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[May 23, 2020] Neoliberalism promised freedom instead it delivers stifling control by George Monbiot

Highly recommended!
From comments: " neoliberalism to be a techno-economic order of control, requiring a state apparatus to enforce wholly artificial directives. Also, the work of recent critics of data markets such as Shoshana Zuboff has shown capitalism to be evolving into a totalitarian system of control through cybernetic data aggregation."
"... By rolling back the state, neoliberalism was supposed to have allowed autonomy and creativity to flourish. Instead, it has delivered a semi-privatised authoritarianism more oppressive than the system it replaced. ..."
"... Workers find themselves enmeshed in a Kafkaesque bureaucracy , centrally controlled and micromanaged. Organisations that depend on a cooperative ethic – such as schools and hospitals – are stripped down, hectored and forced to conform to suffocating diktats. The introduction of private capital into public services – that would herald a glorious new age of choice and openness – is brutally enforced. The doctrine promises diversity and freedom but demands conformity and silence. ..."
"... Their problem is that neoliberal theology, as well as seeking to roll back the state, insists that collective bargaining and other forms of worker power be eliminated (in the name of freedom, of course). So the marketisation and semi-privatisation of public services became not so much a means of pursuing efficiency as an instrument of control. ..."
"... Public-service workers are now subjected to a panoptical regime of monitoring and assessment, using the benchmarks von Mises rightly warned were inapplicable and absurd. The bureaucratic quantification of public administration goes far beyond an attempt at discerning efficacy. It has become an end in itself. ..."
Notable quotes:
"... By rolling back the state, neoliberalism was supposed to have allowed autonomy and creativity to flourish. Instead, it has delivered a semi-privatised authoritarianism more oppressive than the system it replaced. ..."
"... Workers find themselves enmeshed in a Kafkaesque bureaucracy , centrally controlled and micromanaged. Organisations that depend on a cooperative ethic – such as schools and hospitals – are stripped down, hectored and forced to conform to suffocating diktats. The introduction of private capital into public services – that would herald a glorious new age of choice and openness – is brutally enforced. The doctrine promises diversity and freedom but demands conformity and silence. ..."
"... Their problem is that neoliberal theology, as well as seeking to roll back the state, insists that collective bargaining and other forms of worker power be eliminated (in the name of freedom, of course). So the marketisation and semi-privatisation of public services became not so much a means of pursuing efficiency as an instrument of control. ..."
"... Public-service workers are now subjected to a panoptical regime of monitoring and assessment, using the benchmarks von Mises rightly warned were inapplicable and absurd. The bureaucratic quantification of public administration goes far beyond an attempt at discerning efficacy. It has become an end in itself. ..."
"... The other point to be made is that the return of fundamentalist nationalism is arguably a radicalized form of neoliberalism. ..."
"... Therefore, neoliberal hegemony can only be perpetuated with authoritarian, nationalist ideologies and an order of market feudalism. In other words, neoliberalism's authoritarian orientations, previously effaced beneath discourses of egalitarian free-enterprise, become overt. ..."
"... The market is no longer an enabler of private enterprise, but something more like a medieval religion, conferring ultimate authority on a demagogue. Individual entrepreneurs collectivise into a 'people' serving a market which has become synonymous with nationhood. ..."
Apr 10, 2019 | www.theguardian.com

Thousands of people march through London to protest against underfunding and privatisation of the NHS. Photograph: Wiktor Szymanowicz/Barcroft Images M y life was saved last year by the Churchill Hospital in Oxford, through a skilful procedure to remove a cancer from my body . Now I will need another operation, to remove my jaw from the floor. I've just learned what was happening at the hospital while I was being treated. On the surface, it ran smoothly. Underneath, unknown to me, was fury and tumult. Many of the staff had objected to a decision by the National Health Service to privatise the hospital's cancer scanning . They complained that the scanners the private company was offering were less sensitive than the hospital's own machines. Privatisation, they said, would put patients at risk. In response, as the Guardian revealed last week , NHS England threatened to sue the hospital for libel if its staff continued to criticise the decision.

The dominant system of political thought in this country, which produced both the creeping privatisation of public health services and this astonishing attempt to stifle free speech, promised to save us from dehumanising bureaucracy. By rolling back the state, neoliberalism was supposed to have allowed autonomy and creativity to flourish. Instead, it has delivered a semi-privatised authoritarianism more oppressive than the system it replaced.

Workers find themselves enmeshed in a Kafkaesque bureaucracy , centrally controlled and micromanaged. Organisations that depend on a cooperative ethic – such as schools and hospitals – are stripped down, hectored and forced to conform to suffocating diktats. The introduction of private capital into public services – that would herald a glorious new age of choice and openness – is brutally enforced. The doctrine promises diversity and freedom but demands conformity and silence.

Much of the theory behind these transformations arises from the work of Ludwig von Mises. In his book Bureaucracy , published in 1944, he argued that there could be no accommodation between capitalism and socialism. The creation of the National Health Service in the UK, the New Deal in the US and other experiments in social democracy would lead inexorably to the bureaucratic totalitarianism of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.

He recognised that some state bureaucracy was inevitable; there were certain functions that could not be discharged without it. But unless the role of the state is minimised – confined to defence, security, taxation, customs and not much else – workers would be reduced to cogs "in a vast bureaucratic machine", deprived of initiative and free will.

By contrast, those who labour within an "unhampered capitalist system" are "free men", whose liberty is guaranteed by "an economic democracy in which every penny gives a right to vote". He forgot to add that some people, in his capitalist utopia, have more votes than others. And those votes become a source of power.

His ideas, alongside the writings of Friedrich Hayek , Milton Friedman and other neoliberal thinkers, have been applied in this country by Margaret Thatcher, David Cameron, Theresa May and, to an alarming extent, Tony Blair. All of those have attempted to privatise or marketise public services in the name of freedom and efficiency, but they keep hitting the same snag: democracy. People want essential services to remain public, and they are right to do so.

If you hand public services to private companies, either you create a private monopoly, which can use its dominance to extract wealth and shape the system to serve its own needs – or you introduce competition, creating an incoherent, fragmented service characterised by the institutional failure you can see every day on our railways. We're not idiots, even if we are treated as such. We know what the profit motive does to public services.

So successive governments decided that if they could not privatise our core services outright, they would subject them to "market discipline". Von Mises repeatedly warned against this approach. "No reform could transform a public office into a sort of private enterprise," he cautioned. The value of public administration "cannot be expressed in terms of money". "Government efficiency and industrial efficiency are entirely different things."

"Intellectual work cannot be measured and valued by mechanical devices." "You cannot 'measure' a doctor according to the time he employs in examining one case." They ignored his warnings.

Their problem is that neoliberal theology, as well as seeking to roll back the state, insists that collective bargaining and other forms of worker power be eliminated (in the name of freedom, of course). So the marketisation and semi-privatisation of public services became not so much a means of pursuing efficiency as an instrument of control.

Public-service workers are now subjected to a panoptical regime of monitoring and assessment, using the benchmarks von Mises rightly warned were inapplicable and absurd. The bureaucratic quantification of public administration goes far beyond an attempt at discerning efficacy. It has become an end in itself.

Its perversities afflict all public services. Schools teach to the test , depriving children of a rounded and useful education. Hospitals manipulate waiting times, shuffling patients from one list to another. Police forces ignore some crimes, reclassify others, and persuade suspects to admit to extra offences to improve their statistics . Universities urge their researchers to write quick and superficial papers , instead of deep monographs, to maximise their scores under the research excellence framework.

As a result, public services become highly inefficient for an obvious reason: the destruction of staff morale. Skilled people, including surgeons whose training costs hundreds of thousands of pounds, resign or retire early because of the stress and misery the system causes. The leakage of talent is a far greater waste than any inefficiencies this quantomania claims to address.

New extremes in the surveillance and control of workers are not, of course, confined to the public sector. Amazon has patented a wristband that can track workers' movements and detect the slightest deviation from protocol. Technologies are used to monitor peoples' keystrokes, language, moods and tone of voice. Some companies have begun to experiment with the micro-chipping of their staff . As the philosopher Byung-Chul Han points out , neoliberal work practices, epitomised by the gig economy, that reclassifies workers as independent contractors, internalise exploitation. "Everyone is a self-exploiting worker in their own enterprise."

The freedom we were promised turns out to be freedom for capital , gained at the expense of human liberty. The system neoliberalism has created is a bureaucracy that tends towards absolutism, produced in the public services by managers mimicking corporate executives, imposing inappropriate and self-defeating efficiency measures, and in the private sector by subjection to faceless technologies that can brook no argument or complaint.

Attempts to resist are met by ever more extreme methods, such as the threatened lawsuit at the Churchill Hospital. Such instruments of control crush autonomy and creativity. It is true that the Soviet bureaucracy von Mises rightly denounced reduced its workers to subjugated drones. But the system his disciples have created is heading the same way.

George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist


Pinkie123 , 12 Apr 2019 03:23

The other point to be made is that the return of fundamentalist nationalism is arguably a radicalized form of neoliberalism. If 'free markets' of enterprising individuals have been tested to destruction, then capitalism is unable to articulate an ideology with which to legitimise itself.

Therefore, neoliberal hegemony can only be perpetuated with authoritarian, nationalist ideologies and an order of market feudalism. In other words, neoliberalism's authoritarian orientations, previously effaced beneath discourses of egalitarian free-enterprise, become overt.

The market is no longer an enabler of private enterprise, but something more like a medieval religion, conferring ultimate authority on a demagogue. Individual entrepreneurs collectivise into a 'people' serving a market which has become synonymous with nationhood.

A corporate state emerges, free of the regulatory fetters of democracy. The final restriction on the market - democracy itself - is removed. There then is no separate market and state, just a totalitarian market state.

glisson , 12 Apr 2019 00:10
This is the best piece of writing on neoliberalism I have ever seen. Look, 'what is in general good and probably most importantly what is in the future good'. Why are we collectively not viewing everything that way? Surely those thoughts should drive us all?
economicalternative -> Pinkie123 , 11 Apr 2019 21:33
Pinkie123: So good to read your understandings of neoliberalism. The political project is the imposition of the all seeing all knowing 'market' on all aspects of human life. This version of the market is an 'information processor'. Speaking of the different idea of the laissez-faire version of market/non market areas and the function of the night watchman state are you aware there are different neoliberalisms? The EU for example runs on the version called 'ordoliberalism'. I understand that this still sees some areas of society as separate from 'the market'?
economicalternative -> ADamnSmith2016 , 11 Apr 2019 21:01
ADamnSmith: Philip Mirowski has discussed this 'under the radar' aspect of neoliberalism. How to impose 'the market' on human affairs - best not to be to explicit about what you are doing. Only recently has some knowledge about the actual neoliberal project been appearing. Most people think of neoliberalism as 'making the rich richer' - just a ramped up version of capitalism. That's how the left has thought of it and they have been ineffective in stopping its implementation.
economicalternative , 11 Apr 2019 20:42
Finally. A writer who can talk about neoliberalism as NOT being a retro version of classical laissez faire liberalism. It is about imposing "The Market" as the sole arbiter of Truth on us all.
Only the 'Market' knows what is true in life - no need for 'democracy' or 'education'. Neoliberals believe - unlike classical liberals with their view of people as rational individuals acting in their own self-interest - people are inherently 'unreliable', stupid. Only entrepreneurs - those close to the market - can know 'the truth' about anything. To succeed we all need to take our cues in life from what the market tells us. Neoliberalism is not about a 'small state'. The state is repurposed to impose the 'all knowing' market on everyone and everything. That is neoliberalism's political project. It is ultimately not about 'economics'.
Pinkie123 , 11 Apr 2019 13:27
The left have been entirely wrong to believe that neoliberalism is a mobilisation of anarchic, 'free' markets. It never was so. Only a few more acute thinkers on the left (Jacques Ranciere, Foucault, Deleuze and, more recently, Mark Fisher, Wendy Brown, Will Davies and David Graeber) have understood neoliberalism to be a techno-economic order of control, requiring a state apparatus to enforce wholly artificial directives. Also, the work of recent critics of data markets such as Shoshana Zuboff has shown capitalism to be evolving into a totalitarian system of control through cybernetic data aggregation.


Only in theory is neoliberalism a form of laissez-faire. Neoliberalism is not a case of the state saying, as it were: 'OK everyone, we'll impose some very broad legal parameters, so we'll make sure the police will turn up if someone breaks into your house; but otherwise we'll hang back and let you do what you want'. Hayek is perfectly clear that a strong state is required to force people to act according to market logic. If left to their own devices, they might collectivise, think up dangerous utopian ideologies, and the next thing you know there would be socialism. This the paradox of neoliberalism as an intellectual critique of government: a socialist state can only be prohibited with an equally strong state. That is, neoliberals are not opposed to a state as such, but to a specifically centrally-planned state based on principles of social justice - a state which, to Hayek's mind, could only end in t totalitarianism. Because concepts of social justice are expressed in language, neoliberals are suspicious of linguistic concepts, regarding them as politically dangerous. Their preference has always been for numbers. Hence, market bureaucracy aims for the quantification of all values - translating the entirety of social reality into metrics, data, objectively measurable price signals. Numbers are safe. The laws of numbers never change. Numbers do not lead to revolutions. Hence, all the audit, performance review and tick-boxing that has been enforced into public institutions serves to render them forever subservient to numerical (market) logic. However, because social institutions are not measurable, attempts to make them so become increasingly mystical and absurd. Administrators manage data that has no relation to reality. Quantitatively unmeasurable things - like happiness or success - are measured, with absurd results.

It should be understood (and I speak above all as a critic of neoliberalism) that neoliberal ideology is not merely a system of class power, but an entire metaphysic, a way of understanding the world that has an emotional hold over people. For any ideology to universalize itself, it must be based on some very powerful ideas. Hayek and Von Mises were Jewish fugitives of Nazism, living through the worst horrors of twentieth-century totalitarianism. There are passages of Hayek's that describe a world operating according to the rules of a benign abstract system that make it sound rather lovely. To understand neoliberalism, we must see that it has an appeal.

However, there is no perfect order of price signals. People do not simply act according to economic self-interest. Therefore, neoliberalism is a utopian political project like any other, requiring the brute power of the state to enforce ideological tenets. With tragic irony, the neoliberal order eventually becomes not dissimilar to the totalitarian regimes that Hayek railed against.

manolito22 -> MrJoe , 11 Apr 2019 08:14
Nationalised rail in the UK was under-funded and 'set up to fail' in its latter phase to make privatisation seem like an attractive prospect. I have travelled by train under both nationalisation and privatisation and the latter has been an unmitigated disaster in my experience. Under privatisation, public services are run for the benefit of shareholders and CEO's, rather than customers and citizens and under the opaque shroud of undemocratic 'commercial confidentiality'.
Galluses , 11 Apr 2019 07:26
What has been very noticeable about the development of bureaucracy in the public and private spheres over the last 40 years (since Thatcher govt of 79) has been the way systems are designed now to place responsibility and culpability on the workers delivering the services - Teachers, Nurses, social workers, etc. While those making the policies, passing the laws, overseeing the regulations- viz. the people 'at the top', now no longer take the rap when something goes wrong- they may be the Captain of their particular ship, but the responsibility now rests with the man sweeping the decks. Instead they are covered by tying up in knots those teachers etc. having to fill in endless check lists and reports, which have as much use as clicking 'yes' one has understood those long legal terms provided by software companies.... yet are legally binding. So how the hell do we get out of this mess? By us as individuals uniting through unions or whatever and saying NO. No to your dumb educational directives, No to your cruel welfare policies, No to your stupid NHS mismanagement.... there would be a lot of No's but eventually we could say collectively 'Yes I did the right thing'.
fairshares -> rjb04tony , 11 Apr 2019 07:17
'The left wing dialogue about neoliberalism used to be that it was the Wild West and that anything goes. Now apparently it's a machine of mass control.'

It is the Wild West and anything goes for the corporate entities, and a machine of control of the masses. Hence the wish of neoliberals to remove legislation that protects workers and consumers.

[Dec 31, 2019] A Major Bank Admits QE4 Has Started, And That Stocks Are Rising Because Of The Fed's Soaring Balance Sheet

Dec 31, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

psychohistorian , Dec 31 2019 5:53 utc | 65

Below is a ZH link reporting that Deutsche Bank is now calling the Fed's move since October QE4

A Major Bank Admits QE4 Has Started, And That Stocks Are Rising Because Of The Fed's Soaring Balance Sheet

The take away quote
"
and overnight none other than Deutsche Bank joined the "truther" chorus, when in a report by the bank's chief economist Torsten Slok, he writes what we pointed out several weeks back, namely that "since QE4 started in October, a 1% increase in the Fed balance sheet has been associated with a 1% increase in the S&P500, see chart below." Not that DB has absolutely no qualms about calling what the Fed is doing QE4 for the simple reason that... it is QE4.
"
You have to go to the link to see the chart.....

[Dec 31, 2019] Time for PhD supervision -- Crooked Timber

Dec 31, 2019 | crookedtimber.org
Time for PhD supervision

by Ingrid Robeyns on December 29, 2019 Some aspects of academia show great international variation. There is one on which I haven't found any good data, and hence thought I'll ask the crowd here so that we can gather our own data, even if it will be not very scientifically collected.

The question is this: if you are a university teacher/professor and your department awards PhD-degrees, do you get any official time allocated (or time-compensation) for PhD supervision? If it is part of a teaching load model, how many hours (or % teaching load) is it equivalent to? Or is there an expectation that you take on PhD-students but that this does not lead to a reduction in other tasks?

How do international practices of the conditions for PhD-supervisors compare?

In my faculty (Humanities at Utrecht University, the Netherlands), all supervisors together (which generally are two, sometimes three) are collectively given a teaching load reduction of 132 hours in the year follow the graduation of the PhD-candidate. So your teaching reduction upon successful graduation of a PhD-candidate tends to be 66 hours. For the supervisory work you effectively do in the four years prior to graduation, there is no time allocated; so you effectively do this in your research or your leisure time.

To put this into perspective: most (assistant/associate/full) professors teach 50-70% of their time, and a fulltime workload is 1670 hours, or 1750 hours if you are saving for a sabbatical. This can be reduced if you have major managerial tasks (e.g. Head of Department) or if a large part of your wage is paid by a research grant. So without reductions, we teach about 835-1190 hours a year (this includes the time for preparation and examination, but frankly, one always needs more than the teaching load models allocate for a given course. And in general there are no TAs or other support staff to help with the practical sides of teaching).

For writing the grants that are almost always needed to create the jobs for PhD students (with success rates now around 15%), and for supervising those who in the end do not get their PhD degree, there is no time put aside for the supervisor/applicants. That time also goes, effectively, from our research time, or, more realistically, from our leisure time.

Recently, I heard from a British colleague and a Swedish colleague their models for PhD-supervision, which were way more generous (and rightly so in my view), so thought I'll throw the question on the table here: what, if any, time-compensation/teachingreduction do you get for supervising PhD students?

I am not trying to suggest here that without adequate time set aside for doing this work, it would not be worthwhile supervising PhDs. There are in many cases other forms of rewards for the work one does as a PhD supervisor. One might be the honor of supervising PhDs, and in most cases the intrinsic rewards of the supervisory process – the satisfaction of seeing a young person take their first steps as a scholar, and being able to play a crucial role in this process. There is , after all, a reason why the Germans call their PhD-supervisor mein Doktorvater or meine Doktormutter – since yes, there is this element of helping someone to grow, in a cognitive and professional sense. Professionally, there are few people who had so much influence on me as my PhD-supervisor, and I am hoping that some of my (former) PhD-students will think the same at some point in their lives. So it would be wrong to frame it merely as a burden, since there is the intrinsic value of the rather unique professional relationship. But that cannot be a reason to not give PhDsupervisors the time they need to properly supervise, given how severe time pressure in academia is. I see this as a real tension.

In some academic fields, there may be professional research benefits for the supervisors, such as becoming co-authors on the publications the PhD-students write under your supervision. I recently examined a PhD-thesis in medical ethics, and all chapters (being articles published or under review) had been co-written with several members of the supervisory team. Even raising the funds to hire the PhD is sometimes seen as sufficient reason to be listed as a co-author. In the humanities there is no such a thing: we don't put our names on articles of our PhDstudents, even if we contributed significantly to the development of that piece (rightly so in my view).

I'm posting this because I am interested in the international comparison in its own right, but also because of its relevance in discussions on higher education policies which are currently very intense in the Netherlands, on which I'll write another blogpost later.

Share this: { 24 comments read them below or add one }

Chris Bertram 12.29.19 at 9:45 am ( 1 )

In my part of my university each PhD student earns her supervisors around 60 notional hours/1600 total per annum, but that's usually divided 5/1 between two supervisors, so that the person actually doing the work has about 50 hours, so slightly over an hour/week given annual leave etc. My greatest beef with this is when we admit non-anglophone PhD students. Since they officially have a level of competence in English as a condition of their admission, they do not get any extra time for supervision. But in practice, their work takes much longer to read and you have to put a lot of work into improving their English.
Mike Beggs 12.29.19 at 10:18 am ( 2 )
In my faculty (Arts and Social Sciences at Sydney) the primary supervisor gets 40 hours per year and an auxiliary supervisor gets ten. (There is some flexibility for the 50 total hours to be divided differently.)

In a recent survey of faculty staff with a response rate of around 30%, most reported spending longer per primary supervision: the median was 50 hours.

There's actually a growing literature on academic time use. Kenny and Fluck have published a series of papers based on a large survey of Australian academics. The median reported time spent supervising a higher degree student per year was 60 hours over all discipline groups, 50 hours for Arts, Law and Humanities. (Kenny and Fluck 2018 'Research workloads in Australian universities', _Australian Universities Review_ -- and the companion papers on teaching and admin workloads are also worth googling for the full results over lots of tasks.)

Matt Matravers 12.29.19 at 10:31 am ( 3 )
When we tried to establish a "norm" at the University of York, it turned out that practice varied widely not only across faculties, but within the arts and humanities and social sciences. Some departments simply included it in "research time" and gave zero extra time, others gave a (more-or-less generous) "teaching" allocation. So, I am not sure you can get any useful comparisons even at an institutional level let alone internationally.
Currently, in the Law School at York, a PhD student – during the period of registration (i.e., only for the first 3 years) – earns her supervisors around 80 notional hours of teaching per year. This is split across the supervisory team in proportion to their involvement.
Many colleagues think this is insufficient, in particular with non-anglophone students and it can be particularly galling if one is putting a lot of work into the final "writing up" year.
For what it is worth, I found this very hard to manage when I was Head of Department (and so responsible for workloads). The issue for me was that in many cases senior colleagues had several PhD students and (some) junior colleagues none (or very little involvement. This was back in the day of most students have one supervisor.). Modelling a system where PhD supervision was "properly" rewarded (that is, where I tried to allocate hours in accordance to the amount of time it actually took) resulted in a very hierarchical department where (roughly) senior colleagues did PhD supervision and junior colleagues taught undergraduates. So, I didn't do it.
For what it is worth (addressing the wider issues of workload), it seems to me that there is an inevitable gap between a workload system conceived of as a mechanism of "counting" (how many hours does this job actually take?) and conceived of as a mechanism of "distribution" (how much work is there to be done and how many people to do it?). Of course, the distributive principles cannot stray too far from the realities revealed in counting, but it (seems to me at least) perfectly okay to think that the distributive principles include other considerations like the "shape" of the department, individual "goals" (having PhD students is good for promotion at York) and personal development, gender, and so on.
Finally, this problem does not seem to be unique to PhD supervision (the current "hot topic" at York is how to count/distribute time for research grant writing, which at the moment is simply included in individual research in most, but not all, departments). York tried to introduce a workload model across the university and never managed it because departmental variations were so huge (in everything from whether/how to include teaching preparation time to how to rank administrative tasks). That said, this may be the result of our particular institutional history (until recently, we had a very flat structure with only relatively autonomous departments and no faculties).
Faustusnotes 12.29.19 at 10:48 am ( 4 )
In Japan as far as I know there is no allowance at all, and senior staff (the professor who is the official supervisor) often dump all supervisory responsibility on the most junior staff. There is also often no limit on how many PhD students the professor can take on (and dump on their assistant prof). This is particularly bad with masters students, whose theses are much more time limited and challenging to supervise.

I don't know if it's a general thing but my colleagues in China tell me they are only allowed a PhD student if they publish above a certain level – PhD students are treated as a valuable asset you need to struggle to get. (I think they are paid by the uni but don't quote me). In the universities I know of in China the PhD student has to publish to graduate (sometimes like 3 papers) so the benefits to the supervisor are obvious.

I'm in public health where publication is relatively easy and quick. I don't know how it is in other disciplines (but the Japanese professor dumping his responsibilities on junior staff is quite common across disciplines as far as I can tell).

Harry 12.29.19 at 12:34 pm ( 5 )
It's not part of a workload model for us. We're expected to teach 2 classes a semester (8 contact hours a week total), then research, service, and graduate supervision on top, but the only thing that is specified is the 2 classes. So no compensation for PhD students. In practice the number of PhD supervisions varies greatly across faculty (as you'd expect), as does the amount of service work we do (if you're good at it you get asked to do more, if you're tenured and responsible you generally try to say yes), as does the amount of time we actually spend on the courses we teach.

As do our salaries, to be fair, which reflect years of service, perceived quality of research, how much the people elected to the department budget value the other things we do, and, to some extent, market forces.

What I've described is my own department. There's huge variation across campus, including variation in numbers of courses we're expected to teach.

Possibly worth mentioning that from what I have gathered expectations of how many courses we teach have fallen dramatically (across campus) over the past 50 years, and the number of course releases granted have increased dramatically: I estimate faculty in the humanities teach 30% less than 50 years ago, and in the sciences 50% less. I imagine this is similar across public research universities and SLACs.

notGoodenough 12.29.19 at 1:47 pm ( 6 )
So, purely anecdotal and from the perspective of a PhD and post-doc in Science at 2 different, fairly well thought of UK Universities (Russel group, etc. etc.).

PhD students are highly valuable. This is because a Masters or summer student are necessarily short term, and it is difficult to fulfil much breakthrough research (sometimes you need a few years of banging your head against a wall ). Post-docs are phenomenally expensive as in the UK as the University charges a huge amount just to have them – e.g. a rough breakdown (from some years ago, so a little out of date) is to just have a post-doc (i.e. no equipment, materials, etc.) is in excess of £110K per year. Some 31000 is for salary, the rest goes to the University to keep the lights on. Having more than a few post-docs, for all but the most successful labs, became prohibitively expensive.

However, as a PhD most of my time was with my post-docs (in my first year I saw my professor once, for 1hr, in later years maybe a few times more, so approximately 15 hr over 3.5 years). As a post-doc, the PhD students had regular meetings in a group format once per month (so, more or less 2-3 hr per month). In both cases it, in principle, was possible to go and meet the supervisor if you felt the need, but generally speaking your post-doc was the point of contact on a day-by-day, week-by-week basis.

I've not been a lecturer, so this is very speculative, but my impression is that supervising PhD students is generally considered a research activity, and thus you are not budgeted time for it specifically.

Not sure if any of this is useful, but feel free to hit me up for more details if you think it is useful/interesting.

Karen Anderson 12.29.19 at 2:03 pm ( 7 )
I taught for 15 years at 3 Dutch universities, 3 years at a Russell Group university in England, and am now at an Irish university. I did my PhD in the United States. Like the other posters, I have experienced wide variation in 'compensation' for PhD supervision. One of the reasons I left my position at a British university was the bizarre (and I thought, unfair) model for workload allocation. PhD supervision was highly 'compensated', and actual classroom teaching of undergrads was not. I had colleagues who met all or most of their teaching obligations with PhD supervision and did not teach undergrads.
I don't know what the best way to compensate PhD supervision is, but there are a couple of aspects I think need more attention. The first is wide variation in the number of PhD students in any given department and the rules/norms governing who is (de facto) permitted to supervise PhDs. Dutch departments have fewer PhD students than UK/Irish departments (for complicated reasons), and only full (and now associate?) profs are permitted to supervise. PhD supervision is important for promotion (as it is in the UK and IE), so everyone wants to do it, but not everyone has access. I am not sure that an activity that is so important for career progression should be generously compensated.
The second issue concerns co-authoring with a PhD student. I can see the advantages of this (which Ingrid mentions), but the proliferation of the article-based PhD where the supervisors co-author all articles is a cause for concern. Again, I am not convinced that a PhD supervisor should be generously compensated for something (publications) that strongly advances their own career. And it is not clear to me that the supervisor's contribution to the publication (in many cases, at least) amounts to more than what would be considered 'normal' PhD supervision in the US, Canada, and many European universities. This makes it very difficult to evaluate a newly minted PhD's CV, and it inflates the publication list of more senior academics.
A couple of ideas: 1) cap the number of PhD students that staff can supervise, or at least cap the number for which teaching points are earned. 2) ensure that all academic staff have access to PhD supervision.
praisegod barbones 12.29.19 at 4:32 pm ( 8 )
Private university in Turkey : the basic assumption here is that supervising PhD students and MA theses takes zero time (although people typically budget an hour per week per student.
Neville Morley 12.29.19 at 4:50 pm ( 9 )
The workload allocation for Humanities at the University of Exeter is similar to Chris's account of Bristol (where I worked previously), though it's more common for the hours to be divided 70/30, 60/40 or even 50/50 between first and second supervisors, with the latter playing a much more active role. The biggest difference, however, is that you continue to receive an allowance when the student is writing up, and even if they're revising after a first examination, whereas the Bristol practice was, at least, that you get a workload allowance for the first three years and then nothing for the period which in my experience often required the greatest amount of work
Phil 12.29.19 at 5:50 pm ( 10 )
I haven't – yet – supervised a doctoral student, but I did examine a viva this year & was surprised to find that this carried no workload allowance at all, which seems odd given the amount of reading time involved. (Fortunately I wasn't mad busy.)
likbez 12.29.19 at 7:10 pm ( 11 )
40-60 hours are typical. They do not compensate for the effort but still.
oldster 12.29.19 at 7:16 pm ( 12 )
Former US academic; taught at a few R1 uni's from 80s to aughts.

To echo the doughty Puritan: " the basic assumption here is that supervising PhD students and MA theses takes zero time."

We had a standard teaching load, and expectations for research and service. But there was no calculation of supervisory load -- it simply was not tracked, budgeted, or accounted for. As Harry says above, there were wide disparities from person to person, since some people attract a lot of grad students and some do not (and some repel them, either for strategic purposes, or because they are repellent no matter what they try).

No one cared whether you supervised 15 PhD students or zero. Not quite true -- there was some unofficial awareness among colleagues who thought collegially about things. And you might get some private thanks or informal kudos for doing more than your share. But there was absolutely no official account of it. And this was true at all 3 R1s I taught at over several decades.

That's partly because -- in a Humanities field -- the funding of grad students does not follow the prof, but the program as a whole. So, Central Admin knows that your department is training 25 PhDs, because Central Admin has to figure their tuition, stipends, etc. But the money then flows to your department as a whole, with no closer investigation of who in your department is doing the work.

The picture must be radically different in the Sciences, where there is literal accounting of PhD students, since they are supported by the professor's grant-money.

hix 12.29.19 at 8:08 pm ( 13 )
Surely there are other ways to offload work to PhD students one would otherwise have to do oneself besides getting research recognition for their thesis. How much of that is possible should also vary across countries. So a comparsion of alocated supervision time only seems a bit one sided.
John Quiggin 12.29.19 at 10:07 pm ( 14 )
As regards co-authorship, my PhD students and postdocs are often keen to include me on the theory that a paper with a more senior author will have a better chance of acceptance. My impression is that, in economics, the expectation is that the main job market paper will be sole-authored or else co-authored with another junior researcher, but that others are likely to be co-authored with the supervisor.

To complicate things further, economics (like philosophy, I believe) works on average quality rather than total contribution. So, a publication with a student in a journal lower ranked than my average paper is actually a negative for me.

Matt 12.29.19 at 10:38 pm ( 15 )
I assume that "Harry" above is Harry B of the blog. If so, he's showing why comparisons w/ the US on this will be hard, if not impossible. In many countries, there is a weird fantasy that academics can and should be treated like hourly employees, with "hours" assigned to things. (This is certainly so in Australia.) Of course, it's a fantasy in that, if it in fact takes a lot more "hours" to do the things you're assigned, you don't get over-time, comp time, or paid more. The other down-side is that this system leads, in my experience, to more micro-managing – being expected to "account" for your time to a much greater degree. The US system treats academics more like salaried employees – you get paid a certain amount, you have certain tasks to do, and you must do them (some of them at particular times, like teaching classes) but otherwise you're not dealing with "hours" for things. The down-side is that there can be lots of variation in how much work people actually do – even teaching the same "number" of classes can vary a lot depending on the number of preps, size, how often you've taught it, if you have TAs, etc., and having more advisees may not lead to more recognition on its own. The plus side is that less time is spent on being mico-managed and bureaucratic nonsense. The relevant point here, though, is that it's really hard to make a comparison like the one asked for between systems where one treats academics more like hourly employees and the other more like salaried employees.
Gabriel 12.29.19 at 10:52 pm ( 16 )
My wife (a New Zealand academic with confirmation) is allocated a. 24 hours per year for supervising PhD students. She trusts that the ludicrousness of this number is not lost on those present.
billcinsd 12.30.19 at 1:39 am ( 17 )
I am a Professor in an Engineering discipline at a small, state engineering school in the US. Our workload is departmentally determined. My department is fairly small, ~100 undergrads, but does quite a bit of research. My nominal workload is 40% teaching, 40% research and 20% service. This is based on 40 working hours per week. My effective workload is 46% teaching, 8% advising (both undergrad and grad), 23% overseeing my funded research projects and about 25% service. This is more than 100%, which is true for almost all faculty at my school.

Thus, I estimate how much time I spend doing various things and then convert that to credit hours, as my contract is specified in terms of 18 credit hours of work per semester, making a credit hour about 2 hours and 40 minutes

Kevin 12.30.19 at 2:11 pm ( 18 )
In Technological University Dublin (formerly Dublin Institute of Technology), supervision of a full-time PhD student attracts a time allowance of 2 hours per week (48 hours per annum), from a weekly teaching load of 16 contact hours for lecturers (18 hours for assistant lecturers). So, for example, a lecturer with two full-time PhD students will allocate 25% (4 hours) of his / her weekly contact teaching duties to this role.
Michael Dunn 12.30.19 at 2:45 pm ( 19 )
In my department (at Uppsala University, Sweden) the workload norm is 88 hours per year supervisory time for the main supervisor and 20 for the assistant supervisor. This time includes the face-to-face hours, as well as reading, commenting, etc. The split can be done differently to reflect other kinds of co-supervisory arrangements. This seems very generous compared to what others are reporting, which is sad, since an average of 1 hour meeting, 1 hour reading per week for 44 weeks in a year would work out as very minimal supervision -- and supervisors typically spend much more time on supervision related tasks than this.
Johan Karlsson Schaffer 12.30.19 at 4:44 pm ( 20 )
A couple of years ago, I did a survey of the formal teaching duties at polisci departments at Scandinavian universities for a report published by the Swedish Institute for Labour Market Evaluation. The survey looked at the formal percentage of teaching duty for senior lecturers and full professors, and the formal compensation in terms of hours allotted for various teaching activities (e.g., lectures, supervision at different levels, examination and so on).

We found, first, that the formal teaching duty varied quite a lot across Scandinavian universities, but that all Swedish universities had less generous conditions than Danish and Norwegian universities, which came closer to the Humboldtian ideal of unity of teaching and research.

Second, by multiplying teaching duty and compensation for a standard set of teaching activities, we found that the consequences for the individual lecturer could be quite drastic: over a hypothetical career from age 35 to retirement at 67, a lecturer at the least generous university could have ten whole years more of teaching duty than their colleague at the most generous university.

The report is, unfortunately, only available in Swedish, but the graphs and tables (which also includes detailed information on the compensation for PhD supervision) should be rather self-explanatory.
https://www.ifau.se/sv/Forskning/Publikationer/Rapporter/2016/att-mota-den-hogre-utbildningens-utmaningar/

Here's a blog post summary of these findings that include the most important graphs:
https://politologerna.wordpress.com/2016/02/29/att-mota-den-hogre-utbildningens-utmaningar/

Sam Tobin-Hochstadt 12.30.19 at 6:53 pm ( 21 )
I'm an Associate Professor in Computer Science at a US R1 university.

As Matt says, the description in Ingrid's post is totally unlike how things are thought of at all in US universities. My load is 40% research, 40% teaching, 20% service, which is standard for tenure-track faculty in my department (and I think across departments here). The standard teaching load is 3 courses per year (2 in one semester, 1 in the other). However, there are several exceptions to this: before tenure, faculty are assigned only 2 courses per year. Also, if you support (with external grant funding) 3 PhD students or post-docs in the previous year then you only teach 2 courses the next year. Additionally, pre-tenure faculty are asked to do considerably less service.

Furthermore, there are several additional differences that are relevant. First, and most importantly, the distinction between "research" and "PhD supervision" does not exist in science. Effectively all of my research is joint with PhD students, although sometimes they are not "my" students, but those of my collaborators. Second, not all students are funded by grants; PhD students can also be funded by teaching. So it's possible to have one or two students without bringing in funding. Third, there's a strong expectation that training PhD students is part of the job, you wouldn't get tenure/promotion/etc if you just didn't do it.

Z 12.30.19 at 8:33 pm ( 22 )
In my institution, you don't get any teaching load reduction, whereas you do get a tiny but non-zero reduction for supervising a master thesis, or even an undergraduate research project. I believe that is the norm in France in science in general, and most likely overall. The logic behind that choice is that supervising a PhD student is supposed to bring its own benefits: the student will do a lot of lab work for the superviser, the superviser will cosign the research papers etc.

In math (my own field), there is no lab work to be done and the French tradition is that papers drawn from the PhD should be signed by the student alone, so the arrangement is quite unfavorable to us.

On the other hand

So without reductions, we teach about 835-1190 hours a year

Did I read that right? Can you clarify how many hours are counted for one hour in front of the students? That number looks like madness to me (and I have a heavy teaching load myself).

CdnNew 12.30.19 at 9:11 pm ( 23 )
Canadian math prof:

"Highly research-active" profs teach one fewer course per year. There is some flexibility as to how to maintain this designation, but typically you must have at least 2 active graduate students at any given time (and meet various other requirements).

Going through our standard courseload: if you ignore the other work related to maintaining status, your first two Ph.D. students are worth about 90 hours/year, and the remainder are worth nothing.

likbez 12.31.19 at 12:57 am ( 24 )
Your comment is awaiting moderation.

John Quiggin 12.29.19 at 10:07 pm @14

As regards co-authorship, my Ph.D. students and postdocs are often keen to include me on the theory that a paper with a more senior author will have a better chance of acceptance.

This is an important point. I agree that it is somewhat dishonest to use your post-grad students to increase you number of publications. But it should be weighted against the real difficulties of young researchers to get their papers published. And the fact that sometimes brilliant papers from them are rejected. Nobody can abolish clan behavior in the academy. And the "academic kitchen" is pretty dirty, and takes years to understand ;-).

Sometimes publishing oversees helps here, and young researchers should keep this in mind. For many foreign journals, just the fact that you are a foreigner from a prestigious university is a plus that weights on the acceptance.

[Dec 29, 2019] Worst Market In 30 Years - 400,000 Commodity Railcars Sit Idle Amid Industrial Recession

Dec 29, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Wells Fargo, Citigroup, PNC Financial Service Group, and CIT Group accumulated hundreds of thousands of commodity hauling railcars in North America over the last decade. These banks believed railcars carrying coal, grain, and other commodities were going to be highly profitable but have recently turned out to be a major headache as many cars are now in storage because of new regulations and demand woes brought on by fluctuating commodity markets.

David Nahass, president of Railroad Financial Corp., which provides advisory services to railroad firms, told The Wall Street Journa l that "the industry is suffering, there are no two ways about it. Lease rates are down, and there's not a source of hope about when it will start to improve."

The Journal, citing the Association of American Railroads (AAR), said about 400,000 railcars currently sit in storage with no use at all, and many are bank-owned.

[Dec 29, 2019] The process of imbecilization of the West

Dec 29, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

vk , Dec 28 2019 15:28 utc | 4

One more example of the process of imbecilization of the West:

Millennials are turning to magic & astrology for 'empowerment' because liberal ideology failed them

Imbecilization is a normal historical process where intellectual declines follows the economic decline of a given empire. There's growing evidence the West is going through the same process.

A with any composite, complex historical process, imbecilization doesn't happen in a uniform and linear way. Economics was the first science that descended into pseudo-science in the capitalist world (after Marx dismantled Classic Economics). Philosophy followed. Erudite art degenerated after the fall of Modernism somewhere in the 1950s. Human sciences in general became fragmented and little more than a constelation of esoterism and pseudo-sciences - a condition they still enjoy today (e.g. the dismembering of History into Sociology, Behavioral Economics and others).

Meanwhile, the so-called STEM or "Hard Sciences" continued to prosper for some decades, until they also hit a ceiling in the 1990s. The fall of the profitability of the capitalist world led it to resort to "financialization" to keep the system going, which resulted in the most brilliant capitalist mathematicians to be hosed to Wall Street instead to the likes of NASA. Those MIT mathematicians and rocket scientists created the algorithms Wall Street still uses today, but they did not stop the 2008 meltdown.

Nowadays, those brilliant STEM minds are nothing more than fraudsters who keep their careers going by creating meaningless experiments (because they need the funding) only to publish articles and keep their production quotas or self-censuring bootlickers for Wall Street and Big Pharma. When they get to work for a big corporation, they are mere architects of planned obsolescence or patent renewing. There's a new book I strongly recommend all of you to read:

Silent Conflict: A Hidden History of Early Soviet-Western Relations , by Michael Jabara Carley

Here's an interview with him in Sputnik News , in the occasion of this book's release.


