez-faire attitude to sex and support any political movement we like.
We can do all these things because they no longer have any significance – freedom of this kind is prompted by indifference. Yet,
on the other hand, our daily lives have become a constant battle against a bureaucracy that would make Kafka weak at the knees. There
are regulations about everything, from the salt content of bread to urban poultry-keeping.
Our presumed freedom is tied to one central condition: we must be successful – that is, "make" something of ourselves. You don't
need to look far for examples. A highly skilled individual who puts parenting before their career comes in for criticism. A person
with a good job who turns down a promotion to invest more time in other things is seen as crazy – unless those other things ensure
success. A young woman who wants to become a primary school teacher is told by her parents that she should start off by getting a
master's degree in economics – a primary school teacher, whatever can she be thinking of?
There are constant laments about the so-called loss of norms and values in our culture. Yet our norms and values make up an integral
and essential part of our identity. So they cannot be lost, only changed. And that is precisely what has happened: a changed economy
reflects changed ethics and brings about changed identity. The current economic system is bringing out the worst in us.
Under neoliberalism inequality is recast as virtuous. The market ensures that everyone gets what they deserve: Neoliberalism sees competition as the defining characteristic of
human relations and redefines citizens as consumers
Notable quotes:
"... Imagine if the people of the Soviet Union had never heard of communism. The ideology that dominates our lives has, for most of us, no name. Mention it in conversation and you'll be rewarded with a shrug. Even if your listeners have heard the term before, they will struggle to define it. Neoliberalism: do you know what it is? ..."
"... Its anonymity is both a symptom and cause of its power. 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 . ..."
"... Inequality is recast as virtuous. The market ensures that everyone gets what they deserve. ..."
"... 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. ..."
"... Never mind structural unemployment: if you don't have a job it's because you are unenterprising. Never mind the impossible costs of housing: if your credit card is maxed out, you're feckless and improvident. Never mind that your children no longer have a school playing field: if they get fat, it's your fault. In a world governed by competition, those who fall behind become defined and self-defined as losers. ..."
"... Among the results, as Paul Verhaeghe documents in his book What About Me? are epidemics of self-harm, eating disorders, depression, loneliness, performance anxiety and social phobia. ..."
"... It may seem strange that a doctrine promising choice should have been promoted with the slogan 'there is no alternative' ..."
"... Where neoliberal policies cannot be imposed domestically, they are imposed internationally, through trade treaties incorporating " investor-state dispute settlement ": offshore tribunals in which corporations can press for the removal of social and environmental protections. When parliaments have voted to restrict sales of cigarettes , protect water supplies from mining companies, freeze energy bills or prevent pharmaceutical firms from ripping off the state, corporations have sued, often successfully. Democracy is reduced to theatre. ..."
"... Neoliberalism was not conceived as a self-serving racket, but it rapidly became one ..."
"... Another paradox of neoliberalism is that universal competition relies upon universal quantification and comparison. The result is that workers, job-seekers and public services of every kind are subject to a pettifogging, stifling regime of assessment and monitoring, designed to identify the winners and punish the losers. The doctrine that Von Mises proposed would free us from the bureaucratic nightmare of central planning has instead created one. ..."
"... When you pay an inflated price for a train ticket, only part of the fare compensates the operators for the money they spend on fuel, wages, rolling stock and other outlays. The rest reflects the fact that they have you over a barrel . ..."
"... Those who own and run the UK's privatised or semi-privatised services make stupendous fortunes by investing little and charging much. In Russia and India, oligarchs acquired state assets through firesales. In Mexico, Carlos Slim was granted control of almost all landline and mobile phone services and soon became the world's richest man. ..."
"... Financialisation, as Andrew Sayer notes in Why We Can't Afford the Rich , has had a similar impact. "Like rent," he argues, "interest is ... unearned income that accrues without any effort". ..."
"... Chris Hedges remarks that "fascist movements build their base not from the politically active but the politically inactive, the 'losers' who feel, often correctly, they have no voice or role to play in the political establishment". When political debate no longer speaks to us, people become responsive instead to slogans, symbols and sensation . To the admirers of Trump, for example, facts and arguments appear irrelevant. ..."
"... Like communism, neoliberalism is the God that failed. But the zombie doctrine staggers on, and one of the reasons is its anonymity. Or rather, a cluster of anonymities. ..."
