This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
The Sun Chairman, What's Future Is Prologue, And Why The Second French Revolution Is Coming To America
For our closing post of the day we once open the floor to Sean Corrigan who proves that just when we thought all historical comparisons to the current deplorable economic miasma have been used up, a new one springs up, this time perhaps the one most indicative not so much of the past but of the future. Indeed, if history is any indication, and it is, America's catastrophic and untenable position is worse than even that of one Louis XIV, better known as "The Sun King", whose rule set the stage for the downfall of the French monarchy and which ultimately culminated with the French Revolution of 1789. For arguably the best indication of historical parallels to the present, and yet another confirmation that there really is nothing new in this world, especially in the world of central planning of monetary affairs, we present the following summary of the practices of Louis XIV which is verbatim applicable to the actions of the current central planning cartel: "The administration of the finances appears to have practised a subtle and ingenious tactic… [and] by modifications in the monetary unit, attempted to influence economic phenomena. Changes… were made to prepare for the issue of loans or to audit the circulation of the treasury notes, or to regulate exchange, to modify the balance of trade… to effect a redistribution of wealth, to influence the price level of commodities, perhaps to attenuate economic crises and famines…"
It may come as a surprise to some that the very same type of central planning that Bernanke, and his central banking brethren, are trying to inflict (and failing) upon the world, was the same that was attempted on so many occasions in history, most poignantly, and catastrophically in the late stages of the French monarchy. Needless to say the attempts by one man to control a far simpler French economy well over two centuries ago failed, yet ironically, not even then did the economy reach our current level of collapse. Which begs the question: how long until our own "Sun Chairman" finally forces the hundreds of millions of great unwashed out of their hypnotic trance following the realization that their "equity" in the great American experiment, their pensions, lifetime accrued benefits, retirement funds, and of course savings, have been completely wiped out, and another historic 'storming', only this time not of the Bastille, but of the Marriner Eccles building, the focal point of all that is broken with not only America but the world, finally ensues. Just as over 200 years ago, the longer the wait, the greater the ultimate loss for the working class... and the bloodier the ultimate outcome for the modern day iteration of the clergy and aristocracy, also known as contemporary politicians and bankers. And to those saying we are getting ahead of ourselves, we borrow a phrase from the lexicon of unconventional wisdom: "this time is never different."
From Sean Corrigan: If It's Broke, Don't Fix It
In Elgin Groseclose’s magisterial ‘Money and Man’, the following, eerily contemporary quote appears in his chapter on paper money:-
“The administration of the finances appears to have practised a subtle and ingenious tactic… [and] by modifications in the monetary unit, attempted to influence economic phenomena. Changes… were made to prepare for the issue of loans or to audit the circulation of the treasury notes, or to regulate exchange, to modify the balance of trade… to effect a redistribution of wealth, to influence the price level of commodities, perhaps to attenuate economic crises and famines…”
So, we are told, wrote Albert Despaux of the practices of the French regime under Louis XIV during the final, disastrous twenty-five years of his reign. Indeed, upon first examining the accounts, after seven decades of chronic warfare and costly ritual, the incoming administration was to discover that matters were even more dire than they had originally been led to believe – even without a helpful Wall St. broker-dealer to help anyone cook the books beforehand.
As the Duc de Noailles – the new chief of the Council of Finance– wrote to the dead king’s chief concubine, in the autumn of 1715:
“We have found matters in a more terrible state than can be described; both the king [i.e., the ‘public sector’] and his subjects ruined; nothing paid for several years; confidence entirely gone. Hardly ever has the monarchy been in such a condition, though it has several times been near its ruin.”
Plus ça change, one cannot refrain from remarking.
Though we must factor a larger margin of error into his accounts than we must apply to even our own governments’ dubious estimates, it seems that the sunset of le Roi Soleil was accompanied by an annual expenditure of the order of 236 million livres – of which some 86 million was interest payable on the debt – against which revenues of only some 150 million livres could be found. Total debt amounted to perhaps 3 billion livres, implying an average interest rate just south of 3% which is, ironically, much the same as that enjoyed by Uncle Sam today.
The annual deficit, therefore, amounted to some 43% of revenue, or 30% of outlays – still below the Bernholz accelerating inflation threshold of 66% and 40%, respectively, even if not exactly a testimony of rude fiscal health. Things had been deteriorating for quite some time before this, so that, overall, the grand Bourbon’s debt rose twentyfold in thirty years. By way of comparison, the imperial presidency in Washington has allowed its own count of obligations to climb a not wholly incomparable fifteenfold in a like period of time.
It is of note, then, that the abject financial state to which Louis’ vainglory had reduced his realm compares fairly favourably with that produced by a similar threescore years-and-ten of military welfarism in his successors’ populist republic, where the latest €150bln deficit represents 54% of receipts and 35% of expenditures – and the old satyr‘s performance looks even more attractive beside the newly ex-AAA United States’ tally of 60% and 38%.
Moreover, whereas the currency doctoring of which Despaux so disapproved was the culmination of a 66-year process during which the livre was devalued 40% in terms of gold and 35% in terms of silver (for a mean inflation rate of 0.8%!), that same proportionate loss of gold value has occurred to the livre’s paper descendants in just the last sixteen-eighteen months – much less the last six-seven decades. Moreover, in the same, two-generation period up to the present, the US dollar has lost 98% of its gold and over 99% of its silver value, with the franc putting up an even poorer showing beside it.
Even in CPI terms, the US dollar buys only 8% of what it did in 1945, a 3.8% annualized drop whose overall extent it has taken successive French governments something of the order of fifty years to accomplish at the compounded 4.7% rate prevailing in l’Hexagone.
The consequences of the penury of the early eighteenth-century French state are well known to students of human folly, for these were the all-too familiar circumstances in which the regent, the personally extravagant Duc d’Orleans - eschewing both politically unpalatable alternatives of swingeing austerity or outright default - turned to the twisted, Scots genius of John Law, that patron saint of underconsumptionist currency quacks and the honorary founding-father of latter-day central banking.
The broad thrust of the insanity and wastefulness unleashed by this pecuniary Pandora are perhaps too well known to bear overmuch repetition here, but what should be emphasised is that Law – like Bernanke – at first tried to argue that he was not some crude inflationist, but merely arranging an asset-swap of paper money for mortgages. He also held, like all of his ilk who have succeeded him, that the panacea for a nation groaning under an insupportable burden of debt and famished for a lack of productive capital was the emission of more and more money.
This age old error of confusing the medium of exchange with the object of exchange is one we continue to commit. It as if a man’s thirst can be slaked by giving him a box of drinking straws or his appetite sated by kitting him out with a shopping basket.
Soon, enough, for all his astuteness, the malign side-effects of Law’s scheme made themselves felt, not the least of them, the distress occasioned to the ordinary household by the rising price of necessities in a world simultaneously subject to the blatant vulgarities of the rising mob of instant, speculative ‘millionaires’ (as the new phrase had it). Just as we have learned all over again, such disadvantages came rapidly to overwhelm the largely incidental fillip the inflation accorded to genuine economic activity.
Unabashed, our Caledonian conjuror could only plunge ever further into a maze of bewildering – and often contradictory – expedients of his own construction, blurring the lines between state debt and public equity, between common stock and bank money; banning, then re-instating the use of gold and silver and altering their official parities with mind-numbing speed until all trust in his System – its specious virtues so recently extolled to the heavens – collapsed and France lay broken alongside it.
So, too, do we – the voluntary legatees of John Law – face a world which is seemingly broken, in its turn.
Sauve qui peut!
