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Currency Devaluation: The Crushing Vice Of Price
Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,
Devaluation has a negative consequence few mention: the cost of imports skyrockets.
When stagnation grabs exporting nations by the throat, the universal solution offered is devalue your currency to boost exports. As a currency loses purchasing power relative to the currencies of trading partners, exported goods and services become cheaper to those buying the products with competing currencies.
For example, a few years ago, before Japanese authorities moved to devalue the yen, the U.S. dollar bought 78 yen. Now it buys 123 yen--an astonishing 57% increase.
Devaluation is a bonanza for exporters' bottom lines. Back in late 2012, when a Japanese corporation sold a product in the U.S. for $1, the company received 78 yen when the sale was reported in yen.
Now the same sale of $1 reaps 123 yen. Same product, same price in dollars, but a 57% increase in revenues when stated in yen.
No wonder depreciation is widely viewed as the magic panacea for stagnant revenues and profits. There's just one tiny little problem with devaluation, which we'll cover in a moment.
One exporter's depreciation becomes an immediate problem for other exporters: when Japan devalued its currency, the yen, its products became cheaper to those buying Japanese goods with U.S. dollars, Chinese yuan, euros, etc.
That negatively impacts other exporters selling into the same markets--for example, South Korea.
To remain competitive, South Korea would have to devalue its currency, the won. This is known as competitive devaluation, a.k.a. currency war. As a result of currency wars, the advantages of devaluation are often temporary.
But as correspondent Mark G. recently observed, devaluation has a negative consequence few mention: the cost of imports skyrockets. When imports are essential, such as energy and food, the benefits of devaluation (boosting exports) may well be considerably less than the pain caused by rising import costs.
Japan is a case in point. The massive devaluation of the yen was designed to boost Japan's exports and rocket-launch corporate profits, which was then supposed to drive a virtuous cycle of higher wages and increased employment.
But the benefits of the massive devaluation have been underwhelming. Some exporters have seen profits soar, helping to push Japan's stock market to post-1990 highs, but the effect is not universally positive.
Consider the plight of companies that must buy soybeans from the U.S. to make their food products. The cost of their raw materials just increased 50%, as a $1 of soybeans now costs 123 yen rather than 78 yen.
Given that major exporters of goods and services like China and Japan are importers of oil and food, devaluation is a ticking time bomb in terms of the cost of liquid fuels and food. The looming global recession and overinvestment in commodity production--driven by the zero-interest rate policies of the central banks--has created a temporary glut in oil and other commodities.
But as marginal producers are driven into bankruptcy or cut production, supply and demand will realign at some point. Somewhere not that far down the line, exporting nations that devalued their currency for the crack-cocaine hit of soaring revenues and profits in their home currencies will find the cost of essential imports will skyrocket while the benefits of their devaluation fade in the currency wars they instigated.
Authorities pushing currency devaluation as a cure for their stagnating economies might want to study Frederic Bastiat's insight into the eventual cost and consequences: "For it almost always happens that when the immediate consequence is favorable, the later consequences are disastrous, and vice versa.”
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When do the big alien ships show up
And start spraying the whole planet with toxic green mist?
Ohh that would be a GREAT false flag... Really scare the shit out of the serfs.
Fuck Michael Moore but this scene in Canadian Bacon is right on the money.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mon2ygEh3d8
Currency Devaluation: MASSIVE TAX ON THE PRODUCTIVE POPULATION.
Buyer/importers of Japanese products are very happy though. Some of what we buy in Japanese is cheaper than Korean.
" when the immediate consequence is favorable, the later consequences are disastrous"
the word for this is pragmatism, it means: forsaking the future for the present. and is always the wrong choice.
I like the saying that:
"Spirituality is practicality on all levels."
I think it is unfair to "pragmatism" to define it in that way that you have Four chan.
Rather, I would regard human beings and civilization as necessarily operating as general energy systems, which have some general features that manifest in particular ways through human beings. Namely, the path of least resistance in human terms is the path of least morality. While, the system being controlled by the most labile components means human systems are controlled by the most psychopathic people.
