http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49512.htm
Interfering in Italy's Democracy... and It's Not Russia
Italy's political turmoil tends to prove the wry old saying that "if voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal".
The country is facing a mounting constitutional crisis amid calls for the president to be impeached after he blocked the formation of a new government.
The crisis seems to be mainly about a clash over financial policy and a populist challenge to European Union economic austerity, according to to the Financial Times.
But lurking too is a concern among the EU establishment in Brussels that a new populist Italian government is proposing to radically restore friendly relations with Russia. That concern is no doubt shared by Washington and NATO.
After the populist parties of Five Star Movement (M5S) and League topped the polls in a general election in March, they have formed a would-be coalition to govern. It has taken nearly three months of negotiations to hammer out a governance plan.
But there are core policies on which the coalition partners are in strong agreement. Those policies include an end to the EU's orthodoxy of neoliberal economic austerity; and, perhaps just as significant, to end EU sanctions on Russia in a step towards normalizing relations.
Both M5S and League have praised Russia's military intervention in Syria to bring the seven-year war there to a close. Both parties have also blamed the United States and the EU for meddling in Ukraine's internal affairs as the cause of the ongoing conflict in that country. The latter viewpoint turns upside-down the conventional US-NATO-EU notion of accusing Russia of interfering in Ukraine.
For these reasons, that is why the Italian government-in-waiting wants to abandon the EU position of imposing economic sanctions on Russia for the past four years since the Ukraine conflict erupted in 2014.
The EU's sanctions require unanimity among its 28 member states for implementation. If Italy were to vote against the sanctions — as the M5S and League are firmly proposing to do — then the US-EU policy of trying to isolate Russia will be split in two.
After the populist parties won the Italian election in March, a Guardian headline captured the apprehension felt among the Washington and Brussels NATO axis: ‘Electoral gains or M5S and League may threaten Italy's strong support for NATO and US'.
This may, in fact, be the decisive factor in the latest twist of Italy's political crisis.
Over the weekend, long-time President Sergio Mattarella sparked fury after he blocked the key appointment of a finance minister. The nominee for the position, Paolo Savona, is a prominent critic of the EU economic policy of austerity and tight fiscal control.
Savona was nominated by the would-be coalition government because his Eurosceptic views dovetail with the populists' demands for more public investment and a basic income for poor families. The populists believe that Italy can in this way stimulate its economy and grow its way out of high indebtedness, rather than through the orthodox neoliberal position prevailing in Brussels of reducing debt through cutting public spending and imposing austerity.
Italy's largely figurehead President Mattarella said he was refusing to mandate the appointment of the populist finance minister out of "fears about Italian and foreign investors" pulling out of the country's economy. Italy's economy is the third biggest in the Eurozone, but it has been mired in sluggish growth for years, with a massive debt-to-GDP ratio of over 130 percent and soaring unemployment.
The blocking of the new finance minister's appointment has rebounded in a constitutional crisis. Prime Minister-designate Giuseppe Conte resigned in protest. A new government cannot be formed, and there are furious calls from M5S and League for President Mattarella to be impeached for impeding the "will of the people".
Luigi Di Maio, the leader of M5S was quoted as saying: "Why don't we just say that in this country it's pointless that we vote, as the ratings agencies, financial lobbies decide the governments?"
The League's Matteo Salvini was equally vehement: "In a democracy, if we are still in a democracy, there's only one thing to do, let the Italians have their say."
He added with notable fury: "Italy is not a colony. We are not slaves of the Germans or the French or finance".
Incumbent President Mattarella is accused of being "pro-Brussels" and compliant with the dominant economic policy of austerity and strict public finances.
Italy's 132 percent debt-to-GDP ratio is more than double what EU rules allow, and second-highest to Greece, as cited by the BBC.
So if a populist government in Rome were to relax debt rules and grow its way out of economic stagnation, the result would be a head-on challenge to Brussels, the EU administration and the German government in particular, which is a fiscal hawk.
However, the point is that a radical challenge to EU economic policy is what the Italian people voted for. Large numbers of them are fed up with "slave-like" obedience to fiscal policies that accommodate the priorities of financial institutions and foreign capital.
The fury felt in Italy over the latest crisis is propelled by a sense that their votes are being overturned. That is, "if your vote changed anything, it would be made illegal".
This perceived blatant interference in democratic rights on behalf of neoliberal economic interests and financial investors is bound to further rile up the populist backlash against the EU establishment — not just in Italy, but increasingly across the bloc, from Britain to the Netherlands, from France to Germany, Austria, Denmark, Hungary and elsewhere.
But there's another factor that may be equally important, if not quite as openly stated. That is Russia and the geopolitics of the US-led NATO axis.
It is perhaps significant that President Mattarella, like many of the traditional EU ruling elite, is very pro-US and pro-NATO. For instance, when he was previously Italy's defense minister, Mattarella strongly supported the US-led NATO bombing of former Yugoslavia in the late 1990s.
Already noted above, the incoming government coalition between the M5S and League was proposing to end the EU policy of economic sanctions on Russia. Both parties have said Moscow should not be treated as a military threat, but rather viewed as a partner and ally.
As a founding member of the EU, Italy's position on the matter of foreign relations with Russia would be crucial. If the new government had overturned the EU's sanctions policy and restored friendly ties with Moscow that would scuttle the pro-Atlanticist axis between Washington and Brussels.
Arguably for Europe's citizens, that would be a beneficial release from the irrational hostility towards Russia, which Washington has dictated in recent years and which EU leaders have lamentably followed.
In other words, huge geopolitical interests are at stake if the Italians are allowed their democratic freedom to form a populist government. No doubt Washington and its allies in Brussels stepped into "brief" the Italian president on what is deemed acceptable limits of democracy.
And yet, laughably, the US-NATO-EU Atlanticist axis has the brass neck to continually berate Russia for "interfering in Western democracies".
Wednesday, May 30, 2018
SC166-6
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49532.htm
I Pledge Allegiance to the United States of Sociopathy
In Alfred Hitchcock’s classic thriller, Shadow of a Doubt, spunky, recent high school grad Teresa Wright discovers her beloved uncle is a serial killer.
Wright’s subsequent efforts to protect herself and others from psychopathic Joseph Cotten are continually frustrated by the extraordinary denial of her family and her community lost in the “thrall” of the worldly, smooth-talking Uncle Charlie.
Heartbroken and distraught, she must contend with her uncle’s violent agenda while being obstructed by a naive and vulnerable community of his enablers and/or soon to be victims.
Wright’s horrifying predicament resonates as I witness my – our – psychopathic uncle – UNCLE SAM, the U.S. government – perpetrate violent crime upon crime against humanity enabled by a maddening, morally mute, over-trusting, under-informed and/or indifferent citizenry.
I don’t think I’ll ever be able to fully wrap my mind or heart around the profound lack of outrage and empathy among government leaders from both corporate parties, the corporate media, as well as the vast majority of my fellow citizens at the ongoing atrocities of the Global War on Terror. (More accurately, the “US Global War of Terror”!)
The terrorist attacks of 9/11 seemingly justified a “gloves off” bloodlust defiance by the political and military “guardians” of America of the legal and moral pillars of our democracy. All these years since, the mandates for constitutional and moral justice “for all” have gone unheeded.
The Iraq war was launched illegally and with manipulative lies. Bush’s torture program was in total opposition to constitutional, international and moral law. Its perpetrators deserved serious prosecution.
The Geneva Conventions were ratified once upon a time by a U.S. Congress. Habeas corpus, in place since 1679, so cavalierly suspended with the GWOT’s “anything goes” rationale.
When such gobsmacking evil manifests on such a collective and global level for such a sustained amount of time, it deserves a serious analysis by those of us still spiritually awake enough to protest it.
At this point in my concerned citizenship, I am moving beyond anger into an awe of the scope of the – well – I call it downright and seriously unchallenged EVIL. Looking for a more clinical term than that? How about patriarchal psychopathology?
In his acceptance speech for the 2005 Nobel Prize for Literature, Harold Pinter acknowledged the long trail of U.S. international war crimes as well as the lack of historical and current accountability by this government, corporate media and its citizenry for them.
“It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening, it wasn’t happening . . . You have to hand it to America . . . masquerading as a force for universal good. It’s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.”
Speaking of bottom-line and minimized evil, the specter of torture has reared its ugly head once again with President Donald Trump, an unabashed torture enthusiast, and the confirmation of his choice for Director of the CIA, “Bloody Gina” Haspel, notorious overseer of a secret black prison in Thailand where brutal torture was conducted. She was readily confirmed by a combination of Democratic and Republican senators. Senators, no doubt, who after fearful years of being labeled “too soft on terror” were not about to stick their necks out for decency and morality.
As for too many of my fellow citizens, terminally influenced by an amoral corporate media, I am nonetheless at a loss for their easy acceptance of torture.
A Pew Research poll released in 2017 revealed that 48% of the US citizenry believed that some circumstances could justify the use of torture, and 49% maintained there were no circumstances that would ever justify it. Every other US citizen is thumb’s up for the use of torture!
How disturbing over the last decade for the use of torture to be normalized and decriminalized by the military, citizenry, politicians, media, and those government lawyers who early on cravenly defied the obvious spirit of basic “Golden Rule” morality, the Constitution, and international law, to minimize the savagery of torture with euphemistic labels still parroted by much of the corporate media and or applied as fig leaves over the reprehensible.
“Enhanced interrogation techniques.” Thank you, New York Times. They are monstrous methods of inflicting debilitating psychological and physical anguish on victims even at times to the point of death. Techniques that, along with being illegal and immoral, are universally regarded as unreliable. They are reliable only in generating false confessions (which apparently was one of the goals of the original, craven perpetrators).
Torture is wrong. It is evil.
Reading Jacob Weisberg’s book, The Bush Tragedy, I learned that the main ego-armature for George W. Bush during his Yale University years was his participation in the fraternity culture.
Weisberg discloses that when “W” finally became head of a fraternity, he “ruled” at one point that lowly pledges be branded with real, Texas branding irons as part of their hazing.
When the Yale Daily News got wind of Bush’s sadistic and zealous intention, it disclosed it to the entire university community. The Yale administrative patriarchs immediately huddled together to deal with the negative P.R. (I’m guessing that far outweighed the actual physical or psychological welfare of the targeted pledges.)
The patriarchs’ solution? Rein in Mr. Bush, whose sociopathy they irresponsibly minimized as an impish, “boys-will-be-boys”-ness. With the proverbial wink and nod, they insisted young Bush forego the branding irons and instead ONLY make use of scalding metal coat hangers or lit cigarettes to burn freshman flesh.
Say what????
Problem solved? This Yale incident foreshadowed and undoubtedly helped foster the ultimate creation of the craven and covert torture program by Bush and cabal, particularly with the ever-Satanic Dick Cheney.
The green-lighting of that more modest degree of torture speaks volumes of a troubling, profoundly unempathetic – sociopathic— macho-mindset within the deepest, most influential halls of America’s supposed intellectual and ruling class elite and mentors of said elite. They enabled and abetted young, already morally-deranged Master Bush, instead of role modeling and enforcing boundaries of basic human decency.
Just another rite of male passage? No wonder our American culture is so violent.
Andy Worthington, a prime advocate for victimized prisoners of Gitmo once reminded his audience during a NYC anti-war forum that in 2007 it was Senator Obama who declared:
“In the dark halls of Abu Ghraib and the detention cells of Guantánamo, we have compromised our most precious values. What could have been a call to a generation has become an excuse for unchecked presidential power.”
President Obama posed as a person of character most convincingly. It got him the White House. Twice.
Obama took no responsibility for his breathtaking, 180-degree reversals of golden promises of anti-Bush reform, pre-election.
The most obvious and necessarily immediate reforms that he failed to act on were the restoration of habeas corpus rights and the prosecution of the perpetrators of the clandestine Bush torture program, of those who had most reprehensibly exploited the post-9/11 fear, outrage and vengeance sensibility of much of the citizenry.
Obama’s policy decisions instead included deadly drone warfare, assassination kill lists, unlimited due-process-less detentions, military tribunals, countless corporate wars and U.S. military (corporate-opportunistic) garrisoning; and the continuation of Gitmo and God only knows what other black sites.
Obama’s posture was of an always rhetorically amiable and faux-reasonable Roman emperor with thumb’s up or down power over life and death. Many of his “subjects” adored him.
“We tortured some folks,”he finally admitted with a shrug at a press conference. As if it was not a colossally serious deal.
“Folks”? Now there’s a friendly word.
This is heart-of-darkness territory. Obama chose to become an enabler of violators of human rights and then a violator of them himself. To add to the horror, Obama so readily was enabled by the media in this, the vast majority of Congress, and the vast majority of citizens.
Does the cult of celebrity in America overwhelm basic human decency? It seems so.
Do U.S. leaders as diverse (but all amoral) as Bush, Obama and Trump, along with callous political cronies, military leaders and media, only need to repeat the word “terror” enough times to have so much of America fall into a “do with us, our money, or anyone else whatever depraved, anti-humanity behavior you want” kind of swoon?
“To torture or not to torture” not only a hot news media topic, but fodder for jingoistic and sensationalized movies and TV shows (as the normalization of torture steamrolls on).
Loyalty and admiration for the troops (no matter what war crimes they may be committing) and/or blind trust in a national administrative and military authority should not override human decency. American “exceptionalism” should not override identifying and ending war criminality. It does.
The status quo establishment in America has us locked into perpetual war with untold mass global deaths and maiming and ever-increasing economic hardship for all humanity except for a tiny percentage of transnational elites.
A paradigm shift from a “profits over people” patriarchy to the humanism of partnership and cooperation is the answer, but that would require decisions based on a U.S. leadership, a U.S. media and a U.S. society that seriously honored empathy, justice and the law.
Ours do not.
Scott Peck asserts in his book, People of the Lie, that mental health is “dedication to reality at all costs.” This healthy sense of reality includes an in-touchness with one’s inner reality and a respect for the reality of others. It requires the capacity to fully think and FEEL.
This “feeling capacity” – including and especially EMPATHY — seems most vulnerable to dysfunction in our society and world, among both leaders and followers.
Feelings are profoundly under-valued in our U.S. society, and this feeling dysfunction is at the heart (or lack thereof) of the existing suffering and injustice.
Alice Miller, in her book For Your Own Good, refers to a “poisonous pedagogy” that can infect a society. She explains that that was what made the “good” (as in compliant) German population easy prey for the authoritarianism of Hitler.
Miller emphasizes that the capacity for empathy is not linked to one’s intelligence. She points out that both Hitler and Stalin had enthusiastic, highly intellectual followers.
If one is not able to respond with authentic feelings and thoughtful consideration to real life situations involving oneself or others, one is susceptible to “enthrallment” to the will of a toxic and controlling leader, asserts Miller.
She also contends that unprocessed trauma in one’s childhood, that is, when children are exposed to profound degrees of non-empathy from adult caretakers, will cause a crippling or shutting down of their feeling capacity later in adult life along with the potential of a sudden dismantling of their own will for the will of another. Miller explains that such trauma undoubtedly also happened to the original destructive caretakers during their childhoods in a continuing, generational cycle of dysfunction.
When trauma goes unprocessed by feelings, that is, it stays unfelt and un-grieved, it induces one to over-identify with an aggressor and enter his or her “thrall” later in adulthood. Also, such conditioning can induce one to project one’s negative feelings about oneself onto others as scapegoats. People with a disordered feeling capacity cannot handle and take mature responsibility for whatever guilt, shame, anger, frustration gets triggered within them in the present and must deflect it.
In People of the Lie, Scott Peck discusses the experiments of Dr. Stanley Milgram at Yale in 1961 which revealed how people were so readily intimidated by an authority in a white coat that they willingly would inflict what they thought were disabling electric shocks on strangers without question. Six out of 10 of the tested humans were willing to inflict serious harm on strangers from their own over-conditioning to the will of authority figures.
Peck emphasizes how obedience is the foundation of military discipline. “A follower is never a WHOLE person,” he maintains. Tragically, most people are far more comfortable in the “follower” role, leaving the responsibility and decision-making to those who step forward as leaders. When ruthless, reckless, immature, even sociopathic persons assume leadership positions, especially in an authoritarian system, the results can be tragic.
He also contends that a lack of conscience in human beings is partly due to “specialization”, a detachment from responsibility. One regards oneself as simply playing a role in a group scenario and thus can easily pass the “moral buck” so-to-speak to another part of the group. Troops shooting foreign civilians with a kind of “video-game aloofness”, for example will rationalize: “We don’t kill the people. Our weapons do. Whoever gave us these weapons and instructions are really responsible for the killing. Not us.”
Another example he cites is of how weapons manufacturers, sellers, lobbyists, etc. feel no personal responsibility for the consequences of violence from the weapons they distribute. The moral decision as to the use of the weapons is not part of their “specialized” roles. (And the financial profits are just too damn juicy to consider otherwise.)
Peck also cites the regressive shutting down of authentic and appropriate feelings in people due to a phenomenon called “psychic numbing.” The mind has the ability to anesthetize itself from feelings in the face of trauma. “The horrible becomes normal,” he writes.
Finally, he explains that groups bond often within a collectively egotistical groupthink by circling the proverbial wagons against a common, demonized enemy. “The other.” Scapegoating occurs when a group collectively projects the “badness” of themselves, too difficult to fathom, onto others.
James Lucas in an article for globalresearch.com back in 2015 declared that the United States has killed approximately 20 million people in 37 countries since the end of World War II.
How many of us can actually begin to feel and process the utter enormity of such a revelation? (One thinks of a quote attributed to the profoundly non-empathetic Joseph Stalin: “One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic.”)
What say you to 20 million, America? Look what our UNCLE SAM has wrought.
Can we as a nation cultivate a collective capacity for “empathy”? A critical mass of us reached a breakthrough of collective conscience during the Vietnam era (though it took us long enough, admittedly).
Can each of us dedicate ourselves to a “reality at all costs” awareness for our individual as well as collective mental health?
The fast hardening of soft fascism seems to be happening with little conscious struggle among the masses who seem convinced we non-elites can get away with staying passive and will be supported by our corporate-captured politicians and media.
Can we face down and acknowledge the relentless criminality of our government and representatives (who are not really OUR representatives).
If such crimes are not acknowledged, called out and then accounted for they will continue and escalate in number and nature. Even more frightening, more and more and more “good” Americans will succumb to this “normalization” of evil.
Confronting evil is daunting. Confronting mass and institutionalized evil all the more so. Sickening. Spiritually exhausting. It even has been said to biologically weaken one’s thymus gland that supports the body’s immune system.
We must detach from seductive “cronyism” with authoritarians or authoritarian followers and encourage others to do so.
We must explore the details of what is going on in our citizen name, with our tax dollars and especially with our vulnerable, patriotic and earnest young who can become tragically confounded by and induced to perpetrate institutionalized evil policies.
We owe it to ourselves and our world to stay whole and awake as citizens. To speak truth to power. Once again, “a follower is not a whole person” as Scott Peck declared.
“This is why the individual is sacred. For it is in the solitary mind and soul of the individual that the battle between good and evil is waged and ultimately won or lost.”
It has been said there are three types of people in this world. A smallish group of people who make things happen. A larger group of people who watch things happen. (I am thinking, of those “good people who do nothing.”) And finally the third, excessively large and clueless group, exclaiming, “WHAT THE F*CK HAPPENED???”
Let’s try to shrink the second and third groups and expand the first by getting up and exercising those consciences.
I Pledge Allegiance to the United States of Sociopathy
In Alfred Hitchcock’s classic thriller, Shadow of a Doubt, spunky, recent high school grad Teresa Wright discovers her beloved uncle is a serial killer.
Wright’s subsequent efforts to protect herself and others from psychopathic Joseph Cotten are continually frustrated by the extraordinary denial of her family and her community lost in the “thrall” of the worldly, smooth-talking Uncle Charlie.
Heartbroken and distraught, she must contend with her uncle’s violent agenda while being obstructed by a naive and vulnerable community of his enablers and/or soon to be victims.