With the PR-man’s trained ear for a catchy phrase, that emptiest of empty suits, UK PM David Cameron declared, in the aftermath of this week’s appalling display of mass barbarism, that society in the unhappy land over which he shakily exercises power was ‘broken’ – to the ill-concealed schadenfreude of much of the continental press, many of whose own cities still bear the scars of similar irruptions of the Noble Savages whom their Provider States have so successfully reared in the moral wasteland of their sprawling favelas and seething bainlieues.
Painted in oscillating shades of red and green on our dealing screens, we can also see the full, epileptic frenzy of our broken financial markets, no longer evidence of the rational allocation of hard-spared capital to the enriching process of patient and diligent entrepreneurship, but a wild, computer-driven video arena where countless billions swarm into and out of the sea of tickers from one micro-second to the next, with each successive ebb and flow of this leveraged flood further reducing the informational content of the associated prices and so defeating the very purpose of the capital market itself.
Many disparate classes of ‘assets’ had spent eight months trading ever more closely bound to one another on the wave of Bernanke’s last, fatuous, Rooseveltian ‘experiment’ of QEII. So it was that the expiry of that nakedly cynical programme, at a time when the underlying macro-data had rather predictably started to turn sour, left a vacuum behind the broken-record promises of the stock promoters. Unfortunately, the milling Herd to whose members they exist to whisper their blandishments – much like Nature herself – absolutely abhors a vacuum.
A long time ago, we first wrote about what we had come to recognise as the bipolar tendency of financial orthodoxy to undergo opposing, Kuhnian revolutions of its Groupthink every six to twelve months, or so.
Typically, the players first persuade themselves of the validity of an often arbitrary, but usually bullish, scenario which, by dint of constant repetition and uncritical mimicry comes not only to serve as a dogma, but one which each believer professes to have discovered for himself. Along the way, all objective data and governmental statistics which can possibly be construed to support this scenario are talked up and re-transmitted in confirmation of the first idea: those which cannot be so re-interpreted are simply ignored as ‘outliers’ by all except the small cluster of much-derided contrarians and habitual Cassandras.
Eventually, as the trend matures and its espousal becomes near universal, it begins to lose its onward momentum. Now, for the first time, the dissonant evidence, which has long been accumulating, begins to excite a certain uneasiness in the Jungian mass consciousness.
Finally, the trend turns – sometimes to, but often absent, the accompaniment of some unanimously-recognised trigger event – and the first losses start to be taken by those latecomers caught in the reversal. As each successively lesser, Greater Fool sells out, cursing himself that he always buys the top, as he does, he encourages another of this time’s Smart(er) Money men to quit while he’s ahead, too. So, each initial trickle dislodges more and more of those clinging precariously to the edges of a now-vertiginous slope below, until the first, trivial setback snowballs its way into a screaming avalanche of head-in-the-hands liquidation.
Now, at this point of maximum dislocation and mental discomfort, all those inconvenient developments which should have long since called the move into question are suddenly rediscovered and - lo! – they crystallise instantly into the foundational themes of a counter-trend of equal and opposite conviction.
Sadly for them, the earlier naysayers will find no belated applause for being right, being despised for their pusillanimous refusal to play the game if they say, ‘I told you so’ and being anyway doomed to seeing their premature insights co-opted shamelessly – and without the slightest attribution - by the post hoc rationalisations of a consensus-hugging crowd soon avidly blowing themselves an anti-bubble to replace the inflated soapskin of ill-starred hope which has just imploded all around them.
So it has been here, too, with the Shock! Horror! Hoocoodanode? of the downwardly-revised US GDP numbers; the farce of the WWF grand slam which was the Federal budget dispute; and the ritual slaying of the sacred cow of that nation’s undeserved prime credit rating.
Up until that point even the yawning cracks opening up around the foundations of the Eurozone could largely be ignored in the eagerness to buy a small section of Blue Sky, but, once sufficient self-doubt was ignited in some corner of that Gordian tangle of correlated and cross-margined trade in which the near-free leverage of QE-II had enmeshed everyone, that ongoing turmoil also became one of the defining features of the new bearishness and its expression in market pricing became violently intensified as a result.
So the first sparks of panic were struck to find a ready kindling among the garish paraphernalia of illusion piled high behind the flats and tableaus which comprised the backstage clutter in the Theatre of the Absurd where the ‘Great Global Recovery’ play had been enjoying its unbroken, 15-month run.
In time-honoured fashion, a mad rush for the exits soon followed.
»
- 25437 reads
- Printer-friendly version
- Send to friend
- advertisements -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYuLjGQQ-jg
http://www.ammoengine.com/
here's what you're all missing:
http://azizonomics.com/2011/08/15/why-qe-didnt-cause-hyperinflation-2/
Anyone who sites CPI-U as their source for a lack of inflation is a fool, idiot or liar.
i used CPI-U because it's the easiest one to get a quick and dirty graph of, and it's nothing like as much a fudge as U1 vs U6. even if i use MIT BPP it's only a percent or so higher. even if i use "anti-core" inflation (stripping out consumer goods and services and leaving food and fuel) it's never been higher than six percent, and has also still experienced some spots of deflation. the inflation of the monetary base has been over 100%. hyperinflation would be inflation in the hundreds if thousands of percent to match or exceed to growth in the monetary base. austrian accounts don't really account for this, and don't really account for japan's lost decades. debt-deflation combined with a bit of biflation (food & fuel higher on malthusian pressures, consumer electronics lower on china manufacturing more) does.
worse, the u.s. IS vulnerable to hyperinflation, but the threat is different than peter schiff, etc says. if the entire hyperinflation debate centres around peter schiff and austrians who have been wrong multiple times then the real threat (china) will be entirely overlooked 'til the shit hits the fan.
so keynesians are partially right. austrians are partially right. deflationists are partially right. hyperinflationists are partially right. it's time we started looking at the full picture. krugmanites call me an inflation hawk. austrians say i'm using faulty statistics. i wouldn't have it any other way.
Hyperinflation is the real threat and it is not caused directly by government it is caused by the velocity of money increasing as I assume you are aware.
We will have hyperinflation when either countries lose faith in the dollar, its people do, national banks do or all three simultaneously.
Yes we might have inflation, deflation, inflation, deflation, high inflation, but it will end in hyperinflation. Those that point to the increase of the monetary base as the sole source of hyperinflation would be wrong true; we already had enough money before this latest increase to set off hyperinflation, this merely made it triply worse. The gun is loaded and its just a matter as to when its going to be fired.
Of course the Keynesian death spiral ends in hyperinflation. But the underlying dynamic is actually almost always the breakdown of the underlying productive economy — often because all the John Galts are chasing ridiculous immaterial financial wealth, or through exporting all manufacturing to a country that now refuses to export to you,or through occupation, or war, or confiscating productive farmland and giving it to people who are not farmers. That is essentially what happened in Weimar Germany and Zimbabwe, and the rest. The billions and trilions tend to come from government desperately trying to stimulate the productive economy through printing, which just doesn't work, and makes the situation even sadder.
"Hyperinflation is the real threat and it is not caused directly by government it is caused by the velocity of money increasing as I assume you are aware."
How will the velocity of money increase with unemployment at near record highs and with consumer sentiment reflecting the poor jobs market and the current inflation in CPI?
Acheiving hyperinflation would be much easier if the US was near full employment, unions had strike power, and wages were rising and reflecting competition among employers for labor.
How is velocity of money to increase if consumers are maxed out on credit and unable to borrow more?
How is velocity of money to increase if banks balance sheets are impared with enormous amounts of bad loans, thus causing banks to be unwilling to lend to any but the most creditworthy borrowers? The velocity of money would be even lower if many consumers did not have money that they were spending on mortgages now being spent on necessities.
