Trump $6.2 TRILLION Fight Against COVID Is Economically Responsible

Finance is a convenient servant to the economy. Finance is not even necessary to the economy, and no economy, no money.  The six trillion dollars signed and negotiated by Trump do two things: 1) and most important, sustain and amplify the essential economy. 2) keep alive the non-essential economy, which would otherwise stop existing (… we can gently ease it out later…) 

The 2.2 Trillion Dollars Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act passed the US Senate 96 to zero (4 Senators were COVID or quarantined). Two days later the US Congress passed it, and Trump, who had helped to negotiate the details, signed it immediately. There were no hearing: all gt together, including Trump, who agreed to much Democratic ideas…

This was the largest financial intervention act of a state in the history of humanity.

The same day, Trump used the Defense Procurement Act, forcing General Motors to produce respirators. Trump added he may use the FPA again, as “we have a couple of little problem children… two companies which are NOT doing what they said they would be doing”.  

Some anti-Trumpers screamed to high heavens that Trump was exploding the national debt, and bringing financial ruin to the US. Critics of the 6.2 trillion dollar intervention do not understand how the economy works. In particular, they do not understand the essence of the economy, which is GOVERNMENTALISM. Let me explain.

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Big US debt procurement during World War Two was highly profitable to the US… and WORLD, economy… Let alone those who wanted to smash Nazism and other fascisms…

National debt, in a sovereign country acts, potentially, like a future tax, on those wealthy enough to have lent the money, or, potentially, as a future tax on those who received the money… I say debt is a “potential tax”, because reimbursement conditions can, and often, will vary. For example, if money is lent, but not reimbursed, it acts as gift, or theft, depending if one is on the receiving, or donating end. Europeans have acted stupid, ever since the EU was founded, as if they didn’t understand that (but the UK understood it, explaining partly its better economic performance.)

Let me add that this is not the case here; the 6.2 trillions are no augmentation of the national debt (explanation another time). 

What Trump is doing is putting the US economy on life support, while providing massive financing for research and development… and health care: 150 billion dollars for hospitals alone.

Here is an example: CDC Dr. Fauci said industrial fabrication of vaccines will be launched, even while one can’t know yet if those vaccines will work, or even if those vaccines do not launch the dreared “IMMUNE ENHANCEMENT”… that is during Phase 2 trials; that will be costly as perhaps two dozen vaccines are being developed (using sometimes extremely different methods: the Pasteur institute is using its usual method to see if its hybrid coronavirus-brucellosis is safe on mice and soon primates… While Sanofi will further push a 2017 “prototype” SARS vaccine using recombinant tech; several RNA vaccines are already in human trials, testing for basic safety…)     

A nominal increase in national debt acts as real free money for now.. And a potential, just potential, tax. I say potential, because, for a country of Argentina and if the money has been lent by foreigners, one may have to pay back part of it… But if one is the USA, one doesn’t have to pay any of one’s debt. Especially to foreigners. If foreigners don’t like it, they should feel happy to have lend so much money to such a superpower. 

One of the reason the European economy has stagnated is that it has insisted to inflict high taxes on citizens, instead of much more forgiving debt (which growth can erase; so debt enables and incites a sovereign country to grow faster…)

As it is, moreover, Trump’s two trillion is not necessarily a debt. And it’s actually six trillion dollars. 

Japan has a national (“Federal”) debt in excess of 200% of GDP. On March 27, it had only 49 deaths from Coronavirus, out of 1,700 cases, with a (so far) completely flattened curve, and a death rate per million not even one tenth that of the USA. In general the Japanese economy had not been doing badly with that debt… maintaining, for example a first class universal health system…. At a time when the USA is demonstrating, for the whole world to see, that a profit guided health system is a colossal disaster. Indeed, soon the USA may have much more than a million Coronavirus cases, and that will be imputable in part to not have been willing to spend more on healthcare (instead of spending on the billionaires who profit from US healthcare).  

The Federal government created two trillion dollars as direct help with CARES. To this one has to add 4 trillions of the US Federal Reserve at the disposal of banks through leverage (to start with; the Fed has said it will create whatever money is needed). None of this money is really debt. At most it means part of the US economy is getting nationalized (the average citizen becomes a shareholder).

