Wealth Care’s Endless Summers


Abstract: Starting with Nixon, the Kennedy-Johnson welfare state became the wealthcare state. The rise of systematic failures such as Lawrence Summers, was instrumental that way.

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Democrats point at Republicans all the time. In truth, they set-up the Wealth Care State just as enthusiastically. Ever since Nixon, all outwardly socially motivated programs grew that monstrosity. (With the exception of G.W. Bush’s senior drug program! Yes, W. the torture man!)

Nixon publicly funded the HMOs, to make a Kaiser richer. Now Obama has extended plutocratic care. Ever since Nixon, plutocracy has made failure into rapture. It did not start this way, quite the opposite: engineering made the USA rich and powerful. Most renewable energy is hydraulic. It’s symbolized by this dam:

President Hoover's Dam. Engineering, Not Plutophilia

President Hoover’s Dam. Engineering, Not Plutophilia

President Hoover’s dam is an astoundingly high 222 meters (like a skyscraper). The reservoir holds 35 billion tons of water (yes, 35 cubic kilometers). The Hoover dam was launched by Sec. of Commerce Hoover in 1922, and construction ordered, early, by President Hoover, mid-1931.

Imagine Obama built something that big… Instead Obama’s idea of bigness is big money from the wealthy, food from their big tables, sleep in their big beds.

The latest thrust towards the Wealthcare state is a frenzy to make Larry Summers chief of the Central Bank.  The usual suspects push for it: the Rubin-Goldman Sachs-Citigroup gang.

Larry Summers, plutocrat, plutophile, enabler of deregulation under Reagan,  fought to repeal the last vestiges of Glass-Steagall, which separated traditional banking practices and investment (very risky) banking. Summers  deregulated complex derivatives of the world-gobbling type under Clinton in the late 1990s. Summers, grotesquely sexist to the point of imbecility, hyper connected with the worst, the great whale that swallowed the world economy, and regurgitated the neoplutocratic order.

Under Obama, Summers was made chief economic adviser, and gave the worst advice imaginable. Irreplaceable. He is now inciting Obama to see ghosts. Says the President (July 2013):

“let’s make sure that we’re growing the economy, but let’s also keep an eye on inflation, and if it starts heating up, if the markets start frothing up, let’s make sure that we’re not creating new bubbles.

Obama is worrying about inflation?  What else? Little green men? Inflation? Which inflation? Obama is keeping an eye on non-existent inflation? What for? No new bubbles? Really? Is not that rich, Mr. President, after your administration gave about 8 trillion, half of GDP, to the biggest, nastiest banks that ever existed? And all this so those nastiest banks and their bankers could pay the immensely greedy Lawrence Summers, Robert Rubin and their ilk? And fit the vision of the world they have, where financiers know best about everything? 8 trillion dollars to replenish criminals, that’s not a bubble?

After the tragedy of the 1930s, we are now enjoying a farce (before it turns again to tragedy!)

Hoover, an engineer from Stanford U., was no idiot, far from it; and he was experienced: the Hoover dam was his baby. But as President he became an idiot by not understanding the extent of the crisis, and providing an insufficient stimulus program, while allowing banks to de-fund the economy.  Not that Hoover did nothing: look at his colossal dam above. He just did not do enough.

Now here is Obama: one would expect that he heard of Hoover’s meekness. But all he knows is basket ball, not engineering. Obama does not have a Hoover dam to point at: Obama’s stimulus was mostly a fake. He kept his eye on the ball, indeed, from basket to golf.

Obama could have done something to mark the future, as Hoover did, with the Hoover dam. To this day, most of “renewable” energy is symbolized by the Hoover dam (hydro, worldwide, is on its way to pass gas in electricity generation).

What could have Obama done to mark the future with more than basket or golf balls? Get himself genuinely brainy advisers, not just greedy chickens, pecking away (Summers style). An obvious little project would have been Very High Speed trains, where they nearly exist, along the North East corridor or where they are guaranteed to be profitable, as in California.

Much more pharaonic and futuristic would have been for Obama to preside over a massive solar project in the South West USA.

The South West USA is the world’s best place for solar energy (due to solar energy guaranteed & proximity of enormous California, and its two giant metropolises, plus great safety). But Obama did not notice: all he has, is his “eyes on the ball”. The basket ball, historically, and now the golf ball. That’s the balls he knows. Not ball-bearings, not an engineer, just a player.

Yes, Obama gave a bit of money here and there (Mostly to Elon Musk, because he is a tall, good-looking rich South African). Stimulus-wise, Obama is a dwarf Hoover that built dams never higher than a few meters high.