...imo, the factors that could cause hyperinflation are not in place at this time... regardless of how much debt/FRNs the Fed sells into markets. Of course conditions could change but this would probably be caused by fiscal policies...ie; jobs programs, tax holidays, etc. If the Fed saw hyperinflation in the immediate future they would (imo) attempt to drain excess reserves from the banking system. For the Fed to allow an episode of hyperinflation would be to destroy their organization and a probable collapse of the government.
Exactly. And the oligarchy has everything to gain and nothing to lose by keeping the people jobless and money frozen in the banks. All going as planned.
Behold, someone who sees the light! You forgot global wage arbitrage though. Good luck passing that inflation on to your paycheck when Hop Sang in China is willing to work for 1/20th of your salary. If the world depegs from the dollar as the RC then hyperinflation could take hold here at some point but certainly not until. For now your salary will remain flat, the price of staples will go up and the things you own and want will drop in value - for the most part.
We have to be careful about definitions. AFAIAC, the loss of confidence in the purchasing power of a currency, or its deliberate destrcution by its issuer, causes symptoms that most would describe as "hyperinflationary."
So, silly B-school questions about "velocity of money" are irrelevant. Consumers be damned, we can achieve hyperinflation through debt overload, if the debt overload is sovereign. As the economy collapses ever more, the sovereign's revenues collapse, making it harder and harder to pay debt service while maintaining the welfare state. This situation is of course exacerbated by the particular sovereign's status as global imperialist and issuer of the reserve currency. Some kind of purchasing power destruction is always the result.
The most recent experience of the U.S. with catastrophic economic collapse is known as a "Depression," but that event was characterized by the government's response: a step change in the purchasing power of the "money," by reducing its purchasing power by 70%, in one day, at the stroke of a pen. If that's not hyperinflation I don't know what is.
Waffen said: "Those that point to the increase of the monetary base as the sole source of hyperinflation would be wrong true..."
I disagree. They would be correct. Absent the current and inexplicable widespread accceptance of monetarist theory, the mere existence of the extra printed money, whether in circulation or not, would be recognized as immediately debasing all then-existing money; everyone would normally understand that it had been created for a reason and was going to be "used," whether immediately or sometime later. Besides, when the Fed used it to buy assets, they put it into circulation. Claiming it is hidden in "excess reserves" is a canard, one that people are far too willing to accept.
IMO, you don't necessarily need velocity of money for hyperinflation, if you define hyperinflation as a lack of confidence in the currency. Rather the velocity of money could come after confidence in the currency begins to fall apart. You would also likely need an alternative to the dollar. Gold/Silver could provide that alternative (see Utah). Of course, the government will do everything in its power to prevent that from happening. I agree that we definitely aren't close to hyperinflation at this point, but I'd keep my eyes on it happening for reasons that don't come out of a textbook. Nor would I expect the Fed to recognize it when it begins to happen.
Ass hole is too good a name for you, but that's all you have.
Ass hole is too good a name for you, but that's all you have.
But Mish says we are in full deflation !
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2011/08/yes-virginia-us-back-...
There are real problems with the historical "analysis" being presented here.
No present reality is directly comparative to a past historical reality. The word "verbatim" being used is meant to add perceived empirical weight to a weakly supported claim.
France of the late eighteenth century does not resemble the U.S. of the twenty first.
If any of you are going to delve seriously into comparative history, I suggest you take heed of the words of Marc Bloch:
"Misunderstanding of the present is the inevitable consequence of ignorance of the past."
Bloch expressed the need to vigorously cross examine sources and be critical of those who loosely toss around historical comparison for political gain.
He noted, "...even we are most anxious to bear witness, that which the text tells us has expressedly ceased to be the primary object of our attention today."
"the moment when we are no longer resigned to purely and simply recording the voices of our [historical] witnesses, from the moment we decide to force them to speak, even against their will, cross-examination becomes more necessary than ever."
Think critically, people.
Of course no analogy is perfect. That is in the nature of things.
Your critique suggests a focus on the individual trees and how they are different would be more productive (accurate). Corrigan's focuses on the forest and how trees share similarities. Which approach is correct? Neither and both depending on the context of the problem under study.
A meandering criitique that offers no alternative intrepretation but rather devolves into an argument from authority is not very helpful either. (Sorry about that, but I was thinking critically.)
Stupid me or stupid zerohedge. I wanted to abuse those guys with their websties, After serohedge moved all those messages down I just abused. Well, that's ok, better not be too Dry Drunk but better to lust. Trash your TV, destroy it, and then you won't pollute the serohedge message board.
Ass hole is too good a name for you, but that's all you have.
Now that;s wisdom!
Hey, didn't they read Louis' poo back then? Isn't that like listening to Barney Frank queef on TV?
Any lingering notion that a deregulated market operates as an efficient allocator of the means of production, distribution and exchange has been crushed by the convulsions we've endured since 2008.
Eventually, with the decline of the American imperium, the Chinese will take over. If you want to know how the world will look then, think Singapore on a global scale. There will be a glittering facade of free enterprise and quasi-democracy controlled from above by a flinty oligarchy in Shanghai.
In the meantime, the lunatics are running the asylum. The world must be mad when greasers like Silvio Berlusconi or the gun-totin' Momma Grizzlies of the American Tea Party get anywhere near the levers of power. Barack Obama, cried up as the new Franklin Delano Roosevelt, turns out instead to be the new Jimmy Carter - well meaning but hopelessly ineffectual.
The panic that followed Standard & Poor's downgrading of the US government's credit rating to AA+ was beyond bizarre. These turkeys were up to their necks in the crash of 2008, willy-nilly dishing out their AAA approval to junk investment "products", sub-prime housing debt and the like. To hear them posturing now as an arbiter of financial purity is a thunderclap of cognitive dissonance, akin to learning that Anders Behring Breivik has come out for gun control.
so, you're saying you think the state of the world shows the failure of the deregulated/unregulated market?
Like a good Leftist, you never miss an opportunity at biggoted attacks and slurs. The system hasn't failed because of free market capitalism, but from a lack thereof. It failed from the weight of creeping collectivism that started with Wilson, was increased by FDR, signed sealed and delivered by LBJ, and now readied for the torch by Obama. If capitalism, sound money, and Liberty were the path taken, we wouldn't need a website like this.
So take your Italian "greaser" slurs and sh... th.. up your a.., you GD commie pinko.
Exactly. This is a failure of "mixed" markets that went very far toward the socialist/fascist side.
Wow. You're defending Berlusconi. Says everything really. Good luck with your dream of a free-market, sound-money, capitalist utopia. I don't believe in utopias. A Chinese oligarchy-run deformed version of capitalism is our future. I don't welcome it - in fact it will be even more hideous than what we have now. But get ready for it.
It started with Nixon abandoning the gold standard but accelerated under "Reagan-Thatcher" bs.. you're half right. Reagan was a puppet -Bush was always the real power there.
Jimmy carter was not ineffectual - he was a creature of Rockafuckers Trilateral Commission and Brzezinski.
This is why I understand the "financial markets" better than you investor folks - I got here by way of the banksters crimes and know their crimes intimately. they are just an extension of their Wall Street shenanigans with the economy.
This colloquially speaking, I just found this discussion from last night, a conversation of art.
by Michaelon Sun, 08/14/2011 - 13:30
#1559109
We don't need a change in Washington DC, we need to completely restructure the Federal governing model. The US government is what's broken.
by cranky-old-geezer
on Sun, 08/14/2011 - 16:36
#1559499
The federal government does what every government does, extend its power and control as much as possible.
It's not the structure at fault. It's the people at fault. Those government mentalities.
When someone goes to work in government, any government, at any level, their thinking changes. They start thinking they're in control now. They feel the euphoria of being in control over people.