"... The invisible doctrine of the invisible hand is promoted by invisible backers. Slowly, very slowly, we have begun to discover the names of a few of them. We find that the Institute of Economic Affairs, which has argued forcefully in the media against the further regulation of the tobacco industry, has been secretly funded by British American Tobacco since 1963. We discover that Charles and David Koch , two of the richest men in the world, founded the institute that set up the Tea Party movement . We find that Charles Koch, in establishing one of his thinktanks, noted that "in order to avoid undesirable criticism, how the organisation is controlled and directed should not be widely advertised". ..."
"... The anonymity of neoliberalism is fiercely guarded. ..."
"... Neoliberalism's triumph also reflects the failure of the left. When laissez-faire economics led to catastrophe in 1929, Keynes devised a comprehensive economic theory to replace it. When Keynesian demand management hit the buffers in the 70s, there was an alternative ready. But when neoliberalism fell apart in 2008 there was ... nothing. This is why the zombie walks. The left and centre have produced no new general framework of economic thought for 80 years. ..."
"... What the history of both Keynesianism and neoliberalism show is that it's not enough to oppose a broken system. A coherent alternative has to be proposed. For Labour, the Democrats and the wider left, the central task should be to develop an economic Apollo programme, a conscious attempt to design a new system, tailored to the demands of the 21st century. ..."
Financial meltdown, environmental disaster and even the rise of Donald Trump –
neoliberalism has played its part in them all. Why has the left failed to come up with an
alternative? @GeorgeMonbiot
Imagine if the people of the Soviet Union had never heard of communism. The ideology
that dominates our lives has, for most of us, no name. Mention it in conversation and you'll be
rewarded with a shrug. Even if your listeners have heard the term before, they will struggle to
define it. Neoliberalism: do you know what it is?
Its anonymity is both a symptom and cause of its power. 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?
Inequality is recast as virtuous. The market ensures that
everyone gets what they deserve.
So pervasive has neoliberalism become that we seldom even
recognise it as an ideology. We appear to accept the proposition that this utopian, millenarian
faith describes a neutral force; a kind of biological law, like Darwin's theory of evolution.
But the philosophy arose as a conscious attempt to reshape human life and shift the locus of
power.
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.
Attempts to limit competition are treated as inimical to liberty.
Tax and regulation should be minimised, public services should be privatised. The organisation
of labour and collective bargaining by trade unions are portrayed as market
distortions that impede the formation of a natural hierarchy of winners and losers. Inequality
is recast as virtuous: a reward for utility and a generator of wealth, which trickles down to
enrich everyone. Efforts to create a more equal society are both counterproductive and morally
corrosive. The market ensures that everyone gets what they deserve.
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.
Never mind structural unemployment: if you don't have a job it's
because you are unenterprising. Never mind the impossible costs of housing: if your credit card
is maxed out, you're feckless and improvident. Never mind that your children no longer have a
school playing field: if they get fat, it's your fault. In a world governed by competition,
those who fall behind become defined and self-defined as losers.
Among the results, as Paul Verhaeghe documents in his book What
About Me? are epidemics of self-harm, eating disorders, depression, loneliness, performance
anxiety and social phobia. Perhaps it's unsurprising that Britain, in which neoliberal ideology
has been most rigorously applied, is
the loneliness capital of Europe . We are all neoliberals now.
***
The term neoliberalism was coined at a meeting in Paris in 1938.
Among the delegates were two men who came to define the ideology, Ludwig von Mises and
Friedrich Hayek. Both exiles from Austria, they saw social democracy, exemplified by Franklin
Roosevelt's New Deal and the gradual development of Britain's welfare state, as manifestations
of a collectivism that occupied the same spectrum as nazism and communism.
In The Road to Serfdom , published in 1944, Hayek argued
that government planning, by crushing individualism, would lead inexorably to totalitarian
control. Like Mises's book Bureaucracy , The Road to Serfdom was widely read. It
came to the attention of some very wealthy people, who saw in the philosophy an opportunity to
free themselves from regulation and tax. When, in 1947, Hayek founded the first organisation
that would spread the doctrine of neoliberalism – the Mont Pelerin Society – it was supported financially by
millionaires and their foundations.