Some will scoff I am unfair to Obama. But I have been too generous: Obama is Hoover in full reverse. Hoover used the power of the government to build a giant dam (so did FDR, only more so). Instead Obama used the power of the government to give money to plutocrats.

A non banking example? Elon Musk and space X, and the like: NASA money has been detoured to give to that clique, to the point NASA does not have enough money to develop the successor of Saturn V… (Finally decided 40 years after Nixon buried it!… except Musk stole the money…)

We have a Great Depression, but Obama has not noticed, because he only listens to Goldman Sachs (historically his greatest source of funds to get elected)! Indeed, Goldman Sachs’s owners are doing great. Obama breathes Goldman Sachs and its ilk. Such as Citigroup.

Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, etc. were all broke. What did Obama-Summers do? Each of the broken banks got about 60 billion from taxpayers, but Obama failed to acquire those properties taxpayers had paid for. So the plutocrats that controlled those institutions still do, and that’s why Rubin’s Citigroup and its immensely paid creatures (such as Lawrence Summers) are resurfacing from the abyss, stronger than ever. Well fed by clueless, pathetic taxpayers.

Why do we have a great Depression? Because presidents of USA such as Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama thought small, supposing they thought at all. Nixon ordered the stupid Space Shuttle instead of improving enormously the fantastic Saturn V (as it was easy to do, and Von Braun wanted), and Nixon conceived the stupid HMOs crony capitalism (= plutocracy).

The corrupt (What else?) Summers is paid by Citigroup (founded by Goldman’s Robert Rubin, B. Clinton’s main minder.) According to the Wall Street Journal, Saturday July 27, 2013:  “Mr. Summers is getting millions from a number of other financial firms.

These include stock-exchange operator Nasdaq OMX Group Inc., hedge fund D.E. Shaw, venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and asset-management and advisory firm Alliance Partners”

Making Summers central bank chief, reminds me irresistibly of the nomination of H. Schacht at the head of the German central Bank.

Schacht, a pawn of the American plutocrat JP Morgan, enabled Hitler. Was it under orders? Schacht was tried at Nuremberg, and rebounded nicely as a master world plutocrat afterwards (he was obviously protected; he was best silent, as he knew all about Hitler’s mighty financiers).

Quantitative Easing (QE) enthusiasts advocate the idiotic, but highly profitable to them, notion that the economy is all about money: just send enough money to the financiers, and they will make the world right for you (such is the main idea of QE).

Many “democratic” economists have advocated QE: send trillions to buy off the (unprosecuted) banking criminals. And thus most of what Obama did was to implement the notion of sending, according to the esteemed economist and lawyer William Black, and also according to the inspector of TARP, and evidence, trillions to the very banks that created the 2008 disaster. (This is not just my opinion anymore: even the Wall Street Journal agrees now, see below!)

(The banks used a bit of that money to “reimburse” TARP, enabling big reassuring titles in the Main Stream Propaganda: “Banks/Companies Reimburse Government Loans”).

Perfect for a world where the financiers in power decide who deserve money (namely themselves and their friends: why do you think Obama spent years calling Jamie Dimon, the daemon head of JP Morgan, “my friend”?)

Thus caring about the economy was straight WEALTH CARE: take care of the rich, they will do the rest. Reagan (“Ray Gun”?) got the ball rolling all over industry. Thanks to Goldman Sachs, Rubin, Summers, Clinton (in that order), it was extended to all financiers, drugged out on derivatives, in the 1990s.

Bush succeeded to out-Clinton by extending wealth care massively to defense contractors by engaging in carefully unwinnable wars: Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, all over.

Nixon has started HMOs by giving billions to private companies for Health Maintenance Organizing (HMO). The idea had been suggested to him in the Oval Office by the head of Kaiser Permanente, the industrialist Henry J. Kaiser. (Recent profits of Kaiser are of the order of 2 billions, and its revenue 50 billion; it’s the largest HMO in the USA).

Just as Obamacare flaunts the notion that stock exchanges and turning patients into shoppers will be the royal road to health care. Just send enough money to private insurance companies and health care plutocrats, such as Warren Buffet, Obama’s self interested adviser, and, little people, they will take care of you, thanks to the benevolent (and ‘invisible’!)hand of the market.

QE enthusiasts are propagandists for plutocracy. Just like many of the health care advocates are just poorly disguised wealth care fanatics who see more government subsidies coming their way.