That feeling of control gradually morphs into predation. They become a predator. Uncaring. Spiteful. Even hating the people they're governing. Yes, deep down many in government hate the people they're governing, viewing them as second-class, even sub-human.
The seething hatred among government people for the public would shock you if you knew how bad it is. Government people despise the rest of us. Thy hate us with a passion.
That's what happens in the average human mind when you give someone control over other people. It progresses from not caring to outright resentment to seething hatred.
America's leaders can barely conceal their seething hatred of the American people. It's why they have no problem looting and plundering the American people. They'd like to kill us all off, but it would take away their fun looting and plundering.
So they settle for looting and plundering. They want to steal everything we have, leaving us in poverty.
If they can't do it via taxes, they do it via inflation, printing currency and spending it or giving it to their government friends.
That's exactly what we've been seeing since '08. Printing mountains of currency and spending it or giving it to their government friends.
And no, it's not going to stop. It's going to get worse.
by Koffieshop
on Sun, 08/14/2011 - 19:18
#1559949
Some structures are easier exploited the others.
For example, if you would allow one of the Houses to be elected based on percentage of votes instead of a winner-takes-all type of deal, you will find yourself having more then just 2 political parties (If he Green Party collects 10% of the votes, they take 10% of the seats, etc..) This will make it a lot harder to buy/corrupt all house members.
I'm not claiming I have all the answers, but there is no doubt in my mind that you can fight corruption by ajusting the rules of the system. The trouble ofc. is that no one in the established system wants changes that undermine their own position.
by New_Meat
on Sun, 08/14/2011 - 20:45
#1560201
Coffie guy: Please elucidate on your political system theories. <and ya gotta' get back to them English books and figure our basic gramma, don't cha' know>.
a) extra credit: where, in history, have your alternative views proven themselves over a period of <n> years/decades?
b) which frosh poly science section did you learn about alternative voting schemes? I'm even betting that you don't know why RAH had proposed similar schemes.
c) compare-and-contrast the German/French/EU view of political partiez in "coallition governments" vs. U.S. republic/executive model. Demonstrate effectiveness and ineffectiveness situations of each.
Don't worry, i'll be an honest and straightforward evaluator/critic/responder. That is, I'll back up my assertions with data and contracict your comments with facts. Or not--I might be wrong and, since I'm trying to slim down, that would be a way to avoid i) a fat chance, and ii) Ol' Rusty's smoker. But, well, I never know.
But, well, I agree with you that in Chi-town, Boston, SF, <list goes on> your assessment that the corruption is embedded.
And don't do the stupid thing about "I'm not claiming I have all the answers" again. Makes u look jejune to any adult who is watching. fwiw
- Ned
by Koffieshop
on Sun, 08/14/2011 - 22:19
#1560350
English is not my first language and the Chrome spell checker seems broken on this site.
Anyway, the system I am most familiar with is the Dutch one and I have seen events unfold there that would be impossible in the US election model.
The electorate occasionally 'revolts' and massively votes for a newcomer with views incompatible with the established parties. The 'revolutionary views' get absorbed into the mainstream thinking and balance is gradually restored.
This happened with Pim Fortuyn and Geert Wilders recently.
The door for this kind of process seems shut in the US. A candidate is either acceptable within the 2-party-system, or has very little chance of getting anywhere.
If the US had the Dutch election system then Ron Paul would have no problem running under his own flag instead of getting approved by the Republican Party first.
Now, you can demand I produce some essay, make fun of me for not using the right nomenclature..... or you could just explain where you think my reasoning goes wrong.
by Real Estate Geek
on Sun, 08/14/2011 - 23:31
#1560536
Well played.
by wilburpup
on Sun, 08/14/2011 - 20:28
#1560159
And if they can't do it by any of the means above, they--49 states-- resort to lotteries to exploit the statistical ignorance of the poor and the stupid with the unbelievably cynical justification that it's all for "education." It's a positive feedback loop---the more "education", the more people to exploit! Now we are to be treated to state-sponsored internet gambling. It's the next best thing to taxing Amazon transactions.
by AmCockerSpaniel
on Sun, 08/14/2011 - 21:47
#1560292
"It's the people at fault." You can stop there! No enterprise is any better than it's people. They deceive us, but only after they deceive them selves.
by European American
on Sun, 08/14/2011 - 21:56
#1560302
Government is an innocent reflection of the collective quality of the people.
by knowless
on Sun, 08/14/2011 - 21:58
#1560305
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-60DmAHWb4
by Michael
on Mon, 08/15/2011 - 00:45
#1560649
Very well said, cranky-old-geezer. See what we started?
That's exactly what we've been seeing since '08. I'd also add, since NAFTA.
... Wow. You're defending Berlusconi. Says evrything really.
What you know of Berlusconi is, let me guess, what you read in the Anglo-Saxon press. Is that right ? If so, good luck to you. Berlusconi will save Italy (well, actually let Italy survive the NWO).
lol "pinko" I agree w/ your assessment about our country and the collectivist path that we have taken.
So before that, that was free market economy. Asking because free marketeers are such flip floppers. When they are US citizens, things do not get better.
So it was free market economy before that?
So it means it was free market before, right? Just asking because free marketers are just so flip flopers. If they are US citizens, it does not help things.
So it was free market before?
by the post hoc rationalisations of a consensus-hugging crowd soon avidly blowing themselves an anti-bubble to replace the inflated soapskin of ill-starred hope which has just imploded all around them
Nice try .... you would make the spin-misters proud.
We have not had free market capitalism since .... 5 minutes after the term was phrased. Free market means NO intervention. No tarrifs, taxes, tax breaks, compliance laws, eternal corporate structures, free money to some - crushingly high compounded interest to others, money created out of thin air, etc... etc.. etc...
You are right about the lunatics running the asylum and the hilarity of the likes of Berlusconi, Palin etal being considered serious leaders.
We don't have deregulation. We have regulatory capture: banks control the money supply, commodity brokers run the CFTC, etc etc. One hand washes the other.
What we need is a healthy dose of capitalism. As Friedman said, the most important part of capitalism is the "loss", not the "profit". Companies that do stupid things and people who invest in AAA sewage are culled from the herd through natural selection. Instead of reckless companies heading for the trashbin, we have Dr. Bernankenstein keeping undead banks in an animated state, feasting on the flesh of people's savings through ZIRP to keep them going.
We'll never be out of this mess unless we stop propping up the system.
Well said. This is about corruption of systems, people, and institutions. It has very little to do with political, economic, or organizational theories. It has more to do with warnings our founders gave and us as a ruled group getting fat, fed and lazy
That is natural selection? What does Nature care about profit and loss?
That is human selection and the consequences of it, not natural selection.
Very well said. There is no Natural Selection. There is abundance everywhere. All one has to look and see how much abundance there is out there. Everywhere... food, death, more food, bugs, tiny tiny creatures, everywhere, happily living and eating and shitting and not giving a rat's ass about man's belief.
The Far Right doesn't care. A financial collapse will help more people find Jesus.
"Après moi le déluge" bitchez!
The fall of free market capitalism rushes towards us...
Amazing how you could cram so much utter silliness into one little phrase, totally ignoring that the entire world, and most of the US, is a collectivist/redistributionist nightmare. But indeed, BRAVO! for the attempt.
Free market capitalism was mortally wounded in 1913 (and was never really around much prior to that, truth be told), breathed it's last under Hoover and was burried for good by FDR.
I mean, you assess The Teleprompter as "well meaning", for Pete's sake. Do we really, honestly need to know anything else about you?
So before 1913, that was free market capitalism right?
Did you even read the next, like, 10-12 words I wrote after that phrase?
Jerk.
They'll just turn off the WiFi
Never ends well, at least not during the last 3,000 years
“A baited banker thus desponds,
From his own hand foresees his fall.
