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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51827.htm

The Diminishing American Economy

Since June 2009 Americans have lived in the false reality of a recovered economy. Various fake news and manipulated statistics have been used to create this false impression. However, indicators that really count have not supported the false picture and were ignored.

For example, it is normal in a recovering or expanding economy for the labor force participation rate to rise as people enter the work force to take advantage of the job opportunities. During the decade of the long recovery, from June 2009 through May 2019, the labor force participation rate consistently fell from 65.7 to 62.8 percent. https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-labor-force-participation-rate.htm

Another characteristic of a long expansion is high and rising business investment. However, American corporations have used their profits not for expansion, but to reduce their market capitalization by buying back their stock. Moreover, many have gone further and borrowed money in order to repurchase their shares, thus indebting their companies as they reduced their capitalization! That boards, executives, and shareholders chose to loot their own companies indicates that the executives and owners do not perceive an economy that warrants new investment.

How is the alleged 10-year boom reconcilled with an economy in which corporations see no investment opportunities?

Over the course of the alleged recovery, real retail sales growth has declined, standing today at 1.3%. https://www.multpl.com/us-real-retail-sales-growth This figure is an overstatement, because the measurement of inflation has been revised in ways that understate inflation. As an example, the consumer price index, which formerly measured the cost of a constant standard of living, now measures the cost of a variable standard of living. If the cost of an item in the index rises, the item is replaced by a lower cost alternative, thus reducing the measured rate of inflation. Other price increases are redefined as quality improvements, and their impact on inflation is neutralized.

Real retail sales cannot grow when “for most U.S. workers, real wages have barely budged in decades.” https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/

For full-time employed men real wages have fallen 4.4% since 1973. https://www.businessinsider.com/record-median-household-income-is-hiding-a-chilling-fact-2017-9

Economic shills explain away the facts. For example, they argue that people are working more hours, so their real earnings are up although their real wages are not.

Others argue that the declining labor force participation rate reflects baby boomer retirements. Of course, if you look around in Home Depot and Walmart, you will see many retirees working to supplement their Social Security pensions that have been denied cost of living adjustments by the undermeasurement of inflation.

Other economic shills say that the low unemployment rate means there is a labor shortage and that everyone who wants a job has one. They don’t tell you that unemployment has been defined so as to exclude millions of discouraged workers who could not find jobs and gave up looking. If you have not looked for a job in the past 4 weeks, you are no longer considered to be in the work force. Thus, your unemployment does not count.

It is expensive to look for employment. Scarce money has to be spent on appearance and transportation, and after awhile the money runs out. It is emotionally expensive as well. Constant rejections hardly build confidence or hope. People turn to cash odd jobs in order to survive. It turns out that many of the homeless have jobs, but do not earn enough to cover rent. Therefore, they live on the streets.

The propagandistic 3.5% unemployment rate (U3) does not include any of the millions of discouraged workers who cannot find jobs. The government does have a seldom reported U6 measure of unemployment that includes short-term discouraged workers. As of last month this rate stood at 7.1%, more than double the 3.5% rate. John Williams of shadowstats.com continues to estimate the long-term discouraged workers, as the government formerly did. He finds the actual US rate of unemployment to be 21%.

The 21% rate makes sense in light of Census Bureau reports that one-third of Americans age 18-34 live at home with parents because they can’t earn enough to supprt an independent existence. https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/census-more-americans-18-34-now-live-parents-spouse

According to Federal Reserve reports, 40 % of American households cannot raise $400 cash. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/22/fed-survey-40-percent-of-adults-cant-cover-400-emergency-expense.html

The US economy was put into decline by short-sighted capitalist greed. When the Soviet Union collapsed in the last decade of the 20th century, India and China opened their economies to the Western countries. Corporations saw in the low cost of Chinese and Indian labor opportunities to increase their profits and share prices by producing offshore the goods and services for their domestic markets. Those hesitant to desert their home towns and work forces were pushed offshore by Wall Street’s threats to finance takeovers unless they increased their profits.

The shift of millions of high productivity, high value-added American jobs to Asia wrecked the careers and prospects of millions of Americans and severely impacted state and local budgets and pension funds. The external costs of jobs offshoring were extremely high. The cost to the economy far exceeded the profits gained by jobs offshoring. Almost overnight prosperous American cities, once a source of manufacturing and industrial strength, became economic ruins. https://www.claritypress.com/product/the-failure-of-laissez-faire-capitalism/ The “trade war” with China is an orchestration to cover up the fact that America’s economic problems are the result of its own corporations and Wall Street moving American jobs offshore and because the US government did nothing to stop the deconstruction of the economy.

The Reagan administration’s supply-side economic policy, always misrepresented and wrongly described, cured stagflation, the malaise of rising inflation and unemployment described at the time as worsening “Phillips curve” trade-offs between inflation and unemployment. No one has seen a Phillips curve since the Reagan administration got rid of it. The Federal Reserve hasn’t even been able to resurrect it with years of money printing. The Reagan administration had the economy poised for long-run non-inflationary growth, a prospect that was foiled by the rise of jobs offshoring.

Normally a government would be protective of jobs as the government wants to take in tax revenues rather than to pay out unemployment and social welfare benefits. Politicians want economic success, not economic failure. But greed overcame judgment, and the economy’s prospects were sacrificed to short-term corporate and Wall Street greed.

The profits from jobs offshoring are short-term, because jobs offshoring is based on the fallacy of composition—the assumption that what is true for a part is true for the whole. An individual corporation, indeed a number of corporations, can benefit by abandoning its domestic work force and producing abroad for its domestic market. But when many firms do the same, the impact on domestic consumer income is severe. As Walmart jobs don’t pay manufacturing wages, aggregate consumer demand takes a hit from declining incomes, and there is less demand for the offshoring firms’ products. Economic growth falters. When this happened, the solution of Alan Greenspan, the Federal Reserve Chairman at the time, was to substitute an expansion of consumer debt for the missing growth in consumer income. The problem with his solution is that the growth of consumer debt is limited by consumer income. When the debt can’t be serviced, it can’t grow. Moreover, debt service drains income into interest and fee charges, further reducing consumer purchasing power. Thus, the offshoring of jobs has limited the expansion of aggregate consumer demand. As corporations are buying back their stock instead of investing, there is nothing to drive the economy. The economic growth figures we have been seeing are illusions produced by the understatement of inflation.

Much of America’s post-World War II prosperity and most of its power are due to the US dollar’s role as world reserve currency. This role guarantees a worldwide demand for dollars, and this demand for dollars means that the world finances US budget and trade deficits by purchasing US debt. The world gives us goods and services in exchange for our paper money. In other words, being the reserve currency allows a country to pay its bills by printing money.

A person would think that a government would be protective of such an advantage and not encourage foreigners to abandon dollars. But the US government, reckless in its arrogance, hubris, and utter ignorance, has done all in its power to cause flight from the dollar. The US government uses the dollar-based financial system to coerce other countries to accommodate American interests at their expense. Sanctions on other countries, threats of sanctions, asset freezes and confiscations, and so forth have driven large chunks of the world—Russia, China, India, Iran—into non-dollar transactions that reduce the demand for dollars. Threats against Europeans for purchasing Russian energy and Chinese technology products are alienating elements of Washington’s European empire. A country with the massive indebtedness of the US government would quickly be reduced to Third World status if the value of the dollar collapsed from lack of demand.

There are many countries in the world that have bad leadership, but US leadership is the worst of all. Never very good, US leadership went into precipitous and continuous decline with the advent of the Clintons, continuing through Bush, Obama, and Trump. American credibility is at a low point. Fools like John Bolton and Pompeo think they can restore credibility by blowing up countries. Unless the dangerous fools are fired, we will all have to experience how wrong they are.

Formerly the Federal Reserve conducted monetary policy with the purpose of minimizing inflation and unemployment, but today and for the past decade the Federal Reserve conducts monetary policy for the purpose of protecting the balance sheets of the banks that are “too big to fail” and other favored financial institutions. Therefore, it is problematic to expect the same results.

Today it is possible to have a recession and to maintain high prices of financial instruments due to Fed support of the instruments. Today it is possible for the Fed to prevent a stock market decline by purchasing S&P futures, and to prevent a gold price rise by having its agents dump naked gold shorts in the gold futures market. Such things as these were not done when I was in the Treasury. This type of intervention originated in the plunge protection team created by the Bush people in the last year of the Reagan administration. Once the Fed learned how to use these instruments, it has done so more aggressively.

Market watchers who go by past trends overlook that today market manipulation by central authorities plays a larger role than in the past. They mistakenly expect trends established by market forces to hold in a manipulated economic environment.

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https://www.peakprosperity.com/extreme-frugality/

Extreme Frugality

A needed mindset for the age we live in

We didn’t have a lot growing up, as my mom had to single-parent three kids. Most anything I wanted required disciplined frugality.

I bought my first fly rod from Orvis at the age of 13, which took the better part of a year to save up for. I hand-tied the first flies drifted from its lines from the hackles of roosters I raised expressly for that purpose.

In my later teens, I took a long cross-country climbing/working road trip where I lived on $5/week (1980s). Doing so was an art form involving dried beans and camping for free on federal lands, including the time I woke up to a large bull pawing and snorting a few yards from my tent. I knew nothing about the behavior of bulls, and still don’t; but I knew that wasn’t a good sign and so I backed away using the tent as a shield and climbed a tree.

Sleeping on the ground, or on sofas doesn’t bother me. I am a remarkably un-picky eater. I’m just easy that way.

