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The American Dream Part 2 - We Now Live In A "Pimpocracy"
Submitted by Bill Bonner via Acting-Man blog,
Shabby Immensity
Today, we continue mouth wide open (Part 1 here) … staggered by the shabby immensity of it … a tear forming in the corner of our eye.
Yes, we are looking at how the US economy, money and government have changed since President Nixon ended the gold-backed monetary system in 1971. It is not pretty.
We already know about the money. Since 1971, it’s been a credit-based, not a gold-based, system. The pre-1971 economy had three key characteristics:
1) It was healthy – Industry made things and sold them at a profit
2) It was fair – Financial progress was fairly evenly distributed.
3) It was solvent – The US was a creditor, not a debtor, nation.
Cartoon by David Horsey
Change in global share of manufacturing output, selected countries (via Vox EU)
Platitudes and Hypocrisies
Americans still say they believe in free markets, democracy and financial rectitude. But only as platitudes and hypocrisies. America’s industries have largely been shipped over to China and other lower-cost producers in the emerging world.
That didn’t “just happen.” The Fed’s EZ money financed it. American consumers borrowed to spend more than they could afford. Walmart met their desires (if not their needs) with “Everyday Low Prices,” courtesy of low-paid Chinese workers.
This sent US dollars to China. The Chinese used the profits to build even more, and better, factories. Pity the American businessman who tried to compete. He was overwhelmed. He had to pay wages 10 times higher than the Chinese. He also had to bow to regulations – tax, environment, labor, diverse bullying – that left him hobbled and fettered.
There’s not much left of America’s industrial economy. Seventy percent of the US economy is made up of consumer spending. Manufacturing has fallen to just 12% of the economy… down from 24% in 1971. And it’s now the main source of wealth in only seven states. The deindustrialization of the US is blamed for the slipping wages of low- and middle-class Americans. So is immigration. And robots.
“It’s not unfair,” say the people who caused it. “It’s just the free market.”
But the free market was one of the first casualties of the post-1971 fiat money period.
Manufacturing wages, US vs. China – China is catching up, but there is still a huge gap
Bubble Machine
In a free market, people earn money by working (income) or by saving and investing it (capital growth). But credit-based money needed neither work nor saving; you just had to know the right people. Private banks, aided and abetted by the Federal Reserve, could create as much credit money as they pleased and feed it to their cronies on Wall Street.
The new money was then transformed as miraculously as water into wine. For the privileged insiders it was almost free; the Fed made sure of that. But for consumers, it became a heavy burden of debt. And for the economy, it became an inflation mechanism for financial bubbles.
The most recent blew when the banking and mortgage industries (part owned by the feds by way of Fannie and Freddie) lent trillions of dollars to homebuyers, who ended up with debt they couldn’t afford for houses they didn’t need. In 1995, the subprime loan market was about $65 billion. By 2007, it had ballooned to $1.3 trillion – a 1,900% increase.
When the house of cards collapsed in 2008, the feds moved fast. Not to help the homeowners, but to bail out Wall Street – the most reckless risk-takers in subprime debt – and the most incompetent of the big automakers, too.
Fannie Mae, 1995 to 2015 – from major bubble enabler to life under conservatorship – click to enlarge.
The Death of Savings
Wages rise as workers become more productive. Increases in productivity require capital investment (in training, new technology, new materials, etc.). This makes new savings possible. These new savings become the source of new capital investment. But in the 1980s and 1990s, the US savings rate fell.
Why bother to save when you can get phony money from the Fed-controlled banks? Besides, the Fed made sure interest rates stayed ultra-low. This made credit more attractive, as the cost of carrying debt fell. It also made saving money less attractive, as interest rates on savings also fell.
Fewer savings led to less investment in the factories, warehouses, new companies and new technologies that produce real “breadwinner” jobs. Why bother taking the risk growing your business into new markets when you can just borrow from the Fed and buy your own shares? Why bother to start a new small business at all, when all the credit goes to big, entrenched ones?
For most working-class Americans, real earnings peaked in the mid-1970s. Since then, it has been downhill. The rich get richer. The poor and middle classes go further into debt to try to keep up. Since the credit crisis of 2008, nearly 100% of the asset price gains went to the top 10% of the population. This was no accident. The Fed put its credit machine to work for the rich – heating up asset prices, but leaving the rest of the economy cold.
Now the US is the world’s biggest debtor. Not relative to GDP. That title goes to Japan. But it is still a distinction worth noting: The US went from the world’s biggest credit to its biggest debt in little more than a single generation.
What to make of it? The natural process of history? A fluke? We don’t think so. It is the result of public policy decisions made by the hacks, hangers-on and has-beens who gain the most from them.
There were no popular debates. There were no votes. Small but powerful elites created the fiat dollar, the TARP, ZIRP and QE. They were also responsible for Washington’s spending, regulation and tax decisions. That these creations favored the same elites was more than a coincidence.
The personal savings rate has been in a secular downtrend since the mid 1970s – but that may be changing a bit in the post 2008 world – click to enlarge.
Welcome to the “Pimpocracy”
This will be more obvious when we take up Part III of this inquiry – on our new form of government. Our old friend Jim Davidson calls it a “pimpocracy.” At least streetwalkers give value for money, he says. The pimps don’t. They take advantage of the prostitutes… and the johns too.
Today, we simply note that cheap money has done what it always does: undermine the economy and the society that hosts it. It can even happen when you have a gold-backed monetary system.
The Roman Empire was an early victim. When it made a conquest, the easy money – the captured booty and slave labor – came back to Rome and raised prices. Slave labor reduced wages for free workers. And the stolen property competed with locally made goods. This weakened Rome’s domestic economy.
Spain repeated the trick in the 16th century. Gold came back from the New World in such quantities that Spaniards found they could live off the easy money. They found a mountain of silver at Potosí in Bolivia and put slaves to work, night and day, mining it. Prices rose sharply throughout Europe. And when the easy money came to an end, the Spanish economy collapsed. It didn’t recover until Spain joined the European Union in 1986.
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Stock market valuations are not only linked to, but highly correlated with, economic recovery and progression of an economy out of recession.
- Greenspan, 2009
Today, using the stawk market as a gauge of economic activity, is like using a thermometer to measure wind speed.....its really windy out, because its 80.
If a person or a country measures their wellbeing by the state of their stawk market, they are pitiful
If the Pakistanis or Russians had seized control of the government with a couple of billions in political contributions and ran our our economy into the ground the same way as the the vested interests in D.C. have we would have declared war on them long ago...
"Spains economy didnt recover until they joined the european union in 1986"
HA, come on, bill bonner. Any 'help' any of those peripheral EU countries got from joing the EU was a short lived illusion, hows that working out for them right now? Pretty sure most of the economic problems they had throughout most of the past century was largely due to the different authoritarian dictatorships they had running the country
> using a thermometer to measure wind speed
Put water on it and, put in the wind, measure the temperature drop and you might have an ideea how windy it is!
Nah, just how humid it is
I logged in just because of your comment and my desire to overwhelmingly support it! As they say, you sir have "nailed it". Please feel honored.
I'm making over $7k a month working part time. I kept hearing other people tell me how much money they can make online so I decided to look into it. Well, it was all true and has totally changed my life. This is what I do... www.globe-report.com
Classic cargo-cult logic. If a strong economy boosts the stock market, then boosting the stock market will strengthen the economy. This is what passes for reason, among tenured ivy-league professors.
"Americans still say they believe in free markets, democracy and financial rectitude."
Thats because what they believe these things are and what they really are, are two completely different things. Just like when people blame our problems on "capitalism" or "free market capitalism". We have neither of those things today.
debase and confuse the language and you destroy the possibility for rational debate ... that's why someone said (orwell?): intelligent men must open their discussion by first deciding on the meaning of the words they will use. sad aint it
"debase and confuse the language and you destroy the possibility for rational debate ..."
Hey, if you go down that path, the next thing you know you're gonna be labeled an anti-Semite.
I find anti-Sematics totally unscholarable...
No, a SOCIALIST!!!
UROKO (full length)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzdomBX8U0w&feature=plcp
scales fall from the eyes :-) i'm downloading as I type - familiar with much of that material, but a refresher helps
a scooby snack / treat for you - Brent Mason And Jack Pearson - Messin' F
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4j3uD_qzZOU
thanks, sweet.
The Story of Adam Steffey's New Primitive
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDammichC50
good stuff - i work on this style quite a bit actually, though blues and jazz are the first love
Here's a beauty to close this thread - O'Connor's Ashoken Farewell
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDJ21h-iTJs
Thanks for the useful and fascinating documentary.