They have his soul, who have his bonds;
‘Tis like the writing on the wall.”
“The Run Upon the Bankers” (1720), Jonathan Swift
Quoted by Mark Steyn “After America: Get Ready for Armageddon”, (2011), p2
nice
I call dibs on being Guillotine operator on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Ah, come on man... I wanted to do that full time -at no charge. I guess I can share but man do I ever wanna chop some heads off. These are evil bastards responsible for the death and suffering of millions so no problem with chop sueying their asses.
These are setup in Israel.
http://www.roytov.com/articles/guillotine.htm
Comin'to get you Bibi Antoinette!
I will take Monday and Wednsaday, but can I bring my own mask?
Police will gear up in the USA and have the shoot to kill policy. DHS is already there armed to the teeth.
Here's how the Second Civil War will go down. Been saying this for a year:
You're too optimistic.
The war of northern aggression is over dude. You lost.
Actually, I'm a Yankee. But I would side with the South this time, if it comes down to that.
Utter nonsense. The USA is already deep into Civil War and WW3. Weather modification, mass transnational hacking, viruses targetting industrial equipment, mass assassinations, full fledged psy-ops every few weeks, just to fill in the edges of the big picture...
Sounds good to me.
Ron Paul isn't a secessionist or a gunslinger. Rick Perry's both. Perry vs. Obama = 1860.
Wouldn't it be great to have a facebook courtroom where eveyone got to vote on not only the guilt but also the punishment for all the scumbag progressivist left like Frank, Pelosi, Schumer, Dodd, Levin, Obama, Huffington, Kos, Geitner, Bernanke, Immelt, Buffet, etc, etc.
Only way to keep the heads rolling. There has been so much crime that the courts would take hundreds of years to unravel it, if they were even inclined to prosecute at all. Need to scan every document captured in NY/DC, run them all through Google and let conspiracy theorists all around the world run every trial from a Facebook page. Brownie points would be given for finking on higher-ups. Maybe every trial lasts six months, and at the end of it, the whole world would vote if they want to. Vote as many times for as many people as you want, innocent or guilty. One vote per every 100 CAPTCHAs solved. The elites have committed crimes against humanity and oppressed the entire world through their puppet empire so I wouldn't worry about foreigners itching for payback. Iraquis with an axe to grind solving CAPTCHAs for 6 months straight would be awesome. Consider it karma, and a good way to overwhelm any Rothschild attempts to buy their minions' freedom.
I think decentralized is best but maybe to get the broad overview we could install Tyler Durden as SEC chairman, Alex Jones as chairman of the 9/11 Commission, etc.
Yes. Don't laugh. I have thought about this a lot and have coined my own term: Socialocracy. Eliminate all regulatory bodies and instead publish the resultst to the people. They will read, comb and investigate... and if they find wrong doing they can then bring to the judicial system.
Internet has changed everything except governance and banking. They are holding out as it would destory their monopolistic powers.
I wrote about it at my blog (some older articles) http://jimijon.blogspot.com
And I am starting a new website and directory for those businesses that barter: http://www.bartercalcpro.com
cheers
Ahh, you get it:
Basically we are becoming the mind. This also dovetails into a science fiction concept of mine where an alien isn't just an "ego" but possibly a world. We are just too small a mind or creature to realize this. Some say you can see it here now in our world with the whole Gaia concept. However, with the massive internet growing and interconnecting, maybe, just maybe, like a large radio telescope, we will start to see thoughts of "others" impacting our own.
Thanks to psychedelics I have come to believe that the great struggle of our time is between the emergent hive-mind of the oligarchy (which the Illuminati call Lucifer) and the emergent mind of the internet. The internet will ultimately spread throughout the universe, link up with aliens and become part of a giant, godlike cosmic mind that will recreate the universe. But first it has to get off this planet, and Lucifer will do anything to stop that. That's why the revolution must be global and also decentralized. Wait till we get telepathic internet implants with face recognition technology, plus the righteous anger that comes from awareness. We might not even need to rely on Lucifer's courts anymore. 4chan vigilantes could be the new global cops. Then you will see that God has a wicked sense of humor.
Like your ideas about crowdsourced surveillance- if only we could put those cameras in every government office in the country. See if YOU become more honest in a panopticon, bitches.
Which psychedelics would you recommend?
Shrooms, for sanity during these crazy times. They are good for stripping away everything you don't need, for making choices at turning points in your life, for figuring out higher-level connections and your place in the Cosmic Plan. Give your brain a month to digest each trip, while keeping note of subtle changes in brain function. Check out http://www.erowid.com or http://www.shroomery.org for more. Other psychedelics which you can get locally are too dangerous. For example, acid fried my brain and gave me a low-level bad trip that lasted for six months. Almost ended up in the nuthouse. Never mix psychedelics, never combine with stimulants (even caffeine). Beer is good for shutting down a trip if necessary.
Good luck on your journey.
I wrote this a while ago on our future, sort of similar to your view
Humans are created from data
Humans create data (verbal, then written) in order to try and explain the data they came from through contextualization and story
Verbal/written data accumulates upon other verbal/written data, forming an exponential increase in knowledge
An exponential increase in knowledge eventually leads to the advent of technology, which more efficiently analyzes data
An unfortunate side effect is that context is lost at this point, wisdom begins to decrease
Humans willingly upload all possible information into digestible format for the machines
Sum of human knowledge is uploaded in data form to the cloud
Humans create noosphere, noosphere is/can be downloaded and analyzed by machines
At this point, whether humans know it or not, they have created a virtual symbiosis with the machines
The sum of human knowledge becomes accessible to incorporate into our physical shells
The virtual human/technological symbiosis transmutes into a physical one as humans incorporate technology within themselves instead of merely outside themselves.
Biological and chemical restrictions become broken, the bottlenecks of evolution have been broken
Our distributed electrical selves become an electric gaia. Electric gaia and physical gaia exist side by side
Human 2.0 emerges
Human 2.0, with the help of electric gaia creates DNA en masse to seed the universe
Always glad to meet a fellow transhumanist. Check out some of Ray Kurzweil's stuff like The Age of Spiritual Machines, if you haven't already. Greg Egan and Rudy Rucker are good for sci-fi. The Intelligent Universe (AI, ET, and the emerging mind of the cosmos) by James Gardner is also a very interesting read. I do think that the entire universe is pure information which is evolving towards higher levels of sentience. Humans and our machines are information's way of turbocharging its own growing interconnectedness.
This and eurobonds...
As a Yankee, let me assure you if the south secedes, I will not fight a civil war to bring them back into the union. I will be too busy celebrating. Should I post the link for how much citizens of states pay into the system and how much they got out of the system again?
I think I could sign up for this. Sad but necessary I think.
I think all of that will be for naught. When it is millions that are speaking with one voice full of fury, those commie bastards will change their names and hide under their beds - effing STASI bastards.
And after they kill their fellow citizens will they be safe in their homes?
Wow! DHS has maybe 100,000 overweight bodies fully armed to the teeth--about the same as the Crips and Bloods in L.A. Milestones
There are more of us then there are of them and we will have less to lose.
"Rise like lions after slumber
In unvanquishable numbers,
Throw your chains off you like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you.
Ye are many, they are few." Percy Bysshe Shelley
This collapse sure is taking a long time. It is amazing how they have delayed the inevitable. And still people are surprised to hear that thngs aren't going too well. Mass stupidity is a scary thing.
They can't eat ipads. Maybe eating lead will be their last meal?
Edit: Oh, thats not fair -- you editted the comment quite heavily after I made my reply. Shame on your political correctness...
This collapse sure is taking a long time.
As I type, Asia is green, US futures are flying high.