All of which is to say that being frugal and ‘making do’ with what’s on hand comes naturally to me. Don’t get me wrong, I can enjoy spending money, and have indulged in some expensive hobbies in my life. But I can also zipper the wallet and not skip a beat.

I’m glad I can, because being frugal is an extremely valuable skill to employ as we get ready for a future of ‘less’.

System Failure

Sometime, much sooner than we’ll be ready for, the systems upon which we rely will fail us.

The weather system is already becoming intolerably wonky. Heat in Europe, crop-ruining rains in the US farm belt, and unprecedented heat in the arctic are all telling us that something is terribly amiss.

In fact, at this moment on an 80-degree late June night, in New England, I’m typing next to an open window, no screen, the room lights on, and there are exactly zero insects flying about the room. Not a single one. I’m old enough to remember the swarms of beetles, moths, mosquitos, and other bugs that such a night would have brought. That they aren’t here tonight is extremely unsettling to me.

Anyone who can read or access the internet and has at least minimal curiosity can detect the signs of the deep stress all around us — in our environment, in our society, and in our economy.

It’s critical to realize that everything in the financial sphere — from the lofty prices of stocks and bonds to the fiscal solvency of nations — depends on the future economy being exponentially larger than it is currently. But this expectation is flawed; you can’t extract ever-increasing exponential growth from a finite system.

A ‘credit recession’ almost destroyed the global economy last time (2008). Yet now there’s an even larger one primed and ready to burst.

But you’d never know that by watching the nightly news or reading the major media outlets. Because the more dangerously-lopsided things become, the more urgently the entire interlocking system of narrative control works to convince the masses that everything is fine.

But curious critical thinkers like you and I know that’s not true.

Our knowing is in the ecological data, which is horrifying. Plastic pollution now virtually everywhere, vanishing insect and amphibian populations, steadily declining phytoplankton levels, weather anomalies shattering records across the globe, food chain disruptions in the oceans leading to massive bird and whale die-offs, and coral reefs disappearing with frightening speed.

It is in the cultural and sociological data, which show that the epidemic of obesity continues to worsen, suicide rates are hitting record high levels, multiplying increasing feelings of isolation, and record levels of being miserable and unhappy around the globe.

It’s in the economic data, which shows the widest wealth and income gaps in history, 62% of millennials struggling from paycheck to paycheck, desperate central banks able only to conceive of ever-more stimulus (easing) efforts, massive and rapidly growing debt piles, the misery of households that do not have any emergency buffers to draw upon, and in the US alone, over $200 trillion of underfunded pension and Medicare promises that can’t ever be met.

Even if we could set all of the above aside (and we cannot), a looming net energy crisis tells us that the future will be terribly different from the past. Most people are unaware — falsely lulled by the recent US shale ponzi — that oil production will indeed peak and then decline. Or that total net energy output from fossil fuel is already falling steadily now that all the easy oil and gas are gone.

Our economic and population arrangements were made back when huge 100:1 net energy returns from fossil fuel were routine. Comprehensive planning and mitigation strategies have to be made right away if we are to transition to the lower ~5:1 returns offered by shale oil and solar.

Forty to sixty years are required to effect a smooth energy transition. Meanwhile it looks like oil output may well peak in the US around 2025 (a lot depends on easy credit and a high price for oil), has already peaked and gone down in 18 countries since 2005, and the world remains heavily dependent on the output from a small handful of ageing super-giant oil fields discovered and put into service more than 50 years ago.

In other words, we don’t have 40 to 60 years. We may only have ten. Yet no urgency can be detected in the official policies of the world’s major nations.

Industrially-farmed soils are going to be completely exhausted within 40-60 years, requiring ever larger fossil energy inputs to keep them transiently supplied with nutrients.

Add all that up and what do you have? A very strong case for a very uncertain future.

My interpretation is these are the warning signs of a global culture that has grown past its natural carrying capacity and has yet to face that reality.

Which is why the sociological data tells me that people are very worried, even if they cannot exactly explain why....

....Henry David Thoreau captured the gestalt of extreme frugality well when he penned: " I make myself rich by making my wants few "

....

A couple of great books on this subject are, Less is More by Cecil Andrews and Wanda Urbanska , and Choosing Simplicity by Linda Breene Pierce

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https://ourfiniteworld.com/2019/06/12/seven-reasons-why-we-should-not-depend-on-imported-goods-from-china/

Seven Reasons Why We Should Not Depend on Imported Goods from China

It seems to me that the situation in China is far different from what most people think it is. Even if we would like to depend on China, we really cannot.

Reason 1. When we depend on goods from China, an amazingly large share of the world’s industrial activity gets concentrated in China.

The five largest users of energy in the world are China, the United States, India, Russia, and Japan. The International Energy Agency shows total energy consumption as follows for the year 2016:

Figure 1. IEA’s estimate of energy consumption (total fuel consumed, or TFC) by sector in 2016 for the top five energy consuming nations. Mtoe is million tons oil equivalent. Source: IEA. Non-energy use is the use of fossil fuels as a material to create end products that are not burned. Examples include medicines, plastics, fertilizers, asphalt, and fabrics.

When these countries are compared, restricting our analysis to the portion of energy used by industry, we find the rather disconcerting result shown in Figure 2:

Figure 2. Chart by the International Energy Agency showing total fuel consumed (TFC) by industry, for the top five fuel consuming nations of the world.

China consumes more fuel for industrial production than the next four countries listed (United States, India, Russia, and Japan) combined. Of course, we don’t know exactly the corresponding amounts for other countries of the world, but we can observe that if a country is concerned about its CO2 emissions, the easiest way to reduce these emissions is to send heavy industry elsewhere, such as to China or India. There are likely many countries that are primarily service economies, thanks to the option of outsourcing most industry to other countries.

Much of the discussion I have read regarding sending industry elsewhere has been in the direction of, “As advanced as our economy is, we don’t need heavy industry; service jobs will substitute. Industry can be developed at lower cost elsewhere. Everyone will be better off with this arrangement. The invisible hand will provide jobs and goods and services for everyone.” In addition, corporations saw the possibility of adding customers from around the world. Not too many thought about the real-world problems that might result.

Clearly there is a problem with the jobs being lost to China and other Emerging Markets. When new service jobs are added, they often do not pay as well the industrial jobs they replaced. In fact, there might not be enough jobs in total, if automation plays an important role as well.

Another issue is that the level of industrial concentration can be a problem. We are now depending on China and perhaps a few other countries to provide for a large share of the “stuff” we use. Even if China is not the only provider, it is often an important part of the supply chain. If something should go wrong (for example, widespread riots in China), we don’t have a Plan B.

Reason 2. China needs energy products to make the goods it uses for itself and for the goods it exports. China’s own energy supply is faltering. Because of China’s huge size, it is becoming increasingly difficult to keep China’s energy consumption rising sufficiently rapidly using imported energy.

China’s own energy production is shown in Figure 3. (Note: Hot off the press! New BP report released this week.)

Figure 3. China energy production by fuel, based on 2019 BP Statistical Review of World Energy data. “Other Ren” stands for “Renewables other than hydroelectric.” This category includes wind, solar, and other miscellaneous types, such as sawdust burned for electricity.

It is easy to see that China’s coal production hit its highest point in 2013 and has stayed at a lower level since that date. Also, China’s highest oil production occurred in 2015, with lower production since that date. China’s total energy production has been rising recently, but only with great effort. Total energy production is only 8.9% higher in 2018 than it was in 2012, implying an increase of less than 1.5% per year, relative to 2012 amounts.

A standard workaround for inadequate energy production growth is imported energy products. Even with these imports, it has been impossible to keep total energy consumption rising as rapidly as it rose in the 2002 to 2007 period. The cost with imports is greater, also.

Figure 4. China energy production by fuel, plus line showing its total energy consumption (including imports), based on BP 2019 Statistical Review of World Energy data.

In 2018, China imported 71% of its petroleum (either as crude or as products), and 43% of its natural gas. It was the largest importer in the world with respect to both of these fuels.

In 2018, China’s coal imports shrank as its own coal production surged. This was almost certainly a change planned by China. China would much prefer producing its own coal (and keeping the jobs within the country) to importing coal from elsewhere. China imported 4% of its coal from elsewhere in 2018.

Reason 3. The commodity demand from China is so huge that, to a significant extent, it determines world commodity price levels. Where regional energy prices exist, China’s choice regarding whether or not to import from a country can influence local price levels.

Chile is the largest copper producer in the world. A recent article regarding problems associated with lower copper prices notes that the demand for Chilean copper has been driven “almost entirely by the expanding Chinese economy over the last three decades.” For many commodities, China consumes over half of the world’s commodity supply. If China’s industrial demand is growing, prices will tend to rise, allowing more of the mineral to be extracted. Higher commodity prices tend to be needed over time because the ores of highest concentration (and otherwise easiest to extract ores) tend to be extracted first. Ores extracted later tend to be more expensive to extract, so higher prices are required for extraction to be profitable.

This situation of China playing an extremely large role in commodity prices holds for a very large number of commodities. If China is building widgets or any other product, using a particular commodity, China’s need to buy this commodity in the world market will tend to hold up world prices for the commodity. This situation holds even for fossil fuel prices.

Reason 4. Over the next few years, China’s coal supply is likely fall significantly because of depletion. This lower fuel supply is likely to lead to a shrinkage of China’s industrial capability, and, indirectly, falling world commodity prices of all kinds.

The problem that China is encountering in Figure 3 is “peak coal.” This is a similar problem to that encountered by the United Kingdom immediately before World War I, and to that Germany encountered just before World War II.

Figure 5. The timing of the peaks is peculiar, relative to wars.