Curious publication date, no?
50 years to the day. i hadn't noticed that
I was thinking more like November 22, 2011: 11 + 22....so many 11's !
The JFK Anniversary. I see that now.
DOES THIS SEVEN YEAR CYCLE OF ECONOMIC CRASHES PREDICT THE EXACT DATE OF THE GLOBAL FINANCIAL COLLAPSE?
Posted on February 23, 2015 by The Doc
http://www.silverdoctors.com/does-this-seven-year-cycle-of-economic-cras...
.
here a discussion around the mysterious numbers.?
http://www.greatdreams.com/1111.htm
Eventually, we will HAVE to take care of ourselves.
If we 'invested' REALLY smart, we invested in our own Family, and they will pay Dividends by pooling and taking care of us in our old age.
Newflash for DINKs: You reap as you sow. No kids means no one to look after you -- except your CFP, who loves you so much [LOL].
The AARP has assured me that, with their assistance, I can compel other people's children to care for me in my old age. Get to work, all you millenial slackers.
OT... a ZH IT question:
After re-loading my TOR browser, I no longer get the Spellchecker or Font Editing features/toolbar.
Assuming there's a simple way to fix that, does this impact my browser privacy/security, or should I keep using CAPS in place of Italics? Thanks.
use html tags as plain text
http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_formatting.asp
I recommend sending an email directly to "info [ at ] zerohedge.com" with your OS Version and TorBrowser Version.
I'm presuming you've the latest browser downloaded from your OS.
I don't recall if you're a Linux User; but if your Windoze Version is crapping out on you (after you've sent the bug reports), you might try the TAILS (Linux Disk based OS) Disk; and work from there. Just download, install the image, and bingo - you have a "security minded" (though not completely hack proof) Linux OS - with the Tor Mechanisms built in. TAILS updates Monthly, so it does keep up a bit better than Windoze.
I don't know if TAILS allows for a Boot to RAM option; but well worth it if you want some secure web comms at work to check your personal emails. (TAILS shuts down with a RAM Wipe - so it gives you the Mission Impossible "this medium will self erase in 15 Seconds" dialogue as you clear your tracks.
Of course, if the Hackers/Stalkers have access to your Hardware, all is moot(I've local Cult Monkeys, Local Police/Politician/Govt Employee/MIC Contractor(long list of locations and parties invovled - eg., Oracle, L3 Think Tank in San Diego, SDS, Anteon, Navy's SAIC, USAF's Aerospace Corp, CSC, Raytheon, CBH, ABEAM, Cubic, ING, DirecTV, IDS, Deloitte, Andersen, KPMG, PWC, Biola, Loyola Marymount, Microstrategy) Hackers messing with my emails and job networking efforts (ex-Govt Whtstleblower for the Govt. I've several firms who plagiarized my work making $$$ too; and their Cult Monkey Connections are very Rabid and Disturbing); but hey - keeps the "nosey masses" from peeking into your emails.
Outside of TAILS, you might look for a BSD System (or a BSD Firewall, since X-Windows is vulnerable).
The truth is much worse that that. We live in a fascist, police state controlled by a Deep State which determines policy independently of who is elected. The NSA spies on everyone including all branches of government as revealed by Snowden:
The stunning implication of this passage is that NSA spying targets not only ordinary American citizens, but also Supreme Court justices, members of Congress and the White House itself. One could hardly ask for a more naked exposure of a police state.
The Deep State owns all branches of government and determines both domestic and foreign policy and can start wars at will:
There is the visible government situated around the Mall in Washington, and then there is another, more shadowy, more indefinable government that is not explained in Civics 101 or observable to tourists at the White House or the Capitol. The former is traditional Washington partisan politics: the tip of the iceberg that a public watching C-SPAN sees daily and which is theoretically controllable via elections. The subsurface part of the iceberg I shall call the Deep State, which operates according to its own compass heading regardless of who is formally in power.
President Obama can liquidate American citizens without due processes, detain prisoners indefinitely without charge, conduct dragnet surveillance on the American people without judicial warrant and engage in unprecedented — at least since the McCarthy era — witch hunts against federal employees (the so-called “Insider Threat Program”). Within the United States, this power is characterized by massive displays of intimidating force by militarized federal, state and local law enforcement. Abroad, President Obama can start wars at will and engage in virtually any other activity whatsoever without so much as a by-your-leave from Congress, such as arranging the forced landing of a plane carrying a sovereign head of state over foreign territory.
http://billmoyers.com/2014/02/21/anatomy-of-the-deep-state/
Paul Craig Roberts explains the new America:
The Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama regimes are more guilty of “the supreme international crime” than was National Socialist Germany. Today the crazed Washington warmongers are driving toward war with Russia.
Those pathetic Americans who think that their government is so good and pure and only commits wrongs by mistake and would never “kill its own people” need to remember the response of the US high command to the report that American POWs were in Nagasaki: “Targets previously assigned for Centerboard (the atomic bomb attack) remain unchanged.” Washington cared no more about its own soldiers than Washington cared about the innocent civilians of a country whose government was desperately trying to surrender. If you have any doubt that the entire history of the United States is one of murder and mayhem, you need to read Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States.
The Nazis have returned. They are ensconced in the governments in Washington, London, and Germany. The New Nazis have made certain that there has been war every year of this 21st century.
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2015/03/05/crazed-washington-drives-worl...
it does not have to be this way. imho
.
Worshiping Government
Message To The Voting Cattle
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article32152.htm
''Even if though various wars of aggression the US military could establish control all the remaining oil reserves on the planet, under the pretext of protecting democracy from terrorist attacks etc., the finite nature of the oil supply meant were only so much to be controlled; that being the case, all that remained was to determine when collapse would in fact occur.
..........but that defines the parameters of the conditions that beget the foregone conclusion that a empire built on a finite resource (OIL) will eventually fall''.............
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/03/27/collapse-a-foregone-conclusion/
it is not the finite nature so much as the
attitude and approach to the nature that
demands and begs for failure. in a word, it is the
stupid that no one will recognize as leadership,
and rightly so.
"The Nazis have returned. They are ensconced in the governments in Washington, London, and Germany. The New Nazis have made certain that there has been war every year of this 21st century."
Only because Nazi citizens continue to vote them into office.
Not Nazi citizens but merely ignorant citizens deliberately educated and entertained to be that way by the Nazi leaders...
Willfully ignorant. The peasantry doesn't want to know the truth.
Have you ever noticed that Fascist government only came into vogue after women had been given the vote?
Only because Nazi citizens continue to vote them into office.
Apparently our beloved leader is pushing for mandatory voting.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2015/03/18/us/ap-us-obama-voting.html
If you didn't want them in office, how would you stop it? There is no "none of the above" on the ballot, and therefore the whole thing has always been rigged.
There is only one candidate (for any/all offices) I would vote for in the next election, and this is the platform that this candidate would run on:
-No new laws, bills, legislation, taxes, etc- we have enough wrong already from previously passed laws, bills, legislation and taxes.
-No declarations of war, no declarations, period.
-Will work for free, including no perks, meals, expenses, travel, etc.
-No assistants, no security, no personnel- none, zero.
-No heating or cooling for their office, white house, house of Reps, Senate, etc.
-no perks, retirement, healthcare, burial expenses, etc- none.
Now, you might be thinking that no such candidate exists, but I assure you, you are wrong.
There are many such candidates.
And each and every one of these candidates is light years better than any of our existing or previous candidates.
In fact, they would fulfill the entire platform, truthfully, no lies or deception, guaranteed.
Allow me to nominate the next President & VP of the US:
Dog Turd for President & Banana Peel, VP.
< THUNDEROUS APPLAUSE>
In fact, any inanimate object would fulfill the entire platform, truthfully, no lies or deception, guaranteed.
And you ask me why I don't vote?
Not only that, but a cursory review of "executive orders" also includes the ability to "shut down" all forms of communications. Cell, Internet, phone systems. They have / are being tested for effecacy. Take over of all "means of production". Food supplies. He can put your ass in a forced labor camp and in prison without any reason whatsoever and so much more........
Here is the executive order you refer to...13603 https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/03/16/executive-order-n... Enjoy, its a doozy.
For sure, JustObserving, it is MUCH WORSE than a Pimpocracy!
The article above correctly stated:
Bubble Machine... Private banks, aided and abetted by the Federal Reserve, could create as much credit money as they pleased and feed it to their cronies on Wall Street. ... Small but powerful elites created the fiat dollar, the TARP, ZIRP and QE. They were also responsible for Washington’s spending, regulation and tax decisions. That these creations favored the same elites was more than a coincidence.