HAPPY DAYS ARE HERE AGAIN.... (one more rousing chorus)
sunny
Mass stupidity is a shame. Particularly when you're part of the stupidity.
Perhaps the reason the collapse hasn't come the way you wanted it is because your ability to analyze what is actually happening in the present is lacking.
This inability will make predicting the future [an already impossible proposition] even more ludicrous.
The only historically consistent phenomenon on display here is that human beings have been predicting various apocalypses for quite a long time. Lots of people suffered and died during this period, but most of those predicting terrible things didn't do much to help the situation.
Those predicting a future immanent apocalypse are often hiding from their own lack of will to do anything useful NOW. Thus, an imagined collapse that washes away the current paradigm also washes away their guilt for not being able to do anything useful in the present. Good job.
"waah. the collapse is taking a long time to happen."
Poor baby.
.
So, 40 years ago, August 15th, Nixon created fiat - with notion that discipline would rule. Ouch. Not so much
There is no discipline without J. Edgar in his tutu to keep everyone honest.
My God, sir! Do you not remember that you don't have Richard Nixon to kick around anymore?
The Nixon Shock - Gold for dollars - BusinessWeek
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/the-nixon-shock-08042011.html
what an excellent post ZH.
"Typically, the players first persuade themselves of the validity of an often arbitrary, but usually bullish, scenario which, by dint of constant repetition and uncritical mimicry comes not only to serve as a dogma, but one which each believer professes to have discovered for himself. Along the way, all objective data and governmental statistics which can possibly be construed to support this scenario are talked up and re-transmitted in confirmation of the first idea: those which cannot be so re-interpreted are simply ignored as ‘outliers’ by all except the small cluster of much-derided contrarians and habitual Cassandras."
BRAVO!!...Simply one of the best desriptions I have ever come across....so those 'green shoots' were just pure bs....as we all knew at the time...that is, all of us who were thinking rather than herding.
Sho 'nuff. And a pleasure to read some well constructed prose. Rare commodity these days.
sho 'nuff
I believe a Bravo is in order.
Here, here!
Hows about a Bates?
Bernanke del Sol
Fiat Currency Failure: John Law | Rapid Trends - Gold and Silver Bullion
John Law's French Bank was created in 1716 on the back of new world Mississippi Notes. Prosperity for all. By 1720, disaster, fortunes were lost. Capital controls, and possession of gold was outlawed. But these measures failed within 6 months and Law had just as quickly moved on to Venice.
".....Prince Conti was outraged ... and demanded immediate settlement, in coin, of his entire stock of Law’s paper money. The Prince was paid, but was also instructed at risk of the extreme displeasure of the Duc, to return two of the wagons immediately. But it was enough to make the smarter operators see the light.
.... the professionals started to cash in their paper. Coin, bullion, jewels and anything of transportable value were surreptitiously shipped abroad, to Belgium, Holland and England.
...Gambling his remaining authority, John Law abolished coin as a medium of exchange, and then in February 1720 declared it illegal to own more than the tiniest of sums in gold in any form. Then he closed the borders, and sent instructions to all coach-houses to refuse fresh horses to anyone travelling to foreign lands until an inspector had examined their baggage."
The capital controls did not work and within a year they were abolished and it was Law that was forced to flee out of France.
We have the TSA to make sure none of these financial "terrorists" get away.
how many yen for an ounce of gold
134000? is that correct does anyone know
Close enough.
That looks correct. I lived in Japan for 6 years and a quick conversion to $ is to knock off 2 zeros. Of course that assumes a 1 to 1 exchange rate. Another way to think of it is 1 yen = 1 cent. Again 1 to 1 exchange.
Decentralization and Secession as a Viable Alternative to the Tyrannical Status Quo
http://www.activistpost.com/2011/08/decentralization-and-secession-as.html
rain king
Anyone remember that reality TV show called 'Survival'? Throughout the entire first season (I think it was the first season) the guy who ended up winning the contest - I think his name was Robert Hatch - was portrayed as the 'good guy'; a true teammate, always open and honest about his intentions, would sacrifice for the good of this tribe, etc.. In the end, after winning the contest, the reality was he was a complete snake and almost all of his actions were predicated on the long term goal of him winning and was completely at odds at how he was portrayed throughout the show. He admitted as much- he was endeavoring only to win the game the entire time and his 'good guy' persona was all a ruse to reach his goal. This is how most of the sociopathic individuals in leadership or positions of influence act as well. It was a fascinating look into the pseudo-life of someone who sees life as a game and other individuals as merely pawns on a board to manipulate as a means toward their ultimate goal of winning said game. In short, the guy that pretended to give a shit about other people, people on his 'team', really did not give two shits about them and used them as a vehicle to him winning a million bucks.
Hatch is also a serial tax-cheat and has spent several years in prison. Here's hoping reality imitates art!
I preferred the "Colony"
Made for some interesting scenarios.
And then he went to prison for not paying taxes.
Sean Corrigan... truth teller.
"...there really is nothing new in this world".
Repeat and reset. Bring it on.
Brilliant article. The parallels are unmistakable, and go further than just economic shenanagins. France was historically known as the 'First Daughter of Rome,' and her fall was the result of God's judgment. The ecumenical movement in the United States (and the world at large) has seen the Protestant Church 'make friends' again with Rome- that same Roman Church that literally slaughtered millions of Protestants. That bloody revolution in France was due in large part to the removal of nearly every God-fearing person. Godly people might take the abuse and chalk it up to martyrdom, but the godless WILL NOT. The apostate church in the US is a contributing factor in this collapse. There are no Godly men left. The godless will have their blood.
Socrates and Plato would have ridiculed you into rhetorical and dialectical exctasy!
Pity for you that western civilization is based on primacy of fact and logic, not on beiief in a dogmatic creed and a 'superior being' that none can see. But then what you can't see is more potent that what you can see. Even Aristotle, their successor, invented metaphysics to express that frail, human existential evidence.
The meteoric rise of the Unites States was a blessing from God for shunning the Beast. The amazing fall of the United States is God's judgment for embracing the Beast
uh huh, next you'll be telling us your god kept the israelites alive in the sinai desert eating only manna cakes for 40 years.
Why you people always imagine god as ruthless, economically oriented and meritocratic boss? Even if it existed, do you think that it would play economic tycoon games with particular abstractions such as "countries"? Do you seriously believe that he would impersonate dog trainer? Is god communist for favouring China lately? Sober up prophets, you take yourselves and fantasies youve been fed by your molesters (and owners) too seriously.
they'll nuke us before they relinquish power.
From John Hussman's weekly:
http://www.hussmanfunds.com/wmc/wmc110815.htm
"Without question, one of the notions buoying Wall Street optimism here is the hope that the Fed will pull another rabbit out of its hat by initiating QE3. That's a nice sentiment, but it does overlook one minor detail. QE2 didn't work.
Actually, that's not quite fair. The Federal Reserve was indeed successful at provoking a speculative frenzy in the financial markets, which has now been completely wiped out. The Fed was also successful in leveraging its balance sheet by more than 55-to-1 (more than Bear Stearns, Lehman, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, or even Long-Term Capital Management ever achieved), and driving the monetary base to more than 18 cents for every dollar of GDP - a level that requires short-term interest rates to remain below about 3 basis points in order to maintain price stability ( see Charles Plosser and the 50% Contraction in the Fed's Balance Sheet ). The Fed was indeed successful in provoking a wave of commodity hoarding that affected global supplies and injured the poorest of the poor - particularly in developing countries. The Fed was successful in setting off a very predictable decline in the value of the U.S. dollar. The Fed was successful in punishing savers and the risk averse, and driving investors to reach for yield in risky investments that they would normally avoid were it not for the absence of yield. The Fed was successful in provoking those with strong balance sheets to pay down existing higher interest-rate debt, and in creating an incentive for those with weak balance sheets to issue more of it at low rates, resulting in a simultaneous deterioration of credit quality and compensation for risk in the financial system. The Fed was successful at boosting the trading profits of the banks that serve as primary dealers, by announcing precisely which securities it would be buying prior to Treasury auctions, and buying them on the open market a few days later from the dealers that acquired them. The Fed was successful in creating a portfolio of low yielding securities that will be almost impossible to disgorge without capital losses unless the Fed holds them to maturity. On proper reflection, the list of the Fed's successes from QE2 is nothing short of stunning.