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Take four cases I personally know of:

Picture a 500 rooms/apartments hotel/resort without any revenue for the rest of the year. It’s a “family business”. It has employees, pays their healthcare 100%. It’s at 7,000 feet, it has large fixed cost in heating, security, maintenance. And revenue is now zero. And will stay so for many months. What to do? A bank loan! But where does the bank get the money from? The Federal Reserve, which lends it at zero interest!

Picture my climbing gym. Actually a company with a dozen climbing gyms, with course setters, maintenance, staff, and paying 100% health care. Same story as the preceding.

Third example: a research institute in AI getting its money from corporations with now zero revenue. They said they were firing all their scientists, effective in June. The Trump administration is stepping in.   

Fourth example: Several science museums I know. There is money for them in the two trillions. Trump himself explained the Kennedy Center for the Arts needed 25 millions to pay salaries, maintenance (the Dems wanted 35 millions initially). 

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Trump is using MASSIVE GOVERNMENTALISM. Smart.

What is important is that expertise not be lost. OK, a bit of expertise lost in completely useless parts of the economy will be OK… But futuristically essential services should be maintained. For example in teaching, research, industrial base. 

The mightiest states are always living with fiat money. The Inca were using knots on ropes. The very fact a state can impose fiat money is an expression of its power. As it is, there is going to be a hole of one third of GDP, because one third of all transactions in one year will not happen. So the state making it so that it will appear these transactions did happen… Even if they didn’t. 

Debt, left unpaid, means some people with excess capital may be cheated on. But debt, left unpaid, can save an economy. What is it not to like? I always said that Trump, as his chronology and behavior indicates, was truly a real Democrat (aka a “populist”… despised by the haves). TARP, organized by Obama, was truly a Transfer of Assets to Rich People. Whereas CARES has tight oversight, and pays the average family (which TARP didn’t do). CARES is the right thing to do. The alternative was a depression worse than 1929.

This virus crisis is an excellent occasion to find out how the economy works. First, one can see that 90% of the economy, or so, is useless. One can also see that the essential part of the economy, including scientific research, advanced, life saving technology, is underfinanced.

In Italy, some medical workers get paid less than $1,000 a month. Yes, less than a thousand dollars, and now the opportunity to die. But then they were honored by watching on TV brainless muscle guys paid more than one hundred million a year, just to hit a ball with their foot.

Ironically enough, the USA, and the world, is lucky that the US President is a specialist of saving (his won!) value through bankruptcy (ironically yours truly saw this, at the time, as corruption… Meanwhile, though, we have seen much bigger corruption than that…

CARES is bringing in money, as needed. Trump is ordering around General Motors, as, unfortunately, needed. This is a war. War can be good.  Universal health care systems in Europe were created thanks to the shock of World War Two. Coronavirus is the bellicose occasion we needed to reorganize the world economy in a more essential way.

Patrice Ayme 

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Ongoing German Lies Destroying Europe, & World: 2) Debt & Investment

In light of the Biarritz 2019 G7 Summit:

German lies have long reigned as European lies: one of the causes of Brexit. Nobody says it, so I will: the British could only feel good, because their central bank provided their economy with enough “liquidities”… Not the case in Europe, because the ECB, tied in by German (and secondarily) French plutocracies, barely provided enough money to keep hundreds of millions of Europeans alive. The British then, felt there was something right about the UK keeping its independance… and they were right.

For years, US presidents (in particular Obama and Trump) have asked the European Union to augment “consumer spending”, or “demand”. The US can’t ask loudly Europe to augment investment (except in military matters, where the USA have long asked for more EU spending) but they mean it More surprising, Europeans themselves are lackadaisical about investing… or anything else having to do with a better future….

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We Are, Because We Lie… says the herd, and it moos, all together now. What makes a better bound than a lie?

Plutocrats and the plutocracies they depend upon, lie. Otherwise, they would not stay in power: only with lies can a few rule the billions. Those lies, initially imposed on the billions, are believed by the billions. Attacking those lies, thus, means attacking those billions.

For Estienne La Boétie (a close friend of Montaigne who was also a judge) the great mystery of politics was obedience to rulers. Why do people agree to be looted and otherwise oppressed by government overlords? It is not just fear, Boetie explains in “The Discourse on Voluntary Servitude, Le Contr’un,” for our consent is required (La Boétie naively thought). And that consent can be non-violently withdrawn (even more naive: as soon as one strays, one’s career is destroyed, thus the power to eat, let alone influence…)

To go beyond Estienne La Boétie, and his observations on voluntary servitude, one has to realize that obedience is not as much to rulers themselves, as to lies. Systems of lies.

