Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,
Expecting the state to truly reform the nation's engines of financialization is like asking the cocaine addict married to the wealthy dealer to divorce the dealer.
Most observers think they know why the government (i.e. the state) has failed to truly reform the financial system: corrupt politicos on the receiving end of the Too Big to Fail (TBTF) banks and financiers' millions of dollars in lobbying and campaign contributions do the banks' bidding.
While the reduction of democracy to an auction in which the highest bidder controls the state is certainly one systemic reason for this abject failure,there is an even greater, more deeply systemic reason why the state cannot reform the rotten core of financialization.
The state has become dependent on the wages and profits of finance for its own revenues.
Here's an analogy of what's happened in the past few decades of financialization: you meet Mr./Ms. Right (he/she is attractive, makes a lot of money, well-dressed, good social skills, etc.), fall in love and marry.
Unbeknownst to you, Mr./Ms. Right is a cocaine dealer. When you find out the source of the fat paychecks, he/she reassures you it's just business and that he/she never uses the stuff. But if you want to try a taste, go ahead--it won't hurt you.
You think about leaving him/her, but the money is just so good. Life without all that easy money looks bleak and difficult.
Just to see what all the fuss is about, you try the cocaine.
So now you're addicted not just to the easy money but to the cocaine, too. Now it's impossible to leave the dealer.
Substitute finance-dependent profits and wages for cocaine and you now understand the marriage of the state and the engine of financialization: financialization has generated the big profits, the hefty wages that pay most of the state's income taxes and enabled most of the consumption of the past three decades.
Were the state to actually limit financialization--excessive debt, leverage and risk-- it would be cutting the primary source of its own revenues. The wages and profits generated by financialization aren't limited to banks and financial institutions--every industry that depends on leveraged debt and cheap credit is ultimately an arm of financialization.
This includes the entire FIRE economy--finance, insurance and real estate--as well as the auto industry, home furnishings, boating, recreation, tourism--every industry that has been living off credit cards, home equity lines of credit (HELOCs) and other sources of cheap credit.
Cheap credit is the cocaine, and not only is the state addicted to the cocaine of cheap credit that enables its own stupendous borrowing, it's also addicted to the easy money that is generated by our economy's addiction to credit.
Take a look at this chart of financial sector profits. Recall that all corporate profits are about 11% of gross domestic product (GDP). So purely financial profits are about one-third of all corporate profits--an extraordinarily high percentage historically.
But this chart vastly under-represents the true impact of financialization on profits and jobs. How many homes would be sold if all buyers had to put down 20% istead of 3.5% for FHA loans? How many vehicles would be sold if buyers had to put down 20% of the vehicle's cost in cash and qualify for a 3-year loan? How much of the economy's consumption would go away if credit cards had to paid in full every month?
How much federal income tax does a minimum-wage retail worker pay? Zero. How much income tax does a $300,000 a year finance worker pay? A lot. Truly reforming the financial sector to eliminate the cocaine of financialization would gut not just credit-based consumption but state tax revenues.
Expecting the state to truly reform the nation's engines of financialization is like asking the cocaine addict married to the wealthy dealer to divorce the dealer.
This is why socio-economist Immanuel Wallerstein characterizes our finance-dependent version of capitalism as “a particular historical configuration of markets and state structures where private economic gain by almost any means is the paramount goal and measure of success.”
Because it's working just fine for "them" and they don't give a shit.
BECAUSE THEY CAN'T!
DUH!
AND HERE COMES THE NEXT DROP YOU POM POM BOYYYZ!
"...like asking the cocaine addict married to the wealthy dealer to divorce the dealer"
Is this analogous to Mr & Mrs Obama?
The minimum wage retail worker pays moar taxes than General Electric and Verizon does as companies. Convenient that was left out of the article.
It's all the fault of entry-level workers; if only they weren't taking so much from society (sarc). Nevermind the fact that most middle class started off at entry level jobs.
Class warfare distracts from the elephant in the room.
The other problem of the article was the comparison between cocaine and money. Money is money, alluring but not physically addictive. Cocaine is cocaine and is physically addictive. The addition of cocaine in the article was unwarranted and misleading and destroys the value of the piece.
Debt Growth Bitches!
The pyramid has to be FED..............or it all falls down
"Expecting the state to truly reform the nation's engines of financialization is like asking the prison inmates to reform the warden and guards and shareholders of the privatized "correctional" system."
wait -- I don't follow this analogy at all.
you are suggesting that the state is somehow the prisoner of a privatized financial system?
but the state is all, like, sovereign and everything.
so that can't possibly be the situation.
The Unwashed Washington DC Leaders are Sovereign in the Sense that they have sovereign immunity unless they commit a "Capital Crime".
But they are taking part of the "Vig" so they aren't going to rock the boat or willfully implement reforms...
Guess you missed the S/
ADD: Following the Analogy the FED & Wall Street Banks and even big corporate campaign Lobbyist are taking on Constitutional Roles of Legislation.
Money has taken over Legislation where US Congress has Abdicated it's Responsibilities of War Powers, Budget Powers, and Legislative Powers.
