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Proof that War Is Bad for the Economy
Preface: Many Americans – including influential economists and talking heads - assume that war is good for the economy. Many congressmen assume that cutting pork-barrel military spending would hurt their constituents’ jobs. As demonstrated below, it isn’t true.
Nobel-prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz says that war is bad for the economy:
Stiglitz wrote in 2003:
War is widely thought to be linked to economic good times. The second world war is often said to have brought the world out of depression, and war has since enhanced its reputation as a spur to economic growth. Some even suggest that capitalism needs wars, that without them, recession would always lurk on the horizon.
Today, we know that this is nonsense. The 1990s boom showed that peace is economically far better than war. The Gulf war of 1991 demonstrated that wars can actually be bad for an economy.
Stiglitz has also said that this decade’s Iraq war has been very bad for the economy. See this, this and this.
Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan also said in that war is bad for the economy.
In 1991, Greenspan said that a prolonged conflict in the Middle East would hurt the economy.
And he made this point again in 1999:
Societies need to buy as much military insurance as they need, but to spend more than that is to squander money that could go toward improving the productivity of the economy as a whole: with more efficient transportation systems, a better educated citizenry, and so on.
This is the point that retiring Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) learned back in 1999 in a House Banking Committee hearing with then-Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. Frank asked what factors were producing our then-strong economic performance. On Greenspan’s list: “The freeing up of resources previously employed to produce military products that was brought about by the end of the Cold War.” Are you saying, Frank asked, “that dollar for dollar, military products are there as insurance … and to the extent you could put those dollars into other areas, maybe education and job trainings, maybe into transportation … that is going to have a good economic effect?” Greenspan agreed.
And economist Dean Baker notes:
It is often believed that wars and military spending increases are good for the economy. In fact, most economic models show that military spending diverts resources from productive uses, such as consumption and investment, and ultimately slows economic growth and reduces employment.
War Spending Diverts Stimulus Away from the Real Civilian Economy
The New Republic noted in 2009:
Conservative Harvard economist Robert Barro has argued that increased military spending during WWII actually depressed other parts of the economy.
(New Republic also points out that conservative economist Robert Higgs and liberal economists Larry Summers and Brad Delong have all shown that any stimulation to the economy from World War II has been greatly exaggerated.)
How could war actually hurt the economy, when so many say that it stimulates the economy?
Because of what eonomists call the “broken window fallacy”.
Specifically, if a window in a store is broken, it means that the window-maker gets paid to make a new window, and he, in turn, has money to pay others. However, economists long ago showed that – if the window hadn’t been broken – the shop-owner would have spent that money on other things, such as food, clothing, health care, consumer electronics or recreation, which would have helped the economy as much or more. If the shop-owner hadn’t had to replace his window, he might have taken his family out to dinner, which would have circulated more money to the restaurant, and from there to other sectors of the economy. Similarly, the money spent on the war effort is money that cannot be spent on other sectors of the economy.
Indeed, all of the military spending has just created military jobs, at the expense of the civilian economy.
I noted in 2010:
You know about America’s unemployment problem. You may have even heard that the U.S. may very well have suffered a permanent destruction of jobs.
But did you know that the defense employment sector is booming?
As I pointed out in August, public sector spending – and mainly defense spending – has accounted for virtually all of the new job creation in the past 10 years:
The U.S. has largely been financing job creation for ten years. Specifically, as the chief economist for BusinessWeek, Michael Mandel, points out, public spending has accounted for virtually all new job creation in the past 1o years:
Private sector job growth was almost non-existent over the past ten years. Take a look at this horrifying chart:
Between May 1999 and May 2009, employment in the private sector sector only rose by 1.1%, by far the lowest 10-year increase in the post-depression period.
It’s impossible to overstate how bad this is. Basically speaking, the private sector job machine has almost completely stalled over the past ten years. Take a look at this chart:
Over the past 10 years, the private sector has generated roughly 1.1 million additional jobs, or about 100K per year. The public sector created about 2.4 million jobs.
But even that gives the private sector too much credit. Remember that the private sector includes health care, social assistance, and education, all areas which receive a lot of government support.
***
Most of the industries which had positive job growth over the past ten years were in the HealthEdGov sector. In fact, financial job growth was nearly nonexistent once we take out the health insurers.
Let me finish with a final chart.
Without a decade of growing government support from rising health and education spending and soaring budget deficits, the labor market would have been flat on its back. [120]
Raw Story argues that the U.S. is building a largely military economy:
The use of the military-industrial complex as a quick, if dubious, way of jump-starting the economy is nothing new, but what is amazing is the divergence between the military economy and the civilian economy, as shown by this New York Times chart.
In the past nine years, non-industrial production in the US has declined by some 19 percent. It took about four years for manufacturing to return to levels seen before the 2001 recession — and all those gains were wiped out in the current recession.
By contrast, military manufacturing is now 123 percent greater than it was in 2000 — it has more than doubled while the rest of the manufacturing sector has been shrinking…
It’s important to note the trajectory — the military economy is nearly three times as large, proportionally to the rest of the economy, as it was at the beginning of the Bush administration. And it is the only manufacturing sector showing any growth. Extrapolate that trend, and what do you get?
The change in leadership in Washington does not appear to be abating that trend…[121]
So most of the job creation has been by the public sector. But because the job creation has been financed with loans from China and private banks, trillions in unnecessary interest charges have been incurred by the U.S.
And this shows military versus non-military durable goods shipments:
[Click here to view full image.]
So we’re running up our debt (which will eventually decrease economic growth), but the only jobs we’re creating are military and other public sector jobs.
PhD economist Dean Baker points out that America’s massive military spending on unnecessary and unpopular wars lowers economic growth and increases unemployment:
Defense spending means that the government is pulling away resources from the uses determined by the market and instead using them to buy weapons and supplies and to pay for soldiers and other military personnel. In standard economic models, defense spending is a direct drain on the economy, reducing efficiency, slowing growth and costing jobs.
A few years ago, the Center for Economic and Policy Research commissioned Global Insight, one of the leading economic modeling firms, to project the impact of a sustained increase in defense spending equal to 1.0 percentage point of GDP. This was roughly equal to the cost of the Iraq War.