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German fascism rested on lies:

The camp of those who think Germany is lying has grown a lot: Trump is in it, and now even Trump’s nemesis Paul Krugman agrees with the liar in chief on Germany. German readers may object that France also lies (and everybody knows about delusional, Brexiting UK). However German lies are convenient for French corrupt politicians, Germany (in spite of all the fascist dictators), having a reputation for seriousness.

One may even argue that Germany ended up with monsters such as the Kaiser and Hitler, precisely because it had such  a serious, quasi-scientific repute… Which the Germans were the first to believe. 

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Lies Rule History: 

How did Germany become this fascist, racist monster, Friedrich Nietzsche stridently condemned, telling us it would bring a disaster to humanity, a full 35 years before the Zweite Reich? By telling lies. And first of all, to itself.

How come France was so unprepared to fight a world war with Germany in May 1940, after declaring war to Hitler, eight months prior? By telling lies. In this case the lies were from the French High Command, to itself. And from the French government to itself: one doesn’t launch a world war without checking first one is ready (and to be ready, France had to go to war in Spain against hitler and Mussolini)

Disasters and holocausts are often accompanied with lies, or by their mildest, yet most pervasive form, “non-saids” (“non-dits” in the original French). One such lie, or enormous “non-said” pertains to erroneous attitudes of Germany in several dimensions. Nowadays. (Instead one focused on the Greeks.) Here are some of the errors, by order of importance: immigration, ecology, and European economy activity and the attending debt problem. I will ignore the attitude to (mass) immigration (of Muslims, not all of them integrable): its main effect was Brexit. Even Krugman, following Trump, sort of, has to admit there is something rotten in Germany… As I have said for more than a decade.  

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Want to see what lies lead to? Consider carefully the two curves in the graph below:

Degenerating, increasingly impoverished Europe. The blue EU curve, above, is similar to that of France and Germany… Except. of course, France is increasingly lagging, as German policy has been effectively advantaging Germany Uber Alles, all along, as usual… Bankrupt banking in Germany is the great secret advantage…

I have explained that those things would happen, and why, for years. Now they have. Paul Krugman (leftist Nobel star editorial of the New York Times, famous “liberal” economist) didn’t understand for years, what the problem was and now, not only does it, but his position is quite close, in practice, to… Donald Trump. (And Trump is not as far from Obama in several dimension, from MAGA, America First, to debt and championing the US economically through mercantilist policies…)

Paul Krugman in The World Has a Germany Problem

The debt obsession that ate the economy.

“…he’s [Trump] preparing to open a new front in the trade war, this time against the European Union, which he says “treats us horribly: barriers, tariffs, taxes.” 

The funny thing is that there are some aspects of European policy, especially German economic policy, that do hurt the world economy and deserve condemnation. But Trump is going after the wrong thing. Europe does not, in fact, treat us badly; its markets are about as open to U.S. products as ours are to Europe’s. (We export about three times as much to the E.U. as we do to China.)

The problem, instead, is that the Europeans, and the Germans in particular, treat themselves badly, with a ruinous obsession over public debt. And the costs of that obsession are spilling over to the world as a whole.”

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What the European sheeple doesn’t understand is that Public Debt can be defaulted upon. The USA did this many times. It’s painful for investors. But no big deal for a truly sovereign country (thus, not Argentina… or Russia…). 

I have explained many times: Public debt is, should everything go wrong, and a default on that debt occur, a possible, partial tax. Thus European governments, by substituting tax to debt, preventing the latter by splurging in the former, engaged in the worst outcome, basically taxation equating debt going into default, while calling this over-taxation, moral and prudent.

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And Paul Krugman to explain:

“Some background: Around 2010, politicians and pundits on both sides of the Atlantic caught a bad case of austerity fever. Somehow they lost interest in fighting unemployment, even though it remained catastrophically high, and demanded spending cuts instead. And these spending cuts, unprecedented in a weak economy, slowed the recovery and delayed the return to full employment.”