Exactly, here is a good analysis I saw posted today
The Enlargement of the Dialectic Collapse October 15, 2014 14 CommentsUpdate: BIS Warns On Violent Reversal of Global Markets
Completely in tune with today’s post, the Telegraph just came out with this article. The conditioning for the inability of the “Wizards of Oz” or central banks to fix the worlds financial problems is being fully implemented.
By JC Collins
As discussed and defined in the post The First False Flags, a process of Cultural and Socioeconomic Interception, which we will call CSI, has been taking place since at least the early 1600’s. This is a process where international banking interests use hidden strategies and methodologies to effect change on the macroeconomic level.
The disorganized masses, the large majority of the population for which the CSI is targeted, are intentionally divided and confused about the broader mandates and purposes of the international bankers, or Money Changers.
Continue reading ?
And check out this infographic
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6b70TUbdfs
Watch out the trolls are out again.
"Addiction" is clearly a big part of this. Centuries of addiction to wealth, power and dominance.
The perfect symbiosis of greed and corruption.
The state = the failed financial system.
One cannot live without the other
lesson of the millenium.
If the true costs of corporate welfare, social welfare, and wars were expressed in direct taxation of the people there would be an instantaneous revolution by those being taxed. However, when there is a fiat currency that is created out of nothing by central banks to buy the debt of the Congress the true costs of all of these "programs" do not directly get seen by the average citizen, so the politicians can promise and spend all they want.
It's just like the wars. If there were a draft, the people would be up in arms over every undeclared war since WWII as the drafted would be the ones being sent over there. Since this is a "voluntary" military, the rest of the plebes honor the canon fodder instead.
Most people who predict instantaneous revolutions are sorely mistaken... You might get some whining or gnashing of the teeth, but the smart money is on apathy and rest...
Congress is getting a share of the "Juice" in this Racketeering.
Syrin is correct.
- Congress = Financial Scheme
- US MIC, Security, Intelligence Complex = Financial Scheme
- Wall Street = Financial Scheme
- Federal Reserve incorporated = Financial Scheme
- Private Executive Compensation = Financial Scheme
- Prime Dealers for FED = Financial Scheme
- Moving Assets of Balance Sheet (non GAAP) = Financial Scheme
- Naked Short Selling = Financial Scheme
- High Speed Trading = Financial Scheme
- Algo Trading = Financial Scheme
- Gold & Silver & Oil Price Control = Financial Scheme
- LIBOR Pricing = Financial Scheme
- Front Running = Financial Scheme
Information is Control = Financial Success
Greed, Envy, Fraud = Normal Human Drives
Simplify, Standardize, Streamline, and make laws, taxes, regulations understandable to a 12 year old = Justice, Equality, Liberty, & Freedom
Failure, by design.
this mornings buy signal went off loud & clear:
Buyers beware, the bear market has begun: Gartman
http://www.cnbc.com/id/102092358?trknav=homestack:topnews:2
A shitbag comment from a true shitbag to please the shitbag TPTB Elite...
And .gov gets 20% off the top from people having to cash out 401K/IRA to survive.
marginal versus effective, charles - especially as to corporations.
some of the tax shelters out there from 7, 8 years ago are still there - and some of them were/are fucking absurd.
Remember BDO Seidman?
http://www.forbes.com/sites/janetnovack/2012/06/13/bdo-admits-generating...
what did like one guy go to jail - maybe a couple more at DB?
tip of the shelterberg.
They are used to the fine $$$$ that comes from letting the cartel's do whatever they like.
Gordon Gekko: "Greed works"
Who says the state should be reforming the financial system since each"reformation" benefits the status quo and srews over Joe Blow?
I'll posit that it's not actually a reform unless the law is changed to make it more difficult to utilize the government, for your own benefit at the expense of others. Which would likely only last for a couple of decades at most... before reverting back to the norm.
We should be able to pay taxes with bags of blow instead of a check...that's where the money ends up anyways.
We should be able to pay taxes with an IOU.
Fixed.
What, you don't use FRNs?
Because they (THE STATE) are bought and paid for by "the financial system" insider trading, bribes...etc.
Gee I'm so smart i should start my own blog (rolling eyes).
Head Start: Herds, Ann Rand, & Atlas
If you inspect the record, looking at what the intellectual commodities said about the physical commodities, and compare it to what actually happened, you will see that the herd is noise, and from that noise their scapegoats have made a lot of money, on anxiety, getting them all nowhere, but increasingly shrill as their assumptions have been proven false.
We are not exploring space because the political majority with feudalist agendas doesn’t want to explore space, other than to go deeper and narrower into the artificial scarcity cave, with specialization, in a conspiracy of shared stupidity. Of course if you develop the necessary technology, the herd will be happy to commandeer it, to the end of humanizing the universe.
Individuals, blamed under civil law to protect the herd status quo, are not bad, evil, or stupid. Herds are, because they spend all their time trying to reach consensus, assuming that they can control the environment beyond their shrinking cage, instead of adapting. Spend no more than 10% of your time doing what the Romans do, and the Romans will do the opposite.