Global Insight’s model projected that after 20 years the economy would be about 0.6 percentage points smaller as a result of the additional defense spending. Slower growth would imply a loss of almost 700,000 jobs compared to a situation in which defense spending had not been increased. Construction and manufacturing were especially big job losers in the projections, losing 210,000 and 90,000 jobs, respectively.
The scenario we asked Global Insight [recognized as the most consistently accurate forecasting company in the world] to model turned out to have vastly underestimated the increase in defense spending associated with current policy. In the most recent quarter, defense spending was equal to 5.6 percent of GDP. By comparison, before the September 11th attacks, the Congressional Budget Office projected that defense spending in 2009 would be equal to just 2.4 percent of GDP. Our post-September 11th build-up was equal to 3.2 percentage points of GDP compared to the pre-attack baseline. This means that the Global Insight projections of job loss are far too low…
The projected job loss from this increase in defense spending would be close to 2 million. In other words, the standard economic models that project job loss from efforts to stem global warming also project that the increase in defense spending since 2000 will cost the economy close to 2 million jobs in the long run.
The Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst has also shown that non-military spending creates more jobs than military spending.
So we’re running up our debt – which will eventually decrease economic growth – and creating many fewer jobs than if we spent the money on non-military purposes.
High Military Spending Drains Innovation and Manufacturing Strength from the Civilian Economy
Chalmers Johnson notes that high military spending diverts innovation and manufacturing capacity from the economy:
By the 1960s it was becoming apparent that turning over the nation’s largest manufacturing enterprises to the Department of Defense and producing goods without any investment or consumption value was starting to crowd out civilian economic activities. The historian Thomas E Woods Jr observes that, during the 1950s and 1960s, between one-third and two-thirds of all US research talent was siphoned off into the military sector. It is, of course, impossible to know what innovations never appeared as a result of this diversion of resources and brainpower into the service of the military, but it was during the 1960s that we first began to notice Japan was outpacing us in the design and quality of a range of consumer goods, including household electronics and automobiles.
***
Woods writes: “According to the US Department of Defense, during the four decades from 1947 through 1987 it used (in 1982 dollars) $7.62 trillion in capital resources. In 1985, the Department of Commerce estimated the value of the nation’s plant and equipment, and infrastructure, at just over _$7.29 trillion… The amount spent over that period could have doubled the American capital stock or modernized and replaced its existing stock”.
The fact that we did not modernise or replace our capital assets is one of the main reasons why, by the turn of the 21st century, our manufacturing base had all but evaporated. Machine tools, an industry on which Melman was an authority, are a particularly important symptom. In November 1968, a five-year inventory disclosed “that 64% of the metalworking machine tools used in US industry were 10 years old or older. The age of this industrial equipment (drills, lathes, etc.) marks the United States’ machine tool stock as the oldest among all major industrial nations, and it marks the continuation of a deterioration process that began with the end of the second world war. This deterioration at the base of the industrial system certifies to the continuous debilitating and depleting effect that the military use of capital and research and development talent has had on American industry.”
Military Leaders Say Endless War Is Bad For the Economy
I noted in 2010:
All of the spending on unnecessary wars adds up.
The U.S. is adding trillions to its debt burden to finance its multiple wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, etc.
Two top American economists – Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff – show that the more indebted a country is, with a government debt/GDP ratio of 0.9, and external debt/GDP of 0.6 being critical thresholds, the more GDP growth drops materially.
Specifically, Reinhart and Rogoff write:
The relationship between government debt and real GDP growth is weak for debt/GDP ratios below a threshold of 90 percent of GDP. Above 90 percent, median growth rates fall by one percent, and average growth falls considerably more. We find that the threshold for public debt is similar in advanced and emerging economies…
I also wrote in 2010:
It is ironic that America’s huge military spending is what made us an empire … but our huge military is what is bankrupting us … thus destroying our status as an empire.
As economist Michel Chossudovsky told me:
War always causes recession. Well, if it is a very short war, then it may stimulate the economy in the short-run. But if there is not a quick victory and it drags on, then wars always put the nation waging war into a recession and hurt its economy.
(and remember Greenspan’s comment.)
But it’s not just civilians saying this. The former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff – Admiral Mullen – agrees:
The Pentagon needs to cut back on spending.
“We’re going to have to do that if it’s going to survive at all,” Mullen said, “and do it in a way that is predictable.”
Indeed, Mullen said:
For industry and adequate defense funding to survive … the two must work together. Otherwise, he added, “this wave of debt” will carry over from year to year, and eventually, the defense budget will be cut just to facilitate the debt.
Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates agrees as well. As David Ignatius wrote in the Washington Post in 2010:
After a decade of war and financial crisis, America has run up debts that pose a national security problem, not just an economic one.
***
One of the strongest voices arguing for fiscal responsibility as a national security issue has been Defense Secretary Bob Gates. He gave a landmark speech in Kansas on May 8, invoking President Dwight Eisenhower’s warnings about the dangers of an imbalanced military-industrial state.
“Eisenhower was wary of seeing his beloved republic turn into a muscle-bound, garrison state — militarily strong, but economically stagnant and strategically insolvent,” Gates said. He warned that America was in a “parlous fiscal condition” and that the “gusher” of military spending that followed Sept. 11, 2001, must be capped. “We can’t have a strong military if we have a weak economy,” Gates told reporters who covered the Kansas speech.
On Thursday the defense secretary reiterated his pitch that Congress must stop shoveling money at the military, telling Pentagon reporters: “The defense budget process should no longer be characterized by ‘business as usual’ within this building — or outside of it.”
While some might want to start another war, America’s top military leaders and economists say that would be a very bad idea.
Indeed, military strategists have known for 2,500 years that prolonged wars are disastrous for the nation.