The deeper levels of built in paradoxes are that simultaneously both the best and the worst things are due to the same principle of the conservation of energy. However, within human systems, that has ended up being deliberately misunderstood in the most absurdly backward ways possible!
The deeper levels of built in paradoxes are that simultaneously both the best and the worst things are due to the same principle of the conservation of energy.
Everything in nature tends toward a stable state. Yet Radical Marijuana constantly singles out humans as tending toward an unstable state. Why would humans, which are as natural as everything else in nature, tend to be an unstable system? And what is this energy RM speaks of. Every human I have ever know is an energy sink ... not an energy source.
the path of least resistance in human terms is the path of least morality.
But morality defies definition and standardization. And we see that deceit (a low resistance attack) achieves much more than direct confrontation (a high resistance attack).
in 2016, do note hilary, vote johnny bravo instead.
The generally accepted empirical observation of the world we are living in is that it appears to be exploding, and we are living in later stages of that apparent Big Bang. While the ultimate cosmological validity of that Big Bang may well be debatable, the basic nature of human life is primarily due to the Sun Earth Space system, whereby the more concentrated energy flowing form the Sun is absorbed on the surface of the Earth, and somewhat recycled through life and consciousness, before it finally radiates back out into Space in less concentrated forms.
There is no indication that any systems actually ever achieve stability, although it is the nature of life to attempt to do so, through homeostatic mechanisms, etc. ... Of course, human beings and civilizations operate as entropic pumps of energy flows. We MUST have an environment source of energy in order to be able to transform that. Everything that we call "capitalism" is actually due to the basic ways that human beings operate as entropic pumps of energy flows. However, since that "capitalism" actually also covertly includes murder and fraud, that tends to be done through the maximum possible deceits and frauds.
Those are the reasons for how and why human civilization, which has recently developed physical science, that has enabled technologies which have become many orders magnitude more capable and powerful, are destabilizing everything such as by the ENFORCED FRAUDS operating through social pyramid systems, with access to such technology, driving irreconcilable social polarizations, which will probably be trumped by irreparable destruction of the natural world.
There is nothing in human history to compared to what is happening now. The only thing that perhaps compares with current events was the development of photosynthesis, which drove the most radical revolutions in living systems there have ever yet been.
I do not agree that "morality defies definition." Natural selection commensurates the apparently incommesurables, and so do human systems of artificial selection, through the longer term results of what survives, and what does not. (After life exists, it is the death controls that direct the evolution of that life.) In my view, the source of all morality is the conservation of energy. Meanwhile, most of the dominate theories of what is moral are based upon historical circumstances that no longer exist, and therefore, most of those old-fashioned "moralities" have become absurdly backwards.
The basic paradoxes are due to ways that nothing else exists than the dynamic equilibria between different systems of organized lies operating robberies, which systems have become extremely UNBALANCED due to the degree to which some of those systems of ENFORCED FRAUDS, i.e., the bankster dominated governments, have become way too overwhelmingly successful at doing that, which is matched by more than 99% of the rest of the people acting like incompetent political idiots regarding the public "money" supply.
I base all of my opinions upon my understanding of general energy systems, and their evolutionary ecologies, which operate consistently with thermodynamics and information theory, EXCEPT, I point out that the concept of entropy had its meaning reversed, when an arbitrary minus sign was inserted into the entropy equations, in order that that presentation of power and information could remain consistent with the biggest bullies' bullshit world view. My world view is based upon creative synthesis between post-modernizing science with ancient mysticism. I.e., ENERGY IS SPIRIT, while entropy is the scientific Satan, or that entropy is the scientific way to understand evil, which our society deliberately misunderstands in the most absurdly backward ways possible, due our society having been based on the history of warfare, whose successfulness was based upon deceits and treacheries, which then morphed to become financial success based upon ENFORCED FRAUDS.
