Real Doom

RESIST MEEK & SUPERFICIAL EXPLANATIONS:

As The Going Is Getting Tougher, The Weak Is Saying Whatever, But The Tough Will Propose Harder Things:

***

 Abstract: The Central Bank of the USA, Obama, Krugman and much of the left of the USA, let alone its banksters, claim that the present Greater Depression is a combination of over-production and lack of demand. Perhaps unbeknowst to them, this is straight out of Karl Marx. Although not without some superficial merits, that explanation comes very short to explain the extent of the crisis, which has more to do with the capture of democracy by banking.

 The resulting idiocy has blinsided us about even larger problems waiting in the wings, which are making their presence felt. Thus, it’s not about demand, as Obama, Krugman, the GOP, and the Fed believe(d). And providing more money to bankers will not change a thing, if that is all what is done. 

 A real change will come by reigniting the technological drive behind a worthy project. Yes, that will require a massive effort in better public schools, all the way to the highest research level.

 I propose a new technological drive, which is both completely feasible, and will be a game changer in what economy and survival are all about: energy. And no, it’s not about charging towards wind mills. And yes I propose this, because it will be hard, precisely. (We propose it because it is hard is what president JF Kennedy said, correctly and deeply, about his moon project. What I propose will be also much more useful.) 

***

***

 A funny development is afoot: as the severity of the crisis reveals itself, the propaganda machine, unable to deny the existence of a depression, is trying to wrestle control of the discourse by reorienting it towards safer ground… In this case… Karl Marx (as we will see).

 A well connected anointed personalities of the left, John Judis, wrote an essay “Doom!“, quoted approvingly by Krugman. As I will show below, it looks good, and many of Judis’ arguments are excellent, all the more since they are well known, and that all the way since before Karl Marx. However it is still a sly manipulation, as the Marxist conclusion (“too much over production“), while partly correct in the 1930s, eschews the real problems. Then and now. Now being way worse than then.

 Curious times when Marx’s ideas can be manipulated into serving the plutocracy. True, Marx did not have that concept. The concept of plutocracy. Marx believed in the struggle of the classes, I believe into something much more sinister.

 “Doom!”was approved by Paul Krugman as can be seen in the following post, which is revealing in other ways… Krugman’s post is remarkable by his honesty (see the parts I underlined).

 After quoting Krugman, I will explain why “Doom!” is a dangerous whitewash full of disinformation. Truthiness is at its worse when it is carefully laid down to lead us astray.

***

WHEN CHAOS REIGNS, BY DEFINITION A LITTLE CAN DO A LOT:

 Here is Krugman,September 20, 2011, 4:39 pm

 Doom!

 That’s the title of a new article by John Judis about how policy around the advanced world is now aggravating the slump — and how things look likely to get even worse looking forward. It’s not very different from what I’ve been saying, but Judis offers more historical depth in the comparison with the 30s.

Actually, I’ve been thinking about that parallel — and how truly remarkable it is.

I was recently asked to give a talk on “capitalism and democracy”; that’s bigger-think than I usually do, but I gave it a try. I took as my starting point the famous Fukuyama thesis that liberal democracy — meaning basically a market economy plus democratic institutions — was an end state, a final resting point for state organization.

I always had my doubts about that, largely thanks to the 1930s: what we saw there was that a severe economic crisis could put liberal democracy very much at risk. And it was a close-run thing: slightly better strategic decisions by the bad guys could have made totalitarianism, not democracy, the end state.

It seemed to me even when Fukuyama first wrote that this could and probably would happen again, that there would be future crises that would put our system — which I agree is a very good system — at risk.

But one thing I was sure of was that the next great crisis would be different. It would be environmental, or about resource shortages, or about runaway technologies, or something; it wouldn’t be about a banking crisis and a collapse of aggregate demand, aggravated by bad monetary and fiscal policy. We’d learned too much to repeat that performance — right?

Wrong. The amazing thing now is not that we’re having a crisis, it’s the fact that we’re having the same crisis, and making the same mistakes.

A lot of the blame goes to the economists, by the way, who abandoned what they used to know — and many of whom are giving bad advice now, I firmly believe, based more on ego and political affiliation than on analysis. That is, I believe that we’re looking at a moral failure as well as an intellectual failure.

Anyway, awesome. And depressing.

***

WAR BETWEEN THE MIGHTY CAN BE A MOST UNSTABLE THING:

 “Bigger-think than I usually do?“ Bigger admission than those people with fancy credentials usually make. Honnesty in top thinkers who are after the truth allows them to perform better (but does not help their friendships, so there is a complementarity between depth of discovery and influence in one’s lifetime).

