Sarko In Sarcophagi!

ONE PLUTOPHILE DOWN? MORE TO GO!

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Abstract: Hysteria against French socialism by plutophiles is exposed. The last, and by far most important section of the essay, shows that an economy rests on three superposed turtles. But the mightiest one, the only fundamental one, is the state. A state without a free market is a choice, a free market without a state is no choice. A free market has laws, and that means a state. Therein the error of Europe.  

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HOLLANDE: FROM HOLLAND, THE ECONOMIST, FROM PINOCHET:

The French presidential election’s last stage is a confrontation between the plutophile Sarkozy and Mr. Hollande, for eleven years the head of the Socialist party, MP, mayor, and president of a region (the equivalent of an American state). The magazine The Economist got hysterical about the prospect of Hollande leading France, calling him “rather dangerous“. (The “rather” being added to sound British, somewhat detached, above the fray, a cover-up for hysteria.)

Verily, The Economist, like Milton Friedman, used to love Pinochet. That was not “rather criminal”, but definitively criminal. I have never dug up their utterances in Hitler’s times, but I am sure unsurprising surprises lay thereabout.

A lot of the British upper class, up to 1936, was pro-Hitler. After signing a shameful military-economic treaty with the Nazis in 1935, and, after seeing Hitler and Mussolini attack the Spanish republic, propelled by Texas oil, equipped by American plutocrats, Britain operated a U-turn (rather than having to operate U-boats later). If The Economist supported the business side then, it would have supported Mr. Hitler.

Many were afraid, including yours truly, that Mr. Hollande would be rather boring, but, apparently he can defend himself. I hope he bites Obama next week, or, at least signify to him haughtily that he was just elected on a clear mandate: get out of Afghanistan’s Islamist state.

One of Hollande’s dangerous suggestions is to foster the European Investment Bank (a PUBLIC bank, twice the size of the World Bank). The EIB can leverage itself enormously, to build infrastructure (and may have much more impact, that way, than, say, Citigroup, which 7 times the assets.)

Verily, what could be more dangerous than to make normal banking plutocrats irrelevant?

A London banker confided to me that bankers don’t lend to normal people and companies anymore. No need. Profits are with non society directed activities (as provided by Quantitative Easing and hedge funds). I asked him: why then banks should not be nationalized? He told me that, indeed, nationalization is what should be done, if one wanted to return to a normal economy.

Meanwhile The Economist claims that: “The Socialist who is likely to be the next French president would be bad for his country and Europe.” And why is that? The Economist presents a jumble of facts disconnected from sense:

“FRANCE IS half of the Franco-German motor that drives the European Union. It has been the swing country in the euro crisis, poised between a prudent north and spendthrift south, and between creditors and debtors. And it is big. If France were the next euro-zone country to get into trouble, the single currency’s very survival would be in doubt.”

And a jumble disconnected from plausible emotions. Imagining the anti-European plutophiles at The Economist waking up in the middle of the night screaming about the Euro, would not happen because they worry about its survival, but because they worry that the euro has swallowed the pound. As it will, someday.

I personally want France to DEFAULT on her debt. Actually I want all states to default, because the present financial system  is a gangrene, and like all good gangrenes, it has to be amputated.

(The financial transaction tax Hollande wants to implement would go a long way towards destroying much of the financial gangrene.) See:

https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2011/09/14/to-save-the-world-please-default/

However, I am fanatically pro-European, and I think deeper in socio-economic matters than The Economist. In truth the busy propagandists at The Economist know very well that the banking crisis has nothing to do with the principle of a single currency, but everything to do with the fact it was conceived as a SLAVE TO PLUTOCRACY.

Accusing the principle of a single currency, the euro, is a classical case of blaming the victim. But the economists at The Economist won’t say: their salaries depend upon not saying that.

In general, Western democracy is under attack from the fact the Western socio-economy has been made slave to plutocracy… Just as happened when the Roman republic got in trouble. Rome failed because the socialist policies proposed by the Gracchi were not adopted. The plutocrats killed the Gracchi and their supporters. Thousands of them.

Mr. Hollande is a chance to start the arduous task of extirpating the plutocratic gangrene. OK, Obama talked change too. But Obama’s change was about “change you can believe”. Indeed: none. Hollande proposes:”Le changement, c’est maintenant.” (“Change Now”.)  Hollande has 60 specific proposals, and several of the early ones are definitively anti-plutocratic.

Whereas Obama became quickly an extremely rich man, even before he wrote his first book, a typical “golden boy” story (or should I say black boy?), Hollande, seven years Obama’s senior, is no millionaire. Hollande has what he earned from salary, and not from fabulous book advances, American pre-payment style… The mark of huge money, very young, from nowhere, that’s the mark of Pluto. It’s all over those around Sarkozy (like his immensely rich and New York influential brother; I wonder if it has anything to do with a Sofitel hotel in New York…)

Hollande was a student at top rated ENA (where one enters only through a competitive examination, not through “legacy“, that means plutocracy, as one does at Harvard, this parody of an academic institution).

The Economist: “one thing seems certain: a French president [Hollande] so hostile to change would undermine Europe’s willingness to pursue the painful reforms it must eventually embrace for the euro to survive. That makes him a rather dangerous man.”

What seems certain to the crocodile, does not have to be so, for higher forms. The sort of euro that The Economist wants to survive, the plutocrats’euro, is the sort democrats ought to discontinue.

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HOLLANDE CHANGE, SARKOZY, PLUTOCRACY:

Contrarily to what The Economist asserts, vague familiarity with the candidates’ programs shows that it is Sarkozy who wants to change nothing. And that it is Hollande, who proposes change. So the entire analysis of The Economist is built on a false premise. And why Sarko, a weak mind, belongs to his sarcophagi.