[Dec 26, 2019] The Decade in Retirement: Wealthy Americans Moved Further Ahead

Dec 26, 2019 | economistsview.typepad.com

Fred C. Dobbs , December 15, 2019 at 06:54 AM

The Decade in Retirement: Wealthy
Americans Moved Further Ahead
https://nyti.ms/34pZAbD
NYT - Mark Miller - Dec. 14

... In 2010, the economy was just beginning to recover from the worst recession and financial crisis in recent memory. The unemployment rate was high, the stock market was coming back and millions of workers were worried that their retirement plans were ruined.

Since then, a robust economic rebound has put some Americans back on solid footing for retirement, but progress has been uneven. Despite the gains made in employment, wage growth has only recently begun to recover -- and remained flat for older workers. Retirement wealth has accumulated almost exclusively among higher-income households, while middle- and lower-income households have only held steady or lost ground, Federal Reserve data shows.

Trends in Social Security and Medicare also are troubling. The value of Social Security benefits -- measured by the share of pre-retirement income they replace -- is falling, and the cost of Medicare is rising.

For members of the baby boomer and Gen X generations, the odds of success are mixed. The Employee Benefit Research Institute has developed a model that simulates the percentage of households likely to have adequate resources to meet retirement expenses, considering household savings, home equity and income from Social Security and pensions.

The model shows that the highest-income households have seen their odds of a successful retirement improve sharply during this decade, and have very high odds of success. Middle-income households, meanwhile, have seen some gains, but still have only 50-50 odds of success. And the lowest-income households have seen their retirement prospects diminish sharply -- among these boomers approaching retirement, their odds of success have fallen during the decade from 26 percent to 11 percent.

"Retirement prospects improved significantly for higher-income workers who were fortunate enough to work for employers that sponsor retirement plans," says Jack VanDerhei, the organization's research director.

Let's consider how the retirement landscape has changed during the decade now ending.

Retirement savings: Up for the affluent

The stock market bottomed out in March 2009 -- and it has more than quadrupled since then. Most retirement savers did not abandon equity markets during the crash, says Jean Young, senior research associate with the Vanguard Center for Investor Research. "Some did, but the vast majority stayed the course."

But the recovery has seen retirement wealth accumulate almost exclusively among affluent households that had access to workplace retirement plans and the means to make contributions. For example, Vanguard reports that the average balance for plan participants with incomes over $150,000 in 2018 was $193,130, compared with just $22,679 for workers with income of $30,000 to $50,000. ...

[Dec 25, 2019] Art Cashin's Predictions For 2020

Dec 25, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

For the second year in a row, Art Cashin, the head of UBS's floor operations at the NYSE, was spot-on with his market calls in 2019.

Last December, Cashin told CNBC that he expected the Federal Reserve wouldn't raise interest rates during the coming year. In fact, Cashin said late last year that he felt there was now "an outside chance" that the Fed would cut rates in 2019. At the time, many scoffed at that call. But Cashin turned out to be correct.

He was also correct about whether the US and China would manage to strike a long-term trade deal. "I don't believe so," Cashin said. "I think we will get something that approximates it, and you'll get perhaps in midyear a relaxation rally, but - with - with the problems of - political sequencing, whatever, I don't think it works out."

As for whether the US would succeed in striking a lasting trade deal with Beijing before the end of the year, Cashin insisted that the answer was 'most likely no'.

"I don't believe so. I think we will get something that approximates it, and you'll get perhaps in midyear a relaxation rally, but - with - with the problems of - political sequencing, whatever, I don't think it works out."

So, Cashin sat down with CNBC's Bob Pisani at Bobby Van's Steakhouse, across from the NYSE, to discuss what Cashin sees coming down the pipe for markets in 2020.

Cashin offered three predictions - that's fewer predictions than usual: His first prediction was that there will be no Fed hikes over the coming year. His second is that the market's winning streak will continue, and that the big US stock indexes will finish the year higher.

Finally, although Cashin expects stocks to rise next year, their ascent will be punctuated by several periods of extreme volatility, particularly during the months of January, March and July.

Prediction one: Despite a still-strong U.S. economy, there will be no Fed rate hikes in the next year.

"I think the Fed is somewhat intimidated by the market... And the market, if anything, thinks the Fed is ahead of itself on higher rates."

Prediction two: The market winning streak will continue and the broader indexes will be up in 2020.

"Eight out of nine times that we've had an up year like we had this year, it's followed by another decent up year. Not quite as strong, but still strong, and so I'll go with history."

Prediction three: Stocks may be up, but there will be several periods of volatility, particularly in January, March and July.

"In late January, we'll get to see if there's going to be a Brexit now that [Prime Minister Boris] Johnson got a sweeping move in Parliament . And will he, in fact, push through a no-deal Brexit? That could make the markets very volatile and jumpy. The next thing will be the U.S. election. Number one, in early March, we will get Super Tuesday, and one-third of the U.S. populace will vote. And we'll get to find out where [Democat Mike] Bloomberg's strategy is. Who looks to be the leader? Has anybody locked it up? If not, then it could be a brokered convention, and that date would be in the middle of July, when the convention will be."

[Dec 25, 2019] If Trump had actually done anything for the American masses, we would all know it and no list of talking points issued from the Trump administration would be necessary

Dec 25, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

The truth is that the one-percenters got a $1.5 trillion tax cut, another trillion in military industrial complex spending, continued suppression of workers' wages, more imperialist war (even as we now know that Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan were all lies and fraud that cost the American people trillions of dollar), more big pharma raping the **** out of us all, totally ignoring of climate change that will destroy humanity, etc. The 99% got nothing. That's why Trump can only talk about how great his trade deal is going to be for you one day. And how great it will be when there one day are no more "illegals" (which nobody noticed at all being removed from society when Obama set the "illegals" deportation record (which still stands today).

No, we the 99% have gotten ****. Trump, the billionaire president (who's paid zero taxes over the past decade) has done nothing but **** the **** out of the American people for the benefit of himself and his one-percenter BFFs. No right-wing member of the base can point to even one tiny thing that Trump has done that personally benefited them. That is not true for the 1%. Remember, even the Democrat/liberal 1% have done fabulously well under Trump. But regardless of how much the Trump base loves him, he's done absolutely nothing of any substance for them. NOTHING! That's why Trump has to try to tell you what to say to your relatives.

[Dec 25, 2019] Trump military Keynesianism

Notable quotes:
"... My hunch is that a lot of Pentagon defence spending already props up communities throughout the US. Private defence companies set up factories in towns that would otherwise be ghost towns to manufacture armaments or parts for planes or ships in programs funded by the US Department of Defense, in states across the country ..."
"... Part of the reason is to lobby politicians representing the electorates where their factories are located for more Pentagon funding to finance more contracts. Politicians willingly support more defense funding because they know these companies provide jobs and keep unemployment down. ..."
Dec 25, 2019 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com

Jen December 23, 2019 at 8:12 pm

My hunch is that a lot of Pentagon defence spending already props up communities throughout the US. Private defence companies set up factories in towns that would otherwise be ghost towns to manufacture armaments or parts for planes or ships in programs funded by the US Department of Defense, in states across the country .

Part of the reason is to lobby politicians representing the electorates where their factories are located for more Pentagon funding to finance more contracts. Politicians willingly support more defense funding because they know these companies provide jobs and keep unemployment down.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/ba63OVl1MHw?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent

The issue then is how to keep those jobs and keep those factories but change what engineers are designing and workers are making from machines of destruction into machines that sustain life and communities.

Patient Observer December 23, 2019 at 9:50 pm
Yes, the absolute truth. Defense spending is spread over as many states and regions as possible to keep strong political support. It seems every month the state is sponsoring seminars aimed at educating small/medium manufacturers on how to bid on defense contracts. Even small mom-and-pop machine shops get their share of defense business. One small shop in our region makes compressor blades for cruise missiles. Every time the US fires off a barrage of missiles, they probably get an order; everybody is happy except those in the target area.
yalensis December 24, 2019 at 4:33 am
Many American communities also depend on the Military-Industrial Complex to educate their children. I personally know several families who had children enlist in the military in order to get a free college education; one that their families could otherwise not afford. The parents put their kids in the army and navy, and then just cross their fingers and hope they won't be deployed to a war zone.
The system is actually perfect. The odds of any one of these young people actually getting killed in a war, is actually quite low. The vast majority get a good education with lots of perks, all expenses paid including housing, they do their time, and never see a bullet. All at the taxpayers expense.

[Dec 24, 2019] It is trie that Hierarchy class society but the problem (for the lower classes) is that by inequality rises to unacceptable level and becomes evident to all, mechanisms of 'law' and power (plus bread and circuses) have been set in place to prevent or repress the necessary changes from happening from below

Dec 24, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

William Gruff , Dec 24 2019 14:13 utc | 97

Hierarchy ≠ class society.

There is nothing wrong with hierarchy in and of itself. After all, is seniority to mean nothing? Is demonstrated competence meaningless? Should an individual's efforts to build skill sets be treated as equivalent to the couch potato's efforts to build up an epic Body Mass Index (BMI)? Should notions of winners and losers be banned from athletic competitions and sporting events, along with any associated prizes? Everybody gets a trophy whether they run the race or not?

As I understand it there were plenty of routes through life in the Soviet Union in which people could distinguish themselves, perhaps more than in the West. There were plenty of ways to rise in society's hierarchy. None of those routes resulted in fabulous and opulent wealth, but if some did then the society would necessarily be able to afford fewer such routes.

The only problems with hierarchy in society is if the process of rising in it is corrupt (being born into wealth, for instance) or if the span between the bottom and the top of that hierarchy is larger than what the population considers fair.

juliania , Dec 24 2019 18:35 utc | 108

William Gruff @ 97

"...The only problems with hierarchy in society is if the process of rising in it is corrupt (being born into wealth, for instance) or if the span between the bottom and the top of that hierarchy is larger than what the population considers fair."

That is true, the only problem being (for the lower classes) that by the time the gap becomes evident to all, mechanisms of 'law' and power (plus bread and circuses) have been set in place to prevent or repress the necessary changes from happening from below. This is evident to the US populace as the few who saw it coming and protested could not rouse enough support when it could have mattered. We looked and still look for helpers among the children of the hierarchs because those are the only ones who can work within the current system. So far, such are few, if they exist at all. But we saw with FDR it only takes one or two. (I don't know if you saw my previous post that finance was not the governmental powerhouse it has become in FDR's time. First they came for the legislators!!)

I still have hope that the system in the US will of its own weight become unweildly. There are already signs of that happening in the increasing inability of US powermongers to have their way on the world stage, and in their search for ephemeral 'boltholes'. And while they are still able to inflict harm on others and do so with reckless abandon, I do not believe they are ready to risk their own skins or those of their near and dear - or the fortunes they have staked everything to gain. My hope is that even that damaging ability will peter out as climate change necessities force a refocus on what actually threatens said skins and fortunes.

[Dec 24, 2019] Open Borders are a Trillion-Dollar Mistake

Dec 24, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Carey , December 23, 2019 at 12:15 pm

'Open Borders are a Trillion-Dollar Mistake':

Editor's Note: Last month, Foreign Policy ran an article, "Open Borders Are a Trillion-Dollar Idea," which advocated for Open Borders. So for all those who say, "Oh, no one supports Open Borders," here it is in writing! Every point made by author Bryan Caplan, an economics professor, is refutable, and, while the piece is long, we believe it's important "for the record" to counter all of his points.

As I first read Bryan Caplan's "Open Borders Are a Trillion-Dollar Idea" in Foreign Policy, besides disbelief, my thoughts were that this person must not get out much or must not read much. A quote from writer Upton Sinclair came to mind as well: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
https://progressivesforimmigrationreform.org/open-borders-trillion-dollar-mistake/

And some BBC coverage of the bombings in Sweden (now apparently spreading to Denmark): https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-50339977

[Dec 24, 2019] Eviscerating one's sources of income while weakening the overall economy including the general population does not make for a strong state able to withstand an unanticipated emergency. Somehow people keep doing the same thing over and over.

Dec 24, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com


John , December 23, 2019 at 2:20 pm

In China's history when the largest landowners, the wealthiest individuals connived or bribed their way out of paying taxes and the burden shifted down the income scale, the result sooner rather than later was an uprising that ended with a new dynasty.

Why is there always more money than is even asked for for the "defense budget", but social security and medicare are budget problems?

JBird4049 , December 23, 2019 at 9:08 pm

This is a constant in Chinese history, even the French Revolution was set up by the exclusive taxation of the poor and middle classes. Eviscerating one's sources of income while weakening the overall economy including the general population does not make for a strong state able to withstand an unanticipated emergency. Somehow people keep doing the same thing over and over.

[Dec 24, 2019] In the US pols are still making masssive tax cuts for billionairs and big corporations 60 of America's largest corporations in the US paid no federal taxes last year

Dec 24, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

in the US pols are still making masssive tax cuts for billionairs and big corporations – 60 of America's largest corporations in the US paid no federal taxes last year.

At the same time, both parties say there isn't enough money to continue Social Security, as we know it, because of deficits. They say Social Security is the budget problem. right .

France's govt is doing the economic same trick, imo.

[Dec 24, 2019] My "Pickup Truck Price Index" Crushes "CPI for New Vehicles"

Dec 24, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

ewmayer , December 23, 2019 at 3:30 pm

My "Pickup Truck Price Index" Crushes "CPI for New Vehicles" | Wolf Street

For the 1990 model year, the base MSRP of the F-150 XLT was $12,986. In the 2020 model year, it's $34,160. That's a price gain of 163%.

Let that sink in for a moment. Over the same period, the CPI for new vehicles (green line, right scale in the chart below) rose just 22%:

Note that from 1990 through 1998, the CPI for new vehicles closely tracked the price increases of the F-150. But this surge in CPI was too disturbing, apparently, and so the CPI methodology was enhanced with aggressive hedonic quality adjustments and other methods to bring CPI down, and it actually fell from 1997 through 2009, even as new vehicle prices were soaring.

Note the inherent class warfare aspect of the dynamic here: Technological advances are inherently deflationary, in that they allow a manufacturing worker to produce ever-more value-add per hour. In a fair world, said workers would share in that increased value-add via salary gains, which would largely offset the price increases of the higher-value-add products they and others produce.

inode_buddha , December 23, 2019 at 3:56 pm

"Note the inherent class warfare aspect of the dynamic here: Technological advances are inherently deflationary, in that they allow a manufacturing worker to produce ever-more value-add per hour. In a fair world, said workers would share in that increased value-add via salary gains, which would largely offset the price increases of the higher-value-add products they and others produce."

I entered the workforce in ~1984, and I have yet to see the workers get a share in anything.

Craig H. , December 23, 2019 at 4:04 pm

In Eric Weinstein's podcast with Tyler Cowen they have an argument about the CPI and the hedonic adjustment. Cowen claims that the finance markets are totally cool with CPI as is and if you think it is messed up then you have the basis for an investment play that will make you a ton of profits if you are correct.

This is the kind of argument that has given rhetoric a bad name for 2500 years.

If you do not have the patience to listen all the way to the end (I am not proud to say that I did) you will learn that Cowen and Weinstein are sure that they have impeccable taste in music. They sound like one of those cartoon characters like Phineas Whoopie the man who knows everything.

https://www.intanibase.com/iad_characters/character.aspx?charID=404

[Dec 23, 2019] Several House Democrats got up and spoke of how impeachment was like the civil rights movement. I guess they forgot it was the Democratic Party who defended slavery

Dec 23, 2019 | news.yahoo.com

21 hours ago

It was interesting watching the impeachment vote on the House floor. Several House Democrats got up and spoke of how impeachment was like the civil rights movement. I guess they forgot it was the Democratic Party who defended slavery, founded the clan, imposed segregation, and fought against the civil rights acts of the 1950s and 1960s.

[Dec 23, 2019] The order in which Russians and Americans will get ot heavens in case of nuclear war

This was a reply to the jarhead Mattis who mentioned the possibly of a preemptive strike on Russia because of allegations they are violating a missile treaty.
Dec 23, 2019 | news.yahoo.com

"We have no concept of a preemptive strike," Putin told a forum of international experts in the southern city of Sochi in response to a question from the audience.

"In such a situation, we expect to be struck by nuclear weapons, but we will not use them" first, he said.

"The aggressor will have to understand that retaliation is inevitable, that it will be destroyed and that we, as victims of aggression, as martyrs, will go to heaven.

"They will simply die because they won't even have time to repent,"

Bobbie

last year Russia is a Christian nation since the Soviet Union fell. They believe in the 10 Commandments one of which is do not murder. E D

last year Yup a reply to the jarhead Mattis who mentioned the possibly of a preemptive strike on Russia because of allegations they are violating a missile treaty.Yup should start showing the movies 'Fail Safe' New Bedford Incident', 'The Day After', 'Dr Strange Love, ' Missiles of October' now on TV prime time spots. No JFK or RFK to hold the generals in check this time.and God indeed will judge them for the billions that die.

Reply

last year If it had not been for one brave Soviet officer during the Cuban missle crisis it is likely few of us would be reading how "unlikely" the communists are to launch a first strike. I consider Vasili Arkhipov to be a hero but he was not necessarily viewed that way in Russia. He probably prevented a nuclear world war III. Please read his story...
https://www.warhistoryonline.com/cold-war/vasili-cuban-missile-crisis.html Vasili Arkhipov was a Soviet naval officer who, upon making a split second decision, prevented the Cuban Missile Crisis from escalating into a nuclear Vasili Arkhipov was a Soviet naval officer who, upon making a split second decision, prevented the Cuban Missile Crisis from escalating into a nuclear www.warhistoryonline.com wootendw

last year Just a warning to nutjobs in the US who believe Russia won't use nukes because they know they'll be destroyed. Even if there isn't a heaven, what happened to Libya and Qaddafi was WORSE than nuclear war. Having lost 20m in WWII, Russia will certainly use nukes in defense EVEN IF THE WEST ONLY ATTACKS THEM WITH CONVENTIONAL WEAPONS Bond000000007

last year Russia is obviously not the evil society or culture that the evil west is drumming propaganda against at every opportunity It is unfortunate the western world has evolved very negative socially; surviving at the cost of lies, murder, cheating, beliefs in the cultural superiority of the Anglo-Saxons, domination of the world and name it! If it is true that Russia has achieved the military advances that Russia has publicly made known and if that was the western world, then they would have most likely planned for a schedule of striking Russia and China in order to bring the world to the level of subjugation that was existing in the colonial era and even practically now where they are telling countries which community should lead a country at the national level and which ones and which ones should work on cohesion of the nation etc. Without any pretence, a one world government will bring the world to subjugation which will be more less comparable to the era of slavery! Alex

last year

One correction: Putin didn't say "our enemies will just die", he said "our enemies will croak" , he used an informal word 'сдохнут' - zdokhnut.

[Dec 23, 2019] Observer reported about the conflict between Samsung empire and the American hedge fund Elliott Management. A series of articles on Korean business sites that pointedly criticized Elliott's CEO Paul Singer and directly attacked him ... long been known to be ruthless and merciless" and claiming "It is a well-known fact that the US government is swayed by Jewish capital."

Dec 23, 2019 | www.unz.com

Robjil , says: December 23, 2019 at 6:38 pm GMT

@Onebornfree No, knowledge, awareness is all that is needed.

Light the darkness, and darkness ends.

We are in the dark in the west about this.

In the East, people see all this. They are not in the dark.

South Korea knows.

https://observer.com/2015/07/breaking-samsung-reacts-to-observer-deletes-anti-semitic-vulture-man-cartoons/

Earlier this week, the Observer reported on a spat that had broken out between a division of the giant Samsung empire and the American hedge fund Elliott Management. The most newsworthy feature of the dispute involved a series of articles on Korean business sites that pointedly criticized Elliott's CEO Paul Singer and directly attacked him for being Jewish, noting that "Jewish money has long been known to be ruthless and merciless" and claiming "It is a well-known fact that the US government is swayed by Jewish capital."

China knows.

https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/books/167289/nanjing-jewish-studies

"Do the Jews Really Control America?" asked one Chinese newsweekly headline in 2009. The factoids doled out in such articles and in books about Jews in China -- for example: "The world's wealth is in Americans' pockets; Americans are in Jews' pockets" -- would rightly be seen to be alarming in other contexts. But in China, where Jews are widely perceived as clever and accomplished, they are meant as compliments. Scan the shelves in any bookstore in China and you are likely to find best-selling self-help books based on Jewish knowledge. Most focus on how to make cash. Titles range from 101 Money Earning Secrets From Jews' Notebooks to Learn To Make Money With the Jews.

[Dec 23, 2019] Productivity Does Not Explain Wages

Dec 21, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

By Blair Fix, a political economist based in Toronto. He researches how energy use and income inequality relate to social hierarchy. His first book, Rethinking Economic Growth Theory From a Biophysical Perspective , was published in 2015. Twitter: @blair_fix . Republished from Economics from the Top Down via Evonomics

Does productivity explain income? I asked this question in a previous post . My answer was a bombastic no . In this post, I'll dig deeper into the reasons that productivity doesn't explain income. I'll focus on wages.

The Evidence

Let's start with the evidence trumpeted as proof that productivity explains wages. Looking across firms, we find that sales per worker correlates with average wages. Figure 1 shows this correlation for about 50,000 US firms over the years 1950 to 2015.

Figure 1: The correlation between a firm's average wages and its sales per worker. Data comes from Compustat. To adjust for inflation, I've divided wages and sales per worker by their respective averages (in the firm sample) in each year. I've shown stock tickers for select firms.

Mainstream economists take this correlation as evidence that productivity explains wages. Sales, they say, measure firms' output. So sales per worker indicates firms' labor productivity. Thus the evidence in Figure 1 indicates that productivity explains (much of) workers' income. Case closed.

The Problem

Yes, sales per worker correlates with average wages. No one disputes this fact. What I dispute is that this correlation says anything about productivity. The problem is simple. Sales per worker doesn't measure productivity .

To understand the problem, let's do some basic accounting. A firm's sales equal the unit price of the firm's product times the quantity of this product:

Sales = Unit Price × Unit Quantity

Dividing both sides by the number of workers gives:

Sales per Worker = Unit Price × Unit Quantity per Worker

Let's unpack this equation. The 'unit quantity per worker' measures labor productivity. It tells us the firm's output per worker. For instance, a farm might grow 10 tons of potatoes per worker. If another farm grows 15 tons of potatoes per worker, it unambiguously produces more potatoes per worker (assuming the potatoes are the same).

The problem with using sales to measure productivity is that prices get in the way. Imagine that two farms, Old McDonald's and Spuds-R-Us, both produce 10 tons of potatoes per worker. Next, imagine that Old McDonald's sells their potatoes for $100 per ton. Spuds-R-Us, however, sells their potatoes for $200 per ton. The result is that Spuds-R-Us has double the sales per worker as Old McDonald's. When we equate sales with productivity, it appears that workers at Spuds-R-Us are twice as productive as workers at Old McDonald's. But they're not. We've been fooled by prices.

The solution to this problem seems simple. Rather than use sales to measure output, we should measure a firm's output directly . Count up what the firm produces, and that's its output. Problem solved.

So why don't economists measure output directly? Because the restrictions needed to do so are severe. In fact, they're so severe that they're almost never met in the real world. Let's go through these restriction.

1: Firms must produce identical commodities

To objectively compare productivity, you have to find firms that produce the same commodity. You could, for instance, compare the productivity of two farms that produce (the same) potatoes. But if the farms produce different things, you're out of luck.

Here's why. When firms produce different commodities, we need a common dimension to compare their outputs. The problem is that the choice of dimension affects our measure of output.

To see the problem, let's return to our two farms, Old McDonald's and Spuds-R-Us. Suppose that Spuds-R-Us produces 10 tons of potatoes per worker. Tired of growing potatoes, Old McDonald's instead grows 5 tons of corn per worker. Which workers are more productive?

The answer depends on our dimension of analysis.

Suppose we compare potatoes and corn using mass. We find that Spuds-R-Us workers (who produce 10 tons per worker) are more productive than Old McDonald's workers (who produce 5 tons per worker).

Now suppose we compare potatoes and corn using energy. Furthermore, imagine that corn has twice the caloric density of potatoes. Now we find that workers at Spuds-R-Us (who produce half the mass of food at twice the caloric density) have the same labor productivity as Old McDonald's workers.

The lesson? Unless two firms produce the same commodity, productivity comparisons are subjective. They depend on the choice of dimension.

Restriction 2: Firm output must be countable

When you read economic textbooks, it's clear that the discipline of economics is stuck in the 19th century. Firms, the textbooks say, produce stuff .

But what about all those other firms that don't produce stuff? What is their output? What, for instance, is the output of Goldman Sacks? What is the output of a high school? What is the output of a hospital? What is the output of a legal firm?

Yes, these institutions do things. But it defies reason to give these activities a 'unit quantity'. In other words, it defies reason to quantify the output of these institutions.

Restriction 3: Firms must produce a single commodity

Complicating things further, we can objectively measure output only when firms produce a single commodity. If a firm produces two (or more) commodities, its output is affected by how we add the commodities together.

To see the problem, let's return to Old McDonald's and Spuds-R-Us. Suppose that both farms have diversified their production. Spuds-R-Us produces 5 tons of potatoes and 1 ton of corn per worker. Old McDonald's produces 1 ton of potatoes and 5 tons of corn. Which workers are more productive?

The answer depends on our dimension of analysis. In terms of mass, both farms produce 6 tons of food per worker. So labor productivity appears the same. But suppose we measure the output of energy. Again, we'll assume that corn has double the caloric density of potatoes. Suppose corn contains 2 GJ (gigajoule) per ton, while potatoes contain 1 GJ per ton. Now we find that Old McDonald's workers are about 60% more productive than workers at Spuds-R-Us. Here's the calculation:

Spuds-R-Us:
5 tons potato × 1 GJ / ton + 1 ton corn × 2 GJ / ton = 7 GJ

Old McDonald's:
1 ton potato × 1 GJ / ton + 5 ton corn × 2 GJ / ton = 11 GJ

This 'aggregation problem' is why the neoclassical theory of income distribution assumes a single-commodity world -- a world in which everyone produces and consumes the same thing. In this one-commodity world, we can measure productivity unambiguously. In the real world (with many commodities) productivity depends on our choice of dimension.

The Severity of the Problem

Let's take stock. If we want to measure productivity objectively, the restrictions are severe:

Firms must produce the same commodity This commodity must be countable Firms must produce only one commodity

These conditions are so stringent that they're rarely met in the real world. This is a bit of a problem for neoclassical theory. It proposes that everyone's income is explained by their productivity. But only in the rarest of circumstances can we measure productivity objectively.

It's hard not to laugh at this predicament. It's like Newton proclaiming that gravitational force is proportional to mass. But in the next sentence he realizes that mass can be measured only in the rarest of circumstances.

The Neoclassical Sleight of hand

Neoclassical economists don't think of themselves as Newtons who can't measure mass. Instead, economics textbooks don't even mention the problems with measuring productivity. In these textbooks, all seems well in neoclassical land.

But all is not well. Neoclassical economists perpetuate their fantasy by relying on a sleight of hand. Here's what they do.

First, economists argue that the purpose of all economic activity is to give consumers utility . Buy a potato and you get utility. Buy a cigarette and you get utility. Utility, economists say, is the universal dimension of output. By measuring utility, we can compare the output of any and all firms (no matter what they produce).

After proclaiming that utility is the universal dimension of output, economists pull their trick. Utility, they say, is revealed through prices . So a painting worth $1000 gives the buyer 1000 times the utility as a $1 potato.

With this thinking in hand, economists see that a firm's sales measure its output of utility:

Sales = Unit Price × Unit Quantity

Sales = Unit Utility × Unit Quantity = Gross Utility

So sales become a universal measure of utility, and utility is the universal measure of output. Now, when we compare sales per worker to wages (as in Figure 1), economists proclaim that we're comparing productivity to wages.

Except we're not.

The problem is that this whole operation is circular. The idea that prices reveal utility is a hypothesis . And as every good scientist knows, you can't use your hypothesis to test your hypothesis. But that's what neoclassical economists do. They assume that one aspect of their theory is true (the link between prices and utility) to test another aspect of their theory (the link between productivity and income). This is a big no no.

Why do economists use this circular reasoning? Probably because they don't know they're doing it. Economists take as received wisdom the idea that prices reveal utility. But this is just a hypothesis. In fact, it's a bad hypothesis. Why? Because we can never measure utility independently of prices.

Why are Sales Related to Wages

Whenever I go through the logic above, mainstream economists will retort: "But look at the correlation between wages and sales! How can this not show that productivity explains wages?" Their reasoning seems to be that, absent an alternative explanation, this correlation must support their hypothesis.

In No, Productivity Does Not Explain Income , I gave an alternative explanation. The correlation between wages and sales per worker, I argued, follows from accounting principles.

Sales isn't a measure of output. It's an income stream. Once earned, this income gets split by the firm into different categories. Some of it goes to workers. Some of it goes to other firms (as non-labor costs). And some of it goes to the firm's owners as profit.

Figure 2: Dividing a firm's income stream. Accounting principles dictate that a firm's sales get divided into profits and wages.

By definition, the terms on the left must sum to the terms on the right. So it's not surprising that we find a correlation between wages and sales. They're related by an accounting identity.

In comments on No, Productivity Does Not Explain Income (and on other sites), some economists pounced on this argument, saying it was fatally flawed. And in hindsight, I admit that I wasn't clear enough about my reasoning. I was thinking about the real world. But the economists who critiqued my reasoning were thinking in terms of pure mathematics.

To frame the debate, let's think about something more concrete than income. Let's think about volume. In rough terms, the volume of an object is the product of its length, width and height:

V = L × W × H

Now, let's pick a dimension -- say length. Will the length of an object correlate with its volume? In general terms, no. I can make an object with any volume using any length. I just have to adjust the other dimensions appropriately. By doing so, I can make a cube have the same volume as a box that is long and thin.

So in pure mathematical terms, the accounting definition of volume doesn't lead to a correlation between length and volume.

But when we look at real-world objects -- like animals -- we will find a correlation. If we took all the species on earth and plotted their length against their volume, we'd expect a tight correlation. A bacteria has a small length and a small volume. A blue whale has a big length and a big volume. Fill in the gaps between and we should get a nice tight line.

The reason for this correlation is that animals cannot take any shape. You'll never find an animal that is a mile long and a few micrometers wide. Such a beast doesn't exist. Yes, the shapes of animals vary. But in the grand scheme, this varation is small. As a first approximation, animals are roughly cubes. Or, if you're a physicist, they're spheres .

With this shape restriction, it follows from the definition of volume that animal length should correlate with animal volume. We'd be astonished if it didn't.

So too with the correlation between sales per worker and wages. True, this correlation doesn't follow purely from accounting principles. It follows jointly from accounting principles, and the fact that firms can't take any form. We don't find firms that pay their workers nothing. That's slavery and its illegal. Similarly, we don't find (many) firms that pay their workers the entirety of sales. That leaves no room for profit.

So in the real world, there are restrictions on how firms can divide their income stream. Here's what these restrictions look like. In Figure 3, I've plotted the distribution of firms' payroll as a portion of sales. This is the portion of sales that goes to workers. Across all firms, it's a pretty tight distribution, clustered around 25%.

Figure 3: The distribution of firm payrolls as a fraction of sales. Data is for US firms in the Compustat database over the years 1950–2015.

Yes, it's theoretically possible for a firm to give any portion of its sales to workers. But this isn't what happens in reality. In the real world, most firms give between 10% and 50% of their sales to workers. Just like with the shape of animals, there are real-world restrictions on the 'shape' that firms can take.

Given these restrictions, it's not surprising that we find a correlation between sales per worker and wages. When a firm's income stream grows, so does the amount going to workers.

None of this has anything to do with productivity. It's all about income. Sales are the firm's income. And wages are the portion of this income given to workers.

Prices The Elephant in the Room

Let's conclude this foray into neoclassical thinking. The reason that sales don't measure firm output is because they mix unit prices with unit quantities. Yes, sales per worker correlates with wages. But the elephant in the room is prices. Greater sales may be due to greater output. But it can also be due to greater unit prices.

In many cases, price differences are everything .

Imagine that a lawyer and a janitor both work 40 hours a week as self-employed contractors. The lawyer charges $1000 per hour, while the janitor charges $20. At the end of the week, the lawyer has 50 times the sales as the janitor. This difference comes down solely to price. The lawyer charges 50 times more for their hourly services than the janitor.

The question is why ?

Neoclassical economists proclaim they have the answer. The lawyer, they say, produces 50 times the utility as the janitor. Ask economists how they know this, and they'll answer with a straight face: "Prices revealed it."

It's time to recognize this sleight of hand for what it is: a farce. The reality is that we know virtually nothing about what causes prices. And we will continue to know nothing as long as researchers believe the neoclassical farce.

Further Reading

The Aggregation Problem: Implications for Ecological and Biophysical Economics. BioPhysical Economics and Resource Quality . 4(1), 1-15. SocArxiv Preprint .


BillS , December 21, 2019 at 4:46 am

approximation, animals are roughly cubes. Or, if you're a physicist, they're spheres.

..or, more accurately, tori. ;-)

https://www.quora.com/Is-the-human-body-a-torus-donut-topologically

HotFlash , December 21, 2019 at 9:28 am

Yep, that sounds right. Zen-ish philosopher Alan Watts observed that animals, including humans, are tubes.

oaf , December 21, 2019 at 9:44 am

Mostly all
HF? Happy Holidays; Happy Solstice! Brighter days ahead

Hayek's Heelbiter , December 21, 2019 at 2:05 pm

Actually, genomically, human beings are 70% acorn worm.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/11/151118155119.htm

D. Fuller , December 22, 2019 at 1:12 pm

Tube-within-a-tube. The digestive system being the second tube.

Sound of the Suburbs , December 21, 2019 at 4:51 am

Economists are always prepared for yesterday's problems.
Inflation was a big problem in the Keynesian era and every effort has been made to ensure that it doesn't return.
Exceptionally intelligent Chinese economists have been looking at today's problems.

Davos 2018 – They know financial crises come from the private debt-to-GDP ratio and inflated asset prices
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WOs6S0VrlA
The PBoC know how to spot a Minsky Moment coming, unlike the FED, BoE, ECB and BoJ.
The black swan flies in under our policymaker's radar.
Our policymakers are always looking in the wrong direction.
They fixate on public debt, and so don't see the problems emerging in private debt
The central banks look at consumer price inflation, while the problems are emerging in asset price inflation.

Economists assume pay rises with productivity because it did in the Keynesian era, but it doesn't anymore.
http://www.industryweek.com/sites/industryweek.com/files/uploads/2016/11/29/Declining-Wages.jpg
We need those exceptionally intelligent Chinese economists to look at today's problems.
They are really good at it.

Sound of the Suburbs , December 21, 2019 at 5:04 am

Thank god for Google images.
That link has gone bad.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2016/10/03/us-wages-have-been-rising-faster-than-productivity-for-decades/#5e26b1637342

The image is the same – Forbes are putting a different spin on it.
I am just reading their take on it now.

teacup , December 21, 2019 at 1:50 pm

industryweek link gets a 404 not found.

Bill Smith , December 21, 2019 at 6:12 am

"But the elephant in the room is prices. Greater sales may be due to greater output. But it can also be due to greater unit prices."

How does this matter? If my salesperson negotiates higher prices on every deal, that's better for my company and I'd say he/she is more productive.

flora , December 21, 2019 at 12:54 pm

Your salesperson might negotiate higher prices on every deal, and that might correlate with their higher productivity in a regulated and truly competitive market.

What does sales at higher prices in a (de facto) deregulated and increasingly monopolist market space point to? Not to greater productivity, imo, but to deregulated monopoly. It too oftern points to unregulated rentier-ism, or price gouging. Why has the cost of, say, insulin tripled over the past decade? Not because of greater productivity. How can these price increases in this deregulated market environment possibly point to real productivity? It points to price gouging. Since there is more rentier-ism in the market, the old idea that prices/wages can be reliably equated with productivity becomes meaningless, imo.

flora , December 21, 2019 at 8:08 pm

see for example this Forbes article:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnmauldin/2019/12/20/americans-are-not-free-to-choose-anymore/

@pe , December 23, 2019 at 4:15 am

There's the slight of hand

Do your other employees building widgets become "less productive" suddenly when your salesman catches a cold? (You can come up with a bunch of these showing that productive can not be precisely equal to money earned, because they exist on different time scales measuring different firm aggregates).

Is the salesman "more productive" if he kidnaps the children of a client and blackmails him into buying more product? What would "productive" mean in any useful sense if there's no independent definition of utility? Not every dollar earned is a measure of "productive" -- unless you redefine productive to mean "every dollar earned by any measure".

When the US invaded Santo Domingo to extract debts, was that "productive" in any meaningful sense? That would seem to be an abuse of language, rather than saying what you mean.

The problem here is that "productive" is a moral justification -- and so it must continue to mean something more than simply money earned in order to morally justify the order. That's the goal of the use of the word productive -- that thus the results are just .

Amfortas the hippie , December 21, 2019 at 6:49 am

another narrative take on this curious phenomenon:
https://newrepublic.com/article/155666/life-algorithm

tegnost , December 21, 2019 at 8:08 am

That's a good one, thanks

inode_buddha , December 21, 2019 at 7:35 am

"It's time to recognize this sleight of hand for what it is: a farce. The reality is that we know virtually nothing about what causes prices. And we will continue to know nothing as long as researchers believe the neoclassical farce."

This is what I don't understand, I think its obvious why there are prices. The whole idea of business, and capitalism generally, is to charge as much as possible while spending as little as possible.

Beyond a certain point I do believe greed drives inflation -- companies will charge whatever they think they can get away with long before there is wage pressure. Wage pressure in my experience is a reaction to inflation, not a driver of it. For some reason many people of the conservative persuasion seem to get this backwards.

Left in Wisconsin , December 21, 2019 at 1:11 pm

Absolutely. The use of "we" here is problematic. What needs to be made clear is the fundamental distinction between those who study capitalism, where the fundamental driver is the search for profit, and those who study "the economy," for whom profit either doesn't exist or is the "marginal productivity of capital," a concept which has been shown over and over to be nonsensical, and the fundamental drivers are things we can't explain – individual wants and preferences and various completely unpredictable "shocks."

There is no collective "we." It's them against us.

inode_buddha , December 21, 2019 at 2:24 pm

Or, like I say, "Who is "we", white woman?"

The Rev Kev , December 21, 2019 at 9:55 am

It is obvious that prices are seriously out of kilter with actual value of products & services but is this a result of all that extra money that was created to save the banks after 2008? And what about the vital function of price discovery then. How does that work out? I do believe that there is something missing from this article and that is a break-out of "wages". I suppose you could break it down to wages, salary & management which may be more instructive. How does productivity relate to management then, both internally and externally? By externally I mean when consultants are called into a company to do management's job. If you think that this cannot be a serious concern, then reflect that the UK's NHS paid out between $350 million and $600 million worth of taxpayer money on management consultancy in 2014 alone. What effect did that have on the NHS's productivity then?

JohnH , December 21, 2019 at 11:10 am

It sounds like the sure path to higher productivity is to encourage monopolies and oligopolies that can raise prices pretty much at will while reducing the number of workers. The question becomes: why hasn't US productivity surged as its markets became increasingly concentrated?

Chauncey Gardiner , December 21, 2019 at 11:19 am

Blair Fix touches on an important issue behind the layers of terminology, concepts and policies that have so impacted our everyday lives. So if labor productivity doesn't explain wages, income or prices, then what are the true factors influencing prices and stagnant real wages?

Pricing power, labor cost, and profit margins of large transnational corporations have benefitted from their increasingly monopolistic control of markets to suppress competition, use of global labor arbitrage, enjoyment of very low and even negative real interest rates, tax policies and use of tax havens, hidden subsidies, automation, neutering of organized labor, and purchased political influence. The productivity of labor in the West has essentially been made irrelevant in many cases. Important stuff in so many ways.

Still appreciate the famous EPI chart that shows how the wealthy have captured the entire differential between stagnant real wages and the rising productivity of labor since neoliberal capitalism made its appearance on the world stage four decades ago. Trillions:

https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/

Susan the Other , December 21, 2019 at 2:34 pm

Hence 'private equity' is a euphemism for cannibalizing any source of equity for a quick profit. We have an entire paradigm that is a farce. Based on value (equity) which in turn is based subjectively on whatever you can snooker. It is one step forward and two steps backwards at this point. The Chinese have a beautiful view of our debacle. No wonder they can tease out the contradictions. But it's not like we, places like NC, haven't been screaming about all this loud and clear. (Steve Keen for starters.) The thing the aptly named Mr. Fix is saying resides beneath the surface: If we are ever in so desperate a position to raise prices too much nobody will buy and the system will collapse. And because of our horror-at-the-thought we have avoided pricing oil where it belongs. Instead we have burned it with abandon, devastating the environment while we were at it. A very expensive abandonment. It was an unrecognized consequence; an unavoidable one for the sake of profit – whereas the other accounting anomalies are more "discretionary". When you are desperate nothing is discretionary. If price ever comes to equal "utility" aka value, then there will be very little commerce. It makes Richard Murphy's advocacy for Oil Bankruptcy a very rational suggestion. Mitigate the devastation – that's about all we'll be able to do.

TG , December 21, 2019 at 1:26 pm

Even Adam Smith admitted that the economic value of something has no relation to its intrinsic utility, but only to the relative balance of supply and demand for it.