Human beings necessarily live as robbers in their environment, as soon as we define them as separate from their environment. As soon as we define boundaries that subtract human beings, or civilizations, from their environment, then across those boundaries they must TAKE energy in order to live, which TAKING in basic English is ROBBERY. The original subtraction of human beings from their environment is a relative lie, or an illusion. But nevertheless, after that subtraction, then those human beings and their systems must then necessarily live as more or less organized systems of those lies operating robberies. Hence, all private property is based on staking claims, and backing those up with coercions, while money is measurement backed by murder, as the most abstract form of how information and power manifests through human beings.
Of course, I do NOT have any answers for the ultimate questions such as why does anything exist, rather than nothing at all? But nevertheless, after being granted the primary miracle that energy exists, and was relatively concentrated into the Sun, as well as concentrated somewhat into the Earth, then the flow of energy from the Sun, through the Earth, back out into Space is the basic condition of life on planet Earth (now with industrialization added to that, which added lesser inputs from other relatively concentrated forms of energy that were already on Earth.)
The basic chemistry of life on Earth has been photosynthesis and respiration, for a long, long time. That basic chemistry is relatively well-understood. The potential of that kind of energy, given the flow of energy from the Sun, to Earth, and back out to Space, developed series of evolutionary ecologies, within which human beings evolved. However, human beings, through progress in physical science, have developed the industrial revolutions, which now include things like global electronic frauds, backed by the threat of force from atomic bombs. NONE of those have had any time to develop some new evolutionary ecologies to balance out. Instead, those new powers and capabilities are driving extreme imbalances everywhere one looks!
Perhaps in the longer term some sort of new evolutionary ecologies will balance out the emerging systems. However, at the present time we are rushing at exponential rates into the unknown futures, which have nothing to compare them to but the development of photosynthesis, in terms of how profoundly radical and revolutionary could that progress in physical science and technologies eventually become ... IF that technologically based civilization survives its own contradictions.
What I am doing by presenting my kind of world view is attempting to develop a philosophy of science that may enable a technological civilization to survive its own inherent contradictions, which are due to social pyramid systems based on backing up lies with violence becoming amplified to astronomical sizes by progress in physical science ... while, at the same time, political science has gone nowhere, because for political science to progress it would have to go through profound paradigm shifts, which would have to admit and address how and why governments are the biggest forms of organized crime, controlled by the best organized gangs of criminals, which are currently the international banksters, in ways which stopped relying upon the old-fashioned dualities of false fundamental dichotomies, and the related impossible ideals, but rather, started using unitary mechanisms more, in ways which were as consistent as possible with understanding human beings and civilizations as general energy systems, in ways which were consistent with understanding both natural and industrial energy systems.
Ideally, that would enable the development of better integrated human, industrial and natural ecologies. However, at the present time, we have fundamentally fraudulent financial accounting systems, based upon ENFORCED FRAUDS, which get away with deliberately ignoring the laws of natural as much as possible, due to the ways that those are ENFORCED FRAUDS, that operate through small minorities being specialized at backing up lies with violence, while the larger majorities adapted to that by becoming ignorant and afraid.
In that context, it is the international banksters that are pulling the strings that are controlling national central banks to be manipulated into doing things that the banksters want to be done, within those banksters overall longer-term agenda. Therefore, currency devaluations are aspects of the "races to the bottom," which overall fits inside of the context whereby less than 1% of the population covertly controls civilization, while more than 99% act like incompetent political idiots.
The generally accepted empirical observation of the world we are living in is that it appears to be exploding, and we are living in later stages of that apparent Big Bang.
That observation is of red shift. But in observing a galaxy with nearby quasars having an obvious effect on a galaxy, the galaxy has red shift but the quasar doesn't. Please explain!
As I said, withglee,
I do not necessarily believe in the overall Big Bang explanation.
But nevertheless, in the human world, the basic chemistry of life is clear. Moreover, the theory of quantum mechanics has been extremely confirmed, so far, by all experiments, as is demonstrated by the existence of all the fancy electronic gadgets. Similarly, the basic special theory of relativity has been very strongly confirmed by experiments, as well as by the fact that atomic bombs go boom!
