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…

Europe, Victim Of Plutocracy

SOVEREIGN STATES USE FORCE AND FIAT MONEY.

Rapid Reaction Force: Fighting Krugman’s Plutophile Disinformation.

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EUROPHOBES DON’T KNOW MUCH:

Another day, another misleading editorial from Paul Krugman “Greece As A Victim” (NYT, June 18, 2012). As all good propaganda, there is lots of truth therein, just as in all good poisoned beverage, there is much goodness, to make sure the victim drinks it all. So Krugman piles up the truths, all to better lead to the same old stinger, down with the euro:

“…many things you hear about Greece just aren’t true. The Greeks aren’t lazy — on the contrary, they work longer hours than almost anyone else in Europe, and much longer hours than the Germans in particular. Nor does Greece have a runaway welfare state, as conservatives like to claim; social expenditure as a percentage of G.D.P., the standard measure of the size of the welfare state, is substantially lower in Greece than in, say, Sweden or Germany, countries that have so far weathered the European crisis pretty well.

So how did Greece get into so much trouble? Blame the euro.”

“Blame the euro.”: this is Krugman’s sing song. He has used different words to sing the same underlying music. But he, naturally, does not find the right reason to be against the present organization of the European Monetary Union, namely that the EMU was installed as a plutocratic device (by French socialists, of all people, 30 years ago!)

Krugman explains that Greece was doing fine, then it got in the Eurozone (soon he will explain to us that it was doing fine under the American sponsored dictatorship of colonels!). Here is more Krugman:”Then Greece joined the euro, and a terrible thing happened: people started believing that it was a safe place to invest. Foreign money poured into Greece, some but not all of it financing government deficits; the economy boomed; inflation rose; and Greece became increasingly uncompetitive.   

Please remind me of this next time: if people come, bearing gifts to the Greeks, it’s a terrible thing.

Krugman omits an important fact here, a fact that I have never seen mentioned anywhere, except by yours truly. A fact all European authorities want to forget, because they are entirely to blame: the Drachma, the old Greek currency, was converted at TWICE its true rate. It was a question of national pride for the Greeks, etc. Other countries (including Germany) thought that was cute and innocuous.

So the Greeks became TWICE richer than they should have been, just by replacing drachmas with euros, at the rate decided by the ECB. Hence one way to look at the present crisis in Greece is that Greece is readjusting down to what should have been the correct conversion rate of the Drachma.

Why were the Germans so anxious to accept Greece in, while making it artificially rich by a factor of two? The answer is obvious. So that the Greeks could afford to buy Porsches, of course. The way the Germans looked at it then, no harm done, all goodness to Germany in general and VW in particular. This explains also why the German authorities, including at the Bundesbank, are so anxious to blame the Greeks: to deflect the revelation of their own instigation of the whole machination of the Greek mess.

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PROFITABILITY IS WHAT THE STATE DECIDES, NOT THE “FREE MARKET”:

Krugman, mentions “productivity“, which is, fundamentally how much one’s work is valued. Valued by whom? Well, maybe by the politicians one rigged the system with. For example in the USA, most of the wealthiest people pay little (Romney’s tax rate: 13.9%) or no tax at all. Contemplate the tax bills of most Silicon Valley titans:  they borrow their spending money, and don’t touch their financial assets ownership.

And as far as the so called “market” valuing things properly, some the hedge fund managers have “made” (for themselves) up to 5 billion dollars, making them the most “profitable” members of the biosphere. Part of how they make their money is by selling short entire countries, after careful conspiracies which seem to have the support of the president of the USA (as he sings the praises of the most successful conspirators, the so called “Sage of Omaha”: different countries have different notions of wisdom).

Of course, if the empire was different, hedge fund managers would be rewarded by expropriation, and long jail sentences. The argument can also be made that modern bankers are, by the standard of the Imperium Romanum, and direct descendant regimes, a period of more than two millennia (Roman republic-SPQR-Imperium Francorum-Imperium Romanum-Francia, etc.), simply counterfeiters, a crime punishable by being boiled alive, and slow, under the Franks.

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THE STATE IS A FORCE THAT GIVETH MEANING:

Krugman explains that the USA holds together because of transfer payments: “Ask yourself, why does the dollar area — also known as the United States of America — more or less work, without the kind of severe regional crises now afflicting Europe? The answer is that we have a strong central government, and the activities of this government in effect provide automatic bailouts to states that get in trouble.”

Well the truth, historically, is that the USA stayed in one piece because of the application of massive deadly force. When the Confederacy seceded, Lincoln resisted, and won, by killing more than 850,000 people in the process. 850,000 dead is the latest lower bound in the number of death out of a total population of 31.4 millions in 1860, including nearly 4 million slaves. One can round that up to 3% dead (as the stats are known to be underestimates). This was the deadliest civil war known in the West for at least three centuries.  

The second reason the USA is together has to do with being a sovereign state, and that, as in all sovereign states through history, means that the USA has the ability to give money to whoever it pleases, in whatever amounts it pleases.

Krugman will not tell you this, because it is embarrassing for its cherished Wall $treet, and for the policy he has been promoting, Quantitative Easing. In a way a toddler can understand, the policy consists in using the state to give money to friends.

Under Bush II and Obama, the government of the USA, through the central bank, transferred in excess of five trillion dollars of “monetary base” to a handful of very big banks managed by whom Obama calls “friends” (yes, at least a third of GDP). For three quarters of his administration, Obama loudly called Jamie Dimon, head of JP Morgan, a friend and confessed he could never managed the immense and glorious portfolio of Dimon (who used to live in a 20 room mansion in Chicago). Now the Main Stream Propaganda has been busy forgetting these facts (because said facts show that Obama did more, so far, for plutocracy, than Romney ever did!)

So, considering this enormous conceptual picture he royally ignores, why is Krugman “blaming the euro”?

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500 BILLIONS KRUGMAN DID NOT HEAR ABOUT:

It used to be that europhobic Americans such as Krugman accused the Eurozone to not be an “optimal currency area“.

But, it turns out that “productivity” varies just as much in various regions of the USA. So that reasoning was so specious, that the most sophisticated Europhobes were called back to order, and changed their music. So what’s their latest music? Their new music is all about the lack of redistribution in Europe (as it is the EU redistributes only 2% of the total EU GDP). Yet, in truth, redistribution is not, by far, the proximal problem in Europe.

On the face of it, Krugman’s ignorance is mind numbing. Krugman should learn that the total aid to Greece is in the process of passing the 500 billion dollars mark (yes, 500 billions, a total aid of half a trillion). After Krugman integrates that notion it will be interesting to see if his “non redistribution” music changes! Krugman is the plutocratic canary, singing deep in the mines of the subservient soul to reassure the slaves of the established order that Europe is at fault.

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PROBLEM WITH EMU; IT CANNOT CREATE FIAT MONEY:

“Blaming the euro” is the usual anti-European condemnation by innuendo.

So what is the real problem? In truth, the problem is how the European Monetary Union was exactly set-up. The EMU generalized a French law passed by the pro-plutocratic government in 1973 (president Pompidou had been head of the Rothschild bank). The law forbade the French state to borrow from the Banque de France. Thus, similarly, states of the EMU were forbidden to borrow from the ECB. They thus lost their Fiat Money capability.

So what happened? All states use rolling debt. The plutocrats, using a worldwide conspiracy, with the rating agencies (owned by Buffet) and Goldman Sachs (on and off owned by Buffet), and the likes of Buffet and hedge funds (shorting the sovereign debt of states, just before their rating agencies lower their ratings!), have cranked up the interest rates (up to and beyond 100% for Greece). That is why Italy, which has no primary deficit, is now in trouble.

The usual explanation is that the lenders are afraid. But that explanation is all too charitable for the wealthiest people and organizations on Earth. The non charitable explanation is that these wealthiest of the wealthy are maximizing their profits. They do this by using all the tricks they can find, as they operate in a (deliberately organized) judicial vacuum. One of the tricks is simply to blackmail states, by having organized an enormous conspiracy to jack up the interest rates European states have to pay. They will not try the same trick to the USA, because that would be do it to themselves, and Obama has drones, plus the taste to be judge, jury and executioner.

That is why they conspired successfully to force Spain, which has much less government debt relative GDP than Germany, to pay ridiculous high, debt augmenting interest rates, well above 7%. Greed. The striving towards a new feudal order.

Krugman dislike the EMU, while protecting the vast plutocratic plot, because Europe is too socialist and that means too anti-Wall $treet. He wants Manhattan to gleam in the sun, and his mansion well furnished.

It was not the arrogance of European officials that led to the present EMU mess, as much as a silent coup by the pro-plutocratic forces. Now the French socialist, who set-up this mess in the 1980 have the occasion to undo it, and do the right thing, namely gives the ECB all the prerogatives of a central bank, such as creating Fiat Money. Interestingly Milton Friedman would agree to that. Thus the present plutocratic system is amazingly to the right of Friedman!

With Fiat Money, all the European interest rates could be brought down to basically zero, as in Britain, USA, Japan (although Japanese debt is 236% of GDP, much higher than Greece).

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FOLLOW CAESAR AGAIN, & INTEGRATE GERMANIA IN THE GRECO-ROMANO-FRANKISH IMPERIUM:

When Octavian, the grand nephew, and heir of Caesar, took power, he established a plutocracy, and was called Augustus (the one who augments). Later three of his crack legions, plus auxiliaries, and support personnel were annihilated in a three day running battle in Northern Germany. Maybe 50,000 dead, many tortured in gory sacrifices.

Augustus enjoined his successors to leave Germany alone, and keep the limes where it was, awkwardly following the Rhine and then the Danube. There is a gap between both streams, and through it, German invaders would strike again and again, as the centuries flowed. (Germanicus could have fixed things, but Tiberius feared him, and the assassin Consul Sejanus may have poisoned him, as he did Drusus, Tiberius’other son, consul, and expert general!)

Finally the Franks, the hard core of the last two centuries of the Late Roman empire, took power in their own name. The Franks, who were Romanized Sea Germans (the Salian Franks spoke Old Dutch, and wrote in Latin) followed the wise instinct of Iulius Caesar, the assassinated head of the Populares, uncle to the plutocratic Augustus, and decided to conquer all of Central and Western Europe. The Franks did most of Germany in a few years, by crushing the Goths and the Alemanni (“All Men“, French “Allemands”). To finish the task Caeasar had decide upon, took the Carolingians, three centuries later (when the roman Empire, Imperium Romanum, was officially re-established in Pars Occidentalis).

After getting their hands on Eastern European silver, the Franks were able to re-establish enough of a currency for prosperous trade (the Later Romans, like the Chinese, chronically, had run out of enough precious metals to run their economies with free markets).

Unfortunately prosperous Europe attracted invaders and scavengers (in chronological order: Muslims, Avars (a type of Mongols), Vikings). Those powerful and simultaneous invasions forced  the Franks to establish a war society, the feudal order (my analysis is very different from that of Karl Marx; Marx considered feudalism within a purely economic model, preliminary to capitalism, proving he knew ver little history, and that of Rome, not at all!).

This exhausting war, democratic forces against plutocrats on a rampage is still on-going: the French led war against the plutocracy in Libya was nothing else (hey, for once that Sarkozy did something right, we may as well celebrate…) Re-establishing a republic in Syria would be more of that reconquista of democracy…

The feudal order, in turn, led to a split of the Imperium Romanum (Charlemagne’s official name of his 300 counties imperium). Rich Francia went on to reconquer Britain, while the relationship with the rest of the Imperium Romanum became murky. Sometimes differences were settled on the battlefield, sometimes the French king-”emperor in his own kingdom” would support his candidate to lead the Imperium Romanum (the addition of “Sacrum” to “Imperium Romanum” came in a superstitious period, centuries later).

That’s how Barbarossa became emperor: he was the candidate of Louis VII of France who wanted to use him against several of his uppity vassals, such as Savoyards, or Normands, the later ruling over Aquitania, England and much of Italy. Soon the splits turned into outright fragmentation. In Barabarossa’s time the feudal order had broken up Germania in 1600 states! Italy and France were not doing much better, with many independent, or quasi independent nobilities and cities. The French king would support English princes living in France in wars against their father the king living in London, etc.

As European states grew in power, one thing became clear: that growing power could be used for unending, ever growing wars. The (civil) war between France and England lasted nearly 5 centuries (from around 1320 CE to 1815 CE). The war between France and Spain around 150 years (from around 1520 to 1666 CE)… within the later was the 80 years war to create the Netherlands, which used to be the old heart of Francia known as Flanders. And so on.

The mood conducive to conflicts reached its absurd conclusion in 1945. after that a different paradigm was increasingly imposed. It is this paradigm that people such as Krugman try to understand, while not doing a very good job.

Europe is a small place. It has space for just one state, Europe. That is what Caesar thought, and Caesar was right. Caesar, arguably the best general who ever was, was also the chief of the anti-plutocratic party. Not a coincidence. So why did the French socialists set-up the European Monetary Union is a way so friendly to plutocrats? Well, maybe some who went along were just stupid, or corrupt. But maybe some were very clever, and set-up an elaborated trap according to Machiavellianism 101. Now the German mammoth has fallen in the trap. Its struggles are mighty. But in vain.

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MACHIAVELLIAN POLITICS: CONSPIRACIES WITHIN, AND NOT WHAT THEY APPEAR TO BE:

To the discharge of the French socialists who set-up the EMU, maybe they thought that is all they could get from the Germans, at the time. Now Germany has swallowed the bait, and France’s position, in spite of Sarkozy selling the country to international plutocracy, is stronger than ever. France is the country of the future, Germany the country of the old. France has 35% more young people than Germany. The two most represented age slices in Germany are the scared, fat 50 to 60 year olds Merkel incarnates so well. Mr. Hollande, the socialist French president, has four adult children. Ms. Merkel, clinging to a past she neither master, nor understand, and rules which are beyond her, has no children.

Europe was built mostly by intellectuals who conspired to create situations where the easiest solution would be to “come out by the top“. The Steel and Coal Union between France and Germany (1948) was conceived to make war between France and Germany impossible, and so on.

The French Socialists are now in command of 21 of France’s 22 regions. They also control the French senate, the French National Assembly, the French presidency, and most significant cities. Even 8 of 11 MPs for the French living in foreign countries went to the Socialist Party.

In 1914, as the plutocrats, fascists and militarists in Germany marched towards war, the German SPD and the French socialists planned a general strike. This faltered as Jaures, the intellectual French socialist leader was assassinated. This time, though, as the plutocrats further their conspiracies, the socialists are in total control of France, and can plot the overthrow of the plutocratic order incarnated by Merkel with the SPD, Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands.

Granted, when plutocracy is at bay, plutocracy is at its most dangerous. The real reason the plutocrats in Germany went to war in 1914 is that they felt at bay, hounded by the SPD, which was asking for more power for the parliament. Dubious encouragement from Colonel House (photo therein the link, interesting in other ways too!) persuaded the Kaiser the USA would support him against France, and Germany’s army attacked an astounded world in august 1914.

Well, it won’t happen again. Greece is a victim of plutocratic plots, not of “the euro”, as Krugman would have it. I say plots, in the plural, because the richest people and organizations in Greece made a tax code which excludes them from taxation.

For example, Greek ship magnates own more than 3300 vessels, 15% of the world’s total. They employ 200,000 people, in Greece alone. Shipping is an example of the globalization of plutocracy. As a major shipping plutocrat, Victor Restis, put it:“Sure tax me. Find me.” He means that nobody can find him, as his life style is global, overseas.

Such plutocrats say that, if the European Union tax them, they will go to Dubai and Singapore. I say: it’s time to use force. French, British and American police and the military could find them, worldwide. Satellites and drones can be used. Ships can be impounded. Magnates can be arrested, expropriated, judged, condemned, jailed. Or then they can restrict their trading between China and North Korea.

France, by the way, just judged and condemned Somali pirates, arrested on the ground, by helicopters, within the country of Somalia (not just the high seas). Somalia pirates are easy to avoid; don’t come next to the Horn Of Africa. But financial pirates are worldwide, they cannot be avoided.

Lincoln is revered in the USA, not because he averted his eyes from infamy, but because he used force, in the name of goodness.

Plutocracy also uses force. When the interest rates the Spanish state is forced to pay reach 7.25%, as it did June 18, 2012, force is being used against the Spanish People, thus against Europe (Spain has a much smaller government debt than Germany). It used to be that finance grabbed 8% of the profits. Now it’s 40%.

The French socialist foreign minister, the extremely experienced Laurent Fabius, an ex-PM, has called  Assad of Syria, an “assassin”. The French want to use force in Syria. Very good, once some secular precautions are taken. However, there is an even more crucial need to use force against “le monde de la finance”. As president Hollande said: “My true enemy has no name, no face, no party… He will not be elected, yet he governs. It is the world of finance.”

The state, thus democracy, rests on force, be it only to resist plutocracy. So it has been ever since civilization exists. Time to be reminded of this basic fact.

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Patrice Ayme

Societies Pack Thoughts As Weapons

RATTING ON THE RATERS, And Related Remarks.

Europhobia  And Plutophilia Go Well Together. Why? Societies Pack Thought As A Weapon.

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Abstract: Ideas can kill. Why? Because societies can kill, and often do. Let’s put it slightly more pedagogically: sociobiology evolved most fundamentally, for the most violent reasons: defense and attack. And new ideas have an impact only when they become social (although seriously different ideas get born among the asocial). Thus, when ideas come around, there is a good probability that they are propagated for offensive reasons.