If there are more workers than jobs, wages will be driven down and productivity gains will decouple from wages – although with low wages, there will be little incentive to invest in making workers more productivity so productivity may decline as a second-order effect.

If there are more jobs than workers, wages will be bid up, and productivity gains will be largely captured by workers because it is the limiting factor in any economy that captures the profits. At the same time, high wages will tend to spur higher productivity because there will be strong incentive to make efficient use of relatively expensive labor.

At the base of Niagara Falls, water is cheap and it is not used efficiently. Using water efficiently in Niagara Falls will not increase its price. In the Gobi desert, water is expensive and it is used efficiently. Not using water efficiently in the Gobi desert will not make it cheaper.

The core of modern macroeconomics is to take what is fundamentally simple and confuse the heck out of it.

flora , December 21, 2019 at 3:06 pm

One of the harms of monopoly power is it can artificially create resource scarcity to drive up prices.

D. Fuller , December 21, 2019 at 2:01 pm

then what are the true factors influencing prices and stagnant real wages?

That would be the human factor. Greed, honesty, and desires and conscious acts. Economics cannot capture the human factor.

Every human on Earth is capable of affecting markets dramatically by one act. Humans making multiple decisions every day. All 7.5 billion. One person can change markets and history with one act. Gavrilo Princip, for instance. Or by using an Internet post to affect markets.

To accurately model economics? All decisions made by each and every person on the planet would have to be an input into any model. Each person's actions would have to have a solid, predictable outcome with no deviations. A person becomes depressed, then A and B and C can ONLY happen.

Which would rule out occurrences such as Malaysia Flight 370 and quite a few other possibilities.

Economics and economists are in no way, shape, or form capable of accounting for the human factor. Which is why there should be no laws of economics. More like, guesswork and observing trends in a general and gross manner. Only to pray for accuracy.

LTCM was an example of economics and economists over-stepping their intellect. LTCM employed the observations from John Nash (the subject of the move, A Beautiful Mind) and his Nobel prize winning work. Their system worked until it didn't. Other humans made decisions that trashed.

People chose not to play the game. For LTCM? Such decisions by others outside of LTCM's control were fatal. The issue with game theory, etc? For it to work, one has to have enforcers or project power to force people to play by a set of rules. One could call this, the basis of American foreign policy – financial in nature.

The "Law of Supply and Demand"? Routinely violated. A person can decide arbitrarily to put items on sale. The Human Factor.

Trends in economics are like trends on Twitter. You just never know. Economists are trend chasers. Having more in common with Internet "influencers" trying to convince people that a $5 pair of shoes is actually worth $400, than with actual science. THAT being an example of how prices are determined, in part.

Neoliberal economics is a case study of a select group (economists) influencing politicians and others, to support their version of economics.

lyman alpha blob , December 22, 2019 at 10:23 am

Economics and economists are in no way, shape, or form capable of accounting for the human factor. Which is why there should be no laws of economics.

+1000

Great post DF! This whole discussion reminds me of the shortest job I ever had – selling crappy stereo speakers out of the back of a white van for a day.

I'd answered an ad not knowing what I'd be getting into. The people who were "training" me would drive up to an unsuspecting person in a mall parking lot and try to sell these speakers. They had a set dollar amount per day there were supposed to sell to get a bonus, so if they could sell a speaker for $200 they would and if at the end of the day they needed $25 to meet their sales quota, the last speaker would go for $25. The whole thing depended on two very big human factors – greed and gullibility.

I'm sure an economist could come up with productivity figures for this operation, but what it really was was a scam.

D. Fuller , December 22, 2019 at 1:07 pm

Thanks.

The job you describe reminds me of Eastern European bazaars back in the day where items being sold "fell off" the back of a truck. Or Hoboken, NJ market on a certain block. :)

teacup , December 21, 2019 at 2:18 pm

Thank you NC for yet another article exposing the sham of neoclassical economics. Here's a paragraph from a book I happen to be reading yesterday

"..the neoclassical economic perspective is the ideology par excellence of capitalist political economy. It is a theory that explains nothing more than how to assure that capitalism remains capitalism. That is, neoclassical economics demonstrates how wealth and resources may continue to function to the advantage of the minority that controls wealth and the immediate access to political power. It is an ideology because it depicts as "rational" only economic behavior that seeks the "utility maximization" characteristic of market exchange. That other motives and values might deserve priority in our action as economic agents is either unthinkable (ruled out by definition) or, worse, held to be economically "irrational." Neoclassical economic theory is itself a system of morality- and theology and ethics – masquerading as "science." Yet those who dissent from this hidden morality have a difficult task before them. For this debate concerning the ethics of economics is consistently suppressed in public discourse. Reigning economic theory makes calls for the substantive realignment of existing economic power appear as madness. Dissenters are by definition "unrealistic," "utopian," or "irresponsible.""

And this was written almost 30 years ago in the book 'God and Capitalism – A Prophetic Critique of Market Economy'. The excerpt is from chapter three – 'The "Fate" of the Middle Class in Late Capitalism' by Beverly W. Harrison.

Bob Hertz , December 22, 2019 at 8:22 am

I am not trained in economics, but I wrote an article on this subject several years ago entitled "Productivity is Bunk."

My point was that wages often depend on bargaining power and protected status, rather than industrial productivity.

Cases in point are unionized workers vs. non-unionized workers, and government employees vs. everyone else.

Also note the incredible productivity of American farmers, versus their almost-uninterrupted financial precariousness.

As Groucho Marx used to say," who are you going to believe? Me or your own lying eyes?"

kiers , December 22, 2019 at 9:49 pm

Can we please get an SEC or FASB ruling requiring the explicit breakout of salary payroll on the income statement of EVERY public listed company?

Capitalism has ALL manner of enumeration of uses of capital, but nowhere is labor listed! I don't care for labor hidden inside direct/indirect "costs of goods sold", "SG&A", "R&D" etc. Just put a payroll expense (minus payroll taxes, minus the healthcare and whatnot, straight payroll) line item somewhere in the 10-k. Is it a crime to ask?

[Dec 23, 2019] Economics was not always the imperial discipline and economists in the past were not trusted by politicians

Dec 23, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

juliania , Dec 22 2019 19:25 utc | 26

Forgive me if this has been discussed previously. It's from a September Atlantic article on economics I happened upon, a review of a book by Applebaum written by Sebastian Mallaby:

"...Applebaum opens his book with the observation that economics was not always the imperial discipline. Roosevelt was delighted to consult lawyers such as Berle, but he dismissed John Maynard Keynes as an impractical 'mathematician'. Regulatory agencies were headed by lawyers, and courts dismissed economic evidence as irrelevant. In 1963, President John F. Kennedy's Treasury secretary made a point of excluding academic economists from a review of the international monetary order, deeming their advice useless. William McChesney Martin, who presided over the Federal Reserve in the 1950s and '60s, confined economists to the basement.
Starting in the l970s, however, economists began to wield extraordinary influence..."

I know all who are discussing financial matters here know this - it was just good for me to see it spelled out. I see, however, the rest of the review is very economist oriented and no mention of Michael Hudson whatsoever; it is, after all, the Atlantic. Yay for Roosevelt and Kennedy though!

[Dec 22, 2019] Key House Dem Raskin urges Pelosi to stand her ground against a 'farce' Senate trial by Michael Isikoff

Isikoff is a part of conspiracy to depose Trump. and it shows.
OK. Let's assume that will drag the trial all the January. Then what ?
If we believe polls it is amazing how brainwashed US public is: to assume that marionette government has any say in what to do is the upper level of naivety: " Removing Trump from office (a step beyond impeachment) had the support of just under half (49 percent) of registered voters in the Yahoo News/YouGov poll . On the factual basis for the two articles of impeachment, 53 percent of registered voters said Trump abused his power in demanding help from Ukraine; only 40 percent said he did not. Fifty-one percent said the president obstructed Congress; again, only 40 percent said he did not."
Notable quotes:
"... Michael Isikoff was involved with Clinton and the Russian Dossier. ..."
Dec 21, 2019 | news.yahoo.com

A House Democrat who played a key role in the impeachment of President Trump says the House should not "roll over" and quickly present the articles of impeachment to the Senate for a trial that would amount to a "farce."

"We're not going to participate in a process that makes a mockery out of the Constitution," said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., a member of the House Judiciary Committee, who presented the panel's case for impeachment to the House Rules Committee. Raskin has been widely mentioned as a candidate to be one of the House managers to prosecute the case in an impeachment trial in the Senate. "We are not gonna roll over and say, yeah, you can give us some drive-through justice with one afternoon where everything is dealt with on a motion to dismiss and no evidence is heard.

"My position is that, so long as they do not make the most minimal provisions for a fair trial, then we should not participate in a farce."

Although Raskin emphasized he was speaking for himself, his comments on the Yahoo News "Skullduggery" podcast illustrate the competing pressures House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is under from her own caucus in the aftermath of the historic vote to impeach the president, which was supported by virtually all House Democrats -- and not a single Republican. Public opinion among registered voters shows a narrow (50-45) plurality favoring impeachment , according to a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll.

After the passage of the two articles of impeachment on Wednesday evening -- one for abuse of power, the other for obstruction of Congress -- Pelosi has held off presenting them to the Senate, citing doubts that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will permit a "fair" trial. McConnell has said he will coordinate his efforts with the White House and has made up his mind not to vote for conviction. Removal of the president requires a two-thirds majority in the Senate, which Republicans control by a 53-47 margin.

Democrats led by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer are seeking testimony from key witnesses with firsthand knowledge of Trump's efforts to pressure the Ukrainian president to conduct investigations that could help him politically. Former national security adviser John Bolton, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney are among those he has said he would like to call.

Pelosi's move -- as the House adjourned for a two-week holiday break on Thursday -- has created a new layer of uncertainty over when, or even if, the Senate will actually try the president. Republicans have already jumped over Pelosi's tactics, accusing her of political gamesmanship that undermines the solemnity with which Democrats presented the case against the president.

But Raskin, one of the House's more progressive members, says it is McConnell's own comments -- vowing to work with White House lawyers to ensure the acquittal of the president -- that have made a mockery of impeachment.

"To say that you're not going to look at the evidence or the facts would get you disqualified from every jury pool in the United States of America," Raskin said. "If you were in a voir dire and the judge said to you, 'Will you pay attention to the facts? Will you pay attention to the evidence? Will you pay attention to the law?' and you say, 'No. I've already made up my mind,' you would be dismissed immediately."

Bolton, Mulvaney and Pompeo were blocked from appearing before the House during its impeachment hearings by a White House claim that any conversations they had with the president were shielded by executive privilege. Trump's defenders say the House could have tried to compel their testimony by subpoena. But the certainty that White House lawyers would have fought those subpoenas all the way up to the Supreme Court would have put off action until well into next year, Raskin said.

"It just takes a very long time."

Raskin acknowledged that impeachment by its nature is both a judicial and political process -- and that Pelosi's maneuvering is intended at least in part to put public heat on McConnell to accede to the demand for witnesses.

"We want the country to put serious pressure on the Senate to conduct the trial with seriousness," Raskin said. "And the polls show, for example, on the question of witnesses, that even though I think only 51 percent or 52 percent of the people are declaring themselves right now in favor of impeachment and removal, like 70 percent of the people are saying, 'Yes, the president should make all witnesses available.'"

Removing Trump from office (a step beyond impeachment) had the support of just under half (49 percent) of registered voters in the Yahoo News/YouGov poll . On the factual basis for the two articles of impeachment, 53 percent of registered voters said Trump abused his power in demanding help from Ukraine; only 40 percent said he did not. Fifty-one percent said the president obstructed Congress; again, only 40 percent said he did not.

How effective Pelosi's strategy will be is far from clear. While President Trump is seeking a quick Senate trial in January so he can proclaim vindication as he runs for reelection, McConnell has suggested he is happy to forget the whole thing. "Do you think this is leverage, to not send us something we'd rather not do?" he said to reporters this week. And with those words, noted New York Times reporter Carl Hulse, the Senate majority leader " cracked a broad smile outside the Senate chamber in a departure from his usual dour expression."

yesterday

Michael Isikoff was involved with Clinton and the Russian Dossier. ThisSkullduggeryGroup is another TokyoRoseYellowJournalistic attempt at presenting propagandist commentaries as news articles.

Isekoff has replaced Marrissa Mayer at Yawho News that's all.

There are many fake posters on the message boards. They are not really fellow U.S.Citizens and can easily be recognized by their one line insults that have nothing to do with debate and only to do with creating a hostile environment between so called liberals and so called conservatives who I prefer to call U.S.Citizens. Our differences are not that far apart but there are Globalist, Anarchist, and other forces in this country and outside of this country that would love to see our country collapse and that we also discard our Constitution and our freedoms protected under that document.

Cass Sunstein

ObolaCzar proposed government 'infiltrate' social network sitesCassSunstein wants agents to 'undermine' talk in chat rooms, message boards.

Published: 01/12/2012 at 10:56 PM

Just prior to his appointment as President Obama's so-called regulatory czar,CassSunstein wrote a lengthy academic paper suggesting the government should "infiltrate" social network websites, chat rooms and message boards.Such "cognitive infiltration,"Sunstein argued, should be used to enforce a U.S. government ban on "conspiracy theorizing."

Major Obama donor and former Google executive Marissa Mayer will take the helm at Yahoo! as the company's new CEO Tuesday In May, Neilsen listed theYahooABC NewsNetwork as the leading news site on the Web in the U.S., makingMayer the head of the largest news site on the Web.

She is also a major donor to both PresidentBarackObama and the DemocraticParty.According to the Center for ResponsivePolitics; in April 2011Mayer donated two separate amounts of $2,500 dollars to Obama, and one large sum of $30,800 to the Democratic National committee.

Data from political data firm Aristotle, as reported by the HuffingtonPost, reveals that, in the second quarter of 2011,Mayer also contributed $35,800 to Obama Victory Fund 2012.

Asked whether Mayer's political leanings would not affect the editorial direction ofYahoo!, Yahoo nor Mayer returned The DC's request for comment by the time of publication. [Full Disclosure:TheDCandYahoo! have an editorial partnership.]

[Dec 22, 2019] This neoliberal maggot Schumer managed to defeat 'suprise blling" legistlation

Notable quotes:
"... Where is AOC in all this? She was th e prime mover on impeachment, specifically impeachment over a phone call rather than concentration camps and genocide. And now with impeachment she gave Pelosi cover to sell the country out again. I was wondering why many libreral centrists were expreasing admiration for her, a socialist. Maybe they recognized something? ..."
Dec 22, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

flora , December 21, 2019 at 7:41 am

re:impeachment redux

Interesting, to me at least, that the rocket docket timetable of the House impeachment coincided with the deadline to pass a budget to avoid a(nother) govt shutdown. While all msm eyes were transfixed by the hyperventilating spectacle, behind the scenes the budget passed through the Dem House was filled with more tax breaks for the corporations and the .001%, more money than the admin asked for the MIC, and killed a bill that would end medical 'surprise billing' (another gift to medical PE investors and giant hospital corporations), basically a whole neolib wish list.

Interesting the two events coincided, and, that Nancy decided not to sent on the articles to the Senate at this time. What gives? Is she hold on to them for a future time when she'll need to use them as another distraction for the msm to report on? (no, that could not be the reason. ;) )

Spring Texan , December 21, 2019 at 9:44 am

Schumer and a top House Democrat with ties to private equity were instrumental in defeating the surprise medical bill legislation: https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/12/20/schumer-revealed-key-industry-ally-defeat-effort-curb-surprise-billing
https://www.salon.com/2019/12/18/top-house-democrat-kills-effort-to-end-devastating-surprise-medical-bills/
https://slate.com/business/2019/12/surprise-medical-bills-legislation-congress-democrats.html

Pat , December 21, 2019 at 2:31 pm

Pointed this out a couple of days ago (Slate and Buzzfeed). Happy that it is not just the online press pointing out it was Democrats killing this measure, Democrats in leadership positions. I also like that few, if any, of our media is falling for the kabuki used by Neal to stick the shiv in. Everyone gets that the 'competing plan' was there strictly to derail a law that end the hugely profitable but fraudulent price gauging of healthcare by private equity.

If he keeps this up, walking POS Schumer might make me miss Al D'Amato nah Al and Chuck are just two different colors of tulle, adding illusion to the political process.

Carey , December 21, 2019 at 3:51 pm

..and they could have just passed it for the good PR and then de-fanged it
administratively, but it looks like they wanted to press the point:
"No, Proles, we're not gonna let you breathe, not a bit."

Good to know.

Joe Well , December 21, 2019 at 11:03 am

Where is AOC in all this? She was th e prime mover on impeachment, specifically impeachment over a phone call rather than concentration camps and genocide. And now with impeachment she gave Pelosi cover to sell the country out again. I was wondering why many libreral centrists were expreasing admiration for her, a socialist. Maybe they recognized something?

[Dec 21, 2019] When you owe the bank a little money, the bank owns you. When you owe the bank a lot of money, you own the bank.

Dec 21, 2019 | peakoilbarrel.com

HuntingtonBeach x Ignored says: 12/18/2019 at 11:16 am

When you owe the bank a little money, the bank owns you. When you owe the bank a lot of money, you own the bank.

[Dec 21, 2019] "Money is a token in a message flow system used to convey information to control the flows of matter and energy" ~ George Mobus

Dec 21, 2019 | peakoilbarrel.com

Survivalist x Ignored says: 12/18/2019 at 3:24 pm

"Money is a token in a message flow system used to convey information to control the flows of matter and energy" ~ George Mobus

https://static.financialsense.com/historical/broadcast/insider/fsn2016-0415-mobus-u4t7x9w.mp3

I guess it's hard to convey information when you create tokens and splash them about in preferred corners.

[Dec 21, 2019] Mysterious Bags of Cash emerge exactly like in EuroMaydan riots

In case of EuroMaydan cash was delivered by diplomatic mail to Us and other embassies and then to the opposition parities.
Dec 21, 2019 | finance.yahoo.com

(Bloomberg) -- Glancing at bags of cash stuffed to the brim earlier this month, Gary Fan simply wanted someone to remove them from an office in Hong Kong used by his political party.

The former pro-democracy lawmaker had collected HK$2.7 million ($345,000) during an anti-government protest the day before, and was waiting for someone to pick it up from a mysterious group known as Spark Alliance that helps bail protesters out of jail. The next day, a person whom he knew and trusted came to collect the cash, even though Fan says he doesn't know who exactly is behind the group or where the money ends up.

"We just work by an honor system now, trusting them with a good cause," Fan said in a Dec. 11 interview, adding that Spark Alliance has "earned credibility with real work" like getting legal assistance for protesters. Still, he said, "I absolutely agree there should be more disclosure, transparency and accountability when you take money from the public."

On Thursday evening, police announced the arrests of four people connected with Spark Alliance for suspected money laundering, the first cases brought over financing the demonstrations after six months of protests against China's tightening grip over Hong Kong. Authorities froze HK$70 million of bank deposits and personal insurance products linked to the fund, while also seizing HK$130,000 in cash.

"The police attempted, through false statements, to distort the work of Spark Alliance as money laundering for malicious uses," the group said in a statement on Facebook. "Spark Alliance condemns this kind of defamatory action."

​The crackdown deals a major blow to demonstrators as they face ever-mounting legal bills, with more than 6,000 people arrested since June. Spark Alliance, one of the largest crowd-funding campaigns supporting the protests, plays a crucial behind-the-scenes role -- often sending anonymous representatives to bail protesters out of jail in the middle of the night.

The latest arrests risk deterring Hong Kong's professional class from giving more cash, potentially curbing a substantial source of funds that have helped sustain the protests longer than anyone had expected. They also show the limits of the leaderless movement's ability to manage tens of millions of dollars with little oversight outside of a formal financial system.

Funds bankrolling the protests have collectively raised at least HK$254 million ($33 million) since June, with 70% coming from just two groups, Spark Alliance and the 612 Humanitarian Fund, according to a tally based on disclosures from the groups and an analysis of publicly available documents. That figure doesn't reflect all the money raised related to the protests, only the funds Bloomberg News could verify.

The $33 million alone amounts to a third of the money the city has spent in overtime pay to 11,000 police officers since June, and would be able to purchase some 300,000 gas masks. But the largest costs faced by protesters are legal fees that may stretch out for years.

Nearly 1,000 people have been charged for offenses like rioting, which carries a jail sentence of as much as a decade, according to police. The 612 Fund says it can cost up to HK$1.8 million per person for a 60-day legal defense, and many trials last far longer. Some proceedings related to Hong Kong's 2014 Occupy protests are still ongoing.

Among dozens of groups, Spark Alliance is one of the most secretive: Even some donors and lawyers who assist the group say they don't know who runs it, while the bank account listed on its website belongs to a firm that owns a pest control company. A person who picked up Spark Alliance's hotline last week said the number was only for protester requests. The group didn't respond to requests for comment via Facebook, Whatsapp or Telegram.

'We Need Protection'

"Spark is probably less transparent but people tend to believe them," said Jason, a protester in his 30s who asked to be identified by his English name. He said he memorized the group's phone number and called the group after he was arrested in August. Seven hours later, two lawyers helped arrange HK$4,000 in bail money.

"Everyone knows the cost to fight for this movement and not everyone can afford lawyer fees," he said. "We need protection."

[Dec 21, 2019] Again, rule of thumb the cost of a conventional well in our field is approximately 1/100 of a shale oil well ($70K range v $7 million range).

Dec 21, 2019 | peakoilbarrel.com

shallow sand x Ignored says: 12/14/2019 at 8:18 pm

HB. I have used leases developed in our field in the past ten years to demonstrate that shale is high cost. Again, rule of thumb the cost of a conventional well in our field is approximately 1/100 of a shale oil well ($70K range v $7 million range).

Here are some examples with production through 10/31/19:

8 producers 4 injection wells. Cumulative BO 83,466. YTD BO 2,085. First production 4/2003.

10 producers 4 injection wells. Cumulative BO 116,065. YTD BO 2089. First production 9/2005.

10 producers 4 injection wells. Cumulative Bo 55,595. YTD BO 3,023. First production 3/2006.

4 producers 1 injection well. Cumulative BO 37,418. YTD BO 1,289. First production 8/2008.

8 producers 3 injection wells. Cumulative BO 42,494. YTD BO 2,328. First production 10/2008.

4 producers 1 injection well. Cumulative BO 19,216. YTD BO 1,220. First production 12/2010.

8 producers 3 injection wells. Cumulative BO 46,463. YTD BO 1,877. First production 8/2011.

4 producers 2 injection wells. Cumulative BO 10,700. YTD BO 634. First production 10/2011.

8 producers 3 injection wells. Cumulative 59,592 BO. YTD 4,956 BO. First production 11/2011.

1 producer. Water disposed of in adjoining lease. Cumulative BO 7,872. YTD BO 444 BO. First production 5/2012.

8 producers 3 injection wells. Cumulative 56,500 BO. YTD 3,858 BO. First production 6/2012.

4 producers 1 injection well. Cumulative BO 11,758. YTD BO 1,457. First production 6/2013.

2 producers. Water disposed of on adjoining lease. Cumulative 3,524 BO. YTD BO 393. First production 11/2013.

6 producers Two injection wells. Cumulative 25,988 BO. YTD 3,233 BO. First production 9/2014.

Figure in anywhere from $60K-80K to drill, complete and equip each well including electric, flow and/or injection lines. Figure another $20-30K for a tank battery.

Assume anywhere from 12.5 to 20 percent royalty.

Of course, some projects do better than others. But compare this to shaleprofile.com wells.

There was very little drilling in our field from 1987 to 2003. There has been very little since 2015. Century plus year old stripper field.

Shale is expensive oil.

shallow sand x Ignored says: 12/14/2019 at 8:37 pm
There have also been many reclamation projects in our field during 2005-2014 of abandoned wells wherein the producers went bust in the 1990s, with 1998 being a knockout blow.

We took over 2 wells drilled in the 1950s they were abandoned in 1998. We just had to equip them and build a new tank battery. We also took over three wells also drilled in the 1950s where we had to do the same, plus plug the injection well and convert one producer to an injector. These work well at $55-65 WTI also.

I can also point to many projects developed in our field in the 1980s where cumulative per well has topped 40K BO to date.

Conventional oil is a much better deal than shale usually when you can find it. And also when you aren't trying to pay for 8 figure CEO pay, skyscrapers and jets out of it.

Shale just has the scale. Huge scale. Worldwide game changing size.

HuntingtonBeach x Ignored says: 12/16/2019 at 10:37 am
Shallow, I can't thank you enough. Alot to digest here. My first glance gave me the feeling shale drilling dollars are about half as productive. Maybe you have a better number.

When a new field is drilled, is it always under pressure without the cost of lifting it from the hole? Then once the pressure is exhausted it becomes a stripper?

A lot of the Huntington Beach field lays under the ocean. There is over a mile long row of wells along the shoreline. I'm assuming they go horizontal under the ocean. Only a few wells have lift Jacks. Can strippers wells go horizontal?

shallow sand x Ignored says: 12/16/2019 at 1:13 pm
There isn't enough down hole pressure here for natural flow. Everything goes on pumping unit immediately and injection wells are also drilled at the same time as production wells.

To put into perspective, the field was originally drilled over 100 years ago. Waterflood was initiated on a large scale right after WW2. Many wells were plugged in the late 1960s-early 1970s when oil prices were low. The field was redrilled in the late 1970s – early 1980s. Little activity after 1986, until prices took off during the Iraq War.

For example, we operate a lease that was originally drilled in the 1950s. It was plugged out in 1972. In 1979-81, all of the plugged wells were drilled out (casing had not been pulled). New injection wells were drilled.

Cumulative from 9 producing wells since 1979 is over 140K BO with production currently at 5.5 BOPD. It is difficult to tell what these wells produced from 1953-1972, because they were part of a larger unitized waterflood project. Our guess is around 200-250K BO during that time frame.

Only a small company would be interested in 9 wells making 5.5 BOPD, but they have been economic even during the worst part of 2016 (barely during Q1 – 2016).

There haven't been HZ wells drilled in the shallow zones (1,500' and below). However, there has been some success with 1,800'-5,000' TVD hz wells. Not sure of the economics.

There has been success with slick water fracks in deeper vertical wells also.

shallow sand x Ignored says: 12/17/2019 at 11:25 am
Correction. Project discussed above was not economic Q1 2016.

Had not included overhead, which is primarily labor. Labor is usually the major expense with stripper wells.

[Dec 21, 2019] OPEC November Production Data " Peak Oil Barrel

Dec 21, 2019 | peakoilbarrel.com

Mike Sutherland x Ignored says: 12/18/2019 at 12:23 am

"Peak in tight oil will be 2024 to 2026."

No way. It's already here, and there will be no rebound. BTW I did carefully read your comments above Dennis and thank you for your time to respond. As always, your responses are significantly better than what my caustic remarks deserve.

As has been said many times, money does not equal geology. Even if a new tranche of 'investment' could be begged, borrowed, or stolen (likely stolen) it would be spent to build new drilling equipment, pay for new leases/roads/infrastructure, with all of it into new wells that will produce less than any before them. If inflation is a factor (and it is), the borrowed & eventually defaulted upon money will buy less than before.

Shale started bad, and it will stay bad. No shale well was a gusher instead, they all needed huge horsepower, millions of gallons of water, hundreds of tons of sand, and lots of investment dollars just to get started. None of these were ever a Texas gusher. To me, this is no business model to follow, it is a debacle.

We have seen hundreds of shale companies go bankrupt over the last couple of years. Going forward, there won't be hundreds of bankruptcies because there won't be hundreds of shalies to go bankrupt. Like the motorcar companies of old, it'll go from dozens of market participants to a handful through M&A and bankruptcies. There is still plenty of surface carnage to come and it is far from over. Bear in mind, this is largely the same crowd that kept exclaiming a dropping 'breakeven' price from 2010 forward, to the point where $20 was wildly shouted from the rooftops (particularly from John Mauldin) as the point of profitability. Of course, none of it was true. Now we see at long last that $60 (and probably $75) was the true breakeven point. Lots of C-suite executives should be in jail for their malfeasance, but of course none are and with the exception of Aubrey McClendon, all of them are still 'at large'.

So with all this in mind and to round off a long screech, I summarize by saying that 2019 is peak shale.

TonyEriksen x Ignored says: 12/18/2019 at 1:51 am
Peak shale is either 2019 or 2020. Ovi and I guess that peak shale month February or March 2020.
Eulenspiegel x Ignored says: 12/18/2019 at 5:27 am
This is a good guess in my opinion.

The small companies, which have gotten only B class land will have to reduce, leading the decline.

The bigger ones can continue to grow to a certain amount – but using up their A class land. Especially all non-Permian will see this very soon and start declining. So Permian growth soon will not be enough to keep up all shale decline – and this at the cost of the Permian Tier A claims.

Oil production from shale will have a long future if prices settle at 100$ – but with worse land it will just not be a bit boom.

A boom means high drilling everything costs, in a long calm era everything has more normal prices (why should a truck driver carrying fertiliser to farm tows earn much less than a truck driver delivering sand to a hole). And so finally some money can be earned in the oil spot.

If the Democrats take over and get more green, taxes on oil production will be increased anyway, and tax credits cut – so more calm drilling anyway. This is a big "if", I don't know how the D – R battle stands now.

[Dec 21, 2019] It (Shale) still reminds me of the old joke, "Well, we're still losing money with every unit sold, so let's just make it up with volume."

Dec 21, 2019 | peakoilbarrel.com

TonyEriksen

x Ignored says: 12/18/2019 at 6:28 am
" The golden age of U.S. shale is far from over, with an expected slowdown in the Permian Basin likely to be temporary, according to the new U.S. Energy Secretary.

The shale boom helped transform the U.S. into a net exporter of crude and petroleum products in September from a major importer a decade ago. Even as growth is set to slow next year in the Permian and elsewhere as drillers respond to investor demands for capital restraint, Dan Brouillette said the shale boom has further to run."

Shale boom has further to run. Time will tell.

https://www.rigzone.com/news/wire/us_energy_sec_shrugs_off_permian_oil_slowdown-18-dec-2019-160598-article/

Paulo x Ignored says: 12/18/2019 at 6:09 pm
It (Shale) still reminds me of the old joke, "Well, we're still losing money with every unit sold, so let's just make it up with volume."

[Dec 21, 2019] Permian Drillers Are Struggling To Keep Output Flat

Dec 21, 2019 | peakoilbarrel.com

SRSrocco x Ignored says: 12/12/2019 at 1:27 pm

Permian Drillers Are Struggling To Keep Output Flat

Newer wells in the Permian see their oil and gas production declining much faster than older wells, and operators will need to drill a large number of wells just to keep current production levels, an IHS Markit analysis showed on Thursday.

IHS Markit has analyzed what it calls the "base decline" rate, calculating the actual or expected production of all the operating wells at the start of the year and tracking their cumulative decline by the end of the year. Over the past decade, the base decline rate of the more than 150,000 producing oil and gas wells in the Permian has "increased dramatically," according to the analysis.

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Permian-Drillers-Are-Struggling-To-Keep-Output-Flat.html

LOL,

Steve

[Dec 21, 2019] New wells depleting fasting than old wells partly explains why the monthly legacy loss keeps increasing from month to month. It's now close to 600kbd/month, according to EIA DPR.

Dec 21, 2019 | peakoilbarrel.com

TonyEriksen x Ignored says: 12/14/2019 at 12:01 am

dclonghorn,

Your article goes into a lot of depth. I noticed these statements:
"The main driver of Legacy Loss is Total Production, which is logical.
In Permian, higher Initial Production (IPt) increased legacy loss, probably because new wells deplete faster than old wells"

New wells depleting fasting than old wells partly explains why the monthly legacy loss keeps increasing from month to month. It's now close to 600kbd/month, according to EIA DPR.

The chart below from the article shows Jan 2015 as Peak Shale No 1 as legacy loss was above new monthly shale production. The author says when "red line gets above new monthly initial production then that's Peak Shale No 2", which might happen as soon as early 2020. This is shown by the dashed line "IPt minus Legacy Loss" reaching zero, which means Peak Shale No 2. The author says that this could happen if WTI stays at $55.

dclonghorn x Ignored says: 12/13/2019 at 10:01 pm
Interesting article on seeking alpha about why Opec can now push up the price without starting a third shale boom.

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4310727-analysis-why-opec-can-push-up-price-and-not-risk-third-shale-boom

The basic premise is that productivity per completion has stalled, and there is no longer a huge overhang of cheap frac spreads keeping the frac market oversupplied.

[Dec 21, 2019] Shale finances in the tank: $300 billion of already accumulated and un-repayable debt, and Wall Street financiers demanding repayment on their investments,

Dec 21, 2019 | peakoilbarrel.com

Mike Sutherland x Ignored says: 12/17/2019 at 1:00 am

And what, Dennis? How, pray tell, will 17 million horsepower -and other infrastructure including manpower – magically re-appear in 2020 and inflate another peak? With existing shale finances in the tank, $300 billion of already accumulated and un-repayable debt, and Wall Street financiers demanding repayment on their investments, your prognostication for a rebound has a tinge of 'wildly unrealistic' about it.
HuntingtonBeach x Ignored says: 12/17/2019 at 2:27 am
ExxonMoble boe per day is 2.25 millon and has a market value of $300 billion. The tight oil shale play over the last decade has increased production 7 million bpd. Is $300 billion of debt really out of line? Do you have CFO experience with a multi-billion dollar company?

In the trucking industry the major freight companies running 24/7 turn their tractor fleet over on a 5 year rotation receiving 20 cents on the dollar at retirement. Ready mix trucks are turned over after 10 years rotation at 20 cents or less on the dollar running 12/5. When the business environment is good. It's easy to delay retirement a little to meet demand. When times are difficult, the old trucks sit in the yard and can be stripped for parts.

I have to question your hair on fire comment. Do you know the life expectancy of a drilling rig for a large corporation ? The related article is talking about retiring 10 percent. That's a 10 year rotation. Maybe replacement is just cost efficient verses down time. The big boys don't work on the same time frame as the little guy.

shallow sand x Ignored says: 12/17/2019 at 9:27 am
HB. $300 billion divided by 7 million comes to over $42,000 per barrel of debt. IMO that is a high level of debt unless oil prices recover to 2011-14 levels.

Only the best oil production is selling for that in our part of the world and that is production with a decline rate of 3% per year or less.

Regarding XOM, keep in mind that includes not just the upstream, but the midstream and down stream, both of which are substantial.

XOM also has substantial international upstream assets which are generating substantial cash flow at $60s Brent.

[Dec 21, 2019] The only reason there is any production of shale oil at all is that there is a combination of cheap money and a plethora of desperate investors starved for yield

Dec 21, 2019 | peakoilbarrel.com

Mike Sutherland

x Ignored says: 12/17/2019 at 1:33 am
The only reason there is any production of shale oil at all is that there is a combination of cheap money and a plethora of desperate investors starved for yield. Well guess what, the investors want a return on their investment and the cheap money is drying up. So, artificial life support is being withdrawn and the patient is now expected to get off the emergency room gurney and start working for his keep. We shall see how that turns out.

This whole exercise in perfidy is much like Uber, that has never made a profit to date, and yet was supported by billions of investor dollars. The whole ignominious affair put hundreds of thousands of cabbies into destitution and bankruptcy, i.e those who didn't enjoy the largess of investors willing to put up with loss-making operations for years on end.

Uber and Shale; the twin shitstorms of inequity, capital misalocation, and widespread collateral damage to their respective proximal markets.

Hickory x Ignored says: 12/17/2019 at 11:32 am
I agree with your concerns Mike. It seems to me that debt will be accumulated in the system until it needs to be defaulted on. The governments of the world have become expert on kicking the can down the road.
But that path will end one day, perhaps suddenly. Default will come via one of several mechanisms- currency devaluation and debt write-off, for example. Whatever method, it will severely hurt those who were expecting pensions or government payments (Medicare/SS), or to live on savings or investment yield. These things will be massively de-valuated. Negative interest rates you have been hearing about are just the early symptom of this process. A president who cannot release his tax returns because he has a long pattern of committing severe financial crimes, is another. The extreme accumulation of wealth among the super wealthy is yet another.
I have given up expecting a 'fair' or rational game.
Ron Patterson x Ignored says: 12/16/2019 at 8:52 am
The EIA has December 2019 C+C production at 12.99 million bpd. They have December 2020 at 13.28 million bpd. That is an increase, December to December of .29 million bpd. Quite a comedown from the over 2 million bpd increase in 2018.

[Dec 21, 2019] The problem with shale is that it is expensive oil, despite what companies such as XOM and CVX put out publicly. However, it has a big advantage in that it is onshore, USA.

Dec 21, 2019 | peakoilbarrel.com

shallow sand x Ignored says: 12/13/2019 at 8:19 am

HB. The problem with shale is that it is expensive oil, despite what companies such as XOM and CVX put out publicly. However, it has a big advantage in that it is onshore, USA.

I think part of the reason that XOM, CVX, COP, MRO and other companies with worldwide operations keep at it is because it is onshore lower 48.

I remember when everything that these companies were doing was international. It required employees to live in some less than desirable places. Recall the stories I have related here about employees of these companies having less than 24 hours to leave Libya, or being herded out of the office in Venezuela at gunpoint.

Working offshore can't be a picnic. Also, the liability is great, see BP's disaster.

The management and employees want shale to work very badly. And it does at a high enough oil price. Unfortunately, the price hasn't been there since 2014. But they keep making stuff up because they don't want to be sent back to the Middle East and other tough places, or work offshore deepwater.

But what has been bad for the companies has been great for consumers. I can't believe how much Bernie and Elizabeth ignore the benefit shale has been to the US economy.

What would have happened without US going from less than 5 million BOPD to almost 13 million in eleven years? I suspect a lot of bad things. My primary beef is that the companies lie about what price they need for shale to work and completed too many wells when prices were low.

I think maybe shale is finally figuring out they need above my preferred $55-65 WTI price band. We have been slightly below that and it appears things are really slowing down.

[Dec 21, 2019] Interesting article by HFI Research yesterday, making the case for the start of a multi year bull market for oil

Dec 21, 2019 | peakoilbarrel.com

TonyEriksen x Ignored says: 12/13/2019 at 5:14 pm

Interesting article by HFI Research yesterday, making the case for the start of a multi year bull market for oil.
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4312385-oil-things-are-starting-to-look-brighter

Also lots of Goldman Sachs charts, with the one below showing a peak plateau from 2022 to 2025. The legend is missing 3 shale plays. The bottom dark blue is Delaware (Permian), Midland (Permian) above and Bakken, the grey.

My own guess is US shale oil will peak in 2021.

[Dec 21, 2019] Energy crisis looms as forecasts ignore US shale oil quality

Dec 21, 2019 | peakoilbarrel.com

Survivalist x Ignored says: 12/19/2019 at 3:44 pm

Energy crisis looms as forecasts ignore US shale oil quality

https://www.anasalhajji.com/publications/oil-market-general/energy-crisis-looms-forecasts-ignore-us-shale-oil-quality

Freddy Gulestø x Ignored says: 12/20/2019 at 4:30 am
Good article, I believe it will not only be related to US shale oil quality but also a more or less collapse in US shale , to use the shale pioneer Mark Papas words from 2019 " the best in US shale is behind " but the investors choose to not believe him as it not fits with what the shale producers had presented them. Perhaps this time wall street will learn a lesson that might be quite exspensive. I am waiting for how much Exxon will write down of their assets in Permian, that might be higher than Chevron have annonsed.
Dennis Coyne x Ignored says: 12/20/2019 at 10:24 am
Tight oil output will not increase as much as forecast by IEA and OPEC so it is not likely a refining wall at the World level will be be reached. As to demand outrunning supply, when that occurs oil prices will rise to a level that demand is destroyed to the point that supply will equal consumption as it must over the long term. Demand (consumption) cannot be higher than supply (output) for very long as stocks cannot be less than zero plus pipeline fill and minimum storage tank levels needed to keep the overall refinery and distribution system functioning. Oil prices will rise from 2020 to 2030, of that we can be sure, unless a severe World recession occurs (I expect this to begin in 2030+/-2 years and last for 2 to 4 years if World economists remember their Keynesian economics, otherwise it could be 5 to 7 years, if nonsense like fiscal austerity in the face of severe recessions is recommended and we are foolish enough to forget the lessons of 1929-1933.)
Watcher x Ignored says: 12/20/2019 at 2:05 pm
Oil quality is not the way to address or label the issue. Quality is a word traditionally used in oil to describe sulphur content, not a scarcity of middle distillates in the yield. Needs a different word.

Further, from the article, diesel is not the consumption growth heavy constituent. It's jet fuel. Up 3.7% last year. Gasoline was up almost 1%.

[Dec 21, 2019] The Economics Debate, again and again

Dec 21, 2017 | rodrik.typepad.com
The Economics Debate, again and again The debate on the economics profession – its alleged ills and failings -- abates at times, but never ends. A recent piece in The Guardian taking the profession to task for its lack of reform has prompted a response from a group of economists. I thought it was time to re-up my own views on this debate, in the form of two sets of ten commandments. The first set is directed at economists, and the second to non-economists.
Ten commandments for economists
1. Economics is a collection of models; cherish their diversity.
2. It's a model, not the model.
3. Make your model simple enough to isolate specific causes and how they work, but not so simple that it leaves out key interactions among causes.
4. Unrealistic assumptions are OK; unrealistic critical assumptions are not OK.
5. The world is (almost) always second-best.
6. To map a model to the real world you need explicit empirical diagnostics, which is more craft than science.
7. Do not confuse agreement among economists for certainty about how the world works.
8. It's OK to say "I don't know" when asked about the economy or policy.
9. Efficiency is not everything.
10. Substituting your values for the public's is an abuse of your expertise.
Ten commandments for non-economists
1. Economics is a collection of models with no predetermined conclusions; reject any arguments otherwise.
2. Do not criticize an economist's model because of its assumptions; ask how the results would change if certain problematic assumptions were more realistic.
3. Analysis requires simplicity; beware of incoherence that passes itself off as complexity.
4. Do not let math scare you; economists use math not because they are smart, but because they are not smart enough.
5. When an economist makes a recommendation, ask what makes him/her sure the underlying model applies to the case at hand.
6. When an economist uses the term "economic welfare," ask what s/he means by it.
7. Beware that an economist may speak differently in public than in the seminar room.
8. Economists don't (all) worship markets, but they know better how they work than you do.
9. If you think all economists think alike, attend one of their seminars.
10. If you think economists are especially rude to non-economists, attend one of their seminars.