Wright’s horrifying predicament resonates as I witness my – our – psychopathic uncle – UNCLE SAM, the U.S. government – perpetrate violent crime upon crime against humanity enabled by a maddening, morally mute, over-trusting, under-informed and/or indifferent citizenry.
I don’t think I’ll ever be able to fully wrap my mind or heart around the profound lack of outrage and empathy among government leaders from both corporate parties, the corporate media, as well as the vast majority of my fellow citizens at the ongoing atrocities of the Global War on Terror. (More accurately, the “US Global War of Terror”!)
The terrorist attacks of 9/11 seemingly justified a “gloves off” bloodlust defiance by the political and military “guardians” of America of the legal and moral pillars of our democracy. All these years since, the mandates for constitutional and moral justice “for all” have gone unheeded.
The Iraq war was launched illegally and with manipulative lies. Bush’s torture program was in total opposition to constitutional, international and moral law. Its perpetrators deserved serious prosecution.
The Geneva Conventions were ratified once upon a time by a U.S. Congress. Habeas corpus, in place since 1679, so cavalierly suspended with the GWOT’s “anything goes” rationale.
When such gobsmacking evil manifests on such a collective and global level for such a sustained amount of time, it deserves a serious analysis by those of us still spiritually awake enough to protest it.
At this point in my concerned citizenship, I am moving beyond anger into an awe of the scope of the – well – I call it downright and seriously unchallenged EVIL. Looking for a more clinical term than that? How about patriarchal psychopathology?
In his acceptance speech for the 2005 Nobel Prize for Literature, Harold Pinter acknowledged the long trail of U.S. international war crimes as well as the lack of historical and current accountability by this government, corporate media and its citizenry for them.
“It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening, it wasn’t happening . . . You have to hand it to America . . . masquerading as a force for universal good. It’s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.”
Speaking of bottom-line and minimized evil, the specter of torture has reared its ugly head once again with President Donald Trump, an unabashed torture enthusiast, and the confirmation of his choice for Director of the CIA, “Bloody Gina” Haspel, notorious overseer of a secret black prison in Thailand where brutal torture was conducted. She was readily confirmed by a combination of Democratic and Republican senators. Senators, no doubt, who after fearful years of being labeled “too soft on terror” were not about to stick their necks out for decency and morality.
As for too many of my fellow citizens, terminally influenced by an amoral corporate media, I am nonetheless at a loss for their easy acceptance of torture.
A Pew Research poll released in 2017 revealed that 48% of the US citizenry believed that some circumstances could justify the use of torture, and 49% maintained there were no circumstances that would ever justify it. Every other US citizen is thumb’s up for the use of torture!
How disturbing over the last decade for the use of torture to be normalized and decriminalized by the military, citizenry, politicians, media, and those government lawyers who early on cravenly defied the obvious spirit of basic “Golden Rule” morality, the Constitution, and international law, to minimize the savagery of torture with euphemistic labels still parroted by much of the corporate media and or applied as fig leaves over the reprehensible.
“Enhanced interrogation techniques.” Thank you, New York Times. They are monstrous methods of inflicting debilitating psychological and physical anguish on victims even at times to the point of death. Techniques that, along with being illegal and immoral, are universally regarded as unreliable. They are reliable only in generating false confessions (which apparently was one of the goals of the original, craven perpetrators).
Torture is wrong. It is evil.
Reading Jacob Weisberg’s book, The Bush Tragedy, I learned that the main ego-armature for George W. Bush during his Yale University years was his participation in the fraternity culture.
Weisberg discloses that when “W” finally became head of a fraternity, he “ruled” at one point that lowly pledges be branded with real, Texas branding irons as part of their hazing.
When the Yale Daily News got wind of Bush’s sadistic and zealous intention, it disclosed it to the entire university community. The Yale administrative patriarchs immediately huddled together to deal with the negative P.R. (I’m guessing that far outweighed the actual physical or psychological welfare of the targeted pledges.)
The patriarchs’ solution? Rein in Mr. Bush, whose sociopathy they irresponsibly minimized as an impish, “boys-will-be-boys”-ness. With the proverbial wink and nod, they insisted young Bush forego the branding irons and instead ONLY make use of scalding metal coat hangers or lit cigarettes to burn freshman flesh.
Say what????
Problem solved? This Yale incident foreshadowed and undoubtedly helped foster the ultimate creation of the craven and covert torture program by Bush and cabal, particularly with the ever-Satanic Dick Cheney.
The green-lighting of that more modest degree of torture speaks volumes of a troubling, profoundly unempathetic – sociopathic— macho-mindset within the deepest, most influential halls of America’s supposed intellectual and ruling class elite and mentors of said elite. They enabled and abetted young, already morally-deranged Master Bush, instead of role modeling and enforcing boundaries of basic human decency.
Just another rite of male passage? No wonder our American culture is so violent.
Andy Worthington, a prime advocate for victimized prisoners of Gitmo once reminded his audience during a NYC anti-war forum that in 2007 it was Senator Obama who declared:
“In the dark halls of Abu Ghraib and the detention cells of Guantánamo, we have compromised our most precious values. What could have been a call to a generation has become an excuse for unchecked presidential power.”
President Obama posed as a person of character most convincingly. It got him the White House. Twice.
Obama took no responsibility for his breathtaking, 180-degree reversals of golden promises of anti-Bush reform, pre-election.
The most obvious and necessarily immediate reforms that he failed to act on were the restoration of habeas corpus rights and the prosecution of the perpetrators of the clandestine Bush torture program, of those who had most reprehensibly exploited the post-9/11 fear, outrage and vengeance sensibility of much of the citizenry.
Obama’s policy decisions instead included deadly drone warfare, assassination kill lists, unlimited due-process-less detentions, military tribunals, countless corporate wars and U.S. military (corporate-opportunistic) garrisoning; and the continuation of Gitmo and God only knows what other black sites.
Obama’s posture was of an always rhetorically amiable and faux-reasonable Roman emperor with thumb’s up or down power over life and death. Many of his “subjects” adored him.
“We tortured some folks,”he finally admitted with a shrug at a press conference. As if it was not a colossally serious deal.
“Folks”? Now there’s a friendly word.
This is heart-of-darkness territory. Obama chose to become an enabler of violators of human rights and then a violator of them himself. To add to the horror, Obama so readily was enabled by the media in this, the vast majority of Congress, and the vast majority of citizens.
Does the cult of celebrity in America overwhelm basic human decency? It seems so.
Do U.S. leaders as diverse (but all amoral) as Bush, Obama and Trump, along with callous political cronies, military leaders and media, only need to repeat the word “terror” enough times to have so much of America fall into a “do with us, our money, or anyone else whatever depraved, anti-humanity behavior you want” kind of swoon?
“To torture or not to torture” not only a hot news media topic, but fodder for jingoistic and sensationalized movies and TV shows (as the normalization of torture steamrolls on).
Loyalty and admiration for the troops (no matter what war crimes they may be committing) and/or blind trust in a national administrative and military authority should not override human decency. American “exceptionalism” should not override identifying and ending war criminality. It does.
The status quo establishment in America has us locked into perpetual war with untold mass global deaths and maiming and ever-increasing economic hardship for all humanity except for a tiny percentage of transnational elites.
A paradigm shift from a “profits over people” patriarchy to the humanism of partnership and cooperation is the answer, but that would require decisions based on a U.S. leadership, a U.S. media and a U.S. society that seriously honored empathy, justice and the law.
Ours do not.
Scott Peck asserts in his book, People of the Lie, that mental health is “dedication to reality at all costs.” This healthy sense of reality includes an in-touchness with one’s inner reality and a respect for the reality of others. It requires the capacity to fully think and FEEL.
This “feeling capacity” – including and especially EMPATHY — seems most vulnerable to dysfunction in our society and world, among both leaders and followers.
Feelings are profoundly under-valued in our U.S. society, and this feeling dysfunction is at the heart (or lack thereof) of the existing suffering and injustice.
Alice Miller, in her book For Your Own Good, refers to a “poisonous pedagogy” that can infect a society. She explains that that was what made the “good” (as in compliant) German population easy prey for the authoritarianism of Hitler.
Miller emphasizes that the capacity for empathy is not linked to one’s intelligence. She points out that both Hitler and Stalin had enthusiastic, highly intellectual followers.
If one is not able to respond with authentic feelings and thoughtful consideration to real life situations involving oneself or others, one is susceptible to “enthrallment” to the will of a toxic and controlling leader, asserts Miller.
She also contends that unprocessed trauma in one’s childhood, that is, when children are exposed to profound degrees of non-empathy from adult caretakers, will cause a crippling or shutting down of their feeling capacity later in adult life along with the potential of a sudden dismantling of their own will for the will of another. Miller explains that such trauma undoubtedly also happened to the original destructive caretakers during their childhoods in a continuing, generational cycle of dysfunction.
When trauma goes unprocessed by feelings, that is, it stays unfelt and un-grieved, it induces one to over-identify with an aggressor and enter his or her “thrall” later in adulthood. Also, such conditioning can induce one to project one’s negative feelings about oneself onto others as scapegoats. People with a disordered feeling capacity cannot handle and take mature responsibility for whatever guilt, shame, anger, frustration gets triggered within them in the present and must deflect it.
In People of the Lie, Scott Peck discusses the experiments of Dr. Stanley Milgram at Yale in 1961 which revealed how people were so readily intimidated by an authority in a white coat that they willingly would inflict what they thought were disabling electric shocks on strangers without question. Six out of 10 of the tested humans were willing to inflict serious harm on strangers from their own over-conditioning to the will of authority figures.
Peck emphasizes how obedience is the foundation of military discipline. “A follower is never a WHOLE person,” he maintains. Tragically, most people are far more comfortable in the “follower” role, leaving the responsibility and decision-making to those who step forward as leaders. When ruthless, reckless, immature, even sociopathic persons assume leadership positions, especially in an authoritarian system, the results can be tragic.
He also contends that a lack of conscience in human beings is partly due to “specialization”, a detachment from responsibility. One regards oneself as simply playing a role in a group scenario and thus can easily pass the “moral buck” so-to-speak to another part of the group. Troops shooting foreign civilians with a kind of “video-game aloofness”, for example will rationalize: “We don’t kill the people. Our weapons do. Whoever gave us these weapons and instructions are really responsible for the killing. Not us.”
Another example he cites is of how weapons manufacturers, sellers, lobbyists, etc. feel no personal responsibility for the consequences of violence from the weapons they distribute. The moral decision as to the use of the weapons is not part of their “specialized” roles. (And the financial profits are just too damn juicy to consider otherwise.)
Peck also cites the regressive shutting down of authentic and appropriate feelings in people due to a phenomenon called “psychic numbing.” The mind has the ability to anesthetize itself from feelings in the face of trauma. “The horrible becomes normal,” he writes.
Finally, he explains that groups bond often within a collectively egotistical groupthink by circling the proverbial wagons against a common, demonized enemy. “The other.” Scapegoating occurs when a group collectively projects the “badness” of themselves, too difficult to fathom, onto others.
James Lucas in an article for globalresearch.com back in 2015 declared that the United States has killed approximately 20 million people in 37 countries since the end of World War II.
How many of us can actually begin to feel and process the utter enormity of such a revelation? (One thinks of a quote attributed to the profoundly non-empathetic Joseph Stalin: “One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic.”)
What say you to 20 million, America? Look what our UNCLE SAM has wrought.
Can we as a nation cultivate a collective capacity for “empathy”? A critical mass of us reached a breakthrough of collective conscience during the Vietnam era (though it took us long enough, admittedly).
Can each of us dedicate ourselves to a “reality at all costs” awareness for our individual as well as collective mental health?
The fast hardening of soft fascism seems to be happening with little conscious struggle among the masses who seem convinced we non-elites can get away with staying passive and will be supported by our corporate-captured politicians and media.
Can we face down and acknowledge the relentless criminality of our government and representatives (who are not really OUR representatives).
If such crimes are not acknowledged, called out and then accounted for they will continue and escalate in number and nature. Even more frightening, more and more and more “good” Americans will succumb to this “normalization” of evil.
Confronting evil is daunting. Confronting mass and institutionalized evil all the more so. Sickening. Spiritually exhausting. It even has been said to biologically weaken one’s thymus gland that supports the body’s immune system.
We must detach from seductive “cronyism” with authoritarians or authoritarian followers and encourage others to do so.
We must explore the details of what is going on in our citizen name, with our tax dollars and especially with our vulnerable, patriotic and earnest young who can become tragically confounded by and induced to perpetrate institutionalized evil policies.
We owe it to ourselves and our world to stay whole and awake as citizens. To speak truth to power. Once again, “a follower is not a whole person” as Scott Peck declared.
“This is why the individual is sacred. For it is in the solitary mind and soul of the individual that the battle between good and evil is waged and ultimately won or lost.”
It has been said there are three types of people in this world. A smallish group of people who make things happen. A larger group of people who watch things happen. (I am thinking, of those “good people who do nothing.”) And finally the third, excessively large and clueless group, exclaiming, “WHAT THE F*CK HAPPENED???”
Let’s try to shrink the second and third groups and expand the first by getting up and exercising those consciences.
Sunday, May 27, 2018
SC166-5
https://www.oftwominds.com/blog.html
America 2018: Dicier by the Day
If we look beneath the cheery chatter of the financial media and the tiresomely repetitive Russian collusion narrative (that's unraveling as the Ministry of Propaganda's machinations are exposed), we find that America in 2018 is dicier by the day.
The more you know about the actual functioning of critical subsystems, the keener your awareness of the system's fragility, reliance on artifice and an unceasing flow of "free money." Keynesian economics boils down to a very simple premise: a slowing or stagnant economy can be goosed by distributing plenty of "free money" which can be freely blown on either speculation or goods and services.
The "free money" (either created out of thin air or borrowed into existence at rates of interest so low that they're less than zero when adjusted for inflation) dumped into speculation gooses assets higher, generating the "wealth effect" beloved by Keynesians, and the "free money" dumped into goods and services gooses consumption, tax revenues, hiring and so on.
The catch is "free money" is never actually free. Creating trillions out of thin air reduces the purchasing power of all existing currency, and pretty soon you're following Venezuela into "our money has lost all its value" territory.
Borrow trillions into existence and at some point even ludicrously low rates of interest start piling up serious sums of interest due, and the system eventually collapses under the weight of defaults and interest payments that stripmine the economy's productive capacity.
Every subsystem in America has compensated for structural stagnation and increasing friction by reducing redundancy and buffers. Have you noticed how many airline flights are now delayed by mechanical issues? Maybe it's my poor luck (experiencing mechanical-related delays), but it makes me wonder if buffers and redundancy have been reduced to lower costs and maintain profits, lest the management team be fired for missing a quarterly earning target.
If you think America's healthcare system is functioning wonderfully, you need to hear some unvarnished, frank reports from nurses and doctors who are speaking off the record. Healthcare is increasingly fragile as physicians and nurses bail out by retiring early. A destructive feedback is taking hold in rural America and other under-served "markets": chronic shortages of physicians and nurses overload the overworked frontline care providers, burning them out as the workloads becomes impossible to manage without leaving widening cracks in care and infrastructure.
As for education: virtually every school district is screaming for more money while its budget is increasingly devoted to soaring pension contributions. The same can be said for many public agencies and institutions. The unwelcome reality is there isn't enough money in the Universe to fund all the pension obligations and increase funding to meet the demands for more of everything-- unless you just create vast sums out of thin air, in which case you follow Venezuela down the monetary black hole to the point that 1 million units of central bank/government-issued "money" equals one loaf of bread.
Public services are stripmined to meet pension obligations, and this zero-sum reality will only become more apparent as the excesses of speculation, debt, malinvestment and asset bubbles decay into the inevitable business-cycle recession--a recession that will be made worse by the issuance of more "free money," as the increasing reliance on the marginal speculator and borrower will hasten the avalanche of defaults and malinvestments that will bring down the entire house of cards.
As the tent cities of the homeless proliferate, cities and counties are finding their revenues are devoted to pension obligations, leaving less and less to education, filling potholes, addressing the homeless crisis, the opioid crisis, etc. When the "everything bubble" pops and assets crater, the impossibility of fulfilling promises made in "good times" will be apparent to all but those demanding "their fair share."
About that "cheap abundant energy" provided by fracking: it's only cheap if we overlook the $250 billion in losses racked up by the sector, and it's only abundant if we ignore the rapid depletion of the majority of wells.
We're supposed to take Facebook's ease in brushing off its blatant exploitation of users' data as proof all is well in social-media-land, but the reality is sobering: America's devotion to Facebook is evidence of the populace's desperate yearning for a connection, any connection, no matter how thin or artificial, to a sense of community in a society stripped of authentic community by the dominance of maximizing profit (Facebook, Amazon and Google's raison d'etre) and centralized power.
This chart of total debt reveals the system's profound fragility--a fragility the Powers That Be are trying to mask with a tsunami of artifice: the system is now so dependent on the heroin hit of "free money" that even the slightest pause in credit growth will collapse the entire global financial system. This is why central banks have created trillions out of thin air--TINA: there is no alternative:
Between the ceaseless Ministry of Propaganda hysteria, the childish fantasy of super-hero films (we're gonna be saved by somebody, no effort on our own behalf required) and the disgorging of zero-credibility economic statistics, the distractions are 24/7. But scrape all this putrid excrescence off and we're left with a non-fantasy reality: everything is getting dicier by the day.
America 2018: Dicier by the Day
If we look beneath the cheery chatter of the financial media and the tiresomely repetitive Russian collusion narrative (that's unraveling as the Ministry of Propaganda's machinations are exposed), we find that America in 2018 is dicier by the day.
The more you know about the actual functioning of critical subsystems, the keener your awareness of the system's fragility, reliance on artifice and an unceasing flow of "free money." Keynesian economics boils down to a very simple premise: a slowing or stagnant economy can be goosed by distributing plenty of "free money" which can be freely blown on either speculation or goods and services.
The "free money" (either created out of thin air or borrowed into existence at rates of interest so low that they're less than zero when adjusted for inflation) dumped into speculation gooses assets higher, generating the "wealth effect" beloved by Keynesians, and the "free money" dumped into goods and services gooses consumption, tax revenues, hiring and so on.
The catch is "free money" is never actually free. Creating trillions out of thin air reduces the purchasing power of all existing currency, and pretty soon you're following Venezuela into "our money has lost all its value" territory.
Borrow trillions into existence and at some point even ludicrously low rates of interest start piling up serious sums of interest due, and the system eventually collapses under the weight of defaults and interest payments that stripmine the economy's productive capacity.
Every subsystem in America has compensated for structural stagnation and increasing friction by reducing redundancy and buffers. Have you noticed how many airline flights are now delayed by mechanical issues? Maybe it's my poor luck (experiencing mechanical-related delays), but it makes me wonder if buffers and redundancy have been reduced to lower costs and maintain profits, lest the management team be fired for missing a quarterly earning target.
If you think America's healthcare system is functioning wonderfully, you need to hear some unvarnished, frank reports from nurses and doctors who are speaking off the record. Healthcare is increasingly fragile as physicians and nurses bail out by retiring early. A destructive feedback is taking hold in rural America and other under-served "markets": chronic shortages of physicians and nurses overload the overworked frontline care providers, burning them out as the workloads becomes impossible to manage without leaving widening cracks in care and infrastructure.
As for education: virtually every school district is screaming for more money while its budget is increasingly devoted to soaring pension contributions. The same can be said for many public agencies and institutions. The unwelcome reality is there isn't enough money in the Universe to fund all the pension obligations and increase funding to meet the demands for more of everything-- unless you just create vast sums out of thin air, in which case you follow Venezuela down the monetary black hole to the point that 1 million units of central bank/government-issued "money" equals one loaf of bread.
Public services are stripmined to meet pension obligations, and this zero-sum reality will only become more apparent as the excesses of speculation, debt, malinvestment and asset bubbles decay into the inevitable business-cycle recession--a recession that will be made worse by the issuance of more "free money," as the increasing reliance on the marginal speculator and borrower will hasten the avalanche of defaults and malinvestments that will bring down the entire house of cards.