AFTER privately controlled banks capture control over the public "money" supply, everything else automatically follows, getting worse, faster ...
SOME REASONS IT IS MUCH WORSE:
Carroll Quigley in Tragedy and Hope:
"powers of financial capitalism
had another far-reaching goal,
nothing less than to create a
world system of financial
control in private hands
able to dominate the
political system of
each country and
the economy of
the world as
a whole ..."
http://www.conspiracyarchive.com/NWO/silent_weapons_quiet_wars.htm
Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars
Energy is recognized as the key to all activity on earth. Natural science is the study of the sources and control of natural energy, and social science, theoretically expressed as economics, is the study of the sources and control of social energy. Both are bookkeeping systems: mathematics. Therefore, mathematics is the primary energy science. And the bookkeeper can be king if the public can be kept ignorant of the methodology of the bookkeeping. ... In this structure, credit, presented as a pure element called "currency," has the appearance of capital, but is in effect negative capital. Hence, it has the appearance of service, but is in fact, indebtedness or debt. ... if balanced in no other way, will be balanced by the negation of population (war, genocide)... They must eventually resort to war to balance the account, because war ultimately is merely the act of destroying the creditor ... War is therefore the balancing of the system by killing the true creditors (the public ...)
Negative capital has annihilated "free market capitalism," substituting BUBBLE ECONOMICS, where those who have the privatized power to create public "money" supply out of nothing as debts develop every possible excuse that they can find to do as much of that credit creation as possible, regardless of the longer term consequences. Of course, that was the result of the best organized gang of criminals being the "elites" that were able and willing to apply the methods of organized crime to the political processes, in relentless, ruthless, and reckless ways, that have resulted in the entire political economy having a foundation of ENFORCED FRAUDS.
WHAT IS WAY, WAY, WAY WORSE, is that there is almost nobody who willing and able to think about how human energy systems actually operate within the general environmental energy systems. Since we already have had, for generation after generation, after generation, a fundamentally fraudulent financial accounting system, which got away with deliberately ignoring the most basic laws of nature, because it was getting away with the ENFORCED FRAUDS of privately controlled banks making the public "money" supply out of nothing as debts, IT IS PRACTICALLY IMPOSSIBLE FOR THE VAST MAJORITY OF PEOPLE TO GET REMOTELY CLOSE TO THINKING SANELY ABOUT GENERAL ENERGY SYSTEMS.
The basic concepts of evolutionary ecologies, operating through natural selection pressures, are NECESSARY to understand how and why we have ended up with governments being the biggest form of organized crime, controlled by the best organized gangs of criminals. For the vast majority of Americans, it is IMPOSSIBLE for them to approach understanding that, because they have been successfully conditioned to not want to!
The article above was typical Zero Hedge material, inasmuch as it was superficially correct, and interesting to read on the level at which it was presented. However, it grossly underestimates how bad things are. While there is no reasonable doubt that "America Is No Longer A Republic Or A Democracy" calling what currently exists a "Pimpocracy" grossly understates the situation!
There are good reasons how and why the "Deep State" developed as the core of the best organized forms of crime, which were able to control the surrounding bigger forms of organized crime, including control the apparent opposition to those established systems. In my view, the degree to which the alleged "opposition" groups are controlled makes the overall situation become WAY, WAY, WAY WORSE than can be fully comprehended, especially since the so-called "elites" that originally made and maintained the established systems no longer fully understand those systems, since those have become globalized electronic monkey money frauds, backed by the threat of force from apes with atomic bombs, or systems of MAD Money As Debt, backed by MAD Mutual Assured Destruction.
We ARE living inside of systems dominated by the Fraud Kings, who have captured control over the powers that the War Kings originally assembled into the forms of Sovereign States. Thus, the existence of BUBBLE ECONOMICS, which is based on privately controlled banks being able to create the public "money" supply out of nothing, as debts, while governments ENFORCE THAT FRAUD, which amounted to ways that the "bookkeeper can be king if the public can be kept ignorant of the methodology of the bookkeeping."
Given the degree to which the public We the People have generally become deliberately reduced to being incompetent political idiots, or Zombie Sheeple that were being fleeced to exhaustion, while being set up to be slaughtered, there is probably no reasonable expectation of any social successes following from efforts to attempt to educate enough people to better understand
mathematics as the primary energy science.
But nevertheless, genuinely better "bookkeeping systems: mathematics," should and could be understood in ways that connect "all activity on earth" through both "natural science as the study of the sources and control of natural energy, and social science, theoretically expressed as economics, as the study of the sources and control of social energy."
However, attempting to do that runs into the problem that the established systems not only are almost nothing but organized crime, surrounded by controlled opposition, but that also, any alternative systems must necessarily still be alternative forms of organized crime, because human beings and human civilization must necessarily continue to operate as entropic pumps of energy flows, because applying the basic principles of general energy systems to human energy systems demonstrates how and why human systems necessarily match the principles and methods of organized crime, with the death control systems central to everything else. The established systems are based organized crime, surrounded by controlled oppositions groups, which BOTH misrepresent and misunderstand the death control sysetms, since the most socially successful systems were developed to be done through the maximum possible deceits. Therefore, the controlled opposition stays within the same frame of reference, of false fundamental dichotomies, promoting bogus "solutions" based on impossible ideals that actually make the opposite happen. The only realistic solutions are necessarily better death control systems, to back up better debt controls systems. However, the established systems require people not understanding that, because they do not want to understand that, while those established systems have become sufficiently successful so that they already control their publicly significant opposition.
What is theoretically possible is for enough people to change the way that they perceive political problems enough, however, what is most probably going to actually happen is runaway debt insanities provoking death insanities. In that context, it is extremely difficult to imagine who or what is going to survive through those times, to perhaps become the seeds for some new emerging systems. Ideally, IF a technologically based civilization was able to sufficiently survive, then the mathematical bookkeeping would progress beyond the kinds of magical mathematics that are dominate now, which allow the appearance of "money" being made out of nothing, and disappearing back to nothing, as debts are created and are discharged, because it was more widely understood how those systems actually operated as enforced frauds, where the debt controls were backed up by the death controls.
What is both theoretically and practically a WAY, WAY, WAY WORSE problem is that the death control systems must always be central to any political economy, which in turn necessarily exists inside of any human ecology. The currently established systems are able to operate through the maximum possible deceits regarding the death controls, due to the imperatives of the "Deep State" developing according to the principles and methods of organized crime. That then sustained the BUBBLE ECONOMICS based on enforced frauds, which were socially successful to the degree that those managed to both get away deliberately ignoring and/or denying their essential nature, both as enforced frauds.
Generally speaking, most of the controlled opposition groups to those systems are already way too brainwashed to believe in the biggest bullies' bullshit social stories to be able to come remotely close to comprehending any better that human beings and human civilizations operate as entropic pumps of energy flows, because the triumphs of the biggest bullies' bullshit becoming the overwhelmingly dominant social stories have succeeded in inverting and perverting the meaning of almost everything, from the concept of "entropy" to the concept of "money."
Again, I state, what is WAY, WAY, WAY WORSE is that almost everyone operates as some form of controlled opposition, due to the degree to which they take for granted the biggest bullies' bullshit language, and use that language, when they think and communicate with others, through that almost total BULLSHIT, which has made the world we live in become a Bizarro Mirror World, or Wonderland Matrix, where everything appears to be backwards and absurd, because the meaning of almost everything has been systematically inverted and perverted.
Not only does that problem apply to all of the typical analyses of the problems with respect to the established political economy, but is also applies just as much, if not more so, to all the typical "solutions" proposed for those problems, which tend to be perfectly backwards too. Actually, the only things that exist are the dynamic equilibria of different systems of organized lies operating robberies, and thus, the only genuine solutions are ways to modify that dynamic equilibria better the different systems of organized lies operating robberies.
However, meanwhile, what is WAY, WAY, WAY WORSE was that only only did the runaway triumphs of enforcing frauds create loop after loop of BUBBLE ECONOMICS being blown and popping, in ways which over and over again benefited the insiders which could control the kind of public "money" supply blowing those bubbles, so that there developed apparently irreconcilable degrees of social polarization, at the same time, the general social situation based on triumphantly enforced frauds also enabled that society to operate with attitudes of evil deliberate ignorance towards the natural environment, which has developed apparently irreparable degrees of destruction of the natural world.