I have spent enough time around non-economists to know that their criticism often misses the mark. In particular, many non-economists tend not to understand the value of parsimonious modeling (especially of the mathematical kind). Their typical riposte is: "but it is more complicated than that." It is of course. But without abstraction from detail, there cannot be any useful analysis.

Economists, on the other hand, are very good at modeling but not so good at navigating among their models. In particular, they often confuse a model, for the model. A big part of the problem is that the implicit scientific method to which they subscribe is one in which they are constantly striving to achieve the "best" model.

Macroeconomists are particularly bad at this, which accounts in part for their dismal performance. In macroeconomics, there is too much of "is the right model the classical or the Keynesian one" (and their variants), and too little of "how do we know whether it is the Keynesian or the classical model that is the most relevant and applicable at this point in time in this particular context."

Posted at 10:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

[Dec 21, 2019] Keep an eye on 10 year US treasuries. If they become just a little less liquid and yields rise as i believe they will

Dec 21, 2019 | peakoilbarrel.com

HHH x Ignored says: 12/12/2019 at 11:27 pm

Price of oil does have problem that will play out over next 6-8 months. Without a trade war and Brexit hanging over markets. There isn't a whole lot of reason to be holding government bonds which yield next to nothing or less than nothing in some cases. Fed is buying bills so Repo market won't implode into another 2008. Only problem is they need to be buying coupons or treasuries also. They are buying some treasuries but it's not near enough to hold interest rates down. Yields on debt are going to rise without something like a trade war holding them down. That is a problem if your long oil.

Keep an eye on 10 year US treasuries. If they become just a little less liquid and yields rise as i believe they will. These OPEC cuts aren't going to mean as much as some might think.

[Dec 21, 2019] Syria Accuses US Of Stealing Over 40 Tons Of Its Gold by Eric Zuesse

Mar 08, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

by Tyler Durden Fri, 03/08/2019 - 23:55 240 SHARES Authored by Eric Zuesse via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

The Syrian National News Agency headlined on February 26th, "Gold deal between United States and Daesh" (Daesh is ISIS) and reported that,

Information from local sources said that US army helicopters have already transported the gold bullions under cover of darkness on Sunday [February 24th], before transporting them to the United States.

The sources said that tens of tons that Daesh had been keeping in their last hotbed in al-Baghouz area in Deir Ezzor countryside have been handed to the Americans, adding up to other tons of gold that Americans have found in other hideouts for Daesh, making the total amount of gold taken by the Americans to the US around 50 tons, leaving only scraps for the SDF [Kurdish] militias that serve them [the US operation].

Recently, sources said that the area where Daesh leaders and members have barricaded themselves in, contains around 40 tons of gold and tens of millions of dollars.

Allegedly, "US occupation forces in the Syrian al-Jazeera area made a deal with Daesh terrorists, by which Washington gets tens of tons of gold that the terror organization had stolen, in exchange for providing safe passage for the terrorists and their leaders from the areas in Deir Ezzor where they are located."

ISIS was financing its operations largely by the theft of oil from the oil wells in the Deir Ezzor area, Syria's oil-producing region, and they transported and sold this stolen oil via their allied forces, through Turkey, which was one of those US allies trying to overthrow Syria's secular Government and install a Sunni fundamentalist regime that would be ruled from Riyadh (i.e., controlled by the Saud family) . This gold is the property of the Syrian Government, which owns all that oil and the oil wells, which ISIS had captured (stolen), and then sold. Thus, this gold is from sale of that stolen black-market oil, which was Syria's property.

The US Government claims to be anti-ISIS, but actually didn't even once bomb ISIS in Syria until Russia started bombing ISIS in Syria on 30 September 2015, and the US had actually been secretly arming ISIS there so as to help ISIS and especially Al Qaeda (and the US was strongly protecting Al Qaeda in Syria ) to overthrow Syria's secular and non-sectarian Government. Thus, whereas Russia started bombing ISIS in Syria on 30 September 2015, America (having become embarrassed) started bombing ISIS in Syria on 16 November 2015 . The US Government's excuse was "This is our first strike against tanker trucks, and to minimize risks to civilians, we conducted a leaflet drop prior to the strike." They pretended it was out of compassion -- not in order to extend for as long as possible ISIS's success in taking over territory in Syria. (And, under Trump, on the night of 2 March 2019, the US rained down upon ISIS in northeast Syria the excruciating and internationally banned white phosphorous to burn ISIS and its hostages alive, which Trump's predecessor Barack Obama had routinely done to burn alive the residents in Donetsk and other parts of eastern former Ukraine where voters had voted more than 90% for the democratically elected Ukrainian President whom Obama's coup in Ukraine had replaced . It was a way to eliminate some of the most-undesired voters -- people who must never again be voting in a Ukrainian national election, not even if that region subsequently does become conquered by the post-coup, US-imposed, regime. The land there is wanted; its residents certainly are not wanted by the Obama-imposed regime.) America's line was: Russia just isn't as 'compassionate' as America. Zero Hedge aptly headlined "'Get Out Of Your Trucks And Run Away': US Gives ISIS 45 Minute Warning On Oil Tanker Strikes" . Nobody exceeds the United States Government in sheer hypocrisy.

The US Government evidently thinks that the public are fools, idiots. America's allies seem to be constantly amazed at how successful that approach turns out to be.

Indeed, on 28 November 2012, Syria News headlined "Emir of Qatar & Prime Minister of Turkey Steal Syrian Oil Machinery in Broad Daylight" and presented video allegedly showing it (but unfortunately providing no authentication of the date and locale of that video).

Jihadists were recruited from throughout the world to fight against Syria's secular Government. Whereas ISIS was funded mainly by black-market sales of oil from conquered areas, the Al-Qaeda-led groups were mainly funded by the Sauds and other Arab royal families and their retinues, the rest of their aristocracy. On 13 December 2013, BBC headlined "Guide to the Syrian rebels" and opened "There are believed to be as many as 1,000 armed opposition groups in Syria, commanding an estimated 100,000 fighters." Except in the Kurdish areas in Syria's northeast, almost all of those fighters were being led by Al Qaeda's Syrian Branch, al-Nusra. Britain's Center on Religion & Politics headlined on 21 December 2015, "Ideology and Objectives of the Syrian Rebellion" and reported: "If ISIS is defeated, there are at least 65,000 fighters belonging to other Salafi-jihadi groups ready to take its place." Almost all of those 65,000 were trained and are led by Syria's Al Qaeda (Nusra), which was protected by the US

In September 2016 a UK official "FINAL REPORT OF THE TASK FORCE ON COMBATING TERRORIST AND FOREIGN FIGHTER TRAVEL" asserted that, "Over 25,000 foreign fighters have traveled to the battlefield to enlist with Islamist terrorist groups, including at least 4,500 Westerners. More than 250 individuals from the United States have also joined." Even just 25,000 (that official lowest estimate) was a sizable US proxy-army of religious fanatics to overthrow Syria's Government.

On 26 November 2015, the first of Russia's videos of Russia's bombing ISIS oil trucks headed into Turkey was bannered at a US military website "Russia Airstrike on ISIS Oil Tankers" , and exactly a month later, on 26 December 2015, Britain's Daily Express headlined "WATCH: Russian fighter jets smash ISIS oil tankers after spotting 12,000 at Turkish border" . This article, reporting around twelve thousand ISIS oil-tanker trucks heading into Turkey, opened: "The latest video, released by the Russian defence ministry, shows the tankers bunched together as they make their way along the road. They are then blasted by the fighter jet." The US military had nothing comparable to offer to its 'news'-media. Britain's Financial Times headlined on 14 October 2015, "Isis Inc: how oil fuels the jihadi terrorists" . Only America's allies were involved in this commerce with ISIS -- no nation that supported Syria's Government was participating in this black market of stolen Syrian goods. So, it's now clear that a lot of that stolen oil was sold for gold as Syria's enemy-nations' means of buying that oil from ISIS. They'd purchase it from ISIS, but not from Syria's Government, the actual owner.

On 30 November 2015 Israel's business-news daily Globes News Service bannered "Israel has become the main buyer for oil from ISIS controlled territory, report" , and reported:

An estimated 20,000-40,000 barrels of oil are produced daily in ISIS controlled territory generating $1-1.5 million daily profit for the terrorist organization. The oil is extracted from Dir A-Zur in Syria and two fields in Iraq and transported to the Kurdish city of Zakhu in a triangle of land near the borders of Syria, Iraq and Turkey. Israeli and Turkish mediators come to the city and when prices are agreed, the oil is smuggled to the Turkish city of Silop marked as originating from Kurdish regions of Iraq and sold for $15-18 per barrel (WTI and Brent Crude currently sell for $41 and $45 per barrel) to the Israeli mediator, a man in his 50s with dual Greek-Israeli citizenship known as Dr. Farid. He transports the oil via several Turkish ports and then onto other ports, with Israel among the main destinations.

After all, Israel too wants to overthrow Syria's secular, non-sectarian Government, which would be replaced by rulers selected by the Saud family , who are the US Government's main international ally .

On 9 November 2014, when Turkey was still a crucial US ally trying to overthrow Syria's secular Government (and this was before the failed 15 July 2016 US-backed coup-attempt to overthrow and replace Turkey's Government so as to impose an outright US stooge), Turkey was perhaps ISIS's most crucial international backer . Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's leader, had received no diploma beyond k-12, and all of that schooling was in Sunni schools and based on the Quran . (He pretended, however, to have a university diploma.) On 15 July 2015, AWD News headlined "Turkish President's daughter heads a covert medical corps to help ISIS injured members" . On 2 December 2015, a Russian news-site headlined "Defense Ministry: Erdogan and his family are involved in the illegal supply of oil" ; so, the Erdogan family itself was religiously committed to ISIS's fighters against Syria, and they were key to the success of the US operation against Syrians -- theft from Syrians. The great investigative journalist Christof Lehmann, who was personally acquainted with many of the leading political figures in Africa and the Middle East, headlined on 22 June 2014, "US Embassy in Ankara Headquarter for ISIS War on Iraq – Hariri Insider" , and he reported that the NATO-front the Atlantic Council had held a meeting in Turkey during 22-23 of November 2013 at which high officials of the US and allied governments agreed that they were going to take over Syria's oil, and that they even were threatening Iraq's Government for its not complying with their demands to cooperate on overthrowing Syria's Government. So, behind the scenes, this conquest of Syria was the clear aim by the US and all of its allies.

The US had done the same thing when it took over Ukraine by a brutal coup in February 2014 : It grabbed the gold. Iskra News in Russian reported, on 7 March 2014 , that "At 2 a.m. this morning ... an unmarked transport plane was on the runway at Borosipol Airport" near Kiev in the west, and that, "According to airport staff, before the plane came to the airport, four trucks and two Volkswagen minibuses arrived, all the truck license plates missing." This was as translated by Michel Chossudovsky at Global Research headlining on 14 March, "Ukraine's Gold Reserves Secretly Flown Out and Confiscated by the New York Federal Reserve?" in which he noted that, when asked, "A spokesman for the New York Fed said simply, 'Any inquiry regarding gold accounts should be directed to the account holder.'" The load was said to be "more than 40 heavy boxes." Chossudovsky noted that, "The National Bank of Ukraine (Central Bank) estimated Ukraine's gold reserves in February to be worth $1.8 billion dollars." It was allegedly 36 tons. The US, according to Victoria Nuland ( Obama's detail-person overseeing the coup ) had invested around $5 billion in the coup. Was her installed Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk cleaning out the nation's gold reserves in order to strip the nation so that the nation's steep indebtedness for Russian gas would never be repaid to Russia's oligarchs? Or was he doing it as a payoff for Nuland's having installed him? Or both? In any case: Russia was being squeezed by this fascist Ukrainian-American ploy.

On 14 November 2014, a Russian youtube headlined "In Ukraine, there is no more gold and currency reserves" and reported that there is "virtually no gold. There is a small amount of gold bars, but it's just 1%" of before the coup. Four days later, bannered "Ukraine Admits Its Gold Is Gone: 'There Is Almost No Gold Left In The Central Bank Vault'" . From actually 42.3 tons just before the coup, it was now far less than one ton.

The Syria operation was about oil, gold, and guns. However, most of America's support was to Al-Qaeda-led jihadists, not to ISIS-jihadists. As the great independent investigative journalist Dilyana Gaytandzhieva reported on 2 July 2017 :

"In December of last year while reporting on the battle of Aleppo as a correspondent for Bulgarian media I found and filmed 9 underground warehouses full of heavy weapons with Bulgaria as their country of origin. They were used by Al Nusra Front (Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria designated as a terrorist organization by the UN)."

The US had acquired weapons from around the world, and shipped them (and Gaytandzhieva's report even displayed the transit-documents) through a network of its embassies, into Syria, for Nusra-led forces inside Syria. Almost certainly, the US Government's central command center for the entire arms-smuggling operation was the world's largest embassy, which is America's embassy in Baghdad.

Furthermore, On 8 March 2013, Richard Spenser of Britain's Telegraph reported that Croatia's Jutarnji List newspaper had reported that "3,000 tons of weapons dating back to the former Yugoslavia have been sent in 75 planeloads from Zagreb airport to the rebels, largely via Jordan since November. The airlift of dated but effective Yugoslav-made weapons meets key concerns of the West, and especially Turkey and the United States, who want the rebels to be better armed to drive out the Assad regime."

Also, a September 2014 study by Conflict Armaments Research (CAR), titled "Islamic State Weapons in Iraq and Syria" , reported that not only east-European, but even US-made, weapons were being "captured from Islamic State forces" by Kurds who were working for the Americans, and that this was very puzzling and disturbing to those Kurds, who were risking their lives to fight against those jihadists.

In December 2017, CAR headlined "Weapons of the Islamic State" and reported that "this materiel was rapidly captured by IS forces, only to be deployed by the group against international coalition forces." The assumption made there was that the transfer of weapons to ISIS was all unintentional.

That report ignored contrary evidence, which I summed up on 2 September 2017 headlining "Russian TV Reports US Secretly Backing ISIS in Syria" , and reporting there also from the Turkish Government an admission that the US was working with Turkey to funnel surviving members of Iraq's ISIS into the Deir Ezzor part of Syria to help defeat Syria's Government in that crucial oil-producing region. Moreover, at least one member of the 'rebels' that the US was training at Al Tanf on Syria's Jordanian border had quit because his American trainers were secretly diverting some of their weapons to ISIS. Furthermore: why hadn't the US bombed Syrian ISIS before Russia entered the Syrian war on 30 September 2015? America talked lots about its supposed effort against ISIS, but why did US wait till 16 November 2015 before taking action, "'Get Out Of Your Trucks And Run Away': US Gives ISIS 45 Minute Warning On Oil Tanker Strikes" ?

So, regardless of whether the US Government uses jihadists as its proxy-forces, or uses fascists as its proxy-forces, it grabs the gold -- and grabs the oil, and takes whatever else it can.

This is today's form of imperialism.

Grab what you can, and run. And call it 'fighting for freedom and democracy and human rights and against corruption'. And the imperial regime's allies watch in amazement, as they take their respective cuts of the loot. That's the deal, and they call it 'fighting for freedom and democracy and human rights and against corruption around the world'. That's the way it works. International gangland. That's the reality, while most of the public think it's instead really "fighting for freedom and democracy and human rights and against corruption around the world." For example, as RT reported on Sunday , March 3rd, about John Bolton's effort at regime-change in Venezuela, Bolton said: "I'd like to see as broad a coalition as we can put together to replace Maduro, to replace the whole corrupt regime,' Bolton told CNN's Jake Tapper." Trump's regime wants to bring clean and democratic government to the poor Venezuelans, just like Bush's did to the Iraqis, and Obama's did to the Libyans and to the Syrians and to the Ukrainians. And Trump, who pretends to oppose Obama's regime-change policies, alternately expands them and shrinks them. Though he's slightly different from Obama on domestic policies, he never, as the US President, condemns any of his predecessors' many coups and invasions, all of which were disasters for everybody except America's and allies' billionaires. They're all in on the take.

The American public were suckered into destroying Iraq in 2003, Libya in 2011, Syria in 2011-now, and so many other countries, and still haven't learned anything, other than to keep trusting the allegations of this lying and psychopathically vicious and super-aggressive Government and of its stenographic 'news'-media. When is enough finally enough ? Never? If not never, then when ? Or do most people never learn? Or maybe they don't really care. Perhaps that's the problem.

On March 4th, the Jerusalem Post bannered "IRAN AND TURKEY MEDIA PUSH CONSPIRACY THEORIES ABOUT US, ISIS: Claims pushed by Syrian regime media assert that US gave ISIS safe passage out of Baghuz in return for gold, a conspiracy picked up in Tehran and Ankara" , and simply assumed that it's false -- but provided no evidence to back their speculation up -- and they closed by asserting "The conspiracies, which are manufactured in Damascus, are disseminated to Iraq and Turkey, both of whom oppose US policy in eastern Syria." Why do people even subscribe to such 'news'-sources as that? The key facts are hidden, the speculation that's based on their own prejudices replaces whatever facts exist. Do the subscribers, to that, simply want to be deceived? Are most people that stupid?

Back on 21 December 2018, one of the US regime's top 'news'-media, the Washington Post, had headlined "Retreating ISIS army smuggled a fortune in cash and gold out of Iraq and Syria" and reported that "the Islamic State is sitting on a mountain of stolen cash and gold that its leaders stashed away to finance terrorist operations." So, it's not as if there hadn't been prior reason to believe that some day some of the gold would be found after America's defeat in Syria. Maybe they just hadn't expected this to happen quite so soon. But the regime will find ways to hoodwink its public, in the future, just as it has in the past. Unless the public wises-up (if that's even possible).

[Dec 21, 2019] According to Dmitry Orlov it's the x10 rate spike on these REPOS that signifies that the final act is underway.

Dec 21, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

john , Dec 20 2019 11:39 utc | 80

psychohistorian @ 42 says:

Last Thursday/Friday the Fed published a $500 billion dollar REPO backstop plan to cover private bank positioning through the end of the year

according to Dmitry Orlov it's the x10 rate spike on these REPOS that signifies that the final act is underway. So, for folks paying attention to the prediction market, perhaps now is the last moment to take heed.

Looking at the numbers for October and November, the Fed monetized over half (50.7%) of new US government debt. A straight-line projection is that if it took the Fed to go from 0% to 50% in four months, then it will go from 50% to 100% in another four -- by April Fool's 2020. But who's to say that the increase will be linear rather than exponential? Whichever it is, the trend is unmistakable: the market in US government debt -- once the deepest and most liquid market in the world -- is dead. The only thing propping up the value of USTs is the Fed's printing press. And the only thing propping up the value of the output of the Fed's printing press is what is it, exactly? Exactly

so, April Fool's day 2020, the final act ?

[Dec 20, 2019] I think we daily meet plenty of individuals who'd sell their mothers, and maybe kill lives, for pennies. They are like machines not even conscious of what they are doing.

Dec 20, 2019 | www.unz.com

Anon [491] Disclaimer , says: December 19, 2019 at 11:43 am GMT

@Colin Wright Intelligence and bias for co-operation may lead some groups to far greater achievements, in scams as well as in everything else.

That aside, I think we daily meet plenty of individuals who'd sell their mothers, and maybe kill lives, for pennies. They are like machines not even conscious of what they are doing.

I meet them daily, in whatever activity, and none of them is Jewish. Also their shops, businesses, and so on are always the ones that prosper more: people love being scammed, and people love the show of power implicit in making you pay some extra for the service you requested, and still keeping plenty of customers with you.

So, it's the usual with Joyce (and not only Joyce of course). You take something that is human, talk of Jews, point to that something in Jews, and pretend, trusting that your readers will pretend the same, that it's a Jewish-specific something.
Because if you were to say: everyone does this, everywhere, but when Jews do it it's just on a larger scale, then you'd be shining light on the fact that what changes with Jews is just skills, and that they are intelligent enough to co-operate more than the others.
Like when Mac Donald speaks of Jewish self-deception.
I feel I am swimming in self-deception everytime I talk with people (more so with women), and they aren't Jewish. Do people do anything, but self-deceive?
So?

lavoisier , says: Website December 19, 2019 at 12:00 pm GMT
@Colin Wright Bardon will counter with Buffet and the Koch brothers.

But in fairness, the Koch brothers are no damn good for the nation either.

Robjil , says: December 19, 2019 at 12:09 pm GMT
Paul Singer is a world wide terrorist. Here is what he did to Argentina.

https://qz.com/1001650/hedge-fund-billionaire-paul-singers-ruthless-strategies-include-bullying-ceos-suing-governments-and-seizing-their-navys-ships/

Elliott Management is perhaps most notorious for its 15-year battle with the government of Argentina, whose bonds were owned by the hedge fund. When Argentine president Cristina Kirchner attempted to restructure the debt, Elliott -- unlike most of the bonds' owners -- refused to accept a large loss on its investment. It successfully sued in US courts, and in pursuit of Argentine assets, convinced a court in Ghana to detain an Argentine naval training vessel, then docked outside Accra with a crew of 22o. After a change of its government, Argentina eventually settled and Singer's fund received $2.4 billion, almost four times its initial investment. Kirchner, meanwhile, has been indicted for corruption.

Robjil , says: December 19, 2019 at 12:13 pm GMT
Where does Paul drop his bootie from his world wide theft? Israel, oh course.

https://www.mintpressnews.com/neocon-billionaire-paul-singer-driving-outsourcing-us-tech-jobs-israel/259147/

This massive transfer of the American tech industry has largely been the work of one leading Republican donor -- billionaire hedge fund manager Paul Singer, who also funds the neoconservative think tank American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the Islamophobic and hawkish think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC), and also funded the now-defunct Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI).

Singer's project to bolster Israel's tech economy at the U.S.' expense is known as Start-Up Nation Central, which he founded in response to the global Boycott, Divest and Sanctions (BDS) movement that seeks to use nonviolent means to pressure Israel to comply with international law in relation to its treatment of Palestinians.

UncommonGround , says: December 19, 2019 at 12:28 pm GMT
@Lot You give partial information which seem misleading and use arguments which are also weak and not enlightening.

1- Even if its natural that unsafe bonds are sold, this doesn't justify the practices and methods of those vulture fonds which buy those fonds which are socially damaging. I'm not certain of the details because it's an old case and people should seek more information. Very broadly, in the case of Argentina most funds accepted to make an agreement with the country and reduce their demands. Investors have to accept risks and losses. Paul Singer bought some financial papers for nothing at that time and forced Argentina to pay the whole price. For years Argentina refused to pay, but with the help of New York courts and the new Argentinian president they were forced to pay Singer. This was not conservative capitalism but imperialism. You can only act like Singer if you have the backing of courts, of a government which you control and of an army like the US army. A fast internet search for titles of articles: "Hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer's ruthless strategies include bullying CEOs, suing governments and seizing their navy's ships". "How one hedge fund made $2 billion from Argentina's economic colapse".

Andrew Sayer, professor in an English university, says in his book "Why we can't afford the rich" that finances as they are practiced now may cost more than bring any value to a society. It's a problem if some sectors of finances make outsized profits and use methods which are more than questionable.

2- You say that if borrowers become more protected "lenders become more conservative, investment declines, and worthy businesses can't get investments." I doubt this is true. In the first place, risk investments by vulture fonds probably don't create any social value. The original lenders who sold their bonds to such vulture fonds have anyway big or near total losses in some cases and in spite of that they keep doing business. Why should we support vulture fonds, what for? What positive function they play in society? In Germany, capitalism was much more social in old days before a neoliberal wave forced Germany to change Rhine capitalism. Local banks lended money to local business which they knew and which they had an interest that they prosper. Larger banks lended money to big firms. Speculation like in neoliberal capitalism wasn't needed.

3- The point which you didn't grasp is that there is a component of those business which isn't publicly clear, the fact that they funcion along ethnic lines.

4- It would be easy to fix excesses of capitalism. The problem is that the people who profit the most from the system also have the power to prevent any change.

Amerimutt Golems , says: December 19, 2019 at 1:04 pm GMT
@Lot

The article bounces back and forth between two completely different fields: private equity and distressed debt funds. The latter is completely defensible. A lot of bondholders, probably the majority, cannot hold distressed or defaulted debt. Insurance companies often can't by law. Bond mutual funds set out in their prospectuses they don't invest in anything rated lower than A, AA, or whatever. Even those allowed to hold distressed debt don't want the extra costs involved with doing so, such as carefully following bankruptcy proceedings and dealing with delayed and irregular payments.

The author is not a finance expert but he correctly spotlights flaws of so-called 'predatory capitalism' which is disproportionately Jewish.

Private equity is rife with vices like asset-stripping and looting e.g Eddie Lampert ('Jewishness' member) plus El Trumpo appointee Steven Mnuchin at Sears.

Vulture funds often load all sorts of costs, even frivolous ones, and extra interest charges on the original debt to maximize profit.

Some countries have the Duplum rule which limits the amount you are liable to a creditor when you default on a debt.

Sears accuses Eddie Lampert of looting the company
https://nypost.com/2019/04/18/sears-accuses-eddie-lampert-of-looting-the-company/

Anon [203] Disclaimer , says: December 19, 2019 at 1:08 pm GMT
I generally like Tucker but thought his piece on Singer was way off base and a silly hit job. As others above have commented, if you think it's wrong to buy or try to collect on defaulted debt, what is the alternative set of laws and behavior you are recommending? If debts can simply be repudiated at will, capitalism cannot function. (Also, while it would take too much time and space to debate the Puerto Rico situation here, it bears noting that the entire PR public debt burden of ~$75 billion comes to around $25,000 per resident -- about a third of the comparable burden of public sector debt per person in the United States, which itself ignores tens of trillions of "off balance" sheet liabilities for underfunded social security, Medicare, Medicaid and public sector pension obligations. The source of PR's problems lies pretty clearly at the feet of PR's long corrupt politicians -- not the incidental holders of its bonds who would simply like to be repaid or have the debt reasonably restructured.)

Other minor points worth noting:

Joyce names a few Jews associated with Baupost but misleadingly omits its president, the guy who is running the show: Jim Mooney, a proud graduate of Holy Cross and big supporter of Catholic and Jesuit causes. If memory serves, Jim was also the guy behind some of Baupost's biggest and most successeful distressed debt (or "vulture" to use Joyce's pejorative term) trades. The firm's Jewish founder (Seth Klarman) has also donated tons of money to secular causes, including something like $60 million for a huge facility at Cornell.

Speaking of donations and Jews, I believe Bloomberg (not technically a "vulture" capitalist but clearly just as bad -- I.e., Jewish -- on the Joyce scale) gave $1.5 billion to his alma mater, Johns Hopkins. If memory serves, that may have been the largest donation to any university ever. Maybe Carnegie's donations were greater in "real" dollars, but Bloomberg's donation is still pretty significant -- with likely more to come.

Anonymous [165] Disclaimer , says: December 19, 2019 at 1:10 pm GMT
@sally Sally, please, knock it off. If you worked on Wall Street you'd know this article is just the tip of the iceberg of Jewish financial criminality. Years ago Jim Cramer of CNBC fame, who used to appear with Goldman Sachs' former and current PR man Larry Kudlow, also headed Wall Street's top hedge fund at the time, Cramer Berkowitz. A former employee and Jewish at that wrote an expose, Trading With the Enemy letting non-Jews in the reading public in on what's really going on. Of course there's a Jewish pipeline giving them the news before it's news, which is what it means to be a Wall Street insider. Or so says Jim Cramer, and the book establishes this with solid evidence and not speculation.

For example, one of the Jewish anchors on CNBC would routinely call Cramer, which the author overheard at the trading desk, and tip Cramer off about a market moving news story about to be aired so Cramer could front run the market, fanatically divvying the orders out to avoid scrutiny. His most important client was Norman Podoretz of socialist fame, who put up the seed money for Cramer, who'd be on the phone to Cramer throughout the day checking on his investments when not pushing socialism on the stupid goys. That's what socialism means in America. The big names among Jewish stock and bond analysts at the big houses would also be on the line with Cramer right before market making analysis was about to be released.

It's also the case that no economy and society can survive the sort of FIRE parasitism this country's now burdened with, which as Spengler put it a century ago, amounts to tricking a profit off every penny of goyisher labor. A dog can handle a number of ticks and fleas sucking its blood, but will die soon enough when the ticks and fleas are consuming a quarter or more of its blood. As Dr Joyce points out in yet another brilliant article, DJT is demonstrably a puppet of the Jewish billionaires mentioned, who're in a rage to destroy the families and everything the fools attending his rallies hold dear.

secondElijah , says: Website December 19, 2019 at 1:10 pm GMT
@J Adelman Yes, the Jews have always stood up for the underdog (except when they were slave traders) and promoted social harmony (except for cultural Marxism) and "Jewish influence" is purely a figment of your imagination (except WWI and the Communist revolution .and and ). And they definitely have nothing to do with the financial industry or banks (it is all a conspiracy the protocols ya know).

Do you really believe your own poopaganda? A little introspection goes a long way. Why have you been persecuted or kicked out of every country you have ever lived in? You never, ever do anything wrong?

No one is demonizing you. You do it to yourself. People like Epstein and Weinstein are your standard bearers. Events like 9/11 are your trophies. Your infiltration of the body politic and malign influence in society is once again becoming visible to everyone and it is making you afraid.

You have done it again. You never, ever learn. You play the perpetual victim .everyone hates me without a reason. My sin is greater than I can bear (Cain) everyone who comes across me will kill me. I spend my time wandering the earth (boo ho). And despite slaying your brother you are accorded divine protection.

Jesus said (paraphrasing here) that if the unclean spirit is cast out of a man and is not replaced with something wholesome he takes "seven other spirits" into himself and becomes totally insane. You did this to yourself and you will realize that your problem is no longer with man but with God himself. Jacob the deceiver has wrestled all his life against his fellow man and triumphed but now he will confront God himself. Get ready to meet your Maker and see how far your excuses will get you with the Almighty.

[Dec 20, 2019] Vulture Capitalism is Jewish Capitalism by Andrew Joyce

Jewish financists are no longer Jewish, much like a socialist who became minister is no longer a socialist minister. Unregulated finance promotes a set of destructive behaviors which has nothing to do with nationality or ethnicity.
Of course that Joyce is peddling his own obsessions, but I have to admit that Singer & comp. are detestable. I know that what they’re doing is not illegal, but it should be (in my opinion), and those who are involved in such affairs are somehow odious. The same goes for Icahn, Soros etc. Still Ethnic angle is evident, too: how come Singer works exclusively with his co-ethnics in this multi-ethnic USA? Non-Jewish & most Jewish entrepreneurs don’t behave that way.
Dec 20, 2019 | www.unz.com

It was very gratifying to see Tucker Carlson's recent attack on the activities of Paul Singer's vulture fund, Elliot Associates, a group I first profiled four years ago. In many respects, it is truly remarkable that vulture funds like Singer's escaped major media attention prior to this, especially when one considers how extraordinarily harmful and exploitative they are. Many countries are now in very significant debt to groups like Elliot Associates and, as Tucker's segment very starkly illustrated, their reach has now extended into the very heart of small-town America. Shining a spotlight on the spread of this virus is definitely welcome. I strongly believe, however, that the problem presented by these cabals of exploitative financiers will only be solved if their true nature is fully discerned. Thus far, the descriptive terminology employed in discussing their activities has revolved only around the scavenging and parasitic nature of their activities. Elliot Associates have therefore been described as a quintessential example of a "vulture fund" practicing "vulture capitalism." But these funds aren't run by carrion birds. They are operated almost exclusively by Jews. In the following essay, I want us to examine the largest and most influential "vulture funds," to assess their leadership, ethos, financial practices, and how they disseminate their dubiously acquired wealth. I want us to set aside colorful metaphors. I want us to strike through the mask.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/IdwH066g5lQ?feature=oembed

Who Are The Vultures?

It is commonly agreed that the most significant global vulture funds are Elliot Management, Cerberus, FG Hemisphere, Autonomy Capital, Baupost Group, Canyon Capital Advisors, Monarch Alternative Capital, GoldenTree Asset Management, Aurelius Capital Management, OakTree Capital, Fundamental Advisors, and Tilden Park Investment Master Fund LP. The names of these groups are very interesting, being either blankly nondescript or evoking vague inklings of Anglo-Saxon or rural/pastoral origins (note the prevalence of oak, trees, parks, canyons, monarchs, or the use of names like Aurelius and Elliot). This is the same tactic employed by the Jew Jordan Belfort, the "Wolf of Wall Street," who operated multiple major frauds under the business name Stratton Oakmont.

These names are masks. They are designed to cultivate trust and obscure the real background of the various groupings of financiers. None of these groups have Anglo-Saxon or venerable origins. None are based in rural idylls. All of the vulture funds named above were founded by, and continue to be operated by, ethnocentric, globalist, urban-dwelling Jews. A quick review of each of their websites reveals their founders and central figures to be:

Elliot Management -- Paul Singer, Zion Shohet, Jesse Cohn, Stephen Taub, Elliot Greenberg and Richard Zabel Cerberus -- Stephen Feinberg, Lee Millstein, Jeffrey Lomasky, Seth Plattus, Joshua Weintraub, Daniel Wolf, David Teitelbaum FG Hemisphere -- Peter Grossman Autonomy Capital -- Derek Goodman Baupost Group -- Seth Klarman, Jordan Baruch, Isaac Auerbach Canyon Capital Advisors -- Joshua Friedman, Mitchell Julis Monarch Alternative Capital -- Andrew Herenstein, Michael Weinstock GoldenTree Asset Management -- Steven Tananbaum, Steven Shapiro Aurelius Capital Management -- Mark Brodsky, Samuel Rubin, Eleazer Klein, Jason Kaplan OakTree Capital -- Howard Marks, Bruce Karsh, Jay Wintrob, John Frank, Sheldon Stone Fundamental Advisors -- Laurence Gottlieb, Jonathan Stern Tilden Park Investment Master Fund LP -- Josh Birnbaum, Sam Alcoff

The fact that all of these vulture funds, widely acknowledged as the most influential and predatory, are owned and operated by Jews is remarkable in itself, especially in a contemporary context in which we are constantly bombarded with the suggestion that Jews don't have a special relationship with money or usury, and that any such idea is an example of ignorant prejudice. Equally remarkable, however, is the fact that Jewish representation saturates the board level of these companies also, suggesting that their beginnings and methods of internal promotion and operation rely heavily on ethnic-communal origins, and religious and social cohesion more generally. As such, these Jewish funds provide an excellent opportunity to examine their financial and political activities as expressions of Jewishness, and can thus be placed in the broader framework of the Jewish group evolutionary strategy and the long historical trajectory of Jewish-European relations.

How They Feed

In May 2018, Puerto Rico declared a form of municipal bankruptcy after falling into more than $74.8 billion in debt, of which more than $34 billion is interest and fees. The debt was owed to all of the Jewish capitalists named above, with the exception of Stephen Feinberg's Cerberus group. In order to commence payments, the government had instituted a policy of fiscal austerity, closing schools and raising utility bills, but when Hurricane Maria hit the island in September 2017, Puerto Rico was forced to stop transfers to their Jewish creditors. This provoked an aggressive attempt by the Jewish funds to seize assets from an island suffering from an 80% power outage, with the addition of further interest and fees. Protests broke out in several US cities calling for the debt to be forgiven. After a quick stop in Puerto Rico in late 2018, Donald Trump pandered to this sentiment when he told Fox News, "They owe a lot of money to your friends on Wall Street, and we're going to have to wipe that out." But Trump's statement, like all of Trump's statements, had no substance. The following day, the director of the White House budget office, Mick Mulvaney, told reporters: "I think what you heard the president say is that Puerto Rico is going to have to figure out a way to solve its debt problem." In other words, Puerto Rico is going to have to figure out a way to pay its Jews.

Trump's reversal is hardly surprising, given that the President is considered extremely friendly to Jewish financial power. When he referred to "your friends on Wall Street" he really meant his friends on Wall Street. One of his closest allies is Stephen Feinberg, founder and CEO of Cerberus, a war-profiteering vulture fund that has now accumulated more than $1.5 billion in Irish debt , leaving the country prone to a " wave of home repossessions " on a scale not seen since the Jewish mortgage traders behind Quicken Loans (Daniel Gilbert) and Ameriquest (Roland Arnall) made thousands of Americans homeless . Feinberg has also been associated with mass evictions in Spain, causing a collective of Barcelona anarchists to label him a "Jewish mega parasite" in charge of the "world's vilest vulture fund." In May 2018, Trump made Feinberg chair of his Intelligence Advisory Board , and one of the reasons for Trump's sluggish retreat from Afghanistan has been the fact Feinberg's DynCorp has enjoyed years of lucrative government defense contracts training Afghan police and providing ancillary services to the military.

But Trump's association with Jewish vultures goes far beyond Feinberg. A recent piece in the New York Post declared "Orthodox Jews are opening up their wallets for Trump in 2020." This is a predictable outcome of the period 2016 to 2020, an era that could be neatly characterised as How Jews learned to stop worrying and love the Don. Jewish financiers are opening their wallets for Trump because it is now clear he utterly failed to fulfil promises on mass immigration to White America, while pledging his commitment to Zionism and to socially destructive Jewish side projects like the promotion of homosexuality. These actions, coupled with his commuting of Hasidic meatpacking boss Sholom Rubashkin 's 27-year-sentence for bank fraud and money laundering in 2017, have sent a message to Jewish finance that Trump is someone they can do business with. Since these globalist exploiters are essentially politically amorphous, knowing no loyalty but that to their own tribe and its interests, there is significant drift of Jewish mega-money between the Democratic and Republican parties. The New York Post reports, for example, that when Trump attended a $25,000-per-couple luncheon in November at a Midtown hotel, where 400 moneyed Jews raised at least $4 million for the America First [!] SuperPAC, the luncheon organiser Kelly Sadler, told reporters, "We screened all of the people in attendance, and we were surprised to see how many have given before to Democrats, but never a Republican. People were standing up on their chairs chanting eight more years." The reality, of course, is that these people are not Democrats or Republicans, but Jews, willing to push their money in whatever direction the wind of Jewish interests is blowing.

The collapse of Puerto Rico under Jewish debt and elite courting of Jewish financial predators is certainly nothing new. Congo , Zambia , Liberia , Argentina , Peru , Panama , Ecuador , Vietnam , Poland , and Ireland are just some of the countries that have slipped fatefully into the hands of the Jews listed above, and these same people are now closely watching Greece and India . The methodology used to acquire such leverage is as simple as it is ruthless. On its most basic level, "vulture capitalism" is really just a combination of the continued intense relationship between Jews and usury and Jewish involvement in medieval tax farming. On the older practice, Salo Baron writes in Economic History of the Jews that Jewish speculators would pay a lump sum to the treasury before mercilessly turning on the peasantry to obtain "considerable surpluses if need be, by ruthless methods." [1] S. Baron (ed) Economic History of the Jews (New York, 1976), 46-7. The activities of the Jewish vulture funds are essentially the same speculation in debt, except here the trade in usury is carried out on a global scale with the feudal peasants of old now replaced with entire nations. Wealthy Jews pool resources, purchase debts, add astronomical fees and interests, and when the inevitable default occurs they engage in aggressive legal activity to seize assets, bringing waves of jobs losses and home repossessions.

This type of predation is so pernicious and morally perverse that both the Belgian and UK governments have taken steps to ban these Jewish firms from using their court systems to sue for distressed debt owed by poor nations. Tucker Carlson, commenting on Paul Singer's predation and the ruin of the town of Sidney, Nebraska, has said:

It couldn't be uglier or more destructive. So why is it still allowed in the United States? The short answer: Because people like Paul Singer have tremendous influence over our political process. Singer himself was the second largest donor to the Republican Party in 2016. He's given millions to a super-PAC that supports Republican senators. You may never have heard of Paul Singer -- which tells you a lot in itself -- but in Washington, he's rock-star famous. And that is why he is almost certainly paying a lower effective tax rate than your average fireman, just in case you were still wondering if our system is rigged. Oh yeah, it is.

Aside from direct political donations, these Jewish financiers also escape scrutiny by hiding behind a mask of simplistic anti-socialist rhetoric that is common in the American Right, especially the older, Christian, and pro-Zionist demographic. Rod Dreher, in a commentary on Carlson's piece at the American Conservative , points out that Singer gave a speech in May 2019 attacking the "rising threat of socialism within the Democratic Party." Singer continued, "They call it socialism, but it is more accurately described as left-wing statism lubricated by showers of free stuff promised by politicians who believe that money comes from a printing press rather than the productive efforts of businesspeople and workers." Dreher comments: "The productive efforts of businesspeople and workers"? The gall of that man, after what he did to the people of Sidney."