As the tent cities of the homeless proliferate, cities and counties are finding their revenues are devoted to pension obligations, leaving less and less to education, filling potholes, addressing the homeless crisis, the opioid crisis, etc. When the "everything bubble" pops and assets crater, the impossibility of fulfilling promises made in "good times" will be apparent to all but those demanding "their fair share."
About that "cheap abundant energy" provided by fracking: it's only cheap if we overlook the $250 billion in losses racked up by the sector, and it's only abundant if we ignore the rapid depletion of the majority of wells.
We're supposed to take Facebook's ease in brushing off its blatant exploitation of users' data as proof all is well in social-media-land, but the reality is sobering: America's devotion to Facebook is evidence of the populace's desperate yearning for a connection, any connection, no matter how thin or artificial, to a sense of community in a society stripped of authentic community by the dominance of maximizing profit (Facebook, Amazon and Google's raison d'etre) and centralized power.
This chart of total debt reveals the system's profound fragility--a fragility the Powers That Be are trying to mask with a tsunami of artifice: the system is now so dependent on the heroin hit of "free money" that even the slightest pause in credit growth will collapse the entire global financial system. This is why central banks have created trillions out of thin air--TINA: there is no alternative:
Between the ceaseless Ministry of Propaganda hysteria, the childish fantasy of super-hero films (we're gonna be saved by somebody, no effort on our own behalf required) and the disgorging of zero-credibility economic statistics, the distractions are 24/7. But scrape all this putrid excrescence off and we're left with a non-fantasy reality: everything is getting dicier by the day.
Saturday, May 26, 2018
SC166-4
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49499.htm
The Bully's Pulpit
Efforts at taxonomy of the creature Trump have failed. Vituperation and execration have exhausted their utility. Define the beast by its behavior.
Taking him at his word--absurd, of course--that his actions are intended to make America great again--has to show what that must mean for him.
His triumphs, then: to favor obscene wealth in taxation; to scrap diplomacy and bait Russia; to fund military horrors he vowed to reduce; to vilify and punish Islamic and Latino vulnerables; to spurn the world effort to reverse climate change; to reject the Iran nuclear deal; to threaten North Korea with nukes; and to decapitate regimes in Syria, Venezuela, and fill in the blank.
Each of these bizarre acts had to be based on his conviction of their supreme importance and his expectation of “winning” outcomes. Each had to be carried out against resistance by misguided “losers” and perverse and deluded enemies. The fact that his appalled opposition comprised the vast majority of the conscious, sentient human race carried no weight with him.
What can be concluded from this? How to comprehend it? Athenians had a name for it. Sophocles and Euripedes examined it in their dramas in detail, viz.: “Hubris: a personality quality of extreme or foolish pride or dangerous overconfidence, often in combination with arrogance.” It was hubris that blinded Oedipus, burned Troy, and killed Achilles.
What made tragedy poignant for the Greeks was that the protagonist never realized his hubris until the horrors he provoked brought Nemesis, goddess of retribution, down hard to crush him and his world. If, perhaps, that old inevitability of doom is still operative, it’s inclusiveness must disturb us.
Multitudes would rejoice at Trump’s downfall, imprisonment, even death, but the prospect of living in the disaster of his crash prompts only dread. Suppose his tax lunacy or trade madness triggers the titanic meltdown in our Funhouse Finance Economy that cognoscenti know is in the cards? Suppose his Middle School Macho provocations of Iran, or Korea, start a complex, irreversible slide to world war as the Serb ultimatum did in 1914?
The probability of unimaginable disaster due directly to his bedlamite hipshooting is very high in the short run through financial implosion or world war, and higher yet in the long, from likely irreversible global warming.
What, as Lenin asked, is to be done? The political party responsible for his rise and election urges you passionately, as a decent person, to get thee to a voting booth soonest and vote for them. Hell, no, not the Republicans! They feared him like the plague. Doing all they feebly could to deny and derail him, they opposed him righteously, wimpily, to the very moment when they didn’t. When he won... Then they genuflected and kowtowed.
No, no, mes amis: the Dems. It was the Democrats who gave you Trump. It was decades of their cynical, contemptible sellout of labor and working people, of students, children, the elderly and sick, for big chips from the putrescent Vampire Squids of Wall Street that greased the skids for the odious grotesque who controls of our collective fate. And now the party that has conned and screwed you, torpedoed its chance to beat Trump and lied about it, that is doing all in its sleazy power to promote annihilating war with Russia, asks you to drop trou, bend over, and hold your nose again?
One school of thought faults the people for having taken the pretty poison of Exceptionalism and the gospel of Imperialist Proxy Murder of the Deep State’s brain-training game. Another lays all blame on the profound iniquity of the purveyors of that toxic bullshit that has blasted and burnt so much of the world. It no longer matters. The deed is done. The fait is accompli.
However you parse it, an infernal terminal box has been built for America from which there is no exit. It was done with astonishing want of wisdom, a staggering parochial stupidity and solipsistic blindness that, ignoring all options for correcting our fatal vector, proceeded as inexorably as sunset.
The sorry history of our imperial suicide will be the stuff of legend one day if there are still organs of cognition to receive it. It will rank right up there with the Pelopponesian War, the Anabasis, and Hitler’s attack on the USSR.
Evolution shows very clearly that only life forms that adjust and adapt survive. Those that don’t decay and disappear. Jeffers said it a century ago, before this country had hardened in its fatal mold: “Shine, Perishing Republic”.
The Bully's Pulpit
Efforts at taxonomy of the creature Trump have failed. Vituperation and execration have exhausted their utility. Define the beast by its behavior.
Taking him at his word--absurd, of course--that his actions are intended to make America great again--has to show what that must mean for him.
His triumphs, then: to favor obscene wealth in taxation; to scrap diplomacy and bait Russia; to fund military horrors he vowed to reduce; to vilify and punish Islamic and Latino vulnerables; to spurn the world effort to reverse climate change; to reject the Iran nuclear deal; to threaten North Korea with nukes; and to decapitate regimes in Syria, Venezuela, and fill in the blank.
Each of these bizarre acts had to be based on his conviction of their supreme importance and his expectation of “winning” outcomes. Each had to be carried out against resistance by misguided “losers” and perverse and deluded enemies. The fact that his appalled opposition comprised the vast majority of the conscious, sentient human race carried no weight with him.
What can be concluded from this? How to comprehend it? Athenians had a name for it. Sophocles and Euripedes examined it in their dramas in detail, viz.: “Hubris: a personality quality of extreme or foolish pride or dangerous overconfidence, often in combination with arrogance.” It was hubris that blinded Oedipus, burned Troy, and killed Achilles.
What made tragedy poignant for the Greeks was that the protagonist never realized his hubris until the horrors he provoked brought Nemesis, goddess of retribution, down hard to crush him and his world. If, perhaps, that old inevitability of doom is still operative, it’s inclusiveness must disturb us.
Multitudes would rejoice at Trump’s downfall, imprisonment, even death, but the prospect of living in the disaster of his crash prompts only dread. Suppose his tax lunacy or trade madness triggers the titanic meltdown in our Funhouse Finance Economy that cognoscenti know is in the cards? Suppose his Middle School Macho provocations of Iran, or Korea, start a complex, irreversible slide to world war as the Serb ultimatum did in 1914?
The probability of unimaginable disaster due directly to his bedlamite hipshooting is very high in the short run through financial implosion or world war, and higher yet in the long, from likely irreversible global warming.
What, as Lenin asked, is to be done? The political party responsible for his rise and election urges you passionately, as a decent person, to get thee to a voting booth soonest and vote for them. Hell, no, not the Republicans! They feared him like the plague. Doing all they feebly could to deny and derail him, they opposed him righteously, wimpily, to the very moment when they didn’t. When he won... Then they genuflected and kowtowed.
No, no, mes amis: the Dems. It was the Democrats who gave you Trump. It was decades of their cynical, contemptible sellout of labor and working people, of students, children, the elderly and sick, for big chips from the putrescent Vampire Squids of Wall Street that greased the skids for the odious grotesque who controls of our collective fate. And now the party that has conned and screwed you, torpedoed its chance to beat Trump and lied about it, that is doing all in its sleazy power to promote annihilating war with Russia, asks you to drop trou, bend over, and hold your nose again?
One school of thought faults the people for having taken the pretty poison of Exceptionalism and the gospel of Imperialist Proxy Murder of the Deep State’s brain-training game. Another lays all blame on the profound iniquity of the purveyors of that toxic bullshit that has blasted and burnt so much of the world. It no longer matters. The deed is done. The fait is accompli.
However you parse it, an infernal terminal box has been built for America from which there is no exit. It was done with astonishing want of wisdom, a staggering parochial stupidity and solipsistic blindness that, ignoring all options for correcting our fatal vector, proceeded as inexorably as sunset.
The sorry history of our imperial suicide will be the stuff of legend one day if there are still organs of cognition to receive it. It will rank right up there with the Pelopponesian War, the Anabasis, and Hitler’s attack on the USSR.
Evolution shows very clearly that only life forms that adjust and adapt survive. Those that don’t decay and disappear. Jeffers said it a century ago, before this country had hardened in its fatal mold: “Shine, Perishing Republic”.
SC166-3
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49511.htm
Trump Sells Peace Like a Dodgy Dealer
Seriously, would you buy a second-hand car from the American president? Anybody in their right mind would scoff at the unnerving risk of being sold something liable to splutter into a heap or be repossessed.
Not only that, but dodgy-dealer Trump has surrounded himself with henchmen who have a knack for threatening prospective customers with grievous bodily harm if they don't cough up.
Farcically, the casino-merchant-turned-president is trying to entice North Korea into betting on giving up its nuclear weapons, with only the vaguest of American guarantees, and lots of sinister riders. These only weeks after Trump unilaterally tore up the American side of the bargain in the Iran nuclear accord.
You do have to wonder about the sanity in Washington. Can people be so unaware of their own incompetence and ineptitude?
Earlier this week, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivered a snarling speech aimed at Iran, which can only be described as an ultimatum for surrender. Pompeo — supposedly America's top diplomat — warned of the "toughest sanctions ever" that would make Iran struggle for economic survival.
He also said: "Iranian operatives would be crushed". Given that Pompeo previously said he wanted to make the CIA more vicious that's a sinister threat.
All this is because Washington, ironically, accuses Iran of "bad faith" over the landmark nuclear agreement.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un would have to be clueless to do business with the Trump administration. There is absolutely no indication that the Trump White House has any scruples or awareness of legal obligations after it ditched the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) earlier this month — the UN-backed accord signed by Iran, Russia, China and the European Union in 2015.
Virtually everyone, including the UN watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, has categorically vouched for the JCPOA as a successful working deal for nuclear arms control. It is only the US and its dubious client regimes in Israel and Saudi Arabia asserting that Iran has violated the JCPOA, citing tendentious claims of Iranian malign activity. Claims, it should be said, which are made by arguably the most malign clients in the Middle East.
The Iran nuclear agreement took years to negotiate. It is said to be one of the most complex treaties ever produced in terms of rigorous checks and balances. Yet Trump thinks he can trash it and come up with something better, like, Iranian surrender to American diktat.
The false claims made by Trump and Pompeo alleging Iranian non-compliance with the accord, as well as other alleged transgressions of sponsoring terrorism, are so out of touch with facts and indeed are such an arrogant inversion of reality — the US sponsoring terrorism in Syria, for example — it means that this administration is hopelessly bereft of any intelligence or trustworthiness.
Trump and his cabinet are woefully misinformed and ignorant about the world. Nothing they say can be taken with any credibility.
Moreover, Team Trump's attitude is that of a Mafia don. If you don't like our insulting terms, then expect the boys coming around soon with some rough action, like having your nation "totally destroyed".
Indeed, Kim's belated casting of doubt on whether to meet Trump for a supposedly "historic summit" next month in Singapore is for the sound reason that the North Korean leader has simply lost trust in the American agenda, not as American media make out due to "typical" North Korean backtracking.
Last month, Trump's National Security Advisor John Bolton brazenly referred to the "Libyan model" as a guideline for how the Trump administration was approaching negotiations with North Korea. That is, for complete capitulation on nuclear weapons with nothing in return from the American side. We all know what happened to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. Only a few years later, his nation was destroyed by a seven-month US-NATO blitzkrieg and he ended up murdered with a bayonet.
That shows how criminal and arrogant the planners in Washington are. They have the gall to publicly cite the "Libyan model".
It also shows how conceited they are. The Americans must think that North Korea's Kim is ready and willing to prostrate himself in front of the president and "cry, Uncle Sam".
Washington has totally misread Pyongyang — and not surprisingly given the former's delusional self-importance.
North Korea is not going to give up its nuclear weapons without the US side also rightly making some major concessions, primarily scaling back its military presence in the region and giving up its decades-old threats of regime change.
Used-car salesman Trump tried to do some damage limitation after his henchman John Bolton flexed the rhetorical knuckles. Trump claimed the US was "not following the Libyan model". Well, would you believe that from a wheeler-dealer president who has lied through his teeth about paying off a porn star? And who has spewed a load of lies to justify ripping up the Iran deal?
Call it incompetence, stupidity or downright arrogance, but Trump then blew his "assurance" to North Korea by blurting out that if Kim doesn't play ball on denuclearization then his country would be "completely decimated".
No wonder the world is shuddering with contempt and derision for American politics. After decades of waging illegal wars and murdering millions of people, destroying once stable nations and spawning terrorism, the Americans have the audacity to lecture others about "destabilizing activities".
The Americans have even taken to threatening their supposed European "allies" with punitive sanctions if they dare to do business with Iran or Russia.
Washington is an out-of-control rogue regime that has not a scintilla of shame for the way it is ransacking international law and obligations. The only country to have ever used atomic weapons on civilians has the brazen, deluded temerity to demand that others surrender in the name of "peace".
Ripping up accords is a specialty of the US rulers from the time that Native Americans were driven off their lands into oblivion.
Now we have The Donald supposedly proffering "deals of the century" in the Middle East and to North Korea. This is the same conman who notoriously rips off cleaning maids, barmen and other workers who have been employed in his gaudy hotels.
Washington's credibility or integrity has never been too reliable. But now under Trump's "dealership", the American vehicle has no wheels, no brakes, no warranty, faulty airbags, and is liable to run over a cliff edge.
Trump Sells Peace Like a Dodgy Dealer
Seriously, would you buy a second-hand car from the American president? Anybody in their right mind would scoff at the unnerving risk of being sold something liable to splutter into a heap or be repossessed.
Not only that, but dodgy-dealer Trump has surrounded himself with henchmen who have a knack for threatening prospective customers with grievous bodily harm if they don't cough up.
Farcically, the casino-merchant-turned-president is trying to entice North Korea into betting on giving up its nuclear weapons, with only the vaguest of American guarantees, and lots of sinister riders. These only weeks after Trump unilaterally tore up the American side of the bargain in the Iran nuclear accord.
You do have to wonder about the sanity in Washington. Can people be so unaware of their own incompetence and ineptitude?
Earlier this week, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivered a snarling speech aimed at Iran, which can only be described as an ultimatum for surrender. Pompeo — supposedly America's top diplomat — warned of the "toughest sanctions ever" that would make Iran struggle for economic survival.
He also said: "Iranian operatives would be crushed". Given that Pompeo previously said he wanted to make the CIA more vicious that's a sinister threat.
All this is because Washington, ironically, accuses Iran of "bad faith" over the landmark nuclear agreement.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un would have to be clueless to do business with the Trump administration. There is absolutely no indication that the Trump White House has any scruples or awareness of legal obligations after it ditched the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) earlier this month — the UN-backed accord signed by Iran, Russia, China and the European Union in 2015.
Virtually everyone, including the UN watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, has categorically vouched for the JCPOA as a successful working deal for nuclear arms control. It is only the US and its dubious client regimes in Israel and Saudi Arabia asserting that Iran has violated the JCPOA, citing tendentious claims of Iranian malign activity. Claims, it should be said, which are made by arguably the most malign clients in the Middle East.
The Iran nuclear agreement took years to negotiate. It is said to be one of the most complex treaties ever produced in terms of rigorous checks and balances. Yet Trump thinks he can trash it and come up with something better, like, Iranian surrender to American diktat.
The false claims made by Trump and Pompeo alleging Iranian non-compliance with the accord, as well as other alleged transgressions of sponsoring terrorism, are so out of touch with facts and indeed are such an arrogant inversion of reality — the US sponsoring terrorism in Syria, for example — it means that this administration is hopelessly bereft of any intelligence or trustworthiness.
Trump and his cabinet are woefully misinformed and ignorant about the world. Nothing they say can be taken with any credibility.
Moreover, Team Trump's attitude is that of a Mafia don. If you don't like our insulting terms, then expect the boys coming around soon with some rough action, like having your nation "totally destroyed".
Indeed, Kim's belated casting of doubt on whether to meet Trump for a supposedly "historic summit" next month in Singapore is for the sound reason that the North Korean leader has simply lost trust in the American agenda, not as American media make out due to "typical" North Korean backtracking.
Last month, Trump's National Security Advisor John Bolton brazenly referred to the "Libyan model" as a guideline for how the Trump administration was approaching negotiations with North Korea. That is, for complete capitulation on nuclear weapons with nothing in return from the American side. We all know what happened to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. Only a few years later, his nation was destroyed by a seven-month US-NATO blitzkrieg and he ended up murdered with a bayonet.
That shows how criminal and arrogant the planners in Washington are. They have the gall to publicly cite the "Libyan model".
It also shows how conceited they are. The Americans must think that North Korea's Kim is ready and willing to prostrate himself in front of the president and "cry, Uncle Sam".
Washington has totally misread Pyongyang — and not surprisingly given the former's delusional self-importance.
North Korea is not going to give up its nuclear weapons without the US side also rightly making some major concessions, primarily scaling back its military presence in the region and giving up its decades-old threats of regime change.
Used-car salesman Trump tried to do some damage limitation after his henchman John Bolton flexed the rhetorical knuckles. Trump claimed the US was "not following the Libyan model". Well, would you believe that from a wheeler-dealer president who has lied through his teeth about paying off a porn star? And who has spewed a load of lies to justify ripping up the Iran deal?
Call it incompetence, stupidity or downright arrogance, but Trump then blew his "assurance" to North Korea by blurting out that if Kim doesn't play ball on denuclearization then his country would be "completely decimated".
No wonder the world is shuddering with contempt and derision for American politics. After decades of waging illegal wars and murdering millions of people, destroying once stable nations and spawning terrorism, the Americans have the audacity to lecture others about "destabilizing activities".
The Americans have even taken to threatening their supposed European "allies" with punitive sanctions if they dare to do business with Iran or Russia.
Washington is an out-of-control rogue regime that has not a scintilla of shame for the way it is ransacking international law and obligations. The only country to have ever used atomic weapons on civilians has the brazen, deluded temerity to demand that others surrender in the name of "peace".
Ripping up accords is a specialty of the US rulers from the time that Native Americans were driven off their lands into oblivion.
Now we have The Donald supposedly proffering "deals of the century" in the Middle East and to North Korea. This is the same conman who notoriously rips off cleaning maids, barmen and other workers who have been employed in his gaudy hotels.
Washington's credibility or integrity has never been too reliable. But now under Trump's "dealership", the American vehicle has no wheels, no brakes, no warranty, faulty airbags, and is liable to run over a cliff edge.
SC166-2
https://srsroccoreport.com/global-financial-breakdown-continues-economic-growth-chokes-on-massive-debt-increases/
GLOBAL FINANCIAL BREAKDOWN CONTINUES: Economic Growth Chokes On Massive Debt Increases
The U.S. and global economies are choking on a massive amount of debt. While Wall Street and the Mainstream financial media continue to rationalize the skyrocketing debt as merely the cost of doing business, the disintegrating fundamentals point to an economic catastrophe in the making.