Fine. This is what a plutocracy (aka “crony capitalism”) is all about. What’s not fine is when conscientious liberals fall for these schemes and howl in their favor for years. If one wants a society that cares, one builds a society that cares, and one does not simply throw money at the problem. That latter scheme is not new: Roman emperors practiced it for centuries, until the flood of money had corrupted the entire civilization.

Money even corrupted the most basic intelligence of the elite. When society is exclusively organized by money, there is no room for true intelligence. Even the Wall Street Journal, July 27, 2013, is finally understanding (five years after I got alarmed by Obama’s seduction by Summers!):

Mr. Summers is a master at “failing up.” Screw up at one job, get a better one. He’s now considered a front-runner to replace Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke in January.

Mr. Bernanke’s response to the financial crisis has been to digitally print trillions of dollars and give most of it to the biggest banks that caused the crisis. This seems to have averted another Great Depression, but at what cost? Eventually, the Fed must ease this money out of the system…

Meantime, President Obama launched yet another campaign to help the middle class. “With this endless parade of distractions and political posturing and phony scandals, Washington’s taken its eye off the ball,” he complained last week in Galesburg, Ill.

He blames Washington, even as he leads Washington. One reason why the middle class is still suffering is because Mr. Obama has a knack for putting the same people who ruined the economy in charge of fixing the economy.

Well, it’s not a knack, it’s a system. There is constant commuting between the Obama administration and the institutions that got the most money from said administration. The woman who wrote so called Obamacare, a high level (VP) health care insurance executive, went back where she came from, after she was done. Single payer, American style: one woman, singularly paid.

But let’s look at the bright side. The Wall Street Journal’s broadsides against Summers are hilarious, and gratifying; the critiques above I put in bold letters I advocated for 4 years at least. At the time, most would have described my ideas as rabid, irrational leftism. In truth, it was only the truth.

The traditional method to deal with bank-ruptcy of banks is to nationalize them: stakeholders get wiped out, management thrown out, the state brings in what’s needed to keep the bank going, and then sells it back to the private sector. This is fair: banks have a monopoly on money creation, granted by the state. Although privately managed, they are still agents of the state. This is efficient: it punishes malfeasance. And it costs taxpayers, thus, We The People, nothing: all the money is brought by the wealthy, twice.

Faced with the bankruptcy of thousands of a type of banks, the S&Ls, Reagan and Bush Senior followed scrupulously the nationalization method.

Yet the American subprime/European malinvestment crisis of 2008 was dealt in the opposite way: money was just grabbed from taxpayers, and given to the criminals, the banksters. Why? So they could do it again? Bush, Paulson a steroid laden football player who was made president of Goldman Sachs, before becoming Treasury Sec., Nancy Pelosi, a plutocrat daughter of somebody, head of Congress democrats, Obama, the basket ball man, and Lawrence Summers took all the decisions, and gave no explanation, except that they saved the world!

Verily, they saved nothing, except an established order that had blossomed in an orgasm of over-exploitation. What they did, was to Transfer Assets to Rich People (TARP), and impoverish everybody else.

So why Reagan and Bush Senior behave fairly, and the politicians of 2008 so dishonestly? Because the world political class of 2008 was much more corrupt than that of 1998.

How did it get there? Under Clinton, that is the reign of Goldman Sachs-Rubin-Summers, corruption got away from any critical examination. That allowed it to reach a crtitical mass. Summers had a screaming fit against the lady heading the Futures’ Commission, insisting, as he did, that financial derivatives ought not to be regulated (under Harvard president Summers’ supervision, that University lost a billion dollars in derivatives trades, meaning students’ money was transferred to plutocrats).

The same lady, Sheila Bair, was unpopular in the Obama administration, just as the highly qualified Fed Vice President, Janet Yellen.

What’s the problem with those women? They are more careful that the men, being more emphatic. Somebody such as Summers believe that greed is the noblest engine of humanity, and government should serve greed. The welfare state is their enemy, the wealth care state, their solution. They have understood nothing to humanity. And even less to how Earth works.

Lawrence Summers helped ruin Russia (by giving Yeltsin terrible advice) and turned it away from democracy, and back to the KGB. Lawrence Summers made the economy of the West “derivative”. Worse than him, there is not. Thus, Summers is intensely attractive to those whose wealth depends upon ruining the rest of mankind.

Summers? Irresistible to the Obama administrators: that’s where the money is. Citigroup will reward them. Amen.

***

Patrice Ayme

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39 Responses to “Wealth Care’s Endless Summers”

  1. Lovell Says:

    Patrice,
    I love your definition of TARP. Dubya could not have been more proud pulling off such a masterful scam.

    Anyways, I think Summers is done – kaput, finito, out of wind bagpipe. At least for now. Until such time our DINO president performs another round of grand betrayal.