To this, a reader from Brazil, Felipe Coelho replied to Tyranosopher May 5th:

“Yes, Sarko did not change anything, breaking his electoral promises of leading France out of the State Capitalism model and releasing the energies of her society. Almost certainly Hollande can do a better job, even tiny steps will be better than nothing.

The problem is that both French Right and French Left love State Capitalism, for distinct reasons. In Brazil we have the same sort of consensus, selling Petrobras (the largest oil company) or Banco do Brazil (the largest bank), selling railways, ports or airports, ending the gigantic bureaucracy, all this is unthinkable. Instead of Louis XIV and Napoleon one has here the heritage of the State monopolies of the House of Avis XV century kings. The consequence for Brazil is the same, our growth during the last decade was ridiculous, equal to the average of Latin America. Brazil is the eternal country of the future. Cardoso made slight changes in that consensus and sold some mining, telephonic and electrical companies, but Lula did not dare/wish doing anything like that. Perhaps Hollande will, forced by circumstances, be more akin to Cardoso than to Lula. Let’s hope!”

My answer: Brazilian growth has actually been excellent. After going up by 50% in 15 years before 2006, it seems to be averaging 5% a year since. The first problem with Louis XIV and Napoleon, is that they were tyrants. (True they used French economic power, until they ruined it, but that’s besides the point.)  

Brazil has been mimicking not brainless, let’s throw money at the rabble, Keynesianism, but deliberate, let government intervene in free market, Colbertism. (China does the same.) See:

https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2010/09/04/colbert-good-keynes-not-so-smart/

More recently, Merkel practiced a sophisticated form of Colbertism. See:

https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2012/01/28/welfare-state-fares-well/

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AN ECONOMY RESTS ON STATE, & FORCE; MONEY IS A LUXURY:

I do not believe that Sarkozy loves state capitalism. And the love of France for state capitalism is much exaggerated as an exclusively French passion. For example the French Post office is privatized, not so the American one.

In the USA many giant “private” companies are little more than wards of the state. Northrop is an example: it was able to sell subsonic bombers at two billion dollars apiece. Yes, two billions. Yes, subsonic: easy to catch. OK, they call those bombers “stealth“: a marketing ploy. All combat aircraft are “stealth“. The truth is that the Northrop B2 was a subsidy program.

Same for the Raptor, F22, at 200 million dollars apiece: it was never engaged in combat. Not once in ten years. It can’t take the rain, or something. One was shot down by an old French Mirage, in mock combat. More humiliating than that, hard to do, and a question: how come the tremendous waste of taxpayer money? Is not the same done again with the F35? On an even larger scale?

Many of the private companies trying to make money out of space access, are heavily subsidized.

The entire “private” healthcare industry is ward of the state. At least half of its business is with the state (most with Medicare).

Sarkozy’s failure was trickle down economy. Be nice to the rich, the rich shall reward you well, say the naive, and they twitch.

Now Sarkozy insists that it was a “lie” and a “calumny” to say that it’s all what his policy amounted to. Not satisfied with the previous invectives, he called Hollande a “little calumniator” for suggesting as much.

The way I look at it:

1) the “free” market, private capitalism, is a playground set, regulated, protected by the state. It furthers economic activity by exciting the profit motive (having more than the other guy).

If the hormonal situation is such that having more is dwarfed by other motives, the free market is irrelevant. This is what happens in case of very serious, invasive, war. Brazil, to my knowledge, just as the USA, has never known such a war.

France, per her location at the crossroads of three major trade routes, in the middle of Western Europe, has known many such invasions. Even before the Huns, monstrously crushed in 451 CE. The invasions have modified the national character. When French children learn French history, they learn that, the state is not just the lender, but the savior of last resort.

2) State capitalism insures the safety of the state. It was always strong in France, following the greatest Roman tradition. The argument can easily be made that, because of a plutocratically induced collapse of the tax base, Rome got invaded so badly that the economy imploded. The Roman state collapsed first, and was unable to defend the People. Plutocracy is not just infamous, it is lethal: if it does not kill you outright, it will make sure to die with you.

The USA has also an enormous state capitalism. The weapon-making part of the American military-industrial complex is nominally private, but it’s the equivalent of Roman weapon manufacturing. Practically, the crucial state industry.

The free market is a luxury. State capitalism, the real thing.

3) There is even a higher, ultimate system. Economy is managing a house. Bottom line, an economy has nothing to do with money. Money, too, is a luxury.

Barter and mandates can do it all. Some of the greatest civilizations worked that way. Sparta showed the way. It refused to use a currency beyond iron. That idealistic society then helped Athens re-establish democracy (510 BCE).

Barter and mandates is how Athens built a fleet capable of resisting Persia, how the Roman republic rose, how Diocletian re-established the Roman empire. Barter and mandates is how the Inca empire functioned, it’s how president FDR stabilized the economy of the USA in the 1930s, and how the war effort, after 1941, re-established it.

Those who believe in money first could have looked at FDR’s budget in December 1941, and say that the USA could not afford one more aircraft carrier. Instead, the USA’s command economy built dozens of such carriers, and thousands of other ships, let alone more than 400,000 aircraft.

Right now the problem is that the state has been captured by banksters, and their servants. The solution is not to get out of that nightmare, with better dreams. It is to wake up, and use force to roll back that plutocratic tsunami. Starting with destroying its ideology is how it will be done. Hollande’s 75% taxation above one million euro income is a good start to strike terror in those who believe too much in the Golden Calf.

Right now the problem is not too much state, it’s not enough democratic state.

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Patrice Ayme

Tags: democracy, Elections, France, Hollande, plutocracy, Sarkozy