There are NO good labels, that are generally understood, for the paradoxical political situations wherein governments are the biggest form of organized crime, controlled by the best organized gangs of criminals. However, for sure, you were right, JustObserving, that that is WAY WORSE than merely "Pimpocracy."
I tend to like to call that system a runaway fascist plutocracy juggernaut, developing a fascist police state, to protect itself and advance it agenda. However, that still is not an adequate label, since it presumes that the oligarchical plutocrats actually have some "wealth" through which there are able to govern, while their main source of "wealth" actually was due to their ability to apply the methods of organized crime to the political processes, so that governments would enforce their frauds of being able to make the public "money" supply out of nothing as debts for everyone else.
Methinks you'd have made a fine arborist- pointing out all the details of each tree, over and over again, over all the decades of your life.
While entirely missing the view of the forest.
What? no bibley stuff Seek_Truth? You're usually over and over and over with bibley stuff. like it's the only book in the library.
p.s. I pgdn bibely stuff
p.p.s. I pgdn "methinksers" too
MEAN BUSINESS:
Seek_Truth does that below, in his reply to my reply to his comment.
& That gave me an excuse to thump on my own kind of "Bible." Hah!
I was thumping my bible (AR5) today on the electric car thread. OMFG
I got fired up the other day on the NPP thread, Wavy Gravy high priest style (!), and couldn't sway the masses yesterday on Monsanto. LMAO!
I like your "bible", keep on thumpin' : )
Do you really want to know what is happening RM?
Damn you are so close. Get ready for the epiphany of a lifetime.
Actually Aldous Huxley's Brave New World was the expose.
There is a label for this. It is called a Technocracy wth "Scientism" as the State Sanctioned Reigion.
No I am not knocking Science. However I am knocking the Politicization of Science and the technocrats..
You have heard of Antony Sutton, right? Bright guy. He was a visiting scholar up at the Hoover Research Institure at Stanford University until he was booted for exposing the conspiracy.
\
He was a tenured professor at the quasiprivate UCLA. Anyway he coauthored a book with Patrick Wood.
(Hell I use Sutton's book, "The War on Gold" as a guide to my overview of the markets. It was actually quite prescient with exception to the scale of economies. Sutton did not grasp that it could continue beyond 1980. But the same mechanisms are happening and the scale of the fraud is now magntudes of order larger.)
However Sutton died about ten years ago. But Patrick Wood is still alive. And this interview with Patrick Wood is mindblowing. You might want to spark up a bowl beforehand...
This THREE and a HALF HOURS will change your life and allow you to reframe your argument into a more coherent one...At least you will have an understanding of the nightmare befalling us. It is well worth it.
I thank WillyGroper for turning me on to this.
But you are right. ZH is just scratching the surface. And it is all about energy and energy resources. And it is much, much worse that most here can imagine. You are right.
You deserve to know. Of all here...you, especially you, deserve to know.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7QlOTi86Nk
John B. Wells, the interviewer, covers current events up until the interview. (He does not understand what a Theoretical Physicist does.) You may like his commentary on the current events, however...
...you can skip that and the most important information, the interview, begins at 12:12
https://youtu.be/H7QlOTi86Nk?t=12m12s
I hope that you get my response and I hope that you listen to this. Invest your time. It is well worth it.
(And don't knock my Bible...There may be something more to it than you have discerned yet.)
Tall Tom, I agree with "knocking the Politicization of Science and the technocrats." That is merely being dishonest more scientifically, or develops the paradox of a scientific dictatorship, in which the noun is still dictatorship, only qualified, to be made worse, by the adjective "scientific."
I was familiar with Sutton. One of the more recent things that I watched that raised his importance as a historian was a review of the history of the Chinese Revolution by the Corbett Report:
https://www.corbettreport.com/china-menace-accomplice-or-boogeyman/
" ... it is important to note that this phenomenon of a superpower funding its erstwhile enemy is not without precedent. In fact, as I highlighted in a recent episode of The Corbett Report podcast, Hoover Institute research fellow Antony Sutton spent decades of his life documenting the voluminous evidence that the US did precisely this with its two great enemies of the 20th century: the Nazis and the Bolsheviks."
P.S. Of course,
the Bible is DEEPER than I fathom.
EVERYTHING IS!
http://www.artofeurope.com/blake/bla3.htm
"To see a world in a grain of sand, ..."
"p.s. I pgdn bibely stuff"
Your loss.
At least you have admitted your close-mindedness, that's a step in the right direction.
I don't have time to read every comment by every commenter, human or bot, in the blogosphere. My loss? yep.
what's the next step in my redemption?
Hold on, Is this some old rock opera?
2015 would be an excellent year to put your bible up on the shelf and read the entire IPCC 5th Assessment Report. You open to that?
"read the entire IPCC 5th Assessment Report"
A fate worse than death.
You seem to have a problem with adjusting your priorities. Hundreds of Biblical prophecies have come true, with only a handful yet to be fulfilled before it's over.
And you want to prioritize the writings of a committee proven to write blatant falsehoods and lies over prophecies that affect the life or death of every human?
See you in the funny papers.
A fate worse than death? Funny. God's creatures, the ones that can't read AR5, might beg to differ.
"fulfilled before it's over." Before what's over?
"blatant falsehoods" Again with the Himalayan glaciers? LULZ
p.s. what's that you said about my priorities?
--------------
I've been a good boy up until now despite 'urges'. Now can I call you an asshole and tell you to go fuck yourself?
This currency war started in 2008.
Russia and China said no to Wall Street bank fraud.
BRICS was the response.
Believing in a false recovery is being a patriot.
Such a tremendous waste of time.
Commercials talking about retirement are propaganda.
Don't kill yourselves based on this propaganda.
You are not alone.
This currency war started in 1971...
<--- pussies who don't have a competing argument ~make your SYCHOPHANT selves known & junk here
When "Bretton Woods" was abandoned & they elected 5 straight JEW FED chairs [Volcker by proxy because he was on Rothschild's payroll], to print money until kingdom come & make jews rich...
Any questions?
BRICS started in 2008.
Competition against the ponzi banksters.
'Ponzi Banksters' ~ get a fucking clue... They're all fucking jews [or jew knob gobblers like Volcker, Bush, & the Clintons]...
Jim Traficant would have made a great President.
He saw what we are dealing with.
Too bad he's dead.
Tends to happen to 'certain' people... Especially high profile ones who refuse to pucker up to the Wailing Wall...
The currency war against Americans started in 1913, full court press in 1933, clean up in 1963 and mission accomplished in 1971. Everything since has been Mr. Toads wild ride through various states of denial and delusion. The great baby boomer check out and cash out will bring this sad story to a close, just waiting on the river from a loaded deck.
BRICS is the fuck you to WS fraud.
BRICS has been the "beneficiary" and they are complicit in the fraud.
But ill gotten gains have a habit of vaporizing.
And when the Dollar goes to hell, and it will, then what are all of those treasury notes and dollars held as reserves in the BRICS vaults worth?
Squat. They are worth SQUAT.
That makes the BRICS Central Banks INSOLVENT, doesn't it? The Capitalization of the BRICS Central Banks VAPORIZES.
Oh they have Gold? Yeah. Right. What in the fuck is that worth? How do you evaluate it when there are NO GOD DAMNED VIABLE CURRENCIES?
(I am not writing that it is worthless. The price will be ZERO in all Fiat Currencies, however. You will need it after the new paradigm is established. You need to accumulate it now.)
If the USA goes down...excuse me...WHEN the USA goes down then the whole God damned bloody world will go down and even harder.
It will be ABSOLUTE CHAOS.
YOU DON'T GET IT, YET.
But you will. Oh...you will...yes you will.
James Traficant, Jr. (May 8, 1941 – September 27, 2014) was a Democrat, and later independent, politician who was expelled after being convicted of taking bribes, filing false tax returns, racketeering and forcing his aides to perform chores at his farm in Ohio and houseboat in Washington, D.C. He was sentenced to prison and released on September 2, 2009, after serving a seven-year sentence.
Amazing what "happens" when someone tells the truth, ain't it?
Jimmy Trafficant tells the truth about the bankruptcy of the US, gets railroaded into prison:
http://www.americanussr.com/american-ussr-james-traficant.htm
30,000 people in Ohio voted for him in 2010.
There are plenty of his interviews posted on YouTube.
He truly was a great American.
Paul Welstone as well.
You cannot fight evil through the system.
Evil owns the system.
You fight it more directly.
Paul Wellstone? The Democrat "progressive" from Minnesota who said in 1999 that "I'm short, I'm Jewish and I'm a liberal" in response to a reporter's question about why he might have a difficult time winning the presidency?