Coal tends to be the industrial fuel of choice because it is cheap. Goods made with coal tend to be inexpensive, especially if wages paid to workers are low and if the company making the goods does not spend much money on pollution prevention. Hydroelectric can be an adequate substitute for coal, if the water flow can be depended upon. Wind and solar are too intermittent and not sufficiently inexpensive to be adequate substitutes for coal. Wind and solar (included in “Other Ren” on Figure 3) are also far smaller in quantity than coal.

Outsourcing a large share of the world’s manufacturing to China seemed like a great idea back when it was started, often in the early 2000s. If, at some point, China cannot really handle the responsibility it has taken on, outsourcing gets to be a huge problem.

The reason why coal prices cannot rise very high is because if they do, the prices of finished goods will need to rise as well. Wages of workers around the world will not rise at the same time because the higher cost of production takes place due to something that is equivalent to “growing inefficiency.” The coal mined is of lower quality, or in thinner seams, or needs to be transported further. This means that more workers and more fuel is needed for each ton of coal extracted. This leaves fewer workers and less fuel for other industrial tasks, so that, in total, the economy can manufacture fewer goods and services. Because of these issues, countries experiencing peak coal are pushed toward economic contraction.

Unfortunately, rather than leading to high prices (to compensate for the higher extraction costs), running short of inexpensive-to-extract fuel tends to lead to war, or to tariff fights. Countries whose coal is depleting will try to maintain their own supply as long as possible. They will invent excuses to stop importing coal. Back in September 2018, the Financial Review reported, “China has introduced unofficial restrictions on coal imports in a bid to prop up domestic prices by slowing down customs approvals at key ports.” China needed higher internal prices to make it profitable to extract coal from its depleting coal mines.

Figure 6. Chart showing prices of Brent Oil, China Qinhuangdao Spot Coal price, and Asian Marker Coal, all in US$ of the day. Amounts from BP 2019 Statistical Review of World Energy. Note also that the units of coal (ton) are much larger than the units of oil (barrel) used on this chart. Thus, the same number of dollars of buys a much larger quantity of coal than of oil; coal is cheaper.

If higher coal prices really were possible over the long term, it would make it possible to open new mines in more distant locations. The location of coal mines is important because transport costs by rail or truck tend to be high. China built the large ghost city of Ordos, Inner Mongolia, on the expectation that coal prices would rise, making development of coal in the area profitable. Unfortunately, coal prices fell, making the project not economic. I visited the area in 2015, after teaching a short course on Energy Economics in Beijing. There was a large almost empty airport, and few vehicles were using nearby multi-lane roads.

Reason 5. All of the concern about future tariffs artificially raised China’s 2018 industrial production and commodity prices. Because production was brought forward into 2018, China’s production and world commodity prices can be expected to be lower in 2019 and in future years.

Manufacturers wanted to front-run tariffs, so they tended to ramp up production in advance of the tariff implementation date. This higher production in turn tended to raise commodity production and prices around the world. Note on Figure 6, above, that coal and oil prices are both higher in 2018 than in 2017. Prices in 2019, not shown, are tending to trend downward again.

China badly needed higher coal prices in order to help its coal extraction. Thus, part of the reason that China was able to continue to function as well as it did in 2018 was because of all of the discussion about future tariffs. If this discussion had not taken place, employment in China would likely have been lower. With this lower employment, sales of automobiles and smartphones would have been lower as well.

Note, too, that even with the demand brought forward into 2018, China’s economy was not functioning very well in 2018. Private passenger automobile sales for the year fell by 4%. Smartphone sales fell by a worrisome 15.5%. Clearly, workers were having difficulty buying the kinds of goods a person would expect a growing economy to be selling. I would attribute these problems to the peak coal problem mentioned earlier, making it increasingly difficult to increase the amount of industrial operations provided by China’s economy.

Reason 6. The Chinese economy has been gradually changing and adapting to hide its energy problems. Even more changes will be needed in the future, potentially affecting the world economy, with or without tariffs.

The Chinese economy reports carefully massaged GDP numbers, which many analysts consider to be inflated in recent years. Its debt level keeps rising to try to keep all of its operations going.

We know that China discontinued one major industry at the beginning of 2018: recycling plastic and other types of low-valued recycling. With low oil and natural gas prices, this type of recycling cannot be profitable. Of course, discontinuing a major industry can be expected to lead to a loss of jobs within China. But, on the positive side, it frees up coal and other energy resources in China for other industries that can (perhaps) make more profitable use of them.

On a world basis, the loss of the plastic recycling industry becomes a problem. If rich countries are willing to subsidize the cost of sending plastic recycling to China, this subsidy allows containers that bring goods to rich countries to be sent back to China with a paid load inside. Thus, operating the plastic recycling industry helps keep the cost of shipment of goods from China to the US or Europe down because the shipping costs only need to cover the one-way cost of transit, rather than also covering the cost of shipping the empty container back. Without the subsidy to pay the freight of the plastic recycling, costs for the shipping industry rise, making international trade more expensive. Eliminating the subsidy that rich countries are paying to ship otherwise-empty containers back full of mixed trash is part of what pushes the world economy to contraction.

Other countries are not taking over very much of China’s role in recycling plastic, either. The net effect is that the loss of recycling is one of the things pushing the world toward contraction.

China has no doubt been cutting back in other ways as well. It is likely that it is not building as many uninhabited cities and roads that are really not needed. Ugo Bardi recently posted this chart showing global cement production.

Figure 7. World Cement Production by Ugo Bardi from a blog post on January 19, 2019.

China produces over half of the world’s cement; part of the reduction we are seeing relates to China’s falling use of concrete in new buildings and roads.

In some cases, China is moving in the direction of being a service economy. A recent video states that of the $237.45 cost of producing an iPhone in China, Chinese workers only provide assembly services, worth $8.46. The US contributes $68.69 of the cost, mostly in the design and distribution phases. The parts are generally outsourced from other parts of the world.

One way of looking at what is happening in China’s economy is to analyze the country’s oil consumption in terms of the relative amounts of diesel (used primarily by industry) and gasoline (often used by private passenger vehicles).

Figure 8. Gasoline and diesel consumption for China, based on data from 2019 BP Statistical Review of World Energy.

Based on Figure 8, it appears that China’s industrial growth suddenly leveled off about 2012. This, not by coincidence, is about the time that China’s coal problems were becoming apparent in China. China’s gasoline consumption has continued to rise, however. It appears that once it became apparent that its coal supplies were starting to seriously deplete, China began to “grow” China’s economy more as a service economy. After 2012, most growth seems to have come in the non-industrial sectors of China.

Reason 7. A major concern should be a financial collapse, far worse than 2008, both in China and for the world as a whole.

The world needs growing energy supply to support the world economy. China is increasingly having difficulty with its energy supply. When China has trouble with its energy supplies, the world as a whole has a problem with its growth in energy supplies.

A few months ago, I showed the role China has played in the world economy is this chart:

Figure 9. Ten year growth in world energy consumption, divided between the blue portion associated with rising population, and the red portion associated with higher energy consumption per capita, which I have called “Living Std.”, meaning “Higher Living Standards.”

China added a little bump in GDP growth at the end of the nearly 200-year time period shown, after it joined the World Trade Association in December 2001. The energy added by China (mostly in the form of coal) allowed the world economy to continue to grow, when it otherwise would have been up against limits.

Now we are reaching a situation where China’s energy production is likely to flatten or fall because of the depleted state of its coal mines, and the fact that coal prices can’t rise high enough, for long enough, to open new mines. The world economy, over the period shown, has always had rising energy consumption. In most cases, energy consumption rose faster than population growth, allowing some growth in the standard of living over time.

Changing to a situation of shrinking energy consumption per capita would likely be extraordinarily traumatic. Population would likely fall. Commodity prices would drop to low levels. Debt would tend to default; prices of shares of stock would fall. Many governments would fail. If shrinking energy consumption per capita starts in one country (whether China or elsewhere), it could easily spread to other countries around the world.

We don’t know what is ahead, but we know that the low points on Figure 9 were very bad times, even though energy consumption in total was not contracting. The decade of 1860 to 1870 was the decade of the US Civil War. The decade of the 1930s was the decade of the Great Depression. The decade of the 1990s was the decade of the collapse of the central government of the Soviet Union.

We also know that world energy consumption and GDP growth tend to be highly correlated.

Figure 10. World GDP Growth versus Energy Consumption Growth, based on data of 2018 BP Statistical Review of World Energy and GDP data in 2010$ amounts, from the World Bank.

This is as we would expect, because energy consumption is required for the many aspects of GDP growth. Transportation, heating and/or cooling, and electricity all require energy consumption, for example.

The recent divergence between GDP and energy consumption on Figure 10 may be the result of overstated GDP amounts by China, India, and other countries. If a country wants to appear inviting for new investment, there is a temptation to overstate GDP since other countries seem to be doing so, without penalty.

Back during the Great Recession of 2008-2009, our problem was with homeowners who took out loans that were far higher than they could really afford. Today, we have whole economies taking on more debt than properly stated GDP reports would suggest they are able to handle. We go from one version of optimism regarding debt levels to another.

Conclusion. If a person doesn’t understand how badly the energy situation is working out for China, or how important energy consumption is, it is easy to think that the problems China is facing are primarily tariff-related. In fact, China’s situation is a very worrisome one, with or without tariffs being added.

To fix the situation, China would need a very cheap, non-intermittent, locally produced, non-polluting additional energy source. This energy source would also need to be rapidly scalable. Such an energy resource doesn’t appear to be available.