Gravity is arbitrary, and the longer you swim in it, the more capricious and malicious it becomes, because it migrates away from the critical path, based upon false assumption proliferation, always getting further behind in time. An hour on earth is not the same as an hour on Mars or Saturn, and certainly not inside the Sun or another galaxy.
Economics is economics, wherever you go. The very act of extrapolating past assumptions to project the future is a self-fulfilling prophesy, an enormous waste of time that has so far exceeded five thousand years. Don’t expect labor to take majority consensus, or any of its derivatives, with anything more than a shrug.
Like anything else, if you want to explore the universe, you have to do it yourself. In the meantime, expect the new world order to continue imploding, with increasing efficiency, and technology built for the purpose. Pick up your blinders on the way into the event horizon, drop them when you are ready to leave, and everything else will take care of itself.
If you have a worthy project, creating wealth for future generations, labor will be the least of your problems. The corporations, including the Fed, have no worthy projects, so they can only buy back their stock, liquidating into lost purchasing power. It’s a global phenomenon, so you are looking at the global common, foundation feudalism, which the politicians – public, private and non-profit, cannot consider.
Write a program to pool personalities like tl:dr into event horizons, comparing what they expected to actual, with flow on the margin. The critters are tracking themselves, complaining about fascism, which consumes the herd every time, because agendaism is a waste of time.
Assumptions are like diapers for adults. Enjoy your life, building your own instrument, to educate yourself. Peace comes from within; words and numbers are derivatives. You world is what you choose to make of it, and the political majority always finds itself at war, in the back of the cave, where it cannot escape its obligations, by default.
As you can see, I have given you a big head start, and a lot of people, those dependent upon the closed extortion system, who feel that females should not be trained, don’t like it. Too bad; leave the RE queens living on entitlement to eat their drought.
Pop
another thing - and for the record, I'd like taxes as low as possible, I'm not some big .gov "liberal" because I don't agree with everything Ayn Rand or Lew Rockwell has said... that aside... and maybe a little OT but...
the 300k finance worker - how much debt did he create in the system, that is, future IOUs to be repaid via post-tax income derived from labor?
Do the taxes he contribute offset the affect on the dollar's purchasing power via frac reserve currecy creation?
What did he do to make that money, other than create new fiat, new debt, all based on what>? Creating and manipulating debt/future promises to pay?
[open to disagreements/thoughts here, just spit balling]...
Overall though I'd suggest that we've entered a crony capitalism, essentially quasi-fascist debt-based, debt craved system.
The government is the large financial institutions. Creating debt slaves is their business, and their business is good - whether it's good for the real, productive economy is a separate matter. I think the disproportionate growth of the financial sector has mostly been growth in the sense of a lung tumor.
I think that is astute. Federal Government has become a Bank.
We can either:
1) restructure around smaller government, less consumption, harder work, less free shit for freeloaders, fewer subsidies for TBTF banks, less debt OR
2) more debt, bigger government, more free shit, subprime everything, more warfare to distract the citizenry etc.
Charles, whose heart is in the right place, is shocked to see that the Establishment has chosen #2.
You might "Get It" but let me check.
Maybe I am missing some pieces (likely).
- Federal Government Spending Create Fiat collected as Total Federal Deficit
- Fractional Reserve banking is where commercial banking, Investment, Retail, S&Ls create Fiat through Loans, Leverage, Collateral, or Rehypothicating
- Federal Reserve creates Fiat in hidden ways through many different programs probably called loans or collateralized Loans
So who is creating the most Fiat? Welfare, Federal Government Spending, US Banks, or FED?
My Money says it is Wall Street that has the power, Money, Status, Networks, Spies, Intelligence, and government Resources... a huge Octopus creating Quadrillions.
Solving things is bad.
Doing a Press release about solving things is good.
Good for China. Good for Israel. Good for Germany. Good for Mexico.
Fuck you and die, Americanos.
Get these histories in everybody's face!
http://patrick.net/forum/?p=1223928
The problem isn’t the financial system. The problem is the “system” which is perfectly setup for plunder. And it is being plundered. The only thing that the US produces that the rest of the world needs is ….. US Dollars.
Look at to whom the FED favors with dollar swaps (secretly hidden away) and the operators of the plunder will reveal themselves. The financial system as a system is quite OK: with ample safeguards and laws.
The “system” (social, political, cultural, legally) has been engineered to advantage particular persons who will use same advantage to operate within whatever framework comes next.
If you think for one moment that socialism; or some version thereof, will not ensue, you have not read anything worthwhile in the last 4000 years.
BTW; Obama is not the problem. He is an advantaged person operating within the parameters allowed.
It's like the 16th & 17th Amendments. Once the sheeple don't realize they've been fleeced and have bought into the fraud there's no turning back until the criminals steal everything and kill everyone or are confronted and stopped
So in poker terms you could say the psychopaths are going all-in
I see the 17th Amendment is being challenged again. The more recent go around with the 16th & 17th failed due in part to lack of money to continue the legal challenge? WTF America? You love enslavement that much?
