Indebted To Lies Plutocracy Is

A vast scandal is unfolding in economics. Its repercussions are horrendous: in conjunction with what i already denounced in “Indebted To Lies” (February 12, 2013), all you read about debt is false. As Paul Krugman puts it cogently in “The Excel Depression“: “Did an Excel coding error destroy the economies of the Western world?”

Krugman is way too nice. There was not just a coding “error”. The deliberate malfeasance I expose below is no error.

(Notice that Krugman seems to be oozing towards admitting that we have (an excel…lent?) depression not just a lesser one; soon he will have to call the unfolding disaster a Greater Depression, just as I do!)

Harvard: We Lie, Therefore We Thrive

Notice the understatement of the Wall Street Journal (“are not as clearly linked“), in their own caption above: there is little relation between growth and debt load. And this, even in the malevolently selected countries of the extremely influential R-R paper (to be trashed below).

Also notice the biased title of the WSJ, which contradicts the essence of what follows it: the WSJ staff knows readers have little time, and, at a glance, will extract from the graph (that they will most probably not carefully examine), that “debt is a burden“. Whereas the graph says the exact opposite: debt is little burden. But the WSJ staff knows what their masters want them to say: in with the austerity, out with the economy, and the People it supports. The WSj staff has to eat and pay rent. Of these little manipulations, little minds are made.

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HARVARD CROOKS LONG GUIDED THE WORLD INTO THE ABYSS:

To destroy plutocracy, one needs to destroy first the Evil League that provides it with respectability.

A famously very connected Harvard graduate and plutocrat, Ernst Sedgwick Hanfstaengl, was one of the early supporters of Hitler. His grandfather had carried Lincoln’s coffin. The Sedgwick family is part of plutocratic central in the USA. To this day (naturally in various forms of acting).

A composer and pianist, ”Putzi” Sedgwick-Hanfstaengl wrote the songs the Nazis used, modifying his own Harvard songs. The scared and wounded Nazi leader took refuge at the home of this very wealthy American, after the failed putsch of Fall 1923. Hitler was in love with Hanfstaengl’s American wife. She prevented Hitler’s suicide, when Bavarian police came to arrest the Nazi “Guide“.

Hanfstaengl was connected by friendship to the Roosevelts, and many other influential plutocrats, themselves connected to everybody who mattered in the USA. Top Nazis came to believe, correctly, that the plutocratically controlled USA would never attack them (and so the Nazis had to declare war to the USA themselves when they found in Moscow that they would lose the war, anyway! When you have got to go, you may as well do so in a blaze of glory!)

This Harvard connection explains why the USA considered the French republic, rather than the Nazi dictatorship, its enemy after 1933. The result was World War Two, Auschwitz, Yalta, the pact with the Wahhabists, etc. As many gifts to those worthies supporting Harvard. Evil: the gift that keeps on giving to plutocrats.

Is the Ivy League resembling the Evil League, more than anything else?

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HARVARD CROOKS STILL GUIDE THE WORLD TO OBLIVION:

I have long insisted that “plutocratic universities” are propaganda outfits for their masters. Harvard University is blatant that way, a cesspool of theoretical justifications for civilizational abuse. For all to see: one of its professors came with the ridiculous “Clash of Civilizations“, an astoundingly uninformed, but highly influential work, a sort of modern justification for “Mein Kampf“. It goes a long way to explain the support of American “neoconservatives” for Fundamentalist Wahhabism.

Larry Summers (Harvard’s president), insisted, as Clinton’s Treasury Sec., that the most valuable investment known to man would be the financial derivative. And the full power of the state was harnessed to make it so. Ever since the economy has become derivative, indeed (size real world economy: 50 trillions, not even a tenth of financial derivatives alone, 80% of it through fiscal havens).

Thanks to the Clintonians (or should I call them Goldmanians?), financiers have been taxed a maximum of 15% ever since.

I am happy to report another deleterious piece of mass mind control from Harvard, with huge consequences. In 2010, Harvard economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff (R-R) released a paper, “Growth in a Time of Debt.” Their “main result is that… for countries with public debt over 90 percent of GDP … average (mean) growth rates are several percent lower.” The Harvard guys professed that countries with debt-to-GDP ratios above 90 percent have a slightly negative average growth rate.

The work of the Harvard worthies was used, worldwide, as the main argument to engage austerity programs all over. Just when People had to be put to work, they were told they were furloughed. Never minds if people died from all the austerity (say by arriving at hospitals that had stopped providing care, from lack of funds, as happened in Portugal).

Never mind that the austerity was not applied to the hyper rich and banksters (now both richer than ever).

What else? The Harvard economists cheated. And it was deliberate, because they did so several times, and in different ways.

Indeed, it’s hard to believe that their programming “mistake” was really a mistake, because, independently of that, they also massaged the data in what is obvious academic malfeasance (for example equating 19 years of solid British growth, in spite of debt above 90%, with one year of New Zealand growth, and similar biased monstrosities).

Another tactic: they deliberately misinterpreted facts (when GIs were demobilized, an economic disruption due to this was misinterpreted, by the Harvard profs, as a problem caused by debt; showing they are ignorant, or vicious, or both). 

Second problem? It should have been obvious that the Harvard professors’ work was completely wrong (Paul Krugman wants to “Blame the Pundits Too“; I concur).

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PHILOSOPHICAL METHOD SAYS: OBVIOUSLY WRONG IN ONE CASE IS ENOUGH

To prove a theory is wrong, it’s enough to have ONE spectacular counter-example. Obviously a lot of economies grew tremendously in spite of high debt loads in the past. It happened to the USA after World War Two. Same for most European economies.

This happened in particular during the “thirty glorious years” of unabated economic expansion. Then the ruling theory, all over the West, was that growth in infrastructure, knowledge (CERN, going to the Moon, etc.), social progress (retirement, mandatory vacations), education (GI Bill, free education, all the way to universities, even in California) had primacy over all other economic aims. Inflation and debt were put in the service of these goals.

Thus it was clear that the RR fact finding was actually fact denying.

A further step in proving an old system of thought is wrong is when a simpler, more plausible theory offers itself. It does not matter the details are not in. Not only do we have counter-examples to the debt-is-bad theory, but it’s easy to build a theory of why and when debt is good.

Debt, per se, is not a problem. As long as one can reimburse it. Thus the problem is what the debt is used for. Any debt that comes due, after a very profitable investment it enabled, allows to reimburse it, is obviously an economic positive.

So why the debt phobia? Why is Obama using debt phobia to throw Social Security below the exponential train?

Right now the debt phobia is just a Trojan Horse to divert the debate way from what the plutocrats do not want to talk about. Rising the taxes on those who have most of the money and power.

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STOP FINANCING THE RICH, INVEST IN A SUSTAINABLE ECONOMY FOR THE PEOPLE:

As debt became enormous in World War II, taxes on the wealthy, in the USA, were brought up to 94%. Truman lowered them down a bit, but then president Eisenhower, a republican, brought the top tax margin rate back up to 92.5%. Ike explained he did this to reimburse the debt. Meanwhile Ike launched and financed the Interstate Freeway System. The idea: to build all over the USA a system of autobahn (just like in Germany), free to the public, would improve the economy. That was proved correct a hundred times over.

Raising the tax on the most wealthy to 92.5% would have done wonder. Obama could have financed the construction of highly profitable 250 mph (400 km/h) high speed trains in several place where it would have been profitable to do so (for example the North East and California). Or simply to build power lines out of a few places where cheap sustainable is produced or producible. (In Spring, the North West USA produces potentially more electricity from hydro that it can use and export.)

The case of Europe is similar. Taxes there are higher than in the USA, but the land is poorer and smaller (the population density is  about four times that of the USA, with fewer resources). Thus public spending in Europe ought to be even higher. For example in the matter of energy. The switch to sustainable energy, as it is done today, is proving too costly under existing technology (this is very clear in Britain, where energy costs have doubled since 2006, and in Germany where they threaten to do the same soon).

So considerably more research on new energy should be made by Europe. Instead research and education budgets are coming short of what’s needed.

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GREAT DEPRESSION? PLEASE DEFAULT OUT OF THE OLD STUFF, & BORROW FOR THE FUTURE:

European “conservative” leaders will whine they don’t have the money to sustain their socio-economy. Of course, those neofascists and their plutocratic employers have the money, for themselves. And as far as the states are concerned, to get money, it could not be simpler: borrow. Interest rates are at record lows.

Borrow until what? Until so much economic activity explodes that money is very much in demand, and interest rates perk up. The interest rates will follow the economy. It’s mechanical.

The Netherlands just recognized this, three days ago. Not a coincidence that the great debt paper of the Harvard crooks had just crashed and burned. The Netherlands changed policy on austerity, this week, breaking spectacularly with Germany.

The Low Countries decided to forgo the austerity drive. The center-right government decided to deliberately AUGMENT its deficit by 10%, above what the EMU bylaws require. Instead of bringing their deficit below 3% of GDP (as mandated by European Monetary Union rules), they will keep it at 3.3% by refusing to make some cuts.

On April 5, Portugal’s Constitutional Court said that plans to trim public employee wages and retiree pensions—while not touching the income of other groups—violated the constitutional principle of equality. It also overturned a planned tax on unemployment benefits.

Do you really want to make Europe richer, you the “conservatives” admirers of Wall Street, infeodated to international plutocracy? Crack down on the wealthy. Not just wealthy individuals, but wealthy corporations. In particular, Europe should stop financing the corporations of the USA, the core of the plutocratic system. I am not just talking about having them pay tax (this they don’t do, allowing them to kill and devour small businesses, throughout the West… Although the BRICS do not allow them to play this game!).

On the his last day as president, Hoover signed the “Buy American Act of 1933“. That said that the government of the USA would buy only American. In the service of free trade, it was mandatory that the European governments will keep on buying American. All is fair in exploitation and spoliation. (In case the Europeans could still sell something to the USA, president Reagan (Ray-Gun?) had a reinforcement passed in 1983, the imaginatively, and revealingly named “Buy America Act“.)

That “Buy American Act” outrage to free trade was instituted 80 years ago. Meanwhile American plutocracy has kept on preaching the opposite. The European leaders do not seem to have noticed. Why? Are they paid not to notice, just like Harvard economists Carmen were paid, to bear power into the further destruction of the democracies? Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff were paid, through monies, career, honors, and reputation to claim that one cures depression by starving the economy of money.

Same for their European colleagues: paid through monies, career, honors, and reputation to claim that one cures depression by starving the economy of money, and… not to notice the “Buy America(n)” Acts.

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Patrice Ayme

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Notes: The University of Massachusetts found a more honest version of the Rogoff-Reinhart’s paper would revise the average growth estimate for the highest-debt countries to 2.2%—or a percentage point lower than for countries with a debt-to-GDP ratio of between 60% and 90%.

The head of the German Central Bank used the Rogoff-Reinhart’s claim that countries with more than 90% debt/GDP had negative growth, this pack of lies, as recently as February 2013, to justify curing depression with the hunger strike of austerity.

P/S: A faithful commenter on this site, Dominique Deux, reminded me of  “the “internal error” at the IMF which completely underestimated the negative effects of austerity measures. The IMF has recognized the mistake but its recommendations, and more importantly the policies they supposedly inspire, never wavered. I safely predict this new instance of cooked up “data” will have the same lack of consequences. Dogma trumps reality.”

It’s not just dogma, it’s first impression authored with great authority that imprints the weak minded. weak minded by purpose, of course.

Banksters Saved, Jobs Lost

[Considering my preceding essay on bombing semantics, I was happy to hear Obama pontificating that: "Any time bombs are used to target innocent civilians, it is an act of terror!" Wow, what a change! Does that mean no more drone bombings on civilians? Apparently the White House mood of "targeted killings", "untargeted killings" or "signature strikes" is getting discombobulated by what happened in Boston. More on this White House mystified soul searching, in the future.]

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THEY SAVED THE BANKSTERS, NOT THE JOBS:

Readers who are not fascinated by economists’ debate about the Great Depression of the 1930s (GD30), and  lessons therein, can jump directly to the paragraph: “Banksterism Should Have Been Liquidated”. The plutocrats got their attack dogs, the professional economists and politicians, to blissfully conflate providing a financial system for the People, with sending to the richest of the rich ever more money. Here is the result, a collapse of jobs:

Epic Fail: Banksters Saved, Jobs Lost

Basically, the real economy got starved of money. Notice the tremendous drop under great democrat Obama. All the great economists advising great democrats have to greatly explain this. Obama and his great adviser Larry Summers thoroughly approved the great Goldman Sachs plan to save the Goldman Sachs (and tax free big corporate USA) that had brought the crisis.

Then the banksters’ plan was pursued inexorably. After some hesitation, European parrots duplicated the plan. So here we are.

The red line in the graph above, the EMPLOYMENT RATE, the “Labor Force Participation Rate“, to give it its official title, is now as low as it was at the bottom of the deepest Volcker recession (the worst between GD30 and the present Greater Depression 2008). And we are plunging deeper. Much deeper, trust me.

Why much deeper? Because all those Very Serious People above trust in the great free market god, called Supply-Demand, to pull the economy through. But Supply-Demand is itself an artefact from mind control. So what needs to be controlled is mind control, and only regulations, and debate, democratically imposed, can do this.

Thus the employment situation, disastrous in Europe, is also disastrous in the USA (even though the USA is in full fracking boom, with its resulting, probably ephemeral, abundant oil and gas, that brings back to the USA lots of hydrocarbons dependent industries).

Thatcher and Reagan lowered the taxes of the rich. Now we have gone much further: the rich are outright financed by the poor. (To confuse the victims, that outrageous financing of the rich by the poor is nebulously called “Quantitative easing”, or “The Twist“, or simply “providing liquidity“.)

Far from allowing an exit of the system that caused the 2008 financial crisis, the present strategy, this Transfer of Assets to Rich People (TARP), has only made matters worse for the common economy, and for common people.

The latest twist being “austerity” programs, in Europe or the USA, supposedly to solve an alleged debt problem. But truly austerity makes it easier not to raise taxes on the hyper rich, be it only by changing the debate from the hyper-rich-are-not-taxed-enough to the poor-abuse-the-rich-with-their poverty (the latter was Thatcher’s line of personal business). 

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FOUR MAIN CAUSES FOR THE GREAT DEPRESSION OF THE 1930S:

A superficially seductive, but greatly erroneous, prescription to avoid another Great Depression was publicized by Milton Friedman, and officially embraced by many, including the present Fed Chairman, and its central bank.  Contrarily to what those worthies affect to believe, throwing money at the problem, or, more exactly, at the same exact banking system that caused the problem, is no panacea. Quite the opposite. A misreading of what happened in the 1930s presides to the present disaster. Basically, Friedman said one could run on one leg. He forgot about the other leg, the one that was on the ground before.

Friedman’s “explanation” of the Great Depression of the 1930s (GD30) is that the Central Bank of the USA (“Fed”) did not provide banks with enough “liquidity” (cash). So the banks went bankrupt by the thousands, people lost their savings, business lost access to money, and the economy of the USA faltered. That’s all entirely correct, as part of the picture. Yet:

One can tell lies, just by focusing exclusively on part of the truth.

Lying by ommission is what Milton Friedman did about GD30. His bit of truth is not an “explanation” but a sample of  observed facts. Clearly bankruptcies of the banks was a disaster. All he said above is true, but does not provide enough of a context for revealing the real truth in its full splendor.