As it evolved, neoliberalism became more strident. Hayek's view
that governments should regulate competition to prevent monopolies from forming gave way
– among American apostles such as Milton Friedman
– to the belief that monopoly power could be seen as a reward for efficiency.
Something else happened during this transition: the movement lost
its name. In 1951, Friedman was happy to describe
himself as a neoliberal . But soon after that, the term began to disappear. Stranger still,
even as the ideology became crisper and the movement more coherent, the lost name was not
replaced by any common alternative.
At first, despite its lavish funding, neoliberalism remained at
the margins. The postwar consensus was almost universal: John Maynard Keynes 's economic
prescriptions were widely applied, full employment and the relief of poverty were common goals
in the US and much of western Europe, top rates of tax were high and governments sought social
outcomes without embarrassment, developing new public services and safety nets.
But in the 1970s, when Keynesian policies began to fall apart and
economic crises struck on both sides of the Atlantic, neoliberal ideas began to enter the
mainstream. As Friedman remarked, "when the time came that you had to change ... there was an
alternative ready there to be picked up". With the help of sympathetic journalists and
political advisers, elements of neoliberalism, especially its prescriptions for monetary
policy, were adopted by Jimmy Carter's administration in the US and Jim Callaghan's government
in Britain.
It may seem strange that a doctrine promising choice should have
been promoted with the slogan 'there is no alternative'
After Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan took power, the rest of
the package soon followed: massive tax cuts for the rich, the crushing of trade unions,
deregulation, privatisation, outsourcing and competition in public services. Through the IMF,
the World Bank, the Maastricht treaty and the World Trade Organisation, neoliberal policies
were imposed – often without democratic consent – on much of the world. Most
remarkable was its adoption among parties that once belonged to the left: Labour and the
Democrats, for example. As Stedman Jones notes, "it is hard to think of another utopia to have
been as fully realised."
***
It may seem strange that a doctrine promising choice and freedom
should have been promoted with the slogan "there is no alternative". But, as Hayek remarked on a
visit to Pinochet's Chile – one of the first nations in which the programme was
comprehensively applied – "my personal preference leans toward a liberal dictatorship
rather than toward a democratic government devoid of liberalism". The freedom that
neoliberalism offers, which sounds so beguiling when expressed in general terms, turns out to
mean freedom for the pike, not for the minnows.
Freedom from trade unions and collective bargaining means the
freedom to suppress wages. Freedom from regulation means the
freedom to poison rivers , endanger workers, charge iniquitous rates of interest and design
exotic financial instruments. Freedom from tax means freedom from the distribution of wealth
that lifts people out of poverty.
Facebook
Twitter Pinterest Naomi Klein documented that neoliberals advocated the use of crises to
impose unpopular policies while people were distracted. Photograph: Anya Chibis/The
Guardian
As Naomi Klein documents in The Shock Doctrine ,
neoliberal theorists advocated the use of crises to impose unpopular policies while people were
distracted: for example, in the aftermath of Pinochet's coup, the Iraq war and Hurricane
Katrina, which Friedman described as "an opportunity to radically reform the educational
system" in New Orleans
.
Where neoliberal policies cannot be imposed domestically, they are
imposed internationally, through trade treaties incorporating "
investor-state dispute settlement ": offshore tribunals in which corporations can press for
the removal of social and environmental protections. When parliaments have voted to restrict
sales of cigarettes ,
protect water supplies from mining companies, freeze energy bills or prevent pharmaceutical
firms from ripping off the state, corporations have sued, often successfully. Democracy is
reduced to theatre.
Neoliberalism was not conceived as a self-serving racket, but it
rapidly became one
Another paradox of neoliberalism is that universal competition
relies upon universal quantification and comparison. The result is that workers, job-seekers
and public services of every kind are subject to a pettifogging, stifling regime of assessment
and monitoring, designed to identify the winners and punish the losers. The doctrine that Von
Mises proposed would free us from the bureaucratic nightmare of central planning has instead
created one.
Neoliberalism was not conceived as a self-serving racket, but it
rapidly became one. Economic growth has been markedly slower in the neoliberal era (since 1980
in Britain and the US) than it was in the preceding decades; but not for the very rich.
Inequality in the distribution of both income and wealth, after 60 years of decline, rose
rapidly in this era, due to the smashing of trade unions, tax reductions, rising rents,
privatisation and deregulation.