And please be it that nobody evoke the lethal hypocrite Gandhi (self described “friend” of Hitler, and cause of the Pakistan split) again! My model is Mandela. Mandela used bombs, with high explosives. (It’s not that I like bombs: I was bombed myself, by some fascists, and did not like it at all.)

Mandela, once jailed, switched to even more explosive ideas. (Mandela was viewed as a terrorist by the USA until 2008!) But the very power, the very violence, of Mandela’s ideas mangled the racist thought system South Africa was suffering from.  

A symbol of the intrinsic violence of societies is given by the most exclusive society of all, the UNSC. The five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, the victors against murderously insane racist fascism in WWII, all have nuclear arsenals, and certified moods and means to strike with them. This threat of devastating violence has kept global peace for 66 years.

At the bottom of the social instinct, having evolved through the eons, is, fundamentally, the need to survive, a need relating to the ultimate forms of violence. Society is as important, and as violent, as life itself.  Hence, when a society produces ideas, it is not generally from sheer curiosity, but, rather, from aggressive mania.

Richard Feynman resigned from that society called the American Academy of Sciences, when he discovered that all what Academicians worried about was, not science, but rather, who was in, and who was to be kept out.

We have to keep in mind that societies are not made to be smart, whatever they say. Be it Harvard or American economists, societies defend first of all their bread and butter, their influence, not the intrinsic truth. That is why American economist prefer to talk about Europe’s bonds, rather than about failing American ethics, failing American school, failing American energy policy, and, generally a failure of American thinking. And the latter failure can be directly traced to American universities.

Plutophile intellectuals such as Pinker, Ferguson, or even Krugman, illustrate this with the multidimensional apologies of the established Wall Street order they eternally spew. Pinker does it by claiming mathematics have shown him we live in the best possible world, Ferguson by confusing Anglo-American plutocracy with civilization.

Krugman supports Wall Street by spewing absurdities about Europe, calling it “Orwellian“. Is that a trick to better forget the much more eerie American situation, and to keep on insisting that the big banks which caused the disaster should be sent as much money as they want?

(That’s called “Quantitative and Qualitative Easing“: so that guilty banks can keep on investing that the leverage they create from the so called “monetary base” with their equally hyper wealthy friends, especially in the universe of derivatives, which is hostile to the real world).

Krugman insists that Keynes taught him all that, but, since Keynes tried to prevent to have the dollar as reserve currency, in 1944, as the head of the monetary and currency commission at Bretton Woods, Krugman did not learn his lesson well.

In truth, and contrarily to what Paul Krugman brazenly preaches, Keynes believed that an international monetary system needed an international reserve synthetic asset, with components proportional to their output contribution.

By fighting a European currency, Krugman is fighting not just Keynes, but a point that Keynes viewed as the most important in the world trading system. Keynes was obsessed by trade imbalances, and righly so. Trade imbalances caused the Great Depression, and even worse problems, but Krugman will never tell any of this to his smitten readership! Instead the honorable Paul preaches according to the considerable needs of the biggest, dirtiest American bankers!

How do we want Obama to take the right decisions, when the left wing, the self declared liberal intellectuals, the technocrats, are so much at the service of Wall Street, that they cannot even imagine the outside of the Wall Street box? Franco-German leaders are getting slightly better advice, and that is why they are getting down rated by that most influential society, Wall Street. Under covers, a war is brewing between Franco-Germania, and Wall Street.

War between societies? What is more natural? The sun and the stars?

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INTELLECTUALS ARE NO BETTER THAN THE SOCIETIES THEY ARE FROM:

 Obama has officially discovered that his roots are much more from Kansas rather than Kenya, and that Teddy Roosevelt was right to attack the plutocracy. Better belated truth than dreams from an absent father, indeed!

If Obama keeps on discovering truths, there may be hope.

Speaking of truth, the United Nations created a Palestinian state and Israel simultaneously in the late 1940s. And now the Palestinian flag officially flies at the UNESCO in Paris. Washington reaction? Cutting the contribution of the USA to UNESCO, 22% of its budget. The 22% correspond to a smidgen higher than the relative GDP of the USA. No doubt, though, that, if the USA keeps taking ethically stupid decisions, it will keep impoverishing itself. And in more ways than just spiritual. Ethics, after all, is the bottom line.

We have individuals such as Krugman going around the world, teaching their ideas, the same old bigoted ideas, we have seen for centuries before. In the case of Krugman, his grand socioeconomic idea is that every European nation should be armed with its own money, to make war on its European neighbors. Is Krugman teaching war and devaluation? What if he is wrong? Is he responsible of the ensuing war because of his influence as a Very Serious Person?

Notice that the sovereign debt crisis is about credit rating agencies. Those private for profit societies have suddenly decided to view economically magnificent Germany with more suspicion than this den of financial piracy called London (with a 12% British deficit, and two million people in the streets, now that the riots have abated).

We have individuals such as Corzine, one the biggest politicians in the USA, ever, senator, governor, whatever. And who became such, because he was one of the biggest bankers, head of the arch-villain, Goldman Sachs. And what was Corzine doing? Buying billions of Italian sovereign debt with American farmers money. Playing with the retirements of millions. Why is that legal?

Does one become idiotic by worrying too much about what worries idiots? Naturally. In general, all thinking is social. If the society is stupid, it will produce stupid thinking.

Intellectuals belong  to, evolve, and thrive, in societies. When most intellectuals worried about angels on a pin, it was impossible to do otherwise, if one wanted to be taken seriously.

Nowadays, plutocracy supporting economists (so called “Anglo-Saxon economists“) support the New York, Manhattan, Wall Street cause. That is why Krugman proclaims New York City to be the “greatest city in the world” (meaning, implicitly, with the most beautiful  street in the world, the one which is driving the planet into a wall, hence its name: Wall Street; no need for lousy jokes such as New Pork City, the street itself is descriptive enough!)

***

EVEN IN MATHEMATICS, MOBS (TRY TO) RULE:

Ideas are implemented by societies of intellectuals. But they are rarely discovered by them. Really new ideas are produced by lone wolves, not by those who howl together with the packs. This has to do with the fact that the emotional complex supporting groupthink is transverse to the one supporting true creativity: be loved by one’s peers is antagonist to going beyond their feeble mental capability.

Those true geniuses, the real originators of ideas, are generally ignored during their lifetime, when they are not the object of active hostility. Others, the professional opportunists, steal their ideas and run away with them. The most honest of them joke about it. Hence Einstein’s contemptible gloating:”The Secret of creativity is to hide one’s sources“.

Einstein had stolen  “borrowed” the theory of Relativity from an impressive Areopagus of famous…non-German physicists and mathematicians, and, first of all, Poincare’. This sort of theft has consequences, as lesser minds give lesser colors, or the wrong ones, to what they atole and did not really understand. Einstein did not understand Poincare”s subtle objections to his approach to Relativity, he just reacted like a child, aggressively. To this day, Einstein and his simplistic, dubious ideas rule in Relativity, and the choir sings, attributing to itself many Nobel Prizes. But, someday, the time will come to pay the interest on this “loan” Einstein made on behalf of the choir.

An example of the rabid behavior of packs was exhibited when the Poincare’ conjecture was solved by the Russian mathematician Perelman. A famously greedy mathematician (who I personally know all too well) who controlled access to math journals, and a pack of his followers claimed that it was them who proved it.

As Perelman put it: … “I was dismayed by the discipline’s lax ethics... It is not people who break ethical standards who are regarded as aliens, it is people like me who are isolated… there are many mathematicians who are more or less honest. But almost all of them are conformists. They are more or less honest, but they tolerate those who are not honest.”

They have to tolerate the dishonest: all too often, they were their advisers. I personally think that, among the mathematicians I knew best, precisely the group Perelman was involved with, the lack of ethics was so pathological that it was enough to cause massive violations of human rights. The only safe behavior was to not see their faces again, and leave the field, as Perelman did. 

Well, much of the same can be said throughout science, and there is no doubt that rising the ethical level would rise the science too, as it would protect the real creators, and hinder the opportunists, more than now.

Read more:

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/08/28/060828fa_fact2#ixzz1gOvWg0Gn

I know several of the actors involved, and I was dismayed by their disgusting (lack of) ethics before. They would make anybody decent want to leave mathematics. The problem, looking forward, being that the most decent are the deepest. Yau, not to name him, had been immensely rewarded in the past, in no small reason because he was the student of Chern. In math too, it’s who you know, and how much they love you.

Notice that mathematics will suffer, going forward, because somebody of the depth of Perelman left mathematics (and he is not the only one to have done so). So what’s left? Great thinkers can always meet on the Internet, and let the likes of Yau plot with the Chinese “president”…

***

BAD ETHICS, BAD THINKING:

Low ethics of course create low thinking. Those who put so much effort into an abysmal lack of ethics cannot occupy their brains with maximal mental depth.

This is why German nationalism, by putting the German Einstein forward, put on the backburner subtle objections (ironically, lots of Germans later condemned Einstein’s “Jewish science”…And there is indeed something biblical in Einstein way of thinking!)

More towering creators, those interested primarily by maximal mental performance, can only turn away from greedy insects, lest they be eaten alive, or turned into “pets” as Perelman puts it (and I personally experienced). This is why so many of the deepest thinkers turn away from the crowd, and any association of would be “peers”. Thus Spinoza refused a university professorship, and preferred to go on with his daily grind (from which he soon died).

The preceding is a fortiori true in physics, economics or philosophy (and why Nietzsche retired from his full university professorship at the grand old age of 30, having suffered fools and their follies all too long, in a Germany which was already going nuts, he said!)

Conversely, that vermin of Heidegger taught Nazism, in Nazi uniform, and, having thus associated himself with a pretty mighty society, the Nazi Party, sees his reputation thrive to this day. (The same is a fortiori true for the Bush family!)

***

WALL STREET, .1% GROUPTHINK:

Anyway back to the global civilization we have now, led by a few prominently noisy nations, among them, our formerly great leader, the USA. That the USA is increasingly dominated by morons is pretty clear from the panel of republican candidates. The thoroughly corrupt, nutty Gingrich (Gang-rich?) looks like a genius relative to the rest of the field.

Citizens of the USA, contrarily to the opinion they have of themselves, are more like pack members, than lone wolves. That has long been the strength of the USA: it allowed to neglect ethical objections, and occupy an entire continent with an exploitative culture, no questions asked. Indeed pack mentality comes in handy when invading foreign lands.

Even Tocqueville had noticed, long ago, the tendency of Americans to stand in societies obsessed by the concept of peers.

Tocqueville had considered American public opinion to be based on respect for sheer mass (rather than the respect for sheer intellect). The biggest pack was always perceived as correct. He saw in the respect for crowds as intellectual authorities, a threat to independence of thought: “In America, the majority raises formidable barriers around the liberty of opinion” (Democracy in America, 1835 CE, page 117)…“I am not the more disposed to pass beneath the yoke because it is held out to me by the arms of a million men” (ibid., p. 149).

But of course, the oligarchic American universities have interest to raise formidable barriers around the liberty of opinion. They are paid for that, after all, by their rich sponsors.

Conversely, the same richly endowed universities have never produced an Einstein intellectuals of the very highest caliber (as I explained above, a caliber higher than Einstein: Europe has produced dozens; when Yau was asked why he tried to steal Perelman’s discoveries, he justified that by saying he wanted to show to the world that China, too, could produce intellectuals of the highest caliber… Just like Europe; hmm, it rather backfired…) And it is no coincidence: money does not make a bird fly above the commons. Frantic competition is not conducive to deep meditation. 

***

TICKLE ME PINK:

Being a Wall Street groupie is why Pinker (Harvard) tells us in “Our Better Angels” that we are the less violent society, ever. So Wall street is not violent, not at all. You are hallucinating, you the 99%.

Professor Pinker does not see, he cannot see, he is paid not to see, he is paid to tell you that  the millions of dead his defense department, defending Harvard, caused in the last 30 years did not happen. Those five million dead or so (Iraq + Afghanistan), caused by various American master operations simply did not happen. According to the statistics Pinker uses.

Why killing millions dead? In part to keep an aura of terror around the world (the USA attacked the Socialist Republic of Afghanistan in July 1979. To get to the billions in oil in Iraq, and the billions in minerals in Afghanistan. Let’s dig a bit in the later.

Funny story here: the billions in rare minerals in Afghanistan were found by a French campaign (my father collaborated with it). The French geologist Lapparent, and his colleagues (including my dad), prospected under French and Afghan government mandates, until the savage intervention ordered by American Eternal Peace president Carter. Carter’s lethal violence destroyed socialist and republican hopes in Afghanistan. It also helped remind France that the USA owns the world, and, in particular, all minerals. 

According to Pinker, is this peace exploding? Oh no: he simply does not see that war which killed, over more than 32 years, at least two million (maybe three million) Afghans. It simply does not exist. For Pinker, and Pinker wants all Americans to know, as Obama never fails to remind us, that the Afghan war started the day the towers fell. But of course the towers fell because the USA had organized mayhem by in Afghanistan, for 22 years, killing millions.

In other words Pinker worships the same sort of mental ability which allowed not to see Nazism for what it was until after France fell in 1940. He would of course change his music if a few more towers fell in New York. Ferguson author of another Harvard book, “Civilization”, tells us that Britain invented civilization, and he recommends to read great Western books such as the Bible and Locke’s celebration of slavery (that’s on the last page of his book).

***

NOT ENOUGH HEAT FOR THE USA YET:

Wonderful climate conference in South Africa: the USA, with 17.5 tons of CO2 emitted per year and per person, got its way: no efforts, at the earliest, before 2020 CE. This means that the foreseeable heating of the planet will be 4 degrees Celsius. Within a generation. Overall. But most of the heating will happen at the poles, melting the icecaps, and rising sea levels enormously. Within a few decades.

The Europeans, distracted by internal banking and sovereign problems, did not dare rise the heat on the USA at Durban. 

The attitude of Americans is, at first sight, baffling: the supposedly left wings economic commentators there kept on talking obsessively about Europe, as if Europe were a more important problem to the USA than it is for Europe itself. And thus, implicitly, the discourse of American left wing economists was that the fact the USA produces so much hot air and CO2 is not a problem at all.

The European banking crisis is not that much of a crisis: officially, the federal spending on the banking crisis in Europe so far is 2% of GDP, whereas it has been 13% in the USA and the UK. This difference in numbers (the blaring Anglo-Americans spent about eight times more so far on the banking crisis, as behooves their plutocratic status; but that also means they are much vulnerable, and would like to make the Europeans pay, even if they owe nothing, in the grand tradition of piracy!)

As far as pollution is concerned, a power such as France, with, a much better health care, Human Development Index and equality (as measured by GINI), and arguably a higher effective GDP per median person, makes do with only 6.1 ton of CO2 per year. And it’s not just France: Italy emits only 7.5 tons, Japan and Germany around 9.5 tons.

It is significant that Australia and Canada emits about as much as the USA: these are all vast empires whose implantation went according to an exploitation model (for example the Americans deliberately exterminated 60 million bison to weaken the Plains Indians into eradication). In other words, when one has founded one’s riches on over-exploitation and holocausts, applied of the entire continents, it’s entirely normal to extend the concept to the entire planet. Canada actually just decided to quit the Kyoto CO2 pollution treaty, as its egregious violations invited fines.

In general the greatest polluters are all (literally) bloody empires!  This is of course not a coincidence. First one massacres people, then the environment. Actually massacring the environment has often been the best way to massacre people.

***

WHEN THRIVING FROM HOLOCAUSTS BECOMES A HABIT:

Indeed, one may wonder what the USA’s collective consnciousness is exactly after? Making New York and Washington into polders? The final solution to the problem of right wingers in Florida or Texas? By drowning them?

Why does the USA want a climate catastrophe? Why? Because the very rise of the English colony in North America (or Australia, or Canada) rested on cataclysmic change (the French model in Canada was about the Mission Civilisatrice, instructing the Indians, but not massacring them; the English model consisted in first deporting the French out of half of the territory they occupied in Canada).

To this day, about half of the population of New Caledonia descend from the original inhabitants, whereas the same cannot be said in Australia. True, Maoris survived in New Zealand, but, precisely, because of the efforts of the courageous governor Fitz Roy. If Fitz Roy had been like Jefferson or Jackson, Maoris would only be a few thousands, at best, in a few reservations on the worst lands of the micro continent.

Deep American strategists close to the Dark Side can only make the same computation as the Prussian generals who planned, plotted, and  launched World War One: if there is a world war pretty soon, the USA could come on top. Later on, not so sure. It is pretty sure that, when sea level will have risen 5 meters, some sort of world war will be on, as probably more than a billion people will have to move, from desiccation and inundations.

A civilization can get stuck in a mood. China was stuck in Confucianism (until Mao), Japan in a form of militarism (until 1945). Russia is (still) stuck in Czarism (= Caesarism). Or at least Putin is. For Rome the mood was slavery, which blossomed into theocratic plutocracy. In the end, Rome had to be shut down. This said, the USA destroyed its slave system, in a monster civil war. A successful reaction against plutocracy would be a generalization of that.

***

TAX ME PLUTOCRATS NOT:

So the biosphere is exploding, and what do American economists talk about? Europe. Why? Because the Franco-Germans want to tax financial transactions, and refuse to write a blank check to banks. Thus the Franco-Germans threaten the financial pirates in Wall Street on both counts. Franco-Germania does not occupy Wall Street yet, but the assault is on the way. The Franco-Germans are also assaulting the so called “City” (of London). Said PM Cameron.

Krugman, is for the war of all against all, at least in Europe: his opinion is that each European country should have its own currency, and devalue, as needed. When they have all devaluated, and they have no value, only the USA will have value, order will have been re-established. One does not expect anything else from an economic adviser of Ronald Reagan in international economy (as Krugman was, although he is not too keen to explain, so I will: by today’s standards, Reagan was a left wing politician, so Krugman was always on the left!)