Of course, a full-blown economic meltdown may not occur this year or even next, but as time goes by, the situation continues to deteriorate in an exponential fashion. So, the cheerleaders for higher stock, bond, and real estate prices will continue to get their way until the economy is thrown into reverse as decades of increasing debt, leverage and margin finally destroy the engine for good.
Yes, I say for good. What seems to be missing from the analysis is this little thing called energy. The typical economist today looks at the global markets much the same way as a child who is waiting for the tooth fairy to exchange a tooth for a $20 bill. When I was a kid, it was $1 per tooth, but like with everything today, inflation is everywhere.
Mainstream economists just look at market forces, percentages, and values on a piece of paper or computer. When economic activity begins to fall, they try to find the cause and remedy it with a solution. Most of the time, the solutions are found by printing more money, increasing debt, changing interest rates or tax percentages. And… that’s about it.
There is no mention of what to do with energy in the economist’s playbook. For the typical economist, energy is always going to be there and if there are any future problems with supply, then, of course, the price will solve that issue. Due to the fundamental flaw of excluding energy in College economic courses; the entire profession is a complete farce.
Unfortunately, even the more enlightened pupils of the Austrian School of Economics fail to understand the Thermodynamics of value. Instead, we are only taught about SUPPLY & DEMAND to impact price. While supply and demand forces impact price, they only do so over a short period of time. However, the primary factor that determines price (for most goods, services, commodities, metals & energy) is the cost of production. Supply and demand only pull price above or push it below the cost of production trendline.
Regardless, you don’t have to take my word for it, just look at the following charts below.
U.S. Debt Per Dollar Of GDP Growth Goes Ballistic
The days of issuing a $1 of debt to get $1 or $2 of economic growth are long gone. Most may believe this was a grand conspiracy by the elite to control the masses. However, it was more a function of the Falling EROI – Energy Returned On Investment and the Thermodynamics of oil depletion. As the cost to produce oil consumed more energy, well, the best way to offset that was to issue more debt.
The following chart shows the relationship between total U.S. debt from all sectors (public and private) versus domestic GDP:
Total U.S. debt from all sectors is shown in BLUE while the U.S. GDP is in BROWN. You will notice that the total debt and GDP from 1950 to 1970 remained pretty even. It wasn’t until after 1970 did the debt increase more than the GDP. That was due to two reasons
The U.S. Peaked in conventional oil production in 1970
The U.S. EROI of oil fell considerably after 1970
Now, I did not include Nixon dropping the Gold-Dollar Peg in 1971, because that was a direct result of the two reasons listed above. We must understand that financial and economic policy is a direct reaction to the change in energy…. and not the other way around.
So, for the United States economy to offset falling oil production and the EROI, it was forced to add more debt per Dollar of GDP growth. In the 1970’s it took an average of $1.5 of new debt for each $1 of GDP growth but then it doubled to $3 of debt per GDP growth in the 1980’s. However, the escalation of debt really took off after 2000.
According to the data put out by FRED, the St. Louis Fed, the U.S. GDP increased from $10 trillion in 2000 to $19.7 trillion at the end of 2017. However, total U.S. debt (all sectors public and private) increased from $27.2 trillion to a staggering $68.6 trillion during the same period. Thus, total U.S. debt increased by $41 trillion versus approximately $10 trillion in GDP growth. That turns out to be $4 of debt for each $1 of GDP growth.
We also must consider the annual interest expense on the total U.S. debt of $68 trillion to be approximately $1.4 trillion based on a 2% interest rate. I have no idea what the average interest rate is on $68 trillion of debt and liabilities, but if the average interest rate rises to 5%, then the annual interest expense blows up to $3.4 trillion. As they say, a trillion here and a trillion there… adds up.
Unfortunately, the U.S. will not have the available cheap energy in the future to pay back this debt. Thus, as debt implodes, so will the GDP. Furthermore, if we were to adjust the GDP by the additional credit and debt, it would be a hell of a lot lower than its current value. But of course, the GDP figures are calculated by the very economists who are taught to disregard energy in their market studies in college.
Global Debt Per GDP Growth Hit A Record In 2017
According to the IIF, Institute of International Finance, total global debt reached a new record high of $237 trillion in 2017, up $21 trillion from the previous year. Now, compare that to the global GDP growth of $3.9 trillion in 2017, ($75.4 trillion in 2016 to $79.3 trillion last year). If we divide the $21 trillion of new global debt by the $3.9 trillion in global GDP growth, it equals an additional $5.4 for each new $1 of global GDP growth.
I arrived at the figures in the chart above the very same way as the U.S. Debt per GDP growth chart. Even though the values in the graph suggest that the debt per Dollar of GDP growth continues to move up at an ever-increase rate, the annual changes are more volatile. For example, the average global debt per Dollar of GDP increased more during the 2000-2009 period than from 2010-2017. This was also true for the United States.
However, the annual interest expense on global debt of $237 trillion has to be one hell of a lot. Again, I have no idea what the average interest rate is on that debt, but even if we assume a conservative 2%, that is $4.7 trillion. How could the world afford $4.7 trillion of an interest expense if the increase in global GDP was only $4 trillion last year???
Please understand, I am only making simple assumptions here. If the global debt is increasing, so must the interest expense to service this ever-increasing amount of debt. When the debt service starts to compete with global GDP growth, then we have a serious problem. And with the impact of the Falling EROI and Thermodynamics of oil depletion, global GDP growth will likely begin to stall over the next few years.
The notion put forth by some precious metals analysts that if the corrupt banking system would be allowed to go bankrupt (as it is bankrupt), then after the pain, the U.S. economy could grow once again. That will never happen. Why? Many in the alternative media and precious metals community still don’t understand the dire energy predicament. So, much like the college trained economists, they are making the same mistake by analyzing and forecasting the future of the markets without considering energy.
Unfortunately, when the massive amount of debt finally implodes, it will take down the values of most Stocks, Bonds, and Real Estate. This is not a matter of “IF,” it’s a matter of “WHEN.” And it seems as if the WHEN is quickly approaching.
GLOBAL FINANCIAL BREAKDOWN CONTINUES: Economic Growth Chokes On Massive Debt Increases
The U.S. and global economies are choking on a massive amount of debt. While Wall Street and the Mainstream financial media continue to rationalize the skyrocketing debt as merely the cost of doing business, the disintegrating fundamentals point to an economic catastrophe in the making.
Of course, a full-blown economic meltdown may not occur this year or even next, but as time goes by, the situation continues to deteriorate in an exponential fashion. So, the cheerleaders for higher stock, bond, and real estate prices will continue to get their way until the economy is thrown into reverse as decades of increasing debt, leverage and margin finally destroy the engine for good.
Yes, I say for good. What seems to be missing from the analysis is this little thing called energy. The typical economist today looks at the global markets much the same way as a child who is waiting for the tooth fairy to exchange a tooth for a $20 bill. When I was a kid, it was $1 per tooth, but like with everything today, inflation is everywhere.
Mainstream economists just look at market forces, percentages, and values on a piece of paper or computer. When economic activity begins to fall, they try to find the cause and remedy it with a solution. Most of the time, the solutions are found by printing more money, increasing debt, changing interest rates or tax percentages. And… that’s about it.
There is no mention of what to do with energy in the economist’s playbook. For the typical economist, energy is always going to be there and if there are any future problems with supply, then, of course, the price will solve that issue. Due to the fundamental flaw of excluding energy in College economic courses; the entire profession is a complete farce.
Unfortunately, even the more enlightened pupils of the Austrian School of Economics fail to understand the Thermodynamics of value. Instead, we are only taught about SUPPLY & DEMAND to impact price. While supply and demand forces impact price, they only do so over a short period of time. However, the primary factor that determines price (for most goods, services, commodities, metals & energy) is the cost of production. Supply and demand only pull price above or push it below the cost of production trendline.
Regardless, you don’t have to take my word for it, just look at the following charts below.
U.S. Debt Per Dollar Of GDP Growth Goes Ballistic
The days of issuing a $1 of debt to get $1 or $2 of economic growth are long gone. Most may believe this was a grand conspiracy by the elite to control the masses. However, it was more a function of the Falling EROI – Energy Returned On Investment and the Thermodynamics of oil depletion. As the cost to produce oil consumed more energy, well, the best way to offset that was to issue more debt.
The following chart shows the relationship between total U.S. debt from all sectors (public and private) versus domestic GDP:
Total U.S. debt from all sectors is shown in BLUE while the U.S. GDP is in BROWN. You will notice that the total debt and GDP from 1950 to 1970 remained pretty even. It wasn’t until after 1970 did the debt increase more than the GDP. That was due to two reasons
The U.S. Peaked in conventional oil production in 1970
The U.S. EROI of oil fell considerably after 1970
Now, I did not include Nixon dropping the Gold-Dollar Peg in 1971, because that was a direct result of the two reasons listed above. We must understand that financial and economic policy is a direct reaction to the change in energy…. and not the other way around.
So, for the United States economy to offset falling oil production and the EROI, it was forced to add more debt per Dollar of GDP growth. In the 1970’s it took an average of $1.5 of new debt for each $1 of GDP growth but then it doubled to $3 of debt per GDP growth in the 1980’s. However, the escalation of debt really took off after 2000.
According to the data put out by FRED, the St. Louis Fed, the U.S. GDP increased from $10 trillion in 2000 to $19.7 trillion at the end of 2017. However, total U.S. debt (all sectors public and private) increased from $27.2 trillion to a staggering $68.6 trillion during the same period. Thus, total U.S. debt increased by $41 trillion versus approximately $10 trillion in GDP growth. That turns out to be $4 of debt for each $1 of GDP growth.
We also must consider the annual interest expense on the total U.S. debt of $68 trillion to be approximately $1.4 trillion based on a 2% interest rate. I have no idea what the average interest rate is on $68 trillion of debt and liabilities, but if the average interest rate rises to 5%, then the annual interest expense blows up to $3.4 trillion. As they say, a trillion here and a trillion there… adds up.
Unfortunately, the U.S. will not have the available cheap energy in the future to pay back this debt. Thus, as debt implodes, so will the GDP. Furthermore, if we were to adjust the GDP by the additional credit and debt, it would be a hell of a lot lower than its current value. But of course, the GDP figures are calculated by the very economists who are taught to disregard energy in their market studies in college.
Global Debt Per GDP Growth Hit A Record In 2017
According to the IIF, Institute of International Finance, total global debt reached a new record high of $237 trillion in 2017, up $21 trillion from the previous year. Now, compare that to the global GDP growth of $3.9 trillion in 2017, ($75.4 trillion in 2016 to $79.3 trillion last year). If we divide the $21 trillion of new global debt by the $3.9 trillion in global GDP growth, it equals an additional $5.4 for each new $1 of global GDP growth.
I arrived at the figures in the chart above the very same way as the U.S. Debt per GDP growth chart. Even though the values in the graph suggest that the debt per Dollar of GDP growth continues to move up at an ever-increase rate, the annual changes are more volatile. For example, the average global debt per Dollar of GDP increased more during the 2000-2009 period than from 2010-2017. This was also true for the United States.
However, the annual interest expense on global debt of $237 trillion has to be one hell of a lot. Again, I have no idea what the average interest rate is on that debt, but even if we assume a conservative 2%, that is $4.7 trillion. How could the world afford $4.7 trillion of an interest expense if the increase in global GDP was only $4 trillion last year???
Please understand, I am only making simple assumptions here. If the global debt is increasing, so must the interest expense to service this ever-increasing amount of debt. When the debt service starts to compete with global GDP growth, then we have a serious problem. And with the impact of the Falling EROI and Thermodynamics of oil depletion, global GDP growth will likely begin to stall over the next few years.
The notion put forth by some precious metals analysts that if the corrupt banking system would be allowed to go bankrupt (as it is bankrupt), then after the pain, the U.S. economy could grow once again. That will never happen. Why? Many in the alternative media and precious metals community still don’t understand the dire energy predicament. So, much like the college trained economists, they are making the same mistake by analyzing and forecasting the future of the markets without considering energy.
Unfortunately, when the massive amount of debt finally implodes, it will take down the values of most Stocks, Bonds, and Real Estate. This is not a matter of “IF,” it’s a matter of “WHEN.” And it seems as if the WHEN is quickly approaching.
SC166-1
https://www.peakprosperity.com/blog/114062/end-stimulus-and-start-crash
The End Of Stimulus? (And The Start Of The Crash?)
What the most important chart in the world is predicting
Back in January of 2016 we saw what appeared to be, and in my opinion should have been, the end of the Everything Bubble blown by the word's central banking cartel.
The carnage started in the emerging markets. Highly-leveraged positions and carry trades began to unwind. That's a fancy way of saying that all the big, sophisticated investors -- who were busy borrowing heavily in countries with cheap money (the US, Japan, and Europe) and using that debt to speculate in markets offering higher yields (junk debt, emerging markets, stocks, etc.) -- began to reverse their trades.
It quickly devolved into a “Sell everything!” scramble. We saw the dollar spike and stocks fall -- with emerging markets taking the full brunt of the carnage as their stock markets rapidly fell into bear territory, their currencies fell, and their bonds were destroyed.
Until...
Very early one morning in February of 2016 everything U-turned and rocketed higher. Suddenly and magically, the panic was over. This wasn’t the invisible hand of the market at work; it was the very-visible hand of central bank intervention.
With the benefit of hindsight, we now have a clear picture of what happened. The central banks huddled together, a bold (desperate?) plan was hatched, and key printing presses around the world were sent into overdrive. In the months to follow, the European Central Bank (ECB) and the Bank of Japan (BoJ) went on a record-breaking money printing spree:
The red arrows in the charts above mark this moment when the “markets” were saved.
Or, more specifically, when the portfolios the ultra-wealthy were "saved", as the assets within were boosted higher (yet again) by the central banks printing money from thin air:
Addicted To Money Printing
So what caused the weakness in early 2016 that spooked the system so much? The central banks themselves.
After many years of force-feeding stimulus into the global economy to create a "recovery", the central banks have become increasingly concerned that asset prices have become too dependent on said stimulus. So in late 2015, the banks took their feet off of their monetary gas pedals for a bit to see what might happen.
They were hoping that the markets could be gradually weaned off of their stimulus dependence with few ill effects. They wanted to engineer a "soft landing", where if priced declined, they'd come down gradually and not too much.
That didn't happen.
Instead, the cheap-money-addicted markets instantly started expressing massive withdrawal complications.
To re-acquaint you with how quickly things were devolving back then, these are news headlines pulled from an article I wrote back in the middle of January 2016:
Wal-Mart closing 269 stores, 154 in the US.
Business inventories to sales at new cycle highs
U.S. freight volume falls for first time in almost three years
US retail sales fall 0.1% in December
Empire State index weakens to recession lows.
South African rand hits new all-time lows in 2016
Brazil’s Real Falls Sharply Against Dollar
Brazil Unemployment Rate Rises to 9%
Canadian Dollar Hits 13 Year Low Against US Dollar
U.S. Energy Junk Bond Spreads At Record Width
Nigeria’s Currency Plummets On Open Market
Mexico’s Peso Hits New All-Time Low
Chinese Stocks Enter Bear Market (again)
European Stocks Enter Bear Market
Sound familiar at all? It should. These sound exactly like the headlines in the news today, here in May of 2018.
We are still paying the price from 2008, when the central banks committed a massive error by not allowing the markets and their bad debts to actually clear. Yes, it would have been acutely painful; but we would have been through the worst within a year or two and in the process restored the system to a much healthier and sustainable state.
Instead, the bad actors were protected (and rewarded!) and the root fundamental problems were literally 'papered over', left to continue to fester unobserved ever since. Similarly in early 2016, the central banks once again committed the same sin by rescuing everything with another wall of fresh, thin-air money.
To drive home how much, below is a chart showing the yearly change in world central bank balance sheets. The relative ‘area under the curve’ of each major period of money printing gives us a sense of the scale. To help you eyeball it, I’ve placed similar-sized orange rectangles in each area. Key to note is that central money printing has been increasing -- not decreasing -- the further out we've gotten from the Great Financial Crisis:
If we've been in "recovery" for years now, as the central banks have been touting, then why has 2016-2108 seen the most stimulus ever injected into the system?
History has taught us that we should trust or leaders' actions far more than their words. And their actions at this time indicate panic.
What is it that has them so worried? We should all ponder that question long and hard. I’m convinced that they know as well as we do that, once the over-inflated ““markets”” created by the central banks can no longer be sustained at their current nose-bleed heights, the damage will be extraordinary and unstoppable.
The End Of Stimulus? (And The Start Of The Crash?)
The pain of the 2008 crash will seem like a mere flesh wound compared to the devastation the next deflationary wave will wreak.
Of course, the central banks have no interest in seeing that happen and will, once more, do all they can to "rescue" the markets.
But will they act in time? More to the point, given all of their very public commitments to raising rates and reducing their balance sheets, will they allow a market correction to happen in the near term? (presumably, so they can ride to the rescue soon after as "saviors")
Politically, the prospect of showering even more wealth on the 0.001% is going to be a tough sell. This is especially true in Europe -- in Italy, Greece and Spain where the populace is suffering mightily already and is in no mood to further enrich the ultra-wealthy.
So it would seem that the central banks, at least publicly, have to stick to their stated plans to reduce their levels of money printing/balance sheet expansion.
As of right now, they are on track to end worldwide simulus in early 2019, when their collective net change in assets will dip below $0 for the first time in many years:
Given the importance of central bank purchases and market interventions, the above chart is probably the most important one in existence for divining where financial asset prices are headed.
If global monthly stimulus indeed drops to $0, then Watch out below!
Who know if the future will plays out anything like the projections given above? The central banks have proven weak-kneed at every tiny moment of market wobbliness. To date, they've chosen to print and pent and then print some more at every opportunity where the "“markets”" might have corrected.
But we all know that this charade cannot continue forever. Sooner or later it has to stop. Given the blow-ups we're now seeing in the emerging markets, there’s clearly serious trouble brewing somewhere in the system.
In Part 2: The Breaking Point Is Upon Us we provide plenty of data to support that claim.
The currencies and bonds of five countries are now in the danger zone, and many more teeter on the edge. My analysis is that the central banks will resort to their usual money printing to resolve the issue, but for reasons I explain in Part 2, these efforts will fail at some point in the next year -- and spectacularly so.
When today's Everything Bubble bursts, the effect will be nothing short of catastrophic as 50 years of excessive debt accumulation suddenly deflates.
Given the dangers involved, you should expect the central banks to 'go nuclear' in thier deflation-fighting efforts by sending “money to main street” -- likely in the form of a universal basic income, or a check from the Treasury refunding your last 3 years of tax payments, or maybe even an electronic deposit directly from the Federal Reserve into your bank account.
That's when the inevitable fiat currency crisis will begin in earnest. At that time you’ll need to run, not walk, to buy anything with intrinsic value that can't be inflated away -- before your currency becomes worthless....
The End Of Stimulus? (And The Start Of The Crash?)
What the most important chart in the world is predicting
Back in January of 2016 we saw what appeared to be, and in my opinion should have been, the end of the Everything Bubble blown by the word's central banking cartel.
The carnage started in the emerging markets. Highly-leveraged positions and carry trades began to unwind. That's a fancy way of saying that all the big, sophisticated investors -- who were busy borrowing heavily in countries with cheap money (the US, Japan, and Europe) and using that debt to speculate in markets offering higher yields (junk debt, emerging markets, stocks, etc.) -- began to reverse their trades.
It quickly devolved into a “Sell everything!” scramble. We saw the dollar spike and stocks fall -- with emerging markets taking the full brunt of the carnage as their stock markets rapidly fell into bear territory, their currencies fell, and their bonds were destroyed.
Until...
Very early one morning in February of 2016 everything U-turned and rocketed higher. Suddenly and magically, the panic was over. This wasn’t the invisible hand of the market at work; it was the very-visible hand of central bank intervention.
With the benefit of hindsight, we now have a clear picture of what happened. The central banks huddled together, a bold (desperate?) plan was hatched, and key printing presses around the world were sent into overdrive. In the months to follow, the European Central Bank (ECB) and the Bank of Japan (BoJ) went on a record-breaking money printing spree:
The red arrows in the charts above mark this moment when the “markets” were saved.
