To SAVE The WORLD, Please DEFAULT!

GRAB CAPITAL & RENT BACK FROM THE CONNIVING PLUTOCRATS!

[Sep. 14, 2011.]

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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 progressive 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 Jimmy Carter, worthy follower of the morally insane crusader Saint Louis).

This stagnation of income lasting 33 years is unrivaled in any 33 year period ever since the American English colony was born. Thus, it’s a new phenomenon.

There were never three decades of stagnating incomes in English America, including in any period straddling the so called French & Indian Wars, the Independence War, the Secession War, and the Great Depressions of the late 19th century and that of 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 plutocratically friendly localized laws in tiny places, the tax havens, 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.

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GREECE IS EVERYWHERE, WE ARE ALL GREEKS:

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.

Third, and more importantly, a terrible paradigm is created in Greece; the innocent are made to pay for the crimes of criminals, as these criminals still have access to all the levers of power. As long as this is not addressed, the crimes, and the crisis, will keep on rolling.

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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. (But of course, perception becomes realization; so the hysteria has real effects, positive for the hysterics!)

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: https://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).

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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 unfortunate kind 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, another in Chicago, and one in Detroit. Would not that help Detroit’s depressed economy, according to full blown Krugmania?

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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…

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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) .

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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!”

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Patrice Ayme

Tags: Austerity, Eurozone, Greece, Iceland, Keynes, Krugman, Unemployment