RAGFLATION: Inflating Poor In Rags, Wealthiest, Wealthier

RAGFLATION: A New Concept, Inflating Money And Rags: Let Them Wear Rags!

Markets expect inflation to subside within a year (there are markets of future interest rates). Central banks need to mitigate inflation. However, central banks must not create a recession. Yet, the Fed head claimed action which risked a recession was needed. For those who don’t know, central banks are cover-ups of unions of the wealthiest lending to states… So they are intrinsically plots of the wealthiest. The earliest ones in Florence and Britain, were devised for, and entailed much military action.

Thus, any central banks’ action is one directed by the wealthiest financiers plotting together in the name of the wealthiest crust of society. By yanking interest rates and loans (to the wealthiest) just so, and according to their latest plot, they can insure that the wealthiest get wealthier and the poorest more into rags. 

Correcting an error such as free money for the wealthiest, with another error, expensive money for the poor (after making the wealthiest wealthier) does not make a right… for society at large… although it makes still another right for the wealthiest.

The present day inflation was created by central banks, principally (complicating factors such as Putin’s Third World War made matters worse). The Fed not only annihilated interest rates and made massive qualitative easing, but also bought mortgage bonds to make mortgages loans dirty cheap, thus feeding a strong inflation in housing… In existing housing prices, not in creating new housing (the two concepts are antinomic to each other)… making the housing crisis worse.

This sort of torture through interest rates is called “sadomonetarism”, since Lady Thatcher, who practiced it. It inflicts pain to better society (supposedly).

Sadomasochism is fed by a deep tendency of the human mind… that of inflicting pain and extinction on other human beings. This instinct corresponds to the necessity of destroying other humans to save the ecology. In other words, lofty reasoning from revered experts may well hide the basest and worst instincts of destruction… which are millions of years old. When the chimps go kill all chimps in the nearest valley, they don’t act any differently.

Thus, the Fed, the central bank, which is stuffed with human beings with higher ambition, greater greed for domination than usual, as all the most powerful institutions tend to be, may well harbor, deep down inside, a strong desire for ragflation…. The will to reduce a significant part of the population to rags. To make the wealthy wealthier.

In the ultra wealthy San Francisco Bay Area, where I reside, one can see camps, some extending a mile along some freeways and interchanges, where people, some dramatically sick, live in rags. That, too, is part of the economy, and should be part of the Fed’s business, this ragflation, this inflation of rags and destitution, that the Fed fed, while ensuring that local homeowners enjoy multimillion dollar homes (even if they have just one bathroom) lowers the standard of civilization. It makes people inured to gross inequality, inequity and sadomasochism.

Sadomonetarism, making the wealthiest wealthier, is just one consequence of this generalized desire to inflict pain on others. Enablement, love and consideration for genocidal dictators such as Putin and Xi is another aspect, so is the devilish plot to support irrealistic “renewables” while nuking nuclear all with the practical effect of fostering fossil fuels.

The most effective manipulation of minds consists into doing something in order to achieve the opposite. 

Patrice Ayme

This is just a fractious of the Woodstreet Oakland Concentration Camp. In the distance, homes on the hills ar worth several million dollars each. Such camps are many in Oakland, and typically tucked along or below ten lane wide massive freeways or freeway interchanges with dozens of lanes..

Bitcoin Is Organized Crime

I have explained in the past what is fundamentally wrong with Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies: a currency is actually an expression of military and judicial might. A currency needs a state, or states, to back it up, and is a tool thereof: a state, or union of states, can exist without a currency, not reciprocally

Another problem with the concept of bitcoin is that crypto currencies rest on the the “blockchain”, a perfectly inefficient, energy devouring and thus ecologically criminal, idiotic technology… Which could be useful only if information and computation were ecologically free (instead I have proposed “AWE”… which is ultimate efficiency).

Indeed, the “blockchain” records all transactions everywhere, anytime… instead of some transactions by trusted actors. Bitcoin fanatics say they have a right to ravage the planet, because they don’t trust those “trusted” actors. Well, neither do I I say: make the actors (governments, and their agents, the banks) more trustworthy.

Bitcoiners have also insisted their activity was beyond any suspicion, it’s honest, it’s new age, it’s a new dawn, the geek world, better than anything the Greeks offered… Helpful bitcoiners sent me messages offering to educate me, in all sorts of ways. All this, in total violation of the simplest observation of the Bitcoin graph, which looks like a Tulip Mania. Just worse:

Market Capitalization of Cryptocurrencies dropped by ⅔, generating more than 200 billion dollars of losses.