Or, more specifically, when the portfolios the ultra-wealthy were "saved", as the assets within were boosted higher (yet again) by the central banks printing money from thin air:
Addicted To Money Printing
So what caused the weakness in early 2016 that spooked the system so much? The central banks themselves.
After many years of force-feeding stimulus into the global economy to create a "recovery", the central banks have become increasingly concerned that asset prices have become too dependent on said stimulus. So in late 2015, the banks took their feet off of their monetary gas pedals for a bit to see what might happen.
They were hoping that the markets could be gradually weaned off of their stimulus dependence with few ill effects. They wanted to engineer a "soft landing", where if priced declined, they'd come down gradually and not too much.
That didn't happen.
Instead, the cheap-money-addicted markets instantly started expressing massive withdrawal complications.
To re-acquaint you with how quickly things were devolving back then, these are news headlines pulled from an article I wrote back in the middle of January 2016:
Wal-Mart closing 269 stores, 154 in the US.
Business inventories to sales at new cycle highs
U.S. freight volume falls for first time in almost three years
US retail sales fall 0.1% in December
Empire State index weakens to recession lows.
South African rand hits new all-time lows in 2016
Brazil’s Real Falls Sharply Against Dollar
Brazil Unemployment Rate Rises to 9%
Canadian Dollar Hits 13 Year Low Against US Dollar
U.S. Energy Junk Bond Spreads At Record Width
Nigeria’s Currency Plummets On Open Market
Mexico’s Peso Hits New All-Time Low
Chinese Stocks Enter Bear Market (again)
European Stocks Enter Bear Market
Sound familiar at all? It should. These sound exactly like the headlines in the news today, here in May of 2018.
We are still paying the price from 2008, when the central banks committed a massive error by not allowing the markets and their bad debts to actually clear. Yes, it would have been acutely painful; but we would have been through the worst within a year or two and in the process restored the system to a much healthier and sustainable state.
Instead, the bad actors were protected (and rewarded!) and the root fundamental problems were literally 'papered over', left to continue to fester unobserved ever since. Similarly in early 2016, the central banks once again committed the same sin by rescuing everything with another wall of fresh, thin-air money.
To drive home how much, below is a chart showing the yearly change in world central bank balance sheets. The relative ‘area under the curve’ of each major period of money printing gives us a sense of the scale. To help you eyeball it, I’ve placed similar-sized orange rectangles in each area. Key to note is that central money printing has been increasing -- not decreasing -- the further out we've gotten from the Great Financial Crisis:
If we've been in "recovery" for years now, as the central banks have been touting, then why has 2016-2108 seen the most stimulus ever injected into the system?
History has taught us that we should trust or leaders' actions far more than their words. And their actions at this time indicate panic.
What is it that has them so worried? We should all ponder that question long and hard. I’m convinced that they know as well as we do that, once the over-inflated ““markets”” created by the central banks can no longer be sustained at their current nose-bleed heights, the damage will be extraordinary and unstoppable.
The End Of Stimulus? (And The Start Of The Crash?)
The pain of the 2008 crash will seem like a mere flesh wound compared to the devastation the next deflationary wave will wreak.
Of course, the central banks have no interest in seeing that happen and will, once more, do all they can to "rescue" the markets.
But will they act in time? More to the point, given all of their very public commitments to raising rates and reducing their balance sheets, will they allow a market correction to happen in the near term? (presumably, so they can ride to the rescue soon after as "saviors")
Politically, the prospect of showering even more wealth on the 0.001% is going to be a tough sell. This is especially true in Europe -- in Italy, Greece and Spain where the populace is suffering mightily already and is in no mood to further enrich the ultra-wealthy.
So it would seem that the central banks, at least publicly, have to stick to their stated plans to reduce their levels of money printing/balance sheet expansion.
As of right now, they are on track to end worldwide simulus in early 2019, when their collective net change in assets will dip below $0 for the first time in many years:
Given the importance of central bank purchases and market interventions, the above chart is probably the most important one in existence for divining where financial asset prices are headed.
If global monthly stimulus indeed drops to $0, then Watch out below!
Who know if the future will plays out anything like the projections given above? The central banks have proven weak-kneed at every tiny moment of market wobbliness. To date, they've chosen to print and pent and then print some more at every opportunity where the "“markets”" might have corrected.
But we all know that this charade cannot continue forever. Sooner or later it has to stop. Given the blow-ups we're now seeing in the emerging markets, there’s clearly serious trouble brewing somewhere in the system.
In Part 2: The Breaking Point Is Upon Us we provide plenty of data to support that claim.
The currencies and bonds of five countries are now in the danger zone, and many more teeter on the edge. My analysis is that the central banks will resort to their usual money printing to resolve the issue, but for reasons I explain in Part 2, these efforts will fail at some point in the next year -- and spectacularly so.
When today's Everything Bubble bursts, the effect will be nothing short of catastrophic as 50 years of excessive debt accumulation suddenly deflates.
Given the dangers involved, you should expect the central banks to 'go nuclear' in thier deflation-fighting efforts by sending “money to main street” -- likely in the form of a universal basic income, or a check from the Treasury refunding your last 3 years of tax payments, or maybe even an electronic deposit directly from the Federal Reserve into your bank account.
That's when the inevitable fiat currency crisis will begin in earnest. At that time you’ll need to run, not walk, to buy anything with intrinsic value that can't be inflated away -- before your currency becomes worthless....
SC165-15
https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2018/05/25/brilliant-strategy-of-offering-north-korea-the-libya-model-somehow-falls-through/
Brilliant Strategy Of Offering North Korea “The Libya Model” Somehow Falls Through
Three days before President Trump announced him as the new National Security Advisor, deranged mutant death walrus John Bolton appeared on Radio Free Asia and said of negotiations with North Korea, “I think we should insist that if this meeting is going to take place, it will be similar to discussions we had with Libya 13 or 14 years ago.”
Bolton has been loudly and publicly advocating “the Libya model” with the DPRK ever since.
“I think we’re looking at the Libya model of 2003, 2004,” Bolton said on Face the Nation last month, and said the same on Fox News Sunday in case anyone failed to get the message.
Bolton never bothered to refine his message by saying, for example, “Without the part where we betray and invade them and get their leader mutilated to death in the streets.” He just said they’re doing Libya again.
This was what John Bolton was saying before he was hired, and this was what John Bolton continued to say after he was hired. This was what John Bolton was hired to do. He was hired to sabotage peace and facilitate death and destruction. That is what he does. That is what he is for. Can openers open cans, John Bolton starts wars. You don’t buy a can opener to rotate your tires, and you don’t hire John Bolton to facilitate peace.
It should have surprised no one, then, when the administration saw Bolton’s Libya comments and raised him a canceled peace talk.
“You know, there were some talk about the Libya model last week,” Vice President Pence told Fox News on Saturday. “And you know, as the president made clear, you know, this will only end like the Libya model ended if Kim Jong-un doesn’t make a deal.”
“Some people saw that as a threat,” Fox’s Martha MacCallum replied, because there is no other way it could possibly be interpreted.
Pence blathered something about it being “a fact”, not a threat, but that is because he is a fake plastic doll manufactured by Raytheon. It was an extremely obvious and blatant threat, so of course North Korea responded accordingly. Below is the full text of the response to Pence’s statement by North Korea’s Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui, which reportedly was the basis for Trump’s cancellation of the scheduled summit in Singapore:
At an interview with Fox News on May 21, US Vice-President Pence made unbridled and impudent remarks that North Korea might end like Libya, military option for North Korea never came off the table, the US needs complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearisation, and so on.
As a person involved in the US affairs, I cannot suppress my surprise at such ignorant and stupid remarks gushing out from the mouth of the US vice-president.
If he is vice-president of “single superpower” as is in name, it will be proper for him to know even a little bit about the current state of global affairs and to sense to a certain degree the trends in dialogue and the climate of détente.
We could surmise more than enough what a political dummy he is as he is trying to compare the DPRK, a nuclear weapon state, to Libya that had simply installed a few items of equipment and fiddled around with them.
Soon after the White House National Security Adviser Bolton made the reckless remarks, Vice-President Pence has again spat out nonsense that the DPRK would follow in Libya’s footstep.
It is to be underlined, however, that in order not to follow in Libya’s footstep, we paid a heavy price to build up our powerful and reliable strength that can defend ourselves and safeguard peace and security in the Korean peninsula and the region.
In view of the remarks of the US high-ranking politicians who have not yet woken up to this stark reality and compare the DPRK to Libya that met a tragic fate, I come to think that they know too little about us.
To borrow their words, we can also make the US taste an appalling tragedy it has neither experienced nor even imagined up to now.
Before making such reckless threatening remarks without knowing exactly who he is facing, Pence should have seriously considered the terrible consequences of his words.
It is the US who has asked for dialogue, but now it is misleading the public opinion as if we have invited them to sit with us.
I only wonder what is the ulterior motive behind its move and what is it the US has calculated to gain from that.
We will neither beg the US for dialogue nor take the trouble to persuade them if they do not want to sit together with us.
Whether the US will meet us at a meeting room or encounter us at nuclear-to-nuclear showdown is entirely dependent upon the decision and behavior of the United States.
In case the US offends against our goodwill and clings to unlawful and outrageous acts, I will put forward a suggestion to our supreme leadership for reconsidering the DPRK-US summit.
The message of Trump’s withdrawal couldn’t be more clear: we get to threaten you, you don’t get to threaten us. This extremely one-sided dynamic is not a style of negotiation that any sane person would go along with if they didn’t have to, and as Choe pointed out, North Korea doesn’t have to. Libya had only the barest rudiments of what could have eventually one day become a nuclear program. North Korea has a full arsenal, and thus a much bigger stack of bargaining chips. A negotiation at gunpoint can only be one-sided if the other side has no gun.
This negotiation was never meant to succeed. Publicly stating that North Korea gets “the Libya model” was like a hostage negotiator offering “the Waco model”. It was plainly designed to fail.
Of course the US-centralized empire has no intention of a mutually beneficial negotiation with a sovereign nation. That isn’t how imperialism works. You either join the mass of tightly allied nations which function in effective unison on foreign policy, or you are smashed like Libya. This policy of threatening nations to join the empire on pain of decimation is what is causing all nonconforming nations to form into a growing and increasingly close alliance of their own, and it is what is causing them to seek nuclear weapons so that they don’t end up like Libya.
If there’s a silver lining to be found in all of this, it was summed up by the Ron Paul Liberty Report‘s Daniel McAdams:
“I think Trump is making America great again by making America irrelevant. We are irrelevant in the North and South peace talks right now. The ball is completely in [South Korea President] Moon’s court, what is he going to do next; we’ve basically recused ourselves from the whole process. Which is very, very good for us. So I feel rather upbeat. I think although it’s always better to talk to people, and it would be better to talk, but in the current environment, for us to get out of the way is really the non-interventionist position.”
America getting out of the way would be great for everyone, especially for the Americans whose resources are being relentlessly consumed by constant aggressive interventionism and an oligarchy whose vastly disproportionate wealth is propped up with the barrel of a gun. The natural drive of plutocratic smash-and-grab imperialism is in the exact opposite direction of non-interventionism, but as people continue to wake up from the madness and the rest of the world refuses to be consumed by the blob, it’s possible that the empire ends not with a bang but with a barely noticed fizzle. And that is my sincere prayer for all of us.
Brilliant Strategy Of Offering North Korea “The Libya Model” Somehow Falls Through
Three days before President Trump announced him as the new National Security Advisor, deranged mutant death walrus John Bolton appeared on Radio Free Asia and said of negotiations with North Korea, “I think we should insist that if this meeting is going to take place, it will be similar to discussions we had with Libya 13 or 14 years ago.”
Bolton has been loudly and publicly advocating “the Libya model” with the DPRK ever since.
“I think we’re looking at the Libya model of 2003, 2004,” Bolton said on Face the Nation last month, and said the same on Fox News Sunday in case anyone failed to get the message.
Bolton never bothered to refine his message by saying, for example, “Without the part where we betray and invade them and get their leader mutilated to death in the streets.” He just said they’re doing Libya again.
This was what John Bolton was saying before he was hired, and this was what John Bolton continued to say after he was hired. This was what John Bolton was hired to do. He was hired to sabotage peace and facilitate death and destruction. That is what he does. That is what he is for. Can openers open cans, John Bolton starts wars. You don’t buy a can opener to rotate your tires, and you don’t hire John Bolton to facilitate peace.
It should have surprised no one, then, when the administration saw Bolton’s Libya comments and raised him a canceled peace talk.
“You know, there were some talk about the Libya model last week,” Vice President Pence told Fox News on Saturday. “And you know, as the president made clear, you know, this will only end like the Libya model ended if Kim Jong-un doesn’t make a deal.”
“Some people saw that as a threat,” Fox’s Martha MacCallum replied, because there is no other way it could possibly be interpreted.
Pence blathered something about it being “a fact”, not a threat, but that is because he is a fake plastic doll manufactured by Raytheon. It was an extremely obvious and blatant threat, so of course North Korea responded accordingly. Below is the full text of the response to Pence’s statement by North Korea’s Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui, which reportedly was the basis for Trump’s cancellation of the scheduled summit in Singapore:
At an interview with Fox News on May 21, US Vice-President Pence made unbridled and impudent remarks that North Korea might end like Libya, military option for North Korea never came off the table, the US needs complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearisation, and so on.
As a person involved in the US affairs, I cannot suppress my surprise at such ignorant and stupid remarks gushing out from the mouth of the US vice-president.
If he is vice-president of “single superpower” as is in name, it will be proper for him to know even a little bit about the current state of global affairs and to sense to a certain degree the trends in dialogue and the climate of détente.
We could surmise more than enough what a political dummy he is as he is trying to compare the DPRK, a nuclear weapon state, to Libya that had simply installed a few items of equipment and fiddled around with them.
Soon after the White House National Security Adviser Bolton made the reckless remarks, Vice-President Pence has again spat out nonsense that the DPRK would follow in Libya’s footstep.
It is to be underlined, however, that in order not to follow in Libya’s footstep, we paid a heavy price to build up our powerful and reliable strength that can defend ourselves and safeguard peace and security in the Korean peninsula and the region.
In view of the remarks of the US high-ranking politicians who have not yet woken up to this stark reality and compare the DPRK to Libya that met a tragic fate, I come to think that they know too little about us.
To borrow their words, we can also make the US taste an appalling tragedy it has neither experienced nor even imagined up to now.
Before making such reckless threatening remarks without knowing exactly who he is facing, Pence should have seriously considered the terrible consequences of his words.
It is the US who has asked for dialogue, but now it is misleading the public opinion as if we have invited them to sit with us.
I only wonder what is the ulterior motive behind its move and what is it the US has calculated to gain from that.
We will neither beg the US for dialogue nor take the trouble to persuade them if they do not want to sit together with us.
Whether the US will meet us at a meeting room or encounter us at nuclear-to-nuclear showdown is entirely dependent upon the decision and behavior of the United States.
In case the US offends against our goodwill and clings to unlawful and outrageous acts, I will put forward a suggestion to our supreme leadership for reconsidering the DPRK-US summit.
The message of Trump’s withdrawal couldn’t be more clear: we get to threaten you, you don’t get to threaten us. This extremely one-sided dynamic is not a style of negotiation that any sane person would go along with if they didn’t have to, and as Choe pointed out, North Korea doesn’t have to. Libya had only the barest rudiments of what could have eventually one day become a nuclear program. North Korea has a full arsenal, and thus a much bigger stack of bargaining chips. A negotiation at gunpoint can only be one-sided if the other side has no gun.
This negotiation was never meant to succeed. Publicly stating that North Korea gets “the Libya model” was like a hostage negotiator offering “the Waco model”. It was plainly designed to fail.
Of course the US-centralized empire has no intention of a mutually beneficial negotiation with a sovereign nation. That isn’t how imperialism works. You either join the mass of tightly allied nations which function in effective unison on foreign policy, or you are smashed like Libya. This policy of threatening nations to join the empire on pain of decimation is what is causing all nonconforming nations to form into a growing and increasingly close alliance of their own, and it is what is causing them to seek nuclear weapons so that they don’t end up like Libya.
If there’s a silver lining to be found in all of this, it was summed up by the Ron Paul Liberty Report‘s Daniel McAdams:
“I think Trump is making America great again by making America irrelevant. We are irrelevant in the North and South peace talks right now. The ball is completely in [South Korea President] Moon’s court, what is he going to do next; we’ve basically recused ourselves from the whole process. Which is very, very good for us. So I feel rather upbeat. I think although it’s always better to talk to people, and it would be better to talk, but in the current environment, for us to get out of the way is really the non-interventionist position.”
America getting out of the way would be great for everyone, especially for the Americans whose resources are being relentlessly consumed by constant aggressive interventionism and an oligarchy whose vastly disproportionate wealth is propped up with the barrel of a gun. The natural drive of plutocratic smash-and-grab imperialism is in the exact opposite direction of non-interventionism, but as people continue to wake up from the madness and the rest of the world refuses to be consumed by the blob, it’s possible that the empire ends not with a bang but with a barely noticed fizzle. And that is my sincere prayer for all of us.
Friday, May 25, 2018
SC165-14
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49488.htm
Washington Holds Gun to North Korea’s Head
The prospects for peace diplomacy between the US and North Korea took a sudden hit after President Donald Trump issued an extraordinary threat to Kim Jong Un. It was in effect a death threat.
Trump warned last week that if the North Korean leader does not comply with Washington’s demands for complete denuclearization, then Kim would “end up like Gaddafi”. Trump added that North Korea would be “decimated” if it did not give up its nuclear weapons.
Arguably, Trump’s rhetoric of violence towards another state is a violation of international law and the United Nations charter.
It was not the time first time the American president has engaged in criminal intimidation of the northeast Asian nation. Last September, he told the United Nations general assembly that North Korea would be “totally destroyed”.
Yet US news media are spinning the latest row by blaming North Korea for being devious, and backtracking “in typical fashion” from negotiations, allegedly in order to extract more concessions.
US media are ignoring the glaringly obvious fact that Washington is holding a gun to North Korea’s head, and in Mafia-style, making an offer it thinks Pyongyang “can’t refuse”.
All of a sudden, the much-anticipated summit between Trump and Kim – scheduled for June 12 in Singapore – has been thrown into doubt. North Korean state media have cautioned that the summit will be cancelled if the US insists on unilateral nuclear disarmament by Pyongyang.
The Trump administration responded by saying it is continuing with plans for the Singapore meeting. However, American and South Korean officials are reportedly in a tizzy to ascertain North Korea’s position in order to keep the summit on track. No doubt, Trump is anxious not to be deprived of his moment of glory.
Two developments have undermined North Korea’s willingness to engage with Washington. After the apparent breakthrough of Trump and Kim putting their previous belligerent rhetoric aside and agreeing to hold a face-to-face summit, North Korea has gone cold.
Pyongyang has cited the public comments made by Trump’s National Security Advisor John Bolton in which the latter said that Washington was looking to the “Libya model” as a guideline for how it is preparing to deal with North Korea. Bolton was referring to when former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi agreed to unilaterally terminate his nuclear weapons program in 2003-2004 in order to appease the George W Bush administration.
It was an audacious reference point by the sinisterly hawkish Bolton given how seven years later, Gaddafi’s government was overthrown by an illegal US-NATO war which resulted in the Libyan leader being murdered on the streets.
North Korea had previously cited the case of Libya and Iraq as examples of how countries without an insurance policy of weapons of mass destruction are liable to be subjected to American regime-change attack.
Now with notorious Bush-era regime-change architect John Bolton explicitly referring to Libya as a “model” – on the cusp of supposed diplomatic engagement – it is no small wonder that North Korea has decided to snap back.
The other development is the going ahead of annual military exercises this month conducted by US forces and their South Korean ally. Currently, both militaries are carrying out “Max Thunder” maneuvers reportedly involving warplanes and warships near the North Korea border which, as usual, looks to Pyongyang like preparations for invasion. How is that supposed to be “confidence-building” for North Korea?