Notice here that Krugman is criticizing Obama… now… whereas at the time he didn’t (but I did, stridently; Obama didn’t do then what Trump is doing now, namely beating the drum for a stronger economy by helping We The People directly…)

“While debt alarmism ruled both here and in Europe, however, it eventually became clear that there was a crucial difference in underlying motivation. Our deficit hawks were, in fact, hypocrites, who suddenly lost all interest in debt as soon as a Republican was in the White House. The Germans, on the other hand, really meant it.

True, Germany forced debt-troubled nations in southern Europe into punishing, society-destroying spending cuts; but it also imposed a lot of austerity on itself. Textbook economics says that governments should run deficits in times of high unemployment, but Germany basically eliminated its deficit in 2012, when euro area unemployment was more than 11 percent, and then began to run ever-growing surpluses.”

And Paul explains that “Why is this a problem? Europe suffers from a chronic shortfall in private demand: Consumers and corporations don’t seem to want to spend enough to maintain full employment…

The European Central Bank, Europe’s counterpart to the Federal Reserve, has tried to fight this chronic weakness with extremely low interest rates — in fact, it has pushed rates below zero, which economists used to think was impossible…. Indeed, much of Europe may well already be in recession, and there’s little if anything the central bank can do.

There is, however, an obvious solution: European governments, and Germany in particular, should stimulate their economies by borrowing and increasing spending. The bond market is effectively begging them to do that; in fact, it’s willing to pay Germany to borrow, by lending at negative interest. And there’s no lack of things to spend on: Germany, like America, has crumbling infrastructure desperately in need of repair. But spend they won’t.

Most of the costs of German fiscal obstinacy fall on Germany and its neighbors, but there are some spillovers to the rest of us… characterizing this as a situation in which Europe is taking advantage of America gets it all wrong, and is not helpful.

What would be helpful? Realistically, America has no ability to pressure Germany into changing its domestic policies. We might be able to provide a little moral suasion if our own leadership had any intellectual or policy credibility, but, of course, it doesn’t. There’s a sense in which the whole world has a Germany problem, but it’s up to the Germans themselves to solve it.

One thing is for sure: Starting a trade war with Europe would truly be a lose-lose proposition, even more so than our trade war with China. It’s the last thing either America or Europe needs. Which means that Trump is probably going to do it.“.

As we will see next the de-industrialization of Europe, for example France, and soaring mediocrity, is striking, and is directly related to the (plutocrat favoring) austerity… The main champion of this disaster has been the one who profited the most from it, relatively speaking, but not absolutely speaking, Germany. And its weapon of mass destruction of the neighbors, has been the attitude relative to debt and deficits: giant in the US, tiny in Europe… Whereas, in truth, Europe needs debt more than the USA does…

Germany developed and pushed that attitude, precisely because it provided it with an arrogant advantage inside Europe. But this is a childish, all too childish, game, the one which brought us world wars: intra European strife leads Europe only to ever greater degeneracy… not just relative to the rest of the world (aside from the even more degenerating Prophet land), but, more importantly relative to what is needed to preserve Earth…

Patrice Ayme

Debt As Tax Deferred, Or Why Public Debt For Public Interest Works Boosts The Economy

… In A Way No Private Spending can replace

ECONOMIC ACTIVITY BOOSTED BY PUBLIC SPENDING FROM GOVERNMENT DEBT:

IN THE LAST decade, the US has happily run massive deficits. Under Obama, deficits were often around 10% of GDP, or more. Obama deficits peaked at 15% of US GDP. Meanwhile, the US economy grew so much, it overtook the entire, growing, European GDP output (UK included). In 2017 US nominal GDP was 19 trillion dollars, just above the EU GDP (which is still higher at PPP, $23 T). US yearly GDP, charging ahead at a Chinese like clip, has passed $20 trillions as these lines are written.

The Obama spirit of deficit was happily pursued by Trump… And now the new Democratic controlled Congress, wisely enough, has not uttered a peep about this (it prefers to distract its audience with the notion of billionaire Trump as an agent of Putin).

Each three months of 2018 America’s federal government borrowed nearly $320 billion, or about 6% of quarterly GDP. The deficit was 1.5 percentage points higher than in the same quarter the year earlier, despite the fact that unemployment fell below 4% in the intervening period (and thus borrowing more was just because the Trump government is embarked on increasing spending).

The USA borrowed as much in a single quarter as it did in all of 2006, towards the peak of the previous economic cycle.