I presume your referring to Devy Kidds lawsuit in Texas. She is a fine woman and patriot but refuses to acknowledge the airheads called fellow citizens that don't give a rats ass. The fact that 3 states in the last 5 years have ratified the 17th (almost 100 years late) is proof she and others are right. But right doesn't matter in a nation of 300 million apathetic jerks.
I like how you blame the government for not reigning in the banks instead of blaming the banks for being assholes and criminals in the first place.
Because they are filthy whores, that's why.
Tim Hawkins really nailed it with his The Government Can performance. I listen to it almost everyday for a sense of levity.
Yeah, Manipuflation, that is an amusing presentation of the social facts. However, it is based on presuming something which results in a sterile approach.
As outlined more in my comment below:
EVERYONE HAS SOME POWER TO ROB.
Governments are the result of thousands of years of assembling and channeling the power to rob. The basis of human realities as entropic pumps of energy is necessarily operating through systems of lies operating robberies. Indeed, that view of living as entropic pumps of energy applies to all animals, and would apply to any beings which were able to do so through means whereby they made mental models of their world, which included mental models of themselves within their model of the world.
Those who promote idealized solutions in which there are a series of political miracles which would result in everyone always only engaging in voluntary contracts, or whatever other set of impossible ideals are promoted by the range of reactionary revolutionaries are ALWAYS NOT POSSIBLE, AND THEREFORE ACTUALLY CAUSE THE OPPOSITE TO HAPPEN IN THE REAL WORLD. Hence, it is typical for various mainstream morons to promote notions such as idealized "Personal Sovereignty," which are utterly backwards to social realities, since sovereignty is based on the power to rob.
There is nothing wrong with the theory of a democratic republic operating through the rule of law. The problem is that enough of the citizens have been successfully brainwashed to become incompetent political idiots, i.e., masses of Zombie Sheeple, who are fooled not only originally by the government, but also tricked by the Black Sheeple controlled opposition, which attempts to lead them backwards, towards old-fashioned false fundamental dichotomies, and their related impossible ideals, as the basis of bogus "solutions" to social problems.
Actually, citizens are members of an organized crime gang, called their country. The degree to which they do not understand that is the degree to which the best organized gangs of criminals have been able to capture control over that government, through being able to fool enough of the people enough of the time, by "mixing it up with lies, to make it all taste good," as Tim Hawkins sings.
However, in my view, people like Tim Hawkins do not get remotely close to comprehending the degree to which they continue to presume that they have understood some of the lies, while they still continue to take for granted most of the BIGGER LIES. As long as people continue to believe in false fundamental dichotomies, and therefore, promote "solutions" based on impossible ideals, then those must continue to backfire badly, and actually result in the opposite happening in the real world.
+1 RM. I am not the enemy nor do I seem to be the solution. I thought once upon a time that I could change the world. I do not even know why I write anything anymore. My soul has been taken from me by force. It is a good thing I had a spare soul in storage.
I think we know what the answer is and I do not like that answer. Yes, I do have ability to make the streets run red with blood but that is not what I want. On the other hand, these people will stop or listen to reason. What do you do? I have tried the legal avenues and those avenues do not work. It is like they are asking for a fight and a bloody one at that. In the end everyone will regret that fight myself included.
How can you get around these people? They are not leaving us a whole lot of options and it cannot go on. I have made 1000+ phone calls to the .gov and basically they laugh at you. They think they have it all wrapped up and everything is OK.
No, it's not.
I totally agree with your reply, Manipuflation!
P.S.
I particularly liked your statement:
"It is a good thing I had a spare soul in storage."
1) the banking mafia buy the politicians
2) the politicians borrow huge amounts of pretend money from the banking mafia at interest
3) the serfs pay that pretend money back with real stuff
neat scam. requires buying up the MSM first.
If cocaine were legal, it would cost less than sugar. That is the overall perspective one should take with regard to analogies made in the article above, namely, it relies upon one social absurdity to explain another absurdity, without deeper analysis of the reasons for both. That failure to engage in deeper analysis then always results in proposing superficial "solutions."
The marriage between the banksters and the government was a shotgun marriage forced through by the banksters. The banksters used the methods of organized crime, such as bribery, intimidation, as well as assassination of those who could not be bribed or intimidated, to make sure that enough of the successfully surviving politicians were the banksters' puppets. Furthermore, the banksters also channeled enough of their profits through capturing control over the schools and mass media so that enough of the public would become muppets that could be manipulated.
The actual situation is covert control of civilization by the methods of organized crime, while the overt show put on is political puppets tricking enough of the muppets enough of the time to keep that show going. The basic system is debt slavery backed by wars based on deceits. The war on drugs was one of those wars based on deceits. Therefore, when one uses analogies such as comparing the relationship between a marriage of drug sellers and producers, compared to that of the marriage of big government and big corporations, one tends to be barely scratching the surface of the actual situation. That shallowness then also ends up promoting superficial "solutions" which are bogus, because they did not engage the real nature of the problems enough to deal with those on their own terms.