While warning that the meeting with Trump might not take place, North Korea also abruptly cancelled high-level talks last week with South Korean counterparts, citing the ongoing joint US military exercises as reason for the cancellation. North Korea hit out at South Korea for being “foolish and incompetent” over the continuation of military exercises.
Again, that was another dramatic reversal in diplomacy. Only a few weeks ago, North Korea’s Kim held a historic meeting with South Korean President Moon Jae In at the Demilitarized Zone separating the two countries since the end of the Korean War (1950-53). Both leaders vowed a new era of cooperation and their intention to sign a formal peace treaty to finally mark the end of the war.
Western media interpretation of North Korea’s vacillation is misplaced and unnecessarily cynical. This is not about Pyongyang playing mind games and gouging for concessions, as the media imply.
It is simply a reflection of the United States revealing its real and reprehensible agenda of expecting North Korea to unilaterally disarm without any reciprocation from Washington. In short, capitulation and surrender.
Added to that demand is the very grave underlying threat of Washington then moving on to regime change when North Korea is deemed “safe”, that is, defenseless.
Trump’s keenness to hold a “historic summit” with Kim is not about seeking a mutual peace settlement. The real-estate-tycoon-turned-president is all about glitzy spectacle and vainglorious success. He has even talked about how he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize.
Of course, a globally televised handshake with Kim totally plays to Trump’s ego and the former reality TV star’s craving for ratings.
That’s why Trump appeared to slap back Bolton last week by trying to reassure North Korea the “US wasn’t using the Libya model”.
But then in the same moment Trump blundered even further by going on to say, bizarrely, that North Korea would end up like Libya if it did not give up its nuclear weapons.
The morally decrepit warmonger John Bolton and CIA torture-supporter Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State are very sound reasons for why North Korea appears to be turning its back on proposed talks.
With Trump then showing his ignorance and brutish instincts there is even more reason for Pyongyang to be wary.
Peace for the Korean Peninsula is a multilateral formula. North Korea giving up its nuclear weapons is only one part of the equation. Another indispensable part is Washington removing its military forces, signing a peace guarantee with Pyongyang, ending its economic warfare, and permitting the two Koreas to pursue reconciliation without interference.
But, as noted previously in this column, Washington’s strategic interests in maintaining military force in the Asia-Pacific towards Russia and China are such that it is anathema for the US to agree to a genuine peace settlement in Korea.
Beneath the superficial American diplomacy, Washington’s agenda is for North Korea’s surrender to Uncle Sam.
Telling North Korea to “negotiate or else” is like holding a gun to its head. No nation with any self-respect would comply.
Pyongyang is just right to give Washington short shrift due to the latter’s bad faith and arrogant ignorance about its obligations. Trump’s backsliding on the Iran nuclear deal is another object lesson for North Korea.
Ominously, though, Uncle Sam is going to get very nasty after having had his nose tweaked.
Washington Holds Gun to North Korea’s Head
The prospects for peace diplomacy between the US and North Korea took a sudden hit after President Donald Trump issued an extraordinary threat to Kim Jong Un. It was in effect a death threat.
Trump warned last week that if the North Korean leader does not comply with Washington’s demands for complete denuclearization, then Kim would “end up like Gaddafi”. Trump added that North Korea would be “decimated” if it did not give up its nuclear weapons.
Arguably, Trump’s rhetoric of violence towards another state is a violation of international law and the United Nations charter.
It was not the time first time the American president has engaged in criminal intimidation of the northeast Asian nation. Last September, he told the United Nations general assembly that North Korea would be “totally destroyed”.
Yet US news media are spinning the latest row by blaming North Korea for being devious, and backtracking “in typical fashion” from negotiations, allegedly in order to extract more concessions.
US media are ignoring the glaringly obvious fact that Washington is holding a gun to North Korea’s head, and in Mafia-style, making an offer it thinks Pyongyang “can’t refuse”.
All of a sudden, the much-anticipated summit between Trump and Kim – scheduled for June 12 in Singapore – has been thrown into doubt. North Korean state media have cautioned that the summit will be cancelled if the US insists on unilateral nuclear disarmament by Pyongyang.
The Trump administration responded by saying it is continuing with plans for the Singapore meeting. However, American and South Korean officials are reportedly in a tizzy to ascertain North Korea’s position in order to keep the summit on track. No doubt, Trump is anxious not to be deprived of his moment of glory.
Two developments have undermined North Korea’s willingness to engage with Washington. After the apparent breakthrough of Trump and Kim putting their previous belligerent rhetoric aside and agreeing to hold a face-to-face summit, North Korea has gone cold.
Pyongyang has cited the public comments made by Trump’s National Security Advisor John Bolton in which the latter said that Washington was looking to the “Libya model” as a guideline for how it is preparing to deal with North Korea. Bolton was referring to when former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi agreed to unilaterally terminate his nuclear weapons program in 2003-2004 in order to appease the George W Bush administration.
It was an audacious reference point by the sinisterly hawkish Bolton given how seven years later, Gaddafi’s government was overthrown by an illegal US-NATO war which resulted in the Libyan leader being murdered on the streets.
North Korea had previously cited the case of Libya and Iraq as examples of how countries without an insurance policy of weapons of mass destruction are liable to be subjected to American regime-change attack.
Now with notorious Bush-era regime-change architect John Bolton explicitly referring to Libya as a “model” – on the cusp of supposed diplomatic engagement – it is no small wonder that North Korea has decided to snap back.
The other development is the going ahead of annual military exercises this month conducted by US forces and their South Korean ally. Currently, both militaries are carrying out “Max Thunder” maneuvers reportedly involving warplanes and warships near the North Korea border which, as usual, looks to Pyongyang like preparations for invasion. How is that supposed to be “confidence-building” for North Korea?
While warning that the meeting with Trump might not take place, North Korea also abruptly cancelled high-level talks last week with South Korean counterparts, citing the ongoing joint US military exercises as reason for the cancellation. North Korea hit out at South Korea for being “foolish and incompetent” over the continuation of military exercises.
Again, that was another dramatic reversal in diplomacy. Only a few weeks ago, North Korea’s Kim held a historic meeting with South Korean President Moon Jae In at the Demilitarized Zone separating the two countries since the end of the Korean War (1950-53). Both leaders vowed a new era of cooperation and their intention to sign a formal peace treaty to finally mark the end of the war.
Western media interpretation of North Korea’s vacillation is misplaced and unnecessarily cynical. This is not about Pyongyang playing mind games and gouging for concessions, as the media imply.
It is simply a reflection of the United States revealing its real and reprehensible agenda of expecting North Korea to unilaterally disarm without any reciprocation from Washington. In short, capitulation and surrender.
Added to that demand is the very grave underlying threat of Washington then moving on to regime change when North Korea is deemed “safe”, that is, defenseless.
Trump’s keenness to hold a “historic summit” with Kim is not about seeking a mutual peace settlement. The real-estate-tycoon-turned-president is all about glitzy spectacle and vainglorious success. He has even talked about how he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize.
Of course, a globally televised handshake with Kim totally plays to Trump’s ego and the former reality TV star’s craving for ratings.
That’s why Trump appeared to slap back Bolton last week by trying to reassure North Korea the “US wasn’t using the Libya model”.
But then in the same moment Trump blundered even further by going on to say, bizarrely, that North Korea would end up like Libya if it did not give up its nuclear weapons.
The morally decrepit warmonger John Bolton and CIA torture-supporter Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State are very sound reasons for why North Korea appears to be turning its back on proposed talks.
With Trump then showing his ignorance and brutish instincts there is even more reason for Pyongyang to be wary.
Peace for the Korean Peninsula is a multilateral formula. North Korea giving up its nuclear weapons is only one part of the equation. Another indispensable part is Washington removing its military forces, signing a peace guarantee with Pyongyang, ending its economic warfare, and permitting the two Koreas to pursue reconciliation without interference.
But, as noted previously in this column, Washington’s strategic interests in maintaining military force in the Asia-Pacific towards Russia and China are such that it is anathema for the US to agree to a genuine peace settlement in Korea.
Beneath the superficial American diplomacy, Washington’s agenda is for North Korea’s surrender to Uncle Sam.
Telling North Korea to “negotiate or else” is like holding a gun to its head. No nation with any self-respect would comply.
Pyongyang is just right to give Washington short shrift due to the latter’s bad faith and arrogant ignorance about its obligations. Trump’s backsliding on the Iran nuclear deal is another object lesson for North Korea.
Ominously, though, Uncle Sam is going to get very nasty after having had his nose tweaked.
Wednesday, May 23, 2018
SC165-13
https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2018/05/19/the-friendly-mask-of-the-orwellian-oligarchy-has-fallen-off/
The Friendly Mask Of The Orwellian Oligarchy Is Slipping Off
Gina Haspel has been confirmed as America’s new CIA Director, fulfilling her predecessor Mike Pompeo’s pledge to turn the CIA into “a much more vicious agency”. “Bloody Gina” has reportedly been directly involved in both torturing people and destroying evidence of torture in her long and depraved career, which some say hurts the CIA’s reputation.
Others say it just makes it more honest.
The lying, torturing, propagandizing, drug trafficking, coup-staging, warmongering Central Intelligence Agency has done some of the most unspeakably horrific things to human beings that have ever happened in the history of our species. If you think I’m exaggerating, do your own research into into some of the CIA’s activities like the Phoenix Program, which used “Rape, gang rape, rape using eels, snakes, or hard objects, and rape followed by murder; electric shock (‘the Bell Telephone Hour’) rendered by attaching wires to the genitals or other sensitive parts of the body, like the tongue; the ‘water treatment’; the ‘airplane’ in which the prisoner’s arms were tied behind the back, and the rope looped over a hook on the ceiling, suspending the prisoner in midair, after which he or she was beaten; beatings with rubber hoses and whips; the use of police dogs to maul prisoners,” and “The use of the insertion of the 6-inch dowel into the canal of one of my detainee’s ears, and the tapping through the brain until dead. The starvation to death (in a cage), of a Vietnamese woman who was suspected of being part of the local political education cadre in one of the local villages…The use of electronic gear such as sealed telephones attached to…both the women’s vaginas and men’s testicles [to] shock them into submission.”
This is what the CIA is. This is what the CIA has always been. This is what Mike Pompeo said he wanted to help make the CIA “much more vicious” than. Appointing Gina Haspel as head of the agency is just putting an honest face on it.
It really couldn’t be more fitting that the US now has an actual, literal torturer as the head of the CIA. It also couldn’t be more fitting that it has a reality TV star billionaire President, an Iraq-raping Bush-era neoconservative psychopath as National Security Advisor, a former defense industry director as Secretary of Defense, a former Goldman Sachs executive as Secretary Treasurer, and a former Rothschild, Inc. executive as Secretary of Commerce. These positions have always facilitated torture, oppression, war profiteering and Wall Street greed; the only thing that has changed is that they now have a more honest face on them.
The mask of the nationless Orwellian oligarchy which dominates our world is slipping off all over the place.
Israel is now openly massacring unarmed Palestinian civilians, prompting a UN investigation into possible war crimes. Only two nations voted in opposition to the investigation, and surprise surprise it was the two nations apart from Israel who most clearly owe their existence to the institutionalized slaughter and brutalization of their indigenous occupants in recent history: the US and Australia. All other members of the UN Human Rights Council either voted in support of the investigation or abstained.
Internet censorship is becoming more and more brazen as our governments become increasingly concerned that we are developing the wrong kinds of political opinions. Ever since the establishment Douma and Skripal narratives failed to take hold effectively, we’ve been seeing more and more frantic attempts to seize control of public discourse. Two weeks after the Atlantic Council explained to us that we need to be propagandized by our governments for our own good, Facebook finally made the marriage of Silicon Valley and the western war machine official by announcing a partnership with the Atlantic Council to ensure that we are all receiving properly authorized information.
The Atlantic Council is pure corruption, funded by powerful oligarchs, NATO, the US State Department, empire-aligned Gulf states and the military-industrial complex. Many threads of the establishment anti-Russia narrative trace back to this highly influential think tank, from the DNC hack to the discredited war propaganda firm Bellingcat to imaginary Russian trolls to the notorious McCarthyite PropOrNot blacklist publicized by the Washington Post. Facebook involving itself with this malignant warmongering psyop factory constitutes an open admission that the social media site considers it its duty to manipulate people into supporting the agendas of the western empire.
We’re seeing similar manipulations in Twitter, which recently announced that it will be hiding posts by more controversial accounts, and by Wikipedia, which has been brazenly editing the entries of anti-imperialist activists with a cartoonishly pro-establishment slant.
It is always a good sign when people in power become concerned that their subjects are developing the wrong kinds of political opinions, because it means that truth is winning. All this gibberish we’ve been hearing about “Russian disinformation” and “Russian propaganda” is just a label that has been pinned on dissenting narratives by a mass media propaganda machine that has lost control of the narrative.
And this is why it’s getting so overt, barely even attempting to conceal its true nature anymore. Our species’ newfound ability to network and share information has enabled a degree of free thinking that the cultural engineers did not anticipate and have not been able to stay ahead of, and they’re being forced to make more and more overt grabs to try and force us all back into our assigned brain boxes.
But the oligarchs who rule us and their Orwellian power structure is already in a lose-lose situation, because the empire that they have built for themselves rests upon the illusion of freedom and democracy. The most powerful rulers of our world long ago eschewed the old model of sitting on thrones and executing dissidents in the town square, instead taking on a hidden role of influence behind the official elected governments and using mass media propaganda to manufacture the consent of the governed.
This system is far more efficient than the old model because a populace will never rebel against rulers it doesn’t know exist, and it has enabled the western oligarchs to amass more power and influence than the kings of old ever dreamed possible. But it has a weakness: they have to control the narrative, and if they fail to do that they can’t switch to overt totalitarianism without shattering the illusion of freedom and provoking a massive public uprising.
So the wealth-holding manipulators are stuck between a rock and a hard place now, trying to use new media outlets like Facebook, Twitter and Wikipedia to herd the unwashed masses back into their pens. The more brazen they get with those manipulations, however, the more the mask slips off, and the greater the risk of the public realizing that they aren’t actually free from tyrannical rule and exploitation.
The real currency of this world is not backed by gold, nor by oil, nor by bureaucratic fiat, nor even by direct military might. No, the real currency of this world is narrative, and the ability to control it. The difference between those who rule this world and those who don’t is that those who rule understand this distinction and are sufficiently sociopathic to exploit it for their own benefit.
Power only exists where it exists because of the stories that humans agree to tell one another. The idea that government operates a certain way, that money operates a certain way, these things are purely conceptual constructs that are only as true as people pretend they are. Everyone could agree tomorrow that Donald Glover is the undisputed King of America and the new official US currency is old America Online trial CDs if they wanted to, and since that was the new dominant narrative it would be the reality. Everyone could also agree to create a new system which benefits all of humanity instead of a few sociopathic plutocrats. The only thing keeping money and government moving in a way that benefits our current rulers is the fact that those rulers have been successful in controlling the narrative.
They’ll never get that cat back into the bag once it’s out, and they know it. We the people will be able to create our own narratives and write our own rules about how things like money and government ought to operate, and there is no way that will work out to the benefit of the ruling manipulators and deceivers. So they fight with increasing aggression to lull us back to sleep, often overextending themselves and behaving in a way that gives the public a glimpse behind the mask of this entire corrupt power structure. Someday soon that mask will slip right off and come crashing to the floor. That crash will wake the baby, and that baby will not go back to sleep.
The Friendly Mask Of The Orwellian Oligarchy Is Slipping Off
Gina Haspel has been confirmed as America’s new CIA Director, fulfilling her predecessor Mike Pompeo’s pledge to turn the CIA into “a much more vicious agency”. “Bloody Gina” has reportedly been directly involved in both torturing people and destroying evidence of torture in her long and depraved career, which some say hurts the CIA’s reputation.
Others say it just makes it more honest.
The lying, torturing, propagandizing, drug trafficking, coup-staging, warmongering Central Intelligence Agency has done some of the most unspeakably horrific things to human beings that have ever happened in the history of our species. If you think I’m exaggerating, do your own research into into some of the CIA’s activities like the Phoenix Program, which used “Rape, gang rape, rape using eels, snakes, or hard objects, and rape followed by murder; electric shock (‘the Bell Telephone Hour’) rendered by attaching wires to the genitals or other sensitive parts of the body, like the tongue; the ‘water treatment’; the ‘airplane’ in which the prisoner’s arms were tied behind the back, and the rope looped over a hook on the ceiling, suspending the prisoner in midair, after which he or she was beaten; beatings with rubber hoses and whips; the use of police dogs to maul prisoners,” and “The use of the insertion of the 6-inch dowel into the canal of one of my detainee’s ears, and the tapping through the brain until dead. The starvation to death (in a cage), of a Vietnamese woman who was suspected of being part of the local political education cadre in one of the local villages…The use of electronic gear such as sealed telephones attached to…both the women’s vaginas and men’s testicles [to] shock them into submission.”
This is what the CIA is. This is what the CIA has always been. This is what Mike Pompeo said he wanted to help make the CIA “much more vicious” than. Appointing Gina Haspel as head of the agency is just putting an honest face on it.
It really couldn’t be more fitting that the US now has an actual, literal torturer as the head of the CIA. It also couldn’t be more fitting that it has a reality TV star billionaire President, an Iraq-raping Bush-era neoconservative psychopath as National Security Advisor, a former defense industry director as Secretary of Defense, a former Goldman Sachs executive as Secretary Treasurer, and a former Rothschild, Inc. executive as Secretary of Commerce. These positions have always facilitated torture, oppression, war profiteering and Wall Street greed; the only thing that has changed is that they now have a more honest face on them.
The mask of the nationless Orwellian oligarchy which dominates our world is slipping off all over the place.
Israel is now openly massacring unarmed Palestinian civilians, prompting a UN investigation into possible war crimes. Only two nations voted in opposition to the investigation, and surprise surprise it was the two nations apart from Israel who most clearly owe their existence to the institutionalized slaughter and brutalization of their indigenous occupants in recent history: the US and Australia. All other members of the UN Human Rights Council either voted in support of the investigation or abstained.
Internet censorship is becoming more and more brazen as our governments become increasingly concerned that we are developing the wrong kinds of political opinions. Ever since the establishment Douma and Skripal narratives failed to take hold effectively, we’ve been seeing more and more frantic attempts to seize control of public discourse. Two weeks after the Atlantic Council explained to us that we need to be propagandized by our governments for our own good, Facebook finally made the marriage of Silicon Valley and the western war machine official by announcing a partnership with the Atlantic Council to ensure that we are all receiving properly authorized information.
The Atlantic Council is pure corruption, funded by powerful oligarchs, NATO, the US State Department, empire-aligned Gulf states and the military-industrial complex. Many threads of the establishment anti-Russia narrative trace back to this highly influential think tank, from the DNC hack to the discredited war propaganda firm Bellingcat to imaginary Russian trolls to the notorious McCarthyite PropOrNot blacklist publicized by the Washington Post. Facebook involving itself with this malignant warmongering psyop factory constitutes an open admission that the social media site considers it its duty to manipulate people into supporting the agendas of the western empire.
We’re seeing similar manipulations in Twitter, which recently announced that it will be hiding posts by more controversial accounts, and by Wikipedia, which has been brazenly editing the entries of anti-imperialist activists with a cartoonishly pro-establishment slant.
It is always a good sign when people in power become concerned that their subjects are developing the wrong kinds of political opinions, because it means that truth is winning. All this gibberish we’ve been hearing about “Russian disinformation” and “Russian propaganda” is just a label that has been pinned on dissenting narratives by a mass media propaganda machine that has lost control of the narrative.
And this is why it’s getting so overt, barely even attempting to conceal its true nature anymore. Our species’ newfound ability to network and share information has enabled a degree of free thinking that the cultural engineers did not anticipate and have not been able to stay ahead of, and they’re being forced to make more and more overt grabs to try and force us all back into our assigned brain boxes.