War Causes Inflation … Which Hurts Consumers
As I noted in 2010, war always causes inflation … which hurts consumers:
Liberal economist James Galbraith wrote in 2004:
Inflation applies the law of the jungle to war finance. Prices and profits rise, wages and their purchasing power fall. Thugs, profiteers and the well connected get rich. Working people and the poor make out as they can. Savings erode, through the unseen mechanism of the “inflation tax” — meaning that the government runs a big deficit in nominal terms, but a smaller one when inflation is factored in.
***
There is profiteering. Firms with monopoly power usually keep some in reserve. In wartime, if the climate is permissive, they bring it out and use it. Gas prices can go up when refining capacity becomes short — due partly to too many mergers. More generally, when sales to consumers are slow, businesses ought to cut prices — but many of them don’t. Instead, they raise prices to meet their income targets and hope that the market won’t collapse. ***
Libertarian Congressman Ron Paul agreed in 2007:
Congress and the Federal Reserve Bank have a cozy, unspoken arrangement that makes war easier to finance. Congress has an insatiable appetite for new spending, but raising taxes is politically unpopular. The Federal Reserve, however, is happy to accommodate deficit spending by creating new money through the Treasury Department. In exchange, Congress leaves the Fed alone to operate free of pesky oversight and free of political scrutiny. Monetary policy is utterly ignored in Washington, even though the Federal Reserve system is a creation of Congress.
The result of this arrangement is inflation. And inflation finances war. ***
Blanchard Economic Research pointed out in 2001:
War has a profound effect on the economy, our government and its fiscal and monetary policies. These effects have consistently led to high inflation.
***
David Hackett Fischer is a Professor of History and Economic History at Brandeis. [H]is book, The Great Wave, Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of History … finds that … periods of high inflation are caused by, and cause, a breakdown in order and a loss of faith in political institutions. He also finds that war is a triggering influence on inflation, political disorder, social conflict and economic disruption.
***
Other economists agree with Professor Fischer’s link between inflation and war.
James Grant, the respected editor of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, supplies us with the most timely perspective on the effect of war on inflation in the September 14 issue of his newsletter:
“War is inflationary. It is always wasteful no matter how just the cause. It is cost without income, destruction financed (more often than not) by credit creation. It is the essence of inflation.” ***
Libertarian economics writer Lew Rockwell noted in 2008:
You can line up 100 professional war historians and political scientists to talk about the 20th century, and not one is likely to mention the role of the Fed in funding US militarism. And yet it is true: the Fed is the institution that has created the money to fund the wars. In this role, it has solved a major problem that the state has confronted for all of human history. A state without money or a state that must tax its citizens to raise money for its wars is necessarily limited in its imperial ambitions. Keep in mind that this is only a problem for the state. It is not a problem for the people. The inability of the state to fund its unlimited ambitions is worth more for the people than every kind of legal check and balance. It is more valuable than all the constitutions every devised.v***
Reflecting on the calamity of this war, Ludwig von Mises wrote in 1919
One can say without exaggeration that inflation is an indispensable means of militarism. Without it, the repercussions of war on welfare become obvious much more quickly and penetratingly; war weariness would set in much earlier. ***
In the entire run-up to war, George Bush just assumed as a matter of policy that it was his decision alone whether to invade Iraq. The objections by Ron Paul and some other members of Congress and vast numbers of the American population were reduced to little more than white noise in the background. Imagine if he had to raise the money for the war through taxes. It never would have happened. But he didn’t have to. He knew the money would be there. So despite a $200 billion deficit, a $9 trillion debt, $5 trillion in outstanding debt instruments held by the public, a federal budget of $3 trillion, and falling tax receipts in 2001, Bush contemplated a war that has cost $525 billion dollars — or $4,681 per household. Imagine if he had gone to the American people to request that. What would have happened? I think we know the answer to that question. And those are government figures; the actual cost of this war will be far higher — perhaps $20,000 per household.***
If the state has the power and is asked to choose between doing good and waging war, what will it choose? Certainly in the American context, the choice has always been for war.
And progressive economics writer Chris Martenson explains as part of his “Crash Course” on economics:
If we look at the entire sweep of history, we can make an utterly obvious claim: All wars are inflationary. Period. No exceptions.
***
So if anybody tries to tell you that you haven’t sacrificed for the war, let them know you sacrificed a large portion of your savings and your paycheck to the effort, thank you very much. ***
The bottom line is that war always causes inflation, at least when it is funded through money-printing instead of a pay-as-you-go system of taxes and/or bonds. It might be great for a handful of defense contractors, but war is bad for Main Street, stealing wealth from people by making their dollars worth less.
War Increases Terrorism … And Terrorism Hurts the Economy
Security experts – conservative hawks and liberal doves alike – agree that waging war in the Middle East weakens national security and increases terrorism. See this, this, this, this, this, this and this.
Terrorism – in turn – terrorism is bad for the economy. Specifically, a study by Harvard and the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) points out:
From an economic standpoint, terrorism has been described to have four main effects (see, e.g., US Congress, Joint Economic Committee, 2002). First, the capital stock (human and physical) of a country is reduced as a result of terrorist attacks. Second, the terrorist threat induces higher levels of uncertainty. Third, terrorism promotes increases in counter-terrorism expenditures, drawing resources from productive sectors for use in security. Fourth, terrorism is known to affect negatively specific industries such as tourism.
The Harvard/NBER concludes:
In accordance with the predictions of the model, higher levels of terrorist risks are associated with lower levels of net foreign direct investment positions, even after controlling for other types of country risks. On average, a standard deviation increase in the terrorist risk is associated with a fall in the net foreign direct investment position of about 5 percent of GDP.
So the more unnecessary wars American launches and the more innocent civilians we kill, the less foreign investment in America, the more destruction to our capital stock, the higher the level of uncertainty, the more counter-terrorism expenditures and the less expenditures in more productive sectors, and the greater the hit to tourism and some other industries.
Terrorism has contributed to a decline in the global economy (for example, European Commission, 2001).
So military adventurism increases terrorism which hurts the world economy. And see this.
The Proof Is In the Pudding
I noted last year:
This is a no-brainer, if you think about it.
We’ve been in Afghanistan for almost twice as long as World War II. We’ve been in Iraq for years longer than WWII. We’ve been involved in 7 or 8 wars in the last decade. And yet still in a depression. (And see this).