He didn't support Israel's war in Iraq.
He was an America first.
And he pissed off the Zionists!
My hero!!!
Hello Hasbara,
Thanks for your post. As you can see from the replies, some ZH people seem to know about the hit job done on Traficant.
Why not switch topics to .. say the USS Liberty? or dead congressman on the beach in Israel? or some other worm in the deep can.
You might learn something.
Volcker's words and actions differ very markedly from other men and women in the money-class.
The cartoon sure got the identity of The Whore right- the financial system, including stock markets. The financial system is the Whore of Revelation chapters 17 & 18- Babylon the Great.
Mammon comprises a part of it, the whore being the aggregate of false religions. Many worship at the alter of money / materialism. My 2 cents..
It is a widely held belief that false religion is Babylon the Great. However, that interpretation doesn’t fit with the following Biblical clues as to her identity found in the following quoted verses from Revelation chapter 18:
“The kings of the earth committed adultery with her”
What entity has committed adultery with the kings of the earth? Religion, or the Financial System?
“the merchants of the earth grew rich from her excessive luxuries.”
What entity has enabled the merchants of the earth to grow rich? Religion, or the Financial System?
“where all who had ships on the sea became rich through her wealth!”
What entity has enabled the transportation industry to grow rich? Religion, or the Financial System?
“your merchants were the world’s great men”
What entity has enabled the merchants to become “great men?” Religion, or the Financial System?
“By your magic spell all the nations were led astray”
What’s the greatest spell that has ever been used on mankind? Religion, or Fiat currency, fractional reserve banking, derivatives, stocks, bonds, etc?
“When the kings of the earth who committed adultery with her and shared her luxury”
The identity of Babylon the Great, the Great Whore who rides upon the backs of the Kings of the Earth is clearly not religion in the common sense- although it is religion in the sense that it is Mammon Worship.
I'll pretty much concede the point brother. I'll note also that a key tenet of the NWO, to the degree that I've read, is the combination of church/State/Bank with MNCs holding court.
“The kings of the earth committed adultery with her” The USA?
“the merchants of the earth grew rich from her excessive luxuries.” The USA?
“where all who had ships on the sea became rich through her wealth!” The USA?
“your merchants were the world’s great men” The USA?
“By your magic spell all the nations were led astray” The USA?
“When the kings of the earth who committed adultery with her and shared her luxury” The USA?
"The identity of Babylon the Great, the Great Whore who rides upon the backs of the Kings of the Earth"
Wait... who you callin' a ho, biatch???
The "USA" is a political construct, and just one of the many countries that has "benefitted" from adultery with Babylon the Great.
If you look at what actually enabled all of these things to occur, it was finance- fiat currency conjured out of nothing, fractional reserve banking rehypothicated to the max, credit, derivatives, etc. This is in no way unique to the USA. All countries that have a central bank that is orchestrated through the City of London/Rothschild/BIS complex have benefitted from this arrangement.
Interestingly, Iran is one of the only countries left that does not have this whore on it's back, that has not committed "adultery" with her. And it will be Iran and its allies that destroy the great whore, Babylon the Great.
Americans have two absurd State Religions, that most of them do not recognized are State Religions. The first is the monetary system, while the second is national security.
"Mammon Worship" or any other similar superficial labels, are systems of enforcing frauds, or organized lies operating robberies. The label "Pimpocracy" similarly refers to the ways that fraud is symbolic robbery. The basics were ALWAYS that all private property was based on backing up claims with coercions, while money was the most abstract form of that, since money is measurement backed by murder.
State religions were always the biggest bullies' bullshit. Indeed, from that perspective, books like the Bible were primarily the psychotic bullshit of bullies, as were all other similar books, including a wide variety of basically similar behaviors is various cultures all over the world, throughout human history. Neolithic Civilizations that spread out from the Middle East happened to become the most successful forms of lies backed by violence, which morphed and morphed, again and again, to become the current systems of legalized lies, backed by legalized violence, found in the American system, which may be thought to have reverted to the mean, by manifesting runaway triumphant organized crime, being able to almost totally surround itself with controlled opposition, i.e., the currently entrenched American State Religions, the American Dollar, and the American Military, both of which have become the biggest forms of organized crime, controlled by the best organized gangs of criminals, operating through the maximum possible frauds and deceits, because human realities were ALWAYS organized lies operating robberies, because human beings and human civilization were ALWAYS based on the entropic pumping of energy flows.
One would have to go way back, before the Bible, in order to go beyond the Bible in the future, as well as generally beyond the social pyramid systems of Neolithic Civilizations, where were based on being able to back up lies with violence, which have now become globalized electronic monkey money frauds, backed by the threat of force from apes with atomic bombs, or systems of MAD Money As Debt, backed by MAD Mutual Assured Destruction.
While it is relatively true that some of the highest levels of the social pyramid systems, the pyramidion people, tend to covertly believe in some of the oldest forms of religion. Recognizing merely that set of social facts does not provide enough insight to develop better systems in the future. ... See my other reply below regarding what might be theoretically necessary for the emergence of a State Religion that moved beyond the Neolithic style social pyramid systems, to perhaps develop the perception of toroidal vortex social systems.
Radical, there are those who believe that God is real, that He is a spiritual entity that actually exists, that He is the Creator, and that He has revealed to mankind what He intends to do to those who put faith in Him, and those who do not.
Mankind has had thousands of years to try every conceivable form of government, and they have all been failures. God will soon govern mankind, that is the only eternal answer as to how mankind is to be governed.
In addition- Worship is real, and every human worships something(s).
Most worship Mammon, some in addition (or instead) worship power, sensual pleasure, sports, etc. All of these are false gods. There is only one true God, and His Son came to earth and was crucified after making Him known, and showing that there is a path to eternal life with Him, and all it requires is putting faith in Him and rejecting false gods.
I pray that you and others realize soon that the time is near when the remaining unfulfilled Biblical prophesies will be seen by your own eyes, and that you may put faith in Him while there is still time to do so.
Seek_Truth:
I believe that
ENERGY IS SPIRIT.
I regard your old-fashioned versions of approaching an understanding of THAT to have become dangerously obsolete, and so, counter-productive at best.
For several decades I have been engaged with inventing my own "religion" or "philosophy" which is primarily based upon endeavouring to develop a creative synthesis of ancient mysticism within post-modernizing science. Some of the major steps towards doing that are to appreciate how the history of the philosophy of science was full of compromises with the biggest bullies' bullshit world view, during previous historical eras. One of those steps is to recognize that an arbitrary minus sign was inserted into the entropy equations of thermodynamics and information theory. That inversion of the meaning of entropy was important because, in the world view where ENERGY IS SPIRIT, and so, approaching a better understanding of the principle of the conservation of energy is an asymptotic approach to understanding God, the understanding of the concept of entropy is the scientific approach to understanding evil.
I tend to regard most of the Biblical prophesies as being reasonable predictions, after one recognizes that we are on a wide variety of exponential growth curves, approaching limits that most people tend to continue to deliberately ignore. However, I tend to throw books such as the Bible, and similar works, like raw ore into a smelter to be refined, because I regard them as old-fashioned efforts that some people made to try to understand things. I tend to replace Science, Technology, and Evolution, for the older trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
In my view, "God" already does govern mankind, inasmuch as human beings can not create energy out of nothing, nor send energy to nothing. Rather, we live as entropic pumps of energy flows, while governments were the various systems through which we developed to do that. In my view, Seek_Truth, you are merely promoting your own preferred sort of psychotic bullshit, which you like to believe in. Of course, I would agree that I am necessarily doing something similar, because all human realities are necessarily some systems of organized lies operating robberies.
I try to take seriously the principle of the conservation of energy. IF you did that too, then you would rediscover that was another way to approach understanding "God." Moreover, that was a far more useful and interesting way to develop a religion which was better reconciled with science. Of course, I do not expect you to have the slightest clue what I am talking about ... but hey, Zero Hedge comments are supposed to be a kind of "Fight Club" are they not?
We're certainly all entitled to our opinion- free will being what it is.
On the subject of "conservation of energy", you'd do well to apply it to your posts. Brevity and succinctness are always appreciated- you seem to have an issue with that. I hope you take that advice seriously (and I know I am an offender, on occasion, as well, in that regard.).
And I don't take offense to anyone's opinions- this is fight club, as you well stated. You can't learn anything without dropping the ego and truly reflecting on other opinions. But I would highly recommend that you reconsider your conclusions regarding the Bible- there are far too many good reasons why it should be considered head and shoulders above other writing as inspired by God (no, not just mindless energy, but a superior spririt being).