    Like

    • Patrice Ayme Says:

      Dear Lovell: Love that you love it. I was disappointed more did not pick it up. Mo MSM observed that QE was used to “reimburse” TARP. QE is at least 8 trillion dollars, as even the WSJ JUST observed, there is a problem. Especially as, as the WSJ (but not the NYT) observed, like more than 4 years after me and the obvious, it’s the same criminals who got the money who lost it once (to themselves!) already…

      It’s the third time I launch myself against Summers (the DINO wanted to make him Sec. Treasury, again, initially!). This time, though, I must recognize that the outcry is general. Only today the WSJ came out with a pro-Summers, sort of, article, saying Summers would be like Bernanke for QE. Yes, but there is more to the Fed than QE… QE: Quantitative Enrichment?

      The reign of the DINOs is left unperturbed. Where is a good sized comet when sorely needed?
      PA

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      • Lovell Says:

        Deeply disappointed too about President O-bummer’s ignorance on deficits and inflation. That he listens to the Rubin gang explains it all.

        I just hope that when autumn comes, Summers will be gone.

        Like

        • Patrice Ayme Says:

          Hahahah… I finally changed the title into … Wealthcare Endless Summers. The fact Obama rolled out Summers again although we had this conversation 4 years ago means that he is not master of his ship. He has an eye on the (his) future. Clinton also listened, and proited. Now Hillary charges 200,000 dollars for one speech.

          And what does she know? Time to go Swiss. In suisse, the power of We The People through referenda attenuates singularly those of professional politicians. And it makes the debate much more lively… And more clever. Swiss banks have 20% reserves, by law.
          PA

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    • Patrice Ayme Says:

      Dubya is proud: he paints his back in the shower, his own legs in his bath… Now the judge Denise condemned the whistle blower of war crimes to countless years… for revealing war crimes? Shall the army go murder a few journalists if it’s something to be cherished?
      PA

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  2. Bernard M Says:

    Ce qui est le plus triste c’est que tu as raison. il faut relever la guillotine dans tous les pays,

    Hélas ça recommencera toujours.

    Je pense que la situation actuelle est maintenue volontairement car ça correspond a un niveau ou les gens sont mécontents mais il n’y a pas de révolte, alors ils en profitent pour pomper tout le fric dans leur sac.
    le “chacun pour soi et dieu pour tous” fait merveille, bravo l’éducation

    Like

    • Patrice Ayme Says:

      Toi aussi tu as raison: plus ils pensent que cela va pas durer, plus ils se remplissent les poches! (the shorter they think it will last, the more they line up their pockets!)
      PA

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      • Dominique Deux Says:

        “the shorter they think it will last, the more they line up their pockets!”

        It’s the tragedy of the commons all over again: the huddled masses are a common resource for their plutocratic parasites; when the yield starts sliding down because of overexploitation, it makes perfect rational sense for individual parasites to sink their proboscis deeper into the dying populace’s shrinking fat layer.

        The only solution, as was proven in forestry and fisheries, is to allocate the resources (people) to their users (plutocrats) as private or quasi-private property (aka monopolies), thus providing an incentive for long-term conservation. Soon to be explained in The Economist under the title “Anti-Trust to join Seagall in the Trashcan of Economics”.

        Like

        • Patrice Ayme Says:

          dear Dominique: The system you describe (quasi personnal ownership of serfs) is exactly why and how the feudal system worked. It was implemented starting around the year 1000 CE, or so (and not in the High Middle Ages).
          However the whole thing had been precipitated by the perforation and deliquescence of the Roman empire around 406 CE, followed by its “Renovation” in 800 CE… So its instauration may have been rather quick…
          PA

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  3. Old Geezer Says:

    While most certainly not defending the outrageous conduct and compensation of the banksters, it is important to recognize that the retirement benefits of current and future pensioners worldwide depend on that (corrupt and overpaid) financial system.

    And Paulson begged on his knees for TARP.

    At least for the TV cameras.

    In reality, he had us all by the short hairs.

    Like

    • Patrice Ayme Says:

      dear OGP: TARP was a fraud. They ought to have done it like Reagan, Bush, and the Scandinavians did it. That is, like the French always did it. First, nationalize.

      Interestingly a personal lawsuit by the 88 years old ex boss of AIG against Bernanke (boss of Fed) has been allowed to proceeed this week. The ex AIG boss accuses Bernanke to have forced him and other AIG shareholders to accept 188 BILLION dollars on too honerous conditions…

      This is exactly what happens when you rescue bandits from drowning. Then they accuse you to have spoiled their nice swim. what had to be done? Let AIG fail. Then have the government buy it (that is “nationalize” it). Then sell it. It was just a matter of hours.