What Singer and the other Jewish vultures engage in is not productive, and isn't even any recognisable form of work or business. It is greed-motivated parasitism carried out on a perversely extravagant and highly nepotistic scale. In truth, it is Singer and his co-ethnics who believe that money can be printed on the backs of productive workers, and who ultimately believe they have a right to be "showered by free stuff promised by politicians." Singer places himself in an infantile paradigm meant to entertain the goyim, that of Free Enterprise vs Socialism, but, as Carlson points out, "this is not the free enterprise that we all learned about." That's because it's Jewish enterprise -- exploitative, inorganic, and attached to socio-political goals that have nothing to do with individual freedom and private property. This might not be the free enterprise Carlson learned about, but it's clearly the free enterprise Jews learn about -- as illustrated in their extraordinary over-representation in all forms of financial exploitation and white collar crime. The Talmud, whether actively studied or culturally absorbed, is their code of ethics and their curriculum in regards to fraud, fraudulent bankruptcy, embezzlement, usury, and financial exploitation. Vulture capitalism is Jewish capitalism.

Whom They Feed

Singer's duplicity is a perfect example of the way in which Jewish finance postures as conservative while conserving nothing. Indeed, Jewish capitalism may be regarded as the root cause of the rise of Conservative Inc., a form or shadow of right wing politics reduced solely to fiscal concerns that are ultimately, in themselves, harmful to the interests of the majority of those who stupidly support them. The spirit of Jewish capitalism, ultimately, can be discerned not in insincere bleating about socialism and business, intended merely to entertain semi-educated Zio-patriots, but in the manner in which the Jewish vulture funds disseminate the proceeds of their parasitism. Real vultures are weak, so will gorge at a carcass and regurgitate food to feed their young. So then, who sits in the nests of the vulture funds, awaiting the regurgitated remains of troubled nations?

Boston-based Seth Klarman (net worth $1.5 billion), who like Paul Singer has declared "free enterprise has been good for me," is a rapacious debt exploiter who was integral to the financial collapse of Puerto Rico, where he hid much of activities behind a series of shell companies. Investigative journalists eventually discovered that Klarman's Baupost group was behind much of the aggressive legal action intended to squeeze the decimated island for bond payments. It's clear that the Jews involved in these companies are very much aware that what they are doing is wrong, and they are careful to avoid too much reputational damage, whether to themselves individually or to their ethnic group. Puerto Rican journalists, investigating the debt trail to Klarman, recall trying to follow one of the shell companies (Decagon) to Baupost via a shell company lawyer (and yet another Jew) named Jeffrey Katz:

Returning to the Ropes & Gray thread, we identified several attorneys who had worked with the Baupost Group, and one, Jeffrey Katz, who – in addition to having worked directly with Baupost – seemed to describe a particularly close and longstanding relationship with a firm fitting Baupost's profile on his experience page. I called Katz and he picked up, to my surprise. I identified myself, as well as my affiliation with the Public Accountability Initiative, and asked if he was the right person to talk to about Decagon Holdings and Baupost. He paused, started to respond, and then evidently thought better of it and said that he was actually in a meeting, and that I would need to call back (apparently, this high-powered lawyer picks up calls from strange numbers when he is in important meetings). As he was telling me to call back, I asked him again if he was the right person to talk to about Decagon, and that I wouldn't call back if he wasn't, and he seemed to get even more flustered. At that point he started talking too much, about how he was a lawyer and has clients, how I must think I'm onto some kind of big scoop, and how there was a person standing right in front of him – literally, standing right in front of him – while I rudely insisted on keeping him on the line.

One of the reasons for such secrecy is the intensive Jewish philanthropy engaged in by Klarman under his Klarman Family Foundation . While Puerto Rican schools are being closed, and pensions and health provisions slashed, Klarman is regurgitating the proceeds of massive debt speculation to his " areas of focus " which prominently includes " Supporting the global Jewish community and Israel ." While plundering the treasuries of the crippled nations of the goyim, Klarman and his co-ethnic associates have committed themselves to "improving the quality of life and access to opportunities for all Israeli citizens so that they may benefit from the country's prosperity." Among those in Klarman's nest, their beaks agape for Puerto Rican debt interest, are the American Jewish Committee, Boston's Combined Jewish Philanthropies, the Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Honeymoon Israel Foundation, Israel-America Academic Exchange, and the Israel Project. Klarman, like Singer, has also been an enthusiastic proponent of liberalising attitudes to homosexuality, donating $1 million to a Republican super PAC aimed at supporting pro-gay marriage GOP candidates in 2014 (Singer donated $1.75 million). Klarman, who also contributes to candidates who support immigration reform, including a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, has said "The right to gay marriage is the largest remaining civil rights issue of our time. I work one-on-one with individual Republicans to try to get them to realize they are being Neanderthals on this issue."

Steven Tananbaum's GoldenTree Asset Management has also fed well on Puerto Rico, owning $2.5 billion of the island's debt. The Centre for Economic and Policy Research has commented :

Steven Tananbaum, GoldenTree's chief investment officer, told a business conference in September (after Hurricane Irma, but before Hurricane Maria) that he continued to view Puerto Rican bonds as an attractive investment. GoldenTree is spearheading a group of COFINA bondholders that collectively holds about $3.3 billion in bonds. But with Puerto Rico facing an unprecedented humanitarian crisis, and lacking enough funds to even begin to pay back its massive debt load, these vulture funds are relying on their ability to convince politicians and the courts to make them whole. The COFINA bondholder group has spent $610,000 to lobby Congress over the last two years, while GoldenTree itself made $64,000 in political contributions to federal candidates in the 2016 cycle. For vulture funds like GoldenTree, the destruction of Puerto Rico is yet another opportunity for exorbitant profits.

Whom does Tananbaum feed with these profits? A brief glance at the spending of the Lisa and Steven Tananbaum Charitable Trust reveals a relatively short list of beneficiaries including United Jewish Appeal Foundation, American Friends of Israel Museum, Jewish Community Center, to be among the most generously funded, with sizeable donations also going to museums specialising in the display of degenerate and demoralising art.

Following the collapse in Irish asset values in 2008, Jewish vulture funds including OakTree Capital swooped on mortgagee debt to seize tens of thousands of Irish homes, shopping malls, and utilities (Steve Feinberg's Cerberus took control of public waste disposal). In 2011, Ireland emerged as a hotspot for distressed property assets, after its bad banks began selling loans that had once been held by struggling financial institutions. These loans were quickly purchased at knockdown prices by Jewish fund managers, who then aggressively sought the eviction of residents in order to sell them for a fast profit. Michael Byrne, a researcher at the School of Social Policy at University College Dublin, Ireland's largest university, comments : "The aggressive strategies used by vulture funds lead to human tragedies." One homeowner, Anna Flynn recalls how her mortgage fell into the hands of Mars Capital, an affiliate of Oaktree Capital, owned and operated by the Los Angeles-based Jews Howard Marks and Bruce Karsh. They were "very, very difficult to deal with," said Flynn, a mother of four. "All [Mars] wanted was for me to leave the house; they didn't want a solution [to ensure I could retain my home]."

When Bruce Karsh isn't making Irish people homeless, whom does he feed with his profits? A brief glance at the spending of the Karsh Family Foundation reveals millions of dollars of donations to the Jewish Federation, Jewish Community Center, and the United Jewish Fund.

Paul Singer, his son Gordin, and their Elliot Associates colleagues Zion Shohet, Jesse Cohn, Stephen Taub, Elliot Greenberg and Richard Zabel, have a foothold in almost every country, and have a stake in every company you're likely to be familiar with, from book stores to dollar stores. With the profits of exploitation, they fund campaigns for homosexuality and mass migration , boost Zionist politics, invest millions in security for Jews , and promote wars for Israel. Singer is a Republican, and is on the Board of the Republican Jewish Coalition. He is a former board member of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, has funded neoconservative research groups like the Middle East Media Research Institute and the Center for Security Policy, and is among the largest funders of the neoconservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He was also connected to the pro-Iraq War advocacy group Freedom's Watch. Another key Singer project was the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI), a Washington D.C.-based advocacy group that was founded in 2009 by several high-profile Jewish neoconservative figures to promote militaristic U.S. policies in the Middle East on behalf of Israel and which received its seed money from Singer.

Although Singer was initially anti-Trump, and although Trump once attacked Singer for his pro-immigration politics ("Paul Singer represents amnesty and he represents illegal immigration pouring into the country"), Trump is now essentially funded by three Jews -- Singer, Bernard Marcus, and Sheldon Adelson, together accounting for over $250 million in pro-Trump political money . In return, they want war with Iran. Employees of Elliott Management were one of the main sources of funding for the 2014 candidacy of the Senate's most outspoken Iran hawk, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), who urged Trump to conduct a "retaliatory strike" against Iran for purportedly attacking two commercial tankers. These exploitative Jewish financiers have been clear that they expect a war with Iran, and they are lobbying hard and preparing to call in their pound of flesh. As one political commentator put it, "These donors have made their policy preferences on Iran plainly known. They surely expect a return on their investment in Trump's GOP."

The same pattern is witnessed again and again, illustrating the stark reality that the prosperity and influence of Zionist globalism rests to an overwhelming degree on the predations of the most successful and ruthless Jewish financial parasites. This is not conjecture, exaggeration, or hyperbole. This is simply a matter of striking through the mask, looking at the heads of the world's most predatory financial funds, and following the direction of regurgitated profits.

Make no mistake, these cabals are everywhere and growing. They could be ignored when they preyed on distant small nations, but their intention was always to come for you too. They are now on your doorstep. The working people of Sidney, Nebraska probably had no idea what a vulture fund was until their factories closed and their homes were taken. These funds will move onto the next town. And the next. And another after that. They won't be stopped through blunt support of "free enterprise," and they won't be stopped by simply calling them "vulture capitalists."

Strike through the mask!

Notes

[1] S. Baron (ed) Economic History of the Jews (New York, 1976), 46-7.

(Republished from The Occidental Observer by permission of author or representative)


anon [631] Disclaimer , says: December 19, 2019 at 2:34 am GMT

To what extent is Jewish success a product of Jewish intellect and industry versus being a result of a willingness to use low, dirty, honorless and anti-social tactics which, while maybe not in violation of the word of the law, certainly violate its spirit?

An application of "chutzpah" to business, if you will – the gall to break social conventions to get what you want, while making other people feel uncomfortable; to wheedle your way in at the joints of social norms and conventions – not illegal, but selfish and rude.

Krav Maga applies the same concept to the martial arts: You're taught to go after the things that every other martial art forbids you to target: the eyes, the testicles, etc. In other sports this is considered "low" and "cheap." In Krav Maga, as perhaps a metaphor for Jewish behavior in general, nothing is too low because it's all about winning .

Colin Wright , says: Website December 19, 2019 at 3:07 am GMT
On a related subject

There's a rather good article on the New Yorker discussing the Sacklers and the Oxycontin epidemic. It focusses on the dichotomy between the family's ruthless promotion of the drug and their lavish philanthropy. 'Leave the world a better place for your presence' and similar pieties and Oxycontin.

The article lightly touches on the extent of their giving to Hebrew University of Jerusalem -- but in general, treads lightly when it comes to their Judaism.

understandably. The New Yorker isn't exactly alt-right country, after all. But can Joyce or anyone else provide a more exact breakdown on the Sacklers' giving? Are they genuine philanthropists, or is it mostly for the Cause?

Colin Wright , says: Website December 19, 2019 at 3:21 am GMT
@anon 'To what extent is Jewish success a product of Jewish intellect and industry versus being a result of a willingness to use low, dirty, honorless and anti-social tactics which, while maybe not in violation of the word of the law, certainly violate its spirit? '

It's important not to get carried away with this. Figures such as Andrew Carnegie, while impeccably gentile, were hardly paragons of scrupulous ethics and disinterested virtue.

Lot , says: December 19, 2019 at 3:36 am GMT
I won't defend high finance because I don't like it either. But this is a retarded and highly uninformed attack on it.

1. The article bounces back and forth between two completely different fields: private equity and distressed debt funds. The latter is completely defensible. A lot of bondholders, probably the majority, cannot hold distressed or defaulted debt. Insurance companies often can't by law. Bond mutual funds set out in their prospectuses they don't invest in anything rated lower than A, AA, or whatever. Even those allowed to hold distressed debt don't want the extra costs involved with doing so, such as carefully following bankruptcy proceedings and dealing with delayed and irregular payments.

As a result, it is natural that normal investors sell off such debt at a discount to funds that specialize in it.

2. Joyce defends large borrowers that default on their debt. Maybe the laws protecting bankrupts and insolvents should be stronger. But you do that, and lenders become more conservative, investment declines, and worthy businesses can't get investments. I think myself the laws in the US are too favorable to lenders, but there's definitely a tradeoff, and the question is where the happy middle ground is. In Florida a creditor can't force the sale of a primary residence, even if it is worth $20 million. That's going too far in the other direction.

3. " either blankly nondescript or evoking vague inklings of Anglo-Saxon or rural/pastoral origins "

More retardation. Cerberus is a greek dog monster guarding the gates of hell. Aurelius is from the Latin word for gold. "Hemisphere" isn't an Anglosaxon word nor does in invoke rural origins.

Besides being retardedly wrong, the broader point is likewise retarded: when English-speaking Jews name their businesses they shouldn't use English words. Naming a company "Oaktree" should be limited to those of purely English blood! Jews must name their companies "Cosmopolitan Capital" or RosenMoses Chutzpah Advisors."

4. The final and most general point: it's trivially easy to attack particular excesses of capitalism. Fixing the excesses without creating bigger problem is the hard part. Two ideas I favor are usury laws and Tobin taxes.

Dutch Boy , says: December 19, 2019 at 5:09 am GMT
Jewishness aside, maximizing shareholder is the holy grail of all capitalist enterprises. The capitalist rush to abandon the American working class when tariff barriers evaporated is just another case of vulturism. Tax corporations based on the domestic content of their products and ban usury and vulturism will evaporate.
ANZ , says: December 19, 2019 at 5:26 am GMT
Someone with the username kikz posted a link to this article in the occidental observer. I read it and thought it was a great article. I'm glad it's featured here.

The article goes straight for the jugular and pulls no punches. It hits hard. I like that:

1. It shines a light on the some of the scummiest of the scummiest Wall Street players.
2. It names names. From the actual vulture funds to the rollcall of Jewish actors running each. It's astounding how ethnically uniform it is.
3. It proves Trump's ties with the most successful Vulture kingpin, Singer.
4. It shows how money flows from the fund owners to Zionist and Jewish causes.

This thing reads like a court indictment. It puts real world examples to many of the theories that are represents on this site. Excellent article.

Adrian , says: December 19, 2019 at 11:35 am GMT

@HammerJack

Andrew Carnegie left behind institutions like Carnegie Hall, Carnegie-Mellon University, and over 2500 Free Libraries from coast to coast, in a time when very little was done to help what we now call the “underprivileged”.

And he funded the building of the Peace Palace (“Vredespaleis”) in The Hague, presently the seat of the International Court of Justice, an institution not held in high esteem in the home country of the generous donor.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/gqF-NcRXdEs?feature=oembed

[Dec 20, 2019] Canadian news is de facto controlled by an American New York Jewish hedge fund

Notable quotes:
"... [Too much totally off-topic crackpottery. Stop this or most of your future comments may get trashed.] ..."
Dec 20, 2019 | www.unz.com

Jimmy1969 says: December 19, 2019 at 2:12 pm GMT 200 Words Golden Tree Asset Management bought up Post Media in Canada at a fire sale years ago from the bankrupt Asper family. Post Media is a conglomerate that controls dozens and dozens of media outlets in all of Canada including 95% of all the major Newspapers in every large city. Therefore Canadian news is de facto controlled by an American New York Jewish hedge fund. That fact has been known for years and is joked about on all of the bar stools in Canada where reporters hang out .but not in the Press. No one writes about it none of the Nationalistic Professors, Journalists, Members of Parliament no one. One fact is certain you will never ever see a single bad word in any of their papers critical of Israel, or any actions of Israelis. Any comment critical of Israel or Zionist power, no matter how objective or moderate is immediately deleted. And sadly this is no joke. The world should take note of how Canada is strangled. Read More Replies: @bike-anarkist

Replies: @the grand wazoo , @eah Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments


I'm Tyrone , says: December 19, 2019 at 2:18 pm GMT

@silviosilver Paying what you owe is perfectly fine and moral. Paying double of what you owe on account of inflated fees and interest is blood sucking. Doing this to developing nations is downright cruel.

Let's say Congo owes $10 billion. A finance firm buys that debt for $8 billion, collects the full $10 billion (which already includes interest) and make a $2 billion profit. That's not too terrible.

But to buy the debt for $8 billion and then force Congo to pay $60 billion is Jewish. Playing the victim while accusing Congo of financial mismanagement and forcing them to close their schools and hospitals – very Jewish. Evading the ethical implications of one's actions and seeking cover behind legalism like a coward –> Jew level – Godlike

What say AaronB? Do you concur chief?

BannedHipster , says: Website December 19, 2019 at 2:21 pm GMT
It's a simple ingroup/outgroup distinction.

Jews see themselves as the ingroup, and the "goyim" as the outgroup. Since Whites are the "outgroup" it's not just acceptable, but praiseworthy, to exploit them. To "beat" them at war.

The problem is that Whites wrongly do not see Jews as an outgroup – something that Jews themselves take great pains to discourage via their various front groups like the ADL.

There is no "technical" fix, there is no objective "system" that can change this dynamic. There is no "level playing field."

Whites need to ostracize Jews at all levels. Boycott, Divest and Sanction – not just their apartheid regime of Jew bigotry in Zionist-occupied Palestine, but at every level of society, business, civil institutions, etc.

Realist , says: December 19, 2019 at 2:22 pm GMT
@Ghali

Jews are destroying the world. Everywhere they go, they leave behind nations in ruins. Look at Europe, Africa and the Americas, Jews have left their ugly footprints. Corruption, prostitution, drugs and human trafficking are their trade.

Greed from all races is the problem.

DaveE , says: December 19, 2019 at 2:30 pm GMT
Reading the (obvious) Jews commenting here on their various financial swindle-systems is a lot like reading zionists defending Israel. The basic tactics are always the same:

1.) Focus on some small aspects or most recent events and make a comparison to Gentiles or other events with similar micro-narratives. "See? Everyone else does it! Why single out us poor, persecuted Jews?"

2.) Use these minute distractions to drown out the overall issues, underlying concepts, long history or guiding ideology in noise and minutiae.

3.) Never start at the beginning of the story and follow the trajectory though; always start in the middle and focus on some trivial detail, use it to defend the (never stated) sicko ideology that started the problem in the first place. Completely ignore any timelines or larger perspectives.

David Icke calls it (or used to call it -- - back when his backbone was healthy) the Reptilian Brain. The ability to manipulate trivial minutiae while never addressing underlying concepts or timelines.

I just call it Jew Noise.

BannedHipster , says: Website December 19, 2019 at 2:31 pm GMT
@Just passing through

It is hard to feel sorry for WASPs, they struck a deal with the Jews centuries ago

Catholic political powers have been "striking deals with Jews" for two thousand years. There is a synagogue in Rome right next to the Vatican which has been legally privileged since the days of Christ. As E. Michael Jones detailed in his book, Jewish Revolutionary Spirit , the Catholic Church itself defended Jews from the angry mobs time and time again throughout their history, to the point bishops and priests would harbor Jews in the cathedrals and lock the doors before the peasants could arrest them.

Indeed, the infighting among Whites promoted by the likes of Jones is yet again another assist from Catholic powers to their partners, the Jews.

The popular "neo-reactionary/NRx" movement, started by the Ashkenazi Curtis Yarvin, is yet another "right-wing" fad that blames Calvinists for all the problems in the world. Jews are blameless, yet again another White ethnicity/religion is at fault.

No wonder Jews get away with what they do. Whites are too busy infighting over false history demonizing various rival cults.

Really No Shit , says: December 19, 2019 at 2:35 pm GMT
So, the "vultures" flew out to the West after devouring the Russian empire and now with the help of the likes of the homeboy or more like a two bit whore, Ben Sasse, they've descended on America and have started gutting it out.

Where will they fly next? White Christians don't want them and black/brown Muslims can't stand them but perhaps China is their next destination being that they have shipped most of the jobs out there and the whole lot of them are marrying "Chinese-American" women in droves for good measure.

In the coming battle of the titans, the one who's name can't be pronounced, viz. Yahweh, hopefully has better guns than Jehovah and Allah, for it sure is gonna need it when the latter two gang up on it maybe Buddha will give it a helping hand being that they're practically in-laws now!

Arnieus , says: December 19, 2019 at 2:37 pm GMT
Don't think the US will fair better than Puerto Rico when the fake money dries up and there is no way to keep paying the trillions in debt.
Just passing through , says: December 19, 2019 at 2:48 pm GMT
@Father O'Hara

My question is how do entities like Puerto Rico get so far in debt in the first place?

For the same reason individuals get into debt, financial incompetence and sometimes a bit of bad luck.

I've personally never understood how people can take out loans from companies like Wonga or QuickQuid (both Jewish owned incidentally) seeing as they quite clearly advertise their exorbitant interest rates.

Look up income by ethnic group in the UK and US, you will find that Indians and Chinese (South Asians) are the richest in both countries (except for Jews of course).

What I have found is that these two groups come from a debt-averse culture, their kids actually live with their parents until they have saved enough money for a house and other such things required to start a family.

Whites meanwhile are WAY to trusting of these faceless financial institutions, they get into debt very easily and thus become slaves, if you have kids, the first thing you should educate them about is finance and debt, don't throw them out to the dogs either, it's tragic to see some getting into debt and then having other problems like drugs and alcohol addictions.

UncommonGround , says: December 19, 2019 at 2:50 pm GMT
@Anon

I came out of that book with the utmost admiration for Bill Browder.

You don't seem to be serious, if I understood what you want to say. Even Der Spiegel has published a critical article in English about Browder, Browder is the one who pushed for sanctions against Russia because of the case Magnitsky:

Questions Cloud Story Behind U.S. Sanctions

The story of Sergei Magnitsky has come to symbolize the brutal persecution of whistleblowers in Russia. Ten years after his death, inconsistencies in Magnitsky's story suggest he may not have been the hero many people -- and Western governments -- believed him to be.

https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/the-case-of-sergei-magnitsky-anti-corruption-champion-or-corrupt-anti-hero-a-1297796.html

Boone , says: December 19, 2019 at 2:52 pm GMT
@Anonymous Sure, but you're talking utopia. The reality is that public entities issue bonds to finance special projects or even their operations. Somebody then buys the bonds and expects to be paid back.
Just passing through , says: December 19, 2019 at 3:03 pm GMT
@Realist There is something especially deficient with Whites when it comes to money matter, how can such a large number of Whites take short-term loans from companies like Wonga and QuickQuid, when the nature of their business (usury) is very clearly advertised. I was around 10 years old when I was astounded at the 5000% APR loans advertised on TV, and wondered if I understood interest right.

Parents, especially White ones, really need to educate their children on personal finance and debt, it seems a lot of Whites these days do not actually own anything and all their flashy gadgets and whatnot are being loaned out (buying Iphone on contract for example), these people are the hardest hit as they can't scrape together even a couple of hundred pounds/dollars/euros when hard times come. Its farcical albeit tragic.

Satan Became President , says: December 19, 2019 at 3:03 pm GMT
Wow what a confused mess. Here's a summary: Vulture capitalism is bad for no particular reason but only an evil anti-Semite (like you) would dare criticize capitalism.
Really No Shit , says: December 19, 2019 at 3:05 pm GMT
And they want the island of Puerto Rico for themselves, save a few thousand able bodies to serve as maids and gardeners. But what about the triple-raced residents of the island itself? Well, that's easy! Dump them in states like Florida and New York and let the suckers pay for it. After all, it's not like they are going to vote for the other side we get to eat the cake and keep it too!
Bookish1 , says: December 19, 2019 at 3:09 pm GMT
@sally You can separate jews from Zionists but you cant separate zionist from jews. They are the same animal.
Just passing through , says: December 19, 2019 at 3:10 pm GMT
@J.W. https://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/angrif03.htm

An article that appeared in Goebbels newspaper, Der Angriff (The Attack) titled "The Jew", a short excerpt that is relevant to your comment;

The Jew is immunized against all dangers: one may call him a scoundrel, parasite, swindler, profiteer, it all runs off him like water off a raincoat. But call him a Jew and you will be astonished at how he recoils, how injured he is, how he suddenly shrinks back: "I've been found out."

Mulegino1 , says: December 19, 2019 at 3:14 pm GMT
I think the term "vulture capitalism" is calumnious to vultures, who, as carrion birds, perform a useful and purifying function in nature.

The Jews as a collective, i.e., the Jews who identify as such, concur in the death sentence of Christ handed down by their Sanhedrin and espouse the Talmudic mitzvah of killing the best of the gentiles (which naturally implies elevating the worst of the gentiles to power and prominence) are more to be likened to plague bearing rodents. Unlike vultures, rats feast on corruption and putrescence, spread disease and also kill the living.

We embrace the finance capitalist worldview at our peril. In its essence, it is nothing but the worship of money making and profiteering as the supreme aspiration of life, irregardless of its horrible effects on our compatriots and fellow humans. In doing so, we become Jews at heart.

There is nothing wrong with industry and the profit motive per se. Predatory finance contributes nothing to the well being of a nation and the needs of the physical economy- it is supremely toxic and corrosive of both. It must be expunged and its champions expropriated and exiled. People like the odious Peter Singer have no place in a moral world; they ought to be first expropriated, then exiled as far away from their host societies as possible.

Happy Tapir , says: December 19, 2019 at 3:18 pm GMT
I was personally wounded by the anti gay rhetoric peppered across this article. I can't help making the association that Paul singer's son came out as gay and that this must be the source of the author's animus against him and the others. Shakespeare, who was also homosexual, described this state of mind as "a green eyed monster," i.e. jealousy. I'm mortified that other members of the commentariat have not taken issue with this. Maybe we would be more compassionate to the denizens of middle America if they allowed our most basic civil rights.
Bookish1 , says: December 19, 2019 at 3:19 pm GMT
@J Adelman Oh those kind jews have always been for the working class? But there is a white working class and jews want them extinct from the face of the earth. Read 'Abolishing whiteness has never been more urgent.' By Mark Levine
Jimmy1969 , says: December 19, 2019 at 3:23 pm GMT
@Arnieus China will then try to take us and Israel will make a deal with the winner.
jack daniels , says: December 19, 2019 at 3:25 pm GMT
@silviosilver You make several good points but you don't address the issue of capitalists manipulating the politicians with campaign contributions. If a fund gets paid off by public money due to politicians putting the fund owners ahead of the taxpayers, that's corrupt. What happened to the 'creative destruction' principle by which large IBs like Goldman would have been allowed to collapse and their principals carried off in leg-irons in 2008? Oh -- they are "too big to fail and too big to jail." So much for the free market myth.

Moreover, most Jews support endless free money for "victim groups" to be forcibly extracted from the middle-class. Never mind if Mr. Jones has a lengthy criminal record, let's pay for him to go to college, let's pay his rent, let's pay his medical bills, etc. Why then take such a hard line on people who foolishly get into debt?

Moreover, the economic downturn that caused many mortgagors to default was CAUSED BY the big Wall Street firms' irresponsible behavior.

Also, most people do tend to temper economic contracts with a degree of compassion. Gentile capitalism does not exist in a vacuum.

I recall reading about a young female environmentalist who was refusing to leave a venerable redwood tree that was scheduled to be cut down. The WASP businessman who owned the tree was extremely patient with the girl, tried to win her over, threw her food and drinks, and so on. The land with the tree was then sold to some Jewish firm. At that point the article left off. The tree was cut down with no further negotiation.

Desert Fox , says: December 19, 2019 at 3:39 pm GMT
The greatest jewish vulture fund is the zionist privately owned feral reserve aka the FED , is creates money out of thin air and feeds this money to the otherwise bankrupt zionist banks and not just here in the ZUS but in Europe, and the BIS is the vulture fund of vulture funds owned by the zionists, the biggest scam in the history of the world.

By the way, Tucker Carlson said that 911 truthers were nuts, that says it all about him.

Vaterland , says: December 19, 2019 at 3:39 pm GMT
@J Adelman

Jewish people have always stood against

And here it comes:

tyranny against the working class,

Bolshevishm, Trotzkism and the Red Terror

the poor

Cultural Marxism

and other people of color.

Mass immigration for cheap labor, the weaponization of the grievance industry against white majority/European nations and the use for the production of anti-white race baiting media.

Much great work!! Very impressed. Would recommend to Moses himself.

But I agree, you should have a debate with Joyce.

Ian Smith , says: December 19, 2019 at 3:49 pm GMT
@Colin Wright I remember seeing a clip where Jared Taylor was on some talk show. He was calmly citing statistics on how blacks are over represented among violent criminals. A sassy black women broken in with "Jeffrey Dahmer Ted Bundy they were all white!" Not her exact words but something to that effect. Naxalt, in other words.

I don't think Joyce is suggesting that all unscrupulous capitalists are Jews, or vice versa. It is true that gentiles can be scumbags (the Enron boys.)

Now most Muslims are not terrorists, and many terrorists are not Muslims.

And yet it seems like there are many people who will notice patterns among other groups, rightfully roll their eyes when they hear PC arguments in favor of those groups, and then pull out the naxalt and what-about-isms when you notice patterns in Jewish behavior.

Colin Wright , says: Website December 19, 2019 at 3:55 pm GMT
@Happy Tapir ' Maybe we would be more compassionate to the denizens of middle America if they allowed our most basic civil rights.'

Then again, maybe you wouldn't. It'd be nice if it were otherwise, but in my experience, the world doesn't work that way.

anarchyst , says: December 19, 2019 at 3:56 pm GMT
@Dutch Boy Your statement: "maximizing shareholder is the holy grail of all capitalist enterprises" statement is spot on.

I've been saying that for decades.

Labor is never given value, but is a commodity-a "necessary evil" according to the Wall Street types and is to be minimized and marginalized at all costs.

Adolph Hitler's Germany monetized labor and gave it value. THAT is the reason that the jews went after Germany. Post WW1 Germany was successful in its economy due to throwing off the shackles (and shekels) of the internationalist banksters.

Henry Ford CREATED a market which had not existed when he paid his employees $5.00 per day when the average wage of the day was around $1.25 per day. His premise was not entirely altruistic as assembly line work was monotonous; a way had to be found to retain employees as well.

Of course, the wall street types and the banksters howled that Ford's wage rates would destroy capitalism (as they knew it-those at the top reap all of the benefits while the proles are forced to live on a bare subsistence wage, due to the machinations of those at the top).

Guess what??

The OPPOSITE happened. Henry Ford knew one of the basic tenets of a truly free, capitalistic society, that a well-paid work force would be able to participate and contribute to a strong economy, unlike what is taught in business schools today-that wages must be kept to a bare minimum and that the stockholder is king.

Our "free trade" politicians have assisted the greedy wall street types and banksters in depressing wages on the promise of cheap foreign labor and products.

A good example of this is the negative criticism that Costco receives for paying its employees well above market wages. These same wall street types praise Wal-Mart for paying its employees barely subsistence wages while assisting them in filling out their public assistance (welfare) forms.

Any sane person KNOWS that in order for capitalism to work, employees need to make an adequate wage. Unfortunately, this premise does not exist in today's business climate.

Henry Ford openly criticized those of the "tribe" for manipulating wall street and banksters to their own advantage, and was roundly (and unjustly) criticized for pointing out the TRUTH.

Catholic priest, Father Coughlin did the same thing and was punished by the Catholic church, despite his popularity and exposing the TRUTH of the American economy and the outsider internationalists that ran it . . . and STILL run it.

Our race to the bottom will not be without consequences. A great realignment is necessary (and is coming) . .

Ian Smith , says: December 19, 2019 at 3:58 pm GMT
@lavoisier I'm not sure I'd put Buffett in that category. For example, in one of the companies he bought, he kept a factory with declining profits open as long as he could to avoid throwing a large chunk of people out of work overnight. He has mostly made his money by avoiding dopey fads and a disciplined buy-and-hold approach to stocks.
Colin Wright , says: Website December 19, 2019 at 4:04 pm GMT
@J Adelman ' Jewish people have always stood against tyranny against the working class, the poor and other people of color." '

Right. I'd say Jews actually collaborated extensively in the imposition of tyranny on the working class in Eastern Europe from 1917 to 1991. That'd be one counter-example. Should we explore others? The role of Jews in the medieval slave trade? After all, somebody had to castrate all those Christian boys who were to serve as harem guards.

No reason to dredge up ancient history -- except here you are, making a blatantly false claim about it. 'Always stood against ', my ass.

Really No Shit , says: December 19, 2019 at 4:08 pm GMT
They are gunning for India now who do you think that brought in the Turks who ruled as the Moguls to exploit the Hindu wealth and later on who did in the Muslims?

Disraeli and his ilk always knew that India was poor but their temples were rich with gold and it's that they are after one can't build one's own "Third Temple" without it.

Why are the black cohens being promoted (South Brahmins the most pliable ones) at Google, Microsoft and Pepsi etc.? Because the waterboys, and girls, will help rope in what's left of the Indian carcass for thirty pieces of silver!

Colin Wright , says: Website December 19, 2019 at 4:09 pm GMT
@sally 'There are many venture capitalist that are not Jewish '

Could you list them?. Name them and add them -- rank them in the list Joyce provides.

I'm perfectly willing to believe you -- but you've got to provide the data. After all, I can hardly go looking for unnamed venture capitalist firms.

Rebel0007 , says: December 19, 2019 at 4:19 pm GMT
Vulture corporatism = U.S. corporations consuming consumers.
J Adleman , says: December 19, 2019 at 4:20 pm GMT
@secondElijah You are probably the most antisemitic troll I have ever met online.
So, when did Epstein and Weinstein become the standard bearers of the Jewish community?
It is your jealousy of the Jewish people that makes you spew such vile hatred here.
Smug, obnoxious white people like you who have always considered this country their private preserve are an endangered species. The demographic trends cannot be denied.
In less than 25 years white folks will become a minority in this country. So enjoy it while you can, Bubba, your days of driving the bus are numbered.
You and other whites here are like the bad guys in every horror movie ever made, who gets shot five times, or stabbed ten, or blown up twice, and who will eventually pass -- even if it takes four sequels to make it happen -- but who in the meantime keeps coming back around, grabbing at our ankles as we walk by, we having been mistakenly convinced that you were finally dead this time. Fair enough, and have at it. But remember how this movie ends. Our ankles survive.
YOU DO NOT.
Wally , says: December 19, 2019 at 4:24 pm GMT
@Just passing through – What "WASP looting" was that?

– And what "deal" was supposedly struck?

Y0u have no clue.

Rev. Spooner , says: December 19, 2019 at 4:27 pm GMT
@Saguaro The soup has boiled over, the horse has bolted and the barn has burnt down and yet you Yankees haven't woken up.Your politicians are whores who cannot function without funding from the jews. And Jeffery got them all for Mossad. Enjoy
Just passing through , says: December 19, 2019 at 4:29 pm GMT
@Vaterland The "standing up for People of Color" schtick is particularly disingenous, as all the Jews have really done isuse their disproportionate control of the media to peddle false narratives and distort history. One good example of this is the case of then president of the Atlanda chapter of B'nai B'rith, Leo Frank. Frank had raped and murdered 13 year-old Mary Phagan and when he was found out, he used his connection with New York Jews to get lots of money and hire the best defence lawyers, his lawyer then launched vicious racial attacks on a Black semi-literate janitor who worked in the factory that Frank was in charge of (and where Phagan worked) to try and convict him of the horrible crime.

Jews will be friends of POC when it suits them. The funny thing about the Frank case is that the Jewish media has made it out that Frank was innocent and wrongly lynched (only after his death sentence had been commuted by a judge who was suspected to have been bribed by powerful New York Jews), and that the Black janitor was the guilty one. This is absurd seeing as the racist Southern jury would never favour a "White" man over a Black man (anti-semtism wasn't that big in the South, and especially so considering this was before the Bolsheviks took control of Russia), and that if Frank had truly been White, this case would be a landmark case in which the evil rich White man was tried and the Black man was given justice.

Blacks are slowly wising up though.

Richard B , says: December 19, 2019 at 4:34 pm GMT
@Anon Bravo!

Hands down one of the best comments on Jewish Supremacy Inc.'s psychopathy, lack of accountablity and corresponding projection.

Of course, you thought you were doing something else.

Wally , says: December 19, 2019 at 4:35 pm GMT
@BannedHipster True desperation:

– One questionable, alleged example in Rome, hardly "WASP", which you consider to be a trend.

– Then you site a contemporary fringe Jew, born after WWII, who you count on to explain things.

And finally, your hasbarist dead give away:
" Jews are blameless, yet again another White ethnicity/religion is at fault. "

World Citizen , says: December 19, 2019 at 4:37 pm GMT
"Gentlemen! I too have been a close observer of the doings of the Bank of the United States. I have had men watching you for a long time, and am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves. I have determined to rout you out, and by the Eternal, (bringing his fist down on the table) I will rout you out!"




Islam stands in their way of usury-ripping of mankind of their resources and defrauding mankind via bank thefts.

Bring on the Shariah Law. I would much rather live under Shariah, God's Constitution than under Euoropean/Western diabolic, satanic, fraudulent monies, homosexual, thievery, false flag hoaxes, WMD's, bogus wars, Unprovoked oppression, tel-LIE-vision, Santa Claus lies, Disney hocus pocus , hollywood, illuminati, free mason, monarchy, oligarchy, millitary industrial complex, life time congressman/senators, upto the eye balls taxation, IRS thievery, Fraudulent federal reserve, Rothchild/Rockerfeller/Queens and Kings city of London satanic cabal, opec petro$$$ thievery, ISISraHELL's, al-CIA-da hoaxes, Communist, Atheist, Idol worshippers, Fear Monger's, Drugged and Drunken's oxy crystal coccaine meth psychopath, child pedeophilia, gambler's, Pathological and diabolical liars, Hypocrites, sodomites ..I can't think of any right now, because my mind is exploding with rage because of these troubling central banker's satanic hegemony!

Quran Chapter 30

39. The usury you practice, seeking thereby to multiply people's wealth, will not multiply with God. But what you give in charity, desiring God's approval -- these are the multipliers.
40. God is He who created you, then provides for you, then makes you die, then brings you back to life. Can any of your idols do any of that? Glorified is He, and Exalted above what they associate.
41. Corruption has appeared on land and sea, because of what people's hands have earned, in order to make them taste some of what they have done, so that they might return.

http://www.clearquran.com

https://www.youtube.com/embed/QlunSNY5B48?feature=oembed

Just passing through , says: December 19, 2019 at 4:38 pm GMT
@Really No Shit Jews are doing to White countries what Whites and Jews did to India, no honour amongst thieves, the ones with the higher verbal IQ wins.

Also it is important to note that the reason India came under the sway of Anglo-Zionist banking cartels so easily was because how divided it was, I reckon that is why they are promoting mass immigration. Import lots of different groups, then run lots of race-baiting stories to distract the plebs from their financial machinations.

This is why Jews are well represented in non-antisemitic White Nationalist organisations like Jared Taylor's AmRen, they are great at playing both sides.

Realist , says: December 19, 2019 at 4:41 pm GMT
@Adrian

And he funded the building of the Peace Palace ("Vredespaleis") in The Hague, presently the seat of the International Court of Justice, an institution not held in high esteem in the home country of the generous donor.

That wasn't his intent.

Just passing through , says: December 19, 2019 at 4:44 pm GMT
@Wally You can act confused all you want, you know exactly what I am talking about, the fact of the matter is Whites like you and Joyce would be laughing it up at countries/territories like Puerto Rico, Congo, Vietnam etc etc being carved up and financially enslaved if Whites were also allowed a piece of the pie along with Jews (as was the case in the days of the British Empire when WASP's and Jews worked together), but now that the low-IQ countries have been looted, the Jews have turned on the Whites and the latter are now crying that their criminal comrades have now betrayed them.

You quite clearly have a clue, you are just terrified and trying to divert because I am right, the Jews will do to the White nations what the White nations and Jews did to the non-White nations. All I can say is that you WASPs should have kept to youselves like Eastern Europeans and Eastern Asians, they didn't really engage in lofty ambitons to dominate the world and as such are intact at the moment and seem like they will remain that way for a long time, they are the true conservatives, WASPs have always had a Jewish streak within their corrupt souls and are now paying the price for engaging with a criminal race.

Why do you think Epstein has all these Gentiles in his pocket? You think do-gooding gentiles just randomly decided to get into bed with Epstein and Co.? How many East Asians and Eastern Euros do you see terrified of being outed as paedophiles.

Don't deceive yourselves, all debts are paid in the end, especially when the creditors are Jews.

Germanicus , says: December 19, 2019 at 4:48 pm GMT
@Adrian They are a function of Empire in Hague, who protect empire criminals, and assume a non existent legitimacy and jurisdiction as a private entity to take down empire opponents.
It is the very same kangaroo court as the IMT or Tokio show trials.
Richard B , says: December 19, 2019 at 4:48 pm GMT
@Bardon Kaldian

Of course that Joyce is peddling his own obsessions

Psycho-babble explains nothing.

It's a shame you include that remark in an otherwise on target comment.

Richard B , says: December 19, 2019 at 4:58 pm GMT
@J Adleman When you're called an antisemite in the first line you know you've hit a nerve.

Treason Against Jewish Supremacy Inc. Is Loyalty To Humanity!

Oh, it's ok for Noel Ignatiev to not only say

Treason Against Whiteness* Is Loyalty To Humanity,

but to actually "teach" it at Harvard.

And then protect himself and his ilk with accusations of "Hate Speech."

No wonder he died of colon cancer. He was always full of shit.

*typical of JSI to indulge in verbal weasling; by "Whiteness" he means Whites.

By the way, accusations of antisemitism don't work anymore.

It means nothing to us.

If anything, Supremacists like you make it a badge of honor.

Since you use at the drop of a hat.