Krugman, of course, loves to quote fellow professors from the universities at the service of the hyper wealthy. (Except for Niall Ferguson, who is too obviously right wing, and is considered by Harvard to be not just an historian, but an economist, so he wallops in Krugman’s garden, claiming greater depth of analysis, infuriating Krugman.)

Krugman thus quotes approvingly a Oxford professor, O’Rourke, who wrote a “Summit To The Death” where a colossal number of naïve assertions are made. O’Rourke starts with: “As many feared and most expected, the just-concluded European summit left much to be desired.” But desire is precisely needed to integrate Europe. So desire is actually nothing to fear, but something to, precisely, desire.

And then professor O’Rourke goes on, ranting against the monetary union. The best answer to these europhobic clowns from England, is to have Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland secede from London, and join the Schengen customs free union, and the Euro. Maybe Northumbria ought to do the same too!

One can also look at Professor O’Rourke’s discourse as suggesting that much more federalization of Europe is needed. Sure. But it takes time. We have to pile up the desire high.

***

ENRICH MY BANKS, I FEEL WEALTHIER ALREADY:

O’Rourke also suggest to follow the Quantitative Easing path of the USA promoted by, say, Krugman. what’s Quantitative Easing? The buying, by the Central Bank, of worthless financial assets from the biggest banks As I have pointed out, Quantitative Easing has been the main driver of plutocratization in the last three years. It just enriches the banks, and they invest in derivatives (several hundred trillions of Credit Default Swaps, for example). Why would Europe strive to enrich Wall Street too?

Because Europe lives near to, and from Wall Street (as all hyper rich American universities do, since their venom is basic to the plutocratic propaganda)?

Instead the ECB will lend to banks as needed, at 1%. That’s much better; not a blank check to invest in yachts and derivatives, obviously.

Krugman made another ill informed, europhobic commentary on O’Rourke’s article. Europhobia, and Germanophobia have long been staples of the media of the USA. Thus the erroneous can build on others’ errors.

Among other things, Krugman neglected the fact that the 3% deficit rule limit before prosecution, could be overruled by a qualified majority (instead of the present qualified unanimity). Also miscreants will be referred to the European Court of Justice, meaning that only willful  cheating will be punished.

***

USA:  CENTER IS NOT HOLDING, BABY AS UNREAD AS THE BATH:

Professor O’Rourke claims that, if the gumbo shrimp industry ran in trouble in Louisiana, the Federal government would help. This is the redistribution argument which all europhobic Americans repeat, claiming they have it, and Europe does not. Never mind the evidence screaming in their face, the preferred insult from plutophile economists, that Europe is made of “welfare states”.

Then O’Rourke claimed that Germany should have been helped in the 1990s, after reunification, by the European Union, but was not. Right, it should have been helped. And that is why it was. Is O’Rourke paid to blare falsehoods?

Generally Anglo-Saxon Wall Street .1% propagandists say giant lies, because they can get away with them, and the more they say them, the more crucial to, thus rewarded by, Wall Street financial mafia, they are.

Because mafias exist, and they are entangled with the politicians who enable them. Just a few days after Berlusconi was ejected from the Italian Premiership by his good friend Merkozy, the head of the Camorra was arrested in Naples. His name has been known for decades, but, obviously, under Berlusconi, the order had been given to not arrest him.

The entire European budget is about aid. Development aid, or aid to agriculture. There are even food programs attached to the Eurozone. If the periphery of Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Greece was able to develop so much so fast, it was because a Northern European tax gun showering them with money for decades. True, after countries such as Ireland became much richer, per capita, than France or Germany, the money was redirected to prospective and new EU members in Eastern Europe. Ireland is still richer, per capita, than its generous donators (just as Greece is richer than Slovakia, which helps it, in a redistribution program!) Now some development aid is even directed towards North Africa (as it should).

Professor O’Rourke is actually either monstrously ill informed, or a deliberate liar, and his prophet Krugman is, thus, not doing much better.

Let me explain: O’Rourke shrimp example is fishy, complete utopia, denied by reality.

***

REDISTRIBUTION IN THE USA: SCHOOL BUDGETS ARE OFFERED TO THE HYPER RICH:

It is well known that the Gates, who head both one of the greatest personal fortunes in the world, and personally the richest foundation, pose with the president of the USA to say they are going to save the school. So all Americans are supposed to go on their knees, and thank the hyper rich for taking care of them. Such are the Gates of hell: enticing in the moment, seducers posing in wealth and taste, calling you to abandon all dignity, so they can exert their might on your behalf.

What is real is that the school system, from primary schools to universities is collapsing in the USA.

Does professor O’Rourke knows this? Apparently not. He professes to not know it. He is a professional professing denial. For example it costs $31,000 to attend first year college at the University of California this year, a supposedly PUBLIC university. At Stanford University it is more like $70,000 (the supreme outrage being that those called “private” universities get plenty of public funds to support the hyper rich and the ideas that sustain their stranglehold on society). Public primary schools are closing all over the USA.

And what does the government of the USA do? Make sure General Electric and the like pays no taxes. When Obama controlled all, he made sure that the hyper rich individuals would keep paying the lowest tax rate, 15%. In other words the government of the USA is impotent, on its own accord.

All these rich professors from the richest universities in their rich mansions compare favorably a country, the USA, which looks like the Titanic, an hour after the iceberg, with Europe.

Is the school system collapsing in Europe? Are our children learning? As Bush, the preceding moron-in-chief used to say?

Well, Europe is not sinking, but thinking. And European federal debt is basically zero. The American federal debt is  more than GDP of the USA, and overall American debt levels, about four times GDP, are higher than Greece.

***

RATTING ON THE RATERS:

Last year the American and British deficits were around 12%. Did the richest, biggest banks and their hedge funds drive up the interest rates there? By down rating their sovereign credit rating? No. Why? Because they do not want to saw the branch on which they are sitting.

Example of branch on which oligarchs are sitting, and they won’t criticize: the so called rating “agencies” are central actors in the Wall Street system to extract money from the Public. Employees of these conceptual monstrosities rat on states, which do not pay them, but they have interest to be kind to private companies (members of the plutocracy), for two reasons: they get paid by them, and they move to them. Consult for example the Wall Street Journal article: “Credit Raters Join The Rated“.

It is highly significant that so called credit agencies threatened France and Germany with down rates on credit. While not threatening Great Britain. As the head of the Banque de France (French central bank), Christian Noyer, pointed out:”… a downgrade should come first for the U.K., which has a greater deficit, as much debt, more inflation, and less growth than us, France and Germany. Moreover Great Britain has collapsing credit.”

The British deficit last year was higher than Greece more than thrice Germany’s. This year the U.K. deficit is forecast to be nearly 10%, nearly twice France’s. 10% of Britain GDP is financial piracy, and France and Germany have the means, and intent, to greatly shut those criminal activities down. So Britain’s future is distinctly gloomier than that of France and Germany.

But Wall Street and its credit agencies have identified France and Germany as their enemies, and Great Britain as their friend. Pirates help pirates, and those who pirates help help pirates. It’s the same idea as the Wall Street prosecutor putting the French director of the International Monetary fund in high security jail for days, while knowing that his accuser was gloating with a jailed former boyfriend on the phone that she would make a lot of money from her accusations. Let alone the fact, known to the police, that the IMF’s director highly secured Blackberry had stopped functioning well before the alleged rape was announced to anyone (that clearly meant that DSK had been victimof an aggression).

To quote from the article on the raters from the Wall Street Journal: ” More than 100 analysts at credit-rating firms have left over the past five years to work for financial companies they once helped to rate… Lawmakers work in an environment where there is a revolving door and they posit that must have also occurred” at the rating firms.”

Now notice that the Wall Street Journal is revealing itself to be left of Krugman. Krugman criticize the European for not sending trillions to banks, and screams about the euro, the malaise of which is caused by the credit rating agencies.

But Krugman has nothing to say about the lack of vital transfer payments from government to public schools in the USA.

Is it stupidity, or is it corruption? Or is it just that the fattest wolves howl from inside the largest packs? In any case, howling is not deep, nor the noblest conquest of humanity.

Perelman, who finished the proof of the Poincare’ conjecture, would consider my attitude offensive.

The prospect of being awarded a Fields Medal forced him to make a complete break with mathematics. “As long as I was not conspicuous, I had a choice,” Perelman explained. “Either to make some ugly thing”—a scandal about the math community’s lack of integrity—“or, if I didn’t do this kind of thing, to be treated as a pet. Now, when I become a very conspicuous person, I cannot stay a pet and say nothing. That is why I had to quit.”

This old attitude is rather curious, in someone as intelligent and modern as Perelman, and I vigorously condemn it.

 

Perleman’s family is viewed as Jewish, and some of his closest relatives emigrated to Israel. Jews suffered enormous losses in the Baltic area Perleman is from, because of the murderous madness of the Nazis, and of some of the locals. Now a factor in these losses was the attitude of millions of Jews who thought that not making a fuss, not making a scandal, was more important than death itself. (Something they read in the Torah, somewhere, and believed, in their immoral stupidity which helped in the death of millions of children.) As the war evolved into a holocaust, many Jewish resistance groups appeared. They, correctly often prefer to kill than to submit meekly: the line has to be drawn somewhere. And the contemporary state of Israel has learned that lesson all too well.

 

The entire principle of civilization is that there are ideas worth dying for.

 

If one cannot tell mathematicians the truth, about themselves, how could one tell the truth to the Nazis, about themselves, and the truth, about the Nazis, to others? Over the years, I purchased many books of Pinker, Ferguson, and Krugman, and meditated their ideas. Paying them respect is telling them the truth in return.

 

(Both Ferguson, about France’s “Mission Civilisatrice”, and Krugman, about the notion of a common currency in Europe, have evolved considerably, for the best, in recent times: they have become moving targets! Now Krugman is starting to follow my semantics of “Greater Depression“, as he recognizes that “It’s time to start calling the current situation what it is: a depression“.) 

 

To tell others how it really is: what gift is more human? Is not that the gift we make, again and again, to children? 

 

Morality without outrage, and outrage without scandal, are beyond hypocrisy. They are what made Auschwitz possible. Time to cease and desist.

 

Why are human societies so prone to nastiness? Because humanity evolved into the planet’s divinity. I made a comparison between “Rats and Crats“. That was unfair to rats. It turns out that rats are altruistic. Rats Will Work To Free A Trapped Pal, and neglect delicious food to do so.

Rats have plenty of enemies, but rats are not foremost among them. If there are too many rats, there will be too many cats. But if there are too many humans, there will not be more cats to eat them, quite the opposite. So human societies have to be programmed to put some restraint to the (ecological) non sense that is man. Human sociobiology is intrinsically nasty. I do not mean it’s not also altruistic. That, it had also to be. However…

 

Man had to create not just God, in his image, but also Pluto. To reinforce the inevitable, the Dark Side that societies have to muster. And ideas are the swords they slice with. 

***

Patrice Ayme

RATS & CRATS

TO SURVIVE, CIVILIZATION HAS TO FIGHT RATS AND CRATS.

Abstract: Europe long suffered from the exactions of the hyper wealthy, various plutocrats such as kings, dukes, princes or sultans, or, more generally, all those who lust after power to the detriment of the rest.

I give examples extracted from (a small part of) what happened in the late Seventeenth Century, just in (part of, mostly) Eastern Europe. And the irony of it all. While showing that the evil organization of (say) the Ottoman empire, or more generally, of wrath wrecked Europe was such, because many profited from it, Satanic style.

“Kratia” in Greek means power, rule, sway… Hence demo-kratia, the rule of the People, and Pluto-kratia, the rule of Pluto, and his obsession with underground wealth, underground emotions, the invisible hand.

So stupid many economists are, at least around New York or London, that they laud loudly the “invisible hand”.

In their ignorance and depravity, they wallop so much, that they have no idea that invisibility was viewed by the Greeks, 3,000 years ago, as one of the Lord of Hell’s most terrible attributes.

And sure enough, if Auschwitz had been visible, it would not have happened. Think about that, Lords of Finance, if you can! Sorry, I forgot for an instant, that one sees best with the heart, and you have none!

Now the world suffers from 600 trillions dollars of invisible derivatives, 450 trillions of them weighing on the bond market, agitated by well orchestrated panics, so that the rich who organize them, can get ever richer, from the toils of taxpayers, and the ruin of savers, retirees, the unemployed, the sick. “Shadow Banking” is supposed to be glorious…When actually it should be a cause for incarceration.

In Egypt, the army keeps on going as overlord, with the invisible American hand feeding it, instructing it, organizing it…

In the Nineteenth Century, Nietzsche claimed that men were mostly driven by the “Will to Power” (and that it was healthy).

A century earlier, Sade had insisted that political leaders, in particular, were psychopaths, lusting so much for power, that inflicting pain on others was their main driver. Louis XVI put him in the Bastille (big mistake, as it turned out in July 1789!)

Perfect illustrations of the Marquis de Sade’s theory soon blossomed in abundance, with vengeful plutocrats trying to burn all of Europe, demented revolutionary leaders cutting heads by the thousands, and Napoleon’s childish ambition to spill as much blood as possible; those tyrans and crats all had this in common that they hated Sade. They imprisoned him for decades, and Robespierre’s gang scheduled his execution for having saved thousands of lives from the terror. (The ambition of Robespierre’s gangsters got cut short, with their necks, sparing Sade, just in time!)

Of course, humans are motivated by more than the Dark Side’s Will, Violence, and Power. Be it only because of the Light Side, of love, empathy, curiosity, even poetry, and singing, which make even more of a driver of human behavior. And we have names for them: lover, empath, inquirer, questioner, investigator, poet, singer, etc. Just as we have now names for sadists and brutes. (“Sadist” though is a neologism introduced thanks to Sade’s provocative revelations!)

In all and any case, nobody proposed to name those who, among humans are obsessed with the infliction of their will upon others. No name for the power-hungry, the over-ambitious, those who lust for power, the Genghis Khans, the Alexanders, the Caesars, the Napoleons and Hitlers, Rothschilds, Clintons, and DSKs. This is all the stranger, because a noun naturally offers itself!

Thus I proposed a neologism: CRATS, for those so greedy for power that they forget other human values. (Krugman promptly used it in his blog without proper attribution, after I mentioned it in his blog’s comments; I do not belong to the power circle of those worthy of quotation, as I am not a Very Serious Person.)

“Crat” has also the advantage of fusionning two concepts: c, for conspiracy, or cretin, and “rats” for an all too social animal which seems mostly motivated by food, and inspiring to those who lead us into oblivion.

Crats, like rats, have always existed, and have always tried to devour civilization. That’s what they do. To prevent the devouring of civilization, Neolithic men invented cats (against rats), and taxes (against crats). Modern politicians though, inculcated in their subjects the complete disdain for this lesson.

However there is an example of a spur of civilization which evolved, thanks to crats. Colonial English America thrived from civilizational devolution: if English colonial Americans had taken care of the Indians as French Jesuits did, in Canada, the colonials would not have got as rich, as fast as they did.  

This is an important point that Professor Niall Ferguson miss in his white wash “Civilization” book (November 2011). Ferguson  celebrates the attribution of Indian property to whites in North America, that is, to the European invaders. He finds that most wise. In contrast, Ferguson recognizes that there were plenty of Indians left in South America, and that Spain limited immigration to South and Central America, precisely because of this, the abundance of the natives. And Ferguson deplores that!

Thus naughty boy Niall does not realize, in his Harvard induced murderous superiority haze, that he is showing his hand. His hand is not invisible anymore, he should be more careful. What Ferguson is actually saying, for all to see, is that holocausts are the superior economic model. That was Hitler’s point, entirely. But Hitler did not teach at Harvard, that was his mistake (although some Harvard songs were adapted into famous Nazi songs by some of the individuals who connected the university and the party!)

And of course holocausts are much superior economically for those who survive them, especially if they are the perpetrators, and they thrive.

OK, the perpetrators of the American holocaust are long dead in the case of the English American colony. But the ideology of GREED AS SUPERLATIVE is still very much alive. Killing it, is what the world revolt is all about. So Niall should find sonmething else to celebrate, it would be only prudent.

The USA embraced plutocratic civilizational devolution as a metaprinciple of “progress”, and access to riches. The exact sort of “progress” Krugman embraces: divide the world, divide Europe, and then New York, what he boasts is the “greatest city in the world“, will conquer. He was a child a few miles north, he thrives a few miles south: alleluia!

American intellectuals of the powerful type, such as Paul Krugman and Niall Ferguson, perceive a weakness in Europe, and, as good servants of the plutocratic system they suck from, they are on the attack against the European project, telling us that the gods of Anglo-Saxon finance will forever rule, thus hoping we will lay down our mental weapons, and surrender. But, far from it, here is more ammunition to fight what Voltaire used to call “infamy”.

And what is the modern European project? The wise victory of the mind over fate, from knowing more, the very definition of Homo Sapiens. In particular the victory of mind over wealth. The victory of mind over the military, fascist, plutocratic system, as deployed in, say, Egypt. That system which replaced three important European leaders by agents of Goldman Sachs, in two weeks. The victory over the biased accounting the likes of Krugman venerates.

Krugman tells us that accounting his way, is the most worthy thing. Not only he does not know how, and what to count, but, tell me, Krugman, how much is Auschwitz worth? Is it because Americans were doing accounting their way, that they sent to Nazi Germany’s Air Force crucial war supplies in 1939, to enable it to fly, while France and Poland were already in combat against Nazi Germany? Is it why Poland and France fell, and dozens of millions died? Accounting by American plutocrats, for their own benefit?