      But, starting with JP Morgan banksters, instead, deal were made with the banksters. So Jamie Dimon (Obama’s “friend”) got Bear Sterns for free or so, etc.

      Why?
      Only banksters are worthy, that’s why. Dimon had a 18 room mansion when he was exiled on main street in Chicago… Let me guess who used to go there…
      PA

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  4. Old Geezer Pilot Says:

    I don’t think that nationalization was an option because EVERYBODY’S pension fund was loaded with Lehman, Morgan, and Goldman bonds, which paid the 5% needed to justify their under-funding of those plans.

    And the only way L, M and G could get those kinds of returns was by creating all these “Special Investment Vehicles.”

    Of course, they all crashed. But if the US government nationalized AIG, or Lehman, or Morgan or Goldman, those bonds would have paid NO INTEREST, and ultimately been worth 50 cents on the dollar.

    Every corporation would have had to cough up their profits to make up the gap. You see the spiral that this would have lead to.

    When you have a 100 story house of cards, you can’t allow it to fall..

    Like

    • Patrice Ayme Says:

      Dear OGP: Hmmm, I did not think about that. But I do not see how to change the name of the owner of a bank holding corporation would have to change the bonds themselves. The idea is to legally grab property one paid for. Not destroy it.
      PA

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  5. Old Geezer Pilot Says:

    True. But remember that the 1% now have more power than all the governments of the world. To quote Dick Durban, “…the bankers own the place…”

    So while GM could be taken over (and the investors wiped out), the same is NOT true for the financial system.

    Because if those investors are wiped out, there are no more pensions, IRAs, 401ks.

    There is no more money.

    Because it is all FIAT money from a bubble economy.

    And that bubble must be kept inflated.

    Like

    • Patrice Ayme Says:

      You mean Dick Durbin, Senate Majority Whip from Illinois?

      Seems to me the financial system can be taken over, because it’s all in computer. The worth is, ultimately, a number inside computers (thus the cybercrime danger!).

      Investors in bank holding companies have nothing to do with the banks they hold. They could safely be wiped out. Their power is upon elected representatives and the state system (Supreme courts, etc.) attached to them. But it’s not like we have to separate them from gold, and we can’t because then there would be no more gold. That’s what they made people believe.

      What Durbin means is that, when he deals with, say top Obama administrators he is dealing with people who want the rotten banks to survive, and the hedged funds, etc., because they want to make fortunes inside such institutions functioning as they do!

      Quantitative Easing, as practiced now is the transfer of financial power to those who misapplied it before (and they are free to leverage it the way they see fit). To be caricatural, one could just outlaw from any financial activity the top 200,000 guys. Just like, under a new law anybody condemned for a crime in Italy is excluded from the electoral process.
      PA

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  6. Gmax Says:

    Well said. The worthies are just splurging, while they can.

    Like

  7. Old Geezer Pilot Says:

    You are both right. And yes, money is just numbers in a computer. But that computer is owned and operated by the banksters, who also own the government. And the government runs the Army.

    And they are a powerful force to be reckoned with.

    In 2000, Iraq converted all its oil transactions under the Oil for Food program to euros. It was Saddam’s way of trying to replace the USD as the official reserve currency.

    I heard he came to a bad end, and that the USD is still the official reserve currency.

    Money may just be numbers on a screen, but it’s THEIR screen.

    They can do with it as they please.

    Like

    • Patrice Ayme Says:

      Dear OGP & Gmax: Well, I am reviewing the history of Egypt, or rather re-organizing what I know about it. Essays will be incoming. The hard realism many commenters exhibit here is entirely what it is all about.
      What DD was saying was also pretty much how the feudal order SNEAKED in after 1000 CE. A curious thing. Like how did the office of the king of the Franks, officially elective, until 1100 CE, become hereditary? (The (rest of the) Holly Roman Empire followed with the Habsburg, more than three centuries later…)

      Let’s face it: lest we react we are facing a similar downfall. And that Reagan abd Bush Sr had not crossed that rubicon (because THEY nationalized more than 2,000 banks!!!!!!!!!!!) is pretty telling.

      Obama is further down the circles of hellish plutocracy than RE and GB Sr…
      PA

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    • Patrice Ayme Says:

      When I saw Saddam had switched to euros, I knew he was dead. Maybe Obama saw similar things, and don’t want to be dead, so he persuades himself that the likes of Summers are saviors of mankind…
      PA

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  8. Lovell Says:

    “I’m always touched by the loyalty the villagers show for one another. Larry Summers is a rich man. Some of his wealth has come from speaking fees.