Common sense Giuseppe , says: December 19, 2019 at 5:02 pm GMT
In the book "Heaven is for real" a 4 year old boy who supposedly is dead for a short period, but actually visits heaven; when he returns, is asked : what is the meaning, the purpose of life on earth?

His response is so simple, that it could only be true. And it could only come from knowing

"It's a contest between good and evil"

Evil

Germanicus , says: December 19, 2019 at 5:05 pm GMT
@Just passing through

Don't deceive yourselves, all debts are paid in the end, especially when the creditors are Jews.

It is a mathematical impossibility due to interest. The FED probably goes negative interest like ECB mafia.
Chances are higher they do a reset and start anew with an electronic ponzi scheme.
No one seriously plans to pay these "debts", they can't be paid, and are actually a nothing burger, pure fiction.

aandrews , says: December 19, 2019 at 5:07 pm GMT
" it is truly remarkable that vulture funds like Singer's escaped major media attention prior to this ."

Not really. The Jew's grip is starting to slip now, though. More and more people are becoming aware that they are virulent parasites and always have been.

DaveE , says: December 19, 2019 at 5:08 pm GMT
@Mulegino1 Real capitalism is the competition of ideas, innovation, efficient manufacturing and quality products made and produced by honest companies. That competition can, in theory at least, make people (and companies) "try harder". But only when a company's success is determined by the strength of its products, not by the "deals" it cuts with Jewish financial, advertising, "marketing" and swindling rackets, designed to line the pockets of the Jew while destroying honest competition by Gentiles who struggle to play fair and innovate.

Jewish vulture "capitalism" contributes NOTHING of value to any company or any culture. It never has and never will.

Mulegino1 , says: December 19, 2019 at 5:08 pm GMT
@J Adleman

You and other whites here are like the bad guys in every horror movie ever made, who gets shot five times, or stabbed ten, or blown up twice, and who will eventually pass -- even if it takes four sequels to make it happen -- but who in the meantime keeps coming back around, grabbing at our ankles as we walk by, we having been mistakenly convinced that you were finally dead this time. Fair enough, and have at it. But remember how this movie ends. Our ankles survive.
YOU DO NOT.

Talk about deflection. Any nation, empire, culture or civilization wherein the Jewish collective gains critical mass and ultimately absolute power turns into a real horror, not a movie. The Jews may be said to be the true prototype of the "bad guys in every horror movie", since they can only be gotten rid of by very rigorous means taken in the healthiest and most vigorous cultures and societies. Indeed, antisemitism itself is the healthy immunological reaction of a flourishing culture, and its lack thereof the pathology of a moribund one.

Woke Christians of European provenance have nothing to envy the Jew (the archetypal Jew) over. We realize that the true measure of success is not primarily monetary or the fulfillment of cheap ambitions, but a spiritual and cultural one. On the contrary, the Jewish hatred against Christian Europe and the civilization that it constructed is engendered out of sheer envy and malice, because Jewry understands that is would never be capable of constructing anything similar, and never has. In all of the arts, Jewry has produced nothing of note.
This is not to say that individual Jews have not made contributions to the arts and sciences, but they have done so only by participation in gentile culture, not qua Jews. Jewry only tears down and deconstructs; it is not creative in the sense of high art, and can thrive only in the swamp of gentile decadence and moral putrefaction. Whatever Jewry touches, it turns to merde.

Ilya G Poimandres , says: December 19, 2019 at 5:09 pm GMT
@Anon

Intelligence

European Jewish IQ has only gone 1/2 a standard deviation above the white norm in the last 100 years. Interesting to know why, but the belief Jews have always been more intelligent is just lack of data.

bias for co-operation

Nazis did this too – they worked reaaally well with each other. The issue was how they thought of and treated others.

That aside, I think we daily meet plenty of individuals who'd sell their mothers, and maybe kill lives, for pennies. They are like machines not even conscious of what they are doing.

Your 1 data point aside, are you saying all humans act in identical ways, regardless of how the ideologies they embrace ask them to act?

Take the ideology of Islam – it does not allow for aggressive war, surprise attacks, the killing of women or children (unless they take up arms)..

Judaism allows for aggressive war, surprise attack, and demands the killing of all when a state of war is declared.

Do you believe these declarations lead to identical actions by their practitioners? (in other words – people act how they would wish to act, and don't really engage in any belief systems beyond what pulls their own selves?)

So, it's the usual with Joyce (and not only Joyce of course). You take something that is human, talk of Jews, point to that something in Jews, and pretend, trusting that your readers will pretend the same, that it's a Jewish-specific something.

Yes, correct – no ideology is perfect at taming human action, and corruption is a human action, not a Jewish action. But we could still engage in comparative ideology, and this is what Joyce (and not only Joyce, of course) engage in.

Saying 'well, all peoples engage in force and deceit, so is there any actual difference between them and their beliefs?' is absurdism. In such a world, I will build a nation of priests, fashioned along the lines of the Aztek priesthood. Give me your children so I can rip out their hearts and make it rain – after all 'we are all the same'!!

The argument is that, for the proportion of the population, the fraction of monopoly power in Western economies that is taken up by Jewish power is much disproportional to other nations/belief systems.

It is fair to ask whether people who engage in other belief systems have the same level of desire for monopoly, just less skill to get it due to their belief systems.. I would say yes, they have the same level of desire (we are all human after all (not that if you read chapter 1 of the Tanya, you will be offered that point of view)) – but that their belief systems specifically push them away from materialism and desire for money and power, even at the expense of others. That is the exact point of religion (self-improvement) btw, so the next question is – is the Jewish religion effective?

At which point, the Jewish ideology becomes the wolf in the hen house – because it fails to tame the human away from such materialistic desire (as it btw claims it does best).

Should the hens be allowed to point out what they see as a wolf? Yes.

That the supposed wolf then obfuscates and justifies their actions by pointing to others, mostly, betrays that it is, in fact, a wolf.

Rebel0007 , says: December 19, 2019 at 5:11 pm GMT
I have become totally disenchanted with the SEC. Stupid, Evil, Crazy! It would not surprise me if they are the ones that have been terrorizing me, with stupid, evil, crazy chants through appliances after illegallly implaced RFIDs, microchips, or sensors illegally implanted in my ears and nose that started after my first phone was hacked in 2017! Can't expect stupid people not to be stupid, evil people not to be evil, and crazy people not to be crazy! They were just born that way!
9/11 Inside job , says: December 19, 2019 at 5:25 pm GMT
@J Adleman brookings.edu : "The US will become minority white in 2045 Census projects " :
"During that year [2045] whites will comprise 49.7 per cent of the population in contrast to 24.6 per cent for Hispanics , 13.1 per cent for Blacks , 7.9 per cent for Asians and 3.8 per cent for multi-racial populations " Are these projections good or bad for the "Jewish people " ?
Agent76 , says: December 19, 2019 at 5:33 pm GMT
Jan 28, 2010 The Creature From Jekyll Island (by G. Edward Griffin)

A Second Look at the Federal Reserve

https://www.youtube.com/embed/lu_VqX6J93k?feature=oembed

Nov 22, 2013 Thomas DiLorenzo – The Revolution Of 1913

From the Tom Woods show Loyola economics professor Thomas DiLorenzo discusses three events from 1913 that greatly escalated the transmogrification of America from the founder's vision (limited government) to its current state (unlimited government).

https://www.youtube.com/embed/Fj4HyL8pOy0?feature=oembed

Wyatt , says: December 19, 2019 at 5:38 pm GMT
@silviosilver Yes, and just because you can doesn't mean you should. And if there's a predilection among jewish men to engage in predatory lending and collecting tactics that is disproportionate to their of the population, there's something about their genes or their culture that shapes them to be this way.

Also, notice how you left out the part where they jack up the interest rates and debtor's fees to grossly inflate their income. Is there a reason to do this other than as a quick way to make money off already impoverished people? It's kind of like opening up a rent to own place in a low income place. The people who do that shit know exactly why they should set up among poor people; low wealth and bad decision making abound.

And yes, it does seem to be particularly jewish given how many jews are involved in its practice and given that it used to be frowned upon in Christian Europe. Hell, God himself (as Jesus) went and beat the shit out of a bunch of jews for their money lending in the temple. That's the best part of the Bible, frankly. God gets so sick of the his own chosen people that he sends himself to chastise and whip them for their greed and hubris. No lesson was learned.

And then they killed him. And they lost their homeland for 2000 years. And then were kicked out of a hundred plus kingdoms, cities and countries. And then a miserable liberal shows how vile and stupid their children are:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/1e_dbsVQrk4?feature=oembed

You know, maybe instead of making excuses, you can just acknowledge the wrongdoing and acknowledge that some jews are particularly malicious. Cuz eventually, people are gonna get sick of the shit jews pull and see jewish (or gentile zionist) people defending their obvious misdeeds and get pissed at them as well. Remember, the well is open to everyone.

Robjil , says: December 19, 2019 at 5:39 pm GMT
@Onebornfree Freedom of speech would solve the problem. That is step one.

The next step to stop this menace is Usury control.

On 12.23.1913 FED – Jewish banksters took over the western world through the control of the US money supply.

The first century of Zion began that day. It was the most murderous century of all : WWI for the Balfour, WWII for Israel.

The second century of Zion rule began on 12. 23. 5761, Jewish calendar for 9.11.2001. It just as murderous as the first Zion century.

If we had a free press that calls out the Jewish Zion Mafia that in itself would solve the problem.

This Zion Mafia is destroying our planet faster than any Climate Change or any pollution.

Yet, we can not speak about it. It is anti-S to speak about what the Big Js do.

Onebornfree, the J mafia roams the world without being bound to any nation. A nation-less world would not stop their menace.

The best way to stop this world wide menace is free speech to talk about it. Usury control is the next step to end this menace to our planet.

More R1b, Less H1B , says: December 19, 2019 at 5:45 pm GMT
@Lot

Besides being retardedly wrong, the broader point is likewise retarded: when English-speaking Jews name their businesses they shouldn't use English words. Naming a company "Oaktree" should be limited to those of purely English blood! Jews must name their companies "Cosmopolitan Capital" or RosenMoses Chutzpah Advisors."

Telling that you go with hyperbole here: the only two options must be Albion Whyteman Capital or Foreskin-Chewing Pornographers Incorporated!

There are two interesting things about the onomastics of the prepuce-free business world. One is that far fewer sons of Abraham name their businesses after themselves (I'm sure this will insincerely be attributed to some fear of native kulaks' repressed urge-to-pogrom, even in Finland or Japan.) The other is an observation made by an associate of a famous Austrian landscapist: even merely remarking on their origins causes these guys mental distress.

Here in the melting pot, the difference couldn't be any starker. You can make small talk with any flavor of goy based on it: that's a Polish name, isn't it? Yeah, how did you know! Try this one with Levy or Nussbaum down at The Smith Group or The Jones Foundation and watch them plotz.

Mefobills , says: December 19, 2019 at 5:51 pm GMT
Jews have always weaponized usury. Long before Christianity, Jews operated the East/West mechanism on donkey caravan trade routes. Silver would drain from the West, and Gold would drain from the east, while Jewish caravaneers would take usury on exchange rate differences. This operated for thousands of years.

Haibaru donkey bones have been discovered outside of Sumer. The Aiparu/Haibaru (Hebrew) tribes were formed as merchants operating between city states. In those days, psychopaths and criminals would be excommunicated from civilized city states, and would take up with the wandering merchant tribe.

Why do you think the Jew is always interested in owing the money power? Why do you think the Jew perpetually stands outside the walls of the city state, plotting its destruction?

History tells us things, and we had better listen. That is – real history, not what you learned in (((public skool))). There are two ways to deal with the Jew: 1) Remove him from your country. 2) Limit him.

Limiting was done by Byzantium under Justinian. The Jew was limited FROM money counting/banking; limited from participation in government; limited from access to pervert young minds – especially as school teachers and professors.

It takes a King or Tsar who cares about his population, and is willing to eject or filter out toxins from the body politic. (((Democracy))) is a failed form of government, whereby monied Oligarchs control the polity by compromat and pulling strings.

You are not going to be able to vote your way out of the Jew problem.

Digital Samizdat , says: December 19, 2019 at 6:01 pm GMT
@Colin Wright Echoing words once supposedly used by Hermann Goering: whenever I here the word 'philanthropist' these days, I instinctively reach for my revolver!
Agent76 , says: December 19, 2019 at 6:03 pm GMT
Jan 23, 2012 Why the Constitution Had to Be Destroyed | Thomas J. DiLorenzo

Archived from the live Mises tv broadcast, this lecture was presented by Tom DiLorenzo at the Mises Circle in Houston on 14 January 2012.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/wDyDxgJuaDY?feature=oembed

Mefobills , says: December 19, 2019 at 6:07 pm GMT
@Ilya G Poimandres

Take the ideology of Islam – it does not allow for aggressive war, surprise attacks, the killing of women or children (unless they take up arms)..

Ilya,

There is deception in Islam. Sorry. You cannot make claims about Islam not allowing for aggressive war and surprise attacks.

These concepts even have names and doctrine that support them. Wahabbi/Salafist Islam is exactly in alignment with Islamic teachings, especially when using abrogation techniques.

Taqiyya is lying with intent to deceive. The analog in Judaism is the Kol-Niedre, which allows one pre-forgiveness for lying, cheating, even murder of Goyim.

Hudnas is are used to lay in wait, build up strength, to then attack the enemy.

Islam has derogatory terms to demean e.g. Kaffirs, which is similar to Goyim.

There is also deception in Christianity, but this deception is OUT OF ALIGNMENT WITH DOCTRINE. The doctrine of super-session means the old testament is superseded, completed, a historical record.

In Islam the doctrine of Abrogation means that the more pacific Meccan verses are abrogated (made less relevant) that post Medina. Ergo, Wahabbi Islam and the Takfiri's are doctrinaly correct, while Judaizer Christians (those that worship the old testament) are out of alignment and heretics.

Judaism is actually a new religion that came into being after 73 AD, when the verbal tradition (Caballa) became written down into Talmud.

Our Jewish friends have always been practicing usury, going back to since forever.

Our Jewish friends, I count as worse that Islamics. However two wrongs don't make a right. Islam badly needs reform or to be expunged. Talmudic Judaism is by far the worst religion on the planet, and its adherents must malfunction by definition.

Robjil , says: December 19, 2019 at 6:18 pm GMT
@9/11 Inside job Jewish bigwigs think that the world will be their oyster if there are less White Euros in the world.

Yet, Jewish Advisors have been at the top of white Euro nations for centuries as their oyster to pillage the planet.

Non-White Euro people may not be so welcoming to Jewish Advisors at the top telling to them to go to war or pillage their fellow non-White Euros.

I don't think that the big Jews at the top thought this out too much.

Mefobills , says: December 19, 2019 at 6:20 pm GMT
@Onebornfree

o ..kill all the Jewish, er, "vulture capitalists" , right? Or should we go "easy" on them all and merely ship them all off to special "re-education" camps? Or am I missing something here ?

You are missing something because you are unwilling to adapt and learn with new information. This makes you an ideologue.

Lolbertarianism IS A JEWISH CONSTRUCT.

There are no such things as free markets. Money's true nature is law, not gold. Money didn't come into being with barter and other nonsense lolbertarians believe.

Most of the luminaries that came up with "libertarian" economics are Jews, and it is a doctrine of deception. The idea is to confuse the goyim with thoughts and ideas that make them easy pickings.

A determined in-group of predators operating in unison, will take down an "individual" every-time.

Rebel0007 , says: December 19, 2019 at 6:30 pm GMT
Don't expect anything to improve with Jay Clayton as SEC Chair, and his wife and her father Gretchen Butler Clayton who was CEO of CSC and mysterious WMB Holdings which share the same address in addition to many Goldman Sachs divisions. Gretchen was employed by Goldman Sachs as an attorney from 1999-2017. Many companies affiliated with the Panama Papers share the same address as well.

Secrecy has expanded under Clayton.

https://wallstreetonparade.com/2018/01/wall-streets-top-cop-cant-shake-money-ties-to-mysterious-firm/

alex in San Jose AKA digital Detroit , says: December 19, 2019 at 6:34 pm GMT
Jewish people have treated me better than my own White Euro family.

Jews are tribal, gee what a surprise after 1000's of years of people trying to wipe them out . and so their charity is within the tribe, but there is no charity within the tribe among Whites.

Jews, along with Asians and at least some Africans, believe in not just climbing the ladder, but in actually helping others – at least family – up it also. Whites believe in climbing the ladder and then pulling it up after them.

I was explaining to a friend recently: My (relative) has proven that if I showed up at their door, starving, they'd not give me a cheese sandwich, while in my experience, strangers have been overall a fairly kind lot and a stranger, 50/50, might. Therefore, while I find the idea of robbing or burning down the house of a stranger abhorrent, I don't mind the idea so much when it involves a person who's proven to be cold and evil.

For more on this, see the book Angela's Ashes. The Irish family could have stayed in New York where they were being befriended by a Jewish family. There was a ray of hope. The Irish kids, at least, would have been fed, steered into decent schooling, etc. But foolishly they went back to Ireland, to be treated like utter dogshit by their fellow White family and "people".

Most of the predation going on in the US and worldwide is being done by WASPS who are using Jews as a convenient scapegoat.

Digital Samizdat , says: December 19, 2019 at 6:36 pm GMT
@tono bungay Feel free to offer us some counter-examples, tono. How many such funds to you know of that aren't disproportionately Jewish? We're all ears!
Robjil , says: December 19, 2019 at 6:56 pm GMT
@Robjil This is an example of what I was saying. Less Euro whites in the world is not going to be a good world for Big Js. Non-Euros believe in freedom of speech.

https://www.abeldanger.org/vulture-lord-paul-singer-postmodern/

Jewish Bigwigs can't get control of businesses in East Asia. They have been trying. Paul Singer tried and failed. In Argentina he got lots of "success". Why? Lots of descendants of Europeans there went along with "decisions" laid out by New York Jews.

Little Paulie tried to get control of Samsung. No such luck for him in Korea. In Korea there are many family monopolies, chaebols. A Korean chaebol stopped him. Jewish Daniel Loeb tried to get a board seat on Sony. He was rebuffed.

I was moved to reflect on the universality of this theme recently when surveying media coverage on Korean and Argentinian responses to the activities of Paul Singer and his co-ethnic shareholders at Elliott Associates, an arm of Singer's Elliott Management hedge fund. The Korean story has its origins in the efforts of Samsung's holding company, Cheil Industries, to buy Samsung C&T, the engineering and construction arm of the wider Samsung family of businesses. The move can be seen as part of an effort to reinforce control of the conglomerate by the founding Lee family and its heir apparent, Lee Jae-yong. Trouble emerged when Singer's company, which holds a 7.12% stake in Samsung C&T and is itself attempting to expand its influence and control over Far East tech companies, objected to the move. The story is fairly typical of Jewish difficulties in penetrating business cultures in the Far East, where impenetrable family monopolies, known in Korea as chaebols, are common. This new story reminded me very strongly of last year's efforts by Jewish financier Daniel Loeb to obtain a board seat at Sony. Loeb was repeatedly rebuffed by COO Kazuo Hirai, eventually selling his stake in Sony Corp. in frustration.

Here is how the Koreans fought off Paul Singer.

The predominantly Jewish-owned and operated Elliott Associates has a wealth of self-interest in preventing the Lee family from consolidating its control over the Samsung conglomerate. As racial outsiders, however, Singer's firm were forced into several tactical measures in their 52-day attempt to thwart the merger. First came lawsuits. When those failed, Singer and his associates then postured themselves as defending Korean interests, starting a Korean-language website and arguing that their position was really just in aid of helping domestic Korean shareholders. This variation on the familiar theme of Jewish crypsis was quite unsuccessful. The Lee family went on the offensive immediately and, unlike many Westerners, were not shy in drawing attention to the Jewish nature of Singer's interference and the sordid and intensely parasitic nature of his fund's other ventures.

Cartoons were drawn of Singer being a vulture.

Other cartoons appearing at the same time represented Elliott, literally, as humanoid vultures, with captions referring to the well-known history of the fund. In the above cartoon, the vulture offers assistance to a needy and destitute figure, but conceals an axe with which to later bludgeon the unsuspecting pauper.

ADL got all worked about this. The Koreans did not care. It is reality. Freedom of speech works on these vultures. The west should try some real freedom of speech.

After the cartoons appeared, Singer and other influential Jews, including Abraham Foxman, cried anti-Semitism. This was despite the fact the cartoons contain no reference whatsoever to Judaism – unless of course one defines savage economic predation as a Jewish trait. Samsung denied the cartoons were anti-Semitic and took them off the website, but the uproar over the cartoons only seemed to spur on even more discussion about Jewish influence in South Korea than was previously the case. In a piece published a fortnight ago, Media Pen columnist Kim Ji-ho claimed "Jewish money has long been known to be ruthless and merciless." Last week, the former South Korean ambassador to Morocco, Park Jae-seon, expressed his concern about the influence of Jews in finance when he said, "The scary thing about Jews is they are grabbing the currency markets and financial investment companies. Their network is tight-knit beyond one's imagination." The next day, cable news channel YTN aired similar comments by local journalist Park Seong-ho, who stated on air that "it is a fact that Jews use financial networks and have influence wherever they are born." It goes without saying that comments like these are unambiguously similar to complaints about Jewish economic practices in Europe over the course of centuries. The only common denominator between the context of fourteenth-century France and the context of twenty-first-century South Korea is, you guessed it, Jewish economic practices.

The Koreans won. Paulie lost. Good win for humanity. The Argentines were not so lucky. They don't have freedom speech like the Koreans and East Asians have.

In the end, the Lee strategy, based on drawing attention to the alien and exploitative nature of Elliott Associates, was overwhelmingly effective. Before a crucial shareholder vote on the Lee's planned merger, Samsung Securities CEO Yoon Yong-am said: "We should score a victory by a big margin in the first battle, in order to take the upper hand in a looming war against Elliott, and keep other speculative hedge funds from taking short-term gains in the domestic market." When the vote finally took place a few days ago, a conclusive 69.5% of Samsung shareholders voted in favor of the Lee proposal, leaving Elliott licking its wounds and complaining about the "patriotic marketing" of those behind the merger.

jack daniels , says: December 19, 2019 at 7:00 pm GMT
@jack daniels Now that I think about it, it was unfair to make an anecdotal judgment that Jewish lenders are less forgiving. There are plenty of examples, I'm sure, of compassionate Jews and flinty gentiles.
Digital Samizdat , says: December 19, 2019 at 7:01 pm GMT
Finally! An intelligent criticism of Trump for a change. So tired of the brainless Democrat/MSM impeachment circus. They make me feel like a reflexive MAGAtard just for defending the constitution, logic, etc., from their never-ending stream of inanities. Meanwhile, the real problem with Trump is not that he's Hitler; it's that he's not Hitler enough!

I am also so tired of Zionist-loving cucks bleeting on about the evils of the CRA without ever considering the role played by the (((profiteers))) who lobbied such policies into law in the first place. Realize that what Paul Singer does for a living used to be illegal in this country up until recently. That's right: US bankruptcy law used to forbid investors from buying up debt second-hand at a discount and then trying to reclaim the entire face value from the debtor. But I see all kinds of people even on this thread blaming the victim instead -- 'Damn goyishe deadbeats!' Whatever

What Singer and the other Jewish vultures engage in is not productive, and isn't even any recognisable form of work or business. It is greed-motivated parasitism carried out on a perversely extravagant and highly nepotistic scale. In truth, it is Singer and his co-ethnics who believe that money can be printed on the backs of productive workers, and who ultimately believe they have a right to be "showered by free stuff promised by politicians."

Nuff said?

Rebel0007 , says: December 19, 2019 at 7:04 pm GMT
Dr. John R. Hall of ICAACT.org says that approximately 300,000 Americans have had micro-chips illegally implanted in people.

Do you think that it is a coincidence that there are approximately 300,000 names associated with the Panama Papers?

Desert Fox , says: December 19, 2019 at 7:06 pm GMT
@Robjil Agree.
renfro , says: December 19, 2019 at 7:16 pm GMT
@anon

To what extent is Jewish success a product of Jewish intellect and industry versus being a result of a willingness to use low, dirty, honorless and anti-social tactics which, while maybe not in violation of the word of the law, certainly violate its spirit?

The last Gentleman on WS was not a Jew. Bring back the WASP. You can maintain your honor, and manners and still succeed. Jews take the easy low road of deception and cheating. WASP take the higher road of harder work and ethical business practice.

WALL STREET'S LAST GENTLEMAN, Richard Jenrette

https://www.nytimes.com/1984/11/18/business/wall-street-s-last-gentleman-richard-jenrette-forging-the-equitable-connection.html

[MORE]
The courtly Mr. Jenrette, who has been dubbed "the last gentleman on Wall Street" earned this sobriquet largely for his reputation of being particularly sensitive to the human dimension in an industry where such matters often get sidestepped. Nonetheless, despite Mr. Jenrette's modest demeanor, he's risen to the top in an often cutthroat business. He remained with Donaldson Lufkin through good times and bad, guiding it after its two other founding partners departed for other ventures and, next month, he will step down as the chairman of the Securities Industry Association, the brokerage trade group.
"Dick has been the one who carried the firm from its original promise through to closure," said Samuel Hayes 3d, an investment banking professor at the Harvard Business School.
"Dick's more in tune with human values and that's not frequently found on Wall Street."

Richard Jenrette, 89, Wall Street power, Raleigh native, dies
https://www.wral.com › richard-jenrette-89-wall-street-power-and-preserva
Apr 23, 2018 – A courtly, soft-spoken North Carolina native whom The New York Times once called the "last gentleman on Wall Street," Jenrette (pronounced

Wall Street's 'last gentleman' left behind these 24 lessons about life and success: At the time of his death late last month due to complications from lymphoma, these couple dozen rules to live by were left on his desk.
Stay in the game. That's often all you need to do -- don't quit. Stick around! Don't be a quitter!
•Don't burn bridges (behind you)
•Remember -- Life has no blessing like a good friend!
•You can't get enough of them
•Don't leave old friends behind -- you may need them
•Try to be nice and say "thank you" a lot!
•Stay informed/KEEP LEARNING!
•Study -- Stay Educated. Do Your Home Work!! Keep learning!
•Cultivate friends of all ages -- especially younger
•Run Scared -- over-prepare
•Be proud -- no Uriah Heep for you! But not conceited. Know your own worth.
•Plan ahead but be prepared to allow when opportunity presents itself.
•Turn Problems into Opportunities. Very often it can be done. Problems create opportunities for change -- people willing to consider change when there are problems.
•Present yourself well. Clean, clean-shaven, dress "classically" to age. Beware style, trends. Look for charm. Good grammar. Don't swear so much -- it's not cute.
•But be open to change -- don't be stuck in mud. Be willing to consider what's new but don't blindly follow it. USE YOUR HEAD -- COMMON SENSE.
•Have some fun -- but not all the time!
•Be on the side of the Angels. Wear the White Hat.
•Have a fall-back position. Heir and the spare. Don't leave all your money in one place.
•Learn a foreign language.
•Travel a lot -- around the world, if possible.
•Don't criticize someone in front of others.
•Don't forget to praise a job well done (but don't praise a poor job)
•I don't like to lose -- but don't be a poor loser if you do.
•It helps to have someone to love who loves you (not just sex).
•Keep your standards high in all you do.
•Look for the big picture but don't forget the small details.

the grand wazoo , says: December 19, 2019 at 7:19 pm GMT
"Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation and I" care not who makes its laws"
That is what Mayer Amschel Rothchild said in the 1750s. Now, is it a stretch of my imagination to believe the Central Banks of the West, all Jewish controlled, would unfairly favor their 'own' when issueing or disbursing the money they are permitted to create.
We are not allowed to audit the Federal Reserve, so we know not what they do with it beyond what they tell us. In 2016 it was discovered that between the year 1999 and 2016 well over $23 trillions had been stolen from just 2 departments of our government, the DoD and HUD. (Someone should look at NASA). Is it possible the seed money, for not only Venture capitalists schemes but also buying governments and law makers, has been diverted, shoveled out of the back door of these corrupt central banks and into the hands of their fellow jews?
Anyway, the more exposure articles like this get the closer we get to ending their reign.
Robjil , says: December 19, 2019 at 7:23 pm GMT
This Paul Singer is a true world wide criminal. His firm started in 1977, all his four partners where fellow Jews.

https://www.abeldanger.org/vulture-lord-paul-singer-postmodern/

As I noted in my previous examination of contemporary Jewish usury, Jews have been at the forefront of innovation in debt for many centuries, and remain its most adroit auteurs. Although obviously rooted in centuries of Jewish financial practice, Singer and his co-ethnics (all four equity partners of Elliott are Jewish, and its COO is the charmingly-named Zion Shohet) pioneered the finer points of the vulture-fund concept. The firm was born in 1977 when Singer pooled $1.3 million from family and friends,

His firm's first big "win" was the pillage of Panama in 1995.

but it only really took off in October 1995, when Elliott Associates L.P. purchased $28.7 million of Panamanian sovereign debt for the discounted price of $17.5 million. The banks holding those bonds, a group that included heavy hitters like Citi and Credit Suisse, had given up on repayment from Panama. To cut their losses, they sold their holdings to Elliott which, like a medieval tax farmer, went in with a heavy hand. When Panama's government asked for a restructuring of its foreign debt in 1995, the vast majority of its bondholders agreed – apart from Elliott. In July 1996, Elliott Associates, represented by one of the world's most high-profile securities law firms, filed a lawsuit against Panama in a New York district court, seeking full repayment of the original $28.7 million – plus interest and fees. The case made its way from a district court in Manhattan to the New York State Supreme Court, which sided with Elliott. In the end, Panama's government had to pay the Jewish group over $57 million, with an additional $14 million going to other creditors. Overnight, Singer's group made $40 million, and the people of Panama found their original sovereign debt had more than doubled.

Ilya G Poimandres , says: December 19, 2019 at 7:28 pm GMT
@Mefobills If you could point to a verse in the Quran that allows for aggressive war, it would help me learn – when I read it I saw an explosive self defence at any infringment on the Ummah, but not much beyond that.

Of course the origination story of the faith is one of fighting, and without any wise men to guide the laypeople, the faith has an issue in that it is easy for people to not follow what it teaches.

The lying, I agree – Majjhima Nikaya 61 https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.061.than.html is a major reason why I embrace Dhamma over other faiths.

Islam has been assaulted for a millennium, and so the self defence aspect of its faith has become more active than the rest.. it needs reform I agree (and not in the direction the Salafists have taken it), but more so there is a need for the Ummah to have a few generations of non-aggression from the outside world.. without it the pressure will only be towards violence – for any nation or faith!

Judaism has monopolized for millennia though, and still acts as a victim. Different kettle of fish.

Also, you can debate the positives and negatives of Islam with a Muslim (not as a rabid ignoramus of course – you must be polite, and have learnt something, as well as be open to learning more). Almost every debate with a Jew about Judaism has started with, continued with, and ended with name calling for me however.

Judaism fails as a religion because it does not encourage the practitioner to look at themselves when confronted with error, Islam still does imo.

Colin Wright , says: Website December 19, 2019 at 7:31 pm GMT
So I scanned through the posts quickly -- probably too quickly.

How many specific, gentile vulture capitalists currently prominent in the field have been named so far?

When you list them, please respond to my post so that I will be notified.

Anon [515] Disclaimer , says: December 19, 2019 at 7:33 pm GMT
Does anyone here remember how John Leibowitz aka John Stewart spent months ripping Mitt Romney to shreds? Remember? Evil white man vulture capitalism at Bain? Remember? Romney was Adolf Hitler, and look he put his golden retriever on the roof once?

Say. How come that Mr Leibowitz never talked about the Jews who basically destroyed yes the entire Rust belt by acquisition and outsource?

That Mr Johnny Leibovitz sure did hate the goy a lot and all. He never talked about his own people. What a fair fellow Mr Johnny Leibovitz was. He even changed his name. Why change the name?

Remember. Bain Capital and that kind of merger pump and dumps is all done by Mormons goyim.

anarchyst , says: December 19, 2019 at 7:34 pm GMT
@Colin Wright Your statement: "Jews actually collaborated extensively in the imposition of tyranny on the working class in Eastern Europe from 1917 to 1991" not only applies to Europe, but the united States of America as well.

It's the JEWS it's always the JEWS

[MORE]
Our present situation and the devolving into the morass of "multiculturalism" and "diversity" is no accident. The jewish talmud and that jewish invention-communism has "rules" for the debasement of (white) civil society.

The following statements are a result of personal experiences–your mileage may vary

I came of age during the first so-called "civil-rights" movement and saw for myself the underhanded dealings, the demonization of decent, law-abiding whites, and in general, the deterioration of civil society.

Almost all of the "civil-rights" workers and demonstration "handlers" were of one persuasion–New York based leftist communist jews. They cared not one wit about true "civil rights", but were there to create hate and discontent among their black charges (who were too stupid or naive to see that they were being used to suborn and destroy legitimate government and society–a favorite communist tactic).

These New York-based "carpetbaggers" fomented their hate and discontent, only to become future "civil-rights" attorneys, race-hustlers, and America-hating leftist communists and the ADL and $PLC being invented.

Those of us whites who were in the middle of this "civil-rights" revolution had a saying: " Behind every negro, there is a jew ". No truer words were spoken.

Let's not forget their infestation of the nation's education and entertainment systems, (which continues to the present day), in which they can spread their jewish supremacist poison.

The so-called "non-violent civil-rights demonstrations" were anything but "non-violent". Robberies, rapes, and other criminal acts were common, but never reported, as even the "mainstream media" was "in on the game" and conveniently turned off their cameras during the acts of violence. You see, even then,"creating crises" was a part of the agenda.

The "beginning of the end" of America was the use of federal troops against white Americans, which, in itself was a violation of "posse comitatus"–the prohibition on the use of federal troops for domestic "law enforcement" purposes. As most whites were (and still are) law-abiding, they (we) were "steamrollered" by the use of federal troops to crush honest dissent. We never recovered from those unconstitutional actions. It was all downhill from there

The next step may be "civil-war" in which us whites will have to take back our birthright by force.

Robjil , says: December 19, 2019 at 7:40 pm GMT
@Robjil This decision in Panama was "ground breaking". A nation state can be sued in regular courts.

https://www.abeldanger.org/vulture-lord-paul-singer-postmodern/

"Foreign Policy described the court's decision as "a groundbreaking moment in the modern history of finance." By taking the case to a New York district court, Elliott broke with long-standing international law and custom, according to which sovereign governments are not sued in regular courts meant to deal with questions internal to a nation state. Further, the presiding judge accepted the case – another break with custom. It set the stage for two decades of similar parasitism on struggling countries by Elliott Associates, a practice that has reaped billions for Jewish financiers. "

A year later after the ground breaking decision. Paulie tries this scam on another nation, Peru.

Just one year after the Panama decision, Singer spent about $11 million on government-backed Peruvian bank debt in 1996. After Singer took Peru to court in the U.S., U.K., Luxembourg, Belgium, Germany, and Canada, the struggling nation finally agreed in 2000 to pay him $58 million. That meant he got better than a 400 percent return.

In 2001, the victim was Argentina.

In 2001, Elliott Associates purchased an Argentinian default for $48 million; the face value of that debt today is $630 million. The fund wants repayment for the full value of the debt to all of Argentina's creditors, as it did in 1995 with Panama. This amounts to $1.5 billion, which could rise to $3 billion including, again, that all-important interest and fees.

Another victim was the Congo in 2002-03.

..specific activities of Elliott Associates in Congo, where it originally bought $32.6 million in sovereign debt incurred by that country for the knockdown price of under $20 million. In 2002 and 2003, a British court (tactically chosen) forced the Congolese government to settle for an estimated $90 million, which included that all-important interest and fees. Elliott Associates rapidly became known as the quintessential "vulture fund."

Mark Hunter , says: Website December 19, 2019 at 7:41 pm GMT
1. Re Sidney, Nebraska: Maybe I'm missing something but wasn't it Cabela's owners, for example co-founder and chairman Jim Cabela, who sold Cabela, not Elliot Management (Singer et al)? I gather Elliot Management owned only 11% of the company. Was that enough to force them to sell?

2. The article confuses honest straightforward loans with tax farming and government corruption. Loans can be very useful, e.g. for a car to get to a job, or for a house so you build up equity instead of paying rent.

Digital Samizdat , says: December 19, 2019 at 7:46 pm GMT
@Hapalong Cassidy Bain's not much of an exception to Joyce's pattern: although Mitt, like the other three founders, was a goy, there were plenty of Chosen Ones associated with the company right from the start:

In addition to the three founding partners, the early team included Fraser Bullock, Robert F. White, Joshua Bekenstein, Adam Kirsch, and Geoffrey S. Rehnert Early investors included Boston real estate mogul Mortimer Zuckerman and Robert Kraft, the owner of the New England Patriots football team.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bain_Capital#1984_founding_and_early_history

Digital Samizdat , says: December 19, 2019 at 7:55 pm GMT
@BannedHipster According to the Talmud, we goyim are not the descendants of Adam and Eve, like the Jews. No, we are the bastard progeny of Adam's first wife, Lilleth, who eloped with the demon Samael. So we goyim are really all half-demons and therefore we are an abomination in the sight of Jew-hova, and we get what we deserve at the hands of his 'chosen people'.

All clear now?

traducteur , says: December 19, 2019 at 8:02 pm GMT
improving the quality of life and access to opportunities for all Israeli citizens so that they may benefit from the country's prosperity

Read 'all Jewish Israeli citizens'. I doubt they're going to do any life-enhancing or make opportunities available to any of the grunting subhuman goyim .

Art , says: December 19, 2019 at 8:03 pm GMT
@Colin Wright

It's important not to get carried away with this. Figures such as Andrew Carnegie, while impeccably gentile, were hardly paragons of scrupulous ethics and disinterested virtue.

Andrew Carnegie built something that made life better for people. Making steel is a beneficial thing.

These evil vulture Jews build nothing – they make people poorer. They suck the wealth out of people who have little. They know 100% what they are doing.

Jesus expressed anger against the money changers on the temple steps.

It is OK for you to have natural human feelings and be angry at these Jew bastards.

Do No Harm

Art , says: December 19, 2019 at 8:08 pm GMT
Major Kudos to these three heroes – Ron Unz, Tucker Carlson, and Andrew Joyce – for this article and discussion.
renfro , says: December 19, 2019 at 8:09 pm GMT
@Anon Romney is a Mormon, one of the church officials. The Mormons are closer to the Jews pattern of worshiping money and using charity donation for business investments.
Mormons arent considered Protestants .

"Although the church has not released church-wide financial statements since 1959, in 1997, Time magazine called it one of the world's wealthiest churches per capita.[147] In a June 2011 cover story, Newsweek stated that the LDS Church "resembles a sanctified multinational corporation -- the General Electric of American religion, with global ambitions and an estimated net worth of $30 billion." A whistle blower within the church reported them to the IRS for using their status as a non taxable religious groups to invest in business ventures instead of charities.

tomo , says: December 19, 2019 at 8:16 pm GMT
@anon Maybe I can answer your question.
I studied and befriended many jews as a student (Imperial College, London etc) – none were above average intelligent, and although they were very geeky, they only got average grades.
When I moved to LA – most of my friends were jews and again, none were very bright (even though a few were famous). Most of these LA jewish friends were probably psychopaths – thinking back – very manipulative, exploitative and they lied a lot.
I think it's mostly through their cultural nepotism – they work on their own unity (they help promote each other) while at the same time they work on destroying unity in their host and everyone else.
Many have changed their Eastern European names.
And they go out of the way to help other jews (only) – a Serbian friend in Toronto looks very jewish (but is not religious) told me several times here in Toronto, other Jews (his boss etc) just offered to help him for no reason ("Is there anything I can do for you?" etc). He did not understand why they did that – then I realized he actually looks like a Jewish stereotype (as does his twin brother). So he thought he was helping his own tribe.
When I went to Cuba with a Jewish 'friend' from LA – he was actively looking for anything jewish (and nothign else – he did not want to see anything famous like a beautiful cemetery in Havana etc) – only synagogs etc – where he gave some money to jews he never even met. I was there with him and saw it. He was even angry if I suggested we see something nice , historical and not-jewish. We met a NY jew there and we gave his a ride in the car we rented – they immediately teamed up against me – for no reason – I regretted going with him on this trip. It was an awful experience – consistent with all the books I read on psychopaths and also that book Jewish History, Jewish Religion, the weight of 3000 years
Another very wealthy American mother of a friend asked her South African friends (also jews) to help her book trips in South Africa (and they of course recommended only their Jewish friends) – it's their son who told me this.
So a lot of backstabbing, cultural nepotism and actively (but in a hidden way as most psychopaths like to do) they do at wakening and isolating their host. That's their only advantage – not intelligence (at least in my experience )
Alden , says: December 19, 2019 at 8:18 pm GMT
Off topic

I recently learned that from about 1790 to 1967 the USState department refused to issue US passports to people who held foreign passports. State also didn't hire any dual citizens for any job from cafeteria dishwasher to ambassador.

Then in the mid sixties, an Israeli immigrant who became a US citizen applied for a US passport. State refused to issue the US passport. So the Israeli immigrant practiced lawfare. In 1967 the Supreme Court issued one of its usual detrimental and dangerous rulings. State was ordered to start issuing US passports to dual citizens.

Soon there were numerous applications to State depot jobs from Israeli citizens residing in the US. Knowing lawsuits loomed, State caved.