I do NOT assert that we fully understand astrophysics and cosmology. In fact, I am sure that there are lots of anomalous counter-examples that demonstrate that we do not, and so, there are many plausible alternatives to the Big Bang theory. However, my points are that the basic science with respect to human lives, as animals eating other animals and plants, is relatively well-understood, as is the science that enables our machines to operate. One does not need perfect cosmology in order to deal with the basic social, biological and physical facts about human beings, and industrialization. The basic theories of thermodynamics and information theory work relatively well to explain evolutionary ecologies. Similarly those work relatively well to explain human beings and civilizations.
However, that raises some extremely problematic results, since when one thinks more critically about those things, one comes to the conclusions that I have outlined above, namely, that human beings DO follow general energy systems, BUT, do so in ways which are extremely entangled, due to how and why human murder systems were most socially successful by being the most deceitful and treacherous, which means that the biggest bullies' bullshit world view dominates everything, such as the dominate natural languages, as well as the dominate philosophy of science, despite the result of that becoming that we are living in a social pyramid system which is based on backing up lies with violence, which means we are living inside of a Wonderland Matrix, Bizarro Mirror World, where everything appears to be absurdly backwards. The most extreme and most politically important way that manifests is through the monetary and taxation systems being governments ENFORCING FRAUDS by privately controlled banks, in ways which are about 99% triumphant, which requires that about 99% of the general population behave like incompetent political idiots, which is the background to the basic issue of currency devaluation inside of that MAD Money As Debt system.
None of that is too mysterious, once one is willing and able to face the social facts that the history of successful warfare was based upon backing up deceits with destruction. What I am endeavouring to do is develop a general theory which can consistently explain how and why human beings and civilizations operate as energy systems, in manners which most closely match the principles and methods of organized crime. I find that approach to be able to best reconcile the empirical with the theoretical, in ways which could best advance more genuine political science, in ways which remained as consistent as possible with the current physical and biological science.
I am NOT asserting that I fully understand the basic mysteries of the universe. (Actually, I believe that is impossible.) However, I am asserting that is possible to better understand human beings and civilizations as manifestations of general energy systems, (after allowing for the ways that the dominance of the biggest bullies' bullshit world view has proportionately distorted the history of science, the same as every other social enterprise has become distorted, due to the accumulating effects of social successes based on backing up lies with violence, which shows up in the most abstract way as how the meaning of entropy by inverted, when an arbitrary minus sign was inserted.)
What I am endeavouring to do is present as consistent as possible a reconciliation of the theories of natural selection with how those selected for the currently existing human artificial selection systems. I believe that is vital to developing a better overall approach to political economy, within which the central social facts that should be explained are how and why the established systems are based on governments ENFORCING FRAUDS by privately controlled banks, in ways which the overwhelming vast majority of people tend to want to remain deliberately ignorant about.
Zero Hedge content is far superior to the information available on the mass media, which tends to operate by massive lying by omission regarding the MAD Money As Debt systems. However, at the same time, the content on Zero Hedge tends to only present superficially correct analysis of that MAD Money As Debt system, and therefore, there only tends to be presented a typical variety of superficial "solutions," which are bogus because those remain too superficial. While the material published on Zero Hedge is usually way better than that presented in the mass media, in my view, that material continues to not endeavour to develop a more scientific way to reconcile the information and power aspects of the combined money/murder systems, within the more abstract mathematical physics which attempts to explain how information and power work, as manifestations through general energy systems.
As I repeat, there ARE globalized electronic frauds, backed by the threat of the force of atomic bombs, regarding which most of the established theories about political economy are ridiculously old-fashioned, because they make no attempts whatsoever to reconcile political economy with evolutionary ecology. Of course, the main reasons for avoiding doing that are what I have already repeated in many of my other comments, namely, one has to focus on how the debt controls were actually backed by the death controls, and therefore, the political economy is actually based on ENFORCING FRAUDS, which is precisely what the ruling classes, as well as their controlled opposition groups, and thus, the vast majority of people, continue to want to deliberately ignore and deny, rather than understand any better.