,,,,

There are no scalable alternative energy systems that will compensate for the net energy decline realities of oil, coal and gas supplies. Contracting economies throughout the world and all it entails is happening now, and the pace of it will become increasingly dire. What was built up ( especially in the last 200 years ) of infrastructure is beginning to crumble, and populations will begin to decline as the system crashes.

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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51823.htm

The Geopolitics of World War III

( watch the excellent 22 minute video at the link )

The U.S. dollar is a unique currency for many reasons, though the reasons that matter most are not necessarily widely known.

Prior to 1971, the U.S. dollar was bound to the gold standard - or at least that is what the world operated under the belief of. The filmmakers highlight that the International Monetary Fund reports that in 1966, foreign central banks and governments held 14 billion U.S. dollars. While the United States did have $13.2 billion in gold reserves, most of that was needed to cover domestic holdings and only $3.2 billion of it was available for foreign holdings. What that means is the U.S. was printing more money than it could cover, and inflation naturally ensued. To quell the fire, the Richard Nixon presidential administration took the dollar off the gold standard and made it a debt-based currency.

Through various political arrangements, the filmmakers suggest that the U.S. then tied the dollar to oil trade to keep its demand up, a system that remained in place at America's convenience until the year 2000 - right before 9/11, mind you - when Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein declared he was shifting their oil trade from the dollar to the euro. This is said to be the catalyst behind all the post-9/11 military action, not anti-terrorism efforts, and that these dollar-undermining decisions by foreign governments continue to shape the U.S. military agenda today in regards to policy against Russia and Syria.

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https://srsroccoreport.com/trouble-at-the-bakken-oil-production-finally-peaking/

TROUBLE AT THE BAKKEN: Oil Production Finally Peaking?

Is the mighty Bakken Shale Oil Field finally peaking? Well, according to the data from the folks at the North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources, oil production in the Bakken has been flat for the past six months. And, to make matters worse, production has been flat even though oil prices increased from a low of $42 in January to the mid $60’s in April.

So, something seriously wrong is going on in North Dakota. What a difference in the Bakken’s recent oil supply compared to the field’s heyday when production surged from 300,000 barrels per day in 2011 to over 1.1 million barrels per day in 2014. Furthermore, the oil price the shale companies in the Bakken are receiving is now $48 a barrel versus the West Texas Intermediate price of $57.

If we look at the past seven months, the North Dakota Bakken has only added 36,000 barrels per day (bd) of new oil production compared to 114,000 bd during the same period last year:

As we can see in the chart above, the output from Sep 2017 to Apr 2018 enjoyed an upward trend, while the Sep 2018-Apr 2019 has been flat. You can see this better in Enno Peters chart from ShaleProfile.com. I highly recommend followers check out his site as he provides updates on the top shale oil and gas fields in the United States using state data from over 100,000 wells.

These charts from ShaleProfile.com show the annual change production by different colors. Here we can see that Bakken oil production increased steadily from 2011 to 2014, plateaued in late 2014 and 2015, declined in 2016, raised in 2017-2018, and has plateaued once again in 2019. The likely culprit for the plateau in Bakken oil production has to do with the lower oil price and the reduction of investment funds available to the shale companies that continue to spend more money than they make.

And if you remember this chart from my previous article, most of the shale companies suffered negative free cash flow in the first quarter of 2019:

Numbers don’t lie, and according to this new article, Shale Pioneer: Fracking Is An “Unmitigated Disaster,” the situation for the U.S. Shale Bubble is about to go from BAD to WORSE. This is not good news because the increase in U.S. shale oil production has accounted for nearly three-quarters of total global oil supply growth over the past decade:

Once U.S. shale oil production peaks, then it’s highly likely that Global GDP will peak as well. Thus, if the Fed and central banks really start to print money, then the results will resemble more like what is taking place in Venezuela. Furthermore, as Venezuela’s oil supply plummeted over the past few years, it has impacted other energy sources. For example, according to the data in the BP 2019 Statistical Review, Venezuela’s electric generation dropped 15% last year versus 2017.

Unfortunately, most people have no idea what happens to an economy when oil production peaks and declines. Peak oil will impact the supply of all other energy sources such as natural gas and coal. And, the notion that going green and using electric cars are going to save us is pure FOLLY when we realize Solar and Wind are nothing more than fossil fuel derivatives. Without the burning of fossil fuels, the world cannot produce Solar and Wind power plants, or electric cars.

Moreover, the amount of plastic in the manufacture of an electric car by 2020 is forecasted to increase to 772 lbs (source: IHS Chemical). Plastic comes from petroleum, mostly natural gas plant liquids. While some plastic is recycled, the car manufacturing industry will need even more plastic to produce gasoline and electric vehicles in the future.

So, it seems as if the “Green Energy Advocates” fail to consider “ALL ASPECTS” of the global supply chain when they state that switching to renewable energy is the answer. Again, when U.S. and global oil production finally peaks, the public has no clue how disruptive it will be to the economy....

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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51829.htm

You Are Being Trolled

In Internet slang, a troll (/ˈtroʊl/, /ˈtrɒl/) is a person who sows discord on the Internet by starting arguments or upsetting people,[1] by posting inflammatory,[2] extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community (such as a newsgroup, forum, chat room, or blog) with the deliberate intent of provoking readers ...

The world is on the brink of war, again. And again. And, yes, yet again. And then it’s not on the brink of war any more… but wait, there’s more! Of course there’s more, there always is. US aircraft carrier battle groups are steaming toward North Korea… or not. They are steaming about aimlessly, nowhere near North Korea, but in a very threatening manner. Then Trump and Kim Jong Un meet, get on great, sign a piece of paper that means nothing and part friends. Now the aircraft carriers are steaming about far less menacingly. Then Trump and Un meet again, to sign some other meaningless piece of paper, but then John Bolton shoots his mouth off and the deal is off. But Trump and Un continue to exchange love letters, so the bromance isn’t dead. In any case, war between the US and North Korea is not just unwinnable but unthinkable: South Korea’s capitol is within striking range of North Korean artillery and all US military bases in the region are within range of North Korean rockets. War with North Korea is definitely off. Executive summary: nothing happens. So, what was that all about?

Now it’s about Venezuela. Its democratically elected leader is declared to be a usurper and a suitable replacement is found by the name of Random Guy-doh. American vassal states around the world are bullied into granting him diplomatic recognition as Venezuela’s president even though he’s just a random guy in an apartment in Caracas. Some trucks get torched on a bridge between Columbia and Venezuela. They were carrying humanitarian goods such as spools of wire. There is talk of military intervention, but it’s just talk. The Bank of England confiscates Venezuela’s gold, the US freezes Venezuela’s oil company’s bank accounts in the US and hands them off to a bunch of shady Venezuelans who steal it. That part makes sense; the rest of it? Meh! In any case, a US military incursion into Venezuela is not within the realm of possibility: Venezuela has Russian air defense systems which make it a no-fly zone for the US air force; also, fighting guerrilla action in Venezuelan selva is not something the US military is capable of. Executive summary: nothing happens, again.

Now it’s about Iran. Trump pulls out of the carefully negotiated international deal with Iran and says he wants to negotiate another one. If you notice, that’s a truly idiotic move, along the lines of “I am never paying you back, so lend me more money.” If a country is not honoring the deals it has already signed, why bother negotiate any more deals with it? (That’s a rhetorical question.) Iran announces that since the US isn’t honoring the deal, Iran won’t either. A bunch of oil tankers get damaged and the US tries to blame Iran for it, but nobody believes the US. And so a couple more oil tankers get damaged and the US tries to blame Iran for it again, but nobody believes the US again. And so the US flies a drone into Iranian airspace shadowed by a reconnaissance plane with an international crew on board, hoping that Iran makes a mistake and shoots down the reconnaissance plane. But Iran shoots down the drone and it falls in the shallows, in Iran’s territorial waters, rather than in international waters 100 feet deep, which is what the US claims to have happened, but nobody believes it. Iran swiftly fishes out and proudly displays the wreckage of the no longer top secret drone. The Americans spin a tale about wanting to attack Iran but calling the attack off at the last minute. Oil prices go up a bit. The US oil patch is producing flat out but hemorrhaging red ink like crazy. It needs higher oil prices in order to avoid a huge wave of bankruptcies. That part makes sense; the rest of it? Meh again! In any case, a military attack against Iran is unthinkable: Iran has the ability to close the Strait of Hormuz to all shipping, cutting off a third of all of the world’s oil exports and blowing up the global economy, US included. Executive summary: nothing happens, yet again.

There are various other non-events in other parts of the world. NATO ships steam about the Black and Baltic seas, where they are pretty much sitting ducks in case hostilities with Russia turn kinetic. So, what that tells us is that hostilities will not turn kinetic because those ships are expensive and there is no money to replace them. There are also NATO exercises in the Baltics, which are right on Russia’s border. They practice invading and slaughtering civilians in quaint medieval villages staffed with Russian-speaking extras pretending to be peasants eager to surrender. (Technically, that should be categorized as a fantasy game rather than a training exercise.) The Russians remain unimpressed. They want nothing to do with the Baltics, which used to be transit states for Russian exports but now they aren’t needed for anything at all (except as a NATO stomping ground). In any case, talking about waging war against Russia with a straight face is something that only extremely stupid people are capable of doing. Executive summary: nothing happens.

Do you notice the refrain? (I am sure you do.) What’s going on is that a has-been country, which can’t stop squandering what little resources it has left on a useless but ridiculously bloated military-industrial complex, is trying to generate activity in order to justify continued lavish defense spending. All sorts of experts and pundits play along, claiming that the threat of this or that war is very real and that therefore we should all be paying attention to what’s happening. But what’s happening is that you are being trolled.