The deeper situation is that money is measurement backed by murder. Human realities are always systems of organized lies operating robberies. Understanding that through false fundamental dichotomies, and therefore proposing bogus "solutions" based on the related impossible ideals is to STAY WITHIN THE FRAME OF REFERENCE OF THE BANKSTERS' OR THE BIGGEST BULLIES' BULLSHIT SOCIAL STORIES. Of course, I agree with the conclusion to this article about: “a particular historical configuration of markets and state structures where private economic gain by almost any means is the paramount goal and measure of success.”
HOWEVER, THE IMPORTANT POINT, THAT HUMAN CIVILIZATIONS NECESSARILY OPERATE ACCORDING TO THE PRINCIPLES AND METHODS OF ORGANIZED CRIME, IS NOT BEING FULLY FACED!
It is the standard fare in most Zero Hedge articles to reveal some of the ways and degrees to which society is operating in such as way that governments are the biggest form of organized crime controlled by the best organized gangs of criminals. However, virtually none of the articles, and only a few of the comments, ever penetrate sufficiently THROUGH the Looking Glass of that Bizarro Mirror World, to then not the collapse back to bullshit "solutions" which are still based on impossible ideals, due to continuing to perceive the world through false fundamental dichotomies.
The basic realities that drove money to be measurement backed by murder were that the most socially successful murder systems were achieved by deceits, especially the treachery of spies, while that enabled the development of monetary systems which were based on enforced frauds. The deeper problems are that the same methods of warfare, i.e., deceits and spies, were what also ended up being able to control the publicly apparent "opposition" to the established systems. In that context it is practically impossible to gain sufficient perspective, because most people continue to take their circumstances for granted, such as presuming that cocaine is somehow necessarily expensive, when it fact it can be produced for less than it costs to produce sugar. ALL OF THE SOCIAL FACTS THAT SURROUND COCAINE ARE DUE TO WARS BASED ON DECEITS, WHICH WERE DESIGNED TO SUPPORT THE DEBT SLAVERY SYSTEMS.
Hence, using analogies to cocaine to apply to cash tends to remain too superficial, which then results in proposing bogus "solutions" which are also too superficial. The deeper problems are ALWAYS that the debt controls were backed up by the death controls. It is NOT possible to change that basic situation. The only genuine solutions must necessarily be better death controls to back up better debt controls. Nothing less would work. However, since the established systems are based on a long history of the maximum possible deceits, backing up the maximum possible frauds, in which the controlled opposition groups to those established systems continues to stay within the frame of reference of those established systems, we see almost nothing presented in the public spaces which is not superficial analysis leading to superficial solutions.
This kind of article above, which is typical of those on Zero Hedge, skims across the surface of the analysis of the political economy, in ways which are not consistent with perceiving human realities as general energy systems, where the political economy operates inside of the human ecology. What we should do is go through intellectual scientific revolutions sufficient to be able to reconcile human systems with other general energy systems. However, that is practically impossible at the present time, due to the degree to which the biggest bullies' bullshit social stories dominate BOTH the established systems AND their controlled opposition groups almost totally.
To more fully appreciate how and why the government is the biggest form of organized crime, controlled by the best organized gang of criminals requires fully facing that an accurate description of human civilization cannot be based on false fundamental dichotomies and impossible ideals. Rather the radical view of human realities is that the principles and methods of organized crime merge totally with deeper understanding of human civilizations as general energy systems.
It is no more possible to come up with genuinely better resolutions which "stop" society operating according to the methods of organized crime than it is to "stop" human systems from being entropic pumps of energy. The dangerous cul de sac that our civilization has gotten in was due to too much successful organized crime controlling things for too long, to the degree that there is barely any significant public opposition to that which is not also similarly controlled.
The vast majority of people have been brainwashed to perceive everything in profoundly backward ways, and therefore, to continue to promote bogus "solutions" which are backwards, and thus, impossible to ever be realized. There is NO way to avoid the basic fact that money is measurement backed by murder. The current monetary systems exist as they do because of who was the best at operating the real murder systems, or who was the best at applying the methods of organized crime. However, there are no genuine solutions to that situation which would not actually become even better organized crime, in the sense of better death controls to back up better debt controls. Those better systems would be evolutionary ecologies which could be reconciled with the general energy systems found throughout industry and nature. However, such better systems require a series of profound paradigm shifts in perception, namely, not merely perceiving that governments are the biggest form of organized crime controlled by the best organized gang of criminals, but moreover understanding the deeper reasons how and why that is the case.
What was that part in the middle?
JRobby, that part in the middle was tangential references to the ways that the biggest bullies' bullshit has dominated the philosophy of science, the same as it has every other social enterprise.