Radical Marijuana:
As I said, withglee,
I do not necessarily believe in the overall Big Bang explanation.
Well, you sure abandoned that piece of your double talk quickly.
Moreover, the theory of quantum mechanics has been extremely confirmed, so far, by all experiments, as is demonstrated by the existence of all the fancy electronic gadgets.
Electronic gadgets are evidence of quantum mechanics? Isn't one of the precepts of QM that an object can be in two different places at the same time ... that two objects can be in the same place at the same time?
How many cases have we had in history of so-called science where getting the math wrong they came up with more complicated explanations of what they don't understand? Copernicus of course comes to mind. Global warming is a current incarnation of such scientific nonsense.
I did not "abandon double talk."
The Big Bang theory is one of the plausible theories about the possible origin of the universe that we now observe. Similarly, there are plausible alternative theories of how the universe that we can observe may end:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYc8iRyL7YU
The End of the Universe: Big Crunch, Big Chill or Big Rip?
Of course, there seems NO end to the possible ideas!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bATyoYzlObY
NOVA: The Fabric of the Cosmos - Universe or Multiverse?
Quantum Mechanics only significantly applies to extremely small things. Although it theoretically also applies to bigger things, the effects in those case would be too tiny to measure. Yet still, those theories work extremely well to explain extremely small things like electrons, and therefore, enable electronic engineering, which in turn depends upon information theory, which again is based on mathematical physics that directly emerged out of the history of thermodynamics. More and more it is demonstrated that power and information are literally a continuum.
Of course there are LOTS of examples in the history of science where paradigms were overthrown and replaced by others, such as famously documented by Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. The Copernican Revolution was merely one phase of that historical process. Science is more of a method or a process, rather than a finished product. Indeed, the mathematical logic itself demonstrates that it is NOT possible for any finite description of the universe to be both complete and consistent at the same time. Anything that human beings "know," they only "knew" through an original SUBTRACTION, which was never absolute, but only relative, and therefore, automatically, necessarily, a relative illusion or a lie. EVERYTHING THAT HUMAN BEINGS "KNOW" ARE NECESSARILY RELATIVE LIES.
The basic theory of global warming based on greenhouse gas mechanisms is still valid basic science. The background problems were due to the funding of science having an ulterior agenda, which caused some scientists to deliberately ignore factors regarding the overall climate, especially disregard the changes in the Sun and Earth magnetic fields. Hence, that climate is way more complicated does not mean that global warming threats were totally nonsense, only that some people pretended to know things for sure, when they actually did not understand those things all that well. Humans blamed for climate change had an ulterior agenda, and that was possible to advance because there was some science to back that up. The problems with that approach were that it deliberately ignored other factors, due to the biased effects of the funding of scientists, which has distorted all of science, the same as every other social enterprise.
My main point is that we can be relatively certain that governments are ENFORCING FRAUDS by privately controlled banks. That is the context in which phenomena like currency devaluations may take place. My original criticisms of the article above where its approach was too superficial, because it does not examine the degree to which civilization is almost totally dominated by organized crime. The GREAT PARADOXES with respect to science are that society is overall controlled by backing up lies with violence. It was within that overall context, of social pyramid systems, that the relative progress in physical science has driven so many of our problems to get worse, faster, because technologies primarily get used to become better at backing up lies with violence.