But the oligarchs who rule us and their Orwellian power structure is already in a lose-lose situation, because the empire that they have built for themselves rests upon the illusion of freedom and democracy. The most powerful rulers of our world long ago eschewed the old model of sitting on thrones and executing dissidents in the town square, instead taking on a hidden role of influence behind the official elected governments and using mass media propaganda to manufacture the consent of the governed.
This system is far more efficient than the old model because a populace will never rebel against rulers it doesn’t know exist, and it has enabled the western oligarchs to amass more power and influence than the kings of old ever dreamed possible. But it has a weakness: they have to control the narrative, and if they fail to do that they can’t switch to overt totalitarianism without shattering the illusion of freedom and provoking a massive public uprising.
So the wealth-holding manipulators are stuck between a rock and a hard place now, trying to use new media outlets like Facebook, Twitter and Wikipedia to herd the unwashed masses back into their pens. The more brazen they get with those manipulations, however, the more the mask slips off, and the greater the risk of the public realizing that they aren’t actually free from tyrannical rule and exploitation.
The real currency of this world is not backed by gold, nor by oil, nor by bureaucratic fiat, nor even by direct military might. No, the real currency of this world is narrative, and the ability to control it. The difference between those who rule this world and those who don’t is that those who rule understand this distinction and are sufficiently sociopathic to exploit it for their own benefit.
Power only exists where it exists because of the stories that humans agree to tell one another. The idea that government operates a certain way, that money operates a certain way, these things are purely conceptual constructs that are only as true as people pretend they are. Everyone could agree tomorrow that Donald Glover is the undisputed King of America and the new official US currency is old America Online trial CDs if they wanted to, and since that was the new dominant narrative it would be the reality. Everyone could also agree to create a new system which benefits all of humanity instead of a few sociopathic plutocrats. The only thing keeping money and government moving in a way that benefits our current rulers is the fact that those rulers have been successful in controlling the narrative.
They’ll never get that cat back into the bag once it’s out, and they know it. We the people will be able to create our own narratives and write our own rules about how things like money and government ought to operate, and there is no way that will work out to the benefit of the ruling manipulators and deceivers. So they fight with increasing aggression to lull us back to sleep, often overextending themselves and behaving in a way that gives the public a glimpse behind the mask of this entire corrupt power structure. Someday soon that mask will slip right off and come crashing to the floor. That crash will wake the baby, and that baby will not go back to sleep.
SC165-12
https://www.oftwominds.com/blog.html
The Next Recession Will Be Devastatingly Non-Linear
Linear correlations are intuitive: if GDP declines 2% in the next recession, and employment declines 2%, we get it: the scale and size of the decline aligns. In a linear correlation, we'd expect sales to drop by about 2%, businesses closing their doors to increase by about 2%, profits to notch down by about 2%, lending contracts by around 2% and so on.
But the effects of the next recession won't be linear--they will be non-linear, and far more devastating than whatever modest GDP decline is registered. To paraphrase William Gibson's insightful observation that "The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed": the recession is already here, it's just not evenly distributed-- and its effects will be enormously asymmetric.
Non-linear effects can be extremely asymmetric. Thus an apparently mild decline of 2% in GDP might trigger a 50% rise in the number of small businesses closing, a 50% collapse in new mortgages issued and a 10% increase in unemployment.
Richard Bonugli of Financial Repression Authority alerted me to the non-linear dynamic of the coming slowdown. I recently recorded a podcast with Richard on one sector that will cascade in a series of non-linear avalanches once the current asset bubbles pop and the current central-bank-created "recovery" falters under its staggering weight of debt, malinvestment and speculative excess.
The core dynamic of the next recession is the unwind of all the extremes: extremes in debt expansion, in leverage, in the explosion of debt taken on by marginal borrowers, in malinvestment, in debt-fueled speculation, in emerging market debt denominated in US dollars, in financial repression, in political corruption--the list of extremes that have stretched the system to the breaking point is almost endless.
Public-sector pensions are just the tip of the iceberg. What happens when the gains in equities and bonds that have nurtured the illusion that public-sector pension funds are solvent and can be funded by further tax increases reverse into losses?
Pushing taxes high enough to fund soaring public pension obligations will spark taxpayer revolts as the tax increases will be monumental once the delusion of solvency is stripped away in the upcoming recession.
The entire status quo rests on the marginal borrower/buyer. All the demand for pretty much anything has been brought forward by the central banks' repression of interest rates and the relentless goosing of liquidity: anyone who can fog a mirror can buy a vehicle on credit, get a mortgage guaranteed by a federal agency, or pile up credit card and student loan debts.
Those with stock portfolios can gamble with margin debt; those with access to central bank credit can borrow billions to fund stock buy-backs or the purchase of competitors, the better to establish a cartel or quasi-monopoly.
What's not visible in all the cheery statistics is how many enterprises and households are barely keeping their heads above water as inflation shreds the purchasing power of their net incomes. Inflation is supposedly tame, but once again, following Gibson's aphorism, inflation is already here, it's just not evenly distributed.
While employees with employer-paid health insurance are dumbstruck by $50 or $100 increases in their monthly co-pays, those of us who are paying the unsubsidized "real cost of health insurance" are being crushed by increases in the hundreds of dollars per month.
The number of cafes, restaurants and other small businesses with high fixed costs that will close as soon as sales falter is monumental. Add up soaring healthcare premiums, increases in minimum wages, higher taxes and junk fees and rising rents, and you have a steadily expanding burden that is absolutely toxic to small businesses.
The first things to go are marginal employees, overtime, bonuses, benefits, etc.--whatever can be jettisoned in a last-ditch effort to save the company from insolvency. The first bills cash-strapped households will stop paying are credit cards, auto loans and student loans; defaults won't notch higher by 2%; they're going to explode higher by 20% and accelerate from there.
Here are a few charts that reveal the extremes that have been reached to maintain the illusion of "recovery" and normalcy: total credit has exploded higher, after a slight decline very nearly brought down the global financial system in 2008-09:
The massive expansion of assets purchased by central banks will eventually be slowed or even unwound, removing the rocket fuel that's pushed stocks and bonds to the moon:
As governments/central banks borrow/print "money" in increasingly fantastic quantities to keep the illusion of "recovery" alive, the currencies being debauched lose purchasing power. Venezuela is not an outlier; it is the first of many canaries that will be keeling over in the coal mine.
Wide swaths of the economy won't even notice the recession devastating the rest of the economy, at least at first. Public employees will be immune until their city, county, state or agency runs out of money and can no longer fund its obligations; shareholders of Facebook et al. who cashed out at the top will be doing just fine, booking their $18,000 a night island get-aways, and those few willing to bet on declines in the "everything bubbles" of real estate, stocks and bonds will eventually do well, though the Powers That Be will engineer massive short-covering rallies in a last-ditch effort to mask the systemic rot.
The acceleration of non-linear consequences will surprise the brainwashed, loving-their-servitude mainstream media. The number of small businesses that suddenly close will surprise them; the number of homeowners jingle-mailing their "ownership" (i.e. obligation to pay soaring property taxes) to lenders will surprise them; the number of employees being laid off will surprise them, and the collapse of new credit being issued will surprise them.
Don't be surprised; be prepared.
The Next Recession Will Be Devastatingly Non-Linear
Linear correlations are intuitive: if GDP declines 2% in the next recession, and employment declines 2%, we get it: the scale and size of the decline aligns. In a linear correlation, we'd expect sales to drop by about 2%, businesses closing their doors to increase by about 2%, profits to notch down by about 2%, lending contracts by around 2% and so on.
But the effects of the next recession won't be linear--they will be non-linear, and far more devastating than whatever modest GDP decline is registered. To paraphrase William Gibson's insightful observation that "The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed": the recession is already here, it's just not evenly distributed-- and its effects will be enormously asymmetric.
Non-linear effects can be extremely asymmetric. Thus an apparently mild decline of 2% in GDP might trigger a 50% rise in the number of small businesses closing, a 50% collapse in new mortgages issued and a 10% increase in unemployment.
Richard Bonugli of Financial Repression Authority alerted me to the non-linear dynamic of the coming slowdown. I recently recorded a podcast with Richard on one sector that will cascade in a series of non-linear avalanches once the current asset bubbles pop and the current central-bank-created "recovery" falters under its staggering weight of debt, malinvestment and speculative excess.
The core dynamic of the next recession is the unwind of all the extremes: extremes in debt expansion, in leverage, in the explosion of debt taken on by marginal borrowers, in malinvestment, in debt-fueled speculation, in emerging market debt denominated in US dollars, in financial repression, in political corruption--the list of extremes that have stretched the system to the breaking point is almost endless.
Public-sector pensions are just the tip of the iceberg. What happens when the gains in equities and bonds that have nurtured the illusion that public-sector pension funds are solvent and can be funded by further tax increases reverse into losses?
Pushing taxes high enough to fund soaring public pension obligations will spark taxpayer revolts as the tax increases will be monumental once the delusion of solvency is stripped away in the upcoming recession.
The entire status quo rests on the marginal borrower/buyer. All the demand for pretty much anything has been brought forward by the central banks' repression of interest rates and the relentless goosing of liquidity: anyone who can fog a mirror can buy a vehicle on credit, get a mortgage guaranteed by a federal agency, or pile up credit card and student loan debts.
Those with stock portfolios can gamble with margin debt; those with access to central bank credit can borrow billions to fund stock buy-backs or the purchase of competitors, the better to establish a cartel or quasi-monopoly.
What's not visible in all the cheery statistics is how many enterprises and households are barely keeping their heads above water as inflation shreds the purchasing power of their net incomes. Inflation is supposedly tame, but once again, following Gibson's aphorism, inflation is already here, it's just not evenly distributed.
While employees with employer-paid health insurance are dumbstruck by $50 or $100 increases in their monthly co-pays, those of us who are paying the unsubsidized "real cost of health insurance" are being crushed by increases in the hundreds of dollars per month.
The number of cafes, restaurants and other small businesses with high fixed costs that will close as soon as sales falter is monumental. Add up soaring healthcare premiums, increases in minimum wages, higher taxes and junk fees and rising rents, and you have a steadily expanding burden that is absolutely toxic to small businesses.
The first things to go are marginal employees, overtime, bonuses, benefits, etc.--whatever can be jettisoned in a last-ditch effort to save the company from insolvency. The first bills cash-strapped households will stop paying are credit cards, auto loans and student loans; defaults won't notch higher by 2%; they're going to explode higher by 20% and accelerate from there.
Here are a few charts that reveal the extremes that have been reached to maintain the illusion of "recovery" and normalcy: total credit has exploded higher, after a slight decline very nearly brought down the global financial system in 2008-09:
The massive expansion of assets purchased by central banks will eventually be slowed or even unwound, removing the rocket fuel that's pushed stocks and bonds to the moon:
As governments/central banks borrow/print "money" in increasingly fantastic quantities to keep the illusion of "recovery" alive, the currencies being debauched lose purchasing power. Venezuela is not an outlier; it is the first of many canaries that will be keeling over in the coal mine.
Wide swaths of the economy won't even notice the recession devastating the rest of the economy, at least at first. Public employees will be immune until their city, county, state or agency runs out of money and can no longer fund its obligations; shareholders of Facebook et al. who cashed out at the top will be doing just fine, booking their $18,000 a night island get-aways, and those few willing to bet on declines in the "everything bubbles" of real estate, stocks and bonds will eventually do well, though the Powers That Be will engineer massive short-covering rallies in a last-ditch effort to mask the systemic rot.
The acceleration of non-linear consequences will surprise the brainwashed, loving-their-servitude mainstream media. The number of small businesses that suddenly close will surprise them; the number of homeowners jingle-mailing their "ownership" (i.e. obligation to pay soaring property taxes) to lenders will surprise them; the number of employees being laid off will surprise them, and the collapse of new credit being issued will surprise them.
Don't be surprised; be prepared.
Monday, May 21, 2018
SC165-11
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49475.htm
Selfish US Diktats Could Push Europe to Develop Ties With Russia, China & Iran
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s cordial reception for German leader Angela Merkel in Sochi last Friday made for a pleasant contrast to the boorish way that Washington is acting towards its European allies.
On a sun-lit day at the Black Sea resort, Putin greeted the German chancellor with smiles and a bouquet of roses. After discussions, the two leaders told reporters about the need for cooperation and dialogue to resolve various international issues, including the Ukraine crisis, conflict in Syria, and the Iran nuclear deal.
Three days before Merkel visited Sochi, the Americans delivered yet another snub to their supposed European allies. US envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker went to the Kiev-controlled side of the conflict zone in the eastern Donbass region, where he declared American military support for retaking the breakaway self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Lugansk.
The envoy also said that President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary James Mattis were “on the same page” concerning the Ukraine policy.
Volker’s hardline message was a revelation of Washington’s role in the four-year-old Ukraine conflict, which has seen the US-backed Kiev regime launch an offensive on the breakaway republics. The eastern areas declared independence following the illegal overthrow of the Ukraine government by US-backed factions in February 2014. The factions that came to power characteristically espouse anti-Russian sentiments and Neo-fascist politics, which the ethnic Russian people of Donbass repudiated.
Washington – which made its first delivery of lethal military equipment to Kiev forces last month – is thus standing in direct violation of the Minsk Peace Accords that were negotiated in 2015 under the so-called Normandy Format brokered by Russia, Germany and France.
In Sochi, Merkel and Putin restated the importance of abiding by the Minsk agreement.
Washington is thus audaciously snubbing the Minsk process and its European allies, in particular Germany and France.
Hours before Merkel arrived in Sochi, there was a surge in ceasefire violations along the contact line in Donbass, reportedly committed by the US-backed Kiev forces.
It seems certain that given the recent supply of US weaponry and the American envoy’s gung-ho rhetoric about retaking the breakaway republics, the Kiev forces were emboldened to send Merkel a message ahead of her meeting with Putin. The message being: to hell with Minsk and dialogue.
It also seems plausible that the Americans gave the Kiev regime a tacit green light to step up the violence to coincide with Merkel coming to Sochi. Merkel may be talking about dialogue and adhering to the Normandy Format with Russia, but in effect Washington is giving the orders for more aggression.
The upsurge in ceasefire violations is exactly what Moscow warned of if Washington proceeded with supply of Javelin anti-tank missiles.
Putin and Merkel also emphasized ongoing cooperation on the Nord Stream 2 project delivering natural gas to Europe via Germany. The $11 billion, 1,222km pipeline under the Baltic Sea is estimated to double the gas supply to Germany by 2019. It represents a major joint venture investment by Russia and Germany, as well as other European energy companies.
Another area of cooperation concerns the Iran nuclear accord. Merkel and Putin said Europe and Russia remain committed to the 2015 UN-ratified accord, despite the Trump administration’s abrupt withdrawal earlier this month.
Again, Washington has strained transatlantic relations on both counts. While Merkel was in Sochi, Washington reiterated threats that it would impose sanctions on Russia and Germany if they proceed with the Nord Stream 2 project. The US has justified invoking sanctions on “national security grounds” owing to alleged Russian meddling in its 2016 presidential elections, as well as due to the crisis in Ukraine, which Washington blames on Russian interference.
The Trump administration has also warned that European companies and banks could be liable for secondary sanctions if they continue to do business with Iran under the terms of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the formal name for the Iran nuclear deal.
Trump’s tearing-up of the JCPOA comes with the US re-imposing sanctions on Iran which were supposed to have been cancelled through the earlier signing of the accord by the Obama administration. If Trump follows through with threats of secondary sanctions on European firms, it could cost the Europeans billions of dollars’ worth of investments and trade.
The intensifying disputes between the US and Europe reach back to several other broken understandings, including the Paris climate accord, which Trump ditched last year, as well as Washington playing hard ball over trade tariffs and financial contributions to NATO military spending.
What seems to be emerging is the US using high-handed tactics to unilaterally push European partners into accepting Washington’s strategic priorities. In particular, sanctions are being wielded by the Americans to coerce others into conforming with US economic interests.
The Nord Stream 2 project is a perfect example. The US wants to dislodge Russia as the gas supplier to the vast European energy market. But American gas would cost 20-30 percent more than Russian supplies. In order to warp market forces in its favor, the Americans are using sanctions under dubious pretexts. The upshot is the Europeans will pay more for energy supply, which will have widespread inflationary knock-on impacts.
For the Europeans, recent geopolitical developments represent a harsh learning curve. Following Washington’s policy has already cost the Europeans bitterly in terms of the Ukraine crisis and the US-led sanctions on Russia. The biggest loser in terms of exports and jobs is Europe.
That crisis has led a precarious decline in relations between Europe and Russia from the buildup of US-led NATO military forces. If a war were to break out, it would be Europe that would bear the brunt of catastrophe.
What seems clearer than ever is Washington’s arrogant disregard for European interests. Threatening sanctions on European businesses over legitimate participation in the Iran nuclear deal and jeopardizing regional security are just two examples of how little Washington actually cares about so-called allies.
Then when Europe’s strongest leader, Germany’s Merkel, makes a cordial visit to Russia, Washington blatantly delivers a slap to her pronouncements on cooperation and dialogue for finding peace in Ukraine, or on the future of European energy security from working with Moscow.
Europe is learning the hard way that it has much more to gain from developing amicable relations with Russia than from pursuing Washington’s self-serving policy of hostility.
That has long been the case, arguably. But what is making the case increasingly palpable and urgent is the way Washington is riding roughshod over Europeans, inflicting economic and material pain on their livelihoods. That harsh experience of Washington’s selfish diktats will inevitably drive Europe to asserting more independence and possibly seeking more normal relations with Russia, as well as China, Iran and others.
Some cynics in Western media pooh-poohed Putin’s bouquet of flowers to Merkel, snidely saying the Russian leader was condescending. How irrational. What’s wrong with showing a little human kindness and respect? American politicians seem to have no idea about that. Giving orders and cynicism is all they seem to know.
Selfish US Diktats Could Push Europe to Develop Ties With Russia, China & Iran
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s cordial reception for German leader Angela Merkel in Sochi last Friday made for a pleasant contrast to the boorish way that Washington is acting towards its European allies.
On a sun-lit day at the Black Sea resort, Putin greeted the German chancellor with smiles and a bouquet of roses. After discussions, the two leaders told reporters about the need for cooperation and dialogue to resolve various international issues, including the Ukraine crisis, conflict in Syria, and the Iran nuclear deal.
Three days before Merkel visited Sochi, the Americans delivered yet another snub to their supposed European allies. US envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker went to the Kiev-controlled side of the conflict zone in the eastern Donbass region, where he declared American military support for retaking the breakaway self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Lugansk.
The envoy also said that President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary James Mattis were “on the same page” concerning the Ukraine policy.
Volker’s hardline message was a revelation of Washington’s role in the four-year-old Ukraine conflict, which has seen the US-backed Kiev regime launch an offensive on the breakaway republics. The eastern areas declared independence following the illegal overthrow of the Ukraine government by US-backed factions in February 2014. The factions that came to power characteristically espouse anti-Russian sentiments and Neo-fascist politics, which the ethnic Russian people of Donbass repudiated.
Washington – which made its first delivery of lethal military equipment to Kiev forces last month – is thus standing in direct violation of the Minsk Peace Accords that were negotiated in 2015 under the so-called Normandy Format brokered by Russia, Germany and France.
In Sochi, Merkel and Putin restated the importance of abiding by the Minsk agreement.
Washington is thus audaciously snubbing the Minsk process and its European allies, in particular Germany and France.
Hours before Merkel arrived in Sochi, there was a surge in ceasefire violations along the contact line in Donbass, reportedly committed by the US-backed Kiev forces.
It seems certain that given the recent supply of US weaponry and the American envoy’s gung-ho rhetoric about retaking the breakaway republics, the Kiev forces were emboldened to send Merkel a message ahead of her meeting with Putin. The message being: to hell with Minsk and dialogue.