In mathematics local minima do not have to be global minima. Same in the theory of theories: local maximal truth does not a global reality make.

Friedman’s quarter truth has come to be viewed by the economic theory in power in the USA as the be all, cure all (panacea).

A few years back, the head of the “Fed” turned to Friedman sitting in the first row and told him, flippantly, for the ages:”You are right, we did it!“. Bernanke meant that the Fed caused the Great Depression, by being too austere.  (Bernanke did his PhD on GD30, showing that some PhD are provided to reinforce the bankster managed banks.)

Let me quote from Friedman (since I quote Hitler occasionally, I may as well quote Friedman):

 ”at the London School of Economics… the dominant view was that the depression was an inevitable result of the prior boom, that it was deepened by the attempts to prevent prices and wages from falling and firms from going bankrupt, that the monetary authorities had brought on the depression by inflationary policies before the crash and had prolonged it by “easy money” policies thereafter; that the only sound policy was to let the depression run its course, bring down money costs, and eliminate weak and unsound firms.”

Paul Krugman says that Friedman viewed starving the banks as evident nonsense, and advocated instead the (THEN) Chicago view that banks should have been rescued, government should have acted to reflate the economy, and moreover, that there was a strong case, as Friedman wrote: “for the use of large and continuous deficit budgets to combat the mass unemployment and deflation of the times.” I agree with all this… However…

However as many have noticed, the doctrine Friedman considered self-evident nonsense is now more or less the official doctrine of the Republican party, just as it was under republican president Hoover, and of the European Union, as it was under the French governments of the 1930s. Meanwhile the views Friedman advocated from Chicago are now, according to American conservatives, tyrannical socialism, and according to European leaders, not an option.

The wheel of opinion has turned completely… Why? How? Krugman says it’s because they are all idiots, they just don’t know the basics of macroeconomics. Yet, reality is more instructive.

The passage of Friedman above quoted was a quarter of the truth, the fourth quarter of the truth, what became the truth after Roosevelt closed all the banks. That there was excess, and it had to be wrung out of the system, prior to that, that was another quarter of the truth, the third quarter of the truth. Now conservatives are focusing on that third quarter of the truth, in the USA, and in the EU. 

What was the second quarter of the truth? International trade fighting with tariffs (started in September 1929-July1930, by the USA). The modern equivalent of this deleterious international fighting is competitive devaluations, what the honorable dear professor Paul Krugman always advocates. (And which Japan has recently borrowed from the USA, making Washington all yellow in the face.)

Oh, and what got everything launched? A drastic boom in the 1920s, engineered to drown British WWI debt. That led to inflation (real estate, Florida, say) and overproduction (cars). That was the first component of the Great Depression quartet. 

Before I explain the obvious, let me veer towards what’s wrong in the presently attempted method to get out of this unfolding Greater Depression.

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BANKSTERISM SHOULD HAVE BEEN LIQUIDATED, IT WAS NOT:

Saving a bank and saving a bankster are two different things. Two completely opposed things. It’s like confusing saving a victim and saving who murdered the victim. The banksters leveraged the banks they headed, to the max, because the larger the profit, the more money they got. Some built international airports in the middle of nowhere in Spain.

Some made bets with each other, using the fake currency of financial derivatives.

The more they bet with tremendous leverage, the more leveraged the system got, ready to collapse at the smallest loss.

Meanwhile banksters had bought jets, yachts, mansions, islands (Example: Paulson, Bush’s Treasury Secretary, bought himself an island large enough for several villages).

When the banks collapsed the banksters’ properties were outside of the disaster zone. Politicians left them there. Taking care of their own providers.

Example: Lehman Brothers, a bank, an investment bank, was not saved, but its head banksters saved for themselves the billions they made, driving it into the ground. The three top guys, including CEO Fuld, retired with five billions among them.

Starting in 2008, the structures, ways and means of banks, including the derivatives and banksters leading them were saved (see Citigroup, JP Morgan, Goldman). Everything that had caused the disease was saved, thanks to the public (taxpayers, low lives, etc.)

Whereas in truth and full morality, all that should have been saved were the small deposits (as was done in Cyprus below $130K accounts). The entire businesses, the entire bank holding companies, which had failed, should have been left to fail (free market theory).

From the ruins, banks serving the real economy ought to have been founded. Instead,  the exact same holding companies that had failed were refounded, again, same as they were before, and generally around the same imaginary activities, with the same managers. Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, were saved modulo gifts exceeding 50 billion dollars;  JP Morgan got a giant gift (Bear Stern) and got in trouble because of its “London Whale” (highly leveraged government bond derivatives).

Providing liquidity, that is aid and comfort, to a thief, or a system that steals the real economy, does not provide with an optimal outcome, especially if one is poor, because one has already been robbed by the same thief or oppressive system. But such is the business model since 2008.

A financial system that caused such a crisis, should not just be provided with liquidity, but should have been liquidated as a self serving financial entity.

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GREAT DEPRESSION OF 1930S: LIQUIDATION, THEN LIQUIDITY:

So what happened during the Great depression of the 1930s? Was the view that all the excess should have been liquidated, that the depression should have done its job, correct? (The view held first.) Or is the view that the banks should have been saved correct?

Well, both views were correct. What Friedman and Bernanke do not realize is that there was serious liquidation, for four years, before Roosevelt launched his recovery program. And Roosevelt launched recovery by closing all the banks, first, just as was done in Cyprus recently. Banks were then reopened, provided with liquidity, according to their viability.

So Roosevelt’s New Deal provided liquidity… after a tremendous liquidation. (In the preceding 4 years.)

Right now, there is obvious excess, that should be liquidated. All over the West. It spans the whole landscape of spending. From the picturesque but highly symbolic, to the vast and deep.

I will give examples of what needs to be liquidated in another essay. There is just plain too many dimensions of excess, from “poor” Greeks or Italians with secondary residences, driving expensive Porsches although they have no income, to our self glorifying leaders spending on themselves public money like crazy, while sleeping in plutocrats’ beds. and of course transnational corporations paying no taxes so that they can swallow all and any creature or business in their way. Yes, there is much to liquidate.

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Patrice Ayme

Euro Derangement Syndrome

Abstract: Paul Krugman’s campaign against the European currency is reaching new heights of absurdity. In his frenzy, he now advocates catastrophe, any catastrophe, ”to exit from the euro“.

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Paul Krugman passes in the USA for the “conscience of a liberal”. He is now recommending to invest in the future, insisting that debt for jobs or education is no sin, as I was doing several years ago.

However, Krugman has also Euro derangement syndrome. Paul Krugman wants Greece to become like Argentina. More specifically he recommends that Greece follow the disastrous sequence of events that started in 2001 in Argentina.

That, especially for an economist, is astounding. In 2002, Argentina defaulted and inflation reached 40%. Only during the month of April 2002, inflation in Argentina was in the double digits. In four weeks, prices officially augmented by more than 10%. This is what Krugman recommends for, would have liked to happen to, Greece, Cyprus… Anything, anybody, whatever, to break the Euro. Euro derangement syndrome.

As we will see, Argentina’s economic situation, upon a severe collapse of the financial system was much better than that of Greece, or Cyprus would be. Argentina has everything, including a giant, extremely fertile territory,  extending from the tropics to sub-polar Patagonia. Argentina was once the second richest country in the world, per capita.

However, Argentina is generally recognized by everybody, even economists, to have become a basket case. And that, for political reasons. Political mismanagement was so acute it extended to the economy.

Greece was also mismanaged: there was a civil war after World War Two, between Greek communists, and Anglo-American forces (who already knew what was best for Greece; that ugly war killed more than 158,000 officially, and was accompanied by the adoption/kidnapping of Greek children from internment camps to the USA).

Later a dictatorship of colonels, generaly viewed as put in place by the American secret services (following the orders of Wall Street, a place located few miles from Krugman’s mansion).

Greece was admitted to the European Union, as long as it became a democracy, first. Thus it escaped direct USA management (and tyranny, I avoided the pleonasm). It was a great success. Probably left many an American plutocrat frustrated.

But Wall Street did not forget its old Hellenistic dominion. Goldman-Sacks cooked up the numbers used for the admission of Greece to the Eurozone.  Goldman’s cooked numbers were believed at the Eurostat (the statistic arm of the EU). Maybe because Wall Street has agents throughout the European machinery (Mario Monti, ex Italian PM, and Mario draghi, head of the ECB were partners at Goldman-Sacks).

Of course Wall Street has agents, or should we say brains? all over the (plutocratic) universities of the USA. Such as Princeton, Harvard… Here is Krugman in the integrality of a March 28, 2013, blog post of his:

“What’s the Greek for Corralito?

It’s now three years since I suggested a possible route to Greek exit from the euro: a banking crisis, followed by sharp limits on bank withdrawals similar to Argentina’s 2001 corralito, and then — with the panic argument against exit removed — reintroduction of a domestic currency.

Obviously, that hasn’t happened. Despite intense suffering, the Greek political elite’s commitment to the euro has proved incredibly strong. My analysis of the economics wasn’t wrong, but my political guesstimates were off.

Still, Cyprus is now following the first part of the script. And let me ask again: what, exactly, is the point of remaining on the euro? The convenience and efficiency of a single currency is gone; meanwhile, the future for Cyprus on the euro is one of years of grinding deflation and catastrophic austerity. Is the hope of someday, somehow restoring the status quo ante enough to justify all of this?”

Corralito meant to corral Argentines, as if they were hoofed animals to be domesticated. After being corraled, those fierce stallions, the Argentines, rioted violently. As I said, inflation was 40% in 2002, and GDP per head fell 20% in the three years following the corralito. But that’s what Krugman;s professional advice is. Why? A hint:

Amazingly, the corralito ended up being good business for some American banks. They negotiated with their accomplices in the Argentine government to receive compensation bonds for the “missing” money, which had never really left their banks, only moving from one branch to another. These American banks made richer by the corralito have their world headquarters a few miles from Krugman’s mansion.

Krugman does not seem to have noticed that banks in Cyprus were bankrupt. The situation was exactly that defined by the word: bankrupt. The banks were ruptured. They had to close. They closed for 12 days.

Why, how did the banks reopen on March 28, 2013, on the same day Krugman wrote the note above? Obviously, Krugman does not know. He shows no inkling that he knows, or understand, what happens. In Krugman’s mind, Europe is only a malevolent force.

Banks reopened in Cyprus, because the European Central Bank sent to Cyprus huge shipping containers full of Euro bank notes. That was ONE point of remaining on the Euro: having a currency. Krugman cannot know this, because he sees no point at being on the euro, that’s his metaprinciple, his fundamental emotion that rules over all his logic and data gathering.

Curiously, Krugman seems to be unaware of this basic fact. That the money was shipped by the ECB. Maybe he is unaware that in a free market economy, one needs a currency?

If Cyprus switched suddenly to its own currency, Cypriot debt would explode, the worth of Cyprus would be cut by half, or more, inflation on food and fuel would reach instantaneously 50%. The catastrophe would be immense.

As other texts of Krugman reveal, the Princeton Nobel Laureate is only aware of the first fact, the debt explosion thing, and it thoroughly confuses him. The other facts, which are much more important, although they are more fundamentally economic, he has no idea of, nor does he seem to care.

Krugman does not seem to realize that one can default on debt, but not on fuel, and, one cannot, a fortiori, default on food!

Krugman wants Cyprus to be like Argentina, but does not realize Cyprus imports French wheat, whereas Argentina’s economy turned around after 2002, greatly thanks to massive exportation of extremely expensive soybean to the People’s Republic of China. Details, details untended, and before you know it, the devil is attendance. Argentina is not only completely self sufficient on food, but it’s one of the world’s greatest agricultural exporter. Cyprus is not self sufficient in any of the economics fundamentals, by a long shot.

I will follow quickly with an in depth essay to justify what I just wrote, in more excruciating details, and explore why it is that Krugman has… What, gone crazy? Or is it simply ugly American imperialism, Wall Street style, at its best? Is it simply because, bottom line, Krugman lives richly off a system that has Wall Street as its skeletton?

A system of imperialism and exploitation, so thorough that it pervades the heart, so much so, that the mind goes crazy?

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Patrice Ayme

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Note 1: Is Argentina doing well now? Officially, Argentina has now 10% inflation (but non-governmental evaluations puts it at 25%). The evidence that Argentina is not doing well economically extends to the mental. Argentina is deeply disturbed. So deeply disturbed that it does not mind to flaunt its threatening obsession by islands initially settled by the French (“Malouines” from Saint Malo), 500 kilometers away from the closest Argentinean coast.

 Paul Krugman, does not seem anymore afraid to flaunt his nationalistic obsession than Argentinean leaders are. I like and approve many of the economic policies of president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. But one has to understand she had to put them in place after generations of mismanagement in Argentina. To have similar policies in Europe could only be the consequence of disasters that have not happened. And will not, because the economic disasters in Argentina were the product of dictatorship. And also of the influence of the Chicago Boys. Are the Princeton Boys any better?

Note 2: There was actually a campaign out there, probably orchestrated by the likes of Goldman-Sacks, complete with doctored graphs, that present ”Krugman’s” ideas above.  See the article in “Capital.gr” in 2011. Shall we see Krugman as part of this campaign? Tell us it’s not true, Paul…

Raid Treasure Islands, Finally?

Abstract: The plutocrats, plutophiles, and hired guns who dominate the planet have brought a Greater Depression. A punier crisis in the 1930s brought political fascism all over. To avoid a repeat, representative democracies need heavy corrective measures, now. Here is the latest outrage.

Cyprus has invested many times its GDP. In Russia alone. Year after year, for years. Cyprus is a money laundering scheme. One of the many pirate islands around the planet, whose main enterprise is organized crime. Initial violent reactions in Moscow from president Putin and his prime minister Medvedev show that they were party to this conspiracy.

That set-up allowed plutocratic mobsters to buy more and more of Russia. It has also enabled them to purchase a large part of the West. Criminal money, satanic minds, all over, what could go wrong?
Enough has been seen, it’s time to use force.

***

Pompeius: Magnus Accomplice to Pirates?

ROME, OR WHY ONE SHOULD KILL PIRACY, NOT PAY IT OFF:

In the late Roman republic, the seas came to be paralyzed by piracy. Roman politicians, busy at each others’ throats, had overlooked the growth of pirate havens. Pirates owned ports, cities, countries. The situation became untenable; international trade was coming to a stop, and Rome depended upon grain from overseas. Pirates were hanging just outside of Rome, Corsica was full of corsairs, very naturally, even a young Julius Caesar was kidnapped against ransom.

Finally the Roman Senate gave full power to a young Gnaeus Pompeius. After a winter preparation, Pompeius sent 13 legates all over. Cicero was enthusiastic: “Pompey made his preparations for the war at the end of the winter, entered upon it at the commencement of spring, and finished it in the middle of the summer.”

Some say that it took just 40 days for Pompeius to re-establish  freedom of navigation. Yet, years later Cicero knew better. He bitterly criticized Pompeius’ work: “we give immunity to pirates and make our allies pay tribute.”

Sounds familiar? If Cicero’s charge is true, it explains a lot of the further deterioration of the Republic. Two reasons to believe it’s true: 1) No anti-plutocratic measure was taken in Rome at this stage.

2) This is exactly what we have been doing since 2008: exacting tribute from the citizens, and paying the pirates. “Quantitative Easing”, that is money given to the very banksters who caused the 2008 crisis was tribute paid by the citizenry, while immunity was given to financial pirates.