 Let’s analyze in more detail Krugman’s assertion above: “slightly better strategic decisions by the bad guys could have made totalitarianism, not democracy, the end state.”

 This has been one of my points, over the years. I will not go into much details here, just a few illustrations. At Dunquerque (“Dunkirk”), the French army made a successful defensive ring which allowed the professional British army to escape. Had that not been the case, Britain would have been defenseless… The next big Nazi mistake was not to have pushed a few more days in its attempt at destroying the Royal Air Force… Because it was succeeding. Instead the enraged Nazis switched to city bombing, which spared the RAF. And so on.

 Anxious to keep himself popular with his adoring German supporters, Hitler did not switch the German economy into a command economy until well after major disasters, in 1943. The Soviet (of course), British (unobviously), and American economies (spectacularly) had been switched to command economies years before. So Germany, after a jump start into militarization after the Nazis came to power, was slow in mobilizing all its resources.

 By the way, the necessity of this switch from market to command, shows that COMMAND ECONOMIES CAN BE VASTLY SUPERIOR to free markets. What Krugman calls “our system” was not “our system” when it really mattered, during WWII.

 Had Hitler not personally slowed down the development of the Me263 jet fighter (to make it into a bomber to bomb my dad), by more than a year, Germany would have regained air supremacy by Spring 1944, which would have changed everything (it’s not me saying it, but the U.S. Air Force).

 It is intriguing to know that the obverse is even more true: slightly better strategic decisions by the GOOD guys could have defeated totalitarianism quickly. Or just less bad luck, or fewer grave tactical errors. As when that Spitfire pilot saw Nazi armor jammed in the Ardennes’ forests. But he was not believed. Indeed stuffing all of one’s army on one road in one forest was considered an insanely demented mistake, and the Franco-British command could not possibly imagine that the Nazis were that stupid and crazy. Just what Hitler and a handful of generals hoped would happen, to the disbelief of their less mentally imbalanced colleagues. 

 Morality: never underestimate the insanity and stupidity of your lethal adversary. And the more fascist, your adversary will be, the more insane and stupid.

 BAD LUCK: the French army had fully anticipated the obvious German offensive (“Case Yellow“), down to the fact that it would have two main axes through Belgium, and exactly where those axes would be. They were ready for it, and knew they would cut off German armor from behind.  However a plane with the plans crashed in Belgium, and the Nazis switched to a wild and crazy plan concocted by Hitler and his friend the Duke of Windsor (a Nazi fanatic judiciously made inspector general of the British, hence French, defenses, and whose keenest reader was Adolf Hitler himself; Hollywood was correct to make a movie about a king’s speech impediment instead, to help cover the sordid truth).

 Now, of course, when the French high command sent its armored, mobile, seven division reserve to the Netherlands, while smartly keeping no less than half of the French air force out of France, the strategic mistakes were bewildering (there are reasons to believe it was not all accidental, just like with the duke of Windsor, the ex-king who was not tried and shot as he deserved, and it is better to make movies about his successor’s voice. Anything to avoid exploring what really happened in 1939-1940!)

 And, of course, if the USA had gone into the war by the side of France and Britain in 1939, instead of joining Hitler (under cover, but de facto), the Nazis would have been promptly defeated.

 The grand conclusion is this: World War Two was a highly unstable, chaotic adventure (in re-runs of the Battle of France in 1940 and the battle of Midway in 1942, the Nazis and the Americans lose nearly every time, so both were lucky, very lucky, and chaos going just a bit differently would have brought a different world society, now.).

***

ATHENS HAD DIRECT DEMOCRACY, WE PREFER REPRESENTATIVE FASCISM:

 Another statement of Krugman is worth pondering:“I took as my starting point the famous Fukuyama thesis that liberal democracy — meaning basically a market economy plus democratic institutions — was an end state, a final resting point for state organization.”

 This Fuk. thesis is of course the grave mistake, self serving to the oligarchies, that civilization is making: instead of having a real democracy, Athenian style, namely direct democracy, as in the paleolithic cave, for the last four million years, we have a system now closer to elected fascism. A few elected people, in connivance with at most a few thousands, completely unelected conspirators, worldwide, decide for everybody, in connivance with a much larger body of plutocrats, who would be convicts, should justice be applied to them.