That debt Graph would look very different if one incorporated EXTINGUISHED debt

Orthodox economists have traditionally been self-assured, arrogant, and idiotic about debt. “Government spending must be paid for now or later,” wrote Robert Barro, of Harvard University, in a seminal paper published in 1989. “A cut in today’s taxes must be matched by a corresponding increase in the present value of future taxes.”

“Must”? Why? How much more idiotic can one get? Governments can default on debt, and can do it soft, or hard. They can even make default look like an act of God: consider the Russian default when the Soviets took power, in 1917, leaving millions of French investors the poorer for it (yet also leaving Russia with a much improved industrial basis and better trains).

The USA also defaulted twice during the Twentieth Century (under presidents FDR and Nixon). A way to default is devaluation of the currency, another way to sneakily default is inflation.

The late 1920s bull mania was a deliberate attempt by the US Fed and the bank of England, to extinguish debt from World War One. So was the inflation of the 1930s (Paris, against it, argued with Washington, for it; the US was right, France wrong; of course Hitler inflated beyond reason, encouraged by Washington…)

Once again, a traditional, but misleading graph: it contains violently extinguished debt

Inflation is not just a way to extinguish excessive debt: I have argued that it is a way to accelerate the economy, making it more technological.

So why would a Harvard professor say such a stupid thing? Do I need to ask? Even rhetorically? Because it pleased the US plutocratic class at the time, which probably rewarded him handsomely.

Looking around history, one can see big differences between the economy of the last four decades, and the period 1935-1975. The first period was characterized by massive expansion of economy and education (in spite of the 100 million directly killed by generalized fascism). For example air travel, universal higher education and universal health care appeared and became dominant. After that, pretty much stagnation… except for the increase of inequality.

And what do we also see since the Glorious Thirties (the 1945-1975 period when Western economies saw a wealth expansion of the 90%; after that, all the growth in income went to the 1%…)? Public spending on infrastructure, educational, or industrial, collapsed, throughout the West, thanks to the Trickle-Down plutocratic ideology.  

Reciprocally, a return to massive public spending might raise the activity, hence the returns to private investment, generating more the latter. (Calling that “populism” worked for a while as an insult, but should be now backfiring… as We The People realizes that there is nothing wrong with We The People… contrarily to what the insulting elite keeps on claiming…)

Eurocrats and their masters, the Europlutocrats, brandish the scare of public debt. However, japan with a more elderly population, is roaring back thanks to Abenomics… And a 230% of GDP public debt.

Economists out France or Germany say that Japanese public debt is a terrible thing. Why? If worse came to worst, the Japanese government would have to tell those who bought Japanese debt: ’Sorry, we can’t pay you back. At all.’ What would then have happened? A tax! Like in Europe! In other words, should the Japanese government 100% default, those wealthy enough to have lend to the Japanese government would then have to pay… a tax! They would be reduced to the status of French taxpayers, horror of all horrors!

Except, of course, in France, taxes, being mostly indirect, strike the poor and the poorest of the poor… whereas a Japanese default (which will not happen) would strike the wealthy (including a few wealthy foreigners…). The same is a fortiori true for US debt.

If the US defaulted on its debt (and it will not happen), lots of wealthy foreigners may cry… Meanwhile the US economy will have roared ahead… thanks to foreign money. What will the foreigners do, if the USA default, to get even? Invade? (No, the US military, paid by aforesaid foreigners, is too strong…) Refuse to lend some more? Not necessarily: when you can’t beat up the strong, you may as well join it. That’s exactly what happened when the US defaulted… and the USA defaults all the time…

There are many ways to default: first one can default on the interest only, or part of it.

Inflation also extinguishes debt. The CPI (the inflation measurement) in the San Francisco Bay Area, the biggest tech engine of the US and world economy, reached nearly 5% last year (2017). Such a healthy dose of inflation will absorbs lots of debt. Meanwhile, among many other things, said Bay Area fabricated for more than twelve billion dollars of electric cars in 2018…. While Apple Inc. based a few miles away, generated more than 200 billions in revenue…  

So the SF Bay Area is a perfect illustration that a roaring economy goes well with roaring inflation, thus roaring debt, etc. Looking in detail within the machinery of some major tech companies (say Oracle) show lots of debt at major points of development…

When the pace of economic (GDP) growth exceeds the rate of interest on a country’s public debt, managing indebtedness is a shrinking business: debt incurred in the past shrinks steadily as a share of GDP without any new taxes needing to be levied.