    J.P. Morgan Chase offered the former Harvard president and Treasury Secretary $67,500 for a February 1, 2008 engagement.

    Citigroup paid Summers $45,000 for a speech in March 2008 and another $54,000 for a speech that May.

    Goldman Sachs paid Summers $135,000 for a speech on April 16, 2008 and another $67,500 for a speech on June 18, 2008.

    Summers received over $5 million in 2008 in salary from the major hedge fund D.E. Shaw.

    The three Wall street firms mentioned above received billions in government bailouts the following year when Summers was advising President Obama on bailouts.

    Summers has fed well at the Wall Street trough. Mr Rattner calls it public service. I call it self enrichment at the expense of the public.”

    Like

    • Lovell Says:

      The above is a quotation, in toto, reprinted without permission from the author, a certain Annie from Seattle.

      The article where the comment was posted is from here:

      http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/02/the-right-leader-for-the-fed/?hp

      The comments that follow are more interesting than the article itself, penned by Steven Rattner, the auto bailout czar.

      Like

    • Patrice Ayme Says:

      Dear Lovell: Excellent quote. The more recent activities of Summers the WSJ just revealed and I quoted in my essay are current (in 2008/2009, I mentionned explicitly the activities above, but thanks for you and Annie from Seattle for reminding us!).

      When you ask common citizens of the USA if they see something wrong with this, the International PERCEIVED Corruption index pollsters find that they do not react, and call this astronomical corruption business.

      Before thinking, comes feeling. Whatever Descartes said.

      In the French Republic, Lawrence Summers would have the National Assembly, the Senate, and independent judges on his case within weeks. Lest the streets rebel…
      PA

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  9. Patrice Ayme Says:

    @ Lovell: Rattner thinks Summers is the brightest mind. he repeated that several times in his propaganda piece.

    Rattner was a very well paid Wall street henchman. I said something to the effect that, for a leech’s brain, Summers was a genius. The NYT immediately published it.

    However, earlier in the week, Thomas The Paid Friedman wrote an article decrying Chinese corruption. When I rolled out in answer a reasoning demonstrating the USA was even more corrupt, the NYT/Friedman carefully censored it.
    PA

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  10. Paul Handover Says:

    Read your essay, Patrice, aloud to Jeannie just over an hour ago. Was deep in ‘think mode’ while having a shower – many will recognise that the shower is a fabulous place to reflect!

    But aware that there are, still, too many thoughts running through my head for me to pen a coherent reply.

    But I will say this for now: this feels so strongly that the end of an era is rapidly approaching and, like previous huge societal changes, confusion and uncertainty are the norm.

    The one difference between today and the past is the ability of the ‘common man’ to speak so widely, a la Internet, and maybe, just maybe, millions of those common voices will have an influence as powerful as the ‘voice’ of big money.

    This one recent resident of this fine country certainly hopes so.

    Oh, almost forgot – brilliant essay!

    Like

    • Patrice Ayme Says:

      Thanks really a lot, Jeannie and Paul for your approval! Much much appreciated here.

      I do believe, as you do, that thinking in a different neurohormonal and neurophysicological regime is indispensable. In particular, physical exercise encourages oneself to go “meta”, as an adaptation to parsimony of brain activity one is forced into.

      And showers, or baths, are similarly effective, indeed…

      Once a bright young physicist adressed me aloud in a great assembly of physicist. Said he: “How do you do not to get bored, when you run for hours?” “Well, I replied, I run through mountains, and that requires intense brain activity, at every step, bound, leap, lest one dies. But, more importantly, I used the occasion for deep thinking from completely different perspectives, and LOGICAL RESOLUTION.”

      At the time, deep inside, I was floored that an intellectual could ask such a stupid question: what happened to meditation/ Was thinking reduced to computing?

      Carnot, who invented thermodynamics, and had tuberculosis (early 19C) used to walk a lot for health and reflection. Nietzsche did outright solo mountain climbing (bad health, same as Carnot). Newton saw the apple fall, and got the idea of the moon falling too, in his garden. And so on.

      The Peripatetic school in Athens thought philosophy was best achieved on the march…

      Are the times changing? They sure will, but many evil men are determined to get them to change their ways. I am less reserved about Summers, the epitomy of evil, than about, say, Putin. I do disapprove a lot of Putin, but I think Putin is really trying to be good in general, whereas Summers just want to be good to himself.