***

***

BARBARIANS AT THE GATES OF EUROPE:

During the summer of 1683, the Turkish army besieged Vienna. It was allied with the Khan of Crimea and its 40,000 horsemen cavalry. Everyday of the two months assault, the formidable Ottoman war drums beat ominously. The constant rolling was not mean to just destabilize psychologically the Austrian capital. It was conceived to make difficult for the Europeans to localize where exactly the slaves of the sultan were digging their tunnels and covered trenches.

A vast underground battle between 5,000 experienced Ottoman sappers and defending “moles” was punctuated with large explosions when Turkish mines exploded under the successive fortification rings of the European capital. The last and most formidable mine was detected in the last hours of the final battle, as the Turks tried desperately to blow up the main Austrian fort. It was defused by Austrian “moles”, at the last moment. Elite Turkish troops and janissaries had been held back for that moment after the giant bomb exploded. It never came.

The Turks are an interesting example of the importance of ideology. The old Indo-European (not Semitic!) world of Turkic nomadic bands was transformed by the war religion of Islam, about a millennium ago. It allowed them to conquer quickly a vast empire, and they headed west. In a generation or two, they had the Roman empire on the ropes (Byzantium called itself Roman, because that is what it was, although it spoke Greek). The Romans then called the Franks to the rescue (the Franks were all the more willing to settle the problem militarily as recently 10,000 pilgrims to Jerusalem had been massacred, in one swoop).

But it did not work; the ravenous Turkish military established a gigantic empire, which covered Anatolia, the Middle East, North Africa, Anatolia, Eastern Europe. By far the most important reason why the European counter-attack did not work is that the Europeans were very divided. (The same situation happened with the Muslims to the south: Frankish knights, allied to the Mongols were an irresistible force, so the Pope and the French king outlawed the Franco-Mongol alliance with the greatest threats, after the fall of Baghdad and Damascus! If not for that, Islam would probably have become an archeological curiosity…)

In 1204, the Frankish army conquered and sacked Constantinople, in a final, savage conclusion to their nine centuries old domineering military role in Rome, deep down inside hostile to Christianity, which they viewed as all too anti-German, anti-progress, and no fun, if not kept in check by secular power.   

The European divisions endured. The Turkish high command was good at exploiting them. Or let’s say that European adventurers found to their advantage to ally themselves with Turkish fascist imperialism. During the final siege of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453, not only the Turkish shock troops were made of dozens of thousands of indoctrinated, fanaticized enslaved Christian boys, the Janissaries, but the giant “Turkish” guns were made by Hungarian engineers. Moreover, France was treacherously allied to the Sultan, one reason why the relief army failed to materialized. The ancient hostility between the Franks and the “Orthodox Catholic” church had reached its bitter end (Venice and other terminal allies of Constantinople was a client republic of Charlemagne, not Constantinople).

The Janissaries were an interesting institution, typical of a fascist order: Christian families who sold their boys thus got a social promotion and riches. With Janissaries, the Sultans thus had at their disposals a force which owed them everything: so revolution could not come from the real Muslim population. Indeed the anti-Islamist, pro-European revolution in Turkey followed quickly the elimination of the Janissaries in the 19C.

When the situation got grave enough, the Europeans cooperated enough to get the Turkish off their back. The Europeans came together at the siege of Vienna, with the alliance of the Holy Roman Empire and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. After 12 hours of battle, at 17 hour (5 pm), the Polish king ordered, and led, the largest cavalry charge in history. 20,000 horsemen galloped down a mountain. Simultaneously, the Viennese garrison made a sortie. The Turks were finished.

***

WHEN CRATS RULED, SO DID WAR:

Prince Eugene of Savoy‘s reconquered Hungary and some of the Balkan lands within the following years. “Prinz Eugen” is also the name of the famous Nazi battle cruiser crammed with advanced technology, which became later a U.S. Navy ship (at least three of its master technologies were thoroughly copied by the Americans). Prince Eugene de Savoy (old French for modern “Savoie”) was born in Paris in 1663. After chasing the Turks off a bit, a peace was concluded (1699). Europeans were free to fight each other. Prinz eugen then fought with Malborough against members of his own family, for example the elector Emanuel of Bavaria.

Tellingly that prince/prinz signed his name: “Eugenio von Savoy”. An Italo-Germano-French signature! At the village of Blindheim (in English: “Blenheim”), Marlborough and Prince Eugen fought against the combined Bavarian and French armies. 240 years later, a descendant of the Duke of Marlborough, namely the British Prime Minister Churchill (an Anglo-American), sent Bristol Blenheim bombers to sink the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen.

It sounds funny, but, in the great European wars, up to half of the population died. Many wars lasted centuries. Prominent individuals were on both sides of the same war. Do we want more of this European war circus? Well, Wall Street does. Because the more the Europeans are divided, the more the financial pirates of Wall Street reign. The long memory of the Europeans for the exactions of the hyper wealthy is nothing Wall Street wants to hear more of.

Thus it’s useful to change the conversation with distorted history. American intellectuals such as Krugman and Ferguson live off Wall Street (whether they are conscious of it or not). While playing the roles of critiques, they help the pluriharmonic melodious chorus which allow the likes of Obama to claim total confusion, and support the mighty.

***

PLUTOPHILES NEVER RUN OF ADMIRATION FOR PREDATION:

Another weekend, and another blast by the servants of American plutocracy against Europe. In the Wall Street Journal, Niall Ferguson, the Scottish born plutophile history professor at Harvard informs us that Ireland, will asked to join the United Kingdom, in a “Reunited Kingdom“. Ferguson boy probably does not know that the latest measure of inflation in Great Britain is 5.9%. That means: near catastrophe (and I love inflation at 4%!). By the way I am reading his book “Civilization”. The usual thing: history started when Great Britain was created. That would be after the Dutch invasion, and the submission of Scotland, after 1700 CE. By then the American English colony was de facto independent, and had invented racially discriminating slavery. Indeed, a unique contribution. by killing lots of Indians and enslaving lots of Africans growing lots of tobaco, English colonists had become the world’s richest tribe.

But Ferguson does not tell you what I just said. Instead he tells you it’s all about British genius, just like when Newton discovered the Law of Universal Attraction. That is the Anglo-Saxon propaganda at its best. Actually Newton himself, more honest than Ferguson (who, as an historian should check history before proclaiming it!), asserted that  Bullialdus, a French priest and lawyer, found it first. Giovanni Alfonso Borelli suggested first the balance between centrifugal force and gravitational attraction. But you see, Bullialdus is French, thus he does not count, because he is not endowed by Anglo-Saxon genius. Even worse for Borelli: he was the son of a Spanish soldier and a Napolitan woman, races which according to Ferguson, do not have the Anglo-Saxon genius so obvious at Goldman Sachs.

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CRATS’ DEVIOUS VIEW OF HISTORY:

That may be also why Ferguson has the history of the Anglo-Saxons starting so recently: before that the so called Anglo-Saxons were actually French lords, so that’s best forgotten. Edward III “Long Shanks”, conqueror of Scotland, initiator of the half a millennium long “100 years war” was French on both sides, and the grandson of the formidable  Philippe Le Bel.

Of course the only reason why the tiny Netherlands became so powerful was that, in a 150 years long war or so, Spain was defeated by France, and lost the low countries (which was only justice, as the Franks came from said Low Countries! And for centuries, France, England and the Netherlands had formed a triangle of commerce). Of course Spain owned the Netherlands, because Charles of Bourgogne did so, as part of his middle of the Imperium Francorum inheritance, and he had been elected king of Spain.

Charles V spoke perfectly five languages, but his birth language was French, as was that of his great enemy Francois Premier, born a few “lieux” away.

Thus in the end, much of the terrible wars between 1300 CE and 1815 CE were all about French fighting French.  It is normal: France was the largest single piece of the Imperium Francorum, and the later had not been formally dissolved. Instead it went on, at some point as more than 1,000 pieces…

This would go on: after the fascist, or, as he put it himself, “poorly advised” Louis XIV, kicked out millions of Protestants from France, many fled to Switzerland (where they started watch making), some to the Netherlands, or South Africa (where they made wine). many also were welcomed with open arms by Frederick the Great of Prussia (this explains why so many Nazi generals had French names).

In 1945, most French and Germans had come to the conclusion that, whatever was next, it would include definitive peace between France and Germany. The seventy five years of war between France and Germany (1870-1945) had shown that they had more to gain being together, than fighting against each other.

Those who knew history real well knew that the Franco-German wars had started with growing apart.

A lot of this had been propelled by the arrogance of Parisians. In 358 CE, shortly after the name of Lutetia had been changed for Paris (name of the local tribe, the Parisii), the Parisians and the crack Franco-Gallo-Roman troops elected by acclamation Caesar Julianus as Augustus. Julianus demurred for a while, but then accepted the nomination. He had no choice.

The emperor Constantius II, anxious to separate the Caesar from the empire’s best troops, had decided they would be moved to Mesopotamia. Instead, the Parisians rebelled. Julianus took control of the entire empire, and proceeded to de-Christianize the Roman empire (Julianus’ view of Christianism was even worse than that of Nietzsche, 14 centuries later, and fit well wit those of the Franks). Julianus was hit by a lance in Mesopotamia, the Franks took power directly, a century later. Frankish troops would be allied to the Mongols to seize Baghdad, and Damascus, a millennium later.

Forever after electing Julianus, Paris acquired a dangerous attitude. No wonder Carlus Magnus made his capital in Aachen. Throughout the Middle Ages, Paris was by far the largest city in Europe. By the Eleventh Century, Abelard had gone beyond Aristotle, and Paris had a university, by the Twelfth Century, Paris invented the so called “Gothic style“, then actually known as Opus Francigenum.

Actually one of the Franks present at the inauguration of the first Gothic cathedral, with typical Parisian spite, called it “Gothic” as that was the ultimate insult for a Frank (the Goths had been exterminated 450 years earlier, in a combined Franco-Roman-Muslim effort).

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FRANCO-GERMAN REUNIFICATION:

One has made a big deal of the reunification of Germany. But that is small potatoes relative to the reunification which is really needed, that of West and East Francia. That is, Francia and Germania (to use roman rather than Frankish terminology).

The six year long Second World War (1939-1945), the last bout of fighting between France and Germany, coming at the end of 75 years of hostilities, demonstrated to all French and Germans that a thorough rethink of the situation was needed. Obsolete nationalism had become clearly counter-productive for all to see. The Nazis, supreme irony, had demonstrated this to themselves, at their entire dismayed dissatisfaction.

During WWII, Hitler himself, to his rage, had to collaborate with French industrialists. He whined to his cabinet that, once Germany won the war, it would be in the grasp of French civilian industry. But Speer told him that was there was no choice. Hitler’s top, most fanatical generals, once brought to France to occupy and terrorize, generally turned around, and worked against their evil master. Marshall Rommel, a fanatic, mass murdering Nazi in 1940, was pretty much the exact opposite four years later, after getting command in France.

Thus Hitler put in command of Paris the SS “butcher of Sevastopol”, who had, during the siege of Sevastopol, exterminated Jews (as he admitted in a secret recording made by the British August 29, 1945).

Hitler’s order from 23 August 1944: “The city must not fall into the enemy’s hand except lying in complete debris.” Hitler phoned Von Cholztizt in a rage, screaming, “Brennt Paris?” (“Is Paris burning?”) [An account confirmed by Col. General Jodl, Hitler's chief of staff, who added that Hitler asked the question many times, and wanted independent confirmation.]

Instead Von Choltitz and the 17,000 German soldiers under his command surrendered to French general Philippe Leclerc de Hautecloque, commanding the Second Armored French division, which had rushed to Paris through successive Nazi defense rings, and to the Resistance leader Henri Rol-Tanguy at the Gare Montparnasse on 25 August 1944. The Germans had suffered 3,200 dead in combat with the resistance in Paris’ streets, and resistance leaders persuaded Von Choltitz of the uselessness, and immorality, of pursuing the fight, and burning the capital to a crisp as he had been ordered to do.

In 1948, after careful thinking, Robert Schuman proposed that “Franco-German production of coal and steel as a whole be placed under a common High Authority, within the framework of an organization open to the participation of the other countries of Europe.” French and German political leaders united the energetic and steel production of France and Germany. This actually extended work made in the same spirit in the early 1930s (which would have prevented WWII, had it come to fruition).

In 1951, the Treaty of Paris extended the European Steel and Coal Community to the Benelux and Italy.

Why the extension?

Well, France and Germany together united form a superpower which cannot be beaten, so it has to be joined. Superpower? France and German GDP, together, is four times that of Russia (and Franco-German GDP does not rest on the viscous prop oil and gas, as Russia’s does, but, instead on genuine human genius!) For other European countries it is not as if Franco-Germania were sitting on the other side of a vast ocean: if you are a European country, Franco-Germania is next door. Overall, Western Europe is the size of the North East of the USA. Just ask the Swiss how much they have to obey when France and Germany bare their fangs.

Moreover, the other powers, say Italy or the Benelux, were clearly lose parts of France, or Germany. Often of both. In other words, those other countries were created mostly to weaken one, or the other (For example, modern Italy had been pretty much created by the idealistic Napoleon III, who had a long history of conspiring with Italian independentists, as he was truly a Swiss… Piedmont, as its name, and its Savoy cross indicates, has more to do with France, than with Rome…)

So now here we are. American intellectuals are very well paid to demolish the European Union, and to distract from plutocratic Wall Street. Meanwhile in Egypt, the army is firing on protesters, using American weapons and cartridges. The government of the USA gives billions a year to the Egyptian military. The crackdown in Egypt was subsequent to the shooting, and killing by University of California police in Berkeley of a student at the business school, while Occupy Wall Street protests were going on outside.

Why does not Krugman attack that? Instead he deplores that accounting does not reign and that European countries are not fighting each other through competitive devaluations:

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KRUGMAN’ DREADFUL SONG ABOUT EUROPE:

Paul Krugman, the Europhobe, is in great shape, his masters in what he calls the “greatest city in the world” will reward him well. In “Boring Cruel Euro Romantics” (Nov 20, 2011) he pontificates imprudently that:

I like technocrats — technocrats are friends of mine. And we need technical expertise to deal with our economic woes.

But our discourse is being badly distorted by ideologues and wishful thinkers — boring, cruel romantics — pretending to be technocrats. And it’s time to puncture their pretensions.

I guess among “ideologues and wishful thinkers“ are philosophers, like yours truly, who believe in the victory of the mind and enlightenment over the viciousness of Pluto. Indeed, who does Krugman want to “puncture“?

“these people — the people who bullied Europe into adopting a common currency… — aren’t technocrats. They are, instead, deeply impractical romantics.

They are, to be sure, a peculiarly boring breed of romantic, speaking in turgid prose rather than poetry. And the things they demand on behalf of their romantic visions are often cruel, involving huge sacrifices from ordinary workers and families. But the fact remains that those visions are driven by dreams about the way things should be rather than by a cool assessment of the way things really are.

And to save the world economy we must topple these dangerous romantics from their pedestals.

Let’s start with the creation of the euro. If you think that this was a project driven by careful calculation of costs and benefits, you have been misinformed.

The truth is that Europe’s march toward a common currency was, from the beginning, a dubious project on any objective economic analysis. The continent’s economies were too disparate to function smoothly with one-size-fits-all monetary policy…”

Just like the Nazis used to claim that the Jews were cruel, Krugman claims “impractical romantics“, those who want European unification, are both boring and cruel. Well, it can only mean that they do not use expert torturers. In the Middle Ages, torturing was the most appreciated spectacle. nothing boring about it. Maybe we could torture some boring American academics with our contempt, to start with.

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SAVING BANKS IS DIFFERENT FROM SAVING CURRENCIES:

Bravo, Krugman, Bravo! Listening to Krugman you have the impression the euro, as a currency, is a disaster. It needs to be “saved”. The Economist”, and the rest of the financial propaganda systematically claim that the euro needs to be saved. So how come it’s 40% overvalued over the dollar?

Krugman is called an economist, but apparently, he cannot distinguish between a currency and banks. He apparently wants them to be the same. Does that mean American economists are even more incompetent than the realm they built, or is it actually a Freudian slip?

Verily, the so called euro crisis has nothing to do with the euro, or with romance. Whatever the admirers of New York and its financial system say. Europe was born in war. Dozens of millions have died in an holocaust, and the survivors drew some important conclusions which can only have escaped the American society, which ate on both sides of the manger.

The USA, in the entire war lost about 415,000 people, nearly all of them soldiers. French controlled territories lost about two millions, only a third of it, soldiers (don’t expect to find this statistics in USA propaganda). True, for a while (1942-1944), after the defeat of 1940, the million man French army fighting was out of Africa (several of my relatives were in it).

Other European countries had much greater losses. Poland lost six million. Germany lost ten million (OK, they started it, as they chose to be led by Nazi marionettes, with plutocrats pulling the strings). The USSR lost not far from thirty million (OK, they did not have to be led by a Georgian gangster).

To avoid conflicts, it’s important to know who is really pulling the strings.

There is a crisis in Europe, but it’s not a euro crisis. The German ratio of national debt/GDP is 83%. The British and especially Spanish one are lower. France has a ratio of 87%. The USA thrones with a national debt/GDP ratio of 104%.

OK, that’s not all: one has to look at personal debt, etc. It’s bad in Spain. One also has to look at the instantaneous current account deficit: it is nearly as good in Italy as it is Germany, but it is really bad in the UK and the USA (around 12%).

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YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE!