The "state" or the people who make that "state" FAIL TO REFORM OUR BROKEN FINANCIAL SYSTEM, due to the most profound of reasons, that almost none of them are able and willing to go through paradigm shifts in political science which are comparable to those kinds of paradigm shifts which physical sciences went through. Therefore, the REAL WORLD is now globalized electronic frauds, backed by the threat of the force of atomic bombs, while nothing regarding the ways that we should think differently about time and space, as demonstrated in quantum mechanics and the special theory of relativity, etc., have found their way into political science, much less any of the various old-fashioned religions and ideologies that still dominate our current political situation. One of the most important of those paradigm shifts is to appreciate that an ARBITRARY MINUS SIGN WAS INSERTED INTO THE ENTROPY EQUATIONS OF THERMODYNAMICS AND INFORMATION THEORY. That was one of the symbolically most important ways that the biggest bullies' bullshit world view was able to invert and pervert the philosophy of science.
Many people on Zero Hedge are able to understand how the banksters were able to invert and pervert the meaning of the word "money," which used to mean metal coins, or at least paper backed by gold and silver. Similarly, many people on Zero Hedge are aware that the word "dollar" originally meant an amount of silver. However, I doubt that many people, even among the readership of Zero Hedge, are able to understand how the basic philosophy of science suffered from having some of its more important concepts inverted and perverted.
It is not possible to exaggerate the degree to which we are living in a thoroughly Bizarro Mirror World, in which everything appears proportionately backwards and inverted. Furthermore, that applies not only to the analysis of the political problems, but also to any worthwhile political solutions. The first level of discovery is to recognize the degree to which OUR BROKEN FINANCIAL SYSTEM is due to governments being the biggest form of organized crime, controlled by the best organized criminals. However, the next level of discovery is to perceive the degree to which every human being, who is defined and perceived as separated from their environment, is then necessarily operating as an entropic pump of energy, which means they are organized systems of lies operating robberies.
The deeper problems, which I only touched upon tangentially in my comment above is that OUR UNDERSTANDING OF THE CONCEPT OF ENTROPY IS BACKWARDS! Therefore, that includes the ways that we understand everything else backwards, such as that private property is always claims backed by coercions, whereby money has become measurement backed by murder. Our progress in physical sciences, such as demonstrated by electronic and atomic energy, were based on profound paradigm shifts with respect to the basic concepts of time and space, which reversed the meaning of those, in ways opposite to what common sense had previously presumed. However, nothing like that has happened in political science. Therefore, we HAVE globalized electronic fiat frauds, backed by the threat of the force of weapons of mass destruction, running amok!
There is a huge and growing gap, a Grand Canyon of PARADOXES, between progress in physics and biology, etc., while political science continues to be hide bound by old-fashioned religions and ideologies. Social pyramid systems were based on social success through backing up lies with violence. Progress in science and technology primarily has been employed to become better at backing up lies with violence (such as through runaway globalized electronic frauds, backed by the force of atomic bombs.)
The article above was correct, on the shallow level that it was presented. However, the political problems we face are far more profound! My comment above promoted intellectual scientific revolutions which would apply to political science. Of course, almost nobody understands or agrees with that (except for perhaps a tiny minority at the present time, such as a small group of the Zero Hedge readers.)
The history of the American Financial System has been that being flipped upside-down, and turned inside out, such as how the words "money" or "dollar" gradually had their meaning reversed. What I was also pointing out are the deeper ways that almost everything had its meaning reversed, most especially the meaning of the word "entropy." Since the scientific understanding of everything has become an understanding of general energy systems, understanding the concept of "entropy" backwards meant that we understood everything backwards.
While that sublime, almost perfect, backwardsness worked well enough through the physical sciences, it began to have problems in the biological science, and developed extreme problems in the social sciences, especially political science. Many people who regularly read Zero Hedge understand well enough how the government has more and more blatantly become the biggest form of organized crime, controlled by the best organized gang of criminals. However, most of them still want to return to impossible ideals as the source of "solutions" for that social situation. However, what I am asserting is that is not good enough! We need a much more profound and prodigious series of intellectual scientific revolutions, which would apply to political science, and therefore to the combined money/murder systems, in order to cope with how those have become runaway systems of enforced frauds, which have become too criminally insane to be able to continue to do so!
Goddamn... a fucking editor would be well advised.
Expecting the state to truly reform the nation's engines of financialization is like asking the cocaine addict married to the wealthy dealer to divorce the dealer.
Expecting the state to truly reform the nation's engines of financialization is the problem... the state doesn't actually do anything... people do...
Most observers think they know why the government (i.e. the state) has failed to truly reform the financial system: corrupt politicos on the receiving end of the Too Big to Fail (TBTF) banks and financiers' millions of dollars in lobbying and campaign contributions do the banks' bidding. While the reduction of democracy to an auction in which the highest bidder controls the state is certainly one systemic reason for this abject failure,there is an even greater, more deeply systemic reason why the state cannot reform the rotten core of financialization. The state has become dependent on the wages and profits of finance for its own revenues.
The state is dependent upon the wages and profits of finance for its own revenues? Are you fucking serious? What kind of revelation is this nostradamus... that the government is dependent upon the wages and profits of its citizenry to fund itself... You've got to be shitting me. This is the case from inception of the government, not something that has changed recently or that is worthy of being attributable to anything material.
Further, please let me capitalize this so that we can be clear, THE STATE DOES NOT EXIST. It's simply a legal fiction. People exist... and people compete against one another for all kinds of reasons... The state is always, and simply, a derivative of this competition. The state doesn't poke a stick in your backside, rather it's always a person.