      Another thing is that the “end of an era” mood rested heavy upon France for 50 years, before the Revolution of 1789… Yet, i agree with you that some things are changing for the best. In 2003, the NYT censored 90% of what I was sending to them, at least! Now they published much (although still using the delaying tactic when they find it’s too heavy going; Friedman censored my ‘more corruption in USA than China reasoning though, this week…)
      PA

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      • Paul Handover Says:

        Thanks Patrice. However, now need thinking time to muse over your long and educational reply in addition to continuing to think about your essay! 😉

        As someone said, “The more you know, the less you know!”

        Like

        • Paul Handover Says:

          So here’s a question (and apologies if you have addressed this in previous essays)?

          Can you recall any other period in modern history, say last 2,000 years give or take, when the scale of corruption, the power and influence of big money, has equaled or exceeded these present times? And when I use the term ‘scale’ I mean in proportion to the wealth of the dominant empire of the time.

          Like

          • Patrice Ayme Says:

            Interesting question that I approached in the past from different angles… Falling into feudalism, 1,000 years ago, comes to mind. More in a separate commment… To answer you most accurately, one would need to redefine first GDP. I am sure Partha would agree that, in a subsistence economy, as Europe 1,000 years ago, GDP ought to be redefined.
            PA

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        • Patrice Ayme Says:

          Dear Paul: Fire all the questions you want including the most embarrassing. Questioning is how everybody learns. I have been so embarrassed by my friend Obama, I don’t feel the pain anymore… ;-)! Really, I got depressed when I saw what developed in early 2009. All these sacrifices to see the same old vultures feast?
          PA

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  11. pshakkottai Says:

    Hi Patrice : Re “Making Summers central bank chief, reminds me irresistibly of the nomination of H. Schacht at the head of the German central Bank.”
    The Nazis came to power in 1933 when the German economy was in total collapse, with ruinous war-reparation obligations and zero prospects for foreign investment or credit. Through an independent monetary policy of sovereign credit and a full-employment public-works program, the Third Reich was able to turn a bankrupt Germany, stripped of overseas colonies, into the strongest economy in Europe within four years, even before armament spending began.” (Henry C. K. Liu, “Nazism and the German Economic Miracle,” Asia Times (May 24, 2005). From

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mefo_bills

    An imaginary company

    “Hjalmar Schacht formed the limited liability company Metallurgische Forschungsgesellschaft, m.b.H., or “MEFO” for short. The company’s “mefo bills” served as bills of exchange, convertible into Reichsmark upon demand. MEFO had no actual existence or operations and was solely a balance sheet entity. The bills were mainly issued as payment to armaments manufacturers.
    Mefo bills were issued to last for six months initially, but with the provision for indefinite three-month extensions. The total amount of mefo bills issued was kept secret.
    Essentially, mefo bills enabled the German Reich to run a greater deficit than it would normally have done. By 1939, there were 12 billion Reichsmark of mefo bills, compared to 19 billion of normal government bonds.
    This enabled the government to reinflate their economy, which culminated in its eventual rearmament.
    Fueling growth
    This strengthened the German economy by providing the government with various goods and services which it was then able to reinvest in the economy, fueling its growth, and preparing it for Hitler’s aggressive foreign and domestic policies. Not only did the bills serve the above functions, but they also concealed the military expenditure forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles.”

    This shows the power of created money. California can do this too. As long as there is slack in the economy, USA can do it too. USA is already sovereign and obeys the gold standard rules with no need for them (except the big lie favorable to the plutocracy and big corruption). The big lie is to pretend that US economy is the same as kitchen table economics.

    Schact certainly understood fiat money.

    Partha

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    • Patrice Ayme Says:

      Dear Partha: I don’t know who this Liu is, but what he says is the standard, implicitly rabidly anti-French, opinion about Hitler and 1933. In truth, many fascist Germans hated to have lost World War One at the Battle of the Marne, in early September 1914, when the French army counterattacked between German army corps, helped by the African army holding Paris, riding on all taxis and buses, and a British army corps, just arrived.

      H. Schacht launched inflation in 1923 to avoid paying the reparations of the deliberately sabotaged, destroyed and devastated Belgian and French industrial heartlands.

      The showdown was the 1923 German refusal to replace the telegraph poles the Prussian army had destroyed in November 1918. Like there were no trees in Germany…

      Anyway, to this day the Coucy castle, highest dunjeon ever, dynamited in November 1918 by the Prussians, is still on the ground, although the French have been rebuilding it for decades. Germany finished paying the reparations in 1999, or so.