The privatisation or marketisation of public services such as
energy, water, trains, health, education, roads and prisons has enabled corporations to set up
tollbooths in front of essential assets and charge rent, either to citizens or to government,
for their use. Rent is another term for unearned income. When you pay an inflated price for a
train ticket, only part of the fare compensates the operators for the money they spend on fuel,
wages, rolling stock and other outlays. The rest reflects the fact that
they have you over a barrel .
In Mexico, Carlos Slim was granted control of almost all phone services
and soon became the world's richest man. Photograph: Henry Romero/Reuters
Those who own and run the UK's privatised or semi-privatised
services make stupendous fortunes by investing little and charging much. In Russia and India,
oligarchs acquired state assets through firesales. In Mexico,
Carlos Slim was granted control of almost all landline and mobile phone services and soon
became the world's richest man.
Financialisation, as Andrew Sayer notes in Why We Can't Afford the
Rich , has had a similar impact. "Like rent," he argues, "interest is ... unearned
income that accrues without any effort". As the poor become poorer and the rich become richer,
the rich acquire increasing control over another crucial asset: money. Interest payments,
overwhelmingly, are a transfer of money from the poor to the rich. As property prices and the
withdrawal of state funding load people with debt (think of the switch from student grants to
student loans), the banks and their executives clean up.
Sayer argues that the past four decades have been characterised by
a transfer of wealth not only from the poor to the rich, but within the ranks of the wealthy:
from those who make their money by producing new goods or services to those who make their
money by controlling existing assets and harvesting rent, interest or capital gains. Earned
income has been supplanted by unearned income.
Neoliberal policies are everywhere beset by market failures. Not
only are the banks too big to fail, but so are the corporations now charged with delivering
public services. As Tony Judt pointed out in Ill Fares the
Land , Hayek forgot that vital national services cannot be allowed to collapse, which
means that competition cannot run its course. Business takes the profits, the state keeps the
risk.
The greater the failure, the more extreme the ideology becomes.
Governments use neoliberal crises as both excuse and opportunity to cut taxes, privatise
remaining public services, rip holes in the social safety net, deregulate corporations and
re-regulate citizens. The self-hating state now sinks its teeth into every organ of the public
sector.
Perhaps the most dangerous impact of neoliberalism is not the
economic crises it has caused, but the political crisis. As the domain of the state is reduced,
our ability to change the course of our lives through voting also contracts. Instead,
neoliberal theory asserts, people can exercise choice through spending. But some have more to
spend than others: in the great consumer or shareholder democracy, votes are not equally
distributed. The result is a disempowerment of the poor and middle. As parties of the right and
former left adopt
similar neoliberal policies, disempowerment turns to disenfranchisement. Large numbers of
people have been shed from politics.
Chris Hedges
remarks that "fascist movements build their base not from the politically active but the
politically inactive, the 'losers' who feel, often correctly, they have no voice or role to
play in the political establishment". When political debate no longer speaks to us, people
become responsive instead
to slogans, symbols and sensation . To the admirers of Trump, for example, facts and
arguments appear irrelevant.
Judt explained that when the thick mesh of interactions between
people and the state has been reduced to nothing but authority and obedience, the only
remaining force that binds us is state power. The totalitarianism Hayek feared is more likely
to emerge when governments, having lost the moral authority that arises from the delivery of
public services, are reduced to "cajoling, threatening and ultimately coercing people to obey
them".
***
Like communism, neoliberalism is the God that failed. But the
zombie doctrine staggers on, and one of the reasons is its anonymity. Or rather, a cluster of
anonymities.
The invisible doctrine of the invisible hand is promoted by
invisible backers. Slowly, very slowly, we have begun to discover the names of a few of them.
We find that the Institute of Economic Affairs, which has argued forcefully in the media
against the further regulation of the tobacco industry,
has been secretly funded by British American Tobacco since 1963. We discover that
Charles and David
Koch , two of the richest men in the world, founded the institute that set up the
Tea
Party movement . We find that Charles Koch, in establishing one of his thinktanks,
noted that "in order
to avoid undesirable criticism, how the organisation is controlled and directed should not be
widely advertised".