 OK, it’s not anywhere as obvious as in Russia, where Putin will be dictator president until 2024 (he just announced boldly; OK, at least in the USSR, I mean the Russian Federation, one knows who is the boss, whereas in the West one knows who the puppets are).

 The result of the representative fascism we have is an increasingly deeper lack of intelligence, as the handling of the crisis demonstrate.

 There is not much serious debate of the whole population in the system we have, in contrast of what happened in ancient Athens. Only polls are consulted, but polls are the fruit of public opinion, itself heavily manipulated by plutocratically controlled media. “Greek” crisis: in truth, it’s mostly a foolish lending crisis. “Subprime crisis”: in truth it was first of all a derivative crisis. Still is. “Euro” crisis: mostly the dismantlement of a system devised by private banks for private banks, were dangerous investments were disguised as AAA+, in the guise of Euro unification.

 And so on. Palestine not a state: no problem, let’s make Palestine the object of a final peace process, that’s the final solution, for however long it takes, American style (hint about what that means: look for the Cherokees!)

  So all depends upon Obama, thinking in his king size cherry bed (which is particularly comfortable, “The Economist” told us.)

***

NO CONTEMPT IS HIGH ENOUGH:

 The thesis of Judis of the New republic is repeated by Krugman faithfully:

 “The amazing thing now is not that we’re having a crisis, it’s the fact that we’re having the same crisis [as in the 1930s], and making the same mistakes.” But Judis, and apparently Krugman, make the mistake of believing that the crisis is only about that, being an exact copy of the crisis of the 1930s.

 Let me quote Judis extensively (as the article is only for subscribers):

 “TODAY’S RECESSION does not merely resemble the Great Depression; it is, to a real extent, a recurrence of it. It has the same unique causes and the same initial trajectory. Both downturns were triggered by a financial crisis coming on top of, and then deepening, a slowdown in industrial production and employment that had begun earlier and that was caused in part by rapid technological innovation. The 1920s saw the spread of electrification in industry; the 1990s saw the triumph of computerization in manufacturing and services. The recessions in 1926 and 2001 were both followed by “jobless recoveries.”

In each case, the financial crisis generated an overhang of consumer and business debt that —along with growing unemployment and underemployment, and the failure of real wages to rise— reduced effective demand to the point where the economy, without extensive government intervention, spun into a downward spiral of joblessness. The accumulation of debt also undermined the use of monetary policy to revive the economy. Even zero-percent interest rates could not induce private investment.

Finally, in contrast to the usual post-World War II recession, our current downturn, like the Great Depression, is global in character.”

  Well, yes and no. Yes, all the preceding is true. But, THIS TIME, it’s only a small part of the story, and not the worst.

  However, this simplistic a minima analysis is what has led the Obama administration, and others, to believe that demand is the only problem, just as in the 1930s: augment demand, and the crisis goes away. so Judis’ interpretation is not different from Bushama, or Krugman, or many others: just the depth of the crisis changes.

  Lowering interest rates thus was viewed as essential. But it’s not. Jobs are essential. There is no need for interest rates to be manipulated to get jobs. Command economies have demonstrated this before, ever since (Consul, general and imperator) Marius’ legions dug a canal from Arles to the Mediterranean sea (102 BCE). Or, before that the Chinese, the Mesopotamians and the Egyptians built massive canals, in what were, obviously, huge government programs.

 The first Egyptian canal is 6,000 year old. Egypt built another large canal in 1,700 BCE. The Shatt-el-hai Canal was built, linking the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, in 2,200 BCE. Command economies work, and they work more.

 My interpretation is not that interest rates are too high. Anyway, interest rates  are basically zero, and so they have been, basically zero in Japan for 21 years, and the crisis is still there, there.

 My interpretation, instead, is that we suffer from a misallocation of capital, not so much quantitatively, than qualitatively. Krugman, instead, like Obabla, believe that if we send just so much more money to their banksters friends, a miracle will happen, and the bansters will walk on the water, make bread, distribute fishes, and offer the wine.

 But the bread is laden with pesticides, the fishes soaked in mercury, the wine is just a rising acid sea, and banksters make only gifts to Obabla, and the other friends they have.  

***

DIFFERENCES WITH THE 1930S:

 Judis forgets a number of details, each planetary sized. There was no worldwide energy crisis in the 1930s, nor CO2 poisoning, nor a demographic crisis. Weapons of Mass destruction did not exist, and the biosphere had not started to die. Neither the Nazis nor the Soviets ever advocated extra judicial treatments and torture (as the super bully did recently, and practices worldwide for all to see, and learn). OK, Nazis and Soviets were not tender footed. But they did not dare being that devolved for all to see.