The crisis has everything to do with the privatization of public money, as I explained many times before. It was in the air of the times, the era of privatization of everything: Your Money Or Your Life!

Thanks to Milton Friedman and another 13 American “Nobel” prizes, most of them from Chicago (a place of dubious fumes such as mafia, Daley, Obama, and “French” IMF director Lagarde). The doctrine of Milton and his ilk, is the simplest and the oldest of the enemies of civilization: Greed Is All You Need.

Currency is the essence of the state, short of military force. Privatizing currency, made the oligarchy on top ever more powerful, because it made, at the outset, that oligarchy into the state itself. that made it into an instant plutocracy.
Plutocracies can be most resilient. Look at Egypt: since the late forties, when it set up a coup, the Egyptian military has reigned. Cynics in Europe suspect the dictator Mubarak (ex-general commanding the Air Force, like Pinochet in Chili), is still in power. What is sure is that his right hand man, another general, is in power, plotting with the Islamists (who he uses as a justification for his iron rule).

We have seen plutocracy before: it ended up with highway men all over the ex-Roman empire, asking for your money, or your life. And behind high walls, sat the great lords, with their private armies.

So a conspiracy of crats, plutocracy, brought the Late Roman empire where it finished, and us where we are. Crats just want power, nothing else matters to them. They select other crats.

Obama, in his memoirs, say that what is important, in life, is navigation. The grand Vizier would have said the same. Thus the rule of law was very weak in the Ottoman empire. The Grand Vizier travelled with his personal fortune. He had it on board when the Ottoman fleet was tremendously crushed at the battle of Lepanto.  
All and any financial transaction ought to be revealed, regulated, and taxed. Those who cheat should go to jail and have their property confiscated, as pertains gangsters of the highest and most dreadful order.
That European banks, and Shadow banks are in the world financial spider sucking on blood, there is no doubt. That they behaved as if they were our overlords, no doubt either. However the three buffoons nominated recently, Draghi, head of the european Central Bank, super Mario (-nette), parachuted head of Italy, and whatever his name in Greece, were all Goldman Sachs officer, one of the major the spider nests.
So the present austerity is not about saving the euro at all. The euro is strong, all too strong. No, it’s all about paying rent to the banks, until all freedom is gone, except that of the ultra rich, it’s all about a new feudal order.
I will not answer the ill informed anti-European rant about European states being so disparate that they cannot have a common currency. France and Germany decided to become united in 1948. Together, they are at least half the economic power of the USA. Other states on their doorsteps can hardly ignore them. a truck driver, on one shift can cross half a dozen countries, and so on and so forth. I do understand though, that those who think, as Paul does that New York is the “greatest city in the world”, probably thing that, by necessity, Wall Street is the greatest street in the world.
France and Germany want to put an end to the domination of Wall Street. The euro will survive, big banks too big to fail, and big enough to flail us all, should be killed, and the American university-plutocratic complex will be exposed for what it is.

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WHEN WASHINGTON WANTED TO OCCUPY FRANCE:

In 1944, the Americans intended to treat France, exactly just as if France were Nazi Germany. The AMGOT administration for France had been planned by the American Chief of Staff, Marshall. A fake French currency had been printed. Hundreds of American collaborators had been trained to take over the French administration. France was to be occupied. Indefinitely. By the Allied Military Government for Occupied Territories.

The American hegemony failed, because the trained, combat experienced French army was actually much bigger than the American army… in 1944 (it’s always the same American divisions which did all the fighting, whereas the French had completely replaced their experience and ferocious African army, by a new one). At most the Americans had 65 divisions in Europe. In any case the relationship between the French government and Washington was execrable. The French played the pivotal role in the failure of the Nazi offensive in the Ardennes: the panicked American command ordered the evacuation of Alsace (as Hitler thought would happen). But the French refused. That allowed Patton (who also believed that Washington was full of traitors) to throw his Third Army, the best tank army of the USA, north (as his right flank was covered by the French, who had surrendered just two and a half centimeters to the enraged Nazis).

In any case, AMGOT explains clearly why the USA, as a government, refused to help France and Britain in 1940, after hurting them in 1939 (and for several years before that). As far as all too many in Washington were concerned, France was an enemy, and Nazism a tool against that enemy.

A war gets engaged first by propagandists. Europeans have to understand Washington will keep on supporting the banks. So maybe they should stop collaborating.

Why not let the too-big-to-fail banks fail? Is it not what austerity ought to mean? (By failing I mean, while protecting small savers’ deposits, of course!) Then banks, helped by ferocious re-regulating, could stay small enough to help the People, rather than help themselves.

Massive default of the culprits, punishment and recovery of stolen hundreds of billions is a pre-condition to a new, and better financial order. Austerity ought to start at the top. Reintroduce Eisenhower’s 90% upper margin tax rate!

And please resist Krugman’s Europhobic ranting… Just as the Nazis, in a tradition going all the way back to the proto-Nazi philosopher Herder, Krugman exaggerates the “disparity” of the different European nations. Why does not Krugman tell us too that the Jews were too different? Why does not he tell us that Jews and Muslims, or Protestants, for that matter, were too disparate to function smoothly with one-size-fits-all monetary policy? Because he would sound too much like a proto-Nazi?

The Nazis, to a great extent, were manipulated by their American corporate sponsors. They also had German sponsors, but Wall Street overlorded over them (for example, Wall Street created IG Farben, among others; of course Wikipedia will not tell you that; I suspect that paid cleansers take out, or displace, a lot of the serious evidence in the Internet about the connection between Wall Street and Nazism; some pieces are left here and there).

What were the American plutocratic sponsors of Nazism about? Always more power to themselves, getting others to make their dirty work. Yes, some of the most important ones, like the Warburgs, were Jews. American culture, after grabbing an entire continent for itself, could only want to grab others.

As far as the other side of the culture which brought Auschwitz, one does not have to go very far. The ex astronomer Kant was, with Frederick the Great and Herder part of an infernal trio. Kant defined the Enlightenment, just as Krugman defines Europe. In his essay. “What Is Enlightenment?” Kant eructs that:

“Only one who is himself enlightened…and has a numerous and well-disciplined army to assure public peace, can say:’ Argue as much as you will, and about what you will, only obey’ A republic could not dare say such a thing… A lower degree of civil freedom, on the contrary, provides the mind with room for each man to extend himself to his full capacity.”

Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, Goering parroted this sort of thought many times during their reign.

Kant was a very good astronomer, but, as a proto-Nazi philosopher, he was superlative. As a historian he was a zero, because he obviously did not know the history of the Roman republic, a place where steely obedience triumphed, and where fascism was harnessed for the better, and for justice, in the interest of the many. Republican fascism: “All for one, one for all” became the symbol of the Roman, and latter the French republic.

But fascism as defended by Kant, was just in the service of his master, “one who is himself enlightened…and has a numerous and well-disciplined army”.

The rule of the one: the Greeks called that tyranny; that is what the word means. So Kant was also an etymological zero, or extremely dishonest, as he chose to forget what tyranny was. Kant’s call, just as that of Krugman, is that of division. All and any country at each other’s throats, in the hope that his own, with a “numerous and well-disciplined army” will win.

After all both Kant and Krugman lived of what they praise. Indeed economic war of countries against countries through devaluation is the essence of Krugman’s message. One may wonder how much of Krugman’s so called “New Trade Theory” is little more than a fig leaf over the vast worldwide conspiracy, plutocracy its name, which strangles civilization, and the biosphere itself, a galaxy of conniving crats around the globe, immune to reason but for more obsessive power to themselves.

Krugman may still learn. A few of the basics above he learned in the last 12 months. Ferguson is a more complex case. He is less short sighted than Krugman, but neither his mind nor his eyes, nor memory, go far enough. Kant will not learn anymore, and he had nothing major to say which was good. It remains to kill him in other people’s minds.

Kant has much to do with what became the “German problem”. As Eichmann testified in Jerusalem.

What was the “German problem”? It was the Prussian hallucination that Frederick the Great approach to civilization could triumph. It was very similar to the English American colonial approach. In truth, it was an even more dreadful devolution than the American one, because not only it was out to spoil the Indians, but it mistook Europeans for Indians. As so many influential Germans brandish the most selfish and idiotically short sighted reasons for not supporting the rest of Europe Germany profited so much from, one can only conclude that some more philosophical work needs to be done.

Qaddafi used to call the freedom fighters who wanted him out of power,”rats”. But he spent his last moments of freedom in a sewer. Thus that crat was caught as a rat. More generally, one suspects that human institutions, which are all power structures, to be full of crafty crats in the most powerful positions. Thus the outraged/indignes/Occupy Wall Street are right to insist on absolute democracy. Crats there always will be. Mitigating them is of the essence for the survival of civilization.

Civilization is hard work. But first, civilization is superior mental work. Nothing that sheer brutality can buy. Greed is not enough to animate a civilization.

Civilization, and, more generally, the human spirit, has always incarnated  the triumph of ever more sophisticated minds over the “objective economic analysis” of rats, crats, and other crocs.

Si Vis Civilisationem, Cave Kratos.

***

Patrice Ayme

Understanding Naught.

ONE LENDS ONLY TO THE RICH. THE POOR NEED JOBS.

Here is my good friend Paul Krugman, hitting on Europe again, while unknowingly burying the USA in its errors deep down further.

Krugman and I are in very strong agreement about some points, and in just as spectacular disagreement about others. It’s complicated. Be it about his hatred of the euro, or his love of borrowing, Krugman is much more of a reaganophile and reaganobrain than he may think. (But this is not surprising: after all, president Reagan was his first employer…)

So as not to be accused of deforming Krugmania into silly putty, let me quote him in extenso:

 ” September 18, 2011, 10:59 am

Stimulus, Austerity, and Double Standards

Just a quick thought: in much discussion of economic policy these days, the presumption is that stimulus had its chance, it failed, and that’s that. Never mind those of us who say that we actually didn’t do nearly enough — and were saying that from the beginning, not as an after-the-fact rationalization. It’s one strike and you’re out.

Meanwhile, the pain caucus keeps telling us that austerity is the way to restore confidence; and confidence keeps not being restored. Ireland, for example, has imposed savage austerity, yet the interest rate on its 10-year bonds is still 6.7 percentage points higher than Germany’s, down from recent peaks but still far above its level when the austerity program began.

Yet somehow nobody in the pain caucus says hey, this was supposed to work but it didn’t, so our theory is all wrong. Instead, they just insist that we double down, continuing the beatings until morale improves.

Just saying.”

 Some say, some sink, others think. Here is my answer:

 Krugman and me agreed, at the time, that the real stimulus was tiny, and would not restart the economy. Most of what Obama called “stimulus”, something like 90% of the thing, was not a stimulus at all. See “Stimulating-the-erroneous-zones“, July 2009.

 So doing, boasting of a stimulus which was not one, Obama made no favor to the economy, while doing plenty to his rich friends he venerates, and obsessively talks about. Some are born to make others’ beds. Nothing beats making the beds of the Rich. Obama’s policy was more of the same bold, same old that Bush had got us used to. It was obvious that the rabid right would scream, further down the line, that stimulating the economy did not work. So Obama accomplished a double whammy: he called onto an impotent stimulus, calling it mighty, and now unsurprisingly the Tea Party say that mighty stimuli don’t work.

 In truth, mostly the hyper Rich had been stimulated, not the economy as a whole.

 Supposedly left-wing Obama provided less of a stimulus than arch conservative Sarkozy in France. And the French recession had been much less deep than the American one. That means that, in truth, Obama is much more right-wing than Sarkozy. And yes, at the time Obama had a super majority in the Senate, and in Congress.

 To eschew any debate on something really useful, Obama had chosen to create long drawn out fake debates on a bank-Afghanistan-Obamacare drama. After months of shooting the breeze, the decisions came down, and they had all been taken behind close doors, with the powers that had trampled the USA, if not the world, for so long. The decisions were all rabidly right-wing: banks were offered the world, no questions asked, Afghans were offered a tripling of the occupation force, the healthcare industry was offered a mandated public.

 A problem in the USA is that Obama and his (!) Tea Party find tax cuts stimulating. So they want to cut taxes, ever more. Hey, don’t their contributors, like Goldman Sachs or the Koch brothers, precisely pay those taxes? If they paid less taxes, would not they give even more to those who took care of them?

 The more Obama cut taxes, the more stimulus he thought he was doing (that’s in the stupid version of Obama). Or he claims he thought he was doing (that’s in the crafty Trojan horse version of Obama). Most of Obama’s “stimulus” consisted in diminishing taxes, indeed. And that meant further diminutions of the taxes on the rich, since most taxes are paid by the rich. (Not proportionally, but in absolute value.)

Thus Obama made an abominable situation more abominable, as the real cause of the crisis was that the rich had got too rich… We need a new adjective for this grotesque situation: ever more obaminable.

 Abominable, or obaminable? That is the question Obama and his handlers hope not too many people are going to ask. But they will.

 How did the Rich get richer, ever more, besides having Clinton, Bush and Obama making them all what they could be? Well, Clinton, Rubin, Summers, Greenspan took out the bothersome laws from 1933 of president Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Greenspan and Bush let the Rich borrow ever more. Then Obama bushed us up further, not to say ambushed us, ever more, obaminably.

 Hence the borrowing trick, beyond the reasonable, has been central to making the Rich richer. Obama made this worse by lending, or giving to the hyper Rich even ever more money, claiming that was ever more stimulating (certainly stimulating to him and his family, and their friends, as they will be, and are, well rewarded).

 In the end, the latest numbers show a government and individual debt totalling 36.5 trillion dollars, in the USA. That is 275% of GDP, far above the norm, and barely off the peak. The kiss of debt. Why would Krugman think that Ireland would be better off, imitating that?

 The European instinct has been the exact opposite: augment taxes, so that the governments will have more means to respond intelligently to the crisis. After all, if there is a lesson of the 1920s and 1930s it’s that the German government did not find the means to stop the decomposition of society and finance. And the lesson of the 1930s was that the French and British governments had not given themselves enough means to stop Hitler in a timely manner.

 The esteemed Paul Krugman then comes and says: what are the poor Irish going to do, now that they cannot borrow long and get rich that way, as easily as Germans do? Well, the answer my friend, is that Germans did not get rich that way, and it’s time for the Irish to learn that lesson. It is actually well organized austerity which made the Germans rich.

 Anyway, why would the Irish want to borrow more when their entire country is sick of having borrowed too much, and having entire housing subdivisions, brand new, scheduled to be destroyed?

 If European banks need more money, they can be “recapitalized“, and then directed (with or without nationalization) to lend to profitable economic projects only. It’s unlikely that those will be found in Ireland at this point (the Irish, per capita may still be richer than the Germans, or, even the French; however the island has to deleverage).

 To equate the ability to borrow with the opposite of pain and beating, is to have understood nothing. Serfdom was, in a way, the result of too much borrowing.

 Make no mistake: I am for a real stimulus, and I am an enemy of austerity. But the Rich is killing the world economy, and grabbing all they can from the dying body. To stimulate the world economy for real passes by removing first the predator from the patient while the ferocious beast is still eating its innocent victim alive. The Rich needs to be austerified, and destimulated. And the more they are rendered innocuous, humble and unnoticeable, the more the rest of the population will thrive (I will exhibit a graph soon which shows that finance steals directly from manufacturing.)

 To fight austerity means to have the middle class live as it used to. 

 In Greece ship magnates are actually not taxed, nor is the immensely rich church. Not taxing the Rich is what Obama and the Greeks have been calling stimulating, and it’s wrong. It is not stimulating, it is wrong. To illustrate, Obama’s budget director, Mr. Orszag, slept with a Greek shipping magnate, and had a child with her (between marriages), sent 60 billion to Citigroup, and then went to work there. All very stimulating, no doubt, and thoroughly obaminable. When I say they sleep with the rich, I have to admit they do it literally.

 Last week the socialist Greek government, following orders from Merkozy above, announced a real estate tax. What is the greatest landowner in Greece? The church. Later, however, one learned that tax would not apply to the church. There are, officially 700 million euros of church property in Greece (and this is a vast under-evaluation, as Mount Athos, per se, has got to be worth billions). So what should the French, German and Finnish taxpayers do? Instill some more modern sense to the Greeks.

 There are churches, monasteries and cathedrals in France. They are all properties of the state. So why should France give money to the Greek church? No wonder 68% of the French are against “helping Greece” at this point.

 Oh, and how did Ireland become so rich? First, massive European help (that is taxpayer money from, at the time, much richer European countries), and then tricks. One trick has been the corporate tax rate. It’s 33.33% in France. And about the same 33% in Germany (although it varies slightly locally). In the UK it’s between 20% and 27%; it’s 31% in Italy. In Ireland, the corporate tax is only 12.5%.

 So European companies flocked to Ireland to be taxed lightly (or, more exactly they nominally put their headquarters there, while raking the money from the rest of Europe). That was excusable when Ireland was the poorest country in Europe, per capita. But now Ireland is richer than France and Germany, per capita.  

 Economy is house management. Obama doubled down on the rich. However, we don’t need to improve the morale of the rich. The high morale of the Rich, their hubris, and their capture of the political process is at the core of the civilizational problems we are encountering. The beating of the lower classes has gone on long enough.

 As a much elaborate incoming essay will show, augmenting the taxes on the Rich is not just possible, but necessary. Be it only to stop them to harm the economy further, as they do with those financial markets that they have harnessed. A good way to remove the Rich from exploiting exclusively the financial markets as they have been doing, is to tax them at the average middle class income (at the very least!), and to institute a financial transaction tax. Merkel and Sarkozy have proposed it. Guess who is against the transaction tax?