If wars really helped the economy, don’t you think things would have improved by now?
Indeed, the Iraq war alone could end up costing more than World War II. And given the other wars we’ve been involved in this decade, I believe that the total price tag for the so-called “War on Terror” will definitely support that of the “Greatest War”.
Postscript on Iran: Well-known economist Nouriel Roubini says that attacking Iran would lead to global recession. The IMF says that Iran cutting off oil supplies could raise crude prices 30%.
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I think anyone spouting off about how great war is 'for the economy' should be made to enlist themselves and their kids for the front lines.
mmmm, tapioca
A Nightmare! that's all you can call it.
Spot on, anyone who thinks war is a positive force for the economy is delusional.
Sure rebuilding your house after a US drone has bombed the shit out of it stimulates demand but it does nothing at all to help you achieve your needs and wants, Indeed in a world of scarcity it actually stops you from doing so.
Couple this with the fact that your wife and kids have just become collateral damage and we must conclude that anyone who thinks war is a positive economic force, Krugman et all) must be insane and mentally deranged.
Another great post from Washington's blog.
But what about a glorious new Amerikan century? Don't you even care about our collective future?
Ur dangerous dude!
my fav conspiracy rag/now electronic rag AFP
50 Years Later, Agent Orange Still Killing
http://americanfreepress.net/?p=2956
It always astounds me that anyone ever thought that war was good for the economy - what happened after the 20 year-long Napoleonic wars? Recession. What happened after the Civil War? Recession. What happened after World War One? Recession. What happened after World War Two? Recession.
The myth, though, stems from the fact that the 1950's were economic good times for the United States - life telescopes like that; people forgot how things were in 1946, remembered how things were in 1956 and, presto!, the notion that war is good for the economy is born. Wars take lives of the most energetic and productive - they are the first to the front and the most willing to sacrifice, so they die in the highest numbers, thus stripping out from economic activity those who would have done the most. They use up stored wealth and literally shoot it out of a cannon. Aside from people who own the banks which finance wars and the factories which supply the war materials, no one does well out of war.
This is not, though, a sufficient argument against war - some times, wars have to be fought. The problem with America's wars since World War Two is not along the lines of the conspiracy theorists; that they were just exercises in profiteering off of blood. The problem has been that in each instance, the political leadership of the United States (and this goes for both the government and the opposition) has failed to craft a rational goal for the wars. We have not fought wars with a real, final goal in mind. Whatever it is - set the goal, fight until you obtain it, and then the war is over. We've fought, instead, mostly in a manner of fending off an enemy rather than destroying him. Until we get leadership which understands that in war there is no substitute for victotry (ie, an actual goal), then there is no point to the war, only waste on a grand scale.
I'd be grateful for links to source materials about post-war recessions...
Economic data for the 19th century is, of course, limited - but all historical records indicate that the period from 1815 until about 1830 indicates global recession. In the United States, the end of the Napoleonic war period coincided with the end of the War of 1812, we were gripped by quite a financial crisis until 1821, and then bounced back and forth in to and out of recession until 1830 - mostly good times then extended until the Panic of 1857. Post Civil War we entered in to a sharp recession (while the South, of course, experienced an extended time of economic difficulties). Post World War One we experienced a severe recession, as did the rest of the world - Germany, of course, undergoing the (mostly deliberate) hyperinflation which wiped out the German government's war debts to Germans (thus, as one Staff officer observed, removing a major obstacle to renewing the war at a later date).
While the Great Depression is not tied to a war, I blame World War One for it - plus the 'flu pandemic of 1918-19. Between the two events, about 20 million people - mostly fit, young people (the 'flu, oddly, hitting young men and women, while the war mostly killed men, of course). This, in my view, left a gigantic gap on both the production and consumption sides of the economy...these were the men and women who would have been the builders and innovators 1920-1940, as well as the producers of children (which are, aside from anything else, massive stimulents to both consumption and wealth creation). When you add to these lost lives and the wealth they would have represented the massive amount of wealth which was turned in to weapons and then destoyred as fast as possible, I think the cause of the Depression becomes quite clear - not a fundamental flaw in free markets, but a simple loss of life and wealth. We did better than just about any other major, industrial nation in the '20's but, then again, the blood cost of war was least on us and, as well, we had earned a great deal of money selling war material to France and Brtain 1914-17 (a large amount of Britain's pre-WWI wealth wound up in American hands). But the gap caused - but even for us, economic doom awaited; our customers were broke and no amount of financial shenanigans at the Fed could keep the wolf away from our door forever.
Post-WWII, Britain was absolutely bankrupt - so much so that even if they had the will the maintain their Empire, they simply did not have the money. This, to me, is conclusive that wars destroy wealth - if wars make wealth, then Brtiain should have ended WWII in fine economic shape, rather than still living under rationing for years after the war. Our own Post-WWII recession was relatively short and not too sharp, but it was there - and my view of how we got out of it amounts to, "luck". Germany and Japan were literally blown to pieces, Britain was broke, any productive capacity of Russia had to be devoted to merely rebuilding that exceptionally devastated land...boiled down, if you wanted something made in 1945, the only place to go was the United States. Couple this with the unexpected post-War baby boom (which happened not just in the United States, but around the world) and we simply hit the economic jackpot...we didn't have to re-tool our industry, we didn't have to significantly innovate...we could just go on doing what we had been doing and the money would roll in. The bad news was that this could only last until the rest of the world rebuilt itself, and so right around 1965, we started feeling the economic pinch, which was masked at first by the massive spending of the "Great Society" and the Vietnam War - another bit of proof that wars are not wealth-makers because after spending all that money in Vietnam, if that is what makes wealth, then we should have boomed economically when the war ended...instead, recession hit right along with the Paris Peace Accord (and the Great Society is also rock-solid proof that "stimulus" spending domestically is also a crock).
True, that - we will be jerking off the dog to feed the cat in the good 'ole USA pretty soon - oh, wait - we already are !
Will it come after netinyahoo and CO comes to see the usurper sotero/obama?