 Conveniently, Judis forgets also other ecological dimensions, completely. Among them:

 The USA decided to make food into fuel, so food prices jumped, worldwide, and have reached a permanent higher slope. Which has already led to the starvation of many, and dozens of millions, very soon, according to the specialists. But never mind: the USA has lowered the percentage of its oil exports from around 60% to 47% (with lots of “fracking”: finding oil and gas for an inefficient economy is well worth fracturing the entire USA!) And then, of course there is the cost of fossil fuels, which has thrown economies in recession, more than once.

 Judis also forgets the military element: in the 1930s, the USA was at peace. Right now, the USA is at war, all over, and in a very expensive way. Aside from the official soldiery, the Pentagon employs no less than 291,000 private mercenaries. With the intelligence agencies, one gets to about all the budget American taxes pay for, one trillion dollars. Making war against the world is expensive, as Hitler found out. Of course, as he was the first to point out, he did not have the means of the USA. Thus what we have now, mad bull losing its way, in more ways than one, is the real thing.

 In the 1930s, Americans could afford health care. Right now, thanks to (industry) gold plated Obamacare, health spending relative to GDP is climbing vertically: I saw a graph where, in the latest year, health care spending went from 16% of GDP to 18%. At this rate, before the end of Perry’s first presidency, only Congress, the White House, and plutocrats will be able to afford health care.

 Judis also forgets the democratic deficit: Obama, in his star struck simplicity, goes around, quoting the richest men in the world, calling them “my friends“. We are all supposed to be on our knees, swooning with love, as most of disposable GDP is sent towards the superrich, and we are told to follow spiritually the superrich, and tax them more, just as they said.  if Buffet says so, teaches Obama, so it ought to go, because who knows better. If Obama knew a bit of history he would not have waited Buffet and gates to teach him that taxation has to be progressive, just to stay in place. This has been known, and practiced, for 10,000 years. Except in plutocracy. Thus plutocracy was the apparent state of Obama’s nominal reign, so far, since the plutocrats themselves had to tell Obama that it looked bad.

 Next: wolves to come to the sheep pen, and Obama informs us that those quadrupedic wells of wisdom are coming to be shorn. And he shall recommend to do as they said.

 Judis claims the entire problem is over production. As in the 1930s, he says. But that is a complete misinterpretation of the crisis of the 1930s, first of all. That was more caused by the wrong decisions, coming from hubris, rather than by anything else. Now this master cause we have come to enjoy again. Stupid hubris to the point of dementia.

 The interpretation a minima of the crisis by Judis, claiming meekly that it is just as in 1930s, is very convenient to the plutocracy.

 It stands Marx on its head: you see, according to Judis and al., the problem is that workers worked too much! I hope Judis gets invited to a lot of parties in Manhattan, and the Hamptons, by the superrich and influential: he has done well for the malefactors of great wealth.

 Let’s fire more workers, indeed, Mr. Judis. Before they get angry and set fire to that “democratic” ultimate state Fukuyama was paid to be so proud of. 

 In truth preisdent FDR refused an over-production interpretation of the 1930s crisis. According to FDR, the real crisis emanated from the “money changers“. In other words:

***

THE REAL CRISIS. ROGUE MONEY CREATION:

 The more they lend money they do not have, with the benediction of their conspirators in government, the richer the bankers get. It’s as simple as that.

 Krugman seems to have been converted to this view two days ago, as in a rare seizure of truth about Europe, he reveals the “Origins Of The Euro Crisis“. …”it is very difficult in real time to convince people that capital inflows pose a threat, no matter how obvious the numbers seem.”

 In other words, money created in arbitrarily large quantities causes large tsunamis, tearing all societies in their way. We are far from Karl Marx’s critiques. But Krugman fails to see the connection with the fact that Judis is wrong, and that it is also wrong to use the Fed to send arbitrarily large flows of money to giant private banks, which are themselves permitted to use as much leverage as they want, directing those tsunamis each time they see a new landscape primed for devastation.

 This is why Japanese banks lent to real estate speculators and “zai tech” artists before 1990, and frantically all over South East Asia in the 1990s. Big banks all over EU and the USA duplicated the method in the late 1990s and 2000s, with the complicity of central banks and governments. A flood of money was for all actors to have. That is the influential actors, those who can invite the president of the USA for a sleep over.