The grossest of the gross will claim that we have nothing to learn from Rome. But Rome had a republic, a pretty direct democracy functioning for more than 4 centuries, and that’s still the world’s record in duration. How did the Roman pull that trick?

The Roman republic lived for more than 4 centuries with an explicit limit on the wealth that could be acquired by any given family. It is precisely attempts to break down inchoating plutocracy by application of an existing law enforcing that limit, which brought the civil war that the Gracchi brothers lost. By then the plutocrats had private armies, and they used them to kill the Gracchi and thousands of their supporters.

Conclusion: Crack down on plutocracy, before it cracks you.

So what happened to Rome? Plutocracy kept on going, until by the Late Second Century it devoured the ability to destroy foreign enemies, and then devoured the state. In the Third Century, plutocracy devoured the socio-economy until the military rebuilt society in its image. In the Fourth Century, plutocracy merged with theocracy, and devoured philosophy and the brains. By 400, plutocracy devoured the army itself. The Franks were put in charge of the defense of the North-West corner of the empire.

Next Roman state was replaced by the Frankish state, which was very lean, and Frankish law came to rule. Frankish law enforced equal inheritance in (large) families, and leaders were elected. Plutocracy did not die, but became a shadow of its former self, all the more as brains were re-established under the guise of a church ruled by a secular state, that ordered it to teach secular.

Clearly the Gini Index of the Imperium Francorum and the Renovatio Imperium Romanorum that followed was much lower than that of the Roman empire. Only then could civilization be re-launched. Because there was money to finance progress. Again.

Conclusion: plutocracy is a malignancy, it has to be eliminated ASAP, should one want civilization to go up, instead of down. (And of course nowadays we need more civilization than ever, as the old civilization we enjoyed is running out of resources. Same as what happened to Rome, just way worse, and on a planetary scale.)

***

MOOD ABOUT PLUTO CHANGING IN EUROPE:

Injecting 85 billion dollars a month, as USA central bank chief Bernanke announced he was doing, is not enough (although that’s injecting 7% of GDP a year in printed money!). Rats have to be removed from power, prosecuted, fiscal havens have to be exploded, and tax cheat global corporations have to be forced to pay tax where they make sales. Earth’s problem is bigger than just banksters, and oil men.

Such was the hope Obama surfed, before he spent four years flashing his mesmerizing, mile wide, dazzling smile-to-seduce-the-world. And nothing happened.

Fortunately there are inkling that the mood is changing.

The  evidence is coming from Franco-Britannia, the EU, the Eurogroup. Suddenly, laws are passed: Financial Transaction Tax, limiting banksters’ bonuses. Taxing tax eschewing corporations is considered. The latest: telling Russian plutocratic mobsters that they have to pay tax, if they want to go on pumping dirty money through Cyprus.

This turn of civilization against plutocracy, to save itself is slow going. Indeed, the leaders of the West profit of a system rigged by plutocracy. Those elected politicians, supposedly servants of the People, live like kings, in the service of their plutocratic masters. Putting a few in jail, as justice is trying to do in France, may help.

***

REVOLUTION BREWING IN FRANCE:

First the good news: the plutophile who was French president a year ago, has been indicted (“mis en examen“). Justice believes there is enough evidence that Sarkozy was “abusing” an old lady, to put him under “examination”. One cannot make that good stuff up: elder abuse is next to Pluto, second only to pedophilia. Meanwhile many prominent politicians are on trial for  what they did in Iraq. French politicians, of course.

Amazingly, the abuser of the elderly, Sarkozy his name, married to a Franco-Italian billionairess, cost French taxpayers 2 million euros a year. The rich is never rich enough, in the mind of the established order of things. The suspected criminal prepares his defense from a 300 square meter office, next to the Élysée! ($250,000 a year in rent, paid by French taxpayers.)

Top Americans politicians cannot be suspected of any wrongdoing; they prey next to god, as they emphasize all the time, and never go on trial (except for the son of Jesse Jackson). Does not matter if they chew down the Fourth Geneva convention for breakfast. In fact Sarkozy is hounded for practices that are perfectly legal in the USA. 

Sarkozy had to hide in the dark, and persuade an old lady it was perfectly OK to give him money. While he was doing what Obama does one thousand times more, just in one day, and while Obama does it for a thousand days, as he buys himself a presidency.

Americans have stricly no problems when they see their president sleeping in a plutocrat’s bed. And if the president sleep in 100 plutocrats’ beds, it’s one hundred times better. Well, in France, it’s illegal, and it’s elder abuse to make the richest lady in Europe believe she is suddenly in Palo Alto, or something, and American law has superseded French law.   

Ex USA presidents cost USA taxpayers at least 4 million dollars a year (without counting their health care cost, and regalian security cost for them and their relatives). Obviously they deserve it: they all are extremely rich multimillionaires, and the richest get subsidies, so that low lives can dream even more.

Meanwhile in Spain more and more people are imitating the king, his family and the PM: they are living outside of the law. In the region of Andalusia, unemployment is at 35%. Low lives have started to seize government property, and cultivate food to survive. I guess austerity has met ingenuity.

French President Francois Hollande confided that “the unthinkable is now becoming possible, in France and many other countries, I know what I want to do, the problem is I do not have much time to succeed”.  By “unthinkable” he means the return of fascism.

Some may scoff: “who cares about France?” But France is the brainy spider in the middle of the European web. The decider on Cyprus was clearly the French finance minister Moscovici (in full accord with his wheelchair bound German colleague). Interestingly, France is also of one mind with Britain, and not just about Mali… But about taxes!

***

FRANCE & BRITAIN ASK OECD TO FIND WAYS TO TAX GLOBAL PLUTOS:

It is clear that France and Britain have had enough with mobsters (aka tax cheats). The governments there are on opposite ends of the political spectrum, that makes their alliance all the stronger. Alliance? Were not they trying to eviscerate each others’ budgets recently?

Conservative PM Cameron has realized that austerity alone does not work (as many have pointed to him with relish). British GDP numbers are worse than in the 1930s “Great Depression”. To relaunch the economy, Cameron reduced top tax margin from 505 down to 45%. Yet, Cameron is running a terrible deficit, he has to increase revenue.

Can taxes be augmented in France? The newly elected Socialist French government knows it has taxes as high as they can get without having the Sans Culottes take over. Indeed the Constitutional Court barred the proposed 75% proposed top tax margin rate (throwing the law out, although it had passed!). Then the Council of State followed on March 21 2013 by declaring that the top rate ought to be no more than 66%.

(The USA has neither a Constitutional Court, nor a Council of State, but it has a Supreme Court that plays with the constitution, when plutocracy is at bay, contrarily to, well, the constitution…)

So both the French and British government discovered the only solution: get those who pay no taxes to contribute, by force.

There are two main types of those: 1) multinational plutocrats, 2) multinational corporations.

So Mr. Osborne, the UK finance minister and his French colleague, Mr. Moscovici, sent a check to the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, based, in Paris, France). They asked this economic organization of the 34 most developed countries to find out how to tax multinational corporations.

there for a decade or so, The head a OECD an ex Mexican finance minister, Mr. Gurria partly educated in the USA at Harvard. On Saint Patrick day, march 17, 2013, he flatly declared on Tele5Monde (French speaking world TV): “les multinationales ne paient pas d’impots” (“multinationals do not pay taxes”).  And he added in no uncertain manner that this had got to change. He is very happy with the Franco-British checks. And

So even Osborn is determined to tax an entire category of international plutocrats and corruptocrats. Gurria insisted that it was Osborne the Conservative, and not Moscovici the Socialist, who launched the initiative.

***

MAKING AN EXAMPLE OF PLUTOCRAT ASSAD:

For me, plutocracy is, first of all, the rule of the Dark Side without any overwhelming justification from the Light Side.

This being said, Assad’s family is filthy rich in the traditional sense, having stolen We The People more than quite a bit. His shop-alcoholic wife used to support London’s luxury stores, and now she has fled to Moscow, one of Assad’s cornucopian source of weapons (the other being Iran, thanks to Iraq). She and Putin can commiserate of the fate of their funds in Cyprus, I guess.

To make their meaning clear, that the days of arrogant plutocracy are numbered, France and Britain announced they will ship soon to Syrian rebels absolutely lethal French and, or, American anti-aircraft missiles. The Americans do not even have to agree, because the French Mistral are even faster and more deadly than the American Stingers.

The essence of the matter is to make revolutionary secular forces win the war, because otherwise Russian inspired, or Salafist inspired, plutocrats will surely win, and establish their terror, strong as they will be after killing a million or so. Not intervening in the Spanish Civil War had been the fundamental mistake of France, Britain, and the USA in 1936… OK, intruth American plutocrats were fully on the fascist side (with fuel, ammunition, weapons, and Texas oil). At least, this time, those three are no as inert… 
***

CYPRUS ULTIMATUM:

Cyprus’ banks invested heavily in Greece, while paying, year after year, interest rates between 5% and 9%, for years. Cyprus’ banks need immediately 17 billion Euros to keep on operating.

The Eurogroup (mostly the finance ministers of France and Germany) agreed to give ten billions, if Cyprus found the rest. As the Greek church is part of the state there, it could easily sell part of itself, and find the money. Another solution is to tax plutocrats. There are 8,000 (mostly Russian) plutocrats in (nominal) residence in Cyprus.

The European Union gave a banking ultimatum to Cyprus. I saw that one coming. Cypriots had a good run. Money from their tax haven. Hush money. Who protects the tax haven from, say, Turkey? Franco-British military force. Do Cypriots pay for the Franco-British military establishment? Now they will.  

Moscovici agreed to lift the limit of reimbursement to 100,000 euros. (I don’t see why, as those accounts made huge money in the last few years!) That means the Plutos will be taxed at an even higher rate. 25% has been suggested.

There can be NO run on the banks, as all accounts have been blocked in Cyprus. Even the smallest ones. Plutocrats are given a choice: be taxed, or go bankrupt.They can’t even escape, because of capital controls. The days of Cyprus as a tax haven are over. Let all other tax havens join them at the bottom of the sea.

The problem with plutocracy is not just the plutocrats themselves, and the institutions that serves them. It’s also the general mentality that crimes pays, and the more criminal, the more paid one is.

That psycho mechanism, that crimes pays best, has to be broken at some point, and the point is now. Otherwise one would down in the sort of catastrophe that affected Germany. Nietzsche screamed in writing, by the 1880s, that Germany’s mood was turning from ugly, to criminal, and even mass criminal. Nietzsche even explicitly accused Kant. Indeed, Eichmann in Jerusalem, tried for the assassination of more than one million people, brandished Kant’s moral system as his justification.

Nietzsche was not listened to by Very Serious Germans. Why? Because Germany was a successful, run-away plutocracy, ever more fascist to fight the socialists. When Bismarck, no shrinking violet, nor fanatical socialist, finally understood a monster was born under his loins, he was thrown out, and Nietzsche’s prophecy, the destruction of Europe by Germany, proceeded.

We now have the same situation, on a world scale.

Plutocracy, fascism and depletion of resources (including climate) are all entangled. if we did like the Romans, and let our civilization go down, we would not have, like the Romans, a plan B. For the Romans, plan B, as it turned out, was the Imperium Francorum. 

What is therefore needed, immediately, is to traumatize plutocracy. In all sorts of ways. Exploding the island tax havens is a good start.

It’s a new paradigm. Common financial commentators in the USA whine to high heavens that trust has been breached, never to be seen again. Quite the opposite, a new trust has been established. It’s all about trust. Put your money in a tax haven, TRUST the European Union to tax it.

Spare nought. Cyprus today, Monaco tomorrow.

Even Monaco Has Got To Go

Of course, it’s traumatic. Voltaire gave a moral order:”Il faut ecraser l’infame!” (“One ought to crush infamy“) Traumatizing infamy comes before crushing it thoroughly. What else?

So it’s very simple: give an ultimatum to every single tax haven. The truth about these havens is that they are a modern form of piracy. Their relationship to the West is even more abusive than that of Rome’s pirates to Rome. Indeed, they are just another face, another interface, of Western plutocracy with the the weak it’s abusing.

The exact charge against Sarkozy is “abus de faiblesse” (“abuse of weakness”). It’s highly symbolic

In the case of Cyprus, it can submit, or be kicked outside of the Eurozone, to join the fishes at the bottom of the sea. Against the Russian mafia, a greater force has to be employed, and examples made. After years of tremendous interest rates, Cyprus’ parliament has stupidly decided to be greedy in the line of fire. Excellent.

***

Patrice Ayme

Swiss Fight Pluto!

Abstract: The Swiss People, in defiance to the Swiss plutocracy and its attached mob of greedy sycophants, has struck a blow against the extremely wealthy, self perpetuating class of those who rule corporations in defiance of their owners.

Most of these owners are (very) small investors. So this blow for ownership is actually a blow against one of the pillars of plutocracy. That pillar uses corporations to steal other people’s money in a particularly blatant way.

How? By creating what I long called the CEO CLASS the entanglement of corporate boards with executive power in corporations (See the essay of November 2008 on Reforming World Finance). Here is the graph of CEOs compensations versus average salary, USA. (It’s a French translation, because the Berkeley original has magically disappeared from the WWW!)

Rise CEO Class. Jump Under Clinton!

USA CEO salaries are the two top curves, with their logarithmic scale on the left. The (lamentable) average USA salary (not indexed by inflation) crawls on the bottom, with its scale on the right. Source: Anti-Plutocratic French site.

CEO payments climbed up to about 500 times that of the workers in top companies in the USA, but only 15 times in France, 12 times in Germany.

[Interestingly, I searched for days this graph in USA search engines; although of USA origin, Professor Saez, UCB, it is (not so) mysteriously unavailable in USA search engines; a friend suggested I look at Google.France, and there was plenty there! Clearly the USA plutocrats cleaned the World Wide Web carefully, so that their English bound sheeple read only appropriate information! Nothing like the happy bleating of the sheep to fill a sheperd's heart.] 

The entanglement of CEOs and the corporate boards supposed to watch over them, is reminiscent of, and probably inspired by, the entanglement of political and business power in the USA. That public-private entanglement dates from the early 20C: think of JP Morgan intervening in the 1907 crash, or think of the diversion of German property towards USA plutocrats after 1918 (don’t worry, the building were all the giving of seized German property was given to USA plutocrats burned down around 1922, erasing the tracks of grand thievery…).

A behavior that is widely admired in the USA, that of the towering CEO with an astronomical salary bestowed on him or her by a board of co-conspirators, is now criminalized in Switzerland. Such CEO and director thugs will be punished by a mandatory confiscation of 6 years of income, plus three years in prison.

In the USA, CEOs and their boards are immensely admired. The connected ones sit on corporate boards at an early age, to be paid extravagant sums of money, while doing nothing, but allowing CEOs and their minions to steal all the companies profits, from small shareholders, and workers.

Thus, Americans will now know that, by admiring CEO and boards, the American way, they are admiring what Europeans are increasingly viewing as criminals, and criminal boards of directors. OK, as slave masters long admired, I guess they have trained hard, and they will not suffer anguish that way.

Yet, one can hope that this criminalization of a motive of admiration should help with a worldwide readjustments of values.

So far, so good. But there is a twist. Why is it that mutual funds of the USA have supported so much the CEO class and its interlocked boards? Worldwide?

Well, the CEO class part of a larger conspiracy with the financial sector, where the real money is made. It is my pleasure to give some pointers. Those pointers, in turn, will allow to criminalize further said vaster conspiracy.