      Something else; the Hitlerian re-birth of the economy was a fake, principally frantic re-armement on fake money, except for what Hitler stole, first from the Jews, and then from all over.
      PA

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    • Patrice Ayme Says:

      Dear Partha: I did not know the MEFO story. Very interesting. Wow. Schacht certainly knew what he was doing. Quite a bit like Summers. Simply what he was doing served the Dark Side, as early as WWI.

      Rearmement of Germany was engaged secretly, with the help of the USSR, Portugal, even before 1930. France got angry, and. unbelievably, Churchill threatened France (!!!! Little known; in 1929). By 1935, German rearmement was so advanced it got official, with a full alliance with Great Britain (!). That complemented nicely the one with Poland in January 1934. And the still secret one with Stalin…

      I see what you are implictly saying: the ECB can’t do it. Yeap, well, just like Saddam should have done it. In truth, the ECB can create as much money as it wants. But it would need something else than a partner of Goldman Sachs at the head of the ECB. It would also need France to be determined that money needed to be created in large amounts, and ready to go hostile towards Washington-Wall Street, something that France does not want to do, lest she gets stabbed in the back by the usual suspects.

      The present French metaprinciple is that a strong Franc (so called Euro) is good. Same story as in the 1930s. This has lots to do with France having no fossil fuels (just as the nuclear civilian policy has to do with that same fact). Germany has plenty of coal, and will have it for a long time, until its so called ecologists realize it’s worse than nukes…

      Another same story as in the 1930s is that France has a strong, well trained trained military (although it got defeated by happenstance in June 1940, it was strong enough to attack Hitler, something the USA itself was uncapable/unwilling to do).
      PA

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  12. EugenR Says:

    Dear Patrice, Politics and economics is continuous play between the “moral and the practical”, between the “short term and the long term”. Then the very best intentions if followed zealously brought on the humanity the very worst calamities. It is definitely truth since Robespierre, but also before him. Religious and ideological zealousness be it justified as it my be brought nothing but sufferings for humans.

    I don’t say to drop the claim to punish the banksters, but lets not throw out the water with the baby. Learned from the disastrous experience of the thirties in the last century, at 2008 the financial system had to be saved, whatever the moral and financial cost will be .But now that the situation starts to calm down, the time came to sweep the yard. I don’t know to much about the different candidates for the governor of Federal Reserve, but definitely he has to be a Hercules who has the capacity to clean the Augean stables.

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    • Patrice Ayme Says:

      Dear Eugen: I hear your call for moderation. Let’s notice, though that Lenin (he said it himself), stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, where in the pockets of American plutocrats (the Harriman brothers, top democrats, got the top rewards from both Hitler and stalin for financing them; he built up Baku’s oil fields for Stalin).

      So in the 1930s, although talk against “plutocrats” (dixit hitler, Rommel!) was thick, behind the curtains the dictators worked hand in hand with them (even though they complained occasionally). 1930s: Anti-plutocratic show, plutocratic reality.

      I have never advocated to destroy the banking system. Simply the reality should be faced that it is a state system. As it has been faced in India (see what Partha said). Also, what’s wrong with sending 1,000 banksters to jail? About 8 million people are under judicial punishment in the USA. What’s wrong about all the accomplices of say J. Dimon be prevented from any power whatsoever, looking forward?

      Summers is a terrible person. He has long been, among the so called democrat as negative as the worst “republicans’ on many issues. For example CO2. Limiting it, he views as a huge disaster.

      Summers was a leading voice within the Clinton Administration arguing against American leadership in greenhouse gas reductions and against US participation in the Kyoto Protocol, according to internal documents made public in 2009. As top economist at the World Bank, he loudly advocated that any restraint on CO2 emissions would be an unmitigated disaster. All ecologists should hate him. That has nothing to do with what happen in 1794.

      1794 cannot be understood without 1792. It’s great Britain and Prussia that created Robespierre. As I may soon help people recall in another essay…
      PA

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  13. Patrice Ayme Says:

    Summers about the greenhouse: Summers was probably THE most effective individual, in the entire WORLD, to avoid doing anything about CO2.
    (Hence the implicit joke in the title…)
    PA

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  14. Obama, Clinton: Stealthily Regressive | Patrice Ayme's Thoughts Says:

    […] [Why was there a decrease around 1950? Because of super giant spending due to the Second World War, just prior; after that enormous spending, a retrenchment was in order. However, notice that President Ike brought up spending to 25%! Thus, if one makes, say a five year rolling average, Clinton and Obama are the lowest in Net Government Investment since… President Hoover; and even Hoover did the Hoover dam, and much more. One can advantageously consult “Wealthcare Endless Summers“.] […]

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