Nationalism

If we could put the economics of Bernie Sanders into a nutshell, it would be this: Burden private enterprise with one directive after another, and then demonize it when it ultimately falls down under the awful weight of taxes, higher costs, and mandates. While many people believe that instituting the Sanders economic agenda would help turn the USA into another Sweden or Denmark, the more likely outcome would be turning this country into another Venezuela.

Following Monday’s historic stock market downturn, many politicians and so-called economic experts rushed to the microphones to explain why the market crashed and to propose "solutions” to our economic woes. Not surprisingly, most of those commenting not only failed to give the right answers, they failed to ask the right questions.

Too big to control, too volatile to be predictable, and too full of contradictions to achieve stability, China is a society that is on the edge of coming completely unglued. And so, appealing to the typical American conceit that nothing that ever happens to us is our own fault, scapegoating is a reflection of widespread economic ignorance. For the reality is that the policies of our own rulers limn those of the Chinese: pump-priming the currency, flooding the US economy with money, and creating massive bubbles is something they learned from us. And those policies are having the same effect here as they are having in China.

"Having lived in [western] Europe, I realise that they often confuse Nazism with nationalism, which for us Ukrainians is more akin to patriotism. It’s not about considering your own ethnic group as superior, but being proud of it, and of defending your country."

To let the media tell it, recent "attacks" - including a suicide bombing that killed 32 people earlier this month - have prompted Turkey to officially join the fight against ISIS. In reality, Ankara's motivations can be explained not by a desire to rid the world of "terrorists", but by considerations of political expediency and by an autocrat's insatiable thirst for power.

Unfortunately, Trump’s antics will make it only more difficult to hold a sane debate about taking that time-out from immigration. So, one alternative is an insane debate about it, one based on sheer grievance and gall rather than the responsibilities of governance. We've feared for many years that we are all set up to welcome a red-white-and-blue, corn-pone Nazi political savior type. We don’t think Donald Trump is it. But he will be a stalking horse for a far more skillful demagogue when the time comes. There’s a fair chance that the wheels will come off the banking and monetary system well before the 2016 election. Who knows who or what will come out of the woodwork before then.

Greece’s and the European Union’s economic and political crisis will not be resolved through a new debt deal between the government in Athens and the European authorities. It will be merely one more stop-gag “solution” to a problem whose nature is endemic to the current ideology and politics of State-Power and collectivism. Its real solution requires something deeper and more comprehensive: a revival of the classical liberal ideal of individualism and the economics of free market capitalism. This, unfortunately, is not likely to occur any time soon.

Greece is only the beginning. Greeks driven out of their country by the collapsed economy, demise of the social welfare system, and extraordinary rate of unemployment will take their poverty to other EU countries. Members of the EU are not bound by national boundaries and can freely emigrate. Closing down the support system in Greece will drive Greeks into the support systems of other EU countries, which will be closed down in turn by the One Percent’s privatizations. The 21st century Enclosures have begun.

We have now reached the point where the euro does not have a problem – the euro is the problem. De-risking it should be a priority for European leaders, as it now poses a chronic risk to global financial stability. Either the outliers need to leave or the countries inside the eurozone needs to move down the pathway to full political, economic and monetary union.

A Greek exit from the euro would change everything. The greatest change being simply doubt and fear regarding the outlook for other vulnerable EU nations, EU banks and the EU banking and financial system. We discuss short and long term considerations, best and case outcomes, and wealth preservation strategies.

Haven’t you ever sat there in hindsight, drinking history down retrospectively like an already-bad whisky that has been mixed with some equally worse soda and a couple of rocks thrown in for good measure and wondered what life would be like if this or that event hadn’t actually happened?

An increasingly desperate Greek government is once again playing the war reparations card, this time by looping video clips of the Nazi occupation on public transportation (because no Greek commute is complete without a bit of anti-German agitprop). Meanwhile, Varoufakis says he wishes Greece would have never entered the monetary union.

Is it even plausible that China would go all nuke on the U.S. over Taiwan?

"...choosing to raise your children to be independent thinkers who don’t automatically want to control others by force, can sometimes lead to tension with family and friends, especially older ones. I find most of them to be just innocent victims who happily reside within the matrix, merely repeating thoughts they were subliminally conditioned to believe."

The endgame has indeed arrived. At the very least, the international elites seem to think success is within their grasp, for they now openly expose their own criminality. But they do so in a way that attempts to divert blame or to rationalize their actions as being for the "greater good." All signs and evidence point to what the IMF calls the "great global economic reset.”" The plans for this reset do not include U.S. prosperity or a thriving dollar.