From this link:http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:CZmrOu2qlAsJ:www.ze...
Insider Warns Family Of EMP Strike On U.S. This Year Wednesday, February 15th, 2012.by Zen Gardner
I don’t say this lightly. It shocked me as well when I heard it.
This information came to me in a very synchronistic way, as is so often the case. No anonymous phone call. No dark suited stranger whispering at a street corner. It came out in a conversation with a young man managing a cool store who turned out to be a research enthusiast. I’d never met him before and we just “happened” to strike up a conversation. And one thing led to another.
Naturally with this type of leaked info you don’t want to endanger the source by revealing too much. But it sounded very credible the way it was told to me. A good friend of his has a parent, a very high clearance scientist who’s been “inside” famous and hidden secret places for decades, who somewhat cryptically warned their adult child last month of this imminent EMP attack threat.
Apparently it will be this year, and “sooner rather than later”. It sounded like it could be a nationwide hit. This child of an insider was then sent a 1984 heavy-duty truck by this parent (no computerized circuitry) and told, I paraphrase, “When it happens you’ll have 30 minutes to make it out of the city. And even then you’ll only have a one-in-three chance of survival.”
How’s dem apples?
Don’t fear…GrokThere’s no way I can verify this, but I don’t see any reason this wonderful young man should make it up. Thinking he’s lying definitely doesn’t go with my impression or his personality type nor deep spiritual dynamic. I don’t know, maybe someone else can verify this is indeed the understanding of the inner circle of the inside scientific elites.
But it sure resonates. And he’s promised me more information so there’ll be more details in future articles. Tease, I know. Tough. Deal with it, we all do.
Things change as we all know but this EMP strike could easily be one of their options. I take very seriously things that “come my way” and give them strong consideration, as most of you do. Everything’s at play and we need to look at all this from every angle, especially intuitively, our ultimate weapon.
This is not to instill fear. And it shouldn’t. What’s new about this possibility? Nothing. They have an arsenal of depopulation weapons they can unleash at any time. And this one is clean and quick.
And yes, it is that real, present and a very tentative situation for all of us.
What Is EMP Weaponry?An electromagnetic pulse (sometimes abbreviated EMP) is a burst of electromagnetic radiation. The abrupt pulse of electromagnetic radiation usually results from certain types of high energy explosions, especially a nuclear explosion, or from a suddenly fluctuating magnetic field. The resulting rapidly changing electric fields and magnetic fields may couple with electrical/electronic systems to produce damaging current and voltage surges.
In military terminology, a nuclear bomb detonated hundreds of miles above the Earth’s surface is known as a high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (HEMP) device. Effects of a HEMP device depend on a very large number of factors, including the altitude of the detonation, energy yield, gamma ray output, interactions with the Earth’s magnetic field, and electromagnetic shielding of targets. Source
Lotsa EMP ChatterThis subject has been in the news a lot, especially since China is said to be developing a non-nuclear EMP device it could use to disable aircraft carriers and localized areas. Mind you, this was written in the middle of last year way before the build up of carriers currently happening in the gulf region.
China’s military is developing electromagnetic pulse weapons that Beijing plans to use against U.S. aircraft carriers in any future conflict over Taiwan, according to an intelligence report made public on Thursday.
Portions of a National Ground Intelligence Centerstudy on the lethal effects of electromagnetic pulse (EMP) and high-powered microwave (HPM) weapons revealed that the arms are part of China’s so-called “assassin’s mace” arsenal – weapons that allow a technologically inferior China to defeat U.S. military forces.
EMP weapons mimic the gamma-ray pulse caused by a nuclear blast that knocks out all electronics, including computers and automobiles, over wide areas. The phenomenon was discovered in 1962 after an above ground nuclear test in the Pacific disabled electronics in Hawaii.
The declassified intelligence report, obtained by the private National Security Archive, provides details on China’s EMP weapons and plans for their use. Annual Pentagon reports on China’s military in the past made only passing references to the arms. (WashingtonTImes)
But China? Maybe, maybe not.A deliberate provocation such as was done to the Japanese to bring on Pearl Harbor is just the same as a false flag. It’s precipitating the desired result, pull the wool over the sheeple’s eyes any way they can to get their program enacted. You don’t even need an event, they just have to say there was one like the imaginary Gulf of Tonkin incident that never happened and led to the slaughter of millions of innocents.
But bloody sensational incidents like these recent staged attacks on Israeli diplomats are their tactic of choice.
We know good and well that if and when such a horrific event took place, it could very likely be our own shadow government pulling a horrendous false flag for which they could blame anyone they wanted.
The nasty thing is, knowing they’re about to start WW3 by deliberately provoking China and Russia by their imminent attack on Iran makes this scenario very plausible.
Damn.
Utter InsanityAn EMP attack from any altitude would have disastrous, paralyzing effects, never a high altitude blast that could paralyse the entire country and beyond. All communications are stopped, unless you have a tube ham radio and a generator that survived. Nothing would work except the simplest mechanics. Water won’t pump except by gravity. Cars of a later model than 1984 (!) would be immobilized. Gas stations won’t be able to pump gas anyway except by hand.
The scenario is nasty. Food would disappear in a heartbeat. Hospital machinery stops. Supply trucks and factories stop. The panic alone will set off unspeakable horrors depending on the degree of electrical destruction. Even airports would be useless, never mind all the planes that just tragically dropped out of the sky if such a dreadful event ever occurs.
Diabolical Designs?
If this truly is in the cards, is this their way to preserve infrastructure while eliminating huge swathes of the population, the few who survive being forced to do the clean up? Is this to avoid too much radiation being spread so there can be a quicker recovery for the perpetrators who retreat to their underground cities?
I just hope this will motivate some people to take this all seriously, get prepared, or even get to higher ground.
Love, Zen
www.zengardner.com
I believe the U.S. Military, and especially the U.S. retaliatory strike forces are hardened against EMP, so anyone striking with that would cease to exist with in a half hour. As for vehicles, those not running at the time would likely not be disabled. Those that could do it to us won't and those that would do it can't.