 Well, Obama, of course. Next time, he is keen to see Goldman Sachs being his greatest contributor, again. It just does not bring a lot of money in, it also shows that Obama is the anointed one. Meanwhile, if you have got $5,000, maybe you can see Ms. Obama. Or Valerie Jarrett. The ladies are on sale, apparently.  

 Whereas Governor Perry is on the rise. Says he: “I raised 30 million; if you’re saying that I can be bought for $5,000, I’m offended.“

 No kidding.

***

Patrice Ayme

To SAVE The WORLD, Please DEFAULT!

GRAB CAPITAL & RENT BACK FROM THE CONNIVING PLUTOCRATS!

[Sep. 14, 2011.]

***

Abstract: The Greater Depression keeps unfolding, propelled by the deliberate stupidity of the best leadership plutocracy could buy.

In constant dollars, the income of men in the USA has fallen to the level of 1978, shortly after the USA started its covert, but massive attack against the republic of Afghanistan. This is not a coincidence: the unconscionable instrumentalization of Muslim fanatics to destabilize a republic so as to grab its resources demonstrates that various plutocrats had seized control of the USA to an extravagant extent by the mid 1970s (under the democratic administration of Saint Carter, worthy follower of the crusader Saint Louis).

This stagnation of income lasting 33 years is unrivaled ever since the American English colony was born. There were never three decades of stagnating incomes in English America, including in any period straddling the French & Indian Wars, the Independence War, the Secession War, and the Great Depressions of the 19c and the 1930s.

This remarkable stagnation confirms that the present Greater Depression is worse than the one of the 1930s. Indeed the GDP graph is now doing worse in Britain than it did during the 1930s. And we are just getting started. Why? Why just getting started? Because the leaders of the West have adresseds none of the gathering causes of the depression, yet. (By contrast, FDR, ordered a flurry of astounding decisions in the first few days of his presidency in 1933.)

Can we get out of the unfolding disaster? Yes, with judiciously implemented inflation (as Turkey, Argentina or China have decided to do, so far successfully) or with default made so carefully that it will defang the plutocracy (the occasion presented itself in 2008 and 2009, but Bush and Obama declined to do so, although it was their fiduciary duty to do so). Once plutocracy is defanged, some of its contrived connivances, such as plutocratic globalization enabled by the localization of the law to tiny places, could be easily addressed.

A good place to start to dismantle plutocracy is Greece. The only reasonable resolution to the Greek sovereign debt crisis, is actually to default in a well organized, carefully measured manner (I have long advocated strategic default as a panacea since at least 2008).

Letting Greece out of the Euro, as dollar supremacy propagandists insist Greece should do, would be an utter catastrophe, for all concerned, except for U.S. supremacists. A Eurozone exit would be especially a disaster for the Greeks, contrarily to what Paul Krugman pretends, and the reasoning is so elementary, that Krugman ought to be ashamed of himself. Massive devaluation would solve nothing for Greece. True Greece lives off tourism, and that would improve, but Greece has to buy everything outside…

And especially Greece has to buy all its energy from outside sources. Energy is something the economy is fundamentally about (a notion which eludes most professionals paid for telling economic lies, and quite deliberately so).

Greece’s situation is completely different from that of demographically tiny, resource wealthy Iceland, the terrible financial crisis of which is still unresolved, especially in the matter of outstanding bills and criminal activities still unrevealed, and unpunished.

Iceland is often brandished by the enemies of the euro as a demonstration that countries which have their own currency do better. However Krugman and other europhobes always forget the few facts I just mentioned, when they laud Iceland and its brazen, 100% default (so far), which caused a major, still unfinished crisis.

There are many types of default, indeed. The sort of default which happened in Iceland was very peculiar, quite terrible, it is not duplicable, and I do not recommend it (and, as I said, it’s not over!) When I say that Greece ought to default, I speak of a completely different sort of default. Quite different from the grand theft which occured in Iceland. (A theft which will be fixed someday, a detail Krugman does not seem to be aware of: there are actually assets in Iceland set aside to reimburse the European governments which paid for Iceland.)

Why so much hateful hysteria on the part of the plutocratically connected Americans against European institutions? Because American plutocracy is collapsing the USA, and it is trashing around to keep controlling the world reserve currency, just as the one who drowns grabs whatever and whoever.

Paying fossil fuel in euros would be the end for the USA, as it would find itself in a similar situation to that Argentina found itself in, a century ago. However, and paradoxically, it’s in the interest of the USA to keep the euro high enough to make the European Union industrially uncompetitive. The goals are opposed, so the situation is unstable.

Default here and there would precipitate instability, overall. However, that would be a good thing, after the fright. It would allow to put banksters where they belong: if not in jail, then at least to pasture, after repossessing the property they connived to steal. In other words, high time to do what was not done in 2008!

The real truth is that Greek debt is only 300 billion dollars, a fifth of the subprime debt in the USA in 2008. So what’s the real problem? Well, Spain, Italy, and, soon, France. Of course a French default of some sort would be a world cataclysm. But a cataclysm is what is needed to get rid of the predator on our back, the world plutocracy.   

So let’s bring it on! Better this than Greater Depression forever.

***

***

GREECE IS EVERYWHERE:

Some will say: “Europe again? Who cares? Is not that the OLD continent?” Well, as I will show, we, all of us, who own anything, own some of Greece. Even Americans, all Americans, own French and German banks, and, thus, Greece.

Second, Europe in the biggest socio-economic sense is nearly one billion people. Yes, some lunatics, like the Swiss, speak delusionally as if they were not in Europe. In some metaphysical sense, obviously, because Switzerland occupies a third of the Alps, a mountain range installed in the exact geographical center of Western Europe. As I predicted in the past, last week the Swiss National Bank pegged itself to the euro. The SNB promised to buy “unlimited amounts” of Euros each time it takes less than 1.20 Francs to buy a Euro. In other words, now Switzerland has jumped in the Eurozone.

Is Suisse not getting its orders from Washington anymore? Is Krugman going to cry a river? And Polanski is going to receive a prize in Zurich next week! Only the naive would feel all of this to be unconnected.

Little known to the rabid anti-Europeans, countries such as Norway, Ukraine and Iceland are already part of various European unions. There are, inside Europe, unions of free travel, unions of free commerce, even unions of usage of the euro while NOT being in the Eurozone, plus an union of countries economically assimilated to the EU, while not being in the EU, and even other countries admitted to candidacy to the European Union.

Those unions are far ranging. For example the economic might of Turkey is greatly explained by this republic being an associate member of the European Union and its predecessors since 1963. By the way, many a European problem would be lessened if Turkey joined the EU much more. Why not include Turkey in the Eurozone? (That could help Eurozone financing.)

At the center of Europe is the Eurozone, and its core is bicephalic Franco-Germania (however it may hurt all the nostalgic of francophobic Keynes and Hitler).

Not forgetting the rich Franco-Germanoid fragments of the Benelux, which are in between, and inseparable from France and Germany, one contemplates in Franco-Germania a super power with 180 million people, and the most advanced technology. OK, French and German private banks have lent a lot to Greece, and now they are threatened by a Greek default, because they lent so much to the Greeks, that the Greeks cannot possibly pay back. Right. So?

Same with Spain, or Italy? So? Are not the Germans happy that Spain bought from Siemens, that is, from them Germans, very high speed trains? Would they have preferred Spaniards to buy trains from French Alsthom instead?

Many cautious Americans will scoff that they have their money in American money markets, so they have nothing to do with Greece. However, the truth is, all large banks, especially including all large banks of the USA, have a piece in Greece, and a fortiori Spain or Italy. Even the Chinese are deep in the Greek picture. Hence the (well justified) dressing down of the Chinese Premier to the most advanced countries: “We have been concerned about the difficulties faced by the European economy for a long time and we have repeated our willingness to extend a helping hand and increase our investment,” Wen said. In exchange China wants WTO membership.

Americans who think they are out of Greece do NOT know how money markets work. What is a money market? Well, a market of very short term bonds. Some of these bonds are Greek bonds, some of these bonds are bonds of banks which have lent money to Greece, or bonds of institutions which lend money to companies which invested in Greece, or have “swaps” with such. And so on. Thus all Americans, and actually the entire planet, are entangled with Greece and company. If a black hole develops in the middle of that system, much will be swallowed.

***

UNREAL BANK RESERVES, REAL AMERICAN WAR:

How the banks are threatened by lenders unwilling to pay back the whole gamut of what they owe is a bit convoluted. Banks are supposed to have some capital reserve requirements, and are supposed to stop operating if they don’t. European regulators are fiercer on this than American ones. Oh, yes, because American banks would already to have to stop functioning if correct financial requirements were applied to them. So the funny thing is that the panic is about French and German banks having fewer reserves, but still much more than their American competitors.

In truth, the bottom line of the whole problem is that the USA is trying its best to keep its supremacy. So Americans are running around in a panic screaming that Europe is sinking. Whereas the truth is that European banks are still in much better shape than the banking-Federal Reserve-U.S. government complex in the USA.

Right now, the one year Greek Treasury Bond carries an interest of 111%: an investor in that vehicle will double her/his money in 5 months. Such an investor will bet that other European states will keep on forking money over to keep the Greek state afloat.

So why am I for a Greek default, as I have suggested forever? Actually I was also for the default of the Too-Big-To-Fail banks in the USA. Within a month of the election of Obama, I was enraged that Obama had decided to send to the banksters all the money in the world, no questions asked (TARP was just a small portion of the money lent, or given to the banksters). I saw the criminality of it all, very clearly. See: http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2009/02/24/time-for-rico/.

I was for the nationalization of the Too Big To Fail banks. Instead of just giving them the money, many times over what they were worth, as Bushama did. If nationalizations had been done, the economy of the USA would have restarted by now, and the future, even of the deficit, would be rosy. By the way, nationalization of banks is what Iceland did.

Much later, the Tea Party was created, and adopted the same line that the Too-Big-To-Fail banks ought to have been allowed to fail. Whether its partisans understood that meant nationalization of a big chunk of the financial system of the USA is another matter entirely (they are too busy being mystified by the theory of evolution, having dinosaurs galloping all over their little minds…) A dreadful possibility is always that Chinese (say) banks would swoop and acquire all the failed banks in sight. Nationalization avoids that.

So, yes, I am for the Greek default. For the same reason. That will allow to avoid in the Europe Union, the treacherous, unjust slope into the abyss, of using most available public finances to support the very men who have caused the crisis, and the very exact systems they have created and lead, and brought us all to the pauper house, where we will be to stay in residence if, and only if, we become slaves to the Chinese dictatorship (yes, I am not insulting China, it’s officially a dictatorship).

***

THERE ARE MANY SORTS OF EUROPEAN UNIONS:

Is Turkey in or out of Europe? Those who say out, know nothing. Why to talk about Turkey? Because, actually Turkey has very different strategies and capabilities which have not been tapped. And, by the way, the unaffordable Greek military budget is naively aimed at Turkey, an unacceptable situation both economically and between NATO members.

The question of Greece leaving the European Union has nothing to do with a financial crisis, even a sovereign financial crisis. Even leaving the Eurozone and having a sovereign debt default are completely different notions.

Anti-Europeans, strong and strident in the USA, deliberately confuse all these notions: they are paid to do so, making them what they are. Sexual prostitutes provide a service, and, if everybody comes ahead, it’s all for the best and a legitimate business. But when famous economists use the bully pulpits they are paid to bellow from, to tell complete lies, they are definitively turning into public enemies. What do they want, besides money? What do they do besides spewing hatred?  Do they want war with Europe? Well, that’s what they are doing.

Even the head of the bosses’ union in France said so. She said there was a deliberate, organized, orchestrated effort by “the Americans” to destroy the European Union. And the confusion of all the notions is part of it. I would not be surprised that Stark, the chief economist of the ECB who left in a huff 5 days ago, were to be found, someday soon, to have been paid by “the Americans”. Watch carefully who his next employer will be. Mr. Orszag, the Obama budget director, helped send 60 billion to Citigroup, and is now employed there, earning giant amounts of money in compensation for his gracious service.

Suppose California were bankrupt: would it leave the Union? No. And guess what: when California paid with “IOUs” (“I Owe You”), do you think California did that just for fun? IOUs are little pieces of paper supposed to replace the Federally official little pieces of paper known as dollar bills. Guess what? It happened, because California had literally run out of money of that currency union, the USA!

And no American suggested that California ought to leave the Union. Where was Krugman when Anti-Americans needed him? Anti-Americans would have loved hearing that California had to leave the Union, as straightforward Krugmania would have it. Did I misunderstand something? No, Krugman’s reasoning for Greece somehow does not apply to California (although California is endowed by a massive indigeneous energy production, from oil to hydro).

Some fear that Greece may sink that low in next few months, if Sarkozy and Merkel can’t figure it out. As low as California: a terrible thing, that would be, indeed, for the land of the Parthenon!

But then, if Greece were to sink as low as California, pro-Europeans will not fail to notice that Greece does not have anymore reason to leave her Unions than California had to leave the USA.

Thus the hysteria of Paul Krugman and his ilk of sort against Europe and the euro is painful to watch: is this the best the USA can produce in the way of deep thought? Merkel, and several French politicians seems thoughtful relative to Paul losing his marbles about the euro. Krugman does not realize that a fast driver can go in five hours or so, from Spain to Italy, through France. And when the Very High Speed lines presently in construction will be finished, one speaks of less than 2 hours. The time to go from London to Paris, by rail, center to center. Why does not Krugman propose a currency in Washington, and one in Boston, and another in Chicago: would not that help Detroit, according to full blown Krugmania?

***

FRANCO-GERMAN UNIFICATION MEANS MONETARY UNION OF ALL: 

True some German loud mouths seem to have understood nothing since Hitler was consumed by gasoline next to the Reichstag. Hitler started his career hating France and her Versailles Treaty (still hated by many a Nazi nostalgic to this day). He ended it, defended by SS and their officers, who were native French speakers SS. The irony ought not to be lost on europhobes.

The loud mouths dream to reconstitute a larger, Aryan version of the Deutschemark. But those fools have not understood the first two things:

a) Germany has surpluses to a great extend because the south has deficits. Germany can leave the euro, fine. The Greeks will buy Peugeots and Renaults instead of VWs and Mercedeses.

b) The euro union is about unifying France and Germany. Right now France has extracted herself from the demographic black hole she was in for two centuries, and especially around 1870. French demographic growth is now strong and internal. It does not rest, as in the USA on demented immigration and the growth of non integrated recent migrants (a large part of the population of California has, technically passports from the USA, but is truly Mexican; I know some, they are charming, and I prefer them to white, racist, narrow minded Americans, but they are no such thing, precisely; in particular their value system is different, and access to higher education is barred to them, by price, as much of the public education system in the southern USA is being privatized, so their children will also be Mexican!)

To come back to France and Germany: France is, in many important ways, the superior partner. It is the result of a determination of France to never find herself in the situation on 1940, when it was defeated by the unholy union of the plutocratic USA with the USSR and Nazi Germany.

The French have carefully made themselves world masters of all the superior technologies. Germany’s superiority rests on high tech Mittelstand, family enterprises which master the middle, but not the highest. France is the spider at the center of Europe’s highest technology: look at EADS and Arianespace, etc. Giants such as MBDA, the world’s largest nasty missile company are not even on the radar of the close minded, rabidly anti-euro, such as Paul Krugman.   

Of course French spending in ultimate high tech costs a lot: look at the inertial fusion facility built in Bordeaux, which will be the world’s most modern and powerful when it comes on line within two years. It has only one equivalent, worldwide: the National Ignition Facility at Livermore, California (with which France cooperates semi secretly; NIF has made 300 shots so far; an inertial thermonuclear fusion plant will have to make 300 shots every minute to become a productive power plant…)

France gave, and is giving, herself the means: total government budget is more than 56% of GDP. As a French politician quipped in the 1990s: “France is a USSR that has succeeded”.

Germany’s government is 47% of GDP (already basically 50% more than the USA). But Germany is not building its own massive thermonuclear project, and does not make its personal supremacy stealth fighter, and personal strategic nuclear submarines, with personal city pulverizing rockets, capable of taking out 50 million people. True, France is much less efficient with its goverment: she would save a lot if she were as efficent as Germany, with much fewer civil servants.

Not that renewable energy is neglected in France: there are a lot of problems with wind, so France is late in developing that. However, the giant utility EDF has started to install giant “hydrauliennes” to capture tidal power at the bottom of the sea. A world first. If those work, France will have basically resolved its energy problem. OK, it’s a big IF…

***

KEYNES WAS A FRANCOPHOBIC PROTO NAZI:

It’s not just Murdoch’ media machine. Even the American economic left has a strange anti-French bend. This is of no small consequence, because it has made Americans incapable to point at France, and similar socio-economies in Europe, which is pretty much all of Europe, as positive examples for American politicians. The result is that economic ignoramuses such as Obama come to power, and they are advised by dedicated servants and members of the plutocracy, such as Larry Summers, somebody who should have actually been prosecuted for visiting socio-economic hardship on billions of people. As he was the dismantler of FDR’s work, and one of the main agents of the reinstauration of a worldwide plutocratic order, same as before, just worse.

Obama thinks that if forces NASA to give billions to his plutocratic pals, or to whoever wants to make something renewable, he has caught the future. All he has caught is the hope for a shinier toy in the playground. It’s infantile. Also, completely corrupt: what’s the meaning of forking public money, through NASA to a guy who is not an engineer, and laughs as a goat bleats? Or to a non engineer such as Musk, just because he looks good. Musk, like Murdoch is not really an American, just a plutocrat hitching a hike on the back of American taxpayers. 