Meanwhile, all democracies should pass laws similar to the one Swiss representatives are now constitutionally obliged to pass. It is, of course, a consequence of Switzerland having a higher democratic index than any other country that explains that such a popular initiative was taken there. It’s clearly not a case of a country being run by rabid leftists.

***

EVIL IN A FEW WORDS, & ITS IMPLEMENTATION BY CORPORATIONS:
Evil triumphs when good people do not fight it. Why? Because the default state of humanity is strife. This is the point rabid pacifists keep on missing, it’s also the point Obama made in Stockholm, when he got his Nobel. It has been well known since there are men, and they think.

Nothing personal: because of its domination, the genus Homo evolved to control itself, quite bit as wolves do, by killing each other. The Romans abstracted this as: Homo Homini Lupo, Man Wolf Of Man (more than 2,000 years ago). Just like wolves, only more so, because we dominate more.

All species need to be kept in check, and the check of man is man.

But how does man fight man? Like all other social animals, by mobbing, or tribal fighting. So tribal effects have to be watched severely. The most famous tribes are the 200 or so nations and territories more or less represented at the United Nations. But there are other tribes, all over. The most ubiquitous being corporations. (What is meant by “corporations” varies in time, nations and space, but the tribal effect is what unifies them.)

The founders, and early presidents of the USA, so called “Founding Fathers” were fully aware of this.

As president and thinker in chief Jefferson wrote: “I hope we shall take warning from the example and crush in it’s [sic] birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws our country.”

The “example” is that of England (as the rest of the text makes clear). This is taken from a letter to George Logan, Nov. 12th, 1816. There’s a PDF file with scanned images of an edition of Jefferson’s works at this address.
***

WHY THE SWISS CRACK DOWN ON THE CEO MAFIA:
It is no coincidence that Switzerland, the most democratic country, was the first to ask We The People, in a referendum, what they think about the feudal class that is taking over, armed with neofascist ideology.

The answer, delivered March 3, 2013, is that 68% of the Swiss believes that the conspiracy of thieves that has come to dominate civilization, should be forcefully terminated.

Superficially, Switzerland is doing better than ever. GDP expanded in 2012. GDP per capita is nearly twice that of the USA (at nominal rates, not cheating PPP). But these good numbers and nice surroundings mask the fact that the wealthy have been doing incredibly better, while the plebs has lost ground. Most Swiss cannot afford to own there, to start with. Two-thirds of them rent (whereas 55% of French next door own their homes 100%). That way they are like the inhabitants of most “rich” cities of the West in that they can’t afford to live where they work.

An increasing inflow of tax avoiding and tax mitigating plutocrats makes the Swiss increasingly conscious of a feudalization of the country. For instance, most of the world oil trading is conducted out of Geneva, now that London is proving less tax friendly to the world’s richest sharks. That makes Swiss property values skyrocket, and also make average Swiss, like average Belgians, hold the tax bag.

Yet Switzerland is less subjugated by its elite than other “representative democracies”.

This has to do with history. Other places were typically founded by large imperial machines (France, Britain, Germany, USA, Ex British colonies, Portugal, Spain, Spanish colonies, Italy, Russia, Netherlands), and, or slave societies (Spanish colonies, Brazil, USA, Russia). Some countries may look small now, but degenerated from empires. The Netherlands even conquered England; Denmark, Portugal, and Sweden ran empires (Sweden thought it owned Ukraine and Russia for a millennium). The present Swedish regime was founded by Napoleon, etc…

Instead Switzerland started as a rebellion against the family that would run the “Holly Roman German Empire” for centuries. The birth of Switzerland was fundamentally an anti-plutocratic rebellion. Same in the USA, sure, but only that other revolution minded plutocrat, Louis XVI of France, made in possible (in more ways than one). The Swiss revolt was indigenous.

Any initiative signed by 100,000 people can be presented as a referendum in Switzerland.

***

SWISS CRACK-DOWN ON CEO CLASS:

Initiator of the “Rip-off Initiative” Thomas Minder is an entrepreneur industrialist, and right wing politician, who nearly lost his company when Swissair went bankrupt (from obscure financial maneuvers). In recent years, Mr. Minder observed that the world was put on its knees in the service of financiers. This is exactly the point demonstrators were making in Portugal this week.

As Portuguese demonstrators said, why should they sacrifice because infinitely rich bankers cheated? Or went mad? Or conspired with other rich fat cats to rob common people? Why is it that Portuguese people without money now have to pay to use the public hospital, when those who have caused the disaster keep on flying in private jets, shuttling among their mansions, worldwide?

As I said already more than 5 years ago, there is a CEO class. CEOs sit on each others’ board, and attribute each others’ salaries. OK, they are often more crafty, and use agents: relatives, or protégés. It is particularly clear in the USA, where it’s all about who you know really well: see the Summers-Clinton-Summer-Google-Facebook Ms. Sandberg (just a small example).

And it’s even more than a CEO class.

***

CEO CLASS AS A MULTIPLIER:

The CEO Class can be instrumentalized to divest power to talent that will serve plutocracy well.

A lot of people of power are able to transfer quickly and efficiently power to their children, or people they know will serve their children faithfully. It’s happening everywhere, especially in the USA.

Suddenly all powerful young people rise in the USA to seats on corporate boards: thus they are made to integrate the CEO Class, board side. Careful inquests always show connections with the powers that be. See Geithner, head of New York Fed, then tax cheating Treasury secretary, ah, but the son of Geithner (Geithner’s father was a Ford Foundation director who met with Obama’s mother… All and any connection with the painting behind Hitler in his Munich office will not be made, recommended an angel that passed by, dripping with finance…). Geithner was successfully vetted at Kissinger Associates, a plotting organization to connect plutocrats, corrupt politicians and other worldwide tyrants. He was put under the wings of Rubin and Summers (like Facebook’s billionaire woman, the genius feminist Sheryl Sandberg). Geithner was prepared to serve his masters well.

The CEO-boards Class systems enable the plutocratic machine to put large amounts of power to servile critters. This  is how ‘black’ women of the Rice class, such as Rice, Susan and Rice, Condoleezza, were all powerful by the age of 30 (the former a member of the National Security council, thanks to dad, a treasury director, the second on prestigious CEO boards all over, and a supertanker was named after her, because her masters at Stanford had determined she would serve her masters in the Dark Side well… still does: she is a towering member of the CEO class in 2013). Not that I have anything against blacks or “blacks”…

“Are they worth it?” Asked The Economist. While knowing very well the answer was no. One thing the extravagant growth of the CEO Class did not grow is corporate profits:

CEO Class Rising, Everything Else Lagging

***

WANT DEMOCRACY? CUT POWER IN TINY BITS, DISTRIBUTE WIDELY:

Minder’s “Rip-off Initiative” was designed to prevent bosses from receiving huge bonuses by decision of a CEO class. So it makes it harder to congeal a CEO class: board members should serve only a single year.

This, by the way, is something to meditate in a more general way… In the Roman republic, the judicial, military, economic and political executive was incarnated by the Consuls. They served just one year (although they could be elected again: Marius was elected Consul 7 times!). And even in that year, ultimate power switched from one to the other, every month.

Republican Romans knew how fragile the Res (Thing) Publica was. Don’t laugh. The Roman republic, in full, lasted five centuries. Still the world’s record.

Now what we have is, what would have been called in the times of Julius Caesar, (elected) kings. The immense powers the president of the USA are perfectly ridiculous, especially when, as Obama, he does not use them. (An apparent worshipper of Satan, complete with devilish smirks, such as G. W. Bush, did not have such reservations: such a creature never will, by definition!)

Minder’s anti-plutocratic initiative says that companies cannot decide to give their executives “golden parachutes”. Salaries of board members, and companies’ executives will have to be approved by the companies’ owners. That is, by the shareholders. That, by itself, of course, is not enough, because the plutocratic web is entangled in all power structures, and sucks the substantific marrow.

When Novartis gave 71 million Francs ($77 million) to its CEO, Vasella, to the fury of the very numerous small Swiss shareholders of Novartis. The small shareholders could not do anything as most of Novartis’ shares are held by plutocratic institutions, which are part and party to the plutocratic phenomenon.

What plutocratic institutions accomplice to the CEO Class and the financial rip-off sector, am I alluding to? A lot of them are mutual funds in the USA. Or funds for retirement funds. Those used to give rich returns, but, in recent decades, they have faltered. Why? How come? well it’s part and parcel of the worldwide take-over by rich money managers. It may sound strange that they strive towards subpar performance: it’s an apparent violation of the free market principle.
***

WHY MUTUAL FUNDS MANAGERS CONSPIRE WITH THE CEO MAFIA:
The naïve free market principle says that, when a mutual fund has subpar performance, the shareholder should move to another fund. Yes, sure, but what if they are all subpar? What if there is a conspiracy? Because, clearly that is what has been systematically going for like 20 years.

The funds are losing money right and left because the function of fund managers has become mostly to transfer money to the financial fat sharks of the plutocratic class. You know the ones they share the caviar toasts with. Thus small shareholders and retirees, present and future, make richer, ever more, the richest people in the world.

There is actually a closed circuit similar to that between Washington and private corporations and partnerships. Individuals operate as public fund managers for a few years, wasting a lot of investors’ money, and then they become “wealth managers”, “private bankers”, “hedge fund managers”, entangle themselves with the CEO class, and politicians, to make the really big bucks, extracting money from the public, including the public mutual funds for little people… or small shareholders of corporations such as Novartis. Don’t ask me for references: plutocratic universities such as Harvard, Stanford, are not too keen to study the subject, as those who profit from it, are their bread and butter.

Conspiracies to distribute People’s money to friends are all over the so called “representative democracies”. Why should not giant government spending be controlled by the People more directly? It can be done in… Switzerland.
***

SWISS DEMOCRACY VERSUS THE GIANT CORRUPTION IN AEROSPACE, F35 STYLE:
Plutocracy is encountering serious difficulties in Switzerland. Besides the “rip-off” initiative above, here is another example.

Some of the Swiss elite, probably paid under the table, had conspired to buy “Grippens“. The Grippen is an excellent plane made in Sweden. But the Swiss Air Force would prefer the superlative, stealthy Rafale, the world’s best omnirole fighter bomber, from the country next door.

The Swiss are going to be asked their opinion… about purchasing the Grippen. It’s pretty clear that, thanks to outfits such as this site, enough of them will know that they are been rolled in the flour, spending billions on underperforming planes (that actually does not exist in the version proposed to Switzerland). So they will vote against the Grippen.

Not so in the USA, And other countries where the people is supposed to pay hundreds of billions to purchase an entirely useless plane, the F35 Lightning II.

The F35 is already the world’s most expensive military project, ever, anywhere. Yet the plane is military incapable, and will stay so. The entire project is flawed (this kind of passive stealth does NOT work, the plane’s range, speed, acceleration, g loads, weapons capacity are puny).

The great peoples of the great democracies such as the USA, Great Britain, etc. are not consulted about whether they want to keep on going with that F35 corruption. The total program cost already more than 400 billion dollars with not one single plane that could go to war. It’s expected to end up costing about a trillion dollars with planes no better performing than the Vietnam war F105… And just as detectable.

But so far, while People go starving in several countries involved in F35 corruption (including in the USA’s Silicon Valley, where hundreds of thousands are on “food stamps”), nobody is exhibiting very much indignation.

***

PLUTOCRACY IS A SEVERE PROBLEM, IT SHOULD DEALT WITH SEVERELY:

The Swiss referendum forces the Swiss Parliament to draft a law giving shareholders the right to hold a binding vote on all compensation for company executives and directors. The law will also ban signing and leaving bonuses for senior managers and push greater corporate transparency. As said above, criminals will be punishmed by the confiscation of 6 years of income, and three years jail.

The Swiss have just struck a severe blow at the plutocrats, exposing them for the conspiring, manipulative thieves they are. Other European countries will be encouraged to follow, including Germany and Britain (in both countries laws on executive compensation are being elaborated, the German law may come up for a vote as soon as next week). The French Socialists will come back with a 75% tax law, that will pass muster with the French Constitutional Court…

The European Union in preparing a law cracking down on bankers’ bonuses. Great Britain is desperately trying to block it, as it will apply there, inside the very the den of thieves, too. But Great Britain will be overruled. It just revealing itself to be ruled by money. Plutocracy in fact, not just from crowned celebrities.

To have kings is bad. To have money as king, is worse.

It is high time that countries that call themselves democracies be as democratic as Switzerland. It would be a good start towards a more intelligent civilization.
***
Patrice Ayme

Indebted To Lies

LIVING IN DENIAL ABOUT DEBT A PLUTOCRACY MAKES:
Abstract: Too many illusions governing, and a civilization dissolution guaranteed. A vast conspiracy extending from the financial right to the self conscious “liberal” elite, including the honorable conscientious liberal, Paul Krugman, claims that there is not that much of a debt problem in the USA.

Yet, a careful examination of the numbers and concepts involved shows that the esteemed pundits who howl urbi et orbi that there is no debt problem, coolly propose to steal Medicare and the Social Security Trust Fund.

This is pretty typical of the eerie manipulations that the powers that be engage in. Official progressives living in mansions end up in total solidarity with the plutocracy. One shudders at the possibilities.

Servicing Our Lords

Servicing too much debt is servicing plutocracy too much, and denial is its prophet.
***

UNDERESTIMATING DEBT IS AN ECONOMIC DRAG:
Why did the presidency of Obama bring only change that we can’t see? Bush has been gone more than 4 years. Yet, the giant tax loopholes for the hyper rich are still in place (including “carry interest“!).

Not to worry, say many of the self proclaimed liberals and progressives opinion makers. In their latest tactic, they claim that there is no debt problem in the USA. They observe contently that interest rates have never been so low, that the deficit has disappeared from places such as the state of California, and that Obama’s reforms have been the “f… big deal“, as the robust Biden said, and Krugman confirmed.

What that self satisfied elite omits is that interest rates are low because the economy is not recovering. In a self amplifying loop, total debt (also called “leverage”), so easy to acquire with low interest, so stifling to serve later, is obviously a factor.

Because debt is accompanied with interest, too much debt means too much interest paid. At the limit, the debtor owns nothing, the debtor pays interest all day long, and the debtor becomes a serf.
***

WHEN DEBT EXPLODES INTO SLAVERY:
Servitude from debt did not just happen in the Middle Ages. And it does not just happen to individuals.

In 2011 and 2012 Italy’s real economy was doing rather well: a bigger industrial sector than Great Britain, and no PRIMARY deficit (the USA primary deficit is 7% of GDP). Yet, Italy was engulfed in a catastrophic debt crisis.

How come? International investors asked for unsustainable interest to renew Italian debt.
Why they got in that mood, pouncing on Italy instead of Britain, say, is very complicated; but one of the factors is the madness of crowds; another, of course, is that the plutocracy has had a multi-generational conflict with France, and the Eurozone, or even the EU, is viewed as a dangerously French amplification machine.

During that crisis, Italian deficit (that is how much debt is added each year) came to be caused entirely by added interest on very old debt. (Total Italian debt was 121% of GDP when the interest rates charged to that country exploded.)

Greece went through something similar, just way worse (some Hellenic interest rates went above 100%).
Long ago, I advocated that Greece should default. This is what was done, in the end, because there was no other choice (although the default involved most of the governmental debt, Greece still owes hundreds of billions of euros, something that will have to be reduced further).