Thanks for your tolerance, Seek_Truth.
However, I greatly prefer the ancient Chinese I Ching to the Bible. And I also rather like ancient Indian stuff too. In my view, the Bible became dominate through Western Civilization because it enabled the biggest bullies to be more psychotic, which is what the Koran also enabled. Similarly, the Talmud was particularly well-developed book of organized gang rules. Personally, I tend to like Buddhism best, as a living religion, while my favourite dead religion was that of Mithraism.
Purpose has mechanisms in the form of feedback. I TAKE MY CYBERNETICS SERIOUSLY! Since the universe (or perhaps the Universe of universes) is that for which all outputs return as inputs, the Universe as a Whole is the Supreme Purpose, which also is the Supreme Personality. I do NOT regard energy as mindless, but rather, as the divine ground of being. Information is a form of energy. The ocean of energy is an ocean of consciousness, infinitely greater than human consciousness.
I regard the history of science as having made a perverse compromises with the dominant religions, about several hundred years ago, that allowed science to study everything that was "dead," while religion continued to be about things that had a living spirit or soul. As that perverse political compromise developed, vitalism was undermined, while more and more things were asserted to be in the domain of science, due to being dead. (For instance, making previously organic chemical out of inorganic chemicals was promoted as proving that everything was dead, while the alternative conclusion that everything was alive did not fit within the historical compromises that science had made with religions.) My views can eat old-fashioned religions, including books like the Bible, for breakfast, and then go on to lunch and dinner, because the mathematics of energy systems becomes a theology for me.
These days, I think that we should overcome those bad historical errors in the history of the philosophy of science, which leads one to accepting that energy is everything, and energy is alive. Furthermore, information is a form of energy, and therefore, everything is information, or manifests its own forms of consciousness in everything.
Interesting post. The lamentable point is that "consciousness" appears to possess no "conscience". Are not matter and energy the flip side of the same coin, nothing more than clay in the end? You equate the concept of Spirit with information? Surely the coin *and* the patterns are but testimony of a higher power. To me, cybernetics seems nothing but a formalized study trying to mimmic creation - it is impressive, I've had some exposure. One could argue that mimmicry is the sincerest form of flattery, but I'm not sure God would be amused (at least at present), since power tools such as cybernetics, systems science/engineering have also been used to wage war on Creation itself. The most powerful light is love, once that is understood, the whole universe will be granted you, should you desire it - but you wouldn't, at that point. Surely a Creator would desire it's offspring to follow suit - ultimately an appreciation for it's handiwork and respect for life, the vessels that hold and propogate the Spirit. But hey, I could be right.
Yes, cornfritter:
"Surely the coin *and* the patterns are but testimony of a higher power."
Indeed, NO human being is able to "know" anything but infinitesimal keyhole perceptions. However, the biggest bullies' tend to assert that their knowledge is absolute, and to then back those lies up with violence. The Bible, and similar books, were attempts to privatize God, by asserting some claims to have inside knowledge, and then back those claims up with violence: "God says so, therefore, I have the right to beat the shit out of you, if you do not agree with me." In severe conflicts, being psychotic like that can confer short-term survival advantages, because of the ways that fanatics can fight without as much fear. Therefore, the dominant organized crime gangs throughout history were dominated by the most psychopathic people. The history of warfare selected for social pyramid systems, which developed patriarchies and militarism, with their matching kinds of controlled opposition religions.
MEANWHILE ...
The human understanding of the conservation of energy, wherein matter is a form of energy, and information is a form of energy, are merely more human approximations, which may asymptotically approach that which can NEVER be captured in any finite system of understanding. Human beings are required to make "leaps of faith" inasmuch as we struggle with necessarily limits ability to measure things, wherein our efforts to measure change what we were measuring, in ways which we can never catch up to ... Everybody must do that, while the biggest bullies, by definition, are able to make the biggest leaps.
Per Revelation 17:18, the woman (Babylon the Great) is a city:
"And the woman whom you saw is that great city which reigns over the kings of the earth.”
And that "city" is metaphorical/figurative- just like the "whore" (Revelation chapters 17 & 18), and the "beast out of the sea" (Revelation 13:1-11) and the "beast out of the earth" (Revelation 13:12-18) etc, etc, etc.
Nearly all Biblical prophecy is metaphorical/figurative, whether it's Daniel, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Revelation, etc.
The Vatican: see the popes' & cardinals' quotes on the subject.
Possible, but ...
Earlier in Ch 17,
"And I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast which was full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns..." & "The ten horns which you saw are ten kings..."
The horns are a symbol which is explained as being kings, the kings are not a symbol.
In a similar manner the woman is a symbol which is revealed as a city, the city isn't necessarily a symbol.
http://www.amazon.com/World-Revolution-Plot-Against-Civilization/dp/0851...
this book is 20 years old! But it is very interesting to compare with our times!
"American consumers borrowed to spend more than they could afford. Walmart met their desires (if not their needs) with “Everyday Low Prices,” courtesy of low-paid Chinese workers."
Looks like American consumers are getting what they deserve. Ross Perot warned us over 20 years ago. If you're too young to remember - go slap your parents for not listening.
Stupidity has consequences.
While agreeing with most of what you say - Ross Perot was a poster child for crony capitalism. He built EDS (sic?) on the basis of fed contracts. Not saying that a lot of what he said was not appealing - but that is how he got his $$$. Just saying
Here's an idea: Let's invest their inheritance in financial speculation and political patronage, so that our grandchildren end up sucking Chinese dick for Chinese dollars. Oh wait, we're already doing that.
http://bornagainclassics.com/Books/Money-The-Greatest-Hoax-on-Earth-red.pdf
Perhaps you missed the 80's, mortgage rates were 11%-18%.
Not just the 80's. No matter. Like 'ole Bonner says, breaking the last link with gold was an obvious mistake. That's all you need to know.
Somebody call the police. The borders are down and Obama is sticking and enemy in America's rectitude.
There's a solution to this crisis.
If you replace "shareholder" with "owner", then your second point says "End owner control over companies". The people who want that are usually corporate executives. Too many companies have boards of directors that are overpaid along with their executive management friends and they are all hell-bent on looting the company of every last cent - the shareholders/owners are already screwed because that equity will be worthless when the company goes bankrupt.
Instead of such complicated dividend rules like you describe, a company can just buy back all their shares and go private again. But instead of doing that, companies buy back shares and give them out to employees and executives and directors like candy. And instead of employees *holding* the shares to become majority "worker-owned" (item 2.1), many of those workers sell the shares and buy other nice stuff. So will you mandate that workers must hold their shares?
Calling shareholders/owners "foxes" misses the point that most owners do not want their company to go bankrupt. Yes, some owners (especially via private equity buyouts) have mastered the art of fraudulent conveyance via debt-laden payouts to themselves. These owners should be jailed; but they never are.
Ah, those poor, poor shareholders, who have been blessed with massive S&P 500 returns from the outset of the crisis courtesy of buybacks and dividends. If the "executive management friends" are the ones who are to blame, then the blame ultimately rests with the generally wealthy/corporate shareholders, since they chose their executives.
Spain didn't recover until 1986? Uh hello, If Spain is recovered - someone ought to tell them the good news.
They use to recover by 2 in the afternoon, might be 4 now after the recession.
History shows that collapsed civilizations NEVER recover (please read Dr. Joseph Tainter's award winning "The Collapse Of Complex Societies", 1988 for case study after case study, and the why). Sometimes the pieces are picked up by a neighbor/successor state, and incorporated into a later civilization. They typically follow a bell curve, growth, peak, crisis, collapse.
"Free" Trade also factors into loss of manufacturing.
Very often if you suggest that wide open trade is not necessarily a good thing you will get the following reaction:
The other person will smile politely and then begin to talk to you in tones they might use with a 7 year old, saying that if 2 countries can trade freely and each country has a competitive advantage in producing their particular product then it is ALWAYS to both their advantages to trade. I get that. My maths is not too shabby.
The problem is when one country has a compercompetitive advantage in producing ANY product becausE they pay their workers nothing.
It also does an end run around safety regulations if the reason a country has cheap exports is because of horrible factory conditions. China is the world leader in limb re-attachment surgery. Guess why.
Unions got rid of sweatshops. Until we relocated them offshore.
the players at the global chess board are
sacrificing the queens, the pawns etc. too,
to arrive at a stale-mate. they will survive
to play another game, not so much for the rest.
just a thought.