The Europeans, in striking contrast, have given a lot of very deep, professional thought to improving their socio-economy. They did not just become fascinated by proto or pseudo Nazis telling them, a few generations ago, what they wanted to hear. (Allusion to Keynes and the so called “Austrian school of economics”.)

Where does that American francophobia comes from? Well, the key is that left, “democratic” economists in the USA admire Keynes, and therein, a contradiction. Germans who dream they can do it without France, are just pursuing a dream that KEYNES started, and Hitler implemented. OK, a Keynesian nightmare that Hitler tried to implement.

Yes Keynes, Nazi in disguise. Keynes: Nazism’s own professor of anti-French science. I just read “The Economic Consequences Of Peace” Keynes is famous for. What a piece of Nazi trash! Keynes calls the re-creation of Poland, Romania and other occupied nations in the east “scatter brain”. Why? because it would deprive Germany of economic power! Is teaching Keynes teaching hate speech?

The glorious Keynes whined that it was “victorious France” who wanted to impose what he viewed as a monstrosity, the independence of those previously subjugated nations, the freedom of Germany’s former slaves. And the great man moans. Soon Hitler would foam just the same. Did Hitler read Keynes? Many of his criminal co-conspirators certainly did.

Keynes was afraid that France, having, according to him, unlawfully, unwisely, unjustly recovered Alsace and Loraine, occupies German land which have been German for more than 1048 years, he says. What an idiot! Imperial Germany was founded in Versailles in January 1871, 48 years before Keynes put his Nazi ideas on paper.

No wonder that, after being instructed with such trash, Hitler was completely surprised that, after all, Great Britain joined France in declaring war to him in 1939! Did not his advisers read Keynes?

If one wants to go legally technical, and constitutional, “Germania” was certainly part of “Francia” by 800 CE. The Carolingians even invented German (and not just the Carolingian minuscule which even Keynes used, making him another victim of “victorious France“).

The division of the Frankish empire in three pieces was viewed as another case of the standard way to handle inheritance among the Franks. Something they had done for 5 centuries. It was not viewed as definitive. It was made explicit, at the time, that the Western Franks were to stay prominent (they were supposed to elect the eastern king, or emperor, something which soon bored them to death!)

Having many kings was also standard among the Franks: kings were elected, in theory, and having many kings was like having many presidents. However, it was viewed that the king of the western part was “emperor (in his kingdom)”, due to the fact the Franks in Francia (“Salian Franks”, or salty Franks) had fought hard for 4 centuries to unify all of Germania to Francia (Julius Caesar’s old project) .

***

NATIONALIZATIONS A EURO SOLUTION, PLUTO THE WAY OF THE USA:

To come back to Greece; a Greek default has nothing to do with Greece exiting the Eurozone.  True, the Drachma was converted at too high a rate, because of misplaced national pride: one has to live with it. True, the Americans want to break the European Union, and they may as well start with the Eurozone.

A Greek default may leave some major French and German banks with insufficient “tier one capital” to operate according to international regulations, and the markets indicate that they will be unwilling to provide them with it. So what? If it cost little to buy BNP, the French government can find what it takes, before China does, as the German government was able to find enough money to buy Hypo Real Estate. Hypo Real Estate was among the 30 largest companies in Germany. It was fully nationalized in 2009.

Great Britain and Belgium also chose to nationalize banks consecutively to the 2008 crisis. The friends of plutocracy, Bush and Obama, the greedy Bushama, instead offered to their banksters friends as much public money as they needed, without taking possession of their banks in the name of the American public they were so generously offering all the money of. But that is the problem of the USA: no more money for anything else. Bush and Obama, real friends of the Tea Party have not followed down the Marxist, government friendly path traced by those far left liberals known as presidents Reagan and Bush Senior.

Now Dimon, head of JP Morgan Chase, who Obama called repeatedly “my friend”, in his pro plutocratic penis envy, says that the bank of international settlements is “anti-American”. So not only Paul Krugman is going on a pseudo hyper nationalistic pro American rampage. They should be reminded that there is nothing nationalistic at going crazy. Hitler, too, posed as a nationalistic, but he was anything but. In truth he turned into the destroyer of Germany. Anti Hitlerian French were better German nationalist than all of Hitler’s supporters.

BNP is as big as the biggest American banks, but the French republic will nationalize it in a flash, if needed. France, as a state, will also make a lot of money that way (nationalizing very big banks is always profitable, it seems). And then what?

A nationalized BNP will be directed to lend more to people and projects which can pay for themselves, not just to cheating plutocrats they are conniving with. The connivance between banksters, plutocrats, and their servants in government (Obama) is ongoing in the USA, so the economy is falling apart there. Does Europe want to join the USA on the plutocratic road down to hell?

In the 2008 banking crash, banks, and not just in the USA, but also in Europe, got money from the states. Instead of replenishing their cash reserves, as required by International regulations, they paid their managers fortunes, paid large dividends to fellow plutocrats, etc. Now the cash reserves of American banks are 3%, just a bit more than what Lehman Brothers had in 2008 before it failed. They should have 8%, according to regulations, and common sense. And they are supposed to go to 10%. Swiss banks have 20% in reserves (explaining a lot the rush to Alpine gold!)

In other words, the banksters were treated with immense generosity last time, even in Europe.

So will Europe force the People to give money to the rich, so that they can become even richer as in the USA?No. Enough is enough: been there, done that. Thus Greece has to default. The Greek people ought not to pay while its plutocrats, and untaxed, wealthy church, keep on cheating.

***

NOT ENOUGH EUROPE YET TO AVOID A GREEK DEFAULT:

How could Greece avoid a default? Well, Greece could avoid a default only with the help of not-yet-in-existence European structures.

An example of such a structure would be treasury bonds for the European Union, or, at least, the Eurozone. But they do not exist: there is no European Treasury, no European Treasury Bonds, no European Federal debt. Of course, there is no Federal Europe. At least fiscally speaking.

France has 1.6 trillion euros of French treasury debt, Germany 2 trillion euros of the German equivalent. The USA has around 14.5 trillion dollars of U.S. federal treasury debt (but that does not count more local debt).   

It is because there is a U.S. Treasury and U.S. Treasury Bonds, and a transfer system, that California, and several other states, have avoided default. So far. But, of course, at the rate of augmentation of the deficits in the USA, it should not take much longer…

Some Germans, stuck in the Prussian-Hitlerian model, may want to build a greater Germany. They would not end up exactly like before, because Germany’s power is not what it used to be. In France, however, more than ever, the political class knows that salvation lays in Union. France has basically a discrete union with many African states, Francafrique, and it should be boosted. This is the deep reason for the Libyan adventure, as the oil propelled Khadaffi dictatorship messed up much of Francafrique: whereas he spent not much on Libya, Ghadafi was lavish with those in other countries who he wanted to influence.

Another obvious French idea is the Mediterranean Union. Here, Libya again is an obvious centerpiece. Right now France is pushing hard on dictator Assad, while writing the Palestinian state proposal. The Americans are going to be all astonished when they find themselves pushed out of the entire Middle East… which will happen if they don’t cooperate with France (because French leadership on the question is gathering lots of followers).

To come back to Greece, the concept of “Greek bail-out” is misleading. if one wants Greece to be bailed out, Greece has to pay less in interest on the money plutocrats lent it. The so called “bail-out of Greece” is actually a bail-out of the existing plutocratic structure in Europe, or, even, in the world. But plutocracy is not as strong in the EU as in the USA, as the British, Belgian, Icelandic, and German bank nationalizations after 2008 showed. So let’s nationalize some more.

***

EUROPE INTO THE ABYSS, INSPIRED, & ASPIRED BY THE FREE FALL OF THE USA?

I did not even watch the Obama speech. Sometimes a human being has seen enough. How many times does one need to go at the zoo, and see the chimp throwing excrements at the public? Ok, nowadays, most zoos are better designed, and just as there are teleprompters, and human beings can be selected, who make excellent robots, chimpanzees are behind bullet proof glass.

Obama and his handlers have got crafty. They sent early versions of Obama’s teleprompted speech to a number of people, who went all pink and warm inside from receiving the favor of what they feel is a great man. So Krugman admitted that was the case for him, and, flattered to no end, in spite of himself, he fell into celebrating Obama’s speech. In a colossal flourish of naivety unbound. Thus the pundits are also prompted at a distance (tele), for all to see.

Colossal naivety? Indeed, Obama is the bipartisan president, so, in particular, the president of the Tea Party, which is the one controlling Congress. His ridiculous propositions do not impress me except as more of what is burying the USA. As usual most of what Obama proposes is tax cuts. This time he is busy undermining the financing of Medicare and social security, to give a bit more money to those already employed now, so that they will have diminished Social Security and Medicare tomorrow.

How does that help the unemployed? Where are the jobs? Oh yes, president Tea Party will ask the Tea Party to raise taxes to pay for a little bit of needed construction. Obama is intelligent enough (I hope!) to understand that will never happen. So, by suggesting to do something he knows very well will never happen, he is lying to the People. OK, pundits are paid to not notice this so loudly, that it gets reinforced.

On the other hand, he should be able to spend many happy vacations in Bali again in the future, with many domestics. Obama is not, and never was, an average American. I used to think I lived like an aristocrat in Africa, because we employed a cook and a house helper. Then I read Obama’s books, and I was left with a weird feeling: something did not add up. He presented himself as poor, but he did not think poor. Interviewing plenty of people who knew him when he was 10 confirmed the weirdness. Young Obama behaved more like young Bush than young me.

Then the New York Times finally did his job and enquired about Obama’s childhood. In Indonesia, his mother was married to a millionaire, a well paid Indonesian front man for big American corporations to hide behind. According to the NYT, Obama lived in a mansion with four lived in domestics in  secondary housing on the premises. That explains a lot, especially in the conjunction of posing as a victim of the system in one’s fictional biographies.

So, as even Maureen Dodd of the NYT asserted, Obama’s motivation is to join the highest plutocracy. He does not mind if he betrays all his supporters: for him, they are just suckers, too bad for them that they sucked the wrong tit. As he said in his books, and in unguarded speeches, it’s all about navigating.

Those who play to the “adult in the room” have always reminded me of chimpanzees playing with tuxedos with utmost seriousness.

In truth, the wise know that navigating is about a journey, and the journey to a destination, and those who eat part of the crew are unwise. All of this escapes the small men.

In the district of the (republican) speaker of the house, Mr. Boehner, there are 89 “structurally deficient bridges“. Ryan, leader of the republicans in Congress, has 95 “structurally deficient bridges” A virulent blonde republican has 192 structurally deficient bridges. And she is still hysterical against public spending. She cannot even understand that the private sector does not own these bridges.

Some of these bridges carry more than 50,000 cars a day. It has already happened that one even larger bridge with a giant interstate freeway on top collapsed. More is to come. Obama says: let the banks play with each other, faking profits with their electronic casino, so they can keep their mansion, yachts, private jets, tax heavens. Boehner says:”We should not spend.“But the banks do spend, to, and with, each other, in their derivative universe.

***

TIME TO RESIST, AND REBEL: “INDIGNEZ VOUS!”

In France last year an Auschwitz survivor, Stéphane Hessel, published “Indignez Vous!“, a small book advocating that it was high time for common people to rebel against the plutocracy. Mr. Hessel is 94 years old, full of life and youth. Many of those who are young today are, instead mental dead wood, as they confuse feeling good inside and having a moral system. See David Brooks’ editorial in the NYT, “If It Feels Right…” Says Brooks: “The rise of moral individualism has produced a generation unable to speak intelligibly about the virtuous life.”

“Indignez Vous!” has become the banner of the indignant ones who demonstrate throughout Europe.

Here is Stéphane Hesselin his own words, last year:

“Ninety-three years. I’m nearing the last stage. The end cannot be far off. How lucky I am to be able to draw on the foundation of my political life: the Resistance and the National Council of the Resistance’s program from sixty-six years ago…

The motivation that underlay the Resistance was outrage. We, the veterans of the Resistance movements and fighting forces of Free France, call on the younger generations to revive and carry forward the tradition of the Resistance and its ideas. We say to you: take over, keep going, get angry! Those in positions of political responsibility, economic power and intellectual authority, in fact our whole society, must not give up or let ourselves be overwhelmed by the current international dictatorship of the financial markets, which is such a threat to peace and democracy….

We must realize that violence turns its back on hope. We have to choose hope over violence—choose the hope of nonviolence. That is the path we must learn to follow. The oppressors no less than the oppressed have to negotiate to remove the oppression: that is what will eliminate terrorist violence. That is why we cannot let too much hate accumulate….

To you who will create the twenty-first century, we say, from the bottom of our hearts, TO CREATE IS TO RESIST.

TO RESIST IS TO CREATE.”

Hessel is generous to speak of the “financial markets”. In truth the plutocratic class is more like it. There is an important difference between retirement funds and those manager-owners managing them, and conniving banksters of the financial system. Much more, if it is really much more, is completely different.

***

GREEKS ARE NOT LAZY, BUT AMERICAN TAXPAYERS ARE NAÏVE:

The Greeks work much more than the Germans, so why should they work even more while being admonished that they are lazy spendthrifts?

According to OECD.org, in 2008, Germans worked in the average 27 hours a week, 1492 hours per year, while the Greeks worked 41 hours, 2120 hours per year (French work 30 hours a week, 1542 hours per year, Americans USA: 35 hours per week, 1792 hours per year. The British work 32 hours per week, South Koreans, 44 hours per week; philosophers work all the time, 140 hours per week!)

Greek GDP was down 5%, two years in a row, increasing the relative size of the Greek debt. So austerity, per se, is not working. The same will happen in all countries which try that “austerity as prosperity” trick, worthy of lost chimps.

G20, G7, G whatever, have not done anything about banksters: after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brother, American plutocracy saved itself by harnessing American taxpayers, and the entire American money creation machine.

Multiple rounds of deliberately obscurely and misleadingly named “Quantitative Easing” directed trillion of dollars towards the very bankers, and the very banking system which had created the crisis. Banks got short term money for free then turned around, and  invested it long at a higher interest rate, with the government, generating fake profits. Armed with those, they could keep on playing the derivative markets, and fake some more profits. Indeed, as they play with each other, it’s a zero sum game, no economic value is created, as money is just a symbol, not a reality.

There is a lot of misinformation going on. As a rule, American economists, even of the leftist, pro-government sort, are hostile to the European construction, even when they are esteemed advisors in Europe (Krugman has advised Spain), or teach there (Stiglitz, another economy Nobel, teaches in Paris). They always say that they love Europe, and want it to succeed, but then hates the fact Europeans want to have just one currency. What’s next? Just one flag? Are not only Americans allowed to have flag and currency, as the Very Serious Country it is?

There again, they follow Keynes, who used to rage that so many nations had been freed from German imperial subjugation in 1919. How can these American economists be received nicely in Eastern Europe, knowing that, following their racist master, they would like it subjugated?

***

ICELAND VERSUS GREECE:

Could Greece exit the Eurozone? Sure, that is what the USA want. And the USA is doing its best to make it so, having unleashed its plutocracy (why have the Europeans not yet brought warrant of arrest against Goldman Sachs’ executives?) And its wolves howl that way.

Paul Krugman, disingenuously claim that all Europeans are different and they should all have their own currency from Malta (population: 400,000) to Germany: population 83 million. Does Krugman know how many nations there are in Europe? Or all luxury hotels feel the same? Does Krugman know that poor Europeans, now that they have the euro, male comparison shopping among countries, to buy, say, a cheaper car? I don’t think the plutocracy cannot even imagine how the commons live.

Krugman lauds the default of Iceland, and its massive devaluation. He forgets, or rather, refuse to consider that, after Iceland basically stole billions to millions of EU citizens, their governments stepped in, and that those powerful governments are still determined to recover the money. In case Krugman does not know, Great Britain is 200 time larger than Iceland, and, ironically is (partly) in charge of the… defense of Iceland. 

In the second quarter 2008, Iceland’s external debt was 9.553 trillion Icelandic krónur (€50 billion), more than 80% of which was held by the banking sector, mostly in 3 more or less private banks. By comparison, Iceland’s 2007 gross domestic product was1.293 trillion krónur (€8.5 billion).

Krugman is always saying that the fact Iceland has its own currency and so was able to solve the crisis by devaluing its currency. This is deeply dishonest. A glance at the Wikipedia article shows that Krugman’s view of the situation is an affabulation. That is Iceland has improved, but not because of the currency dropping. Actually, Iceland was so desperate that its currency was going to the bottom of the ocean, that it went on its knees to enter the Eurozone.  It was told it had to enter the EU first. Since, arguments have blossomed about whale killing, and the negotiations are ongoing.

And, by the way, fixing the root of the crisis was just differed. Countries such as Great Britain, who reimbursed her 300,000 stolen depositors (as many as Iceland has inhabitants), have evoked the anti-terrorist act against Iceland, and are still determined to recover their losses. Other aggrieved  countries are the Netherlands and Germany, or Norway. French veteran magistrate (and presidential candidate) Eva Joly was named by Iceland to head a serious economic crime unit of 20 detectives to find out the causality (hence culpability chain) of the whole thing.

If Greece had its own currency, it will have one positive consequence: tourists would flood to Greece, because that currency would be worth very little. Krugman would say:”I told you so”.

However Krugie boy forgets that Greece basically makes nothing, so Greece would still have to buy everything outside, and that would be very expensive. then Krugie boy will jump up and down, and squeak:”How did Iceland do it, then? Nananana!”  

Well Iceland has giant geothermal resources, and also mountains, with a very wet climate. Over 80% of Icelandic electricity is generated by hydro power. Whereas Greek energy has to be fully imported. And with a collapsed currency, that would be ruinous. So there would be tremendous inflation, and the Greek central bank would have to raise interest rates very very high.