The European debt crisis abated in the second part of 2012 thanks to three factors. The most important factor was that unambiguous signals were given that France and Germany would do whatever it took to preserve the European banking system.

Thus the European Central Bank (ECB) was given a green light to stretch its mandate, and resort to USA style “Quantitative Easing” (QE). (The Europeans use another term than “QE”, in the hope that one does not feel they are just Americans infeodated to private finance as the government of the USA is!) QE consisted into sending a trillion euros to private banks, in the hope that they will show a profit. In the USA, QE has given to the banks more than 8 trillion dollars (about half of the yearly GDP). (See note on liabilities.)

The other cause of the abatement of the European debt crisis has been a ferocious crack down on deficits. Italy has no primary deficit, Germany has no deficit whatsoever. Even France is breaking hard to try to bring her deficit around 3% in 2013. Spain’s unemployment, now at 26%, keeps climbing, but the government helps ever less (after years of a delirious construction binge).

As Europe imports much of its energy, the climb of the euro, a consequence of these healthier finances, is viewed positively (it forces European industry to excell, a ball Switzerland and Germany got rolling, to great success.)
***

WHEN DEBT CUTS INTO THE BONE:
Many countries are overdoing the austerity: Germany has no deficit, but it’s interior demand has long been very weak, as it rested on the likes of Greek and Iberian madness. Now the German economy is contracting. In Great Britain, savage cuts are proving self defeating: the deficit is still above 7%, the country is rolling again in recession, with long term GDP numbers worse than in the depression of the 1930s.

David Cameron, an extremely rich scion, Britain’s chief, thinks smart to duplicate the degeneracy that afflicts the USA, ever since Reagan imposed Voodoo economics. Thanks to Cameron, it can cost 10,000 euros to attend public university in the UK. Such cuts, should they stick, guarantee that the historical strength of the West, intellectual power, will sink in England, as surely as the Titanic.

California does not have a deficit, Paul Krugman boasted. Sure. Because of horrendous cuts, through the muscles, into the bones. Say in education: the, supposedly public, University of California charges California residents more than $12,000 in tuition, about a quarter of the median USA family income. Another sneaky deficit fighting measure is to let children enter primary school a year later. Meanwhile health costs considerably more to the public, thanks to genial Obamacare.

No more education, no more health, while Paul Krugman, self proclaimed “conscience of a liberal”, extols California as an example. The hyper rich have something to celebrate, many of the richest of the elite still pays no taxes, thanks to loopholes that the media never talks about (while the working stiff pays nearly as much tax as in France, without any of the free stuff there).
***

LET’S LIE ABOUT FEDERAL DEBT: WHAT COULD GO WRONG?
Paul Krugman, much of the New York Times and much of the official left, claim that there is no debt problem in the USA: the debt is only 73% of GDP (less than France or even Germany). This chorus has recently been joined by the Congress Budget Office (CBO) and the Wall Street Journal.

And yet… The debt ceiling has been broken through. The ceiling was at 16,4 TRILLION. Total debt is now crossing $16.5 trillion. The USA GDP is around 15 trillion. Thus the debt is 111% of GDP, as the IMF says, it’s not 73% as many democrats claim.

USA Debt/GDP Worse Than During WWII

(The green line above depicts what would have happened if Reagan had balanced his budget instead of practicing the Voodoo Economics that debt did not matter.)

If one tried to point to that fact, the 111% debt, the New York Times censorship bureau was long in the habit to find such news unfit to print, and would censor them immediately. They did this to me, dozens of times. I amused myself seeing the liberally correct establishment crack down on this apparently anti-liberal notion. the real extent of the debt. Another trick was to publish unfavorable comments informing me that I “did not know what I was talking about”, and should “do [my] homework“.

The Economist, apparently recognized that there was something good in this conspiracy to underestimate the debt. So it nebulously recognized that the debt was “actually 25%” higher than 73%. That is 100% of GDP.
But, as I said, the total USA debt is above 111% of GDP, and growing by 1% every two months. Not exactly a viable proposition. Those who deny this are, on the face of it, just sycophants of the present economic-financial system. As it is, the USA cannot apply to the European Union, on financial grounds alone. Ironical.

Debt is not computed in the same way in Europe and the USA. First, one has to distinguish “gross” public debt and net public debt. Net public debt subtracts fiscal assets (cash, bonds, shares) owned by the government.

When Europeans talk about the debt their states owe, they talk about the gross debt. That makes a huge difference due to the many assets owned by European states.

The French government could argue French debt is not that bad, because it owns shares in Renault, EADS, etc. The Greek government is busy selling various assets it owns to reduce its debt (countless islands, etc.).

But this is not the mentality ruling the bean counters in the USA. There those who want to under-estimate the debt of the government of the USA, far from being rigorous as the Europeans, go to the opposite extreme. They do NOT take into account the money borrowed FROM Medicare and the Social Security “Trust” Fund. Those who want to underestimate the debt of the USA do not count government bonds owned by the Social Security Fund since it is seen as one arm of government having a claim on another arm of the government.

This sleight of hand reduces the debt/GDP of the USA from 111% down to 73%. In other words, according to this subterfuge, the government general fund does not have to reimburse the five trillion dollars it owes to Medicare and Social Security. Paul Krugman and many at the New York Times and the CBO find this conscientious and liberal.
***

LITTLE DEBT, IF WE STEAL SOCIAL SECURITY & MEDICARE:
The debt situation shows that many of the many prominent American liberals are actually not liberal at all. They just play one on TV. Because the most important message they have about the Federal debt of the USA is that, the money owed to Medicare and the Social Security TRUST Fund is actually ZERO.

It’s cool with the New York Times, Krugman and company, if the government stole five trillion dollars to We The People. How conscientious and liberal is that?

But why should we be surprised? Did not the same crowd embrace Obamacare’ public subsidies to private healthcare plutocrats?

Some say that there is no danger. They assume that government bonds will stay as worthy in the future as they are now. Yet this will happen if, and only if the Greater Depression we are in extends indefinitely. If the economy happens to improve significantly, there is no way that the present bonds, with their extremely low returns, would interest investors. So the bonds would lose most of their value.

As the money those bonds used to represent would still be due to Medicare and Social Security, it could either be stolen outright, from The People, or it could be raised from taxing The People once again, for the same thing as they taxed for, before.

Hence ignoring the part of public debt held by the… public, through public institutions is sustainable, if, and only if, the economy keeps on sinking. How progressive.
***

TAX FREE RIDERS, TAX CARBON, SPURN UNPRODUCTIVE DEBT, EMBRACE JOBS:
So? Are the loud progressives dominating the media actually regressive? Would that be, by any chance, entangled with their membership in the plutocracy serving oligarchy?

By underestimating the debt problem, the problem of the present economy can keep on being underestimated. A huge deficit can insure that money can keep on been thrown at the People. And that the free riders will keep on riding for free.

Whereas what we The People need, to be fully satisfied, is jobs. Jobs don’t just bring money, but empowerment, pride, satisfy the instinct of utility, mental, and physical activity. A society where People work is fully human, a society where People don’t work, is not.

By realizing how severe the crisis is, jobs can be brought over to bear on the peoblem. Just to make sustainable energies work, millions of jobs have to be created.

Because those jobs would be profitable by definition, they are worth getting indebted for.

Take for example power lines. Power lines are needed because sustainable energy tends to jump around in space and time; lots somewhere sometimes, and then somewhere else, another time. Germany has wind in the north, sun in the south. Washington State has much hydro power in early summer, and not enough power lines to get it out. Much power line work is needed all over.

Windmills work. Especially the latest types, offshore. A problem, though, is that the wind does not blow all the time, or when needed. The same problem affects solar energy. Power lines cannot solve it all. But dams can remedy the rest.

In the case of offshore wind, the solution is obvious: artificial, multibillion dollars islands, to turbine up water in artificial reservoirs, when demand is slack. To build all these islands will surely be a lot of work.

Mandated weatherization of homes and buildings is another obvious target (that is done in some European countries such as France, but not in the USA, where the Obama administration just gave subsidies to weatherize one million homes; a completely different activity, as it redistribute taxpayer money, instead of leveraging private economic activity… without using any taxpayer money).

So here we are: face the debt problem. It’s enormous. Debt ought not to be used for everyday expense, but only for worthy investments, as used to be the case.

And if there is too much debt, the solution is not crushing taxes on salaried people (top tax margin in California is 52%, although the truly hyper rich still pays nought, as they are not salaried…) Nor is the solution savage cuts. Instead the tax system ought to be overhauled: make the richest individuals and corporations pay tax, and make the richest economic activity pay tax too (for example financial transactions ought to pay tax, like all other transactions do; 11 countries of the Eurozone have decided to do so.

Another obvious revenue generator is a worldwide carbon tax. If the USA cooperated with the European Union there, instead of opposing it ridiculously, the tax would become reality so fast it would have a positive economic effect right away. Verily the least carbon burners can do is to pay for the damage they are causing to the biosphere.
***

SERVICING CAPITAL IS LESS IMPORTANT THAN SERVICING NATURE:
On the most macroscopic scale, debt services the most wealthy persons, those who have the capital. That’s OK, civilization needs capital. For worthy investments. It’s not OK, when it gets out of control, and debt becomes a way of life.

By insisting that Federal debt of the USA is only 73% of GDP, one lives in denial. One more denial in a web of illusions. Too many illusions governing, and a civilization dissolution guaranteed.

At this point, we can emulate the immense Khmer empire around 1300 CE. We can refuse to change so long, that we cannot change when we are forced to. With one million inhabitants, the capital, Angkor, was perhaps the world’s largest city, larger than China’s Hangzhou. However, the Khmer devastated their ecology, precisely by doing as we do now: using up all the carbon around. That deforestation caused a massive drought, combined with intense floods, and the combination killed the capital of Angkor.

Maybe the Khmer were paralyzed by the debt they were servicing, and, certainly, they were paralyzed by the plutocracy that they were servicing.
What they needed to do was to repair the giant reservoirs they depended upon, that were fillong up by debris from the floods. And stop the deforestation. And they needed to do this in timely manner, when they still had the power. They waited too long, weakened, and were invaded.

The Maya also waited too long in a huge ecological crisis they contributed to, along the same lines. So it was with Sumer: deforestation, drought, salination, biblical (literally!) flood…

Rome went through something similar, long enough to debate the problem. However, the plutocracy barred the way to go further than that.

It’s always the same pattern: not working hard on the ecological problems, when they could still be solved, because one is paralyzed by a self obsessed plutocracy.

Why underestimate the debt difficulties of the USA, while maximizing bad rhetoric about those of Europe? Is there a pro-American cult out there? Not really. It is more a cult of capital, and underestimating the debt one owes to capital is part of it.
***
Patrice Ayme
***

Note on liabilities: Liabilities are more general than debt. Although this is too arcane to deal with here, QE extends the liabilities of the central banks, and one can view it as augmenting considerably, maybe 50%, German or French debt… But of this no one never talks. For example although USA debt is nearly $17 trillion, all the liabilities of the government of the USA go beyond $62 trillion…

USA Arm-Stronging Planet?

Sustainable countries are sustained, literally, by a type of secular nationalism, imposed by their national institutions, and showing up as local traditions. This peculiarism is akin to a religious structure, and often related to the local superstition(s). Religions have moral systems. Moral systems have very practical consequences: countries behave according to them, according to their own national morality.

The tradition of crooks confessing on national TV (that they were honest crooks, so to speak) is a tradition in the USA. And also, confessing, and that is obvious in the case of the cyclism crook Lance Armstrong, can be itself a manipulation.

American peculiarism is of peculiar interest because of the great influence of the USA, and its pretensions to universalism. It is always inappropriate to masquerade peculiarism as universalism. Yet peculiarism is often there to hide exploitation below red herrings, and other irrelevance.

In the USA, the bigger crooks, the more they visit visit the White House regularly. During the “Chinagate” affair, under Clinton, the chief crook visited the White House no less than 58 (fifty-eight) times (in less than 4 years). He was a major money contributor to the Democratic Party, and also a Chinese government agent. (22 other agents were convicted.)

Aaron Swartz was an Internet genius (having been co-author of the RSS program at age 14). JSTOR is an organization to STORe Journals. It is restricted to those who are viewed favorably by the powers that be (for example I do not have presently access to JSTOR, being an enemy of the established order).
Never mind that the research published in the academic Journals was financed by the public (yes, even arrogant Harvard is financed by the public, the word “private” as in “private university” is a joke).

In plutocracy, the public is made to be stolen, and the great priests (now played by Nobel prize winners and the like in “prestigious” institutions) are there to make that into a religion.
For a very long time, academic journals, or, more generally, academic publishing, have been a good trick to make multi-billion dollar fortunes, so the wealthy have been partial to this system, one more system to divert public funds to their pockets. (In Great Britain alone, several multi-billion dollar fortunes arose from academic publishing.)

Aaron Swartz noticed this, that JSTOR was an organization to steal public property. He downloaded millions of articles of JSTOR, to allow the public to access it own public property. That was an important violation of the plutocratic principle that only the mighty has access to knowledge, because knowledge is power, and power belongs to those who have it.

(The Obama administration uses this plutocratic principle when it uses secret recipes to decide which citizens of the USA will be summarily executed by robots, for whatever those citizens did that crossed the secret red lines.)

Aaron Swartz was relentlessly pursued by the government of the USA, the latter thus proclaiming, for all to see, that the established order had a moral right to steal public property. Swartz risked 35 years in jail, no less (for trying to give back to the public, public property, the primary crime in plutocracies!) He faced a trial, public humiliation, enormous cost in time, worry, money, gigantic injustice, the feeling that he was nothing, and would be crushed by plutocracy, no matter what.

Aaron Swartz committed suicide. When he was still free to do so. At age 26. He was made an example by plutocracy. Morality, plutocratic style, re-established. All plutocrats can rejoice. JSTOR came out with a declaration oozing with haughty hypocrisy.

Notice the analogy between JSTOR and the banking system: banks also use public money, and the full back-up of the public, through the money giving (“printing money”, “monetary base”, “quantitative easing”) of the public’s government.

However, in recent times, after a number of corrupt individuals tweaked the system to their advantage under Clinton, the bankers became convinced they could get away with anything. Now they have got used to confiscate the money, and keep it to themselves, their friends, politicians, and (so called) public servants. That’s why they have the command and control of the red carpet at the White House, and the president calls them “friends”, express his admiration, and go play golf with them.

Banking is another case of stealing public money by an oligarchy. But of course not too many academics will protest about JSTOR, and, thus, banking. Once “top” academics are fed at the trough in Harvard or Stanford, they laud the plutocracy that feed them, as Roman intellectuals used to do, to their great satisfaction, as small thinkers, and great greedsters.

A related case is that of Mr. Assange of WikiLeaks, an Australian. His greatest crime should have seen him decorated by the USA Medal of Freedom. Indeed it showed an attack helicopter destroying like vermin a number of civilians, and rescuers, having mistaken a reporter’s camera with a gun. It demonstrated that the U.S. Army had criterion of engagement inside cities that should be changed. And yet, Assange is pursued with rage, as if he were a danger for civilization.
Instead it is those who are gun happy and those who steal public property are threats to civilization.

In barely more than a week, the Boeing 787 “Dreamliner” experienced a brake failure, a fuel leak, a fire which fire fighters took 40 minutes to extinguish with specialized equipment, on the ground in Boston, a cracked front cockpit window, and finally smoking battery that leaked corrosive fluids, projecting flammable liquids 4 meters away, provoking an emergency descent and landing. The 787 Dreamliner was ordered off the skies, worldwide.