And indeed, turning things on their heads, there is a new reason to criticize bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies: they are manipulated by organized crime. Bitcoin enthusiasts may counterpunch that central banks are organized crime; well, I agree, and wrote so for more than a decade; however, it’s not because Rome is on fire that one should start new fires! Bitcoin enthusiasts should go the way of Nero.

 

• New research observes that at least half of the 2017 rise in bitcoin prices was due to coordinated price manipulation using another cryptocurrency called tether.
• The 66-page paper says tether was used to buy bitcoin at carefully selected moments when it was declining, which helped “stabilize and manipulate” the cryptocurrency’s price.
• “In general I research things that are potentially illegal, and there’s a lot of rumors surrounding potential questionable activity in cryptocurrencies,” says University of Texas finance professor John Griffin, who has a decade-long track record of flagging fraud in financial markets.

Here is the paper’s abstract:

John M. Griffin

University of Texas at Austin – Department of Finance

Amin Shams

University of Texas at Austin – Department of Finance

Date Written: June 13, 2018

Abstract

This paper investigates whether Tether, a digital currency pegged to U.S. dollars, influences Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency prices during the recent boom. Using algorithms to analyze the blockchain data, we find that purchases with Tether are timed following market downturns and result in sizable increases in Bitcoin prices. Less than 1% of hours with such heavy Tether transactions are associated with 50% of the meteoric rise in Bitcoin and 64% of other top cryptocurrencies. The flow clusters below round prices, induces asymmetric autocorrelations in Bitcoin, and suggests incomplete Tether backing before month-ends. These patterns cannot be explained by investor demand proxies but are most consistent with the supply-based hypothesis where Tether is used to provide price support and manipulate cryptocurrency prices.

Keywords: Blockchain, Cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin Prices, Tether

Suggested Citation:

Griffin, John M. and Shams, Amin, Is Bitcoin Really Un-Tethered? (June 13, 2018). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=

***

Why was Bitcoin Organized geek Crime tolerated? Because those one bought, one owns! 

All this was long obvious. As it was that organized crime used Bitcoin (didn’t just manipulate it). A high level contractor of Google told me the government (under Obama) was perfectly aware, but let it run its course. That may look strange. But not so, once one has realized that the government knows that conventional banking is organized crime, a major engine of inequality, worldwide: bankers create money, and they create it, for their friends.

By letting Bitcoin run its perverse criminal course, many geeks made lots of money, getting ethically very dirty in the process, while growing in power and influence by leaps and bounds. Same general strategy as with holding the world economy hostage of monopolies (GAFA, FANG, etc.): all these dirty, wealthy people are now stakeholders in the engine of criminal inequality. Organized criminality got them there, and their now criminally confirmed minds make them most qualified to help run the world… as the little soldiers of dirt. They are all accomplices in crime, so they will shut up, cooperate, and subjugate. Thus geeks may as well implement the system, they are not just crucial to the system… They are it (or so they think, and thus will thereafter behave as the true holders of power want them to).

When Augustus seized the Roman Republic, and made it his personal thing, he was not alone: several millions stakeholders (mostly having to do with the Roman army, its suppliers, accomplices, etc.) were helping him out. He had cultivated them carefully. Same now.

 

Patrice Ayme

WHAT’s WRONG WITH THE ECONOMY?

The strategy. The tactics. Everything. Since 2008, the central banks have created money. Why? Key actors of the economy lost too much money in 2008 to keep on functioning. Some of these actors: banks and “shadow banks”.

How did the central banks create money? Mostly by buying government debts from the large private banks. The banks thus made money. Who caused the 2008 crisis? The banks. Thus the very strategy used is Orwellian, and promotes a vicious circle. Upon closer inspection, the situation deep down inside is more of the same and even worse.

The result has been a faltering of economic growth, a creeping destitution of the 99.9% in the West, and the blossoming of colossal inequalities and corruption, worldwide:

Inequality Has Brought Down World GDP Growth. And Bringing That World GDP Growth Too Low Brings War

True, banks are more regulated than in 2008 (but much less than before the Clinton presidency brought devastation to the regulation of finance!) However, a large, maybe the largest, part of the banking system is “Shadow Banking”. That’s not regulated. By fostering fiscal heavens and anonymous financial entities, Great Britain and the USA are actually expanding the “Dark Pools” of money which feed “Shadow Banking”.