 Then the president will invest half a billion in your society (say a solar company financed from those friends who had him at dinner, and made him feel important). Don’t worry: now that these solar companies are bankrupt, the venture capitalists will be the ones to see their money come back (contrarily to usual usage of venture financing where early investors lose all). Thus, they will be able to get their “democratic” president re-elected. No the taxpayers will not see their money come back, it’s lost for good, and this is only justice, they are only suckers, what are they going to do? Vote for Perry? Really? 

 The money rushed particularly towards untapped markets: derivatives, subprime, and European periphery. There was no cause of worry: in 1996 various indicators were as bad as in 1929. What did the head of the Fed do? Greenspan provided more money so that the party could keep on burning the house. He used as pretexts, a whole succession of crises: South East Asia collapse, Russian collapse, and LTCM. Long Term capital Management was a hedge fund full of friends and Very Honorable People.

 Then there was the year 2000 crisis (no kidding), and the Internet Bubble. Greenspan kept on forking the money. Naive creatures such as Nobel Paul Krugman have asked for more of the same, and I am all for it.

 However the way the American Central Bank has been sending the money is through the private banks. Or more exactly the same small conspiracy of bankers, a gang of banksters. Look at Rubin and Summers to see what I mean: already ultra powerful under Hollywood actor Ronald Reagan, those financial manipulators reached even higher even before the ignorant, but surprised Bill Clinton was elected. Then they took control of their Obamabot, a tele prompted device: a more advanced technology than Clinton. If one is to believed recent revelations, Rubin, Summers and their Geithner device, outright ignored the Obamabot, as happens in star Wars with idiosyncratic robots, when they scoffed at his erratic orders.

 What happened since 1996 (which was in many ways like 1929, as far as the indicators were concerned, as I said) is that at each episode, at each crisis of liquidity, the banksters were encouraged by the governments to throw more money, more investment. The correct course would have been, instead to regulate tightly the money flows according to higher principles. That is what the PRC, the People Republic of China, does.

 But how do banks create all that money? Through leverage. So the leverage got globally ever worse, at each further step of curing over lending by more money creation. Derivatives have reached more than ten times world GDP. The superrich and their servants in government loved it, as they became ever richer (since they serve themselves as the giant cash flows pass below their noses). This points immediately to the most obvious aspect of major problem: the super giant leverage is private. That, in turn, points at the solution, as I point out in conclusion.

 As the conditions become adverse, the latest leverages, most giant, most adventurous, more leveraged than ever, have to be inverted. As Kash Mansori (approved by Krugman) points out, in the case of the European debt crisis.

***

SOLUTIONS LOOKING FORWARD:

 As usual when there are crises, opportunists move for easy pickings, and the kill. American plutocrats and their supporters see an occasion to “explode” the European Union, for example.

 So what to do with all this insanity? There is a number of simple measures which are in the air in France and Germany, or even the UK and the USA:

 a) Getting rid of those who say we don’t need a Financial Transaction Tax, like Geithner. A FTT will discourage banks from engaging in fake trades with each other, and from extracting all profits or capital from legitimate investments in the real economy. It has to be implemented right away, as Merkozy says.

It’s a torpedo to fire at plutocracy that even European conservatives agree should be fired. European conservatives like money, they don’t like to hang from lamposts.

The Eurogroup should not hesitate to use the threat of force (by forcing a lot of financial euro business to be conducted in the Eurozone, and also by threatening to facilitate a lessening of euro valuation, as I said in the preceding essay).

 b) Getting rid of those who, like the German Vice chancellor, Rösler, ironically head of the “Free Democratic party”, want to abrogate the rights of completely innocent people and nations’ rights. OK, like Hitler, Kaiser Wilhelm, Stalin, Sarkozy or Obama, there are some doubts about his true origins, at least in his mind, so he is anxious to show he belongs, because he is more patriotic, and no patriotic act is high, or hard enough, for him to commit in front of the admiring crowd.

 Krugman is now mellowing a bit about the euro, saying that the “the euro is going to have a chance of working only if the ECB delivers much more expansionary and, yes, inflationary policies than the market now expects. If you don’t think that’s a possibility, say goodbye to the euro project.”

 “Euro project“? What about the “dollar project”? How is that doing? That would also be helped by small inflation, too, as long as capital is well allocated. But, to do this, gross misallocation of capital by itself, for itself, should be stopped, and that means a FTT. and also, for the USA, a Value Added Tax, to foster savings (total USA debt, including “Government Sponsored Enterprises” is well above 400% of GDP, arguably only less than the total debt of the UK and Japan).  

 c) Push fundamental research and development, give society a project, indeed, and a dream that will bear fruit.