Immediately, propagandists with weasel words implied that this had happened before. But not so, to see a new model of planes with so many problems is an unprecedented event in aviation history.

(The Comet in the early fifties exploded mysteriously four times, and the DC10 also had two very deadly crashes; they got grounded, but these were, essentially mysteries about unforeseeable metal fatigue problems; the 737s also had a mysterious control failure, over several years, but, there again, this was more of mystery, a subtle, unforeseen problem; right now the A380 “Super Jumbo” is the object of a recall of cracking aluminum rib brackets in its wings, 4,000 of them per plane, because a British company made a slight mistake; but that’s no big deal, just a recall, and most companies will wait major revisions to do so.)

Why did not this happen before? Because Boeing was an engineering company based in Seattle. It made great planes. Now Boeing is a financial company with headquarters in Chicago, making financial-political plots, worldwide. So the 787 is a shoddy plane.

Meanwhile the F35 Lightning II, another worldwide USA led political-financial plot, is delaminating (the layers of composite material of the tail are separating from each other). Same story at Locckeed-Martin as at Boeing.

There is nothing like sheer violence. To impose oneself, and get to the top. Lance Armstrong (not his true name) made a fortune of more than 100 million dollars, and it’s entangled in his “charity” (“Live Strong”). OK, granted it’s little relative to ex-president Bill Clinton’s fortune, and much less of an ethical breach.

All along Armstrong cheated, and the rumor has it that his cheating was so successful, because it happened with the complicity of some controlling authorities.

The same thing happened with the USA Olympics committee in the times of Marion Jones, and for decades before that. Times magazine made a cover claiming she would get five gold medals. Never mind that Marion Jones was tightly connected, and even married, to notorious drug circles in the San Francisco Bay Area. Unfortunately the Olympic committees of other countries had enough of this American corporate circus, and Ms. Jones got finally busted. She went to jail a bit.

The fact remains that known drug addicts are celebrated as great sport figures, and entire sports are going control free, because they are big business, and the grotesque, steroid exhuding aspect of the athletes is part of the draw.

So Arm Strong confessed, a sort of religious ceremony USA citizens are eager for, in their simplicity. He was questioned by Oprah Winfrey, herself a monument of the system, a billionaire of her own, paid to ask the right questions in the right way on the authorized subjects, as part of the general lobotomization program. One could nearly see the dollars scrolling across the screen. It has always been clear that Armstrong benefited from the highest complicities, and still do.

That way Armstrong (not his true name) is pretty much like USA corporations and plutocrats. No paying their way, but profiting from the system, arm stronging the rest of the cycling world into oblivion, just like the USA corporations and plutocrats are arm stronging the rest of the planet into oblivion. While USA industries were making billions from Armstrong, the rest of the planet, once again, was getting the short stick.

Countries come with their moralities. The USA long enjoyed the moral and judicial system exhibited in “Django Unchained”. But what did work, sort of, exploiting a rich and empty continent, killing millions of slaves and Indians, will not work on a crowded, simmering planet, full of people who are neither slaves, nor Neolithic American natives.
***
Patrice Ayme

Force Tax Havens

FORCE IN THE NAME OF DEMOCRACY’S SURVIVAL IS NO SIN.
The brand new Swiss president had the impudence of moaning that “big states do not treat small states as equal”.

At first, this sounds good: the eternal lament of the weak and small being oppressed by the big and strong, something to make the righteous weep. And yet bacteria are small, but nothing to cry about.

The proximal object of the Swiss’ hypocritical whining was the unilateral French decree on January 1, 2013 to tax 5,430 tax payers who earn their living in France, but were (lightly) taxed in Switzerland (through special contracts with Swiss cantons, although they are French citizens). Under what theory is one supposed to negotiate about that?

I have a question for Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden (and other European tax havens).

What were they doing in October 1939? Hitler had just invaded Spain, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. Hitler had started a holocaust in Poland, bombing cities, focusing on flour mills, for all to see. France and Britain had started a war against Hitler. 40 French divisions were trying to break through the Nazi Westwall in a very narrow, difficult mountainous sector (they would succeed 54 months later). The French could only attack there, because Belgium and Luxembourg were “neutral”.

It’s not that they are just small: roaches may be small, but they accumulate as great masses. The total population of Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden is now 51 millions (2012). That is, larger than the population of England (although less than the UK).

What were those “small”, “neutral” countries doing in 1939? Well certainly not cooperating with France and Britain. In other words, the “neutral” were not on the side of civilization.

Switzerland was racking in the cash and valuables of millions of Europeans from Middle Europe, who were fleeing the Nazis. That included all the valuables of hundreds of thousands of Jews (conveniently the banks would later lose the records of these transactions, once their clients had been exterminated by their accomplices the Nazis). While filling up its coffers with what would turn out to be an enormous stolen capital, Switzerland was not cooperating militarily with France. This had drastic consequences, because the Maginot line, which extended along the border with Italy, did not extend along the Swiss border.

So France had forces at the ready, in case the Nazis tried to pass by the central plain of Switzerland; the dispersion of French forces on May 10, 1940, was the major factor in the defeat of May-June 1940.

(The major sea-land-air invasion of Norway and Sweden ongoing in May 1940 by elite French and British forces did not help; for example the Legion could not be deployed to help the Fourth Heavy Armored French division led by de Gaulle cut behind the Nazi Panzer army; as it is giant French heavy tanks came within a kilometer of the top Nazi generals, at night, without knowing how close they came to decapitating the German command, including general in chief Guderian, who related the situation; a few legionnaires may have made the difference; but the Legion was getting ready to invade Hitler’s collaborator, Sweden.)

The usual Francophobic rabble will laugh, at the idea of 5 million French prisoners, 200,000 French killed. However France had on her territory hundreds of thousands of political refugees fleeing Nazism. A direct consequence of the French defeat was to enable further the extermination programs directed at Poles, Jews, Slavs, Gypsies. (And soon 28 million Soviets killed.)

Those extermination programs extended the extermination program against mental retards and degenerates, which was completely official, so Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden knew very well what the Nazis were up to.

Sweden was outright intensely collaborating with Hitler by selling him enormous quantities of high grade iron ore that the bloodthirsty dictator needed for making his weapons. The ore was going through Norway along the “Iron Road” to Narvik, a special railway carrying the world’s heaviest trains.
The situation was so strategic that France and Britain decided to cut off that non-sense by force, while Hitler, anticipating this, decided to invade Norway, to secure the “Iron Road”.
Sweden could have sent the ore by a longer route to the Baltic, so France and Britain decided to invade Sweden with an army spearheaded by the French Foreign Legion. Unfortunately the Legion had to be recalled in May 1940, when the Nazis attacked through the Ardennes mountains.

Hitler, smart in the way predators are, and desperate, because his chances against the French army seemed tenuous, had concentrated all his forces on one road through the Ardennes. A Spitfire pilot saw the German armor traffic jam, reported it, and was not believed.

Meanwhile the worldwide dispersed French Air Force was not even at 50% strength over France, and could not check where exactly the main Nazi forces where. Hitler focused on a savage attack against the Netherlands, in the hope that the French would stupidly show a big heart.
The French High Command fell in the trap and, with consummate stupidity sent the Reserve Mobile army of seven armored divisions led by general Giraud to the Netherlands. While the ten Nazi Panzer divisions broke through the Meuse river, way south.
The reason Hitler broke there is that the French Maginot Line finished a few kilometers to the south. The Maginot Line could not be penetrated. It was even stronger than the Nazi Westwall, which held the five million man Western Allies for 6 months in 1944-45.

The portion of the Maginot Line that was supposed to be built in Belgium, going north, had never been built, although it was supposed to be built, by treaty with France. This non construction of crucial fortifications was a particularly fatal treachery of “neutral” Belgium.

The initial Nazi plan called for a double pronged attack through Belgium. It had been fully anticipated by the French High Command. Had the Nazis done this they would have encountered head-on the French and British army, and be defeated. French and British armor was superior to the Nazi one, with much bigger tanks. The rare pitched tank battles with the French and the British brought systematic Nazi defeats (it’s only by going AROUND French and British armor that the Nazis won in May 1940!)
However a plane carrying the Nazi plan crash landed in Belgium, and the Nazis had to change to the crazy plan that worked.

There is a contemporary lesson therein: plans do not resist contact with the enemy, that’s well known. Less known is the fact that a vastly inferior enemy, as the Nazis in May 1940, can win by trying something crazy, as the Nazis did in May 1940. The admonishment is that the Western Allies should not underestimate, again, what potential enemies are capable of. Ballistic missiles, satellite and cyber attacks should be prepared against.

To come back to the initial subject, had the Netherlands, Belgium. Norway and Sweden declared war to Hitler during Fall 1939, Hitler would have certainly lost.

So we can conclude two things:
1) countries that still claim to be neutral, such as Sweden and Switzerland, should be sanctioned against, on that ground alone. They are, in truth vile, always anxious to serve the worst, most profitable master they can find. (See the WikiLeaks story with Sweden or Switzerland’s anxious pandering to Qaddafi, as ongoing symptoms of baseness.)
2) countries that are “neutral” when civilization, basic human rights, or the right to life are at stake (as was the case in 1939), are actually followers of the Dark Side.

Some will say:”Grow up, we are not in 1939 anymore, this is not relevant today.” But nothing could be further from the truth. The order established worldwide, is primarily military. It is symbolized by the United Nations, and was established by the democracies during World War Two (as the SDN’s idea got started in France in 1916; the SDN was the ill fated predecessor of the UN).

Taxation precedes militarization, which precedes democratization (this point of view was argued in these terms in Athens 2,500 years ago, leading to the construction and manning of a 200 triremes fleet, and, at enormous human, financial and ecological cost, the victories of Marathon, Salamis, and Platea… Against a particularly parodic version of the Dark Side. Thus civilization won over fascization.

For decades, Switzerland and the Benelux have played tax havens (it varies from canton to canton; Luxembourg or Zug are particularly abject, the Netherlands milder, but bigger by two orders of magnitude!).

Tax havens are not just draining the bigger states from tax revenues. As I always mention, the withdrawal of the legions from Britain, Germany and Gaul in 400 CE was directly caused by lack of revenues (the Roman plutocrats refused to pay tax, they felt reasonably confident that, protected by their own private armies, they could resist the small invading German bands). The crisis had been long in coming (Marcus Aurelius confronted it already in 160 CE). The “Occidental” Roman empire collapsed within six years.

By draining tax revenues from the bigger, leading DEMOCRACIES (there are about ten of those, led by the nuclear armed USA, France and Britain), the smaller states, the tax havens, are actually conducting CHRONIC hostile operations against democracy, republic, civilization, basic human rights, or the right to life.

Thus, whenever Occidental democracy confronts an enemy, Switzerland, whether conscious of it or not, is an objective ally of said enemy.

So Mr. Swiss president, by choosing the Dark Side, your country is not just small, vile and ugly, but should also be treated as a hostile alien. Such is the lesson from 1940. As France, Germany, Italy, the USA, maybe even Great Britain are presently requesting Switzerland to surrender tax evading plutocrats, they should hesitate to use force (as they have been doing increasingly).

The other lesson is that France and Britain should have invaded Narvik and perfidious Sweden in 1939, instead of waiting passively, and stupidly, for Hitler to attack Norway. (If the Norwegians wanted to fight the Foreign Legion, well, tough luck for them.) Cutting the “Iron Road” in 1939 would have fatally weakened the Nazis.

Right now the galaxy of small and despicable tax havens, worldwide, greatly weakens the big democracies, and is at the root of the ongoing Greater Depression. Tax havens enable gangsterism, banksterism, and tax avoidance by the largest international corporations, while leeching off the military power and order established by the leading democracies.

Tax havens should be viewed as terrorist organizations, as they enfeeble those who fight the enemies of the Open Society, and treated as such. That means, they should be treated with democratically imposed military force, precisely what the plutocrats do not want to pay for anymore than they did in 400 CE.
***
Patrice Ayme

Crazy Lie Technique

The Economist, the celebrated British tabloid, teaches economy thus: it siphons its European profits behind a mangy door of a second floor apartment in a poor part of Luxembourg. Would it be economical to pay taxes in the countries where The Economist is sold? Tax havens is where the good life is at, and The Economist just contrived a list to prove that.

Major profiteers and corporations do the same all over the world: they hide profits in tax havens they enabled through subtle conspiracies and deep propaganda. Why is the insanity allowed to go on? Not just because of corrupted politicians. Also because plutocratic agents made common people too confused to realize they are robbed blind. Instilling insanity is the plutocrats’ first barrier against common sense and decency.

Propaganda fabricates the spines of the sheeple (sheep-people). Here is a spectacular example. The ”Economist Intelligence Unit crunched hard numbers” to answer this: “Which country will be the best for a baby born in 2013?” Here is its somewhat deranged answer:

Better Serving Emirs, Without Health Care?
Intelligent To Make Us Crazy & Stupid?

First of all notice that, among the first 15 countries, none is a major military power. In other words, these 15 countries depend upon the military superpowers for their protection. That is nothing to encourage, lest one wants to repeat World War II.

We saw what this kind of parasitism brought in 1939-1940: the pro-Hitlerian antics of Sweden, Switzerland, Belgium and the Netherlands caused the loss of France, enabling 50 million Europeans to die subsequently; as a telling aside, Dutch Jews were killed nearly to the last person. 

Observe that sexist Muslim Fundamentalist regimes, with their subjugation of women, score high in The Economist’s esteem. This sadomasochism theme, unsaid, runs deep.

Among other amusements, Cyprus is one of the better places to live, according to The Economist Intelligence. Cyprus is an island cut in two, a few years ago, when Turkey attacked militarily by sea and in the air, invading it with its army, twice (well named operations Attila). Cyprus survives, without a peace treaty, the butt of Turkish hostility. Another full war, with more atrocities, is entirely possible as Turkey increasingly veers towards Islamism. But, according to the mental retards at The Economist Intelligence, Cyprus ranks higher than Japan, France and Britain, none of which is under foreign occupation. Maybe The Economist Intelligence finds lethal atrocities of the massive type one of the better spices in life?

So? What else? Why to live in a place that could be wracked by war again, just off Syria, with so many who have lost their property and can never again where they were born? Cyprus is a tax haven. Tax avoidance, the meat of life, according to Economist Intelligence!

According to The Economist Intelligence, Singapore is deemed safe, while the acceleration of sea level rise is 60% higher than the most pessimistic official forecasts (countries such as the Belgium or the Netherlands are spending already much to fight the advancing sea). For those unawares, Singapore, a tax haven, is barely built above high tide.

The Economist self glorifies, as it pontificates that “the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), a sister company of The Economist, has this time turned deadly serious. It earnestly attempts to measure which country will provide the best opportunities for a healthy, safe and prosperous life in the years ahead.”

So the other times, The Economist admits that it was not “deadly serious“? It was just seriously deadly, as when it  supported Pinochet? I sent the following to The Economist, and they published it:

The Economist’s biases comes in many guises. The Economist now tells us that tiny Israel, hated on all sides, surrounded by a ghetto like wall, and with the high likelihood to be plunged into five or six horrendous wars, nuclear or not, with impacts all over its minuscule vegetated territory, scores higher for a “healthy, safe and prosperous life” than all major West European countries?

Does The Economist know how to spell C R A Z Y?

And Switzerland, a small enclave stuck between France, Germany and Italy, does particularly well? As if it were on another planet? Whereas, in truth, Swiss schemes are highly dependent upon whether the EU and the USA are going to let them happen, looking forward. 