It is beyond comprehension why anyone would wish for more of this recklessness.
We went out for a very nice meal tonight. And then "Cowboys and Aliens". When we got home there was electricity in all the sockets.
Thank you, QE2.
Assignats, bitchez.
It's amazing...does anyone read these excellent articles on ZH or do they just wait for a new post to upload the same bullshit day after day?
Read the fucking article and comment on it...please!
Almost forgot...excellent article Tyler, thank you Sean for taking the time and writing it.
"http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/business/global/source-sought-for-fals..."
"The series, “End of the Line for the Euro,” looked at how a collapse of the single currency might play out, against the backdrop of French presidential elections next year. While the 12-part story was clearly labeled as fiction, it named real banks, like Société Générale, whose shares plunged 15 percent last Wednesday, prompting the bank to deny speculation that it was in financial trouble."
Listen guys, I just heard a rumour from senior government Austrian official that there is a bank run at Creditanstalt!
No doubt this is a well thought out article and an interesting historical comparison. 'A tale of two pities.'
But where's Peak Oil in the French economies of Louis XIV or Louis XVI?
Nowhere.
And Peak Peruke didn't really occur until Madame la Guillotine appeared in the Place de la Concorde.
Peak Oil : France lost the seven years war subsequently. England became top colonial dog. There goes the RM supply chain for France!
Peak Peruke : That's the killer for the Bourbons. They said 'eat cake' to the people. The people took them at their word and ate their caky perukes. The cemetary of Picpus in Paris attests to that blood bath very eloquently. Now Peak Peruke is tantalising the nape of Ben Bernanke's neck and bald pate; as it should for all those WS shills who sang 'shake, rattle and roll' during the halcyon mega bonus days.
The French Revolution has arrived... on black wings!
Charming, yet inspirational!
some of balzac's stories include the characters of l. quattorze's court
his father, dying, when the son was in his early teens, set everything up, then his widow changed everything before his body was cold
here he is ~17, still a minor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Louis_XIV_as_Child.jpg
here he is at 23 years, after 5 years under guidance, when he took over the gov't.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Louis-xiv-lebrunl.jpg
here's a family portrait when he was 32
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Louis14-Family.jpg
if you like Balzac you would love Maupassant, so pessimistic and corrosive about bourgeois france.
#1: In gold we trust.
#2: In silver we trust.
#3: Off with their heads.
Answer: All of the above.
for all you traders waiting for markets to open. last 20mins EUR got crunched. funny trade could be a HFT going mental, or a fat finger out of Asia. looked strange.
*now melted up. looks like a HFT trade.
au/ag compression add it up
I'm probably just a lunatic.
But I don't fear hyper-inflation.
I still believe we are going to have a deflationary collapse.
http://geraldcelente.proboards.com
The French Revolution was a case of mass passive aggressive syndrome gone berserk. Couldn't we have a little more kind and gentle method of justice be implemented? I like the original Boston Tea Party where no one got hurt but a strong message was sent to the oppressors. Interestingly that original tea party was a leaderless cell based group that operated under the principle of consensus.
I think completely abandoning the concept of leadership amongst adult citizens is our only hope today for the implementation of a fair and just society . It is through leadership that TPTB maintain their chain of command and control. That is why leadership is so often emphasized by the mainstream media and politicians as being so important and crucial; without it they lose all their control and therefore their power.
Perhaps the best contemporary example of the proletariat revolting against bourgeois tyranny is the occurrence of Argentinian factory workers taking over and operating as a business shuttered factories. There, everyone gets to keep their head and there's also no Stalinist gulag prison camps. I think the Argentinian example works so well because it appears to not have any clear leaders to worship but rather operates under a very practical and rational goal of producing a product for commerce and in turn receiving consideration for the product. And all the workers know if they don't work together they wont produce a product and therefore won't be able to sustain the reasonable standard of living they're hoping for. They also know there is no magic wizard of oz central government that will take care of them if they don't work. Their case is documented in the documentary 'The Take' which can be viewed here: http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-take/
The original Boston Tea Party? You mean the guys who did their stuff, disguised as Indians so they could shift the blame?
Please report directly to the Liberty Reeducation Camp.
That is all.
So, are you saying that the Boston Tea Party was not a colonial tax revolt but was rather a false flag attack intended to leverage the British Imperialist powers to take down those pesky native americans? That would be a new one to me. In the mean time I'm still going to go with the belief that the get-ups were never meant to create the appearance of true native americans, but were rather just a fun & campy way for the perps to avoid being identified by any witnesses.
Amusing how you provided an exxaggerated vision and try to monopolize a more accurate version.
When will US citizens accept that their propaganda is cheap and take action about it?
The mattering fact is the original Boston Tea Party got in disguised as Indians. Not as themselves, but under cover.
US citizens should bear with their own history or provide quality propaganda to cover their blatant lies.
Amusing how you provided an exxaggerated vision and try to monopolize a more accurate version.
When will US citizens accept that their propaganda is cheap and take action about it?
The mattering fact is the original Boston Tea Party got in disguised as Indians. Not as themselves, but under cover.
US citizens should bear with their own history or provide quality propaganda to cover their blatant lies.
You still don't explain how shifting the blame onto the native americans would help the colonists send a message to the crown (or wasn't that their purporse at all, but if not that then what? please explain). If the Boston Tea Party members ever thought that the king would ever think it was the native americans that did it, then wouldn't that circumvent the whole porpose of the tea party; to tell Englend that we the colonists (not the native americans) are not going to take it anymore?
Instead you just reiterate the single premise that they were disquised as indians. Where or what is your argument?
Meanwhile, I'm going to provide an even more exagerated and absurd vision: The original Boston Tea Party was in fact an Indian themed mascarade ball to be held in the setting of an actual trade ship. This is how it got it's name as it was originally intended as an actual party where people would mingle and trade business cards. They also thought it was going to be a real hoot when they brewed and then drank the tea on the ship without having to even pay for it (or a ballroom). However things got really out of hand when they realized no one brought their royal dalton tea set to drink the tea from and in a wild frenzy everyone started chucking the boxes of tea into the harbor. After they calmed down and realized what they had done, the partiers figured they'd need to save face somehow and not appear as bunch of hooligans to friends not attending the party. So they came up with the story that they were engaging in a noble protest against the crown for the unfair taxation of their beloved tea. Everyone bought the story and the rest is history. The preceeding story was a fictional tale that I just made up, but it still could conceivably be true, but concealed from all the known historical recordings of the event.
A false loin cloth operation.
.
The article suggested to me that the current world of finance is more like the Colonial period than one might think.