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Public Debt Helps The Public In General, and the Poor First of All:

Some are sure to whine that debt might nonetheless rise if annual deficits are sufficiently gigantic, as they are in US America now. Even so, at prevailing interest rates and growth rates, and with deficits continuing at 5% of GDP, it would take more than a century for America’s ratio of gross public debt to GDP to reach the current Japanese level…. And then, as I pointed out, so what? A tax? A 2018 French-like situation? Overtaxation? No, not really: remember, only the wealthy lend. So debt will reduce inequality. Actually MASSIVE debt reduces inequality in two ways:  it potentially taxes the wealthy, in the future, and, in the meantime, it feeds countries and the poor (who are the first to profit from public infrastructure)…

Hypocrites will come, and suggest inflation hurts the poor… However, although inflation extinguishes debt, there are other ways to extinguish debt, and thus rampant debt doesn’t mean rampant inflation…

Olivier Blanchard, long chief economist of the IMF, pointed out that since 1870, the average nominal interest rate on one-year US government debt has been 4.6%, though the average annual growth rate of nominal GDP has been 5.3%. Growth rates have surpassed interest rates in every decade since 1950, except the 1980s…. And guess what happened in the 1980s? Plutocratization! (Much admired by all too many “democrats”, including Barry Obama…)

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The Rise Of Evil Power, aka, Plutocracy was tied in to debt extinction:

(Perhaps unwittingly, and hopefully witlessly) Evil US president Carter launched a secret war in Afghanistan, using Muslim Fundamentalist and the Muslim Fundamentalist ISI of Pakistan… On July 3, 1979, and immediately afterwards, Reagan, helped by the evil Democratic Congress, led by fellow Irishman Tip O’Neil, launched officially trickle-down economics: instead of making everybody wealthier through public debt, Reagan and his “democratic” little helpers claimed that, the economy would do better by making the wealthiest wealthier…

Nicholas Crafts of the University of Warwick observed that the difference between growth and interest rates did more to reduce British debt loads in the 20th century than budget surpluses. Indeed, austerity-induced deflation in the 1920s frustrated attempts to pay down war debts (that was followed by the attempt of inflating out, which was too brutal, and helped bring the 1929 crash…)

Inflating out of debt was successful after World War Two. At the same time, the uppermost margin rates were pushed by Republican president Eisenhower up to 93% (nobody has accused Eisenhower to be a socialist… yet) Similar rates applied in Britain and high taxes on the wealthy also applied in throughout Europe…

In the past decade our great leaders have listened to their future benefactors, and sponsors, the wealthiest. The wealthiest want the poor ever poorer, so that wealth, power, can be worth having, ever more. So our great leaders, who are great servants of the wealthier, have done as ordered, and have stimulated public economies too little. (To make the lowest people feel good enough about themselves, while they undermined them, they have paid them with PC speech, and “identity politics”, that is, racism…)

Result? Rich countries have spent ever more time below their productive capacity than above it—at grave economic cost: while French, German, British and US  politicians explained to We The people that they cost too much, China, India and their satellites (population three billions) roared ahead, spending on the public as needed by the public. This is how Europe, its colonies and the US did it in the Nineteenth Century (and even in centuries prior, following the dominant economic theory known as “Mercantilism”)

An overdeveloped fear of public debt, invented by plutocrats, nurtured by prostituted economists, is to blame. But now a new class of “populist” leaders have appeared, who call a lot of it, for what it is. So some government economists have been ordered to acquaint themselves with reality.

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The 3% Deficit Limit Is Killing the European Union:

And guess what? Experience suggests that governments face much looser budget constraints than once was claimed on every rooftop. So governments enjoy more freedom to support struggling economies than previously believed. Economists, happy to get orders less debasing to themselves, are taking note, that, indeed, yes, governments can borrow more…..

“Neoliberalism” is fundamentally a lie. “Neoliberalism” is a creed, a faith, and a conspiracy for the gullible. “Neoliberalism” asserts that the economy does best, when left to private enterprise. This is a lie, just there, and propaganda. Indeed it always omits a detail: how money is created.

In the “Neoliberal” creed, the (private) banks create money by lending. To whom do they lend? The wealthiest. So the wealthiest privates get more and more money, and the poor, less and less, augmenting inequality, year after year, as observed: the color of the skin of the president has nothing to do with it.