"Americans still say they believe in free markets, democracy and financial rectitude. But only as platitudes and hypocrisies. America’s industries have largely been shipped over to China and other lower-cost producers in the emerging world."
No matter how often I am told to blame myself instead of the owners of the country for the shitty way things turned out, I never do. How long is this propaganda technique expected to keep the finger from pointing at the rich, with all their ill gotten gains?
+1,000,000,000,000
"The American Dream Part 2 - We Now Live In A "Pimpocracy"
We live in and under nothing, but tolerate the tyranny.
The other half of tyranny is obedience.
Withdraw obedience to tyranny, and tyranny withers.
The banksters need to repay us.
The Paradox of Tyranny is: Tyranny depends on those it is oppressing.
The Paradox of Liberty is: Liberty can only be killed by obedience to tyranny.
Kill Jews for fun and profit.
That is just as evil as killing Arabs for fun and profit...or killing anyone for "fun and profit" for that matter.
You must be a US Government paid troll as that is what our Government promotes and is about these days.
Now I know why my rectum has been feeling a little bruised,and swollen lately; I've been gettin' pimped out,and didn't even know it..
It must be an oversight that Greece was left off the manufacturing output graph. Not that there's reason to be smug...we don't produce shit here in 'Murica either besides low quality cars, RVs and houses made from 2x4s.
You know, a 2x4 isn't really 2"x4" ^^ usually it will endup being 1.5"x3.5" give or take.
Also whats wrong with building houses out of lumber??? shit works fine, goes up fast and its dirt cheap . . .
All that is great if your're building it. However if you're the poor sap who owns it, look out.
Yeah, like all those crappy post Civil War mansions that are the showcase homes in most cities and towns.
All stick-built out of 2X4's. Granted they were a full measure rather than a nominal size, but that imparts no strength to the overall structure. A house clad with plywood or strand board has far more wind shear resistance than a pre-WWII home clad with # 3 pine 1x12"'s. This is one of the reasons those lovely old homes with wood lathe and plaster walls and ceilings have to be continuously repaired at great expense.
Don't forget those nice fat !2x12 center girt beams that twist over the years and put permanent waves in the floors and the creaking from sub-floor planking nailed with straight shanked nails.
The real problem with new structures is the fast-growth farmed lumber used that twists like spaghetti once it is unbanded and the grab-it and nail-it style of building, rather than selecting the best studs for long walls and reserving the junk for blocking.
You're lucky 'they don't build them like they used to'.
I grew up in a house that the "new" addition was built in 1850. Mom enjoyed picking out new wallpaper every few years because Pops had to steam the old stuff off to repair the old cracked or loose plaster.
You can learn a lot from a pissed off guy who mutters as he works.
recycling is good and it is time to clean house.
"People who lie to themselves, and believe their own lies, becomes unable to recognize the truth, either in themselves or in anyone else.
And they end up losing respect for themselves and for others. When they have no respect, they can no longer love.
So they yield themselves up to their impulses, indulging in the lowest forms of pleasure, and behave in the end like a thing obsessed in satisfying their vices.
And it all comes from lying — to others and to yourself."
Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
" “THE PROBLEM FOR THE MANIPULATORS IS NOT HOW TO MANIPULATE, BUT HOW TO STOP. JUST AS WITH LYING, MORE AND MORE LIES ARE NEEDED TO COVER THE FIRST LIES, AND MORE AND MORE LIES ARE NEEDED TO COVER EACH ADDITIONAL LIE. THE LIES MUST CONTINUE NON-STOP OR THE GAME ENDS." LES TO BILL MURPHY IN LE METROPOLE CAFÉ, 15 NOVEMBER 2005 (AND A NICE EXAMPLE OF THE CREDIBILITY TRAP)
Jesse's site
You could say the flashy people are strip mining the finacial markets,
This Bill Bonner is another very prejudiced member of the elitist rich. He's trashing all Americans because our elitist overlords shredded the Constitution and rejected all of the work that the Founders of the United States put into designing a system to prevent a runaway central government from becoming the tyranny it has become today.
He is far, far out of touch with real "Americans", the people who worked, who did the hard dirty dangerous jobs, who volunteered and still volunteer to fight in Washington D. C.'s wars even though we know that American Elites know all about the Veterans Administrations callous indifference to the problems incurred during our time in uniform.
I am old enough to have known many Americans who, like me, knew that we were on the road to ruin because of government debt, the official debt and the off-balance sheet unfunded liabilities from assorted sundry commitments made by sociopathic and/or psychopathic politicians.
We could trace it all the back to the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, and then forward to President Roosevelt's massively Unconstitutional acts, whose tail risks liabilities are of a magnitude that can never be paid for, including his covert bullying of Supreme Court Justices. Another debt explosion with huge tail liabilities during psychopath President Johnson's drastic escalation of war in Vietnam and the even more dramatic plunge into liberal follies with the war on poverty, a spectacular $22 trillion FAILURE. Johnson's massive spending boom directly led to President Nixon's decision to sever the dollar from its tenuous link to gold, making it entirely a fiat currency, floating in value against all other currencies.
It is extremely negative for America that people go into politics as a life long profession and worsens by several orders of magnitude that the great majority of them are lawyers. Their combined educational backgrounds are far too narrow, their actual experience with real America is extremely skewed.
The revolving door between government, academia, corporate executives and boards of directors, and financial opportunities combined with human nature breeds short-term outlooks ripe for corruption, self-dealing, self-enrichment, doing corporations favors for bribes, future jobs or future financial compensation.
Those offering the financial incentives have goals that are generally opposite those of American workers. These are all detrimental to America in the short-term and the long-term.
We were not asked, were not consulted, our complaints ignored, protests violently suppressed by the police, when our elitist masters closed factories here and shipped everything to China and other countries.
One commenter here wrote we were all STUPID to send our jobs overseas. Maybe his IQ is even higher than mine. Maybe he would like to reveal his plan instead of keeping it secret and he could educate us using his superior intellect. Because the actions of the political class indicates that they don't care about what we want. The only way I see to affect decisions including so-called free trade agreements by the ruling Junta would be to largely remove the elite classes across the board by force.
We didn't vote to send our entire Semiconductor manufacturing industry to Malaysia, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, etc.
We didn't vote to send an entire McDonnell-Douglas commercial aircraft factory to China.
We did not vote to gut all of the companies in the Northeastern United States that used to design and manufacture products for the aerospace industry. There used to be a lot of small but excellent niche technology companies there. As there also used to be textile mills along all the streams and rivers that powered their machinery. All gone. The people are still there though largely much poorer and unemployed.
We did not vote to shutdown U. S. Steel mills, coal mines, heavy industrial factories, all the ship yards that used to supply the now non-existant American merchant marine industry.
We did not vote to send hundreds of thousands, millions, tens of millions of existing and future manufacturing jobs to China and other even poorer slave labor wage-rate countries. That's why so many Black American men are unemployed and among the ranks of the long-time unemployed whom companies consider to be unemployable. All of their jobs and the factory machinery were packed up and sent to China.
Yes, that's right. Personnel departments now routinely throw away applications of people who are unemployed. They only review applications from people who are still employed, hence their skills are current, making them still employable.
The U. S. BLS doesn't count the long-term unemployed, classifying them as having voluntarily dropped out of the work force. But, if they suddenly get a job the BLS adds them back into the workforce. No, it doesn't make any sense except for the attempt to fool people.
Yeah, so there are TENS of MILLIONS of working age who just don't want to work. So, what did they win the lottery? Or, are they part of the 50 million receiving food stamps?
The BLS does not count them as unemployed if they dropped out of the workforce. But, the BLS counts them if they find work somehow, someway.
The BLS is saying that though there are jobs for them, they just don't want to work. So where are these TENS of MILLIONS of jobs? Only about 65% of the American work force has a job, and many of those are part-time jobs. The BLS counts the worker as employed even if her job is one hour per week. That's one way BLS makes the employment market look rosier than it really is. According to John Williams ShadowStats.com real unemployment was about 23% as of September 2014.
Yeah. But, maybe it's just me. Maybe I just missed the election(s) where the People told our elected Representatives, whom are always eager to hear us out and are responsive and redress our grievances, in the Congress of our great Republic, that it would be a fabulous idea to send all of our jobs overseas or to Mexico and other Central and/or South American countries.
Amen, brother! I, too have noticed the absence of a vote on these life-changing issues. What do the elected think we are, stupid? (Rhetorical question).
We got conned just like you guys with this "hope and changy" shit. They all say one thing and do another when they get in.
This goes back a few presidents and congresses and more.