" During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, England, France and Holland established their own overseas empires, in direct competition with each other." Wikipedia
With the increased power and influence of the Major world Central Banks, it has similar effect on the world as the earlier Colonial period of Western Europe, and, unfortunately, the same problems.
this man, this corrigan, has a gift; he's dexterous with stolen stuff! a low-down-dirty-thief; in fact, if you need a reference, sort of a 'this is text-book larceny' type of thing, booknote this essay, cause this corrigan is shameless.
he steals from the same places janus loots. people, what gives this high-born reading such cred is the fact that it trains you to think with disipline, forces you to extend the concentration past what you thought were the limits of its tether; it gives you the tools to push the contours of an idea far past the flaccid norm, such that a single thought can hold whole worlds, multitudes even, and, above all else, it permits the individual's dislocation from his circumstance, gives him the proper clarity and perspective of his true nothinglessness and his potential limitlessness.
actually, i'll cut it right there -- the best tribute i can pay to corrigan's piece is to redirect your attention to it. reread it, janus did.
PS thanks for sockin it to the ole sun king -- he gave janus's progenetors the proverbial boot (huguenot stuff, we're still smartin from it, too)...and when it comes to louis and benjamin, wasn't it jung who postulated the whole follies a duex thing? and, finally, do you have a website?
behold, the kingdom of heaven is within you,
janus
Meh. The "Second French Revolution" ain't getting started here so long as American Idol is still on the idiot box (or iPad) and Starbucks is still open for business.
hmm eur is looking stressed again, euro indexes looking crap again, US futures gonna rally on the japan illusion....i don't think so.
corrective buy now to sell, volatility coming back
Gold for the lords, fiat/cabbage for the serfs. It's an old, old story. The bankers are loaded to the gills with gold and they will carefully control it's price having been backing their fiat with gold for years.
"This age old error of confusing the medium of exchange with the object of exchange is one we continue to commit."
Plus ca change, indeed.
I agree our system is fucked and will crash but comparing us to the Sun King's reign is nothing but fear mongering. The method may be the same but the times are much different. All this talk of the current environment is the same as x(pick your year) is stupid. Oh my god! It's the same as 33AD. See, the world is ending right now! Pfffff.....
Interesting read though.
"The French Revolution was, to an extent, about tax loopholes." http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/08/tax-expenditures-are...
Deleted.
Mr. Corrigan’s flowery description of the economic parallels between the French ‘Ancien Regime’ and the contemporary US ‘petrodollar empire’ is fitting. History, of course, never repeats exactly. The French never became the sole global superpower. There were rivals. England controlled the seas and contested the land. The military loss of colonies, the loss of slave and plantation trade, all cut into the profits of empire.
But the error Mr. Corrigan makes comes not in drawing the parallels, but in ex post facto reasoning about the parallels.
The excessive military spending, the distribution of wealth upward to the nobility, the extravagances of the French court laid the foundation for economic travail. The stage was set for the financial shenanigans of John Law. There was no other way to fund a bankrupt regime which refused to change.
‘John Law’ financial practices both postponed and triggered a collapse. But it is a mistake to say, implied or outright, that financial practices were the underlying cause of collapse. It would be even more of a mistake to conclude that the ‘Ancien Regime’ could have been continued, or its collapse avoided by somewhat different financial policies.
These days, similar misleading arguments are made about the continuation of the US empire. Many seem to believe that better financial practices, whether by stimulus or austerity, can save the empire. Many seem bewildered by the refusal of the contemporary US ‘nobility’ to implement change. Stimulus becomes merely another way for the elite to reward themselves, changing nothing. Austerity becomes austerity for everyone else, again changing nothing. (Done domestically by cutbacks which leave the primary sources of elite enrichment intact; and done globally by way of reserve fiat devaluation, or by the military imposition of supplicant governments willing to acquiesce to US business. )
The global militarism, the flood of wealth upward, the perks of high civilian and military office, the luxuries of billionaire lifestyles, the insider corruption - it all continues protected. Focusing on changing the finances, and thereby increasing the profits of empire… is myopic.
The problem is not financial, but systemic.
Superficially it is government and government policy, on a deeper level it is not.
Consider the idea of financial ‘profit’.
Profit is a man-made concept. It is a limited concept. Profit cannot measure the worth of everything and anything and be the ultimate guide to human conduct. The concept nonetheless underpins the whole notion that the pursuit of micro self interests will result in the best of all possible worlds. And it is that mistaken notion which is often used to justify the worst of all outcomes, and pronounce the solution to our miseries is to increase business profits.
Never mind the profits made by ruining forests, rivers, and oceans. Never mind the profits from destroying the fisheries and polluting the air. Never mind sweatshops, child labor, and poisoned foods. Micro profit, it seems, does not measure the environmental losses to society, nor the debilitation and destruction of human beings. But yet, it is to be the ultimate guide to human conduct. Or so we are told.
A system based on maximizing work, maximizing production, maximizing consumption becomes outdated in a finite world. It values neither leisure nor the quality of life, human or other. The corporation is the apex profit-driven organization of a misnamed and impossible “free market”. It is elitist, with a narrow single-minded goal, and disdainful of all that stands in its way.
Government, like corporations, has evolved in the pursuit of profit. Government has become, like corporations, autocratic, secretive, and intimately involved in symbiotically furthering the corporate pursuit of profit, to the detriment of all else.
Financial solutions will always be superficial ones, so long as the systemic problem remains.
Meanwhile the dogma continually streams from the mainstream media that there is necessarily a synergistic relationship between the capitalistic prusuit of profits and the ideal world while conveniently ignoring the many refutations of that belief that are clearly manifold around the world.
This has to be one of the worst posts I've read on Zerohedge. The argument that the US financial ministry has used the same tricks as every other nation's tricks, and because it is no different from those other nations, will lead to a bloody revolt where all the politicians will be hung or treated to a guilotine is nonsense. There may be a civil war in our future but it will not be because of this. If it comes to this it will be because the government will have failed in its duty to protect its citizens.
The failure to protect the citizens from financial racketeers (more exactly, government collusion with and protection of racketeers) ... is the primary source of all other government failures and counterproductive endeavors.
In reply to Quarky Gluon: Yes, Argentina makes an excellent study of bankster globalization and recent history of the people’s movement to reclaim and operate abandoned industry.
Argentina’s recent history is a story of struggle of the courageous people of Argentina against globalization and austerity. Indeed, Argentina is a study of bankster globalization, Argentina was the banksters first global terrorist attack to test their financial weapons of mass destruction.
Argentina is a model of globalization and what the United States and the rest of the world have to expect from the IMF and the centralized banksters.
There are two must see documentary films that records Argentina’s recent history and the central banksters globalization model that currently is being used to attack the United States economy.
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/argentinas-economic-collapse/
The other follow up documentary has already been mentioned by Quarky Gluon.
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-take/
What is really remarkable is how the destitute but courageous people of Argentina determined their own destiny by reclaiming abandoned factories that were going to be sold as scrap by the global banksters.
Argentina is a remarkable story of non violence and resistance, the peoples struggle against fascist tyranny, and so far, the people have won peaceful change!
If a French style revolution happened in the US ultimatley it will lead to a bloody civil war. The nation is divided between religion,race,politics,regional. If today the corrupt politicians and bankers get executed who will replace them? Socialist/communist will see it time for a leftis revolution. Neo cons will call upn the military to take over. Libertarians and militias will call upon a weaker central government. So it will lead to a civil war like the Yugoslav war times 100. It will be long,bloody and lead to the nation fragmenting into differeing nations. A revolution today will lead to civil war.
So maybe Bill Gates will get his population control after all...
Just last week I mentioned the spectre of "guillotines in Times Square" wondering how long before the masses awake from their televison induced stupor.
Thanks for making the same connection...
Nial Ferguson's documentary (and book) "The Ascent of Money" has an episode (chapter - "Blowing Bubbles") on John Law and how he destroyed the French Monarchy. A big part of it was his control of The Mississippi Company as well as the printing press. He printed money to drive up the price of shares in The Mississippi Company as its fortunes were flagging. It was all about Law's self-interest.
The more things change, the more they remain the same