The only way to cut that vicious circle is having the Treasury create money and use said created money for public work. The Treasury can do this by creating bonds. That will spur the economy.

Should a crisis arise, a sovereign government can grab the debt and extinguish it.

In 1790, Secretary of the US Treasury Alexander Hamilton did just that: he took all the debt, from all the states, and extinguished it, by making it into Federal Debt (hint to the European Union… do the same…).

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When Not Sovereign Debt To Foreigners Means Loss of Independence: the Case of Dauphiné

The French Crown had done exactly the same extinction of debt with the state of Dauphiné in 1349 CE. Long an independent republic in the Roman empire, that region, named after an altruistic sea mammal, found itself with crushing debts in the Fourteenth Century. In exchange Dauphiné lost its independence inside the Roman Empire, becoming instead subject to the kingdom of France, “empire in its own kingdom” (don’t ask: a consequence of the Frexit of the Tenth Century; France by then had discovered that it would be better to make one with the region east of the Rhone-Saône).

Dauphiné has a very long independent history, all the way back to before Hannibal. The Dolphin was selected as a symbol of the altruism of that Alpine quasi-republic. Differently from fellow Switzerland, debt enslaved it… But France was the superpower of the time… Switzerland solved the ownership problem by fighting its owners, the Habsburg, to death…

The kingdom of France, empire onto itself had debts, of course, but when it so pleased. Otherwise, it could always send the army to visit lenders with too much of an inappropriate attitude (as the soon to be ex-Republic of Florence found out…)

Sovereignty and debts are bound together. The EU should do as the US did in 1790 CE. Meanwhile, the present European situation is not sustainable: whereas the USA can grow debt as big as it wants, and the notion of debt doesn’t even exist in China, Europe is reducing its economic activity to profit its plutocrats.  

At least US politicians are not so treacherously corrupt, that they will stoop that low. 

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Conclusion: Debt is tax deferred. Public debt for public interest works boosts the economy, in a way no private spending can replace. Indeed, private spending is motivated by profit, but serving the public is serving the public, not profiting from the public.

The “Neoliberal” creed, truly the power of evil, has insisted human beings know just one motivation: greed. But humanity, in full, know many other motivations, including that of serving public good. Servicing public good is more deeply anchored in human psychobiology, because, prehistorically speaking, the individual couldn’t exist without the collective (the tribe).

We need more public spending, thus, to not overtax the economy, more debt.  

Patrice Ayme

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Even “The Economist” has noticed. Consider: “Economists reconsider how much governments can borrow: The profession is becoming less debt-averse”

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Dauphiné lost its independence to Paris in 1349 CE… But not its Parliament. However, in 1788 CE, one year before well known events in Paris, the French Revolution started, for real, south of Grenoble in the city of Vizille, encircled by mighty mountains. A consequence of the Revolution would be the loss of regional parliaments, including that of Grenoble…

 

Obama, Clinton: Stealthily Regressive

So much lying! So much naivety! Oh Blah blah! Obama! Obamacare! Obama cares not: yes, GDP of the wealthiest, the .1% has been growing. But, in truth, Clinton and Obama were the most stingy presidents of the last 66 years. Far from being progressives, they were the top two regressives and regressors. Here is the graph:

Clinton And Obama Were The Less Progressive Presidents In 66 Years

I do not expect the insulting fanatics who worship Clinton and Obama to understand the preceding graph. Let me explain a bit more for the others.  The graph above looks at United States government purchases of goods and services. It looks at the purchases at all levels: local, state, and federal. Such purchases are, actually buying real stuff, and work, in contradistinction with transfer payments like Social Security and Medicare.

[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; that was 83 years ago; and even Hoover did the Hoover dam, and much more. One can advantageously consult “Wealthcare Endless Summers“.]