I have read a lot of pro and con argumentation about EMP effects on particular items, and thus civil and military effectiveness. I've come to the conclusion that the effect of each hit will be patchy, sort of like how a large hurricane affects a large area but the real structural destruction and disruption is patchy, and somewhat random.
It's also the case the preparedness and mitigation of EMP attack requires serious planning, money and above all extraordinary discipline levels and awareness. That suggests to me that very few military systems and facilities will actually be effectively and practically hardened against EMP on an given day.
So I consider it something of a myth that the US or any other country is persistently and effectively on-guard against surprise EMP attack. Especially a highly coordinated one. Hence I presume most such preparatory defence measures against EMP will fail completely, eventually, in practice.
There are too many opportunities for systems to become exposed with time and with electrical degradation. I do not believe the state of readiness will ever be high enough, and certainly can not be maintained long-term at the required levels. Stuff will happen that no one really expects, or even considers possible.
And we're not talking about one pulse, but dozens or hundreds of them, in differing locations, altitudes and yields, and each will contribute to cumulative electrical damage and signal sensitivity attenuation and failure.
It's like building a fortification to withstand a heavy artillery barrage. It may work fine for an hour to protect you, but will anything be left of it after 3 days of near hits? Well this would be like a major hurricane after a major hurricane after a major hurricane, times ten hitting Louisiana. Even hardened-structures would degrade and fail from impacts and flex fatigue.
The Russians and Chinese have enough nuke-cores and ballistic missiles to maintain an EMP barrage over Europe and the USA for weeks, and as I will explain, they would have to do that.
There's simply NO WAY around the raised electro-magnetic 'noise-floor' problem for sensors and digital comms links.
These simply can't and won't work until the resulting electromagnetic disturbances abates which will takes hours to days. Imagine a clear pool of water, throw in a grenade, and time how long the water takes to become clear. That's a good analogy to what happens to electronic signal transmission and reception when a nuke explodes in the ionosphere.
Which is why an attacker must and will maintain an EMP barrage, at regular intervals, to keep you deaf, dumb, blind and paralysed, for as long as needed to take you apart militarily. And it's very unlikely US satellites will still be there or functioning after it all ends. Thus whoever can get in the first hits is likely to suffer the least retaliation and effects.
Hence the threat-level and geopolitical instability raises sharply with the general belief that ABMs can actually work, so it's important to repeatedly point-out that it definitely won't.
The noise-floor problem means a determined and well-prepared nuclear attacker will always succeed in hitting you.
How you could guard civil electrical cable and especially fully exposed mains distribution transformers and the AC generators from the initial pulse is beyond me. They will melt and explode in a green flash. The mains supply alone is not going to be there any more, and it will not be coming back for well over a year. Phone towers likewise.
The USA certainly would not escape that, at the very minimum.
--
EDIT:
It's important to understand the logic of an EMP war.
The North Vietnamese understood that wounding a US soldier used up 7-times more resources than killing them did. So severe but non-fatal wounding was the preferred goal, as it made it so much harder for the US to maintain a quantitative and qualitative edge. Hence the North invested in simple tech like small cheap mines that would blow a limb off, and even man-traps like bamboo spikes in pits, covered in excrement, to generate terrible infections, that would be very traumatic and damaging, but mostly non-fatal.
Plus it had a shocking psychological effect.
The same applies to EMP; why destroy a city when you can simply cripple and traumatise it, thus creating a massive endless problem for any and all existing authorities which would require resource re-allocations away from an effective battle, or retaliation, and focus simply on minimising the resulting deaths. This is why the USA and Soviets built large arsenals and delivery systems, not simply to fry every city, as they almost certainly wouldn't have, but to ensure the other side could not win, and were rendered semi-permanently forced to think about more important things, like their own survival, rather than continuing a nuclear war of attrition.
***
Does this look like a set up?
http://www.independentsentinel.com/2011/08/tehran-preparing-for-the-emp-...
***
What to do?
http://survivalism.blogspot.com/2010/03/prepare-what-to-do-after-emp-str...
***
Heart it has been my view for two decades that systematic and repeated EMP attack is the most likely use of nuclear weapons in a strategic war, i.e. use that's not restricted to the area of direct battles, but is part of a global strategy of strategic bombardments to overwhelm, destroy and eliminate, to take whatever you want.
It is essentially the ultimate form of neutron-bomb type effects, namely kill the people and destroy the country, but leave it in tact, and avoid massive environmental pollution, radiation, and degradation of the biota and climate effects.
It would be damn tempting, if there were no counterbalance to one great power having that capacity.
Other than the USA, there are only five other serious candidates for a possible strategic EMP attack on the USA. These are the UK, France, China, Russia, and Israel, and it's not clear Israel could do it. Iran at best is at least a decade from being able to do it (DPRK may possibly get there first).
I believe that much effort and expense has been exercised over the past 50 years to try and prevent the spread and systematic development of a strategic or even tactical but decisive EMP capabilities.
They are just too uncontrollable, to random to plan for, too scary, and worst of all, their effects can not be reversed or undone.
EMP attacks would change and drastically affect human history and developmental paths forever. It would be a true departure-point for our feeble little monkey-zoo drama or cultures, religions and nation-states.
It would result in a mass die-back of humanity, at the very least, and that idiotic facebook IPO ain't gonna rate a mention after that, nor facebook itself (thank God for his great and curious take on mercy and compassion).
It's clear from observation that DPRK, Iran and Israel and in fact all nuclear powers are heavily invested in developing and maintaining the ability to launch a devastating large-scale EMP attack with almost complete surprise, and also to be able to launch an assured counterstrike to one.
This is real and massive deterrence, because it is not just a single target that suffers, but the whole country, or region of countries. Modern countries and their systems would come apart fast.
The-powers-that-be would not longer be in control of much at all, they also would become very vulnerable to random acts and responses. It would scare the shit out of them.
Thus the nuclear powers all want the other power's to see and understand it, and to act with M.A.D.-type levels of strategic restraint and care.