 Improbably president Kennedy ordered the USA to land on the moon, with exalted firecracker technology. It worked. It was sort of useful , be it only by broadening humankind’s vision.

If Obama were really smart, he would have proposed a similar project. He should. The prime candidate is laser triggered thermonuclear fusion. It’s not plausible that it will not work on an efficient industrial level. (The USA, UK, and French programs are already talking to each other; one should make it into the next moon like project, an occasion to teach Krugman the difference between “project” and “currency”.)

 Some of the naive will say: thermonuclear, what for?

 Well, don’t believe the propaganda that there is plenty of oil and gas. We are past peak cheap oil. Now, indeed, we can have centuries of unbearably expensive (financially, socially, ecologically) oil, and gas and coal. But unbearable is the word. Starting in 2016, the prices will augment vertiginuously.

 Meanwhile demand is exploding: cars are supposed to quickly double to two billions, as emerging countries get to drive. China and India build four coal plants, a WEEK. Soon there will so much mercury vapor deposited from burning all that coal, that fish will be inedible, anywhere.

 The 30% more acidic oceans are now rising 5mm a year. Yes, the rise of the waters has accelerated.

 We need a new massive energy source, and it’s going to be nuclear, one way, or another. No more of that Roman energy stuff. We can do better than Inuits 1,000 years ago, who already burned oil. Because the superior Viking did not copy Inuit technology, they disappeared from Greenland. Our case is worse: we have nobody to copy. OK, maybe the Inuits, if it comes down to that. But don’t forget that mercury fish. Well, when one’s brain is full of mercury, one has forgotten what forgetting means, good point. Long live coal, down with nuclear, as completely idiotic pseudo ecologists say.

 And don’t tire me with the obsolete 50 year old plant at Fukushima hit by the giant wave after the giant quake, and without having done any of the mandated work on emergency generators: pictures show that the raccoon dog, the Tanuki, is back, frolicking among the reactors… Same in Chernobyl. Maybe we could explode a few thousand nuclear reactors, so wildlife would thrive? just wondering. Won’t happen with mercury, though, indeed… Actually a low level of radiation is well known to improve health, through the triggering of subtle repair mechanisms…

 Thus the number one strategy ought to be to declare a state of socio-technological emergency, and push for more brains in science, and shower the whole area with all this money the Financial Transaction Tax will send in the direction of common sense. With a clear target: tame thermonuclear fusion in 10 years, for power generation. It can be done (it’s just a question of augmenting a firing rate, and receiving the neutron efficiently).

 Late Imperial Rome died, in part, from its devastation of the ecology having caught up with its mostly stagnant technology: the “malefactors of great wealth” (as president Theodore Roosevelt called them) hate thinking (and rightly so, from their point of view of greedy crocodiles!) Rome was mastered by, submitted to, malefactors of extreme wealth. Some Roman bishops had 400 slaves. Malefactors of great wealth hypnotizing the People into superstition, away from reason, knowledge and wisdom.

 The Franks and other Germans developed more appropriate renewable technologies than the Romans had (wooden constructions and water wheels everywhere), and soon completely new technologies the Romans never even dreamed of (deep ploughs, massive labor horses, beans, etc.)

 A massive technological project to pull us up is bigger-think than Krugman, or Obama, and a fortiori the rest of the government of the USA usually do, but that is (part of) what is needed.

 Ah, and what of the super giant private leverage now incapable of supporting its own weight? Well default it, thanks to public funds which will acquire title and control (what Obabla did not do… yet). Once the European public fund for stability (etc.) is deployed and massively leveraged into many trillion dollars, one will have such a (trans)national public bank, which, under the People’s control, will be able to return banking to the real economy, and maybe even sanity. As it will crush all the hedge funds in the way, especially after a Financial Transaction Tax has been instituted.

***

Patrice Ayme

***

To answer a reader, just now: There are about 100 potential nuclear fission technologies all much safer than the present ones. China has a national Liquid Thorium Reactor project (project: learn, Krugman, learn…). France also finances a bit such research. The advantages of LTR reactors are enormous (they were studied initially as engines for planes). But of course nothing would be fusion (besides ITER, and the laser approach, there are other realizable fusion technologies within profitable energy production grasp.)

Tags: Bankers, Doom!, Great depression, John Judis, Karl Marx, moon project, president JFK, propaganda machine, Technology