And that children is how and why State, commerce, DOJ CIA treasury, top security civilian departments in the Pentagon and other federal agencies became flooded with dual American Israeli citizens who divert money to Israel. Plus they work for Israel instead of the US. Mysterious how the only Whites who manage to make it past affirmative action barriers are jews.
Maybe there's a special affirmative action quota for Israelis residing in America.

the grand wazoo , says: December 19, 2019 at 8:21 pm GMT
@J Adelman Adelman, be careful what you wish for, as in a debate you will be drowned.
Being labeled an ANTISEMITE is the new badge of honor and courage.
Central banks and their fiat fractional reserve banking system is slowly collapsing, as more and more nations avoid using the BIS. Joyce's article fully explains why Russia is being promoted as some type of arch-enemy.
Alden , says: December 19, 2019 at 8:22 pm GMT
@Digital Samizdat I thought we are just 2 legged animals intelligent enough to invent everything and do all the necessary useful work.
Old and grumpy , says: December 19, 2019 at 8:22 pm GMT
@DaveE I don't even know what capitalism means anymore. It doesn't seem like it's an actual free market system. Seems like it is slavery for the little guy, and parasitism for the rich. Maybe we should ditch the word capitalism for usuryism.
EliteCommInc. , says: December 19, 2019 at 8:25 pm GMT
"'It was very gratifying to see Tucker Carlson's recent attack on the activities of Paul Singer's vulture fund, Elliot Associates '"

I am going to avoid the Jew is bad mantra here. I read that article. But it was not an expose' of hedgefunds, at least not at the level i was expecting. They merged two companies and sold off or closed that which was least profitable.

In that article there was no clear discussion – about what could have prevented the closure. So it was hard to respond positively in favor of not closing. I am advocate of keeping work in the US, but I don't think it is unreasonable that companies be sustainable. I would have liked that exposure, that the hedge had no intention of exploring possible profit making alternatives.

And that is where Mr. Carlson lost me. He did not link the companies as you have. Nor provide the examples you bring to the fore.

the grand wazoo , says: December 19, 2019 at 8:27 pm GMT
@Realist No, not stupid whites, they're not to blame. It's the greedy corrupt politician: white, black, or white jew, who are to blame.
Mefobills , says: December 19, 2019 at 8:31 pm GMT
@Ilya G Poimandres Ilya,

What distresses me about Islam is that the pacific practitioners, e.g. Suffi's, many Shias and Sunnis are out of alignment, and hence are subject to violence from their coreligionists. I happen to believe there are many wonderful people within the religion what I am saying is that there is an elephant in the room, and it has a name: abrogation.

I'm going to use a smoke there is fire analogy using data.

If a religion launches repeated attacks against civilizations, then there is something "in" the religion that is used for justification of said aggression. I'm of the opinion that data matters, and you have to adjust your position to come into accord with real world data.

http://cspipublishing.com/statistical/jihad.html

Between 632 and 1922, Islam launched 548 offensive battles against classical civilization

These attacks were often brutal, especially with rapes being used to "convert women" rapidly.

In Islam (as in other religions as well) the Imam can turn knobs and get an output. This means that abrogation is used to pick and choose verses depending on situation, to maneuver the sheeple in the direction Imam's or political authority want them to go – including offensive war. I used the term political authority on purpose, because Islam is more than just a religion, it is a political-theocratic construct that is all-encompassing.

There may not be a specific verse allowing aggressive violence, but there is something going on based on the data. (I admit to being a lay-man and not an expert on minutia of Islam. I don't want to go there based on what I already know to be true.)

In Christianity, if there are calls for aggressive violence it is OUT OF ALIGNMENT because of super-session. Christian adherents who do this are Judaizers, and have to use the old testament for justification.

Old and grumpy , says: December 19, 2019 at 8:31 pm GMT
@Digital Samizdat Who the heck is Lillith? Where did she come from? Adam's apple? At least Samael is a step up from a talking snake. Talk about rewrite. Almost on par to the silly ones on the daytime soaps. Oh wait . probably same writers.
annamaria , says: December 19, 2019 at 8:33 pm GMT
@Rebel0007 "This won't end well."
-- They cannot help themselves. Two components make it impossible for the tribe to behave in a preservation mode:
1. the victimhood complex, despite all the recently displayed data about Jewish murderous ways in the host countries
2. the disproportionate number of psychopaths who are approved by tribal epos and mentality

Perhaps the only solution is to make the aggressive Jews become confined to their Jewish country. Like an infectious disease that needs to be quarantined. Otherwise, the Jewish psychopaths will continue leaching and destroying.
Not only the vulture bankers but a complete set of ziocons-infested stink-tanks should be relocated (with their immediate families) to the Jewish State and prohibited from crossing the Jewish State borders. Plus the limitations on their involvement in international commerce and banking. Let the Jews be finally in Jerusalem today, not "next year." Let them enjoy the company of other Jews.

Charles Pewitt , says: December 19, 2019 at 8:36 pm GMT
Jew billionaire globalizer money-grubber Paul Singer has bought and paid for politician puppet whore Marco Rubio.

JEWS ORGANIZED GLOBALLY(JOG) -- of which Paul Singer is a shady participant -- have plans for after Trump and they involve the US Senators Marco Rubio and Josh Hawley and Tom Cotton and others.

Paul Singer pushes mass legal immigration and mass illegal immigration. Paul Singer wants to continue to use mass legal immigration and mass illegal immigration as demographic weapons to attack and destroy the historic American nation.

Paul Singer wants to continue to use the US military as muscle to fight endless wars on behalf of Israel.

I wrote this in February of 2019:

I just got reminded that Marco Rubio won a lot of the GOP billionaire Jew donor money away from Jebby Bush in the 2016 GOP presidential primary because the Jew billionaires -- Paul Singer in particular -- were not too thrilled with Jebby Bush's connection to James Baker. James Baker was a factor in the Jew billionaire decision to back Marco Rubio.

George W Bush had dragged the American Empire into a war in Iraq on behalf of Israel and the GOP Jew billionaire donors were still not convinced of Jebby Bush's slavish devotion to Israel.

Marco Rubio signalled his willing whoredom to the ISRAEL FIRST foreign policy of endless war on behalf of Israel in a way that left nothing to chance for the GOP Jew billionaire donors.

Marco Rubio is nothing more than a filthy politician whore for the GOP Jew billionaire donors who want to continue to use the US military as muscle to fight wars on behalf of Israel.

New York Times article:

Mr. Rubio has aggressively embraced the cause of wealthy pro-Israel donors like Mr. [Sheldon] Adelson, whom the senator is said to call frequently, and Mr. Singer, who both serve on the board of the Republican Jewish Coalition, an umbrella group for Republican Jewish donors and officials. Mr. Bush has been less attentive, in the view of some of these donors: Last spring, he refused to freeze out his longtime family friend James A. Baker III, the former secretary of state, after Mr. Baker spoke at the conference of a liberal Jewish group.

The lobbying of Mr. Singer intensified in recent weeks as Mr. Bush's debate stumbles and declining poll numbers drove many donors to consider Mr. Rubio anew. Last week, Mr. Bush's campaign manager, Danny Diaz, and senior adviser, Sally Bradshaw, flew to New York to make personal appeals on Mr. Bush's behalf, in the hopes of heading off an endorsement of Mr. Rubio, according to two people close to the former governor's campaign.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/31/us/politics/paul-singer-influential-billionaire-throws-support-to-marco-rubio-for-president.html?mabReward=A1&moduleDetail=recommendations-2&action=click&contentCollection=Middle%20East&region=Footer&module=WhatsNext&version=WhatsNext&contentID=WhatsNext&src=recg&pgtype=article&_r=0

Tweet from 2015:

GOP Billionaire Shyster Rat Paul Singer endorses Marco Rubio -- RUBIO PUSHES MASS IMMIGRATION https://t.co/B86Lp18Y6P #nhpolitics @vdare

-- Charles Pewitt (@CharlesPewitt) November 1, 2015

Anonymous [211] Disclaimer , says: December 19, 2019 at 8:38 pm GMT
This is a timely article for me as I have been pondering the relationship between Jews and neoliberalism for some time now.

At university I studied under a brilliant Neo-Marxist professor who showed me some theory and arguments that went a long way towards explaining how to make sense of the global power structure. (Just a quick not for those who recoil at the mere mention of Neo-Marxist: the academics that use a marxist lens as a tool to criticize the powerful are not all the cuckold communist SJW types – some of these individuals are extremely intelligent and they make very powerful arguments backed by loads of data.) One of the theories I was introduced to was the notion of the Transnational Capitalist Class in this article called Towards A Global Ruling Class? Globalization and the Transnational Capitalist Class: http://media.library.ku.edu.tr/reserve/respring18/Intl313_ZOnis/3_Historical_Structuralism.pdf

The authors write the following:

Sklair's work goes the furthest in conceiving of the capitalist class as no longer
tied to territoriality
Inherent in the international concept is a system of nation-states that mediates relations between classes and groups, including the notion of national capitals and national bourgeoisi. Transnational, by contrast, denotes economic and related social, political, and cultural processes – including class formation that supersede nation-states
What distinguishes the TCC from national or local capitalists is that it is involved
in globalized production and manages globalized circuits of accumulation that give it an objective class existence and identity spatially and politically in the global system above any local territories and polities.

Since reading your (Dr Joyce) work on the JQ I began to see the connection between age old complaints of Jews, and what Ford referred to as "The International Jew". In fact, replace the term "transnational capitalist class" from my passages quoted above (and many others) and what you have is perfect mirror image of the argument.

This question has come up often lately, synchronistically (or maybe not). I'm somewhat new to the JQ, having consumed many hours of work (including much of your own) after being sent down the rabbit hole by the ongoing Epstein case. I was pondering that perhaps, Jews take the blame for what the predatory capitalists are doing. Not even a week later you addressed this precise question in your piece about Slavoj Ziszek and now with "vulture capitalism" it is coming up yet again in Carlson's segment followed by the article right here. It also came up on the "other side" in the blog I follow of a professor of globalization in this article: https://zeroanthropology.net/2019/11/27/global-giants-american-empire-and-transnational-capital/

The link above is a review of the book Giants: The Global Power Elite . The review provides a summary of the book which once again could be a text about Jews if one were to replace the term "transnational capitalist class" with "Jews". Why I mention it, though, is the following: "Chapter 2, "The Global Financial Giants: The Central Core of Global Capitalism," identifies the 17 global financial giants -- money management firms that control more than one trillion dollars in capital. As these firms invest in each other, and many smaller firms, the interlocked capital that they manage surpasses $41 trillion (which amounts to about 16% of the world's total wealth). The 17 global financial giants are led by 199 directors. This chapter details how these financial giants have pushed for global privatization of virtually everything, in order to stimulate growth to absorb excess capital. The financial giants are supported by a wide array of institutions: "governments, intelligence services, policymakers, universities, police forces, militaries, and corporate media all work in support of their vital interests" (p. 60).
Chapter 3, "Managers: The Global Power Elite of the Financial Giants," largely consists of the detailed profiles of the 199 financial managers just mentioned.

This caught my eye because I immediately wondered how many of those 199 directors are Jewish. It also pertains directly to this exact article because I am confident that the vulture capitalists you targeted here are profiled in the book, probably with many others.

Now, I am not in the business of writing about the JQ, so I wanted to suggest to anyone out there that is that if they were to obtain a copy of this book and determine how many of the 199 directors are jews. What this could accomplish is a marriage of the major two theories of the "anti-semites" (for lack of a better word) and the "Neo-Marxists". I would argue that perhaps both sides would learn they are coming at the same thing from two different angles. Most would ignore it, but maybe a few leftist thinkers would receive a much needed electric shock if they were to see the JQ framed in marxist terms. Perhaps some alliances could be forged across the cultural divide in this struggle. Personally I believe that both angles are perfectly valid, and that understanding one without the other will leaves far too much to be desired when studying the powerful.

Father O'Hara , says: December 19, 2019 at 8:39 pm GMT
@UncommonGround Without the Jews we'd be far better off.
Sean , says: December 19, 2019 at 8:41 pm GMT
@the grand wazoo Reagan relaxed the laws on takeovers and as a result what Galbraith called the technostructure (modern corporation in which the business was run by not with an eye on shareholder value but in the interests of everyone involved) was ripped apart.

However the technostructure had come about in the 30s when the Depression led to mass lay offs, which had began to cause social unrest. The Chinese are have already cutting a swath through Western productive capacity, and now they are coming for the rest to the extent that the European Union is tightening the limits of foreign direct investment and takeovers. Trump is calling for negative interest rates, which were not adopted even during the 1930s when one-quarter of the labor force was idle.

Prospects for severe economic pain being imposed on ordinary working people and the consequent (eventual) establishment of a new technostructure are excellent. I hate to sound like an accelerationist, but Jews like Singer are bringing that day closer.

annamaria , says: December 19, 2019 at 8:43 pm GMT
@Ghali 'Everywhere they go, they leave behind nations in ruins. "

-- They always find the willing local collaborators ready to make a big profit. Who can forget Dick Cheney, the Enemy of Humanity? The same kind of unrestricted criminality and amorality lives on in Tony Blair the Pious. The fact that this Catholic weasel and major criminal Tony Blair is still not excommunicated tells all we need to know about the Vatican.
Assange is rotting in a prison, while Tony Blair and Ghislaine Maxwell are roaming free. The Jewish connections pay off.

Anon [271] Disclaimer , says: December 19, 2019 at 8:59 pm GMT
@J Adelman https://www.truetorahjews.org/

I know some Torah Jews who are angry that Mischlings have no right of return to Israel, and apparently now aren't part of the ruling American Jewish nation, or American, or have anywhere to go now. They're also angry at what they see as a repeat of the cycle of international Jewish action and inevitable reaction they will have to bear the brunt of.

They referred me to this website: The Institute for Historical Review where they apparently contribute.

http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v17/v17n6p13_Michaels.html

" Although Jews make up no more than three or four percent of Russia's population, they wield enormous economic and political power in that vast and troubled country. "At least half of the powerful 'oligarchs' who control a significant percentage of the economy are Jewish," the Los Angeles Times has cautiously noted. (See also: D. Michaels, "Capitalism in the New Russia," May-June 1997 Journal, pp. 21-27. )"

So that was the context of who owned capital in Russia, what was the effect?

" According to Harvard University scholar Graham Allison, who is also a former US assistant Secretary of Defense, ordinary Russians have experienced, on average, a 75 percent plunge in living standards since 1991 -- almost twice the decline in Americans' income during the Great Depression of the 1930s. But in the midst of this widespread economic misery, a small minority has grown fabulously wealthy since the end of the Soviet era ."

But how is that possible? Swashbuckling international capitalists like Bill Browder were bringing their Ivy League MBA's to more efficiently manage all those assets. And he said how much he wanted to save the Polish Train-yards.

What happened? A Putin arose. He took the capital from the Jews, and the Jews were dispatched to the United States. Putin also aligned himself with a different Jewish faction less virulently dismissive of the needs of the people they ruled.

What do they do in the United States? Something similar as the economy careens towards another financial crisis and living standards, mortality rates, and the middle class plummet.

"Jewish power in Russia, Galushin continues, has resulted in millions of homeless children, widespread tuberculosis and cholera, a shortage of medicines, cheating retirees of their pensions, suicide in the armed forces, and the death of science. What do the Gusinskys, the Berezovskys, the Chubais, the Nemtsovs, the Kiriyenkos, the Smolenskys, the Livshits, and the Gaidars say about this? Millions of Russians have perished under their rule. Are the Russian people ready to judge these scoundrels for their crimes, Galushin ask",

Robert Maxwell was a Chezch Jew – he also robbed hundreds of millions worth of pensions. How is it possible that all these Jewish capitalists can be linked to readily to Jeffrey Epstein?

How did Robert Maxwell get his seed money?

Here is a letter sent to Boris Berezovsky nee Abramovich.

"In sharp contrast to the intense feelings expressed by such Russian writers over the catastrophic situation in their country today is the seeming indifference of American and German taxpayers who have unwittingly channeled billions of dollars and marks to the oligarchs -- who in turn have transferred this largesse to secret Swiss accounts. Who monitors the distribution of these billions through the World Bank, the IMF, the financial houses, and various banks? Who is responsible for this terrible injustice?"

That's really strange, because isn't that what the Russians accused Browder of doing? They say that he channelled billions of dollars out of Russia into the United States. Then we had the great Russian menace that is still ongoing in the media, and failing.

But Browder said that the Russian collusion story that was created by Fusion GPS, and then the FISA court warrants issued on the basis of the fabricated Steele 'pissgate' dossier and media stories was 100% true.

And Steele worked for the Russia desk of British Intelligence, and was being paid by the Democrats.

Even the proto-Shabbos goys at the National Review had to distance themselves from it. They showed that the date the FBI and Justice said it was verified it couldn't possibly have been verified.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/05/the-steele-dossier-and-the-verified-application-that-wasnt/

So why did so many Jewish capitalists like Browder support it?

And why aren't the Russians being permitted to trace Russian monies into Cyprus if Bill Browder and now Jewish captialist ever has every done a thing that is wrong?

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-11-20/luongo-bill-browder-behind-anti-russia-interpol-propaganda

And now they accuse Browder himself of being involved in 5 assassinations.

Which would seem wild. Except, one of the first rules of Saul Alinsky is to accuse your opponents of what you are doing.

Why is this entire affair around the impeachment of Donald Trump and the depersoning of Russia and Putin so incredibly Kosher?

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/10/corrupt_senators_took_ukraine_cash.html

Because literally to the letter what is said about Donald Trump, the Democrats were actually doing.

"" It got almost no attention, but in May [2018], CNN reported that Sens. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) and Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) wrote a letter to Ukraine's prosecutor general, Yuriy Lutsenko, expressing concern at the closing of four investigations they said were critical to the Mueller probe. In the letter, they implied that their support for U.S. assistance to Ukraine was at stake. Describing themselves as "strong advocates for a robust and close relationship with Ukraine," the Democratic senators declared, "We have supported [the] capacity-building process and are disappointed that some in Kyiv appear to have cast aside these [democratic] principles to avoid the ire of President Trump," before demanding Lutsenko "reverse course and halt any efforts to impede cooperation with this important investigation ."

And yet Trump pulls the Jews ever closer. A ruling race of ubermenschen now.

'No reason'.

Can you imagine what American Blacks and savage Hispanics let alone whites are going to do if the US economy craters like the Russian economy, and everything is transferred to the banks?

DaveE , says: December 19, 2019 at 9:00 pm GMT
@Old and grumpy Yeah . fine idea. I've always maintained there are two uses of the word "capitalism" industrial capitalism or competition of ideas vs. financial capitalism, the Darwinian struggle for the most ruthless bankster to rig the "markets" most efficiently.

Whether we give it new terminology I don't care much . but I sure wish people would understand the difference, one way of another !

Charles Pewitt , says: December 19, 2019 at 9:04 pm GMT
Trump and the Republican Party puppets are nothing more than nasty politician whores for billionaire Jews such as Seth Klarman and Paul Singer and Shelly Adelson and Les Wexner and Bernie Marcus and many other money-grubber Jew donors.

The Republican Party Jew donors want to continue to flood the USA with mass legal immigration and mass illegal immigration and the Jew donors want to continue to use the US military as muscle to fight unnecessary wars and endless wars on behalf of Israel.

The Republican Party Jew donors also want to have all their shady money-grubber scams protected by the Republican Party politician whores.

I wrote this in October of 2017 about Seth Klarman and Puerto Rican government debt:

Puerto Rico must be allowed to go belly up. The bond owners who own Puerto Rican debt must go tits up. The US government must not bail out the investors who purchased Puerto Rican government debt, or any debt whatsoever connected to Puerto Rico. Seth Klarman has been revealed as a person who has bought Puerto Rican bonds in hopes of cashing out big.

SETH KLARMAN must be given a salt shaker to sprinkle salt on his worthless Puerto Rican bonds before he eats them. Klarman must lose 100 cents on the dollar for his greedy purchase of Puerto Rican debt. Klarman has loads of loot, and the Puerto Rican government debt was purchased for one of his funds. I am sure his investors won't mind getting soaked by Seth for a bit of money -- it is not even a whole billion dollars, only close to it.

David Dayen says:

Klarman, who has been described as the Oracle of Boston, has a history of buying unpopular or distressed assets on the cheap in hopes of a payday. Baupost manages over $30 billion in assets. He is known as the top campaign contributor in New England and has been a major donor in Republican politics in Massachusetts, including largely secret support for 2016's Question 2, an ultimately unsuccessful effort to lift a state cap on charter schools. Klarman supported Hillary Clinton in 2016, calling Donald Trump "completely unqualified for the highest office in the land."

Klarman's involvement in Puerto Rican debt will surely come as a surprise to activists in Massachusetts and Puerto Rico, who have never mentioned him among the "vultures" who are causing undue pain for the island's U.S. citizens.

https://theintercept.com/2017/10/03/we-can-finally-identify-one-of-the-largest-holders-of-puerto-rican-debt/

NO BAILOUT FOR PUERTO RICO BOND INVESTORS

Mefobills , says: December 19, 2019 at 9:05 pm GMT
@alex in San Jose AKA digital Detroit Alex,

You make some important points.

Jewish people have treated me better than my own White Euro family.

White Euro people are/were evolved for small tribes. They were hunter gatherers, and evolved concurrently with dogs. In my opinion the pathological altrusim of whites has to do with the close relations to dogs, pets and later livestock. The whole "good shepherd" is more of a Western Construct of Cro-Magnon white people, than the insular goat-herding types of the middle east.

For example, in Scandinavia and most white countries, a 'baby sitter' can be a neighbor, while in middle eastern cultures, a baby sitter can only be from a family member.

In other words, white people extend trust to one another, while middle-eastern ethos is more familal then tribal. Ice age evolution, especially the fourth ice ages, selected for pathological altruism is whites; which is why whites extend their grace to foreigners, brown people, and are easily duped by Jews.

All you can do is try to rise above your own families failings. White people have to think it through intellectually, as it does not come naturally.

Jews are tribal, gee what a surprise after 1000's of years of people trying to wipe them out . and so their charity is within the tribe, but there is no charity within the tribe among Whites.

Yes, but what is being debated here is how Jews use their ethnocentrism and in-group methods to practice usury against out-groups. Euro-whites are a perfect host for the parasite. The parasitical methods EVOLVED over millenia to operate the usury mechanism, to take rents and unearned income. This is why they have been kicked out of 109 countries, because what they do is seen as immoral and against the common good. (Euro whites eventually smarten up and it always takes a King to eject the Jews.)

For more on this, see the book Angela's Ashes. The Irish family could have stayed in New York where they were being befriended by a Jewish family.

Let's not get cause and effect reversed. The potato famine in Ireland was devastating because high-value crops were being exported to England to pay for wait for it . usury on debts the Irish owed the English. The English in turn were operating the state sponsored usury system of the Bank of England, which came into being in 1694. The BOE in turn was JEWISH in construct, being maneuvered into place by Sephardic Jews from Amsterdam.

The Irish, being trusting souls, fell into the usury trap and could not keep up with the exponential debts.

A general statement: White people can build high trust civilizations that benefit all of their people, but are easily subverted when the wrong type of predators infiltrate. If your family was extended, and had aunts and uncles and cousins, who lived in the general area for centuries, then there would be a network to fall back on.

See slaughter of the cities by Jones:

And yes, the FIRE sector and impetus behind the destruction of your extended family was JEWISH. The breakdown of neighborhoods and ethnics was on purpose.

The Jew is anti-logos, and whatever he touches he destroys. (There are exceptions of course – but these people no longer possess a negative Jewish spirit.)

Sorry your family was destroyed. When whites become un-moored they don't know how to act.

Father O'Hara , says: December 19, 2019 at 9:06 pm GMT
@J Adleman Quite bizarre post. First,he makes a half ass defense of Jew character.(Weinstein,Epstein don't represent jews! Well,they kind of do. Any jew who is called to accounts for his crimes automatically does not represent jews!
You are a used condom. Do you represent the jews? Id day yes.)
Your diatribe sounds like an alt righter's view of jews. Are you real?
Antares , says: December 19, 2019 at 9:06 pm GMT
@Anon

if you think it's wrong to buy or try to collect on defaulted debt, what is the alternative set of laws and behavior you are recommending? If debts can simply be repudiated at will, capitalism cannot function.

Capitalism includes money. You can't separate the risks in lending from other risks. Bad investors should be punished and good investors rewarded. Resources should be well allocated. Otherwise it's not capitalism.

Happy Tapir , says: December 19, 2019 at 9:12 pm GMT
@Rebel0007 I looked at his book on amazon. Do you believe all that stuff? Are these people with psychoses or delusional disorders?
Anon [271] Disclaimer , says: December 19, 2019 at 9:12 pm GMT
https://www.trunews.com/stream/jew-coup-seditious-jews-orchestrating-trump-impeachment-lynching

These insane Boomers seem to think that there is a Jewish coup underway to remove Trump because of all the things that Jews are saying in Jewish publications and every single person involved being Jewish and stuff.

Adrian , says: December 19, 2019 at 9:20 pm GMT
@Germanicus About the Carnegie donated "Peace Palace" in The Hague, presently the seat of the In ternational Court of Justice:

Germanicus claims:

They are a function of Empire in Hague, who protect empire criminals, and assume a non existent legitimacy and jurisdiction as a private entity to take down empire opponents.

Such as this ruling for instance:

Guardian 3 Oct.2018:

International court of justice orders US to lift new Iran sanctions

Mike Pompeo indicates US will ignore ruling, after judges in The Hague find unanimously in favour of Iran

Informed Reader , says: December 19, 2019 at 9:21 pm GMT
@Colin Wright Colin Wright: Tel Aviv University's Medical School is called the "Sackler Faculty of Medicine." Does that help answer your question?
annamaria , says: December 19, 2019 at 9:24 pm GMT
@silviosilver "What Joyce regards as a defect of "vulture" funds, others might regard as an benefit. "

-- Of course. I hope you did not miss the fact that the Jewish vulture funds -- ruthless, unethical, and leaching on goyim -- contribute to the Jewish Holocaust Museum.
Is not it touching that the same bloody destroyers of nations demand from the same nations a very special reverence -- out of ethical considerations, of course -- towards the Jewish victims of WWII? But only Jewish victims. All others were not victims but casualties. See Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Ukraine. See the unlimited hatred of ziocons towards Russia.

utu , says: December 19, 2019 at 9:25 pm GMT
@Anonymous " but maybe a few leftist thinkers would receive a much needed electric shock if they were to see the JQ framed in marxist terms " – I would not count on the effect of the electric shock on the leftist thinkers. The role of Jewish Bolsheviks in the Cheka, NKVD, GULAGs, genocides by famine has been known from the very beginning and yet it left no impact on the leftist thinkers.
Anon [271] Disclaimer , says: December 19, 2019 at 9:33 pm GMT
Browder's case is really interesting.


http://www.ihr.org /jhr/v17/v17n6p13_Michaels.html

"According to Harvard University scholar Graham Allison, who is also a former US assistant Secretary of Defense, ordinary Russians have experienced, on average, a 75 percent plunge in living standards since 1991 -- almost twice the decline in Americans' income during the Great Depression of the 1930s. But in the midst of this widespread economic misery, a small minority has grown fabulously wealthy since the end of the Soviet era."

"Although Jews make up no more than three or four percent of Russia's population, they wield enormous economic and political power in that vast and troubled country. "At least half of the powerful 'oligarchs' who control a significant percentage of the economy are Jewish," the Los Angeles Times has cautiously noted. (See also: D. Michaels, "Capitalism in the New Russia," May-June 1997 Journal, pp. 21-27.)"

It's interesting how the appeal of Eduard Topol to Jews in Russia is now starting to echo Jewish calls in the United States for Jews to stop the path they are currently on.

Here is the complete text of Topol's extraordinary "Open Letter to Berezovksy, Gusinsky, Smolensky, Khodorkovsky and other Oligarchs," translated for the Journal by Daniel Michaels from the text published in the respected Moscow paper Argumenty i Fakty ("Arguments and Facts"), No. 38, September 1998:

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-07-21/guardians-magnitsky-myth-will-real-bill-browder-please-step-forward

Magnitsky and Bill Browder is also really interesting.

It turns out that a large measure of the Russiagate story arose because Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, who traveled to America to challenge Browder's account, arranged a meeting with Donald Trump Jr. and other Trump campaign advisers in June 2016 to present this other side of the story.

Apparently that's collusion.

But this isn't collusion.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2017/08/left-red-scare-democrats-suddenly-hate-russia/

Remember when Obama literally said he would sell out US defence interests to the Russians on a hot mic?

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/10/corrupt_senators_took_ukraine_cash.html

Then we had Democrats actually literally word for word doing what they accuse Trump of doing in Ukraine.

"It got almost no attention, but in May [2018], CNN reported that Sens. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) and Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) wrote a letter to Ukraine's prosecutor general, Yuriy Lutsenko, expressing concern at the closing of four investigations they said were critical to the Mueller probe. In the letter, they implied that their support for U.S. assistance to Ukraine was at stake. Describing themselves as "strong advocates for a robust and close relationship with Ukraine," the Democratic senators declared, "We have supported [the] capacity-building process and are disappointed that some in Kyiv appear to have cast aside these [democratic] principles to avoid the ire of President Trump," before demanding Lutsenko "reverse course and halt any efforts to impede cooperation with this important investigation."

What's the first rule of Communist and Satanist Saul Alinsky? Always accuse your opponents of what you are doing.

Imagine having a Grandfather as the literal Chairman of the American Communist Party, and all the amazing lessons you would learn about political maneuvering and ideology.

And it's amazing.

Browder's story is that Russian officials stole his companies seals and then fraudulently formulated a tax avoidance scheme with a complete paper trail that they fabricated against him in totem. Precisely matching the amount of money he was trying to remove from their country, like those other Jewish Oligarchs who imposed conditions that were multiples worse then even the American depression.

When under oath it turns out that Magnitsky wasn't even a lawyer at all, and didn't go to law school. Why did the media owned by Mormons of course keep saying that Magnitsky was Browder's lawyer?

Why did the Russians fraudulently fabricate a paper-trail for another Jewish Oligarch to steal money out of Russia? Just like they colluded with Trump when a Russian lawyer sought to explain what happened. Because that totally happened.

Maybe the problem isn't Capitalism. Maybe, when even the ur-Shabbos goys at National Review are shaking their head and washing their hands like Pilate, maybe it's a different problem.

Yet Trump holds these people ever close to his beating heart.

And then there are all these connections to Jeffrey Epstein that are like an explosion linking all these people.

Poor old Russia. Even Putin isn't worse then what came before.

renfro , says: December 19, 2019 at 9:50 pm GMT
@Anonymous

The link above is a review of the book Giants: The Global Power Elite. The review provides a summary of the book which once again could be a text about Jews if one were to replace the term "transnational capitalist class" with "Jews". Why I mention it, though, is the following: "Chapter 2, "The Global Financial Giants: The Central Core of Global Capitalism," identifies the 17 global financial giants -- money management firms that control more than one trillion dollars in capital.

From the review .

"Robinson's claim that nation-states have become, "little more than population containment zones," while "the real power lies with the decision makers who control global capital" (p. 26). Both propositions are unconvincing: first, populations are clearly not being contained; second, if states matter so little, and the real decision-makers are global capitalists, then why do the latter need states

That is such stupid reasoning it blows the mind. He is trying to shift the global problem to institutions .. instead of the people who head those institutions

Institutions, agencies , financial firms, etc .are ALL run by PEOPLE .who make the policies,laws, take the actions.

Why does the 'transnational capitalist class' need states? well duh because people/labor/consumers are indeed "contained' in states subject to the states laws and system. The transnational capitalist class created the institutions he speaks of 'from within' those states thru their control of its system and their same goal partners who do the same from within their respective states.

That the capitalist class is not tied to any territory has been observable since 1960.
I don't have time now to look up how many of 199 directors are Jews . but I know enough of the economic history of various countries to know that Jews were the first business and finance globe trotters,,,,.from Spain to Amsterdam, France to Africa , etc.etc. Jew were first hired as reps and facilitators by the gentile business owners especially because of their breather tribal contacts in many countries ..that was their stepping stone to becoming transnational capitalist themselves.

Understanding our global capitalist ruling elite and who they are is not rocket science

Anon [421] Disclaimer , says: December 19, 2019 at 9:53 pm GMT
Buy your loans from another lender,
change the terms (add fees, penalties, underhanded stuff),
reposses your collatteral.

Outta be illegal.

White Gentiles, you must infiltrate and take over big business and big finance to help protect your people from predation .and to give all peoples principled, fair financial services. To help our society, and even others. Paul Singer doesnt seem to care about most of his fellow men. We could do better, and help the world be a better place.

steinbergfeldwitzcohen , says: December 19, 2019 at 9:54 pm GMT
Yet more evidence is piling up that Donald J Trump is the Great Betrayer.
A man who had the biggest mandate in post war history to clean up the Swamp that is D.C., reform Immigration to save America and reform the economy for American workers.
He has squandered all of it while pandering to Jews.

When the Donald is revealed as the Great Betrayer where will Jews run? Yes, they have several back up plans. Patagonia, Ukraine and Israel.

Imagine that. They have their own country and 2 back up plans. It is really tough being a hated, oppressed minority.

Digital Samizdat , says: December 19, 2019 at 9:55 pm GMT
@Anonymous Thanks for your comment. You've come to the right place. Unz is an ideal hangout for left/right fusionists who don't fit in perfectly with either side, but are interested in hearing from both. In addition, if you're looking for other good right-wing sites that aren't libertarian, Zionist or overly Christian, I can also heartily recommend Dr. Kevin MacDonald's Occidental Observer , where Dr. Joyce himself usually posts.

What this could accomplish is a marriage of the major two theories of the "anti-semites" (for lack of a better word) and the "Neo-Marxists". I would argue that perhaps both sides would learn they are coming at the same thing from two different angles. Most would ignore it, but maybe a few leftist thinkers would receive a much needed electric shock if they were to see the JQ framed in marxist terms.

Or, more correctly, it would be a re -marriage of anti-Semitism and Marxism. If you have a background in Marxism yourself, maybe you recall reading or hearing about Karl Marx's pre-Kapital classic, On the Jewish Question , where he basically identifies finance-capitalism as a Jewish phenomenon in essence and origin. Money quote :

"Let us consider the actual, worldly Jew – not the Sabbath Jew but the everyday Jew. Let us not look for the secret of the Jew in his religion, but let us look for the secret of his religion in the real Jew. What is the secular basis of Judaism? Practical need, self-interest. What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money. Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist. Money degrades all the gods of man – and turns them into commodities . The bill of exchange is the real god of the Jew. His god is only an illusory bill of exchange . The chimerical nationality of the Jew is the nationality of the merchant, of the man of money in general.[ ] The Jew has emancipated himself in a Jewish manner, not only because he has acquired financial power, but also because, through him and also apart from him, money has become a world power and the practical Jewish spirit has become the practical spirit of the Christian nations. The Jews have emancipated themselves insofar as the Christians have become Jews. [ ] In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism."

Marx himself, of course, came from a family of rich conversos, so he knew whereof he spoke.

Perhaps some alliances could be forged across the cultural divide in this struggle. Personally I believe that both angles are perfectly valid, and that understanding one without the other will leaves far too much to be desired when studying the powerful.

As a third-way national socialist, I hope so, too. Libertarianism/capitalism and mainline socialism are dead-ends, having both been thoroughly co-opted (founded?) by the Jews. Both fail to address the pink elephant in the corner; both put some hopelessly abstract ideology before the welfare of my people–while benefiting another. And so, as the original NS used to say: 'Neither godless Bolshevism nor soulless capitalism!'

Bardon Kaldian , says: December 19, 2019 at 9:58 pm GMT
@Ian Smith

A sassy black women broken in with "Jeffrey Dahmer Ted Bundy they were all white!"

She was wrong even with that category. Blacks are over-represented as serial killers: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/5-myths-about-serial-killers-and-why-they-persist-excerpt/

Myth #2: All Serial Killers Are Caucasian.

Reality: Contrary to popular mythology, not all serial killers are white. Serial killers span all racial and ethnic groups in the U.S. The racial diversity of serial killers generally mirrors that of the overall U.S. population. There are well documented cases of African-American, Latino and Asian-American serial killers. African-Americans comprise the largest racial minority group among serial killers, representing approximately 20 percent of the total. Significantly, however, only white, and normally male, serial killers such as Ted Bundy become popular culture icons.

JUSA , says: December 19, 2019 at 9:59 pm GMT
@Lot Your defense of bond holders do not hold water. They agreed to take the risk at the given price. If the debtor can't pay back, they have the eat the losses, period. Usury law needs to be put in place to outlaw these vulture funds. Then the bond funds will adjust by demanding better terms that truly reflects the risk from the get go, and the debtors will adjust by being much more cautious in their borrowing since the borrowing cost is so high.

Instead, this current arrangement basically uses bond funds to put up a false front, telling a debtor they can borrow at 2% when the real rate should be at 20% given the known risks, then the debtor goes crazy borrowing because it's so cheap to borrow, and when they can't pay back, the bond gets sold to the vultures who come collecting at 20% or they seize assets. This is no different than the subprime mortgage crap, except now that is regulated so they go after sovereign debt and corporate debt instead. These vultures need to go die period.

Art , says: December 19, 2019 at 10:03 pm GMT

Trump is now essentially funded by three Jews -- Singer, Bernard Marcus, and Sheldon Adelson, together accounting for over $250 million in pro-Trump political money. In return, they want war with Iran.

Hmm -- The day after Trump in inaugurated for his second term -- will Iran be in his crosshairs?

We need to think very seriously about that!

bike-anarkist , says: December 19, 2019 at 10:16 pm GMT
@Jimmy1969 This is a great, concise overview of Canadian media influence by the "silent" Jewish overlords via Golden Tree.

I tried copy/paste of your comment on CBC, but it did NOT last 2minutes before being suspended!!

I am sorry to have used your comment without your permission, but I am going to "misspell" some words to defeat the algorithm to get your message across.

Anon [112] Disclaimer , says: December 19, 2019 at 10:27 pm GMT
@Lot For points 1 and 2, I think that you would learn a lot from reading his previous article ( https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2015/08/01/paul-singer-and-universality-of-anti-semitism/ ) on vulture capitalism. It is not just that they are recovering assets from defaults. These vulture groups will use the courts to increase the size of the debts and sue for extra "fees" on top, even when all other lenders are against it. They typically manage to get US courts in NYC to try these cases, which also is apparently abnormal (apparently it would be more normal to use international courts). This is what Joyce refers to here:

"This type of predation is so pernicious and morally perverse that both the Belgian and UK governments have taken steps to ban these Jewish firms from using their court systems to sue for distressed debt owed by poor nations. "

These funds do not do something that normal investors do, especially not to the bonds of governments of struggling third-world countries.

As for 3, you are misunderstanding. Joyce never demanded that they name their charities anything in particular, but it is obviously the case that your typical normie thinks that "white males," presumably golf-playing Episcopalians or something, are the ones running finance, and these golfy-sounding names (Elliot, Monarch, GoldTree, OakTree, Canyon, Tilden Park) fit the perception. We whites receive the society's hate for the wealth disparities created by high finance.

4. No, it is not difficult to do finance differently. Every other investor has higher patience for poor countries in Central America and Africa, and they all look at Elliot with confused scorn.

And, things would probably run fine without hyper-aggressive multi-billionaires in pushing the courts to f- over those who default on debts they owe to the maximum degree. Japan and Norway do quite fine with businesses that are run by gentle and humble goys who feel ashamed at the thought of getting "too rich."

steinbergfeldwitzcohen , says: December 19, 2019 at 10:27 pm GMT
@J Adleman You will be thrown out.
You will have to choose between Israel, Ukraine and Patagonia. No one else will take you.
You have destroyed our politics, media and economy.
You are not respected.
You buy compliance with money.
You have bankrupted the U.S. dollar with debt pursuing Israel's enemies.

You should pack.
Real Soon.
Good Riddance.

Anon [112] Disclaimer , says: December 19, 2019 at 10:31 pm GMT
@Just passing through I accept the guilt for what whites have done in the past.

But whites have become incredibly generous and gentle with the Other. We have turned in the opposite direction, we are not the same.

Great Britain gave up many of its colonies with no fight. Kenya was given up before there was even an anti-colonial movement in Kenya!

We whites are fair-players, and we respect the right of other peoples to self-determination. We haven't in the past, but we have learned.

ANZ , says: December 19, 2019 at 10:32 pm GMT
@mark green Mark, you called out Lot like Joyce called out Singer, et.al. Strong, unequivocal and straight for the jugular.

I like your style here. That was a verbal beat down.

Anon [271] Disclaimer , says: December 19, 2019 at 10:33 pm GMT
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-08-01/hillary's-latest-headache-skolkovo

Do any of you goys remember when the Jewish funded Democrats through the US State department gave Russia one third of the US strategic uranium reserve and also funnelled military tech to Russia's Skolkovo Valley? At a time when they were working on the Hypersonic ballistic missile engine?

It's almost like there was this plan for people to move back into Russia, just like China, but for some reason the Russians and Chinese didn't cooperate.

Remember when David Spengler wrote about this a few years back hence?

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/20/world/asia/china-cia-spies-espionage.html

Do you think disloyal Jews had anything to do with 18 American CIA assets getting captured and murdered by the Chinese Intelligence services through 2010 to 2012?

Could it be that there were loyal Americans who were interfering with Chinese pay for play with the Jewish nation in the United States? Or might have come upon it?

Imagine being an American military service member knowing that your Jewish commanders and Jewish senior officers have got your back.

It's amazing isn't it.

Clinton was receiving tens of millions of dollars from Skolkovo Valley Syndicate owners in Russia, and in exchange all she gave them were military secrets that may have given Russia for example it's lead in hypersonic military technology.

And then we're told China had a duplicate version of her emails in China, in exchange for what?

US Taxpayer money funded the Russian weapons program.

How much China tech was also funded by US taxpayers?