So what have the banks done with the money generously given to them by central banks? Did they invest it somewhere fabulous? No. There has been no new technological, industrial, economic, social breakthrough which needed, and provided with, the opportunity of massive investment.

(There were some efforts towards “sustainable energy”, but those subsidies and regulations are dwarfed by those in favor of fossil fuels, which total 5.5 trillion dollars, according to the IMF; the key is fossil fuels do not require much new investment, including in research, development and education as new energy sources would.)

No new nuclear program was instituted (say replacing all old reactors with better and safer ones), no thermonuclear powers plants (although a crash program would have probably produce those already), no massive space program (comparable to Apollo in the 1960s).

Even biomedical innovation, hence investment, has petered down (research has been smothered down by marketing, regulations, and cut-throat academia producing poor research).

But, mostly, there has been no new construction program in housing and physical infrastructure. Oh, there is a massive need: the dearth of housing is why real estate is getting out of reach of the middle class, in the top cities, worldwide. (Moreover one can now make positive energy buildings, which produce energy.)

And don’t forget public education has been let go to waste, in the leading countries (with few exceptions: Switzerland, Canada…) It is as if the leadership in the West was afraid that We The People would get knowledgeable and smart.

So where did the money the banks were given by the central banks go? To hedge funds and the like. To the industry of HOT MONEY. One day they buy this, the following week, they sell it, making money, both ways (thanks to financial derivatives). The money created by the banks (which are better regulated, as I said), at this point, once given to financial manipulators, escapes regulation (that’s the whole idea).

“Leaders” know about this. But they obviously intent to keep on getting money from shadow financiers. An example: Obama did not try to tax “carried interest” by hedge funds (although Donald Trump proposes to do so!)

The leading states (USA, UK, EU, China, Japan, etc.) believed that to provide money (“liquidity”) would relaunch the economy. Absent this, massive devaluations would help. Thus Japan devalued by 50%, undercutting South Korea and China severely.

Meanwhile the IMF has allowed these competitive devaluations, following the advice of economists such as Friedman, Krugman. However, this is tickling the tail of the worst devil. War. Economic war is the first step to all-out war, indeed. Competitive devaluations are a form of war.

And what’s the main mission of the IMF? Preventing economic war between the states. This is why the IMF has been created in 1945: “The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is an organization of 188 countries, working to foster global monetary cooperation, secure financial stability, facilitate international trade, promote high employment and sustainable economic growth, and reduce poverty around the world.”

Thus the IMF is failing to do its main job. Notice that many American economists, from Friedman to Krugman, in their anti-European frenzy, have pleaded FOR the economic war of (European!) state against (European!) state, thanks to competitive devaluations.

Notice too that Abenomics, the devaluation of Japan, has not had much of a dent: Japan is still mired in stagnation, no doubt still afflicted by its main problem, the collapse of its population (a problem many developed countries have, especially in Europe; the USA and UK have escaped demographic collapse, mostly through massive immigration).

The world economic strategy reflects the mood of the times: the so-called “free market” is all the thinking and activity we need since Ronald Reagan. That’s in contradiction with policies followed by Colbert, Henri IV and Sully, or even emperors Diocletian and Darius. (Darius reigned over Persia 25 centuries ago.) They, like Julius Caesar, thought that the economy had to be governed by the state.

Will China try a massive devaluation, a la Abe in Japan?

Since 2008, the governments, mostly in the West, have been cowardly. The USA suffers from massive inequalities (and no, Mr. Obama, the situation is no as good as eight years ago), the European Union suffers from too much regulations (including at the level of services, where the European UNION has not been implemented), China is a dictatorship which became richer by exploiting workers relentlessly, etc.

Those competitive devaluations and lots of money sloshing around have been addictive: central banks engage in them, to give the states space, and the states, momentarily relieved, put off necessary reforms.

Inequalities suck up “liquidity” (so power and means) from average people, while putting huge amounts of money, and power, under the control of a few hands. And this money is invested in liquid investments, instead of serious things such as massive, affordable, state of the art housing and cities. Thus this money slosh around the world, like the waves of a tsunami, devastating all it touches (example: Greece, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Iceland, etc.).

The reason the crisis goes on is the confusion between symptoms and disease. That the main actors in power have interest not to understand the nature of the crisis explains why understanding has not been fostered. Thus very few economists have seen it, let alone politicians. (From Obama down to Nancy Pelosi, Krugman, and countless “Republicans”, but also French Socialists, EC bureaucrats, USA universities professors, most actors of influence have interest to sound as intelligent as cows watching a train pass.)