USA and NATO seem to be ignoring the danger, and not living up to their end of the MAD bargain, and they are setting up multi-layered continental missiles defences, to try and prevent the Russians from having an effective EMP strike option, or even an assured counterstrike capability.
This is DANGEROUS, it's a serious act of escalation, and the Russians are now furious and also resigned to the fact that the West is doing it whilst pretending to the Western MSM that it ain't doin' nuthin'.
This is very dangerous, aggressive and destabilising behaviour.
M.A.D. worked because it was assured--there was no escape. If you launched you were implicitly killing yourself as well.
But ABM missiles meant it was not assured Or rather, it overtime has caused mainstream dumb-fuckville USA, to believe a MAD counterstrike is no longer assured--it can be avoided and defeated!
When actually, it is still assured.
So now, one side of the MAD "Balance of Terror" equation thinks it's suddenly able to fight-it-out, toe-to-toe, even with the Russians, and there's no really large strategic danger.
All they in dumb-fuckville USA 'understand' is that we have missiles that can shoot down nuclear missiles!
Thus leading Hillary Clinton and fiends to constantly acting like Monty-Pyton-esque complete arses (just like Hillary did today).
But dumb-fuckville does not understand that EMP can VERY EASILY blind the sensors, targeting systems, comms and electronic warfare systems, plus destroy the power supplies and logic-circuits of such missiles their flight support measures and launch apparatus.
The Russians have always know an ABM shield would not work, but the danger was always that one or both sides would come to presume over time that it would work, or that it could be made to work really well, in conjunction with other systems, tactics and technologies.
But the danger is still assured and hideously real, in fact a missile defence will never 'work' against a determined attacker with abundant nukes and ballistic missiles, and it never will.
The official demonstration of Russian containerised heavy anti-ship-missiles and ballistic missiles leaves no doubt of this. They could launch and detonate nukes in the lower ionosphere near the US EEZ, an blind US defence systems with a wall of electronic noise (at the very minimum) before the US could even be sure of what they're watching on their screens.
The US is totally open to EMP strike, and dumb-fuckville's Homeland Security can't and also won't ever be able to do something effective about it. The Russians or Chinese could simply use 100 smaller nukes to march an EMP barrage toward the US coast and continental interior. Even as Russian ICBMs launch then plop 650 kiloton warheads on and all around the last known or estimated position of a submerged US SSBN, detonating 2000 feet depth in all the ocean's. They could assign ten MIRV nukes per sub and just blast the shit out of the surrounding 50 square kilometres or so of ocean. And there goes most of your retaliatory strike capability.
These things can happen. This is how both sides planned to fight WWIII just 20 years ago. The weapons and capabilities have not gone away, they have all gotten more effective and cpntinued to evolve.
An "ABM Treaty" (Anti-Ballistic-Missile Treaty banning national ballistic missile shields) was signed during the cold war, specifically to prevent such a death-spiral from getting started, to prevent the sort of unnecessary escalation of implied and present threat levels.
G. W. Bush effectively unilaterally tore-up that ABM Treaty and Russia warned the US there would be strong and dangerous repercussions for doing that as it would force the Russians to assume the West may use it aggressively against them and try to cower them into submission.
Which is exactly what we now see occurring! The US is deploying a Land and Sea based ABM system, and issuing dramatic insults and putdowns to Russian and China. The endlessly warmongering Hilary Clinton did it again to Russia and China today!
So the Russians (and Chinese) now perceive that their worst fears are coming true. The USA actually wants a big war, and they seem determined to create it. It appears Washington has already made that choice, and are simply following the script, in order to generate that war. But the USA must appear to be responding to intolerable aggression.
So they have to fabricate something, something really big to get it kicked-off.
And by God, all the elements for generating something really BIG, and also very time-compressed, are in place.
This is a very dangerous situation we are going towards and the MSM are just pumping a delusion of invulnerability and qualitative and quantitative superiority.
Wow!~
Thanks for that!
As usual, incredible and most interesting leading edge thoughts. Bless you big time for having them and sharing.
One day at a time aye.
Here is another clue.:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCYbEujiKPU
Starting to see a pattern along with the ramping up of the "big war" any day now?
What may come after Purim and the netinyahoo visit?
As you say, the stupid sheeple do not even have a clue, so glad you do.
Honored indeed that you commented in such an outstanding way. Thank you.
Funny how this issue is being shuffled off quickly in all places.
Of course, as you say, there are only a certain amount of entities that have the capability of doing this kind of thing.
There is also the real possibility that Israel will surprise attack Iran with an EMP also or something? They just tested a missile that could do it a few weeks ago.
http://newmediajournal.us/indx.php/item/4359
http://empandsolarprotection.com/2011/11/how-would-israel-attack-iran%E2...
http://www.pakalertpress.com/2012/01/04/us-moves-emp-attack-to-iran-from...
All this is horrible to think about. This perpetual war for profit must end!
Oh, great ... now that it is widely recognised that Iran is not pursuing "the bomb" to fry Americans, the propaganda machine moves to Plan B: Iran could set off an EMP today and kill all Americans through starvation and anarchy!!! Be afraid. Be very afraid!!
As transparent as clingwrap. LOL.
Economic hardships can be survived, but these threats to our way of life are much more frightening.
At present, there is a 60.3% chance that Obama will be re-elected: http://www.intrade.com/v4/markets/contract/?contractId=743474
Do you think Obama will be able to protect us from the threat of these EMP weapons?
FWIW I think Santorum might be a stronger choice.
"Do you think Obama will be able to protect us from the threat of these EMP weapons?"
Isn't he the one with his finger on the trigger?
Too long, didn't read.
This article is misleading.
First, many of the economists mentioned are pseudoscientists.
Second, "good for the economy" has no objective meaning, nor even an inter-subjective meaning, but only a subjective meaning for each individual. What is good from the point of view of one person can be bad from the point of view of a different person. And there is no means to sum the subjective valuations of different people.