The nouveau riche were once disparaged by those who had
inherited their money. Today, the relationship has been reversed
The words used by neoliberalism often conceal more than they
elucidate. "The market" sounds like a natural system that might bear upon us equally, like
gravity or atmospheric pressure. But it is fraught with power relations. What "the market
wants" tends to mean what corporations and their bosses want. "Investment", as Sayer notes,
means two quite different things. One is the funding of productive and socially useful
activities, the other is the purchase of existing assets to milk them for rent, interest,
dividends and capital gains. Using the same word for different activities "camouflages the
sources of wealth", leading us to confuse wealth extraction with wealth creation.
A century ago, the nouveau riche were disparaged by those who had
inherited their money. Entrepreneurs sought social acceptance by passing themselves off as
rentiers. Today, the relationship has been reversed: the rentiers and inheritors style
themselves entre preneurs. They claim to have earned their unearned income.
These anonymities and confusions mesh with the namelessness and
placelessness of modern capitalism: the franchise model which ensures that workers do not know for
whom they toil ; the companies registered through a network of offshore secrecy regimes so
complex that even the
police cannot discover the beneficial owners ; the tax arrangements that bamboozle
governments; the financial products no one understands.
The anonymity of neoliberalism is fiercely guarded. Those who are
influenced by Hayek, Mises and Friedman tend to reject the term, maintaining – with some
justice – that it is used today only pejoratively . But they
offer us no substitute. Some describe themselves as classical liberals or libertarians, but
these descriptions are both misleading and curiously self-effacing, as they suggest that there
is nothing novel about The Road to Serfdom , Bureaucracy or Friedman's classic
work, Capitalism and Freedom .
***
For all that, there is something admirable about the neoliberal
project, at least in its early stages. It was a distinctive, innovative philosophy promoted by
a coherent network of thinkers and activists with a clear plan of action. It was patient and
persistent. The Road to Serfdom became the path to power.
Neoliberalism, Locke and the Green party |
Letters Read more
Neoliberalism's triumph also reflects the failure of the left.
When laissez-faire economics led to catastrophe in 1929, Keynes devised a comprehensive
economic theory to replace it. When Keynesian demand management hit the buffers in the 70s,
there was an alternative ready. But when neoliberalism fell apart in 2008 there was ...
nothing. This is why the zombie walks. The left and centre have produced no new general
framework of economic thought for 80 years.
Every invocation of Lord Keynes is an admission of failure. To
propose Keynesian solutions to the crises of the 21st century is to ignore three obvious
problems. It is hard to mobilise people around old ideas; the flaws exposed in the 70s have not
gone away; and, most importantly, they have nothing to say about our gravest predicament: the
environmental crisis. Keynesianism works by stimulating consumer demand to promote economic
growth. Consumer demand and economic growth are the motors of environmental
destruction.
What the history of both Keynesianism and neoliberalism show is
that it's not enough to oppose a broken system. A coherent alternative has to be proposed. For
Labour, the Democrats and the wider left, the central task should be to develop an economic
Apollo programme, a conscious attempt to design a new system, tailored to the demands of the
21st century.
George Monbiot's How Did We Get into This Mess? is
published this month by Verso. To order a copy for £12.99 (RRP £16.99) ) go to
bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online
orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99.
"... Corporate capitalism is supranational . It owes no loyalty to any nation-state. It uses the projection of military power by the United States to protect and advance its economic interests but at the same time cannibalizes the U.S., dismantling its democratic institutions, allowing its infrastructure to decay and deindustrializing its factory centers to ship manufacturing abroad to regions where workers are treated as serfs. ..."
"... Resistance to this global cabal of corporate oligarchs must also be supranational. It must build alliances with workers around the globe. It must defy the liberal institutions, including the Democratic Party, which betray workers. It is this betrayal that has given rise to fascist and protofascist movements in Europe and other countries ..."
"... Capitalism, at its core, is about the commodification of human beings and the natural world for exploitation and profit. To increase profit, it constantly seeks to reduce the cost of labor and demolish the regulations and laws that protect the common good. But as capitalism ravages the social fabric, it damages, like any parasite, the host that allows it to exist. It unleashes dark, uncontrollable yearnings among an enraged population that threaten capitalism itself. ..."