And Ireland, which lives partly from being an outrageous tax heaven (like Switzerland with its Vereins) will keep on being a tax heaven, thus staying rich, while keeping on getting subsidies from its poorer, but ten to fifteen times larger European neighbors?

And Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan are much safer than Italy? The Chinese plutocrats will not go silly in the next 50 years? The Chinese leaders will not abide by the deep desires of their underground Lord? Just in case The Economist does not know, let it be reminded that the People Republic of China reserves itself the right to recover Taiwan, anytime, by force, and that, should there be problems within the PRC, it will be only natural to distract the sheeple with a good foreign war.

“Crunching numbers” is good, thinking, better.

This incident offers a troubling two dimensional space: along one dimension, The Economist is really stupid, along the other, The Economist is launched into a multi-dimensional propaganda operation, no holds barred. Notice that in The Economist’s classification, tax heavens score high. Notice also that the large countries, which are taking increasing measures against tax cheats, are scoring low. An argument The Economist uses, even against the USA, is that they owe large debts.

What The Economist “forgets” to say is that the large countries, which defend the West, owe large debts, because they pay rent to tax cheats (including, but not limited to tax cheating plutocrats, tax cheating countries such as those glorified by The Economist, and tax cheating corporations, such as the one that owns The Economist).

In passing, The Economist mentions that the Netherlands, a sneaky tax haven, is the only Eurozone country worth living in. Just in case Luxembourg does not work anymore, the Netherlands, which is 30 times larger, should be able to shelter The Economist from big bad Franco-Germano-British taxes. (Netherlands population: 17 million, UK + FRA + DEU = 210 million.)

The Economist’s analysis of the best places in which to be born started with another piece of classical propaganda. That great plutocratic philosopher, Warren Buffet, one of the world’s richest and deepest men (Buffet splurged with various manipulations that turned Greece into a colossal profits him and his associates) was quoted extensively as opining that he was who he was, that splendor of a vulture, because he was born in the right country, as the right time.

The Economist Intelligent Unit is intelligent enough to pose as exemplary the USA in general, and its plutocracy in the 1930s, and in the 2010s, while talking about the good life.

Hitler famously explained in “Mein Kampf” how Big Lies work: “little people use little lies all the time, they do not expect big ones…“By using Big Lies, Hitler succeeded to persuade the Volk of things that were not true, as he pursued what he viewed as higher aims, that he knew the Volk would disagree with, such as preparing for a world war in 1945 or the extermination of the Jews.

If most Germans had learned about either of these secret aims of Hitler, they would have been horrified and would have viewed Hitler as insanely dangerous… So, knowing this, he lied, big time.

However, as time went by, Hitler became a mental investment most Germans believed in, and the more they invested in him, the more they believed. (A phenomenon well known in the stock markets, as all too many people tend to fall in love with their investments… however bad those turn out to be.) In the end complete collective insanity took over, as the book Soldaten, relating secret recordings of German POWs, shows (Soldaten is also in English with same title).

Now we have something new, that even Hitler did not think about: the Crazy Lie. The Crazy Lie technique makes people accepting of modes of apprehending reality that prevent them to think seriously.

The Crazy Lie Technique is, first, emotional. The Economist used to support Pinochet’s dictatorship for its economic prowess (paid in part with around 5,000 killed and 31,947 officially tortured). Some will say: that was then. Indeed. The USA helped or led, and paid terrorists right wingers to make a coup in a democracy that never had any coup (the USA was furious about losing control of Chilean copper).

Chili was, is, a European foundation. What happened to it was horrible, but The Economist applauded, just as Milton Friedman applauded. Many in the Pinochet junta were on CIA pay roll, while heating up their electrical pincers.

By posing the United Arab Emirates as what we need to emulate, The Economist is actually sinking even lower than it did under Pinochet. The UAE has no European foundation. The UAE is a sordid medieval pluto-theocracy. Some emir, son of his father, is chosen by his medieval tyrannical peers to be the chief, just as was the case in Transylvania 8 centuries ago.

Differently from Middle Age France, though, more than 80% of the UAE’s inhabitants are NOT citizens. They are basically salaried slaves. Health spending proportionally to UAE GDP is only 2.8%, the 181th rank in the world (there are only 193 nations in the UN; as Emirati citizens get health care, that means that non Emirati, the slaves, get none). The UAE enjoys four billionaires with worth around ten billion dollars. Out of a million Emirati (among 4.5 million foreign slaves, servants & mercenaries).

The UAE is Sunni Muslim, and it faces hated Shiah Iran just across the sea of the Arabic, I mean, Persian Gulf. The UAE is basically a Western Plutocratic outpost, not exactly what the Iranian theocrats fancy. Fortunately for the thousands of Persian rockets at the ready, the hundreds of huge towers of the UAE (culminating up to half a mile high in Dubai!) offer themselves as ready targets.

To warn Iran off, the French were requested by the UAE to open a sea-air base, with half a brigade of the French Foreign Legion in residence. Thus the Camp de la Paix came to be.

War with Iran is more likely than not. Although crumbling towers and fireworks among great explosions promises a good show, by assimilating this to the good life, the Economist Intelligence Unit apparently advocates massive lethal sadomasochism as the dominant pursuit of our desires.

Not all is dark in the UAE; it is a place that strives very hard, from pretty bad initial conditions (aside from having the world’s 7th highest oil reserves). But here what I target is the cult that Anglo-Saxon plutocratic media such as The Economist, and the Financial Times enjoy.

Both of the much admired tabloids ferry their revenue through Luxembourg for tax avoidance, which, on that scale, surely is satanic.

So why convey the insane idea that the United Arab Emirates provides with a healthier (2.8% of GDP on health, remember) and safer (obvious target for Iranian nukes) life? Just out of love for plutocrats? Not, not just that. What is taught here is insanity itself.

What is taught is an erosion of intelligence. The Economist Intelligence Unit is out to destroy intelligence.

Teaching people that “crunching numbers” leads to the mathematical conclusion that the UAE provides with much nicer prospects than Japan, France, Britain, Italy or Spain, is so crazy that the notion can only be accepted by suspending one’s critical and intellectual capabilities.

And this suspension of rationality and criticism is what The Economist teaches.

So we are supposed to join the plutocratic cult that Singapore is a much better place to be born than the USA. Or that the United Arab Emirates, a rabidly sexist medieval pluto-theocracy where most inhabitants are foreign slaves, just a handful of minutes away for the thousands of missiles of the hated Iranians, is obviously much safer and healthier than… the French Republic (of course!)

After I wrote most of this essay Lord Justice Brian Leveson, mandated by PM Cameron, came up with his report on the UK press. Leveson writes: “Most responsible corporate entities would be appalled that employees were or could be involved in the commission of crime in order to further their business. Not so at the News Of The World” (the now-shuttered tabloid that was owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, owner of the WSJ, Fox news, New York Post, etc., and powerful enough to be a part instigator of the war in Iraq, hence Murdoch’s nickname: Murderoch).

“Lord Justice” observes that the press “did not fullfill its role of guardian of the nation“. (Hey, The Economist spits on the nation!) The ‘Right Honourable Lord Justice’ recommends that the press  should create its own regulator, backed by legislation to make sure it meets certain standards of independence and effectiveness.

What we contemplate in The Economist is a further problem. What to do when crazy lies are created, just to erode reason? The problem is not restricted to the plutocratic cult, but other cults, as the Islamist one.

Egypt’s Muslim Fundamentalist parliament is rushing to pass Islamist legislation, making the Sharia into law. Never mind that Egypt thrived without Islam, a military-industrial superstition, for 4,000 years. Egypt was 100% Christian, for centuries. The word “Copt” itself is the Arabization of the word for Egyptian in Greek. In other words, to use some humor, the Muslims stole Egypt from the Egyptians, and are still at it, because, well, truth is secondary.  There are up to 20 million Copts in Egypt (Islamists will tell you that’s a lie).

Plutocracy and superstition reign best upon decerebrated chickens. So the chicken they decerebrate. Nowadays, though, the tsunami threatening civilization is not a few meters high, but kilometers high. Even the plutocrats and other exploiters will be destroyed by it, with most of the biosphere.

What we need is legislating for more truth. I proposed to make TRUTH as a new branch of government. After all, experiments show that equity, thus justice, is fundamental to primates. But what is equity without truth? What is a primate without truth? TRUTH & REASON ARE ESSENTIAL TO HUMAN RIGHTS.

What is essential ought to be legislated, thus civilization is enabled.

***

Patrice Ayme

***

P/S: Last, but not least, morality, at the scale of nations, makes happy (at variable scales of time). And safe. Thus morality is a crucial component for tomorrow’s health and happiness (although what ‘morrow’ means will vary considerably: Germany was punished on the scale of generations, Sweden never was, the USA already self punished, in part, with the Secession War, but more works need to be done).

Notice that I excluded not just the medievalists countries, or those waiting for heavy military action, but also the tax cheats from the list: Switzerland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Singapore, Hong Kong (also disqualified as owned by a dictatorship). Others have also to disqualified on even worse moral grounds.

I do not contest that Australia and Canada are good countries to be born. If one’s aim is wealth and comfort, in the next few years. However the ecological policies of these countries are so greedy as to endanger the planet’s ecology. They contribute massively to fossil fuel burning. One wants to keep in mind that the unfolding catastrophe of heat trapping gases pollution will be terminated by a massive world war, not just flooding, droughts, hurricanes, mass extinctions, rising heat, and collapse of oxygen production.

Being born in countries where one’s moral system will be tweaked towards tolerance for mass criminality is not, regrettably a criterion that The Economist put as an input. But it is neither willing, nor able, to do so.

“Greatest Nation On Earth”? Really?

YES WE CAN, MURDER WHOEVER WE WANT:

What Else? Not Much. 

The Higher The Assassin Climbs, The More It Shows Its Bottom.

***

[Those who spurn critical thinking can take the blue pill offered by Krugman, trying desperately to mumble vaguely positive about who history may abstract as the assassin in chief! Uncritical thinking: what mussels do.]

***

“We work harder and smarter than anyone else.” 

Thus boasted Obama at the democratic convention. If a politician in France proffered such a lie, voters would think he was not just deranged, but nationalistically crazed. What’s true instead? We are much less employed:

Employment Ratio Prime Age Population

If one had an ethical graph, it would crash through the floor. Obama stood on its head 25 centuries of Ius Belli (see below). Assassination without due process is the only category where Obama unquestionably surpassed G. W. Bush (Bush had implemented free drugs for seniors, effective immediately, so, in a sense, Bush beat up Obama at the health care game: Bush really did something major, and positive, while president).

The naive may object that the collapse of employment was not Obama’s making. But the opposite is pretty much true. Obama approved, with the republican presidential candidate, John McCain, in a showy way, the decisions of the Bush administration. Obama even left the main engineer in charge, tax avoiding New York Fed chief Tim Geithner. Geithner is still in place, having presided over a collapse of employment.

Plutocrats, starting in ancient Rome, have always loved unemployment, because it transforms the People into hungry pigeons who eat in their hands, humbly. Nothing makes Pluto happier that this daily humiliation.

Moreover Obama resurrected Larry Summers, and took him as economic guru, starting in August 2008. This is exactly when unemployment rolled over, big time. The obvious causal relationship is that, at the time Summers gave a presentation to Obama about the importance to save the criminals, the banksters, and re-establish their wealth. that, in turn, gave the Bush administration a green light to do just that. So, instead of playing FDR, that means, stimulator to the economy, Obama played stimulator to banks.

A the time Bush was lost, his dreams smouldering, and checked out (and not just out of Iraq). Geithner, Summers, and the Mc Cain advisers were all in agreement to save the banksters, and damn the real economy. So here we are. Worldwide.  

Instead what had to be done, ALL OVER, was what was done to save the car industry. Obama did it, but just for the car industry (I gave explicit recommendations on how to do it in other industries, so it was possible to do so, obviously… Trillions were spent on the banks, for the banks, by the taxpayers, order of Obabush.)

Mr. Summers was the architect of the sustainable crushing of the economy by an unregulated bubble of financial derivatives and activities, under money hungry resident Clinton. It made the economy red hot under Clinton, and after that, it imploded. For this, people are much grateful to Clinton.

People are mesmerized by Clinton, like birds by a mamba. Something about bird brains, that even mambas understand.

Verily, the much despised Greeks work 2,100 hours a year (that’s because Greece is the country with the most family owned businesses). Koreans work 2,200 hours, and USA citizens work “only” 1778 hours. At least 15 nations work more per hour than the USA… In the OECD alone.

These numbers are known by all serious people. So why is Obama seriously lying to the thunderously applauding multitude? Why is the pseudo left multitude applauding those serious lies? So that they can better forget that their great leader is busy reverting 25 centuries of civilization, replacing justice by assassinations, in the best tyrant style?

It is revealing to compare the French and USA presidential elections. Raw nationalism is very strong, all too strong, in the USA. Nationalism is even viewed as a moral duty, in the USA. In France, among other European countries, nationalism is viewed with intense suspicion, so one does NOT go shrill that way, there. In France, nationalism reeks of insufferable bad manners (except in the despised National Front, despised precisely because of its nationalist rhetoric). 

After all, when the Nazi tanks rolled in, the most important mental force in plain view was nationalism. Nationalism is the “Na” in Nazism.

So no wonder nationalism is not hot in Germany anymore, either. And that’s very gut.

Civilization is not made just of things one does, but also of things one does not do anymore. Lying about other countries is a very bad habit to have. Just as it is a rather bad habit not to reveal that the USA attacked the Republic of Afghanistan, with the help of its henchmen in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, more than 35 years ago. Attacking people, killing millions, for no good reasons, has consequences. In the fullness of time.

True, Rome killed and enslaved millions in Gaul; but there were good reasons, said Caesar, although the Senate stridently disagreed. The judgement of history, and of most of the Celts themselves, at the time, and even more afterwards, was that Caesar was right. So killing millions is not necessarily bad. (Anyway, conflicts cascaded in Celto-Germania, and Caesar did not start the war, the Helvetes did.)

Killing more than ten million Germans was the price to get rid of Nazism; there was an excellent reason. In Afghanistan, all the reasons of the USA, to sow religious war there in the 1970s, were terrible, anti-civilizational, and part of the price is the unravelling of the constitution of the American Anglo Republic into an unprincipled Principate.

The official story about how 9/11 came about, is an enormous lie. In truth, the USA attacked civilians on the other side of the Earth, and that was followed by a counter-attack, more than a quarter of a century later, after the primeval action of the USA led to the death of several millions in Afghanistan.

The truth is mean, but it is the truth. And even so called “god” cannot do anything about it.

“We are endowed by our creator… we are the greatest engine of growth and prosperity that the world has ever known…” We we we we… Is that a mutation of the self satisfied he he  he he of G. W. Bush?

We, we, we, we have a president who is personally acquainted with his “creator“. Was that creator UBS, or Wall Street? Those were the only creators in plain sight, for the objective observers (except for the millions of suckers like me, all the little tini tiny creators who helped decisively Obama come to power, last time, of course. But then he forgot us all, because we were not banksters!).

Speaking of that great other USA president, G. W. Bush, his CIA tortured those it captured for Qaddafi first. Hey, what are friends for? “We work harder and smarter than anyone else.” Indeed, some world records may have been shattered. Torture records and cover-ups records are piling up. For the whole world to contemplate.