The inclusion of any law for the benefit of people generally (individually) without power is simply the result of their collective bargaining, which over time is chipped away until the parties are back at the bargaining table... because humans' default state is apathy and rest... the impetus is thus on those without power to constantly exercise rights and be proactive to eliminate injustice wherever it may exist. This standard has never existed on the world for more than a twinkle in the eye of a tenured imbecile.
In short, tl/dr, the state does not have (and did not ever have) the tools to reform the financial system... this is why we have booms and busts... we're on rails once certain thresholds are crossed (often from the inception of systems).
The FIRE economy is what's wrong. No manufacturing, no production. Yeah, that's working out just fine.
RadicalMJ - I have considered you postings for a year now which basically state there are no solutions. I disagree. Take the Chinese for example. They offered something of value capital wanted - cheap labor with narrow government restrictions. Who won and who lost? The Chinese won and Americans lost. I don't blame the citizenship, leadership sold out and that is part of our repetetive evolutionary story.
Take a cue from the Chinese at an individual level. Offer something of value to attract capital, at first you'll work cheap but over time you can raise prices or become wealthy enough to tell them your changing business models and retire wealthy.
As for "death controls" well mankind can focus on defeating physical death as we know it and use our competitive nature for collective purpose. But I suspect that will only happen after this short period of global calamity unfolding. Pain is what spurs evolution forward and those at the top will push forward robbing until there own relatives begin to die and they feel it. Individual citizens do not have the means or power (nor seldom do they) to cause such to leadership and force change.
It is when one national or nowadays suprational bloc of leaders go to war that pain elevates into the ivory towers. When elephants dance, ants get trampled so in the short term hedge by finding methods of getting out of the way or if you dont have those means at least have enough food, water and means to defend it for a a couple months during the worst of it.
I believe your a pessimist RM. Understandable, we are all imperfect and there is a real ugly side to human nature, spurred by evolution of predators and prey. But I am an optimist about where our species is going over the medium term in the tools we're building which reflect evolutionary advancement, particularly in particle physics and bio-medicine. Short-term say, next several years not so much. My studies here and on many sites, books etc. are telling in how to defend oneself against robbery and murder and my good natured side may not be what is required to survive against the desperate willing to do anything to me or my own to preserve there unsustainable way of life.
The chinese have printed money at a 10:1? rate compared to the FED and you're telling me they won something? What exactly? They've won some real assets in america with their funny money, but the yokels will see to it that they don't keep much of it... think japanese owned golf courses, but with more bib overalls and pitch forks. Or do you mean the suicide nets are to be coveted?
It's also pretty awesome to think that virtually anyone can actually offer something of value to someone else... simply put, on the labor side, that ship has sailed. There may be some odd jobs here and there, but humans are being displaced. There are structural issues that society hasn't really had to deal with... I suspect our solution will be juvenile at best.
Machoman -
1) Fractional reserve lending is a 10/1 model. So the Chinese cloned a western model. Not sure your point on this.
2) Japan did not become the global reserve currency. China did. There reasons for this which I can get into if you would like.
3) There is still individual opportunity in America. Just be prepared to educate yourself using the Internet spending hundreds of hours doing so to utilize the information to your advantage on how the world works. 95% won't and will just do meaningless tweets or facebook posts looking for personal attention when well... The world really doesnt give a shit when it comes to your individual financial well being.
The point was that sitting in a sweatshop, tied to a table, making apple products isn't my idea of winning anything... you can fellate china all you like, but it has significant issues to say the least. When the dust settles, maybe it emerges as the world's only superpower, but even then, even with a reserve currency, what did china win? For a couple hundred years, tops, it will print with impunity? And then it will go tits up at the same time the rest of the world hates it?
If some new fangled renaissance or enlightenment comes out of china, then color me surprised.... but I won't hold my breath.
Raging Debate, what I assert is that "there are no solutions" within the frame of reference that made the problems. There are NO possible reforms that would be sufficient, only some revolutions might be enough. However, revolutions only happen when things get so bad, for so long, that the established systems are collapsing into chaos, due to their own madness.
I do not know the answers to questions about what happens to the human species after progress in science and technology, so that there are things like globalied electronic frauds, backed by the force of weapons of mass destruction. NOBODY KNOWS!
RM - What is the difference between the words revolution and reform? I would argue only scale. The Russian people also had a solution and so did the Indians for what looked an impossible situation: As a laborerer, walk off the job or pretend to work.
So I offered two solutions where your argument is that no one offers any because they basically can't. That is where I disagree with you when you boil down all the details.
Put another way, the US and much of the world economy is a barbell. One can attempt to break gravity to be a in top 10% of earners, then hire lawyers, security whatever protections life can afford against predation. Or one can work 25 hours a week, share household expenses amidst a few members which can be fun. Not good for family formation but I found it somewhat overated in any event. Birth control changed a few things as did women's lib. Evolution and all :)
No insult to your deep think RM. As I said, I just believe you are too much of a pessamist to really enjoy life, to your own detriment.