And then these people accused Trump of collusion with Russia, because the Russians were telling the Trump family that the Magnitsky Act was unjust because the Russians were trying to secure their assets against the kind of predatory practices that lowered Russian mortality to where it's headed in the Midwest. Right now. For the same reasons.

Yeah – this trend is absolutely going to be permitted to continue.

The American nation forewarned and forearmed is simply going to allow itself to go the way of the Russian Slav under a century of Jewish and proto-Jewish (the man who was made to call himself Stalin) leadership.

Maybe, just maybe, an American President might consider a Magnitsky Act the subjects of which were different. Maybe Trump is the last civic-nationalist President, maybe.

Look at how loyal the ruling nation in the United States is to their fellow Americans.

There aren't enough hours in the day to trace the labyrinthine set of Jewish betrayals and asset transferrals – remember the Panama Papers? Remember the Samson Option?

Why won't Browder let the Russians investigate Cyprus?

Maybe good old fashioned local corruption with noblesse oblige is preferable to this international corruption.

The Jews got out-leveraged by the Russians, and now, finally, the Empire might be able to take back Korriban from the Jewdi.

Of course that's impossible. You have to trade one for the other. Just one set for the other set.

If you want to find a list of these capitalists – you just look at who attends the World Jewish Congress Galas.

https://www.henrymakow.com/2019/11/putting-a-face-on-the-illumkinati.html

Here are a few:

" Ira Rennert (net worth $3 billion, previously, $6 billion, investor, known as a "junk bond billionaire," found guilty of corruption in 2015, placed a mill in Baltimore's outer harbor into bankruptcy, causing more than 2,000 workers to lose their jobs, owes Baltimore $8 million in unpaid city water bills, allegedly used money he looted from his business to build a 29-room mansion & compound – a garage holds 100 cars)
Dick Parsons (former Time Warner CEO, CBS chair, & Citibank chair; in 2012 shareholders filed a lawsuit against Parsons and some other executives for "stuffing their pockets while running the bank into the ground")
Ben Ashkenazy (net worth $4 billion, Israeli American real estate tycoon, a benefactor of the 2015 AIPAC Real Estate Luncheon at New York's Grand Hyatt Hotel)
Jack Chehebar (real estate mogul, sued for alleged breach of contract, accused of beating his son)
Ray Kelly (longest serving commissioner in the history of the New York City Police Department, for a period was an Interpol vice president, charged by Muslim groups of discrimination: "The commissioner oversaw a spying program that targeted Muslims based solely on their religion, showed poor judgment by participating in a virulently anti-Islamic film, and approved a report on terrorism that equated innocuous behavior such as quitting smoking with signs of radicalization."

What did God say once?

In Genesis 18:32 He said he would spare Sodom and Gamorrah if Abraham could find just 10 honourable men. He couldn't find them. Only the family of Lot.

There isn't much time left. It might simply be the case that the rot goes too deep and too dark.

Valhalla is a worthy place. I think there might be some Russians there, along with the souls of those 18 Americans who were tortured and murdered in China for reasons unknown.

Mefobills , says: December 19, 2019 at 10:38 pm GMT
@Antares

Capitalism includes money. You can't separate the risks in lending from other risks. Bad investors should be punished and good investors rewarded. Resources should be well allocated. Otherwise it's not capitalism.

There are different kinds of capitalism. It is part of today's hypnotism that people don't know the different types.

For example, there is finance capitalism, industrial capitalism, and what Andrew Joyce calls vulture capitalism.

Vulture capitalism is a subset of finance capitalism.

Industrial capitalism was invented in the American colonies, especially Massachusetts bay. The American system of economy (industrial capitalism with mixed economy and sovereign money) has since been lost to America, as it imported Jewish/British finance capitalism as the operating construct after 1913.

You can separate risks in lending. That is more hypnosis that you have been imbibing on. The entire corpus of Classical economics goes about trying to separate unearned from earned income, how to tax properly, what is site value, and it also is able to separate risk types.

The fact that you do not know these things is not surprising, as most of western man is living inside of a Jewish inverted reality bubble. The agents of mammon won, and classical economics is not even taught in university.

Just passing through , says: December 19, 2019 at 10:45 pm GMT
@Anon I agree about your opinion on Ehits
bike-anarkist , says: December 19, 2019 at 10:47 pm GMT
@Happy Tapir Shakespeare was bisexual.

Homosexuality is present in our society, but doesn't register much in demographics and as such, I am happy to call gays as homosexuals. Tackling animus towards homosexuals requires NOT trying to enforce new nomenclature of gender etc., otherwise an unexpected nasty backlash can occur. Within your "ingroup", you can say what you like, but do not try and force ingroup dynamics on the majority that are not interested.
Otherwise, you are behaving by identity politics, just like the Jews force their identity upon the majority.

Johan , says: December 19, 2019 at 10:56 pm GMT
@sally " Time after time I have asked my Jewish friends are you are Zionist, and most say they do not really know what Zionism is? "

Zionism is a name which is more well known as an identifier by the critical (among the Goy), carrying by now negative connotations. Broadly it is not an ism which is well known to the man in the street. It could well be that among Jews, the name Zionism is only handled by certain groups.
The question should have been rephrased asking what position these Jewish friends take with regard to Israel. It comes down roughly to the same thing.

To not know of Zionism might be strategically a good thing, it refers to convergent interests, actually a power block, you don't want to throw around such things, it could make people aware Keep it diluted, diversity, obfuscation.

thotmonger , says: December 19, 2019 at 11:02 pm GMT
Ben Franklin and the American revolution was almost put in a similar pinch by the Amsterdam banker Jean DeNeufville. In a letter to John Adams, 14 December 1781*, Franklin explained that DeNeufville wanted as security for a loan "all the lands, cities, territories, and possessions of the said Thirteen States, which they may have or possess at present, and which they may have or possess in the future, with all their income, revenue, and produce, until the entire payment of this loan and the interests due thereon."

Franklin considered that "extravagant" but Newhouse rejoined, "this was usual in all loans and that the money could not otherwise be obtained". Franklin retold in this lengthy letter, "Besides this, I was led to understand that it would be very agreeable to these gentlemen if, in acknowledgment of their zeal for our cause and great services in procuring this loan, they would be made by some law of Congress the general consignee of America, to receive and sell upon commission, by themselves and correspondents in the different ports and nations, all the produce of America that should be sent by our merchants to Europe."

Talk about shooting the moon

While Wikipedia says DeNeufville was Mennonite, Franklin concluded with this colorful -- and bitter -- remark , "By this time, I fancy, your Excellency is satisfied that I was wrong in supposing John de Neufville as much a Jew as any in Jerusalem, since Jacob was not content with any per cents, but took the whole of his brother Esau's birthright, and his posterity did the same by the Canaanites, and cut their throats into the bargain; which, in my conscience, I do not think Mr. John de Neufville has the least inclination to do by us while he can get any thing by our being alive. I am, with the greatest esteem, etc., ✪ B. Franklin."

Perhaps it was just an expression based on an earlier stereotype?

*Bigelow, 1904. The Works of Benjamin Franklin, Vol. 9 Letters and Misc. Writings

Mefobills , says: December 19, 2019 at 11:08 pm GMT
@steinbergfeldwitzcohen Adrian Salbuchi, an economist from Argentina, does a good job of exposing Zionist plans in Patagonia.

If you google his name along with Patagonia then it will come up with links in Spanish.

Here is a Rense translation:

https://rense.com/general95/pata.htm

What our Jewish friends have done to Argentina, through maneuvering the elections, killing dissidents, and marking territory, is a cautionary tale to anybody woke enough to see with their own eyes.

Zion had the opportunity to go to Uganda and Ugandans were willing, but NO Zion had to have Palestine, and they got it through war, deception, and murder. It was funded by usury, as stolen purchasing power from the Goyim.

The fake country of Israel, is not the biblical Israel, and it came into being by maneuverings of satanic men determined to get their way no matter what, and is supported by continuous deception. Even today's Hebrew is resurrected from a dead language, and is fake. Many fake Jews (who have no blood lineage to Abraham), a fake country, and fake language. These fakers, usurers, and thieves do indeed have their eyes set on Patagonia, what they call the practical country.

Anonymous [147] Disclaimer , says: December 19, 2019 at 11:08 pm GMT
@Digital Samizdat

Unz is an ideal hangout for left/right fusionists who don't fit in perfectly with either side, but are interested in hearing from both

You just described me to a tee. I defy categorization, especially ideological ones (although I half jokingly refer to myself as a free-thinkist), and I feel this makes me weird.

I've been to TOO. However I can't bring myself to start commenting on a white nationalist website. I will admit I am unable to articulate this discomfort presently.

As to your point about Marx – I actually forgot about his work on the JQ. The Saker, who is a columnist on this site, referenced Marx's essay on the JQ some time ago. I must have not read the whole thing or I'd have remembered it. I didn't know that Marxism originated with anti-Semitism, but that is fascinating. I have encountered some Marxists in my time and they focus exclusively (predictably) on the cis-white-male patriarchy, or whatever occupies their brainwashed minds after an Introduction to Gender Studies class.

Johan , says: December 19, 2019 at 11:15 pm GMT
@Anon "If debts can simply be repudiated at will, capitalism cannot function."

Is this children's capitalist theory class time? throwing around some simple slogans for a susceptible congregation of future believers?

Should be quite obvious that people, groups of people, if not whole nations , can be forced and or seduced into depths by means of certain practices. There are a thousand ways of such trickery and thievery, these are not in the theory books though. In these books things all match and work out wonderfully rationally

Then capitalism cannot function? Unfortunately it has become already dysfunctional, if not a big rotten cancer.

secondElijah , says: December 19, 2019 at 11:18 pm GMT
@J Adleman Your God must be anti-Semitic as well?

Isaiah 1:4 4 Alas, sinful nation, A people laden with iniquity, A brood of evildoers, Children who are corrupters! They have forsaken the LORD, They have provoked to anger The Holy One of Israel, They have turned away backward.
Ezekiel 21:25 25 'Now to you, O profane, wicked prince of Israel, whose day has come, whose iniquity shall end
Jeremiah 5:9 Shall I not punish them for these things?" says the LORD. "And shall I not avenge Myself on such a nation as this?

As Jesus said which of the prophets have you not killed or persecuted? The truth hurts. As for me I do not hate Jews ..I feel terribly sad for a people that are capable of greatness and squandered the gifts given to them by God. Are you a holy nation? Don't make me laugh. Repent. Your time is coming. No more running and hiding. Deception will no longer save you only acceptance of the Messiah.

tomo , says: December 19, 2019 at 11:28 pm GMT
@Father O'Hara he can't be bargained with,he can't reasoned with,he doesn't feel pity,remorse,or fear "

In other words – a 'culture' as a PSYCHOPATH
it's a well-oiled psychopath support group

utu , says: December 19, 2019 at 11:29 pm GMT
@Mefobills " classical economics is not even taught in university." – Could you recommend some books?
Clutch these pearls, sqrt, sqrt, sqrt , says: December 19, 2019 at 11:36 pm GMT
Hey! Don't mention anything a Jew ever did, especially usury, or else the entire cult will go up in a holocaustal mushroom cloud of emo nasal whining. In Judaism you've got a fanatical sect that systematically selects and brainwashes its members to inculcate extreme values of two Big Five personality axes: high neuroticism and low intellect (where intellect means open-mindedness.) Note the existential crisis triggered by a straightforward lecture from The Society for the Study of Unbelievably Obvious Shit.

https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/295595/pride-and-prejudice-at-fieldston

Of course Israel is holocausting the Palestinians. This is what happens when the founding myth of a nation is, We wiped em all out and then they wiped us almost all out so now we gotta wipe em all out etc., etc., etc.

Fuck Israel. Fuck the Jewish State.

tomo , says: December 19, 2019 at 11:41 pm GMT
@J.W. "Relationships with narcissists are no fun"

Well, the only difference between a narcissist and a psychopath is that the former need people to like them whereas psychopaths genuinely could not care less (although they learn early that acting as if they do can be very helpful , as can always trying to elicit sympathy etc).
As I noticed while reading a few books on psychopathy (I was inspired to after reading Steve Job's biography) – their whole 'culture' is structured as a (collective ) PSYCHOPATH.
It seems that (collectively) they cannot care about others even if they wanted to. Due to their sickness

I am not saying they are all that way – but overall their 'culture' seems to be that way

Tusk , says: December 19, 2019 at 11:49 pm GMT
@Digital Samizdat Indeed I cannot agree more. I quote from a 1923 interview of Hitler:

"Why," I asked Hitler, "do you call yourself a National Socialist, since your party programme is the very antithesis of that commonly accredited to socialism?"

"Socialism," he retorted, putting down his cup of tea, pugnaciously, "is the science of dealing with the common weal. Communism is not Socialism. Marxism is not Socialism. The Marxians have stolen the term and confused its meaning. I shall take Socialism away from the Socialists.

"Socialism is an ancient Aryan, Germanic institution. Our German ancestors held certain lands in common. They cultivated the idea of the common weal. Marxism has no right to disguise itself as socialism. Socialism, unlike Marxism, does not repudiate private property. Unlike Marxism, it involves no negation of personality, and unlike Marxism, it is patriotic.

And so we see the truth of the matter revealed.

Skeptikal , says: December 19, 2019 at 11:56 pm GMT
@Colin Wright The Sacklers occupy a hoity-toity rung in the philanthropy universe, as they have given enough $$$ to Harvard for H to paste their name on its museum housing I believe its whole Asian art collection. Students have now protested Harvard's high-profile gift of probity and cultural status to the Sacklers via, literally, an "Aushangerschild" on a major university museum. Harvard protests back: Jeez, if we don't take the Sacklers' dough we might be obliged to stop taking the dough from Exxon, etc.
Skeptikal , says: December 19, 2019 at 11:59 pm GMT
@Colin Wright "Lot had a go. Anyone else care to offer a rebuttal?"

You sound like a self-appointed moderator/sheepdog.

tomo , says: December 20, 2019 at 12:04 am GMT
@Anon you are right about repaying the loan
but Banksters have managed over decades I think starting with Clinton to remove protection laws (which were stating how much interest was the maximum a bankster could charge his pray etc). They also removed the rules of how much was the maximum they could lend (according to how much their victim makes a year etc).
So even though you are right that loans should be repaid – it is immoral to allow a well connected mafia to change all the laws and remove protections while pushing up prices of everything because it suits the lender (who has a licence to print).
They basically lend money that does not exist and get interest for that. So the more sheeple are tricked into borrowing the better for them, but the worse for everyone else
They should not be allowed to bribe politicians to remove all the protection that was there since 1920s I think.
It's a marriage from hell: easy to bribe Anglosheep meets the masters of predatory bribing who own the printing press
MarkinLA , says: December 20, 2019 at 12:14 am GMT
@silviosilver https://qz.com/1001650/hedge-fund-billionaire-paul-singers-ruthless-strategies-include-bullying-ceos-suing-governments-and-seizing-their-navys-ships/

Yes, but the Argentine bond situation was particulary crappy and not what happens when a typical bondhoder is forced to take a hit.

lavoisier , says: Website December 20, 2019 at 12:22 am GMT
@anon

That stupid cuck Trump just got impeached by the House. Thats a good lesson to everybody how much good Jew-ass kissing does for you .you get stabbed in the back anyway lol

Couldn't have happened to a more deserving and treacherous scumbag!

But he should have been impeached for his treachery to the constitution and to the American people for his slavish devotion to all things Jewish!

PCA , says: December 20, 2019 at 12:24 am GMT
@mark green The singular is PHENOMENON for God's sake. Phenomena is plural.

Have Americans always been this illiterate?

BannedHipster , says: Website December 20, 2019 at 12:26 am GMT
@Digital Samizdat True, but irrelevant. The Jews that matter don't read the Talmud or believe in "Adam and Eve."

It's 2020. The Jewish religion is "The Holocaust" and we're all "Nazis."

Frankly, it's these traditional religious notions of "anti-semitism" that get in the way of understanding what is, at the core, an ethnic issue. It's Sheldon Adelson, the Zionist entity in Palestine, and the ADL that are the problem, not some looney-tunes rabbi living in Brooklyn.

Daniel Rich , says: December 20, 2019 at 12:31 am GMT
@Digital Samizdat

But I see all kinds of people even on this thread blaming the victim instead -- 'Damn goyishe deadbeats!' Whatever

The number of families who're unable to pay an $500 emergency bill is staggering as is the number of families being 1 paycheck away from bankruptcy.

Yes, some people are totally irresponsible and burn through their money faster than it can be printed, but not all 55,000,000 of 'em.

utu , says: December 20, 2019 at 12:45 am GMT
@Mefobills Market Forces and Santa Claus
Rafael Martorell , says: December 20, 2019 at 12:47 am GMT
The other side of the expalnation is the laking of reaction of the victim,the american people.
The least that the people that loot the world trough and with the USA power should do, is ,at least ,let us,the american people, a free ride.
Milesglorious , says: December 20, 2019 at 12:50 am GMT
@anarchyst And when it comes, vae victis.
Frank Frivilous , says: December 20, 2019 at 12:51 am GMT
Well, DynCorp has a particularly insidious reputation beyond your run of the mill Usury.

https://www.outsidethebeltway.com/wikileaks-reveals-american-contractors-involvement-in-afghan-pedophile-ring/

Not illegal in the Talmud either but most certainly illegal in all of the countries that DynCorp was caught profiting from this type of business. For some reason they never seem to suffer for their exposure suggesting that they may be wielding the same influence that Epstein had over our elected officials.

Rafael Martorell , says: December 20, 2019 at 12:59 am GMT
We dont have to get back to the Singer of this world but to our own politicians ,that allowed them to do this to us,and to the world.In this kind of abusive realtionship the 2 sides are to blame.
Thomasina , says: December 20, 2019 at 1:14 am GMT
@Just passing through "Look up income by ethnic group in the UK and US, you will find that Indians and Chinese (South Asians) are the richest in both countries (except for Jews of course)."

And why is that? Think about it. These are members of the Indian and Chinese elite who the multinational corporations are doing business with.

In order to do business in China, the Chinese stipulated that the western corporations had to give one of the members of the Chinese elite half ownership in the company. They were also required to turn over the western technology to the China-based company. Western technology, western money, cheap Chinese slave labor, ability to pollute to your heart's content. For both sides, it was a win-win. The Chinese elite got filthy rich and then moved over to the West with their newfound gains, buying up properties, forcing prices up for the natives. The western corporations not only wanted cheap products to export back to the U.S., but they were also developing a whole new market – Chinese consumers who would buy their products as well. Double plus good!

And once in the West, the Chinese and the Indians stick to their groups. They hire their own, promote their own, do business together. A lot of corruption, money laundering, cheating, taking advantage of and bending laws. Rule of law? Code of ethics? Morals? Do unto others? They never learned it. Opportunistic dual citizens.

Isthatright , says: December 20, 2019 at 1:23 am GMT
@Colin Wright Tucker is smart. He never uses the J word. Great article.
Fayez chergui , says: December 20, 2019 at 1:31 am GMT
The only path to understand the spirit of jews to money is to read the Old Testament : clear and sharp.
lavoisier , says: Website December 20, 2019 at 1:42 am GMT
@utu

I would not count on the effect of the electric shock on the leftist thinkers. The role of Jewish Bolsheviks in the Cheka, NKVD, GULAGs, genocides by famine has been known from the very beginning and yet it left no impact on the leftist thinkers.

It unfortunately has not had much of an effect on a lot of people in the West, who remain ignorant or in denial of the role played by Jewish Bolsheviks in historic mass murders and totalitarian repression.

Waiting for the Hollywood movie to tell the story.

Rebel0007 , says: December 20, 2019 at 1:42 am GMT
[Too much totally off-topic crackpottery. Stop this or most of your future comments may get trashed.]
Mefobills , says: December 20, 2019 at 2:02 am GMT
@utu Utu,

I recommend starting with Zarlinga and "The Lost Science of Money."

https://www.monetary.org/buy-the-book

This is an expensive, weighty, and important book, which will take some time to digest.

Classical economists re-learn the science of money, starting with Prodhoun and even Marx in Das Kapital volume 3. (Leftists are often correct about money, but wrong on social issues.)

The jew Marx does do some deception in volume 3 with a sneaky equation that does not compound interest, but otherwise he is pretty accurate. Marx was probably beholden to his finance masters.

This is why you need to start with Zarlinga, as there is no BS to lead you astray. Hudson tends to drill the bulls-eye too. There is so much deception in the field of money and economy, that it is easy to get caught up in false narratives, like one-born free libertarianism. Usury flows fund the deception, even to the point of leaving out critical passages in translations, such as in Aristotle's works. Or, important works are bought up and burned.

Michael Hudson is the leading economist resurrecting Classical Economics. Reading all of Hudson and Zarlinga will take some time and effort, but it is good to take a first step.

9/11 Inside job , says: December 20, 2019 at 2:10 am GMT
@Anon I respectfully disagree that "Kenya was given up [by Great Britain] before there was even an anti-colonial movement in Kenya ."
According to Wikipedia : " The armed rebellion of the Mau Mau was the culminating response to Colonial rule . Although there had been previous instances of violent resistance to colonialism , the Mau Mau revolt was the most prolonged and violent anti-colonial warfare in the British Colonial colony. From the start the land was the primary British interest in Kenya ."
Just as the Kenyans suffered the consequences of British colonialism , the "Palestinians will suffer
the consequences of Zionist colonialism until Israel's original sin is boldly confronted and justly remedied " foreignpolicyjournal.com
Realist , says: December 20, 2019 at 2:17 am GMT
@the grand wazoo

No, not stupid whites, they're not to blame. It's the greedy corrupt politician: white, black, or white jew, who are to blame.

Who votes these greedy corrupt politicians into office? Hint: It is Whites who are the majority.

Citizen of a Silly Country , says: December 20, 2019 at 2:20 am GMT
@anon A particular distinction of Jewish investors versus gentile investors – on average, of course – is their use of bribery to get the force of government behind them. Rather than taking a bet about some group being able to pay back some bonds and letting the chips fall where they may, Jews start bribing or influencing politicians to force that group to pay back the bonds.

Buy some bonds, charge outrageous fees, bribe officials in some form or other, get govt to force the payment of bonds and outrageous fees. Rinse and repeat. Jews have been doing this in some form aor another for 1500 years. It's why the peasants get a tad angry at both the Jews and their bribed politicians/nobility.

Thomasina , says: December 20, 2019 at 2:22 am GMT
@lavoisier "But he should have been impeached for his treachery to the constitution and to the American people for his slavish devotion to all things Jewish!"

A purely political impeachment, right down party lines. I hear Schiff has got his hands full of Ukrainian-Jewish oligarchic money. Dear me, wait until that comes out.

Trump is in league with the Jews? Yeah, who isn't? Obama's lips are still sore from kissing Jewish Wall Street bankers' asses (notice that none of them went to jail). Same with the Clinton's.

You can get politicians to pass all sorts of laws in your favor if you've got enough dirt on them. After all, your side owns the media, Hollywood, academia, the courts, the banks.

If dirt doesn't work, you can always threaten to impeach them in order to get what you want.

But Trump is also revealing every last dirty one of them (accidentally or on purpose). People see them now.

Robert Dolan , says: December 20, 2019 at 2:37 am GMT
The jews suck.

Trump sucks.

All decent people should stand up and fight against these scumbags.

They can't play whack a mole with all of us.

Colin Wright , says: Website December 20, 2019 at 2:49 am GMT
@Informed Reader 'Colin Wright: Tel Aviv University's Medical School is called the "Sackler Faculty of Medicine." Does that help answer your question?'

That sort of thing is what led me to ask the question.

tomo , says: December 20, 2019 at 2:50 am GMT
@Father O'Hara I now use therm 'Weinsteined' to mean 'raped' (by jewish banksters, investors etc)
Also Jewish , says: December 20, 2019 at 2:52 am GMT
@J Adelman J Adelman comes out swinging. He's such a tough guy. But does he make sense? Does he care if he makes sense? The writer is talking about those Jews who are vulture capitalists. He's not talking about every Jew. Isn't it a little odd that nearly all of these funds are run by Jews? Can your corrupt mind accept that fact and address the question? Or are you going to bore us with your religion and by that I mean your obsession with anti-semitism, which is your religion.
tomo , says: December 20, 2019 at 3:00 am GMT
@bike-anarkist I posted the same comment on the Facebook a few hours ago and it's still there
Colin Wright , says: Website December 20, 2019 at 3:04 am GMT
@Art 'Hmm -- The day after Trump in inaugurated for his second term -- will Iran be in his crosshairs?

We need to think very seriously about that!

My guess is Iran is in the crosshairs.

Trump probably promised he'd start the war as soon as he was elected the first time -- but he putzed around, and now it's almost 2020.

Adelson et al are pissed -- but Trump's got a point. If he starts the war now the unknown Democrat will win -- and do you trust their word instead?

They just gotta trust Trump. Let him get reelected -- then he'll come through.

This is one of those cases where I'll be happy to be proved wrong -- but such is my suspicion.

Longfisher , says: December 20, 2019 at 3:13 am GMT
No surprise here. They're Jews aren't they. Utterly predictable.
mark green , says: December 20, 2019 at 3:23 am GMT
@PCA Stop splitting hairs. Is this the best you can do? Are you one of Lot's cronies? I don't normally address petty matters of this kind but Joyce is describing a multitude of sins and misconduct orchestrated by various Jewish financiers around the globe. It is not merely one phenomenon; thus, 'phenomena' fits. Go troll someone else.
anon [125] Disclaimer , says: December 20, 2019 at 3:44 am GMT
Lobelog ran some articles in Singer, Argentina, Iran Israel and the attorney from Argentina who died mysteriously . Singer is a loan shark. Argentinian paid dearly .

Google search –

NYT's Argentina Op-Ed Fails to Disclose Authors – LobeLog

https://lobelog.com/nyts-argentina-op-ed-fails-to-disclose-authors-financial-conflict-of-interest/
Dec 13, 2017 Between 2007 and 2011, hedge-fund billionaire Paul Singer contributed $3.6 million to FDD. That coincided with his battle to force Argentina to

Following Paul Singer's Money, Argentina, and Iran – LobeLog

https://lobelog.com/following-paul-singers-money-argentina-and-iran-continued/
May 8, 2015 As Jim and Charles noted, linking Singer to AIPAC and FDD doesn't between Paul Singer's money and those critical of Argentina, Sen.

Paul Singer – LobeLog

https://lobelog.com/tag/paul-singer/
Paul Singer NYT's Argentina Op-Ed Fails to Disclose Authors' Financial Conflict of Interest by Eli Clifton On Tuesday, Mark Dubowitz and Toby Dershowitz, two executives at the hawkish Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), took

The Right-Wing Americans Who Made a Doc About Argentina

https://lobelog.com/the-right-wing-americans-who-made-a-doc-about-argentina/
Oct 7, 2015 One might wonder why a movie about Argentina, in Spanish and . of Nisman's and thought highly of the prosecutor's work, told LobeLog, FDD, for its part, has been an outspoken critic of Kirchner but has From 2008 to 2011, Paul Singer was the group's second-largest donor, contributing $3.6 million.

NYT Failed to Note Op-Ed Authors' Funder Has $2 Billion

https://fair.org/home/nyt-failed-to-note-op-ed-authors-funder-has-2-billion-motive-for-attacking-argentina/
Dec 16, 2017 Paul Singer FDD has been eager to promote Nisman's work. Singer embarked on a 15-year legal battle to collect on Argentina's debt payments by This alert orginally appeared as a blog post on LobeLog (12/13/17).

mcohen , says: December 20, 2019 at 3:54 am GMT
@mark green Mark green the queen of self rightousness.

There are many non jews runny vulture funds worldwide with at least 100 in china alone.

The list joyce provided is selective and politically motivated.There are many more non jews who are guilty of financial crimes.The jails are full of them.

The vulture funds are a product of a system that punishes failure.Do not blame the funds,blame the system.

This story and like many that appear here is designed to pressure israel to change politically.Israels future lies in the hands of God not some mutt with a serious case of mutters.

Daniel Rich , says: December 20, 2019 at 4:02 am GMT

It is not merely one phenomenon; thus, 'phenomena' fits.

You're absolutely correct.

On the upside, these trolls happily turn 'Vertebra' into Vertebron' just to p *** someone off :o]

sally , says: December 20, 2019 at 4:07 am GMT
@Lot venture capital funds are only made necessary because we have a federal reserve.. which is a private bank and private banks want to earn interest.

consider the difference between when a private lender makes loans to the USA (treasury)
on the books of the feds is the following

due from the USA $11,000
new cash printed and given to dumb clucks at the USA $10,000
profit on the loan $ 1,000
what happened here is the fed printed $10,000 in new bills.
Assume the loan made at 10% interest and it is due in 1 year.

Ok so what is the loan on the USA books
cash $10,000
amount payable to the Federal Reserve $11,000
loss on the deal $ 1,000

this loan becomes the loan on the local bank books
the government gives the bank its loan and its obligation to repay the principal plus interest

If there were no interest (that is the government printed its own money and made
venture loans to entrepreneurs at 0% interest the entries would look like this )
Amount due in one year from venture borrower $10,000
new cash printed and loaned to venture $10,000

so if the venture guy spent the $10,000 and then went broke the treasury would still gets its money back in taxes from those who earned profit the money the venture paid.. no one has to beat somebody to pay the interest (the economy does not have the extra $1000 dollars in interest so somebody has to lose)

When interest must be paid its like musical chairs.. each time the music stops there are not enough chairs to go around, someone is left standing ( its like that in money lending, the debtors dance until the music stops, but because the private bank only put the principal amount $10,000 in circulation the guy needs $11,000 to pay the loan back where does he get the extra $1,000? <=If ten $10,000 loans are made, and 1 guy goes broke, there will be enough cash in the system for the 9 others to pay the interest they each owe and enough for the local private bank and lawyers to get paid for handling the bankruptcy. . <= we started with 10 loans, one loan went broke the 9 remaining borrowers each pay $11,000 to retire the debt , there are 9 loans "$99,000 to repay them and $1000 to pay debt service costs and legal fees.

if there were no interest on the loans, the bankruptcy would not matter.

What makes the venture capitalist have a business at all is the Federal reserve is a private profit making bank. Lending printed money from the Federal reserve requires interest to be paid, and that requirement of interest makes the economy horde its capital and the economic players playing king of the mountain to get the extra money they need to pay the interest . ..

Zionism brought private banking to the USA and the USA wrote a tax law to collect the money from the Americans it governs to pay the interest on the debt.

this is a really simplistic description of what is happening to our economy so don't rely on it but instead use its simplistic idea to model the impact of having interest on the national debt is having each year. If our government reversed what it privatized to the Federal Reserve, we could make the economy run more or less as we please. \we could eliminate the national debt and with it income tax es.

redmudhooch , says: December 20, 2019 at 4:13 am GMT
Typical Jew baiting article. Mitt Romney isn't a "Jew" Ashish Masih isn't. Many more examples of gentiles taking advantage of their brothers. May as well consider the Walton family of Wal-Mart to be vultures as well since they benefit the most from this system, they're so called Christians, not Jews. The problem is capitalism. Author seems to suggest that a moral economic system has been corrupted. The system was designed in an era of widespread slavery folks. Its an immoral system that requires theft, slavery, war, immigration, all the things you hate, to survive. The system is working exactly as it is designed to work. Exploit workers, the environment and resources, shift all the profits from workers to the owners of capital, period. Welcome to the late stage, it eats and destroys itself

From the days of the colonists slaughtering the Injuns and stealing their land. The days of importing African slaves, and indentured servants. The days of child labor and factory owners hiring Pinkertons to gun down workers who protested shitty wages and working conditions. The good ol days of the gilded age. Now the age of offshoring to China or some other lower wage nation. Overthrowing leaders not willing to let their resources and people be plundered and enslaved, driving refugees to our borders fleeing violence and poverty. Importing H1B workers to drive down wages. It was always a corrupt system of exploitation/theft/slavery. This is nothing new and doesn't require "Jews" to be immoral.

And all these so called "Christians" like Pastor Pence approve. Usury and capitalism run amok. I'm sure Jesus is smiling down on all these Bible toting demons who allow their fellow man to be exploited by the parasites. Sad!

Good for Tucker. He has his moments I'd watch his show if he wasn't a partisan hack. But that will never happen working for Fox or any other corporate media.

Thomasina , says: December 20, 2019 at 5:31 am GMT
@Anon You've read "Red Notice", but that is only Browder's side. To get the other side, read these articles from Consortium News:

https://consortiumnews.com/tag/william-browder/

Thomasina , says: December 20, 2019 at 6:18 am GMT
@Colin Wright I doubt Trump promised to go to war with Iran before he was elected. In his Inauguration Speech, Trump said he wanted to bring the troops home and stop the wars. He didn't have to say these things, he had already won the election, but he said them anyway.

One of the few times the media has laid off Trump was when he sent some missiles into Syria (after he gave them hours of warning ahead of time that the missiles were coming). If Hillary had been elected, Syria would have been leveled by now and flying an Israeli flag.

Obama brought us the destruction of Libya and the murder of Gaddafi, the coup in Ukraine, and through ISIS, which the U.S. armed, trained and paid for, tried to destroy Syria.

I don't really blame Obama or Bush Jr. or Clinton. They were all puppets who did as they were told. If they hadn't, in the words of Chuckie Schemer, there would have been "six ways from Sunday of getting back at them".

If you don't do what they want, you're impeached, some of your dirty laundry is aired, or they purposely crash the stock market on you. If you still don't get the message, maybe you're just assassinated.

Trump loves his daughter and she is married to a Jew. If they're not getting their way, I could see them telling Trump: "Sad what happened at the Pittsburgh synagogue, isn't it? Sure hope nothing like that happens to your daughter."

I don't envy Trump. He not only is up against the Democrats, but he is also fighting the globalist neocons in his own party. Both parties want open borders and more war, something Trump does not believe in. As far as I can see, he's throwing them bones in order to shut them up. If he gets elected again, which I think he will, we might see a different Trump. Who knows.

Wally , says: December 20, 2019 at 6:55 am GMT
@Just passing through IOW, you can't answer my questions:

– What "WASP looting" was that?

– And what "deal" was supposedly struck?

– You then desperately change "WASPS" to 'whites' and still flounder.

– Unproductive, lazy Puerto Rico? It has received much more than it deserved.
'It's so bad for them', yet they always vote against independence. Oops!

– Vietnam & Congo can choose as they wish, it is they who vote for their leaders.
In fact, Congo was better off with colonialism.

– Then you change the subject to Epstein. Pathetic.

Wally , says: December 20, 2019 at 7:01 am GMT
@Robert Dolan Of those running for US President, who then do you prefer?

And why?

A. Benjamine Moser , says: Website December 20, 2019 at 8:15 am GMT
@Jimmy1969 I think this deal has already taken place. Israel has given away to China for 99 years the hall commercial incomming This deal has taken place 2 or 3 years ago
Thomasina , says: December 20, 2019 at 8:52 am GMT
Andrew Joyce – that was an incredibly well-written and informative article. Thank you very much.
Laurent Guyénot , says: December 20, 2019 at 9:11 am GMT
Don't blame it on the Talmud. These Jews act in accordance to their Torah: "If Yahweh your God blesses you as he has promised, you will be creditors to many nations but debtors to none; you will rule over many nations, and be ruled by none" (Deuteronomy 15:6). "feeding on the wealth of the nations" (Isaiah 61:5) is Israel's destiny according to Yahweh.
NoseytheDuke , says: December 20, 2019 at 9:12 am GMT
@mcohen I took a squint at both your own and Mark Green's comment history. Your comment history cannot even begin to compare in value, but I should have already guessed that from the name-calling in the first line of your comment. Just weak, extremely weak.
ivan , says: December 20, 2019 at 9:38 am GMT
Rather amusing to read our resident Jewish apologists carrying on about the absolute sanctity of the necessity of collecting debts to the functioning of the capitalistic system. These nations and corporate entities that are now in thrall of the Wall Street Jews , were herded into debt by that other faction of the capitalist system, the dealers in easy money. Snookering the rubes into lifelong debt, telling them that money is on the tap, promoting unsustainable spending habits and then let the guillotine come down, for the vultures to feed on. They are two sides of the same coin.

Its damned funny that the rich Jews nowadays are absolutely addicted to usury, rentier activities, and debt collection, when the Bible itself condemns such activities. But they are our elder brothers in faith according to some.

PaddyWhack , says: December 20, 2019 at 9:58 am GMT
@Colin Wright Carnegie was a Protestant. The Protestant cancer serves it's Jewish masters. Read 'The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit' by E. Michael Jones. There is definitely a revolutionary nature to the international Jew just as there is to their Protestant dupes. Jewish nature is to subvert the natural order and the west was built by the guidance of LOGOS. The Catholic Faith created by God guided the creation of the west. These Jewish exploits are a result of the Wests rejection of its nature and its enslavement
Calvin Simms , says: December 20, 2019 at 10:12 am GMT
Amazing article from the ever insightful Andrew Joyce. The usual apologists are sputtering to try to mitigate the damage, but the game is almost up.
anno nimus , says: December 20, 2019 at 10:38 am GMT
1. rich or poor, creditor or debtor, in the final analysis, ultimately, all will become equal in the grave. the filthy rich might decide to lay their corpses in coffins made of gold, but it will be in vain. the sorrows and the joys of this fleeting world shall quickly pass like the shadow.
2. talmudics feel the need to accumulate money in order to have sense of security since they were stateless for two millennia. paradoxically, amount of wealth is indirectly proportional to a sense of security, provoking backlash from aggrieved host people.
3. establishment of State of Israel did not reduce the need for the accumulation but has only heightened it since now talmudics feel the need to support it so that she could maintain military superiority over neighbouring threats.
4. as long as Palestinians are not free and Israel does not make peace, talmudics will continue to meddle in American politics. if you don't want to save the Palestinians for the sake of humanity and truth or justice, at least you should do it for your own sake.
5. loan sharking, vulture whatever, etc., is the ugliness of big capitalism with capital C, what is beyond sickening is the promotion of sodomy. if one becomes poor or homeless, it's a pity. to go against nature is an abomination.
6. by using such words as "homosexual" you have accepted the paradigm of the social engineers and corruptors, and are therefore collaborating with them. words have consequences since that is how we convey ideas unless you own Hollywood and can produce your own moving pictures too.
7. talmudics is a better word than as a great American scholar says, since people who promote sodomy are absolutely opposed to the Torah (O.T.). those who still struggle to follow it couldn't care less what happens to benighted goyim, only becoming reinforced in pride of their own purity as opposed to disgraced nations. thus, practically, they too are talmudics, alien to the spirit of the ancient holy fathers and prophets of Israel. the word "Orthodox" has been stolen and now has lost all meaning or it means the exact opposite of what it originally meant.
8. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Matthew 5:5
Wizard of Oz , says: December 20, 2019 at 10:38 am GMT
@Colin Wright Well there's nothing wrong in principle about specialists in valuing distressed debt and managing it nuying such debt and using the previously established mechanisms for getting value out of their investment. So the problem is how they go about enforcing their rights and the lack of regulation to mitigate hardship in hard cases.

Still it is notable that it should, overwhelmingly be a Jewish business and such a powerful medium for enriching Jewish causes and communities at the expense of poor Americans.

eah , says: December 20, 2019 at 10:57 am GMT
@Realist Turnout in the 2018 midterms was only 50% , and that was the highest for a midterm election since 1914 -- normally turnout in midterms is < 40% -- even in the 2016 presidential election, which at least on the surface was fairly polarizing (largely due to Trump's rhetoric, which in the end was little more than just rhetoric), turnout was < 60%.

While Whites theoretically still have the numbers to affect/determine the outcome of elections, a majority of Whites usually stay home because they are tired of the 'evil of two lessers' choice they are offered -- even voting for Trump got them little/nothing.

PetrOldSack , says: December 20, 2019 at 11:02 am GMT
@Bardon Kaldian Change the sýstemics of society and the Jewish question will disappear. No less.
9/11 Inside job , says: December 20, 2019 at 11:30 am GMT
@Colin Wright George Bush needed Tony Blair's support to attack Iraq , Donald Trump now has the support of Boris Johnson to attack Iran : "Boris Johnson refuses to rule out military intervention on Iran ." metro.co.uk
It is said that the "deep state " removed Theresa May from office as she was "too soft" on Iran . As you suggest the attack will not happen until Trump's second term unless, in the meantime , there is a false flag attack like 9/11 which can be blamed on the Iranians .
Robjil , says: December 20, 2019 at 12:01 pm GMT
East Asians have freedom of speech. That is all that is needed to end Jewish Mafia vulture capitalism. If it was Italian Mafia vulture capitalism, the west would end it a few seconds. When one is in a "no see, no say, no hear" tribal group one can get away with everything. East Asians don't believe in hiding reality.

Here is more on how Samsung fought back against little Paulie.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3164975/Pictured-offensive-Samsung-cartoons-Jewish-U-S-hedge-fund-boss-sparked-anti-Semitism-row-South-Korea.htm

This is a summary of the article.

Samsung published controversial sketches in response to row over merger
Jewish U.S. hedge fund boss Paul Singer was trying to stop a Samsung business deal
In response the firm released cartoons on its website depicting Singer as a vulture
A row has broken out in South Korea with media there describing Jews as 'ruthless' with money
Merger between Samsung C&T and Cheil Industries was approved today

This is how Paulie's row with Samsung started.

These are the extraordinary cartoons Samsung posted on its website which reportedly depict a Jewish hedge fund boss as a money-grabbing vulture.

The row between Samsung and one of its major shareholders, Paul Singer, has sparked an anti-Semitism row in South Korea.

Harvard-educated Mr Singer, 70, whose hedge fund Elliott Management o