The scientific enterprise is a social enterprise, and therefore, suffers from all of the distortions that society generally does, because of the history of the biggest bullies being able to promote their bullshit to become the dominate social stories, that most people were brainwashed to believe, for generation after generation. Meanwhile, my feeling, withglee, is that you appear to noy bother to learn more about the history of science, but rather like to stay with your superficial views. Therefore, I presume you will continue to never bother to look more deeply into what I have been attempting to communicate. In that regard, you are like the vast majority of other human beings, who are mostly acting like "urban barbarians" that use cell phones, etc., but never bother to learn about the history of the science that was behind that, and therefore, for instance, never consider the possible health risks from that kind of technology. That fits into the overall social situation that most people care about making and spending "money" inside the social system that they most take for granted, while they tend to NOT be interested in the real source of that "money" supply. The vicious spirals of money and politics have distorted the development of science, however, that does not mean there is no science, but that only science is a social enterprise that suffers the same fate as all societies do, namely the ability of the biggest bullies to promote their bullshit. That apples more to "money" than anything else that I am currently aware of, which then also results in that applying through the monetary system to pretty well everything else to varying degrees.
Money is a human symbol, which fits into the overall context of power and information. There is LOTS of good science which has been done regarding those. However, when one does that more rigorously, one discovers more clearly how and why civilization operates according to the principles and methods of organized crime, which is the real context in which national central banks, et alia, manipulate their currencies. That deceit and fraud can be socially successful does not violate the laws of nature. However, that can make understanding the relationships between human laws and natural laws way more difficult.
One of the most INTENSE PARADOXES is that warfare was the oldest and best developed form of social science, and social engineering. That does not stop that from still being science and engineering, but does make understanding that way more difficult. That then also applies to political economy based upon ENFORCED FRAUDS, which is the context in which all of the various national currencies actually exist at the present time.
Uhhh, okay.
Fresca?
I would prefer another beer.
As Dr. Ron Paul said, inflation is the most devious tax.
it allows the fed to steal silently, so far for a century, the tribes "system" is working perfectly.
You mean -- more than one Yellen, spraying that toxic green stuff all around? One is enough...
If only we had a one-world, paperless currency on RFID chips... That would end all the shenanigans. It should all be run by benevolent banking families that always have the best interest of the people in mind.
That sounds like a great idea. Um, wait. I have a few questions.....
"Hello, NWO regional office? NoDebt has questions, turn his chip off."
Questions? Here step into this black box and all your questions will be answered.
You won't feel a thing....well...maybe a slight poking sensation in your....oh nevermind.
Here's hoping the Chinese devalue the Yuan soon. I need more plastic crap at discount prices.
Its astounding the lengths TPTB are going through to keep this bullshit alive...truly astounding.
It's not astounding. Corporate oligarchs have made their fortunes by ensuring that alternatives to their products do not exist. If they don't keep the bullshit alive, most places don't have anything to fall back on. Just think about what portion of our food depends on giants like Monsanto, Kraft and other industrial agriculture giants. What does the US have to fall back on in that area? As fucked up as our food supply is, if you take the major players out, we're all fucked, rich or poor, unless you are one of the few who have taken steps to protect yourself against such an event.
And that's just food. What about the companies who make the parts that pump your water? Or companies that deal in transportation? What happens to them if a couple of the world's larger iron ore producers go under? How long until transport grinds to a halt? You had better hope that it takes longer than a couple of years, to give people time to adjust to growing their own veggies and maybe picking up a trade craft, like spinning and weaving.
So yeah, the world is bullshit, however, there is no safety net. It must continue, yet it cannot.
.
The Mad Max scenario doesn't seem too far fetched..
Yes, El Vaquero!
On every level.
The single simplest symbol, and most extreme particular example, is hemp. Hemp seeds are the best plant source for human nutrition generally, and since that is a plant source, it also could be the cheapest source of protein and oil. Of course, therefore, the corporate oligarchs, or the banksters and their buddies, promoted the propaganda referred to as "reefer madness," that re-branded hemp as being "marijuana which is almost as bad and murder," in order to criminalize all cannabis cultivation.
Those huge legalized lies, backed up for decade after decade by legalized violence, were also one of the examples of Bastiat's general observations regarding how non-linear systems operate:
By making the single best plant on the planet for people, for food, fiber, fun and medicine, become illegal, that enabled the creation of an enormous black market. 75% of the "War on Drugs" was the war on marijuana. That history enabled the original creation of the Mexican Drug Cartels. Those Mexican Drug Cartels were in fact primarily the result of the American banksters and their buddies criminalizing cannabis.