There being nothing better for it to do, the US is trying very hard to troll the whole world, but more and more the world is either refusing to be trolled or trolling the US right back.

• When the US threatens to cut off access to the US financial system, the world works on circumventing it.

• When the US imposes tariffs and sanctions, the world responds by reworking its trading relationships to exclude the US.

• When the US threatens countries with military intervention, the world responds by constructing new alliances and making security arrangements that isolate the US.

But most importantly, the world simply waits. The US is now running a budget deficit that is over a trillion dollars a year and taking on debt at about the same rate as it was during the height of the previous financial collapse. What do you think will happen when the next financial collapse hits? (According to a lot of authoritative voices, it should hit either this year or the next.) Meanwhile, I hope that you enjoy being trolled, because I am sure there will be more trolling from the US, just, you know, to keep busy, I guess.

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https://www.globalresearch.ca/face-armageddon-western-world-leaderless/5681453

Crazed US Government: As We Face “Armageddon” the Western World Is Leaderless

According to news reports, the validity of which cannot be ascertained by the general public, a crazed US government came within ten minutes of igniting a general conflagation in the Middle East, the consequences of which could have been catastrophic for all.

The moronic warmongers in high office—Bolton, Pompeo, and Pence—and their Israel Lobby masters are determined, and they have not abandoned their campaign for war with Iran. Of course, the liars say that Iran will just accept its punishment for defending its territory and there will be no war. But this is not what Iran says. I believe Iran.

Some of the tiny percentage of people in the Western World who are still capable of thought regret that Trump called off the insane plan. They think the consequences would have been the destruction of the Saudi and Israeli governments—two of the most evil in history—and the cut-off of oil to the US and Europe, with the resulting depression causing the overthrow of the Western warmonger governments. They believe that catastrophic American defeat is the only way peace can be restored to the world.

In other words, it is not clear whether Trump calling off the attack saved us or doomed us. The Israel Lobby and their neoconservative agents have not been taught a lesson. Trump has not fired Bolton and Pompeo for almost igniting a conflagation, and he has not dressed down his moronic vice president. So, it can all happen again.

And likely will. The lesson that Bolton and Israel have learned is that the fake news about an Iranian attack on a Japanese freighter, denied by the Japanese, was not sufficient to lock Trump into “saving face” by attacking Iran. So be prepared for a larger orchestrated provocation. Bolton and Israel know that the Western presstitutes will lie for them. Watch for a provocation that allows Trump no alternative to an attack.

Washington’s use of fake news and false flag attacks to launch military attacks goes back a long way. In the 21st century we have had a concentrated dose—Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, Assad’s use of chemical weapons, Iranian nukes, Russian invasions, Maduro starving his own people, the endless lies about Gaddafi. Yes, I know there are more. I am writing an article, not an encyclopedia.

Washington has grown accustomed to attacking countries on false pretenses and getting away with it. Therefore, there is nothing to discourage the Israel Lobby and its Washington puppets from continuing to set-up Iran for an attack. Success breeds incaution. The attack on Iraq was stage-managed by a credible US Secretary of State before the UN. The attack on Libya was stage-managed by a UN resolution that a deceived Russia and China failed to block. In situations such as these, Washington arranged a green light for its war crimes. However, Washington has failed to stage-manage a green light for an attack on Iran. Moreover, Iran is a more powerful military force than Iraq and Libya, and the extent of the depth of Russian and Chinese support for Iran is unknown to Washington.

If Israel succeeds in having its Washington puppet attack Iran, Israel and its neoconservative agents will not welcome failure of their objective. They will fight against failure with more dangerous moves. I can easily imagine the fanatics having Trump “save face” by destroying the world and issuing some kind of ultimatums to Russia and China or resorting to the use of nuclear weapons against Iran.

The insouciant American—indeed, Western—people are kept unaware by design. It is the function of the presstitutes to control the explanations given to the people. The US Congress is bought and paid for by the Israel Lobby, as are most important politicians in the UK and Europe. What I am telling you is that it is very easy for fanatics to produce Armageddon.

Stephen Cohen and I, and a few surviving others, lived through the 20th century Cold War. In recent years we both have reported on numerous occasions that the threat of nuclear war today is far higher than during the Cold War. One reason is that during the Cold War US and Soviet leaders worked to defuse tensions and to build trust. In contrast, since the Clinton regime the US has worked consistently to build tensions. Both Cohen and I have listed on many occasions the tension-building activities pursued by all post-Reagan/George H.W. Bush administrations.

The Russians no longer trust Washington, and neither do the Chinese. Washington has lied to, and about, Russia so often in the 21st century that Russian trust of Washington is exhausted. No matter how earnestly the Russian government wants to trust Washington, it dare not do so.

Therefore, it takes very little miscalculation for the morons in Washington to cause a threat-ending response from Russia as Washington has convinced the Russian government that the US intends to destroy them.

The orchestration of Russiagate by the Democratic Party, military/security complex, and their media whores has, as Stephen Cohen has emphasized, forced President Trump in an act of self-preservation to adopt the neoconservative attitude toward Russia and other “non-compliant” governments. This attitude is dangerous enough in the best of times. It is extremely dangerous after trust has been destroyed by years of lies and false accusations.

Perhaps there is someone in the Trump administration who has the intelligence to understand the dangerous situation and who has Trump’s confidence. But I do not know who that person is.

We have to face the fact that as we face Armageddon the Western World is leaderless.

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https://www.oftwominds.com/blogjune19/casino-open6-19.html

The Fed's Casino Is Giving Away Free Gambling Chips (But Only to the Super-Rich)

The news that the Federal Reserve Casino is giving away free gambling chips triggered a frenzied rush that trampled the bears, including poor Yogi:

There's just one catch to the giveaway: you have to be rich, and if you want more than a token free gambling chip, you need to be super-rich. Then you get a pile of free chips.

If you're not rich--none for you, debt-serf! If you're already super-rich, the Federal Reserve Casino has plenty of free gambling chips for you, which you are free to "invest" (heh) in just about any asset, since they're all going higher: gold, silver, bitcoin, stocks, bonds, bat guano, quatloos and of course shorting volatility, since volatility dies when the gambling chips are free.

If you're not rich, you're only allowed to gamble with cash you've saved from hard-earned income. And since your income has been stagnant for years or decades when adjusted for real-world inflation, that means you'll never have the leverage the super-rich have to acquire assets and watch them loft ever higher as the Federal Reserve Casino continues issuing free gambling chips to financiers, global corporations, banks and the super-wealthy.

The non-rich are allowed to borrow--but only at high rates of interest for worthless college degrees, rapidly depreciating pick-up trucks, groceries, $5 coffee beverages, etc.

When all is said and done, what's left from all this borrowing by the non-rich is the interest due the super-wealthy, who just so happen to own all the debt.

The only Federal Reserve Casino table open to the non-rich is housing, but with prices at bubble highs, it's a risky bet. Although you won't find any corporate media coverage of this, if you poke around the legal notices in newspapers (yes, the dead-tree variety), you'll find a steady trickle of mortgage foreclosures, as all the losers from the casino's housing roulette wheel are foreclosed by entities such as Deutsche Bank National Trust Company as Trustee for Morgan Stanley ABS Capital I, Inc. Trust and Deutsche Bank National Trust Company as Indenture Trustee for New Century Home Equity Loan Trust 2004-2.

Many of these defaulted mortgages date from the last housing bubble a decade ago. The lenders and mortgage-backed securities pools (legally, trusts managed by entities such as the Deutsche Bank National Trust Company) have kept these bad loans (non-performing loans, in the polite language of financial ruin) on the books, often under purposefully misleading guises to mask the enormity of the losses that are yet to be taken.

The bagholders of the defaulted mortgages are slowly liquidating the thousands of foreclosed homes under the radar now that absurd valuations are once again the norm. Since many of the foreclosed homes have not been maintained, they don't fetch much on the auction block.

The main point here is that there are losers even when the Federal Reserve is giving away free gambling chips. Since the stock market is the key signaling device that every gambler is a winner (so keep buying!), everyone reading the headlines and listening to to the daily reports of stocks rising to new highs is lulled into a very hazardous complacency: only the super-rich get bailed out when their bets go bad.

The rest of us eat our losses, either all at once or in bitter bites as we trudge through the financial wasteland left after bubbles burst.

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https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/starvation-sanctions-are-worse-than-overt-warfare-b52604b53290

Starvation Sanctions Are Worse Than Overt Warfare

“We are putting major additional Sanctions on Iran on Monday,” President Trump tweeted today. “I look forward to the day that Sanctions come off Iran, and they become a productive and prosperous nation again — The sooner the better!”

Iran’s economy is already floundering due to the steadily mounting sanctions that the Trump administration has been heaping upon it since its withdrawal from the JCPOA last year. Crucial goods are four times the price they used to be, sick Iranians are having difficulty obtaining life-saving medicine, and life in general has been getting much more difficult for the poorest and frailest Iranian civilians.

For this reason, it is a very safe bet that there have been Iranians who have died because of the sanctions. Being unable to obtain enough life-saving medicine will inevitably increase mortality rates, as will inadequate nutrition and care for those whose health is at risk. There’s not really any way around that, and it’s only going to get worse.

And that’s exactly what was supposed to happen. As far as their intended purpose is concerned, the sanctions are working. They’re doing exactly what they were intended to do: hurt Iranian civilians.

How do I know this? Well for one thing America’s Secretary of State has said it openly. The New York Times reports the following:

Last week, Mr. Pompeo acknowledged to Michael J. Morrell, a former acting director of the C.I.A., that the administration’s strategy would not persuade Iranian leaders to change their behavior.