Some victims were left dangling from manacles around their wrists and feet for four months straight (interview on French TV from a famous survivor captured in Asia by the CIA). This assuredly demonstrates that USA torturers can get lazy: leaving a guy to hang around for four months does not smack of hard work. Besides those CIA goons are not that smart, because they forgot to kill all those they tortured, so now they speak (at least to non USA media).

People will say: “Oh, that was Bush, that was before”. Right. Things have become much worse, as a policy of systematic assassination by robots is being conducted worldwide, even on USA citizens, even on some of those who are still children. People should meditate this carefully: do they want a world where a so called “commander in chief” selected by some tribe with 4% of mankind go around the world, assassinating people without judicial process?

The Roman Republic leaders, 25 centuries ago, found such a notion atrocious, repulsive, uncivilized. Some of Rome worse terrorist adversaries received a sort of legal process (for example, Jugurtha, Vercingetorix, Simon bar Giora and John of Giscala; the former three were judged and executed, the latter, condemned to life imprisonment). These events were, in order of people killed, relative to the population then, and the danger they represented to Rome, greater, by orders of magnitude, to relatively puny 9/11. Still the Romans kept their constitutional cool, they applied due process to the criminals.

Formidable adversaries such as Josephus, the top Jewish general in the (treacherous Judea war) in the end was adopted by emperor Vespasian, and inherited his mansion, in Rome.

And the Romans kept their constitution intact, whereas Obama considers he has right of life and death on anybody, worldwide, without a semblance of due process. Definitively a violation of Ius Belli and international law. Say the millennia.

The Romans knew that “Ius Belli“, the Law of War, killing the adversary philosophically, was more important than killing the adversary physically. Obama confuses looking cool as a chap, and cold blooded assassination. Worse: goose stepping behind, cheering and applauding Obama’s exhibitionist love for his family, a circus for little children, USA citizens are carefully arranging their forgetfullness about what the Romans knew, 25 centuries ago. Namely that it matters when one goes and kill people, that everybody understand why, and that the cause be just.

The main axis of France’s foreign policy, since May 8, 1945, has been to re-educate the Germans in the way of peace and love. Franco-German reconciliation has been number one top priority. This was not compatible with nationalism, and that is why France did not seize one square kilometer of German territory after the Nazi defeat.

I turned the TV on, to watch the democratic convention, and here were sexy girls speaking like they knew it all, telling the USA what to think. They were movie actresses, and the crowd just loved them. With a teleprompter, any mental retard who knows how to read can work harder and smarter than anyone else.

Talking about plastic surgery, here was Vice President Jo Biden. All excited, and delivering a pretty good speech. He celebrated, (for want of a better word),  the death of more than 6,000 soldiers, and 50,000 wounded some so very severely, he marvelled with exorbited eyes. The RESOURCE WAR, aka “war against terrorism“, brought a tear eyed evocation. Biden finished on :”God bless you, God bless you!“

God bless you for what? Destroying Afghanistan since 1978, just because “yes, we can“

What struck me, beyond Joe’s predictable rhetoric, was how Biden had suffered from plastic surgery. His eyebrows were angling up, then came down hard on the side. His eyelids were wide open, as if he had been immensely struck by the incongruity of it all, after been hit on the head. What did that creature remind me of? It felt familiar. Yes. Those Batman movies, with the Joker. OK, I am not a specialist of Batman, and I have not really seen the movie, just extracts, so I cannot explore further what Biden has been trying to say by being a real life imitation of the joker incarnated by Jack Nicholson. Is it all a joke? Is that what he wants to say?

Another contrast with France was the so called “First Lady” that introduced “the love of my life“. Nobody of importance in the USA is aware that the “First Man” semantics was invented by Augustus, Rome’s first life long tyrant. But, even Augustus, did not introduce the ridiculous notion of “First Lady“. Who are the Last Ladies?

And why is the First Lady’s sex life so important? Sorry, I meant romantic. Hey, go easy on the steroids, by the way, those shoulders… And why does the resident instrumentalize his daughters? “Malia, Sasha, we are so proud of you… and tomorrow you have to go to school.” Why is that national news? Why does the president’s official business includes telling his daughters he is proud of them? It’s not obvious? He did not think of it before? He needs a teleprompter to communicate with his family? 

And why are taxpayers paying 100 million dollars for this pathetic, clownish circus?

Are USA citizens so deprived of these things they need to see them on TV? I was amused when Michelle made a huge smile off sync while telling the story of someone who could not afford health care. It was meant to express compassion, but the timing and intensity were off. With these little things sincerity, or lack thereof, shines through. Can one work the appearance of a heart harder and smarter than anyone else? A question much of the world has for the USA.

“Michelle…I love you so much” Thus Obama does not just love to coolly assassinate citizens, worldwide. His love is all encompassing. And the other clown who smiles, immensely touched by this apparent revelation, just made to her, watched by hundreds of millions. And they embrace, and embrace… Why don’t they go all the way? Would not that augment the audience? Worldwide exhibitionism. What happens when it turns out that the president was sleeping around with the hordes, as happened so many times in the past, with many other presidents? Maybe all these drugs they are given to perform 24/7, like circus animals who would never, ever, rest in a cage.

For that matter, how come ex-resident Clinton, now filthy rich, is immensely popular while everybody should know, by now, that he planted, with his gardener, Larry Summers, the seeds of the financial disaster? Namely plutocratically engineered derivatives to the horizon, devouring the world economy? Is WE THE PEOPLE dominated by masochism?

So why the exhibitionism? Because when there is enough style, it can displace substance. And when the substance is banksterism as far as the eye can see, it’s best hidden in plain sight.

The best joke was Obama’s content empty discourse. He even forgot to mention “Obamacare” also known as the “Affordable Care Act”. His sycophants used to call that monstrosity his “signature achievement“. And here he was, refusing to sign his achievement again! Tell us it’s not true, Barry-Barack, tell us that you do not just say what the polls tell you to say.

Health care is much improved, just wait for the bill. Apparently Obamacare has become better not talked about. (True the ACA is supposed to increase how much most people are supposed to spend in health care: the act may be affordable, but is it care? The Republicans have noticed that Obama proposed to reduce the funding of Medicare by $750 billion… So naturally they pounced on that, while proposing to transform Medicare into Vouchercare. Democrats are screaming it ain’t fair, as if that were not predictable. Either they are lying, or they really have puny brains)

In truth, Obama and his Pelosi plutocrat carefully wasted time when they had total control with a health care plan that will not work (because it does not have a sustainable mechanism for cost control). They agitated the ACA as the red flag it was, thus distracting the attention of the People away from the banksters (neither jailed nor even prosecuted), and from Quantitative Easing (print money for the banks that caused the crisis), and from allowing banks to use loans as rents for over-valued properties (over-valued by the banks themselves), while they, those Pelosi plutocrats, were keeping the taxes on the hyper rich at rock bottom, more than ever, and closing their eyes on giant loopholes in taxation (such as billionaires borrowing instead of spending).

Did I mention the tripling of troops in Afghanistan? (The Iraq withdrawal was pre-set by Bush the torturer, but that did not prevent Obarack to claim success for it, whereas, in truth, he was kicked out by the Iraqis, after trying to stay.)

The Pelosi plutocrat has long posed as a leftist, while owning Sugar Bowl, among other things. Never mind that Sugar Bowl had plotted with Royal Gorge LLC to destroy a huge amount of wilderness to extent both resorts (now an ad hoc conservation group has saved the wilderness from the claws of Pelosi plutocrat and her kind).

“Hope has been tested“. Obama has switched from being the candidate of hope to the candidate of “hopeful“. So cars will go twice further “in the middle of next decade” (news: they already do, in Europe, and they will anyway, even in the USA, when oil hits $200 a barrel). OK, could have been worse: Obama could have passed a law to improve cars in the middle of next century, and improve health care by selling body parts. Small favors are better than no favors. Four more years of empty promises, and love of my life celebrations. In the Roman Republic the two Consuls were elected for a year, and rotated supreme authority every month. OK, Romans did not have plastic surgery honey babies to tell them what to think.

Obama finally left the stage, after bellowing about the “greatest nation on earth“. A god nut, Timothy Cardinal Dolan, archbishop of New York, took the stage to deliver a general blessing. May this land of the free never lack those willing to grab guns, and kill others, said the holly man in substance, as he circled several times around the notions pertaining to “men in uniform“.

‘One nation under god, so dear god, bless the USA.’

The old fat man of god was a nice contrast with the young sexy actresses who had warmed up the scene before. Sex and the City of God. Even more weird was the gun fanatic who got shot in the head (with many others) and came to be rolled out as a great hero, whereas all she proves is that, even before being pierced by a bullet, she did not think right.

But 73% of USA citizens attach the greatest importance to shooting other USA citizens. A problem when crazies get crazier: craziness is viewed as heroism (for further reference, see our historical guinea pigs, the Nazis: the deeper they got in their madness, the madder they got).

So what is Obama proposing to do, by the way? Change you can’t believe in! Obama is mostly proposing to do what he did not do when he was in total control, namely rising taxes on the rich, and imposing a minimum tax of 30% on the hyper rich. It’s safe to propose it now, his masters have determined: he is not in control anymore (the Republicans are). So his masters told him: OK, go ahead, tell them what they want to hear, the Dream, the American Dream.

We work harder and smarter than anyone else. Who is that “we” who haunts us? The plutocrats?

Raising taxes on the rich is also insufficient, in any case: it won’t solve the deficit, right now augmenting at one trillion a year, for a grand total of 16 trillion dollars, nearly as much as the 17,6 trillion GDP of the European Union.. . And certainly higher than the 15 trillion dollars USA GDP. (European countries have an Added Value Tax of at least 15%, by law, 17.5% in France and Germany, up to 20% in Great Britain, 23% in Greece. That reduces deficits, but Obama does not know what it is, although I wrote extensively about it, and offered him a book, where it is, black on white.)

Partisans such as Krugman speak only of a USA deficit of around 10 trillion dollars, allowing the USA to look slightly better than France or Germany. How do they do it? How do they cheat? Partisans of USA greatness omit what the USA government borrowed from USA government funds whose spending in the future is mandated by law.

By the way, recent graphs show the USA GDP going up by leaps and bounds, whereas the EU’s stagnates (with Germany not enough to compensate Britain rolling over, lower, while Italy and Spain sink, and France is going nowhere). This looks good, for the USA, but it means nothing. Inefficiencies, waste, jams, and the intrusion of pay services in what ought to be free (like school and care) augment GDP artificially, or, let’s say in ways that cannot be compared!

Obama crowed that he had signed free trade agreements that allowed to sell lots of products stamped “Made in America”. Never mind that “America” is not an official country.

Never mind that the free trade agreements with Panama, Columbia, South Korea, were long stalled, because of the fear for USA jobs, and passed… by the Republican Congress in October 2011. The democratic crowd roared its approval, of the great Obama victory, grabbing his pen to sign on Republican policy, I guess. I am also for free trade… But only if and when everything else been equal. Actually the USA administration (and also Europe) are claiming that China dumps solar panels. Among other things.

Obama forgot to put a carbon tax, so his ‘5 millions‘ renewable energy jobs did not materialize. (By comparison Sweden passed a carbon tax in 1990, to great success for employment and CO2, let alone energy independence.)

Nationalist frenzy, and plutocratization, are hard to reverse. Citizens of the USA view as a self evident truth that they got attacked on 9/11 by a country they had nothing to do with, as they were careful, and still are careful, to NOT learn what really happen. Namely they do not want to read that the USA was engaged in a war of aggression in Afghanistan as early as 1978. (Shortly after three government sponsored Franco-Afghan geological missions under Dr. Laparent, found great mineral wealth. Is the Afghan war just a Franco-american conflict?)     

Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter’s National Security Adviser, stated in 1998, to the French “According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujaheddin began… after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan… But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise:

Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.… We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.” [Le Nouvel Observateur (Paris), 1/15/1998] After Brzezinski’s confession, other US officials who denied US involvement prior to the Soviet invasion, also changed their story. (For instance, Charles Cogan, head of the CIA covert aid program to Afghanistan at this time.)

For a fuller quote and a more comprehensive story see: http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2010/09/17/obama-commemorates-911-his-way/

By the way, it’s really hard to search the web, in the USA, only in the USA, about the Pelosi plutocrat‘s plutocracy, or Carter’s henchmen terrorizing Afghanistan. It’s not just the People Republic of China which manipulates the search engines.

But it works: the professional killer who was leader of the section who killed Bin Laden, although increasingly cynical in all sorts of ways, really believed that the USA was treacherously attacked on 9/11. Attacked, sure. Treacherous? Not so fast. That soldier had no idea that USA henchmen instructed the Islamist Fundamentalists to attack civilian objectives in Afghanistan, and, preferably school for little girls, a full generation earlier. (No, I will not bother to make a search for this from the USA; I would come empty. But, overseas, the documentation is plentiful.) 

Obama also strokes the dream of the unprovoked 9/11 attack.

Whatever happens, plutocracy will soon elect its next USA president. It would be funnier, if it were Biden. With his distorted face, he looks the part. Joker.

Obama has accomplished his role, that of a vaccine against change. You can read through his face his great interrogation: are they, my rich friends, replacing me with one that they would like more? So he mouthed the change-y thing unconvincingly. He took the left for granted, giving it only pittance. All the horrors inaugurated by G W Bush were left in place, more, even more terrible, were added. Worst: the left took Obama for granted Brown skin, lofty rhetoric, what could go wrong?

Fact is, although the assassination program and its death panel is going strong, the economy is going, at best, nowhere (in France, EU, or the USA) once population change is factored out. See the fawning Krugman, September 7, admitting in a burp of honesty, speaking of employment:“A plunge and a stabilization at a depressed level, which has now gone on for almost three years. Everything else is just noise.” (By the way, Krugman is now looking at the employment ratio, which I long advocated as more pertinent than the U numbers.)

Systems of minds are dynamic. As they go on, they become their own initial conditions. Plutocratization is hard to stop. In Rome it got unfettered after Hannibal’s forever wandering cataclysm. The situation got ever worse. 160 years later, the Republic had fallen. Augustus, of course re-established the Republic, formally speaking, so he claimed. With a caveat: he was to be known as the “First Man In Rome.” Princeps. Or as the French, always inclined to abstraction, put it: prince.

Whatever that was, whatever that is, it’s not democracy. Certainly not democracy as the Greeks understood it, and not even democracy as the Romans understood it. An abomination looking for a catastrophe is more like it. In the fullness of time, sometimes the present itself turns into a golden legend, as the floor disappears below a civilization.

Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Chanted Obama and his helpers four years ago (me among them). Yes, he could. Asssasinate whoever the death panel Obama instituted at the White House wants. This has been Obama’s presidency greatest breakthrough, its true signature achievement. Not fighting climate change. Not bringing jobs. Not rolling back metastatic kleptocratic finance. No. It’s all the way back to the jungle. Yes We Can! Assassinate. Whoever we want. For whatever they do.

And yet ethics was invented for economics, not just survival. When the god fearing Carter sent his assassins to Afghanistan, he set the groundwork for 9/11… And probably much worse to come (the USA has helped Pakistan’s Islamist regime make thermonuclear weapons, thus enabling a potential thermonuclear 9/11).

Nastiness does not just propagates, it feeds on itself. Not that the plutocrats mind. In hell, all fired up, ready to go, their lord dwell. When plutocracy turns into an avalanche, civilization is swept away.

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Patrice Ayme