Black market marijuana money became the backbone of organized crime, which subsidized the development of those organizations, which enabled them to diversify into other forms of organized crime, such as human smuggling, built on top of the previously established systems of drug smuggling. It is arguable that the enormous problems that America now has with illegal immigration was a kind of blowback from transforming hemp into marijuana (a Mexican slang word). In the USA, the original marijuana laws were a cover to attack Mexicans in the USA. However, that strategy has backfired badly, in the manner described by Bastiat.
The overall situation is that our civilization is based on being able to back up lies with violence, which became systems of legalized lies, backed by legalized violence, which now encompasses about 99% of everything that governments everywhere in the world actually are doing. Therefore, the same fundamental problems exist everywhere, and are everywhere automatically getting worse, faster!
BEING ABLE TO BACK UP LIES WITH VIOLENCE HAS ENABLED EVERYTHING TO BECOME BASED ON INTEGRATED SYSTEMS OF ENFORCED FRAUDS, WHICH ALL SUFFER FROM THE UNDERLYING PROBLEM THAT BEING ABLE TO ENFORCE FRAUDS NEVER STOPS THOSE FRAUDS FROM BEING FALSE.
That civilization is actually based on the applications of the methods of organized crime is the real reason why we are living in a civilization that has developed runaway criminal insanities, which are headed towards psychotic breakdowns. Corporate oligarchs have made their fortunes by ensuring that alternatives to their products do not exist, by capturing the powers of governments to create integrated systems of legalized lies, backed by legalized violence, regarding practically everything, everywhere, which means that ALL OF THAT SUFFERS FROM THOSE INTENSE PARADOXES THAT BEING ABLE TO ENFORCE FRAUDS NEVER STOPS THOSE FRAUDS FROM BEING FALSE.
In my view, that is why the article above by Hugh-Smith was merely another typical installment of the stream of articles republished on Zero Hedge which are superficially correct, but otherwise profoundly wrong. As you suggested, El Vaquero, "It's not astounding." It is NOT due to incompetent stupidity, but rather due to the established systems having a core of organized crime, surrounded by layers of controlled opposition. The layers of controlled opposition, namely the banksters' political puppets, and enough of the masses of muppets that vote for them, may well be acting in ways which are based on incompetent stupidity. However, the deeper reasons for that are the core of organized crime being competent at conducting their organized crimes, especially including controlling their apparent "opposition."
We are NECESSARILY stuck in the vicious spiral ruts of the biggest bullies backing up their bullshit. The established systems are ubiquitously and pervasively based upon ENFORCING FRAUDS, which are automatically becoming more psychotic every day, since no amount of violence ever makes lies stop being false, although that violence can make sure that those lies become the dominate social stories, to the degree to which that bullshit almost totally dominates ALL sociopolitical institutions, which are ALL operated by the best available professional liars and hypocrites.
The deeper levels of that always trace back to the same SOURCES, namely, social successfulness in the short-term being based upon backing up deceits with destruction, which enabled the financial systems to become based upon ENFORCED FRAUDS. Absolutely everything, everywhere, that our civilization is doing is being done through fundamentally fraudulent financial accounting systems. Moreover, the degree to which that is the case also means that there is no publicly significant real opposition to that!
In my view, our civilization has become runaway psychotic criminal insanities, due to natural selection pressures selecting for human artificial selection systems to become most socially successful when done through the maximum possible deceits and frauds. In each short-term increment, success in warfare, and then success in economics, was based upon successful applications of the principles and methods of organized crime, by being able to back up lies with violence, which automatically become worse, faster, so that those rapidly becomes almost inconceivably crazy and corrupt.