"... "We live in a global economy, highly interconnected," North went on. "A globalized process of production, financial system. The ruling class has an international policy. They organize themselves on an international scale. The labor movement has remained organized on a national basis. It has been completely incapable of answering this [ruling-class policy]. Therefore, it falls behind various national protectionist programs. The trade unions support Trump." ..."
"... "How many times can you turn on a mainstream news like CNN and expect to hear the word 'capitalism' discussed? Bernie [Sanders] did one thing. He called himself a democratic socialist , which was a bit transformational simply in terms of rhetoric. He's saying there's something other than capitalism that we ought to be talking about." ..."
"... When feminism was turned into that kind of leaning in, it created an identity politics that legitimizes the very system that needs to be critiqued. The early feminists were overtly socialists. As was [Martin Luther] King. But all that got erased." ..."
"... "The left became a kind of grab bag of discrete, siloed identity movements," Derber said. "This is very connected to moral purity. You're concerned about your advancement within the existing system. You're competing against others within the existing system. Everyone else has privilege. You're just concerned about getting your fair share." ..."
"... "Identity politics is to a large degree a right-wing discourse," Derber said. "It focuses on tribalism tied in modern times to nationalism, which is always militaristic. When you break the left into these siloed identity politics, which are not contextualized, you easily get into this dogmatic fundamentalism. The identity politics of the left reproduces the worse sociopathic features of the system as a whole. It's scary." ..."
There will be no economic or political justice for the poor, people of color, women or
workers within the framework of global, corporate capitalism. Corporate capitalism, which uses
identity politics ,
multiculturalism and racial justice to masquerade as politics, will never halt the rising
social inequality, unchecked militarism, evisceration of civil liberties and omnipotence of the
organs of security and surveillance. Corporate capitalism cannot be reformed, despite its
continually rebranding itself. The longer the self-identified left and liberal class seek to
work within a system that the political philosopher Sheldon Wolin calls " inverted
totalitarianism ," the more the noose will be tightened around our necks. If we do not rise
up to bring government and financial systems under public control -- which includes
nationalizing banks, the fossil fuel industry and the arms industry -- we will continue to be
victims.
Corporate capitalism is
supranational . It owes no loyalty to any nation-state. It uses the projection of military
power by the United States to protect and advance its economic interests but at the same time
cannibalizes the U.S., dismantling its democratic institutions, allowing its infrastructure to
decay and deindustrializing its factory centers to ship manufacturing abroad to regions where
workers are treated as serfs.
Resistance to this global cabal of corporate oligarchs must also be supranational. It must
build alliances with workers around the globe. It must defy the liberal institutions, including
the Democratic Party, which betray workers. It is this betrayal that has given rise to fascist
and protofascist movements in Europe and other countries. Donald Trump would never have been
elected but for this betrayal. We will build a global movement powerful enough to bring down
corporate capitalism or witness the rise of a new, supranational totalitarianism.
The left, seduced by the culture wars and identity politics, largely ignores the primacy of
capitalism and the class struggle. As long as unregulated capitalism reigns supreme, all
social, economic, cultural and political change will be cosmetic. Capitalism, at its core, is
about the commodification of human
beings and the natural world for exploitation and profit. To increase profit, it constantly
seeks to reduce the cost of labor and demolish the regulations and laws that protect the common
good. But as capitalism ravages the social fabric, it damages, like any parasite, the host that
allows it to exist. It unleashes dark, uncontrollable yearnings among an enraged population
that threaten capitalism itself.
"This is a crisis of global dimensions," David North , the national chairman
of the Socialist Equality Party in the
United States, told me when we spoke in New York. "It is a crisis that dominates every element
of American politics. The response that we're seeing, the astonishing changes in the state of
the government, in the decay of political life, the astonishingly low level of political and
intellectual discourse, is in a certain sense an expression of the bewilderment of the ruling
elite to what it's going through."
"We can expect a monumental explosion of class struggle in the United States," he said. "I
think this country is a social powder keg. There is an anger that exists over working
conditions and social inequality. However [much] they may be confused on many questions,
workers in this country have a deep belief in democratic rights. We totally reject the
narrative that the working class is racist. I think this has been the narrative pushed by the
pseudo-left, middle-class groups who are drunk on identity politics, which have a vested
interest in constantly distracting people from the essential class differences that exist in
the society. Dividing everyone up on the basis of race, gender, sexual preference fails to
address the major problem."