“I think what can change is the people can change the government,” he said on a podcast hosted by Mr. Morrell, in what appeared to be an endorsement of regime change.

The Trump administration isn’t leveling these sanctions because it believes they’ll cause Tehran to capitulate to Washington’s impossible list of demands; they know full well that that will never happen. What they claim, based on no evidence or historical precedent whatsoever, is that by making life so painful for the hungry and malnourished Iranian people they’ll be forced to rise up against their government to effect regime change themselves.

Can you think of anything more sociopathic than this? Off the top of my head, I personally cannot.

Starvation sanctions kill people. Tens of thousands of Venezuelans have reportedly already died as a result of this administration’s relentless assault on their economy; those human beings are no less dead than they would have been if the US had killed them by dropping cluster bombs on Caracas. Yet these deaths have received virtually no mainstream media coverage, and Americans, while they strongly oppose attacking Iran militarily, have had very little to say about Trump’s attacks on the nation’s economy. The economy which people use to feed their children, to care for their elderly and their sick.

I’m titling this essay “Starvation Sanctions Are Worse Than Overt Warfare”, and I mean it. I am not saying that starvation sanctions are more destructive or deadly than overt military force in and of themselves; what I am saying is that the overall effect is worse, because there’s no public accountability for them and because they deliberately target civilians.

If the US were to launch a barrage of Tomahawk missiles into an Iranian suburb with the goal of killing civilians, there’d be international outrage and the cohesion of the US-centralized power alliance would take a major hit. Virtually everyone would recognize this as an unforgivable war crime. Yet America will be able to kill the same number of civilians with the same deliberate intention of inflicting deadly force, and it would suffer essentially no consequences at all. There’s no public or international pressure holding that form of violence at bay, because it’s invisible and poorly understood.

It reminds me of the way financial abuse gets overlooked and under-appreciated in our society. Financial abuse can be more painful and imprisoning than physical or psychological abuse (and I speak from experience), especially if you have children, yet you don’t generally see movies and TV shows getting made about it. In a society where people have been made to depend on money for survival, limiting or cutting off their access to it is the same as any other violent attack upon their personal sovereignty, and can easily be just as destructive. But as a society we haven’t yet learned to see and understand this violence, so it doesn’t attract interest and attention. That lack of interest and attention enables the empire to launch deadly campaigns targeting civilian populations unnoticed, without any public accountability.

It’s great that more people are starting to understand the cost of war, to the extent that we’re even seeing US presidential candidates make opposing it central to their platforms, but this is happening at a time when overt warfare is becoming more obsolete and replaced with something subtler and more sinister. We must as a society evolve our understanding of what starvation sanctions are and what they do, and stop seeing them as in any way superior or preferable to overt warfare.

The fact that people generally oppose senseless military violence but are unable to see and comprehend a slow, boa constrictor-like act of slaughter via economic strangulation is why these siege warfare tactics have become the weapon of choice for the US-centralized empire. It is a more gradual way of murdering people than overt warfare, but when you control all the resources and have an underlying power structure which maintains itself amid the comings and goings of your officially elected government, you’re in no hurry. The absence of any public accountability makes the need for patience a very worthwhile trade-off.

So you see this siege warfare strategy employed everywhere by the US-centralized empire:

You see it with Iran and Venezuela.
You see it in Yemen, where in addition to deadly blockades the Saudis have been deliberate targeting farms, fishing boats, marketplaces, food storage sites and cholera treatment centers with US-assisted airstrikes.
You see it in North Korea, where boats full of dead people have been washing up on Japan’s shores because fishermen get stuck out at sea trying to catch food since they can’t afford enough fuel to get back to shore, which former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson attributed to US sanctions.
You see it in Gaza, where people are being deprived of an adequate amount of nutrients due to an Israeli blockade designed to “put the Palestinians on a diet”.
You saw it with Julian Assange, where Ecuador collaborated with the US to slowly make life in the embassy more and more hellish in the hope that he’d step outside to be arrested by British police.
You’re seeing it now with Chelsea Manning, who is currently racking up $500 a day fines for her principled stand against a corrupt grand jury proceeding against Assange, fines which will double next month to $1,000 a day.

The US-centralized power alliance is so powerful in its ability to hurt nations with financial influence that in 1990 when Yemen voted against a UN Security Council Resolution authorizing the attack against Iran, a senior US diplomat was caught on a hot mic telling the Yemeni ambassador, “That will be the most expensive ‘no’ vote you ever cast.” According to German author Thomas Pogge, “The US stopped $70 million in aid to Yemen; other Western countries, the IMF, and World Bank followed suit. Saudi Arabia expelled some 800,000 Yemeni workers, many of whom had lived there for years and were sending urgently needed money to their families.”

That’s real power. Not the ability to destroy a nation with bombs and missiles, but the ability to destroy it without firing a shot.

It’s no wonder, then, that the drivers of this empire work so hard to continue growing and expanding it. The oligarchs and their allies in opaque government agencies no doubt envision a world where all noncompliant nations like Iran, Russia and China have been absorbed into the blob of empire and war becomes obsolete, not because anyone has become any less violent, but because their economic control will be so complete that they can obliterate entire populations just by cutting them off from the world economy whenever any of them become disobedient.

This is the only reason Iran is being targeted right now. That’s why you’ll never hear a factually and logically sound argument defending Trump’s withdrawal from the nuclear deal; there is none. There was no problem with the JCPOA other than the fact that it barred America from inflicting economic warfare upon Iran, which it needed for the purpose of toppling the nation’s government so that it can be absorbed into the blob of the US-centralized empire.

And all the innocent human beings who die of starvation and disease? They don’t matter. Imperial violence only matters if there are consequences for it. The price of shoring up the total hegemony of the empire will have been worth it.

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https://www.globalresearch.ca/germany-vs-iran-has-germany-sold-out-to-the-devil/5681471

Germany vs. Iran – Has Germany Sold Out to the Devil?

Madame Angela Merkel – the head of Europe’s strongest economy, of the leader of the European Union, said that there was strong evidence that Iran attacked the two tankers in the Gulf of Oman. Ten days ago, German Foreign Minister, Heiko Maas, travelled to Tehran, officially to “save” the Nuclear Deal (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – JCPoA), but in reality, to ‘negotiate’ with Tehran ways so Germany and by association other EU members, might still do business with Iran, against some “concessions” by Iran, in order to appease Washington.

Iran’s President Rouhani reacted quickly. FM Maas got the cold shoulder and was dismissed. And rightly so. Maas was not really representing Germany – but the United States. Iran gave the EU an “ultimatum” of 60 days to stick to their commitments on trading with Iran according to the Nuclear Deal – despite the US reneging on it – or else, Iran may bypass some of the conditions under the JCPOA accord. The EU – not being independent and her member countries having lost all sovereignty by submitting to the dictate first from Brussels, second from the tyranny of Washington, didn’t like the ultimatum, and said so in a joint statement. They added a weak and meek phrase, “We call on countries not party to the JCPOA to refrain from taking any actions that impede the remaining parties’ ability to fully perform their commitments;” not even daring calling the country by name, for whom the statement was destined, i.e. the US of A.

Germany’s position is as absurd as it has ever been since Merkel and the entire Bundestag accepted the sanctions imposed by Washington on Russia in 2014 – and replicated them along with the rest of the EU – even to their own detriment and to the detriment of the entire EU. Chancellor Merkel and apparently the entire Bundestag, again, go along with Washington’s equally absurd and false accusation that Iran has attacked the two tankers, one Japanese owned, the other Norwegian. The latter belonging to a close friend of Iran’s, and the Japanese one, hardest hit – exactly at the time when Japan’s PM Shinzō Abe, was visiting the Ayatollah in Tehran to discuss how to maintain the Nuclear Deal – trading – despite the sanctions and threats of Washington, hence, a friendly visit.

A blind person can see that these were two false flags – so thinly masked, with badly fabricated US ‘video evidence’ that even according to CIA and US military brass did not deliver conclusive evidence. In fact, none at all. Madame Merkel – why do you not first ask the obvious question “Cui bono?”— Who benefits? Certainly not Iran – but the aggressor, the US which has been planning and preparing for war with Iran for decades, ever since the first Iraq war under Father Bush, in 1991. At the 2003 invasion of Iraq – Bolton openly expressed his dreams to demolish Iran. He and Pompeo are liars and war criminals, who run the White House and pretend to run the Pentagon – and who act in impunity. Their power seems limitless. Trump – seems to be a mere puppet.

Getting Merkel on board of the flagrant US lie that Iran was attacking two tankers in the Gulf of Oman, is a strategic hit, enhancing the lies’ credibility and, thus, making a US attack on Iran more palatable to the rest of the world. Yet, apparently this was not enough. The Pentagon sent an unmanned high-altitude Global Hawk drone into Iranian airspace, a provocation Iran could not resist and shot the drone down, but not before sending warning signals, about which today nobody talks. The world shouldn’t know that Iran had the noblesse to warn the US about the drone being in their airspace. As can be expected the White House gnomes deny that the drone was invading Iranian airspace, but pretend it was in international air space, when it was shot down.

This raised the ante for Washington to launch an attack on Iran. All was planned to be carried from Thursday to Friday (20 to 21 June), and at last minute Trump stopped it. Is it true? – It could be, because somebody a bit ‘higher up’ than Trump and his warrior minions, must have realized the danger that such an attack may pose to the rest of the world – or actually that it could trigger a nuclear conflict. However, that the attack plan was stopped doesn’t mean it was canceled. Maybe it was just postponed.