It also seems plausible that the Americans gave the Kiev regime a tacit green light to step up the violence to coincide with Merkel coming to Sochi. Merkel may be talking about dialogue and adhering to the Normandy Format with Russia, but in effect Washington is giving the orders for more aggression.
The upsurge in ceasefire violations is exactly what Moscow warned of if Washington proceeded with supply of Javelin anti-tank missiles.
Putin and Merkel also emphasized ongoing cooperation on the Nord Stream 2 project delivering natural gas to Europe via Germany. The $11 billion, 1,222km pipeline under the Baltic Sea is estimated to double the gas supply to Germany by 2019. It represents a major joint venture investment by Russia and Germany, as well as other European energy companies.
Another area of cooperation concerns the Iran nuclear accord. Merkel and Putin said Europe and Russia remain committed to the 2015 UN-ratified accord, despite the Trump administration’s abrupt withdrawal earlier this month.
Again, Washington has strained transatlantic relations on both counts. While Merkel was in Sochi, Washington reiterated threats that it would impose sanctions on Russia and Germany if they proceed with the Nord Stream 2 project. The US has justified invoking sanctions on “national security grounds” owing to alleged Russian meddling in its 2016 presidential elections, as well as due to the crisis in Ukraine, which Washington blames on Russian interference.
The Trump administration has also warned that European companies and banks could be liable for secondary sanctions if they continue to do business with Iran under the terms of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the formal name for the Iran nuclear deal.
Trump’s tearing-up of the JCPOA comes with the US re-imposing sanctions on Iran which were supposed to have been cancelled through the earlier signing of the accord by the Obama administration. If Trump follows through with threats of secondary sanctions on European firms, it could cost the Europeans billions of dollars’ worth of investments and trade.
The intensifying disputes between the US and Europe reach back to several other broken understandings, including the Paris climate accord, which Trump ditched last year, as well as Washington playing hard ball over trade tariffs and financial contributions to NATO military spending.
What seems to be emerging is the US using high-handed tactics to unilaterally push European partners into accepting Washington’s strategic priorities. In particular, sanctions are being wielded by the Americans to coerce others into conforming with US economic interests.
The Nord Stream 2 project is a perfect example. The US wants to dislodge Russia as the gas supplier to the vast European energy market. But American gas would cost 20-30 percent more than Russian supplies. In order to warp market forces in its favor, the Americans are using sanctions under dubious pretexts. The upshot is the Europeans will pay more for energy supply, which will have widespread inflationary knock-on impacts.
For the Europeans, recent geopolitical developments represent a harsh learning curve. Following Washington’s policy has already cost the Europeans bitterly in terms of the Ukraine crisis and the US-led sanctions on Russia. The biggest loser in terms of exports and jobs is Europe.
That crisis has led a precarious decline in relations between Europe and Russia from the buildup of US-led NATO military forces. If a war were to break out, it would be Europe that would bear the brunt of catastrophe.
What seems clearer than ever is Washington’s arrogant disregard for European interests. Threatening sanctions on European businesses over legitimate participation in the Iran nuclear deal and jeopardizing regional security are just two examples of how little Washington actually cares about so-called allies.
Then when Europe’s strongest leader, Germany’s Merkel, makes a cordial visit to Russia, Washington blatantly delivers a slap to her pronouncements on cooperation and dialogue for finding peace in Ukraine, or on the future of European energy security from working with Moscow.
Europe is learning the hard way that it has much more to gain from developing amicable relations with Russia than from pursuing Washington’s self-serving policy of hostility.
That has long been the case, arguably. But what is making the case increasingly palpable and urgent is the way Washington is riding roughshod over Europeans, inflicting economic and material pain on their livelihoods. That harsh experience of Washington’s selfish diktats will inevitably drive Europe to asserting more independence and possibly seeking more normal relations with Russia, as well as China, Iran and others.
Some cynics in Western media pooh-poohed Putin’s bouquet of flowers to Merkel, snidely saying the Russian leader was condescending. How irrational. What’s wrong with showing a little human kindness and respect? American politicians seem to have no idea about that. Giving orders and cynicism is all they seem to know.
SC165-10
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-coming-collapse/
The Coming Collapse
The Trump administration did not rise, prima facie, like Venus on a half shell from the sea. Donald Trump is the result of a long process of political, cultural and social decay. He is a product of our failed democracy. The longer we perpetuate the fiction that we live in a functioning democracy, that Trump and the political mutations around him are somehow an aberrant deviation that can be vanquished in the next election, the more we will hurtle toward tyranny. The problem is not Trump. It is a political system, dominated by corporate power and the mandarins of the two major political parties, in which we don’t count. We will wrest back political control by dismantling the corporate state, and this means massive and sustained civil disobedience, like that demonstrated by teachers around the country this year. If we do not stand up we will enter a new dark age.
The Democratic Party, which helped build our system of inverted totalitarianism, is once again held up by many on the left as the savior. Yet the party steadfastly refuses to address the social inequality that led to the election of Trump and the insurgency by Bernie Sanders. It is deaf, dumb and blind to the very real economic suffering that plagues over half the country. It will not fight to pay workers a living wage. It will not defy the pharmaceutical and insurance industries to provide Medicare for all. It will not curb the voracious appetite of the military that is disemboweling the country and promoting the prosecution of futile and costly foreign wars. It will not restore our lost civil liberties, including the right to privacy, freedom from government surveillance, and due process. It will not get corporate and dark money out of politics. It will not demilitarize our police and reform a prison system that has 25 percent of the world’s prisoners although the United States has only 5 percent of the world’s population. It plays to the margins, especially in election seasons, refusing to address substantive political and social problems and instead focusing on narrow cultural issues like gay rights, abortion and gun control in our peculiar species of anti-politics.
This is a doomed tactic, but one that is understandable. The leadership of the party, the Clintons, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Tom Perez, are creations of corporate America. In an open and democratic political process, one not dominated by party elites and corporate money, these people would not hold political power. They know this. They would rather implode the entire system than give up their positions of privilege. And that, I fear, is what will happen. The idea that the Democratic Party is in any way a bulwark against despotism defies the last three decades of its political activity. It is the guarantor of despotism.
Trump has tapped into the hatred that huge segments of the American public have for a political and economic system that has betrayed them. He may be inept, degenerate, dishonest and a narcissist, but he adeptly ridicules the system they despise. His cruel and demeaning taunts directed at government agencies, laws and the established elites resonate with people for whom these agencies, laws and elites have become hostile forces. And for many who see no shift in the political landscape to alleviate their suffering, Trump’s cruelty and invective are at least cathartic.
Trump, like all despots, has no ethical core. He chooses his allies and appointees based on their personal loyalty and fawning obsequiousness to him. He will sell anyone out. He is corrupt, amassing money for himself—he made $40 million from his Washington, D.C., hotel alone last year—and his corporate allies. He is dismantling government institutions that once provided some regulation and oversight. He is an enemy of the open society. This makes him dangerous. His turbocharged assault on the last vestiges of democratic institutions and norms means there will soon be nothing, even in name, to protect us from corporate totalitarianism.
But the warnings from the architects of our failed democracy against creeping fascism, Madeleine Albright among them, are risible. They show how disconnected the elites have become from the zeitgeist. None of these elites have credibility. They built the edifice of lies, deceit and corporate pillage that made Trump possible. And the more Trump demeans these elites, and the more they cry out like Cassandras, the more he salvages his disastrous presidency and enables the kleptocrats pillaging the country as it swiftly disintegrates.
The press is one of the principal pillars of Trump’s despotism. It chatters endlessly like 18th-century courtiers at the court of Versailles about the foibles of the monarch while the peasants lack bread. It drones on and on and on about empty topics such as Russian meddling and a payoff to a porn actress that have nothing to do with the daily hell that, for many, defines life in America. It refuses to critique or investigate the abuses by corporate power, which has destroyed our democracy and economy and orchestrated the largest transfer of wealth upward in American history. The corporate press is a decayed relic that, in exchange for money and access, committed cultural suicide. And when Trump attacks it over “fake news,” he expresses, once again, the deep hatred of all those the press ignores. The press worships the idol of Mammon as slavishly as Trump does. It loves the reality-show presidency. The press, especially the cable news shows, keeps the lights on and the cameras rolling so viewers will be glued to a 21st-century version of “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.” It is good for ratings. It is good for profits. But it accelerates the decline.
All this will soon be compounded by financial collapse. Wall Street banks have been handed $16 trillion in bailouts and other subsidies by the Federal Reserve and Congress at nearly zero percent interest since the 2008 financial collapse. They have used this money, as well as the money saved through the huge tax cuts imposed last year, to buy back their own stock, raising the compensation and bonuses of their managers and thrusting the society deeper into untenable debt peonage. Sheldon Adelson’s casino operations alone got a $670 million tax break under the 2017 legislation. The ratio of CEO to worker pay now averages 339 to 1, with the highest gap approaching 5,000 to 1. This circular use of money to make and hoard money is what Karl Marx called “fictitious capital.” The steady increase in public debt, corporate debt, credit card debt and student loan debt will ultimately lead, as Nomi Prins writes, to “a tipping point—when money coming in to furnish that debt, or available to borrow, simply won’t cover the interest payments. Then debt bubbles will pop, beginning with higher yielding bonds.”
An economy reliant on debt for its growth causes our interest rate to jump to 28 percent when we are late on a credit card payment. It is why our wages are stagnant or have declined in real terms—if we earned a sustainable income we would not have to borrow money to survive. It is why a university education, houses, medical bills and utilities cost so much. The system is designed so we can never free ourselves from debt.
However, the next financial crash, as Prins points out in her book “Collusion: How Central Bankers Rigged the World,” won’t be like the last one. This is because, as she says, “there is no Plan B.” Interest rates can’t go any lower. There has been no growth in the real economy. The next time, there will be no way out. Once the economy crashes and the rage across the country explodes into a firestorm, the political freaks will appear, ones that will make Trump look sagacious and benign.
And so, to quote Vladimir Lenin, what must be done?
We must invest our energy in building parallel, popular institutions to protect ourselves and to pit power against power. These parallel institutions, including unions, community development organizations, local currencies, alternative political parties and food cooperatives, will have to be constructed town by town. The elites in a time of distress will retreat to their gated compounds and leave us to fend for ourselves. Basic services, from garbage collection to public transportation, food distribution and health care, will collapse. Massive unemployment and underemployment, triggering social unrest, will be dealt with not through government job creation but the brutality of militarized police and a complete suspension of civil liberties. Critics of the system, already pushed to the margins, will be silenced and attacked as enemies of the state. The last vestiges of labor unions will be targeted for abolition, a process that will soon be accelerated given the expected ruling in a case before the Supreme Court that will cripple the ability of public-sector unions to represent workers. The dollar will stop being the world’s reserve currency, causing a steep devaluation. Banks will close. Global warming will extract heavier and heavier costs, especially on the coastal populations, farming and the infrastructure, costs that the depleted state will be unable to address. The corporate press, like the ruling elites, will go from burlesque to absurdism, its rhetoric so patently fictitious it will, as in all totalitarian states, be unmoored from reality. The media outlets will all sound as fatuous as Trump. And, to quote W.H. Auden, “the little children will die in the streets.”
As a foreign correspondent I covered collapsed societies, including the former Yugoslavia. It is impossible for any doomed population to grasp how fragile the decayed financial, social and political system is on the eve of implosion. All the harbingers of collapse are visible: crumbling infrastructure; chronic underemployment and unemployment; the indiscriminate use of lethal force by police; political paralysis and stagnation; an economy built on the scaffolding of debt; nihilistic mass shootings in schools, universities, workplaces, malls, concert venues and movie theaters; opioid overdoses that kill some 64,000 people a year; an epidemic of suicides; unsustainable military expansion; gambling as a desperate tool of economic development and government revenue; the capture of power by a tiny, corrupt clique; censorship; the physical diminishing of public institutions ranging from schools and libraries to courts and medical facilities; the incessant bombardment by electronic hallucinations to divert us from the depressing sight that has become America and keep us trapped in illusions. We suffer the usual pathologies of impending death. I would be happy to be wrong. But I have seen this before. I know the warning signs. All I can say is get ready.
The Coming Collapse
The Trump administration did not rise, prima facie, like Venus on a half shell from the sea. Donald Trump is the result of a long process of political, cultural and social decay. He is a product of our failed democracy. The longer we perpetuate the fiction that we live in a functioning democracy, that Trump and the political mutations around him are somehow an aberrant deviation that can be vanquished in the next election, the more we will hurtle toward tyranny. The problem is not Trump. It is a political system, dominated by corporate power and the mandarins of the two major political parties, in which we don’t count. We will wrest back political control by dismantling the corporate state, and this means massive and sustained civil disobedience, like that demonstrated by teachers around the country this year. If we do not stand up we will enter a new dark age.
The Democratic Party, which helped build our system of inverted totalitarianism, is once again held up by many on the left as the savior. Yet the party steadfastly refuses to address the social inequality that led to the election of Trump and the insurgency by Bernie Sanders. It is deaf, dumb and blind to the very real economic suffering that plagues over half the country. It will not fight to pay workers a living wage. It will not defy the pharmaceutical and insurance industries to provide Medicare for all. It will not curb the voracious appetite of the military that is disemboweling the country and promoting the prosecution of futile and costly foreign wars. It will not restore our lost civil liberties, including the right to privacy, freedom from government surveillance, and due process. It will not get corporate and dark money out of politics. It will not demilitarize our police and reform a prison system that has 25 percent of the world’s prisoners although the United States has only 5 percent of the world’s population. It plays to the margins, especially in election seasons, refusing to address substantive political and social problems and instead focusing on narrow cultural issues like gay rights, abortion and gun control in our peculiar species of anti-politics.
This is a doomed tactic, but one that is understandable. The leadership of the party, the Clintons, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Tom Perez, are creations of corporate America. In an open and democratic political process, one not dominated by party elites and corporate money, these people would not hold political power. They know this. They would rather implode the entire system than give up their positions of privilege. And that, I fear, is what will happen. The idea that the Democratic Party is in any way a bulwark against despotism defies the last three decades of its political activity. It is the guarantor of despotism.
Trump has tapped into the hatred that huge segments of the American public have for a political and economic system that has betrayed them. He may be inept, degenerate, dishonest and a narcissist, but he adeptly ridicules the system they despise. His cruel and demeaning taunts directed at government agencies, laws and the established elites resonate with people for whom these agencies, laws and elites have become hostile forces. And for many who see no shift in the political landscape to alleviate their suffering, Trump’s cruelty and invective are at least cathartic.
Trump, like all despots, has no ethical core. He chooses his allies and appointees based on their personal loyalty and fawning obsequiousness to him. He will sell anyone out. He is corrupt, amassing money for himself—he made $40 million from his Washington, D.C., hotel alone last year—and his corporate allies. He is dismantling government institutions that once provided some regulation and oversight. He is an enemy of the open society. This makes him dangerous. His turbocharged assault on the last vestiges of democratic institutions and norms means there will soon be nothing, even in name, to protect us from corporate totalitarianism.
But the warnings from the architects of our failed democracy against creeping fascism, Madeleine Albright among them, are risible. They show how disconnected the elites have become from the zeitgeist. None of these elites have credibility. They built the edifice of lies, deceit and corporate pillage that made Trump possible. And the more Trump demeans these elites, and the more they cry out like Cassandras, the more he salvages his disastrous presidency and enables the kleptocrats pillaging the country as it swiftly disintegrates.
The press is one of the principal pillars of Trump’s despotism. It chatters endlessly like 18th-century courtiers at the court of Versailles about the foibles of the monarch while the peasants lack bread. It drones on and on and on about empty topics such as Russian meddling and a payoff to a porn actress that have nothing to do with the daily hell that, for many, defines life in America. It refuses to critique or investigate the abuses by corporate power, which has destroyed our democracy and economy and orchestrated the largest transfer of wealth upward in American history. The corporate press is a decayed relic that, in exchange for money and access, committed cultural suicide. And when Trump attacks it over “fake news,” he expresses, once again, the deep hatred of all those the press ignores. The press worships the idol of Mammon as slavishly as Trump does. It loves the reality-show presidency. The press, especially the cable news shows, keeps the lights on and the cameras rolling so viewers will be glued to a 21st-century version of “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.” It is good for ratings. It is good for profits. But it accelerates the decline.
All this will soon be compounded by financial collapse. Wall Street banks have been handed $16 trillion in bailouts and other subsidies by the Federal Reserve and Congress at nearly zero percent interest since the 2008 financial collapse. They have used this money, as well as the money saved through the huge tax cuts imposed last year, to buy back their own stock, raising the compensation and bonuses of their managers and thrusting the society deeper into untenable debt peonage. Sheldon Adelson’s casino operations alone got a $670 million tax break under the 2017 legislation. The ratio of CEO to worker pay now averages 339 to 1, with the highest gap approaching 5,000 to 1. This circular use of money to make and hoard money is what Karl Marx called “fictitious capital.” The steady increase in public debt, corporate debt, credit card debt and student loan debt will ultimately lead, as Nomi Prins writes, to “a tipping point—when money coming in to furnish that debt, or available to borrow, simply won’t cover the interest payments. Then debt bubbles will pop, beginning with higher yielding bonds.”
An economy reliant on debt for its growth causes our interest rate to jump to 28 percent when we are late on a credit card payment. It is why our wages are stagnant or have declined in real terms—if we earned a sustainable income we would not have to borrow money to survive. It is why a university education, houses, medical bills and utilities cost so much. The system is designed so we can never free ourselves from debt.
However, the next financial crash, as Prins points out in her book “Collusion: How Central Bankers Rigged the World,” won’t be like the last one. This is because, as she says, “there is no Plan B.” Interest rates can’t go any lower. There has been no growth in the real economy. The next time, there will be no way out. Once the economy crashes and the rage across the country explodes into a firestorm, the political freaks will appear, ones that will make Trump look sagacious and benign.
And so, to quote Vladimir Lenin, what must be done?
We must invest our energy in building parallel, popular institutions to protect ourselves and to pit power against power. These parallel institutions, including unions, community development organizations, local currencies, alternative political parties and food cooperatives, will have to be constructed town by town. The elites in a time of distress will retreat to their gated compounds and leave us to fend for ourselves. Basic services, from garbage collection to public transportation, food distribution and health care, will collapse. Massive unemployment and underemployment, triggering social unrest, will be dealt with not through government job creation but the brutality of militarized police and a complete suspension of civil liberties. Critics of the system, already pushed to the margins, will be silenced and attacked as enemies of the state. The last vestiges of labor unions will be targeted for abolition, a process that will soon be accelerated given the expected ruling in a case before the Supreme Court that will cripple the ability of public-sector unions to represent workers. The dollar will stop being the world’s reserve currency, causing a steep devaluation. Banks will close. Global warming will extract heavier and heavier costs, especially on the coastal populations, farming and the infrastructure, costs that the depleted state will be unable to address. The corporate press, like the ruling elites, will go from burlesque to absurdism, its rhetoric so patently fictitious it will, as in all totalitarian states, be unmoored from reality. The media outlets will all sound as fatuous as Trump. And, to quote W.H. Auden, “the little children will die in the streets.”
As a foreign correspondent I covered collapsed societies, including the former Yugoslavia. It is impossible for any doomed population to grasp how fragile the decayed financial, social and political system is on the eve of implosion. All the harbingers of collapse are visible: crumbling infrastructure; chronic underemployment and unemployment; the indiscriminate use of lethal force by police; political paralysis and stagnation; an economy built on the scaffolding of debt; nihilistic mass shootings in schools, universities, workplaces, malls, concert venues and movie theaters; opioid overdoses that kill some 64,000 people a year; an epidemic of suicides; unsustainable military expansion; gambling as a desperate tool of economic development and government revenue; the capture of power by a tiny, corrupt clique; censorship; the physical diminishing of public institutions ranging from schools and libraries to courts and medical facilities; the incessant bombardment by electronic hallucinations to divert us from the depressing sight that has become America and keep us trapped in illusions. We suffer the usual pathologies of impending death. I would be happy to be wrong. But I have seen this before. I know the warning signs. All I can say is get ready.
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