North argues, correctly, that capitalism by its nature lurches from crisis to crisis. This
makes our current predicament similar to past crises.
"All the unanswered questions of the 20th century -- the basic problem of the nation-state
system, the reactionary character of private ownership with the means of production, corporate
power, all of these issues which led to the first and Second world wars -- are with us again,
and add to that fascism," he said.
"We live in a global economy, highly interconnected," North went on. "A globalized process
of production, financial system. The ruling class has an international policy. They organize
themselves on an international scale. The labor movement has remained organized on a national
basis. It has been completely incapable of answering this [ruling-class policy]. Therefore, it
falls behind various national protectionist programs. The trade unions support Trump."
"We don't really have a left because we don't have conversations about capitalism," Derber
said. "How many times can you turn on a mainstream news like CNN and expect to hear the word
'capitalism' discussed? Bernie [Sanders] did one thing. He
called himself a democratic socialist , which was a bit transformational simply in terms of
rhetoric. He's saying there's something other than capitalism that we ought to be talking
about."
"As the [capitalist] system universalizes and becomes more and more intersectional, we need
intersectional resistance," Derber said. "At the end of the 1960s, when I was getting my own
political education, the universalizing dimensions of the left, which was growing in the '60s,
fell apart. The women began to feel their issues were not being addressed. They were treated
badly by white males, student leaders. Blacks, Panthers, began to feel the whites could not
speak for race issues. They developed separate organizations. The upshot was the left lost its
universalizing character. It no longer dealt with the intersection of all these issues within
the context of a militarized, capitalist, hegemonic American empire. It treated politics as
siloed group identity problems. Women had glass ceilings. Same with blacks. Same with
gays."
The loss of this intersectionality was deadly. Instead of focusing on the plight of all of
the oppressed, oppressed groups began to seek representation for their own members within
capitalist structures.
"Let's take a modern version of this," Derber said. " Sheryl Sandberg , the COO of
Facebook, she did a third-wave feminism thing. She said 'lean in.' It captures this identity
politics that has become toxic on the left. What does 'lean in' mean? It means women should
lean in and go as far as they can in the corporation. They should become, as she has, a major,
wealthy executive of a leading corporation. When feminism was turned into that kind of leaning
in, it created an identity politics that legitimizes the very system that needs to be
critiqued. The early feminists were overtly socialists. As was [Martin Luther] King. But all
that got erased."
"The left became a kind of grab bag of discrete, siloed identity movements," Derber
said. "This is very connected to moral purity. You're concerned about your advancement within
the existing system. You're competing against others within the existing system. Everyone else
has privilege. You're just concerned about getting your fair share."
"People in movements are products of the system they're fighting," he continued. "We're all
raised in a capitalistic, individualistic, egoistic culture, so it's not surprising. And it has
to be consciously recognized and struggled against. Everybody in movements has been brought up
in systems they're repulsed by. This has created a structural transformation of the left. The
left offers no broad critique of the political economy of capitalism. It's largely an
identity-politics party. It focuses on reforms for blacks and women and so forth. But it
doesn't offer a contextual analysis within capitalism."
Derber, like North, argues that the left's myopic, siloed politics paved the way for
right-wing, nativist, protofascist movements around the globe as well as the ascendancy of
Trump.
"When you bring politics down to simply about helping your group get a piece of the pie, you
lose that systemic analysis," he said. "You're fragmented. You don't have natural connections
or solidarity with other groups. You don't see the larger systemic context. By saying I want,
as a gay person, to fight in the military, in a funny way you're legitimating the American
empire. If you were living in Nazi Germany, would you say I want the right of a gay person to
Softpanorama
FILE PHOTO: Tulsi Gabbard speaks during the US Democratic presidential
debate in Atlanta, Georgia, November 20, 2019 © Reuters / Brendan McDermid
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1 minute ago The
thing is most people at Zerohedge have no idea about the reality in Germany and the other
European countries and the psychicological robustness of its people. This crisis is nothing
compared to the catastrophies of the 20th century. In times of challenge one can see who is
strong and effective and acting in solidarity. And this is it what the extended Euroland is
going to show soon. A masterplan for Euroland how to overcome this Corona problems. It takes
time to adopt but things do move already in the right direction. Banning travel is a harsh
measure but the right thing in this situation.
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