I have crawled out of nowhere, made some loot and got seriously robbed learning certain lessons. I am talking $100k+ in a few short years. But I remain an optimist.
If WW3 goes off ill eat bugs for protein and leaves for vitamins and Ill still remain an optimist. The more I am pushed the more I will evolve until me or my progeny can overcome the current band of robbers.
My kind of thinking is why life has gone from a few million to billions on earth. The other kind of thinking that there is no way out tends to just make life even worse during tough cycles.
If I cant get wealthy, Ill get some laughs making a fool of some sociopaths in charge. At the very least I'll get off on it and "getting off" is kind of all we really get here. That and hopefully owning a bit of property to get off in.
Well, at least you're honest about kidding yourself...
Raging Debate, I regard the accusation of "pessimist" as merely being a kind of abrupt ad hominem ... As far as I can tell, the more one learns, the worst it gets, and the only way to be optimistic is to be relatively ignorant. The foundations of the political economy are rotten. There can be no reforms on top of that which are still not on rotten foundations. However, what is way worse than the social polarization driven by the crazy corruption of the public "money" supply being privatized, as government enforced frauds by private banks, which debt slavery system has necessarily driven its numbers to become runaway debt insanities, ARE THE WAYS THAT MAKING "MONEY" OUT OF NOTHING AS DEBTS HAS "PAID" TO STRIP-MINE THE PLANET.
I do NOT think it is "pessimistic" to face the facts that human beings' criminal insane civilization is driving mass extinctions of other species of life, and that the oceans, etc., are having their ecologies destroyed at an exponential rate, over which there appears to be no reasonable ways to stop that from happening for decades, if not Centuries, or even longer. After all, when human beings destroy the habitat of species which therefore go extinct, they are never coming back!
Personally, I find some sorts of philosophical consolations in the stars, and the magnitude of the universe, and that human systems are infinitesimal in an apparently infinite universe of possibly infinite universes. However, from the point of view of human beings, I KNOW that the places where I grew up as a boy are now developed dead zones, and they are never going to recover during my life time. Although there is still progress in science and technology, those continue to primarily be pumped through social systems controlled by lies backed by violence, and that social insanity continue to get worse, faster.
I think it is an irrelevant ad hominem approach to boil that down to psychological cop-outs with labels such as optimist versus pessimist. I am supremely optimistic that there will continue to be an overall conservation of energy and momentum, and preservation of information. However, I find no good reasons whatsoever to doubt that civilization is being controlled by Huge Lies, backed up with Lots of Violence, and therefore, all that evil deliberate ignorance is going to cause immense amounts of suffering for young people and people not yet born, in the foreseeable future.
My own life has been pretty good, and continues to be O.K. despite getting older. However, everything that I have learned over the past several decades indicates to me that there is no way to avoid the conclusions that a civilization based on enforced frauds is criminally insane! We have only just barely reached the tipping points in that process, whereby the short-term benefits are on the edge of being rapidly wiped out by the longer term consequences.
Until and unless the problems of capitalism are recognized, it will continue as is. Capitalism is the dominate economic system in the world and must begin to accept as its own the problems in the world. Capitalism is totally dependent upon the cheap labor of newly formed capitalistic economies out of communism. India and China are the labor pools of the US Capitalistic economy because they are cheap, not because they are more skilled. Capitalism operates on profit, not principle.
If you look around the United States today, you cannot help but be appalled at the deep spiral it has taken since the 1950’s. The 60’s wrecked the society and the 80’s ruined the financial integrity of capitalism and turned it into whatever kind of capitalism we have today, where greed and criminality pay off in the marketplace, thus demanding that men survive not by means of virtue, but by means of vice.
I am not saying that there is a name for a more enduring economic system. I am only saying that until we recognize the fairy tale definition of capitalism no longer applies, capitalism as now practiced in the US has metastasized into a tumor we can no longer ignore.
".. but doctor, you don't understand,
we need the eggs." w.a.
good one. funny .....
the first truth americans need to understand is, it's not OUR financial system.
in 1913 americas politicians wouldn't make a financial decsion for americas future, and their political future, so they gave that job to the federal reserve, a private bank.
a private bank thats assisted in passing legislation to where every penny spent, or lost, in america, they make money.
how many dems, or reps have you voted for because they campaigned on changing americas financial woes, you didn't realize they have no say on americas financial situation, as long as the fed. is in charge.
While they claim otherwise, in many ways Bernanke and the Fed have put America on a path that mirrors the same unsuccessful path taken by Japan. A path that avoids real reform and bails out the very people that caused many of our problems. Bernanke upped the ante by setting the bailout and money printing machines on high and flooding America and the world with QE.
By selling other central bankers on this solution the Fed has taken the lead in an experiment that is losing traction. Real momentum seems to ebb shortly after each new wave of stimulus and another fix seems to constantly be needed. This means Yellen has a real problem. More on this subject in the article below.
http://brucewilds.blogspot.com/2013/11/we-are-on-path-to-lost-decades.ht...