From the point of view of an entrepeneurial provider of security services, war might be "good" if:
1. The owners are able to extract war reparations exceeding the cost of operations
2. The owners are able to preclude destructiveness at the hands of the enemies by acting preemptively
3. The owners are able to maintain the fitness of their forces and to keep their knowledge of the enemy's capabilities up-to-date
4. The owners can improve their reputation for fomidableness by defeating the enemy
In the case of the United States government and its defense services - specifically the Pentagon - each citizen is essentially a shareholder and for them, each of these considerations comes to bear.
Ah, an "entrepreneurial provider of security services". You mean a leech that survives on the fear and hate America creates around the world. I bet your services are not required by Brazil, or Sweden, or Chile, or Thailand, or Korea, or Mexico...because nobody hates them.
But "they hate America because we're free"
No. They hate America because America hates them. We bomb them, enslave them with our corrupt financiers, put military bases on their soil, burn their holy books.
You are a bloodsucking leech. Admit it.
Dr. Arcula: Economists are scientists? Surely you misspoke.
Economics is part of the sciences of human action, viz. praxeology and the specialization catallactics.
Econometrics and thymology are not sciences.
But many soi-disant economists do not understand these things.
I am going to be FUCKING SHOCKED if the DOW doesn't close above 13k. Why? Are you kidding me!!!! It's FRIDAY!!! That goes against all playbook rules. In fact I would almost be tempted to call it a top if this market doesn't close above 13k today.
Same here.. Definitely need a head line to distract from gas prices..
But, but didn't the cartel banks tell us WAR IS GOOD FOR BUSINESS, INVEST YOUR CHILDREN?
Here's my take. Wars suck all the great talent in the country into non-productive occupations. As a hi-tech employer I see myself getting taxed and then I have to compete against the government for top labor. In our town we have a huge DoD employer. It seems that we can barely compete against the offerings from this organization. Imagine hundreds of thousands of PhDs, engineers, technicians, etc. working on something besides weaponry.
like how to teach people non carbon energy instead of how to kill people who still have carbon energy
D. JONES
Without carbon we couldn't exist, wouldn't have any food 'cause plants don't grow w/o carbon (even the plants that animals need to become food wouldn't grow). Even a small reduction in atmospheric carbon could bring on devastating crop failures -- those who believe in G.W. believe not, but they aren't so careful with facts or science, so perhaps some info is missing. Be careful what you wish for unless you want serious population reduction which will, of course, be NON-selective.
don't be silly, you know what I meant
prac. war backwards is raw crap
Actually it's "raw carp", which sounds disgusting.
At least it's not a pilocarpus or a Messerschmitt.
was fishing too hard for a joke
War is good for the economy in hunter gatherer tribe settings. By culling the population it would prevent population overshoot. Other than that, not so much.
look at this from a rational self interest point of view. who has the rational self interest to engage in war? the answer lies in the economic benefits of war. who are the benefactors of war, of capacity destruction in the countries engaged in war? without the great research gw labors to find, the short answer to all these questions are the banks providing the funding for the wars(for all sides in many cases).
great wars offer the catalyst for a world monetary reset especially useful when the banks are in financial trouble, like now. expect a massive capacity destruction event coming soon to a theater near you. interestingly this time there has been an effort by the targeted countries(china and russia) to isolate themselves from the status quo as a means to lessen the impact of a global war and position themselves as the benefactor of the aftermath.
In the "broken window" example from above, the shopkeeper did not break his own window and had no choice but to repair the window, providing a profit for the glass company.
Our military industrial complex is like the glass company. They break the windows, and they get to make the money off of replacing the glass. We are like the shopkeeper. We would rather spend our money on food and clothing, but we don't get the choice do we?
my 'broken window' thought
unemployed man
benefits run out
shoots self in foot
collects disability
15 million folks see this example on news
each shoot selves in foot
collect disability
drop from unemployment roles
problem solved
no more unemployed people
america is saved
Instead of shooting yourself in the foot, you can also cut off a hand and collect dismemberment insurance: http://www.thestate.com/2012/02/24/2164502/man-charged-in-amputation-investigation.html
I would give an arm and a leg for that kind of money.
War has bankrupt pretty much every country in Europe ..many times over
it's no coincidence Nixon un-pegged from Gold (ie. went bankrupt) financing Vietnam
War is socio-economic vandalism, a 'Lose-Lose' situation
So it's no surprise it comes from the most destructive, dysfunctional and deranged institution (of human scum) ever devised: Government
Want to stop war? Stop funding it (paying your taxes)
The central irony of war is that while it is caused by too much confidence, too much cronyism and imperialism and too much spending, it can only be resolved with more confidence, more cronyism and imperialism, and more war.
ZERO GOV:
bravo, you're brave to speak thus. Cass Sunstein's watching you.
If you could start a war and the only personal repercussion would be that you would perhaps miss your daily cocktail hour for the first couple of weeks due to the mainstream media's blitzkrieg for ratings and their around-the-clock interview-a-rama, why not start one?
I agree with John 39. Evidently we are so sheltered, we have no idea of the horrors of war.
sweat, dirt & blood in your mouth, pain, misery and heartbreak, loss, guilt and remorse, just a few wonderful ways to describe what war does to a man
this combat vet agrees
add nightmares,'mystery illness'
anyone else?
Depends. You might have gotten "lucky enough" to survive a near-fatal injury with loss of limb, sight, &etc.
Emotional isolation from just about every civilian around you. It's almost easier to deal with the ones calling you a baby killer than the "supporters" who act like it's a video game with re-spawn points, who ask "how many did you kill?" (or the other one, "Did you kill anybody?" from the slightly less game afflicted). If you tell them what it's like, the words don't matter because you cannot explain it. It isn't an intellectual exercise. There are very damn few who can even come close to understanding.
The knowledge you, your buddies and your unit were used to "gain bargaining position" or "to show national resolve", rather than defending the country.
My list could get pretty long. Yours could, too.
OT, I have started wondering if the real reason we use so much DU was to kill the vets as much as the enemy.
A big enough war might be "good" for long term economic prosperity.............say one that killed off 1/2 the world's population. Throw in a nasty virus that takes away another 1/4 and we could wring another five hundred years out of this Ponzi.
This is a great essay except for one thing: its almost all recycled from previous material.