In the meantime, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has ordered all US airlines to avoid the Gulf of Oman and the Gulf of Hormuz. And, as could be expected, the airlines of Washington’s “true” puppet allies have followed suit, i.e. Australia’s Qantas Airways Ltd, Singapore Airlines Ltd, Germany’s Lufthansa, British Airways, Air France and its Dutch KLM affiliate, as well as Malaysia Airlines, said they were re-routing flights to avoid the area. Others may follow under direct or tacit pressure of the US. The Japanese airline ANA said they were considering alternative routings. Effectively, the US was able to declare a no-fly zone over a significant area of Iran.

Let’s make no mistake, all the visible key figures at the helm of the White House – are run in the back by Israel, by Netanyahu and the Chosen People he represents, those who also run Wall Street and the western world’s banking and financial system. Israel would like to see Iran in rubbles, or better, in eternal chaos, the goal that was set for Iraq, Afghanistan and that the US was and still is dreaming for Syria. This bunch of evil elite pulls the strings and hopes to soon pull just ONE string for global hegemony, under a ONE World Order.

Back to Germany. Instead of jumping off the sinking ship of Washington and its faithful entourage of the willing, as rats would do, and as the vast majority of the German people would prefer, let alone German and European business, Madame Merkel and apparently all her circles, including Berlin’s Parliament, follow the US flagrant lie propaganda. Why? – Well, this is the deal: There are many ways to “buy” top politicians, with threats or with money or by outright inflicting fear through ‘proxy-assassinations’.

Once Germany is on board – the rest of Europe will follow suit. In that case, Washington – Trump and consortia – think they have Iran totally strangled, by blocking all trade and all financial transactions, plus confiscating Iranian assets abroad – on top of imposing stiff tariffs, so that Iran can no longer afford importing vital goods for manufacturing – or for sheer survival from the west. Once a country is weak, it can be taken over easily. So, the western, AngloZionist thinking goes.

Iran – her Fifth-Columnists aside – is strong and has already proven that it is detaching from the west. Even trying to adhere and fight for the Nuclear Deal which the west, i.e. Europe is incapable of respecting for lack of backbone, is a waste of time. To demonstrate that Iran has alternatives, Mr. Rouhani was attending the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, on 13 and 14 June 2019, by invitation of China, the leader of the 8-member “club”.

SCO stands for promoting peace, trade and a non-aggressive defense strategy (the antidote to the NATO-type military aggression). As of now, Mr. Rouhani is an observer for his country, Iran which is in an advanced stage in the process of entering the SCO as a full member. This could happen later this year or in 2020. Iran would recover her sovereignty, her economic potential and would – and will – be able to detach from the west, pretty much as did Russia and China, the two super-powers under constant assaults of sanctions, denigration and false accusations.

Turkey – is in a similar situation. If Turkey is admitted by the SCO – also very likely – their NATO exit will be imminent. What that will mean for the rest of NATO, at this point we can only guess and dream of, especially since there is an ever-stronger people’s movement throughout Europe to exit NATO. It is particularly strong in Italy and paradoxically also in Germany. The vast majority of Germans want to exit NATO, but the government doesn’t listen. “So far” doesn’t listen. The German anti-NATO movement has been gaining strength ever since the anti-nuclear energy protests in the early seventies which were followed and intensified in the late 1970’s early 1980s against nuclear arms stockpiled in Germany by the US, particularly those stored at the US Air Force base of Ramstein, near Kaiserslautern.

The “so-far” is a precursor to a break with NATO, as the pressure against the USAF base Ramstein, against NATO, is mounting, and that, when Madame Merkel decides firmly to go with the sinking ship – risking to pull Germany and her people down the drain for sheer senseless and outdated obedience to the succumbing tyrant. How absurd!

While Iran is making smart moves, gradually away from western economics, from trading with the west – and moving eastwards – where the future is – Germany backtracks, literally into the orbit of a dying beast, into what is ever-more detectible – a decaying empire.

When will Germany wake up? When the first bombs fall on her cities – a WWI and WWII redux? Except this time, it may not be just the falling of conventional bombs. It may be nuclear meeting nuclear at Ramstein. Madame Merkel, your obligation to the people who apparently elected you is larger than you think and larger than yourself – and much larger than whatever goes on in your mind to follow a defeated warrior and rogue nation into hell.

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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51786.htm

The View from Abroad - America as Others See it

Americans are brought up to believe that the United States is a shining city on a hill, a light to mankind, that the world envies us for our values and freedoms, and hates us because we have them. This is ground into us from birth. Those of us now long in the tooth remember the Fifties when Superman jumped out of a window while the announcer spoke of a strange visitor from another planet fighting for “truth, justice, and the American way,” then thought to be related.

As one who has traveled much and lived in several countries, I can tell you: It ain’t so. The world does not regard America with admiration.

Today the internet profoundly affects the world’s view of America. The Web makes graphic and easily found things that in earlier times would have been out of sight from abroad.

For example, people in Kathmandu and Moscow can see horrifying and entirely truthful photos of the homeless living in piles of garbage in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, and dozens of other American cities. They can read of trade conventions avoiding San Francisco because of needles and excrement on the sidewalks. Such scenes are rare even in most upper-Third World countries. To the orderly Japanese, accustomed to spotless cities and responsible government, such things are, in the strict sense of the word, incomprehensible.

Home of the brave, land of the free, the envy of the world. Just ask us. The estimated homeless population of LA is 58,000 and climbing. Swarms of flea-carrying rats, which certainly exist, are said to cause outbreaks of typhus, a medieval disease. Anyone with a smartphone can see this.

The frequent mass shootings in the United States astonish most of the world. Opening fire on a country music concert, randomly shooting to death people in a gay nightclub, seems to most of the world a breakdown of civilization. It is.

Many of these matanzas involve children gunning down their classmates. Even in a country like Mexico, accustomed to recurring slaughters of narcos by other narcos, the school shootings are a shock.

Americans are now used to things that in any other country would be unthinkable: bulletproof backpacks for high-school students, police walking the halls, metal detectors, proposals to arm teachers, “active-shooter” drills. To the rest of the world (or to Americans who were in high school in the Sixties) this is insane.

But normal in the Indispensable Country.

The now-predictable annual harvest of 700 successful homicides in Chicago, the 300 in Baltimore, plus thousands of wounded, seem to outsiders like something out of Blade Runner. Much of the civilized world looks with wonder on an American overflowing with guns and using them on each other. Only in America. Interestingly the most heavily armed countries in the world, Israel and Switzerland, have virtually no gun crime.

This is the country Americans believe the world wants to imitate. No. From outside, it seems more a country in political and cultural freefall.

To everyone else, the militarism of the United States, its absurd military expenditures, its huge number of nuclear weapons, its desire to upgrade them, to develop small tactical nuclear weapons, its preparation for nuclear war with specialized flying bunkers–seems nutty. No other country does this. None wants to. In Mexico people roll their eyes. What the hell is wrong with the gringos?

“Affectionately known as the “doomsday plane,” the modified Boeing 747 is used to transport the Secretary of Defense and is born and bred for battle. It stands nearly six stories tall, is equipped with four colossal engines, and is capable of enduring the immediate aftermath of a nuclear detonation.” The language is that of a little boy of twelve watching Star Wars. It is the attitude of much of America.

Easily found online: the racial disaster in the US, the dozens of cities with domestic Sowetos in their hearts, the huge, hopeless, entirely black regions where whites dare not walk. In these, entirely black schools turn out millions of barely literates who for the remaining fifty years of their lives will be unemployable. This is all online with photos and statistics.

“Man, just out of jail, arrested in rape of woman, 78….” Another face of race in America. These stories, common as potatoes–a similar gentleman just threw a white child of five from three floors up–are suppressed to the extent possible by the American media, but often show up in British dailies. Such things almost never happened in Europe before the arrival of African and Muslim immigrants. The whole world can see.

Freedoms? More sophisticated readers abroad know of our intensifying censorship, the words that can get you fired, the controlled press, the surveillance. Americans know what you can’t say and who you can’t say it about. We know the police are militarized and out of control. We see the cell-cam videos of beatings. So does the world.

America’s foreign policy makes it hated in most of the world. It seems murderous, thuggish, brutal, a menace to everyone. For example, the U.S. killed over a million people in Iraq. This does not bother Americans. Since 2000 it has destroyed Iraq, Syria, Libya, enters its eighteenth year of butchering Afghans, bombs Somalia, sends troops to Africa. It militarily threatens North Korea, Venezuela, Iran, seeks to destroy the economies of Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Russia, China. It sanctions Europe. No other country does this.

This is not the griping of Fred. It is what the whole world sees, daily, in detail.

Number of wars started since 2000 by Iran: 0r. Russia: 0. China: 0. North Korea: 0. America…? Number of countries openly running torture sites while talking of human rights? 1. The country with the largest prison population? The answer is left to the reader as an exercise.

Even today, many Americans speak of American Values, of the country’s devotion to democracy and human rights and freedom. Maybe Americans believe it. No one else does. The United States has a horrendous history of installing or supporting hideous dictators, supporting repressive regimes, overthrowing elected governments. Human rights? In Saudi Arabia? Israel? The world is not blind.

Americans, self-absorbed, perhaps the most historically ignorant of First-World peoples, shrugs such things off. “Oh, get over it.” Whatever it was. The nations involved do not shrug them off. You can bet the Chinese know about Legation days, America’s role in forcing the opium trade on China, extraterritoriality.