While those were always the ways that things worked, namely, the biggest bullies were able to most promote their bullshit, and beat up everyone else who would not agree with that bullshit, the progress in physical science has enabled those systems based upon ENFORCED FRAUDS to become globalized electronic frauds, backed by the threat of force from atomic bombs. The deeper levels of those problems were always the chronic political problems inherent in the nature of life, which were the reasons that there were natural selection pressures, which have selected for human beings and civilizations to become based on being able to back up lies with violence, which have been amplified to astronomically proportioned sizes by progress in physical science.
Ideally, we should go through paradigm shifts in the ways that we perceive political problems that surpass those that already achieved in physical science. However, since the human world is almost totally dominated by systems run by the best available professional hypocrites, both inside the core organized crime gangs, such as the bankster controlled governments, as well as throughout all of their various controlled opposition groups, it is practically impossible to imagine human beings and civilization pulling out of their madly self-destructive dive into their self-created black holes based on ENFORCING FRAUDS.
Currency Devaluation operates inside of systems whereby the public "money" supplies are created out of nothing as debts, which can also disappear back to nothing, when those debts are discharged. Inside of the MAD Money As Debt system, too much "money" created out of nothing results in what is called inflation, while too much "money" disappearing back to nothing results in what is called deflation. The background facts were that "money" was being created out of nothing in order to "pay" for strip-mining the planet's natural resources. There usually was almost always slightly too much of that "money" being created out of nothing, and therefore, there used to almost always be relatively constant rates of inflation.
At the present time, for the first time in known human history, the globalized systems based on being able to strip-mine the natural resources of a fresh planet at an exponential rate are running into real limits of diminishing returns from being able to do that, which is resulting in various counter-intuitive deflations and devaluations, because the first and foremost place that those problems of not being able to continue to strip-mine the planet at an exponential rate show up are within the fundamentally fraudulent financial accounting systems which enabled doing that.
The world's political economy is based upon ENFORCED FRAUD, which is stuck inside of its Catch 22 double-bind paradox that:
I pooped today and got to wipe my ass with real toilet paper. Sorry Venezuela, we're not using fiat ........yet.
Sorry Doc, digital fiat is not even good for wiping one's ass.
So a country has to have exports that far exceed it's imports for devaluation to work? Given that the US imports a vast amount of goods dollar wise, shouldn't we be trying to strengthen our currency? Isn't one way to strengthen a currency deflation? If so, why the constant droning about how good inflation is?
I may be an ignorant redneck but that doesn't mean I'm wrong.
Strong dollar = cheap imports
Weak dollar = servicing debt
Why are you even giving the dollar a chance?
Who said I was giving it a chance? We live in a consumer economy where a strong dollar is needed for consumers to consume foreign crap, yet we have a debt load that is too high for a strong dollar to survive. Take your pick, because one has to die first: The consumer economy or the debt load. The other surely won't be far behind.
In a race to the bottom, the biggest turd usually wins.
Unless it's a floater
most dense*
hey, it's Johnny Bravo........ remember.... way back...Johnny Bravo !
Yup! Gown Kick Ass!
What country inflates its currency and charges no tariff on imports?
That is one dumb country.
Sounds like they want to commit economic suicide.
So sorry, but the investor class will not save this dumb country.
It's too dumb to save.
Johnny is the perfect mascot for this dumb country.
Print MOAR. Daddy needs new wallpaper. I can do one room in dollars, one in yen and the other in euros.
There's an old book "The Cost of Something For Nothing." Relevant.
Another BS ZH article by an armchair analyst.I lived in Japan 10 years and just came back from a 2 week trip.The following are price comparisons to my home on the West Coast of N. America. 1. Sit down lunch of pasta& salad $4 in Japan including tax &tip, $10+ for me. 2. Gasoline: 20% cheaper in Japan. 3. Cheapest can of 1oz beer: $1.50 in Japan $2.25 for me. 4. 30 min. Express train ride: $2.80 in Japan $4.50 for me. 5. Print scan and email 5 page document at convenience store: $1.80 in Japan $6.72 for me. 6. Even Starbucks Japan has to provide coffee refills ($1.60) because competitors do.Conclusion: this writer us full of shit. Another time waster on ZH.