How did the world come out of the slump of the 1920s to 1940s? Through reconstruction in the “30 glorious years” after 1945. Reconstruction from total war. Something to think of. One thing: many countries are on the verge of implosion. One culprit? The obvious world devaluation blatant in the collapse of the price of oil.

What is the way out of the world socio-economic crisis? The same way as it was done after 1945. Massive social, educative, health and construction programs in the West,  building a useful economy, by taxing those who create the inequalities, and grab all the economy, and opportunities to themselves.
Patrice Ayme’

Art As Devil Currency, & Clinton’s Fading Worth

Why Clinton Won’t Be President Again, And Why Art Is Tax Evasion:

“If you live long enough, you’ll make mistakes. But if you learn from them, you’ll be a better person. It’s how you handle adversity, not how it affects you. The main thing is never quit, never quit, never quit.” [― William J. Clinton.]

This is typical of the sound-good idiocies we have to learn not to take as below our dignity to lash out after. Sophisticated thinking is of no help if the worst thinking is left unmolested, free to grow, corrupt, and rule, most minds

Neither G. W. Bush, nor Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, or Mao Tse Tung, or the Khmer Rouges, or Louis XIV, or Philip II of Spain, or Antipater of Macedonia, ever quit, but it would have been better if they had. And as the Romans had it: “Perseverare Diabolicum”.

Learning from mistakes can go both ways: to profit humanity at large, or profit the learning individual. The latter may, or may not profit the humanity at large.

If one never quits, just to embrace the Dark Side, ever more, methinks matters are not improving for humanity, at large. That Bill Clinton thinks learning made him a better person, automatically, is only the sort of self-indulgence he is famous for, and which will probably cost his wife the presidency.

Dark Currency: Such A Beauty Cannot Be Taxed Or Detected

[That painting was sold at auction for more than 170 million dollars… to a “former taxi cab driver turned billionaire art collector”… I will be even more interested to know his connections to the Triads, the multi-century old Chinese crime organizations. It’s already known that the entire gambling industry on Asia is connected to sophisticated money laundering.]

And why no Clinton again? The sheeple is not that dumb, that it cannot smell something is amiss. The Clinton presidency was as devastating for the (world) middle class as that of G. W. Bush. A difference: Clinton was part of the pre-condition for G. W. Bush.

It’s not just that Clinton deregulated, thus unleashed the financial sharks onto the world (thus making possible the economic crash which followed 2008). It’s not just  that Clinton got away with it. It is that the crushing success of propaganda was blatant: because Clinton was a “Democrat”, he could only be doing good.

Hence Clinton, by succeeding to make the meek, weak proverbial little guys feel that finance unchained was good for them, showed that there were no limits to what propaganda could achieve. The lies of Blair and Bush were just a further little step away.

This is why Quantitative Easing (giving ever more money to banks who had caused the crisis) has been glorified as the way out of the 2008 crisis.

Now there is a new twist. A twist within the twist, after the “Twist” (the Federal Reserve of the USA actually set-up a bank helping scheme it had the effrontery to call… “The Twist”).

The twist has been this: the banks have been slowly squeezed under “Dodd-Frank”… While, discreetly, “Dark Money” in “Dark Pools” or not, has been unleashed, more than ever.

Hence the on-going rise in the price of “art”. “Art is  parallel currency: it’s often not taxed (even in France!). It goes across borders, get stored in other countries, and change hand to hand, without having to be declared to the authorities.  Meanwhile the little guys one thousand dollars (let alone euros!) transactions are scrutinized, and meticulously registered. The currency of the wealthiest people on Earth is a Dark Currency, so dark authorities themselves can’t see, let alone understand it. Why would you want to understand your masters, except to please them?

So what of the Commons in all this? The Commons smell a rat. A rotting rat, and Clinton reminds them of that smell.

So does, by the way Jebb Bush, the latest model from that (Hitler sprung) dynasty. This is why (pseudo) anti-establishment candidates have been running strong.

Yet, the Devil lurks in the ugly, most obscure, worst smelling corners. As long as the Commons are not willing to quit their comfort zone, to relish exploring those disgusting places (as I obviously do), their understanding, thus their action, will not disrupt the oligarchy’s mental order enough to unsettle it.

Patrice Ayme’