From abroad, America is a feral, amoral, remorseless empire, rotting from within, willing to do anything to maintain its dominance. From inside the U.S., it seems otherwise. Do you, an American reader, want to kill Afghans? Buy another trillion dollars of nuclear weapons? War with Iran? Russia? But Americans have no influence over what Washington does, and the world judges by what it sees.

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https://srsroccoreport.com/global-economy-propped-up-by-u-s-shale-oil-ponzi-scheme/

Global Economy Propped Up By U.S. Shale Oil Ponzi Scheme

Few analysts realize that for the past decade, the global economy has been propped up by the U.S. Shale Oil Ponzi Scheme. Without the huge increase in U.S. shale oil production, the global economy would have peaked and collapsed into a severe depression. And according to the new data put out in the 2019 BP Statistical Review, of the total global oil production increase in 2018 over 2017, the United States accounted for a stunning 84% of that growth.

I first wrote about this subject in my article, Global Economic Growth In Serious Trouble When U.S. Shale Oil Peaks & Declines. However, since that article, the new 2019 BP Statistical Review was published on June 11th. I took the data and updated my charts to show that the United States and Canada accounted for 90% of global oil production growth since 2008:

As total world oil production increased by 11.6 million barrels per day (mbd) since 2008, the United States accounted for 8.5 mbd, Canada 2.0 mbd, and the rest of the world 1.1 mbd. If we look at the net increase of global oil production versus the U.S. and Canada during the same period, this is the result:

Now compare this updated chart to the data for 2017:

Total U.S. oil production in 2018 increased by 2.2 mbd while Canada added 0.4 mbd, and the rest of the world lost 0.6 mbd. And if we look at the change in Global oil production minus the U.S. and Canada since 1997, it seems as if the rest of the world is dealing with the ramifications of PEAK OIL.

From 1997 to 2007, global oil production growth minus the United States and Canada was 11.4 mbd. However, since 2008, the rest of the world has only added a net 1.1 mbd of new oil production growth vs. 10.5 mbd from the United States and Canada. Thus, North American oil production growth, especially from the U.S., has been the leading factor for Global GDP Growth.

For those who don’t believe that oil production (consumption) has anything to do with Global GDP growth, you need to look at the following chart by Gail Tverberg at OurFiniteWorld.com:

Here we can see that oil consumption rates correspond with the change in Real GDP growth. So, if we consider that the United States accounted for nearly 75% of total world oil production growth since 2008 (check figures below), then it also attributed to approximately 75% of Global GDP growth during the same period.

Breakdown in the oil production growth from the United States, Canada, and rest of world:

Net change 2008 to 2018 Oil Production Growth:

U.S. oil production growth = 8.5 mbd (73%)

Canadian oil production growth = 2.0 mbd (17%)

Rest of world oil production growth = 1.1 mbd (10%)

While the U.S. has added a lot of oil production since 2008, that wasn’t the case in the previous decade:

From 1997 to 2007, U.S. oil production fell by 17%, but surged 125% during the recent decade. Even though the BP Statistical Review posts 15.3 mbd of oil production for the United States, that also includes Natural Gas Plant Liquids (NGLS). According to the EIA, U.S. Energy Information Agency, total U.S. NGLs production for 2018 was 4.3 mbd, or 28% of total oil production:

Due to the rapid increase in U.S. shale oil and gas production, a great deal more NGLs are produced. Unfortunately, a barrel of NGLs only contains two-thirds the energy content compared to a barrel of oil and receives a market price that is 60% less than oil. Thus, the 15.3 mbd of total U.S. oil production quoted in the 2019 BP Statistical Review, is actually 11.0 mbd of crude and condensate plus 4.3 mbd of NGLs.

Regardless, the U.S. Shale Oil Ponzi Scheme has allowed the Global Economy to continue growing this past decade, despite the massive amount of debt added to the system. However, U.S. shale oil production will likely peak much sooner than energy analysts are forecasting, especially during the next economic downturn and recession (depression).

Lastly, I will be posting a new article showing that U.S. shale oil production has DECLINED during the first few months of 2019. With oil prices now in the low $50’s, shale oil companies are struggling to continue producing oil at a loss. If oil prices don’t recover back to the high $ 60’s or $ 70’s, watch for growth forecasts in U.S. shale oil to be cut back considerably this year.

....

Read the comment section for more perspective on how severe this problem really is. As stated in the article and succinctly put, " Without the huge increase in U.S. shale oil production, the global economy would have peaked and collapsed into a severe depression ". Shale oil just bought the world a few more years of the status quo, and that era will be over soon. There are no other energy schemes that will maintain complex societies like oil, coal and gas did.

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https://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2019/06/19/facebookcoin-is-a-trojan-horse-of-corporate-oligarchy/

FacebookCoin is a Trojan Horse of Corporate Oligarchy

ZUCK: yea so if you ever need info about anyone at harvard
ZUCK: just ask
ZUCK: i have over 4000 emails, pictures, addresses, sns
FRIEND: what!? how’d you manage that one?
ZUCK: people just submitted it
ZUCK: i don’t know why
ZUCK: they “trust me”
ZUCK: dumb fucks

– Leaked messages sent by Mark Zuckerberg to a friend at Harvard as he was building Facebook

Years ago, Mark Zuckerberg made it clear that he doesn’t think Facebook is a business. “In a lot of ways, Facebook is more like a government than a traditional company,” said Mr. Zuckerberg. “We’re really setting policies.” He has acted consistently as a would-be sovereign power. For example, he is attempting to set up a Supreme Court-style independent tribunal to handle content moderation. And now he is setting up a global currency.

– From Matt Stoller’s recent article: Facebook’s Undemocratic Currency

For a long time, I’ve maintained there’s no doubt the current system/paradigm we live under will collapse under its own weight, but that doesn’t keep me up at night. What keeps me up at night is understanding we still have no idea exactly what will replace it. It could very well be a more decentralized and free world, a world less defined by brute force, grotesque power concentrations and coercion, but it could also very easily go the other way. The coming out party for FacebookCoin (aka Libra) is in my view the first real indication the forces of corporate oligarchy are determined to ensure the new world reflects their vision and is under their control.

Though I’ve seen many thoughtful and important articles on the dangers of Facebook and a consortium of large corporations building a new financial system in broad daylight, I have yet to see anyone explain precisely what seems to be going on. I think the level of strategic long-term thinking happening here is more extensive than even the most cynical observer is willing to contemplate. This looks like a power play of monumental proportions.

I’ve come to view Mark Zuckerberg as a strategic genius with zero ethics. In other words, he probably has a plan beyond your field of vision and you can’t take anything he says at face value. This is how we’ve seen him operate within Facebook and via the various wildly successful acquisitions he’s completed over the years, most notably Instagram and WhatsApp.

You don’t have to be Nostradamus to see that the current global financial system is failing and won’t be around as currently structured much longer (years not decades). Nowhere is this more apparent than in the fact that negative yielding global bonds just pushed back into record territory at $12.5 trillion.

If I can see where this is headed, Zuckerberg and his top team at Facebook can see it too. As such, I view FacebookCoin as the corporate oligarchy’s first serious attempt to position itself to be chieftains of a key segment of what will be the financial system(s) of the future.

I do not think Zuckerberg’s ultimate goal is running a stable coin, although he could live with that arrangement and benefit from it for as long as necessary. I think the main reason Facebook has structured the coin with fiat backing is to make it seem less threatening to the current monetary establishment and world governments. It’s a way of saying Facebook isn’t trying to compete with the current status quo, but rather make the status quo run more smoothly and efficiently. Then, once it has a foot in the door and gains traction amongst its massive user base, all Facebook has to do is wait until the current assortment of global governments and their respective central banks fail.

At that stage it can remove the fiat currency backing (who will want it anyway), and let FacebookCoin free float. With the credibility of global governments and central banks in the toilet by then, Facebook and its corporate oligarch partners will be in a prime position to take over a sizable chunk of worldwide payments using their own currency. In other words, this appears to be a long-term scheme by elements of corporate oligarchy to position themselves as an unelected and unaccountable future sovereign power.

All that said, I want to be clear about something. Just because the above represents a plausible scenario doesn’t mean it’ll work out that way. If enough people recognize the dangers of this scheme, it could very well be stopped in its tracks.

In this regard, I want to highlight one of the biggest threats posed by a financial system run by a corporate oligarchy. For one thing, there’s the ever-present issue of censorship. I understand why many in the “crypto” world are fine with FacebookCoin since they see it as a threat to state power and control, but this is myopic in my view. Let’s not forget who is silencing the voices of Americans online in 2019. It’s not the state, but rather Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc. If we allow these companies to gain control of payments, you can be sure the same sort of unaccountable blacklisting will follow in the world of transactions.

Also, similar to what many of the tech giants have done with speech, Facebook could easily team up with governments or government linked deep-state type entities to stop transactions or freeze the accounts of “problematic” citizens. It would be a very convenient way to get around the rule of law in a place like the U.S., and would represent a perfect symbiotic relationship of tyranny between what could at that point be a vestigial state apparatus and empowered tech giant oligarchs.

Ultimately, what’s going on here gets at the crux of everything I’m trying to discuss at Liberty Blitzkrieg. Namely, that the old world is dying and the most important thing that’ll occur over any of our lifetimes is the sort of world we create, or allow to be created, in its wake.

The launching of FacebookCoin represents one segment of corporate oligarchy throwing its hat in the ring, and a very dangerous one at that given the already existing dominance of tech giants in the communications realm. From my perspective, communications and money are two aspects of human existence so fundamental to liberty they should remain as free and uninhibited as possible. To trust these things to a collection of billionaires and their corporations would represent the pinnacle of short-sightedness and insanity.