Then you get those employed by all the governments and those who feed off the system, who do you think they vote for? Why are cops pepper spraying protesters? Because the cops get paid too much. Once they are forced to the same economic level as the protesters, they will join them.
We didn't vote to send our entire Semiconductor manufacturing industry to Malaysia, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, etc.
We didn't vote to send an entire McDonnell-Douglas commercial aircraft factory to China.
We didn't vote...
Uhhhh...Excuse me?
Yes you did.
You voted everytime you purchased foreign made products over that of American made products.
You can justify your decision to do that in any way that you want. In fact some of your justifications may actually be valid reasons for doing so. (Less expensive, reliability, quality, and so on...)
But the truth remains that your demand for these goods made them marketable.
You voted with your pocketbook and you are responsible for doing that.
You could have always decided to do without and to sacrifice convenience. But you decided not to do that. It was YOUR CHOICE. It always has been your choice. It is your choice TODAY. And it will always be your choice.
Take responsibility.
So Gregga
May I ask what you and the many others who thought like you did about all that you complained!
And may I ask what are you doing about it now!
Anyway soon with the Bummer at the helm we will soon have WW3 to blame for everything. Yes of course he is a puppet. But Americans are responsible for whom they elect. And to have use their brains like you to see what is happening around them.
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/11/examining-the-big-lie-how-the-facts...
Thieving bank4ers in collusion with the government set up a system to steal from the people and transfer wealth to those who were already wealthy. When their plan took all the liquidity out and pocketed it, the "crash" was addressed by their friends in the government who began paying them off, keeping their assets inflated by denying opportunity and health to working (mostly not, now) Americans and people who live here. F&F broke bad, but so late that it is mostly owned lapdog rentier blowhards on the business channels who try to blame them. Not much use in repeating anything they mouth.
Oh, and that line above about how the government owns part of the banks because of Fannie? I think that would mean the people have some control, instead of being menu items.
Judging by the flow of donor and lobbyist's payoffs the evidence indicates instead that the bank$ters own a good number of those who run our government.
Good articles, these.
People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
yanki-cretins will get what they want, once they get rid of 18trillion debt
If that is Hillary Clinton on the right, Her makup has improved.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NavVfpp-1L4
Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here
.
pink floyd, more western
civ. blues, so true
The gold standard.
What standard does it set? What imutable base is it? Less than we imbue it with.
Gold is just one of many valuable deposits sprinkled about the earth according to geological process. At first quite worthless. Gaining value as we gained knowledge to use it. Then gained more value as we lost cognizance of the value of other things in relation.
The standard by which we should value things is their labor cost to utilize, actual utility, and then, by their scarcity. For most of human history of the use of gold, it had little actual utility. It was somewhat rare and quite shiny. Humans imbued it with more value than it was worth. It has some utility in the real world. But knowledge eventually supplants that too.
It should be obvious that gold, being inflated in value beyond it's utility and labor cost, is very prone to artificial deviation in it's contrived and percieved worth as a standard. As it has been and currently is being deviated.
Gold is as much fiat as any other currency.
A currency is as solid as is the society that backs it. The strength and depth of it's various resources. For the long term, those resources must be renewable. Otherwise there is a variable time limit on the value of that currency. Resources are all encompassing of that society. Actions are resources. They consume, produce and move resources about. Actions are a resource in themselves. The people of that society are it's base resource. They are it's gold standard. They are the economic and social intelligence that produces things of value. For themselves and others.
A society that loses track of their economic and social resources, devalues it's currency. Within and without.
If people are the base resource, try trading a couple of your kids for a new car.
Here is the trick to be a cia agent.
1) Call TurboTax
2) Answer all questions.
3) Ask For an upgrayed. codeword=Timmay
You know Brawndo is what plants and NSA agents crave.
Why Shouldn't I Work for the NSA? (Good Will Hunting)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrOZllbNarw
The fact that we are living in times of post scarcity means that these psychopaths have to find ways to induce privation among the victims. The fact that we can all see the abundance of food, material goods, and energy right in front of our faces each and every day means that they are going to have a hard time convincing people that we should all live in mud huts and bow down to worship the pharoah class.
They need a war that destroys all the means of production and returns humanity to the dark ages,
The long story could be cut short: At the heart of global financial woes is the privately held FED which sets the path for all central banks on the globe. Dismantle this private organization and subsitute it by a central bank that is fully accountable. Add some minor efforts to re-establish the US constitution. That should suffice!
"At the heart of global financial woes is the privately held FED which sets the path for all central banks on the globe."
The tail doesn't wag the dog.
Who owns the Fed? The same families that are behind the City of London, which was in existence long before the Fed, and were the ones who brought the FED into existence in 1913.
http://www.whale.to/b/m_ch6.html
Yes ... but I am convinced that blaming a handful of evil families is too simplistic. I am convinced that they too are only willing tools who are rewarded greatly for their betrayal of humanity. I believe that even among the elitists, hardly a one truly understands what they serve. They rationalize that they are somehow better or more deserving, not wanting to admit the truth, even to themselves.
Greed is a powerful corrupting force and it can be infinite.
I wonder what is included in US manufacturing. Is the mark-up in value of Apple products completely manufactured in China using 100% Asian made parts considered "manufacturing"? $50 items magically become $500 items when they cross an ocean. Is that manufacturing? I am pretty sure it is considered part of GDP. Labor arbitrage, like investment banking is paracitism, nothing more.
Like Rome our government spends so much on creating war for (more than) looting purposes that the home country suffers from the lack of needed infrastructure investment. We also suffer from the smothering parasitic government entities that suck the life out of the country and keep the people from being free, independent and investing in the future.
On has to conclude that this betrayal of humanity, like others it is by design. There is evil that is more than just greed controlling this world.
Your ANDROID is made and marked up 500% in China. ALL of your electronic gadgets are made at FOXCONN= source WIKIpedia; your WINDOZE PHONE and SURFACE-if they survive into 2016-are made there too
It has a name,it's called "cultural inbreeding".
;-D
The chart seems to indicate that the US is still slightly ahead of China in manufacturing share.
Now, China doesn't count hamburgers (and similar fast food items) a manufactured product, whereas the US does!! (just as China doesn't consider pizza a vegetable, whereas the US does - because there is enough tomato paste in it, per US Congress)
How many hamburgers are "manufactured" every year by McDonald's, Whataburger, Wendy's, Burger King, and other corporate or family owned burger joints in the US? What's their contribution to the manufacturig share?
Downstream, the 'manufacture' of cows, potatoes, chickens, and all the other ingredients that go into McDonalds et al products is likely why it is considered a manufactured product, and should be.
That doesn't answser the question of how to live on a McDonald's income or why those who must work there because they haven't the mental capacity to do well in college, in a productive major.
Destroying the value of work and savings is as corrosive as the Soviet system used to be, where work did not pay and participating the corruption was the very question. This survived three generations, so how long does it take for us................
Bitcoin and physical gold FTW.
For the Larry Kudlows of the world....who celebrate and present themselves as free marketers..but also applaude the Federal Resereve...
check yourself in for an examination....for you cant have it both ways...
The Fed, Hank and Rubin and all the Goldman folks who run the Fed and the Treasury....are the culprits. And the polititcians that enjoy the flow of money
into their pockets.
Centralized governments end this way..... the federal income tax, which initiated the massive flow of money to WA DC changed our form of govt.
For the Larry Kudlows of the world....who celebrate and present themselves as free marketers..but also applaude the Federal Resereve...
check yourself in for an examination....for you cant have it both ways...
The Fed, Hank and Rubin and all the Goldman folks who run the Fed and the Treasury....are the culprits. And the polititcians that enjoy the flow of money
into their pockets.
Centralized governments end this way..... the federal income tax, which initiated the massive flow of money to WA DC changed our form of govt.
Mass graves appears in russian teritory.
Search in google maps:
Unnamed Road, Rostov, Rostovskaya oblast', Russia
Latitude: 47.317878 | Longitude: 39.701767
https://stopputinregime.wordpress.com/2015/03/29/mass-grave-of-russian-s...
It doesn't even matter what term best describes the US government. The elections are rigged, the politicians work for bankers and corporations, stocks & bonds and precious metal prices are manipulated, local law enforcement is becoming militarized, the currency is being debased, the constitution is being ignored and our freedoms are being destroyed. Our elected officials have no ability or inclination to pay off the national debt.
The applecart in Washington D.C. will never be tipped over, we are going over the fiscal cliff. Nothing will ever be volunteerily fixed. When the shit hits the fan, you had better be prepared!
Nice piece, gives a good overview of the problem situation.