In other words, Krugman panacea is just an absurdity. Hopefully the Europeans will be able to resist the American plutocratic conspiracy, its siren songs of the mentally undeveloped, and not fall into the abyss.

***

WHEN THE USA FIGHTS FOR ITS LIFE:

A default for Greece would not mean that, as Iceland did until now, and Krugman always fail to mention, Greece would run away with all the money. Far from it. Wiping out 50% or so of the Greek debt ought to be fine. Next time the banksters will have to be more careful, or more brazenly conniving.

It is clear to me that huge banks and their bankers try to become more influential, more Too-Big-To-Fail, by lending more. That was clear with the subprime madness in the USA. Madness for the victims, crafty for the biggest bankers, the banksters.

How do plutocrats operate, when they have achieved plutocratic sustainability?  They extract a rent from the multitude. Such individuals are who, historically, the French called “rentiers“. Tellingly, the meaning of the word “renter” in English is the exact opposite (inverting meaning is a good way to confuse). Paying rent of own’s life is close to the idea of serfdom: one does not own anything, and one spends all of one’s life paying rent to the overlord. This is basically how Americans live. And then they have been imprinted to feel proud, insuring they don’t understand a thing about what ails them.

American propaganda says most Americans “own” their homes. Instead Americans actually rent their homes to banks. The average American homeowner now has 38 percent equity, down from 61 percent a decade ago. Thus in truth, American own only 24% of their housing market: they rent at most than 75%, and most of it at a totally overvalued rate. The money is sent to the friends of Obama such as the daemon Dimon, who then live in mansions, and buy the president (who loves to be bought so he can live in mansions too! Even “The Economist” has started to make fun of Obama’s luxury bed!)

Well, it’s high time to stop paying rent to the plutocracy.

As I write this, hordes of armor clad American sharp shooters are fighting on roof tops inside Kabul, killing Afghans who are stupid enough to believe American propaganda and feel they own their country. I have live access to both foreign and United States media. It was amazing how much the attack was downplayed and misleadingly represented in the media of the USA, which said things one could see were blatantly not true: non American TV showed clearly hordes of Americans fighting, contrarily to what was said in the USA, where it was falsely claimed most of the fighting was made by Afghans, and giant American helicopters turning around the battle were just sightseeing.

Well worth spending lots of money, treasure, lives, and brains on it, indeed, this little adventure in Afghanistan, designed to show that, like Carter, Obama deserved his Nobel Peace Prize, because, like Carter, he attacked Afghanistan much more. Thus the dollar has to stay both strong and weak, and the euro better disappear from sight, as its rise could mean that other countries could follow Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, and switch to the euro for oil payments.

For the same reason that switching to its own currency would be ruinous energetically for Greece, for the dollar to lose its solitary reserve currency role would be energetically ruinous for the USA. Hence it would be ruinous for Paul Krugman. The energy budget for heating and cooling the mansion in which he lives would become considerable. Let alone the fact that his sponsors would be disappointed that he did not deliver a demolished European currency. Funny how it all makes sense.  

“Indignez Vous!”

***

Patrice Ayme

Welcome Estonia!

ESTONIA JOINS EUROPE, AMERICAN LEFT COMPLAINS.

***

Wonderful news for Europeans: the Baltic republic of Estonia is joining the Eurozone. The Eurozone is the set of 17 countries, where the Euro is officially authorized by the European Central Bank as currency (other countries have been using the Euro without official authorization). Many American economists, even some who are considered left wing, are enraged.

One could only expect Americans of the monetary type, to be exasperated. American monetarism is intrinsically nationalistic, just as European monetarism is intrinsically transnational.

The invasion of Estonia by the Euro is a further encroachment of Europe into Europe. This undermining of the American empire by the European imperialists invading Europe has got to stop! If American easy money (easy for American bankers that is: hard for others) cannot reign in Estonia anymore, what’s next? A European crack down on bank bonuses? Who is going to pay for American politicians’ souls?

The fascist hydra has many heads, and some in unexpected places, on the left. It is true that, as long as Estonia is in Euros, Americans can forget about buying there. And if the dollar eases further into nothingness, it will be only more so, thus undermining a cheap trick the USA has used a lot.

“Social Europe” journal readers found Paul Krugman the most influential left wing thinker. This is really pathetic. What is next? Will “socialist” Hitler’s nationalistic conceptions for Europe be celebrated?

Let me explain. I respect and appreciate Krugman. He is good to me personally, and I am grateful.

However, Krugman wants European countries to devaluate when they are in trouble, so that they can take advantage of other European countries, a stone’s throw away. Don’t ask on which neighbor the stone falls, it falls for thee, says Krugman, and he smirks, claiming to be unaware of the double meaning. Europeans fighting each other with competitive devaluations has been done hundreds of times before. Europeans know where it leads, because they have studied history.

Just ask the Germans. They can be lyrical on devaluation, since they saw it brought by Dr. Schacht, a friend of JP Morgan, the American super banker, who later brought that other gift of the cheap type, Hitler.

Krugman’s love for Europe is fundamentally not that much different from Stalin’s. The more independent little European countries there were, fighting each other, the happier Stalin was. And the happier Paul Krugman advocates one should be. This new trade theory Krugman is famous for is strangely reminiscent of the Nazis’ “New Order”. Let the strongest win over the jungle, by eating others.

To help Ireland, the way Krugman sees it, it would be best that Ireland devaluate its currency and declare war on Europe, economically speaking (and economic war is a preliminary for the real thing). Same for Spain, Portugal, Greece, Belgium… Let them all leave the Eurozone and cheapen their currencies, and soon the USA will come and tell them which leaders they should have, as in the old times. American order will have been re-established. Uncle Barack will be reigning again, and Krugman, his prophet, may become just as rich.

It is sad that Paul does not seem to understand why the terrible wars of the twentieth century happened, and killed about 100 million Europeans. That holocaust was caused by this exact same desire to find specious nationalistic solutions with the neighbors all around, to their detriment. Instead of finding the solutions inside, war outside was the way. The way to hell. And make no mistake: devaluation is war.

Krugman himself argues frantically that China is making war on the USA with its undervalued currency, but then he advocates that Spain ought to make war on France by devaluating its currency. War across the Pacific becomes salvation across the Pyrenees. Incoherence can be funny, but brings a question: who is Krugman really working for? The Comedy Channel or the War Department?

I am not making this up: many times Paul Krugman explained that it was easier and faster to stick it to the neighbors, through a devaluation. What about just nuking the neighbor, and taking over its territory? Would not that be even faster?

Krugman explained that the problem with internal re-adjustment (by opposition to an instantaneous devaluation) was the duration of the pain. By that obsessive krude-man measure, nothing would beat a French strategic nuclear submarine unleashing 50 thermonuclear warheads on Spain, and then there would be no more Spain, hence no more Spanish pain.

Would that devaluation make Spain more worthy? Or would it make Spain more worthy for American plutocrats, and then they could pay uncle Barack and professor Krugman even more? Worthy for whom, that is the question…

 Contrarily to the Spain of Krugman’s competitive nightmares, the real Spain just inaugurated still another very high speed (400km/h, 250 mph) train line, this one between Madrid and Valencia. Should Spain devaluate so that American plutocrats can buy that very high speed train line for pennies on the dollar? Is that what Krugman really wants? Is it not what was done in Argentina, buying a big part of Patagonia with dollars, when the natives’ currency had conveniently collapsed?

I know, I know, the busy Barack makes all his money writing children books while president, because he has time on his hands, since everybody attends on him, and he just has to read that teleprompter which was obligingly put in his line of sight. It’s not like the plutocrats give him money directly for all to see. He is just gifted, very smart, and if he gets the Nobel Prize in physics, and lots of money from lots of patents, that would prove my point even more.

All of us who do not support plutocracy can appreciate the errors of our ways, every day that Pluto makes, giving us a harder time, and we brought this on us, because we did not navigate well.

Krugman always insist upon the expediency of devaluations: it’s the economic equivalent of a bullet in the head, so it’s good. Once upon a time, Hitler was fond to explain that, thanks to the monarchy he had established (“Drittes Reich”), instantaneous decisions could be taken, including breaking contracts and reversing alliances. Hitler had just to decide what he wanted that day. And it could be done that day. The way Krugman claims to like it. Just like a devaluation.

Example: after running an electoral campaign foaming at the mouth about Poland occupying Germany, within a year Hitler had concluded a non aggression pact with Poland. Hitler’s Germany, in total violation of the spirit of his electoral campaigning recognized Poland’s borders and ended a decade old economically damaging customs war.

Having Hitler as “Guide” was very expedient. For a while. Fundamentally this is what Krugman also proposes, as he puts expediency above all and any other political principle.

Speaking of expediency, since the nationalistic spirit of Hitler is extolled once again in these political matters, let’s remember that Adolf found expedient to steal from the Jews, to create a Nazi economical miracle for his supporters.

This is not an obsolete example. Reaganomics is another example of Hitleronomics, just a bit more subtle, and much more patient. Reaganomics creates an economic miracle for its most ardent supporters, in the USA, and abroad, by redistributing riches to the hyper rich who then mesmerize the population into following them, thanks to their ownership of all and any media. In other words, Reagan do to most what Hitler did to the Jews… but Reagan and his followers, do it in all legality. (The extermination of civilians in the “Third Kingdom” was not legal, according to the laws of said kingdom: the Nazi leadership hid what they were doing… even to most Nazis.)

To given even more to their hyper rich supporters, the Reaganosaurs just borrow, in the name of the American People to their accomplices the Chinese. (Dangerous accomplices, sure, just as Hitler was, but it turned out well, for the American century.) They don’t have one very high speed train lines to show for it. They use the money strictly to make more billionaires (see note).

Krugman’s little proposal that every little tribe ought to go its little way is a long story gone stale. In May 1945, the perfidious Irish regime, still full of hatred for the Anglo-Saxons, sent condolences to the Third Reich for the death of its esteemed Chancellor and President, Adolf Hitler. Is this what Krugman wants to go back to? Should Auschwitz have its own currency, as we are at it? The free slave, as managed by Prescott Bush? Just asking.

The way to do modern politics in Europe was, instead to welcome Ireland. As it is to welcome Estonia.

After joining the European Union in 1973, Ireland (Éire), then a very poor country, transformed itself from a largely agricultural society into a modern, technologically advanced “Celtic Tiger” economy. But European Union help, direct or indirect, was the foremost factor in this transformation, as it was for Greece, Portugal, or Spain. Europe is an Union, and it is strong because it is an Union. It helps, but then it should be helped too.

Unsurprisingly the word “Union”, long proud and mighty, is not far from becoming a dirty word in the unfolding USA. Krugman says it would be better if Europe was a disunion. That is what the plutocrats say. Their banksters don’t like that Europe is now preventing them to get bonuses, the way they used to have them. You know, by ruining the companies they then ordered the states to pay for, so they can do it again. And again. That is what is ruining Ireland. Paying for the plutocrats. Ireland’s problems are not about the Euro, as Paul Krugman would like us to believe. As the plutocrats would like us to believe. That’s a red herring.

Since we now all know that Paul Krugman is revered in Europe, it is time for him to understand that somebody in the position of mental authority that he enjoys presently should not encourage the sort of nationalism, especially when combined with pop socialism, which brought such a terrible outcome as the war of 1914-1945.

What mood carried a lot of Europe from bad to worse, from 1918 to 1933? Nationalism. The thing Krugman wants more of, because it is so expedient.

In the post 1918 era, the deepest divide between nationalists and genuine internationalist Europeans. It was not between fascism and communism, as those two liked us to think. Even the French communists, as they sang the “Internationale” abided by it, since they took their orders from hyper nationalist Moscow. Their fellow fascists from Italy and Germany were even worse, as nationalism, they claimed, was their guiding light.

In truth, Western European fascists were taking their orders from plutocrats, the richest bankers and industrialists, many of them American. Those who think that Benito Mussolini was hung from an ESSO (= EXXON) gas station in Milan, for no good reason, should study history a bit more. The Italians knew well who owned that puppet, that Mussolini, and it was duly returned to its master. Uncle Barack will cry us a river about “Anti-Americanism“. Look: that river is so big, it can be sailed on.

Estonia is pulling away from its oppressor to the east. In the early onset of World War Two, the USSR, then allied with German national-socialists, invaded the Baltic republics. The Finns fought back, and very hard, mauling the Russian bear. That is why Finland is in the Eurozone. It is not about the context Krugman worries about.

Little known by those who remade history in a way that suits them, in 1940, the democracies, France and Britain, intended to crush the perfidious Nazi collaborating state, Sweden. Sweden, hiding behind “neutrality”, was busy arming Hitler in more ways than one.

Sweden is not presently in the Eurozone, although it is bound by law to integrate it at some point. After occupying Hitler’s loving and caring Sweden, France and Britain planned to cross the Baltic sea, and rescue Finland from Stalin’s monstrous USSR, Hitler’s ally. The war was going according to plans, when France suddenly fell (and the dispersion of the French Air Force was a factor in that fall, since only half of the French Air Force was in metropolitan France at the time).

Europeans have had enough of big powers manipulating small states, because they have small armies, small populations, small currencies. So now they are grouping together, overcoming their little differences, to resist the likes of the USA and the USSR (well, OK, maybe Uncle Vladimir will make nice now that he is confronted with irresistible force).

Giant banks which have harnessed the fractional reserve system to create as much money as they need to invest in derivatives, are the proximal problem the West is having at this point. We don’t hear too much on that subject from the esteemed Paul Krugman. Actually we don’t hear him at all on this subject. He prefers GDP, and stimulating by de-taxing..

The common currency of the common European People is not the problem of the west, at this point. It is just made to look so, by relentless propaganda. Time to grow up out of subjugation. At the same moment when the European Union cracked down on bank bonuses, all what Paul Krugman could do was to address condolences to poor Estonia, which he presents as a victim of those lying Europeans.

Although Krugman’s economic blog is number one in the USA, he has forgotten the big picture… except if one considers that the big picture is the USA, and everything else is a small and nasty critter.

It is actually telling that the European Union has cracked down on banks bonuses, whereas the USA has not. Even though the Congress, the Senate, and the presidency of the USA were controlled by supposedly progressive democrats. Clearly, they did not want to progress. Why? Because the truth is that they have a vested interest in the abusive financial system, as it is. So they made it so, that it would keep on going, same as it ever was.

This persistence in financially abusive behavior does not just say that the USA is subjugated to banksters. It also say that the American and international banking system as it presently exists, is an instrument of subjugation of American plutocracy on the rest of the world, and, in particular, Europe. And American leaders know that well. (But don’t wait with bated breath that they will tell you so: it is not on Barack’s teleprompter.)

Paul’s object of admiration, the British citizen known as Keynes, objected strongly to the dollar as world currency. Keynes was head of the relevant commission at Bretton Woods, in 1944, charged with setting up a world currency (first by pegging all currencies together within 1%, a system later used for construction of the Euro).

The Americans insisted that the US dollar ought to be the world reserve currency. Keynes blocked the world dollar take-over. But the Americans cheated on the documents to be signed, substituting what they wanted at the last moment, without Keynes knowing. Paul Krugman talks about Keynes all the times, in glowing terms. But he never mentions that story. That’s steering the context to calmer and misleading waters.

It may be time to stop cheating on the logic. Expediency in economics, apparently Krugman’s preferred tactic, is only advantageous to the plutocrats, because they can run away from the law, let alone ethics, and People’s economics. By the time stupor has been replaced by regulations and laws, the plutocrats have already move to greener pastures. This will go on, until no pastures are left, and they have stolen the entire world. This sort of things has happened before, that is how so called aristocracies arise.

Paul would say: no, it’s not like that, I am looking at GDP. Well, look, instead at what a devaluation does to GDP, in, well, dollars. And, as I said already with buying Spain on the cheap, that is the whole point. Just as Americans can still buy oil cheap, because of their world reserve currency, each time a new country joins the Eurozone, the time of reckoning comes closer, and American supremacists tremble ever more. Hence the rage about Estonia.

And what does GDP measure anyway? It should be called Gross Demonic Product, for all I know. GDP measures whatever American plutocracy thinks is important, because it makes a lot of money with it. Then it tries to persuade American sheep that they ought to buy more of whatever makes GDP shine.

With tremendous traffic jams and tremendously expensive health care, GDP can go to the moon in the USA, while common people go down to hell. GDP has just become an instrument to indoctrinate Americans. Seriously, if a doctor’s visit and the prescribed drugs cost nada in Europe, how much is contributed to European GDP? Nada. But the same purchases could easily contribute thousands of dollars to the USA’s GDP, before people crawl into a hole and die (USA life expectancy went down significantly in 2009).

Europeans don’t need to be as obsessed by GDP as American economists are: they have other, much higher values, and their societies and lack of noxious GDP shows it.

Estonian austerity is no fallacy, as many American left wing economists would like us to believe. The hydra of cheap imperial fascism shall be defeated by proper thinking, and gravitas, independently applied.

Congratulations Estonia, and welcome!

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Patrice Ayme

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Note on welfare for the rich, Reagan style: Obama taxes the hyper richest 400 incomes at a rate of (no more than) 17%. They make an average of 340 million dollars income. A normal European taxation rate on these critters would be 50%. Thus each critter saves 120 million dollars relative to its European equivalent. Cost: 50 billion dollars, borrowed directly to foreigners (who get paid in return by American jobs). And this is only part of the support for the hyper rich. The self serving  belief of American leadership in serving the rich has sucked the economy of the USA dry of much profitable investments: the money is created inside the USA by borrowing from abroad, and then sent back abroad.