Obama has been far from presiding over a huge expansion of government the way he himself and the right-wing, Neoconservative fanatics who now support Hillary Clinton, claim. As a matter of fact, Obama presided over unprecedented austerity, in part driven by spending cuts at the state and local level. Thus it is an astounding triumph of misinformation and disinformation that lackluster economic performance since 2009 has been interpreted as a failure of government spending. Let’s zoom in on Obama’s first term:

Obama Cliamed He Was A Big Spender. Instead, He Spent Big Only On His Friends, The Plutocrats, Soon To Provide Him With Beaucoup Bucks

Here it is, massaged differently:

Clinton And Obama, By The Measure Of Annualized Growth Of Real Government Spending, Were The Two Most Conservative US Presidents

[Source: Economist View.] So now the hysterical ones on the pseudo-left tell us that Hillary Clinton is not at all like Clinton, Bill, her husband and Obama, her supporter. It is indeed likely: Clinton says she will spend more in education and infrastructure. How much she can deliver with a hostile Congress, is something else. However, Trump has clamored for more government spending since ever. Trump lambasted the decrepit infrastructure of the USA while Obama (and Clinton), in chief command, did nothing about it.

I have said that government spending should be massively  augmented, for years. (But intelligently augmented, a big but, not a big butt!) Even Krugman, the Clinton sycophant, has joined my long held opinion. Here he is, in August 2016:

“Time to Borrow, by Paul Krugman, NY Times: …There are, of course, many ways our economic policy could be improved. But the most important thing we need is sharply increased public investment in everything from energy to transportation to wastewater treatment.

How should we pay for this investment? We shouldn’t — not now, or any time soon. Right now there is an overwhelming case for more government borrowing. …

First, we have obvious, pressing needs for public investment in many areas. … Meanwhile, the federal government can borrow at incredibly low interest rates: 10-year, inflation-protected bonds yielded just 0.09 percent on Friday. …

Spending more now would mean a bigger economy later, which would mean more tax revenue…, probably be larger than any rise in future interest payments. And this analysis doesn’t even take into account the potential role of public investment in job creation…”

In any case, no president did worse than Obama, except for skirt-chaser-thanks-to-government-clout Clinton. Would the Clinton of the future be different from the Clinton of the past? Hillary hysterics foam at the mouth, and assure us, that such will be the case. However, as many called me a racist, xenophobe, fascist, hater of Muslim People, Trump lover and even less flattering term, in public, on the Internet in recent days, I now strongly doubt that they are capable of informed judgment.

Yes, be it Hillary or President Trump, real government spending will grow. Both from what they said, and who they are (Trump is a builder used to take loans and invest rather profitably). But also because, after eight years were Obama “signature achievements” consisted in bombing weddings in Yemen, in “signature strikes”, and deploying the health plutocrat friendly (think Buffet) Obamacare, real government spending could not be any lower.

Or then, it was a farce: consider the US government spending on Elon Musk (a South Africa born entrepreneur). If Trump is elected, SpaceX is gone in a year. And so it will be all over: watch Amazon go down in flames. Yes, I do finance heavily my local bookstore, and yes I purchase only two books once at Amazon. Nobody os perfect.

But those who say that Clinton and Obama were progressives, are either liars or ignorant, or cruel, or all the preceding. It is one thing to no be perfect. It is another to wallop in error: to persevere in error is diabolical, the Romans said (“perseverare diabolicum”).

Again, look at this:

I invest Nothing For You People, because You Are Unworthy. Call Me Progressive, Like The Anaconda Who Progressively Squeezes

[Notice the dearth of spending under Clinton. Pelosi-Bush invested, until last 3 months of 2008, when Pelosi-Obama signed on Bush’s Sec. of Treasury Paulson’s plan. Pelosi-Obama invested in plutocrats thereafter (mostly, although there was a small genuine ‘stimulus’ which worked wonders).]

I expect feeble minds and cultural retards to not understand such a graph. They will probably revert to insults. And I do not expect them to understand what this means for analyzing the reasons for the frantic support of the Obamas for Clinton. You see, ultimately, investing is a zero sum game, in the instant: the US government did not invest, because all its discretionary money went to plutocrats. And this is why the Main Stream Media, held by plutocrats, is so anti-Trump. Trump, who is one of them, plutocrats, know very well where the investment streams are going. If Trump wants a bigger name, and he does, he will have to divert them, towards We The People. And all and any president, but for Clinton, did this, investing in the USA, better than Obama did. Since president Hoover.

In retrospect, those who wanted progress, at least by the measure of investing in the country, should never have voted for Clinton or Obama. How can one hope that the creature closest to them would be any different?

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’

Of Those Who Mind Minds

Polls show that two-thirds of Americans want taxes to be raised for taxpayers earning more than a million dollars a year. It’s not happening. Obama is pushing for the TPP, the Trans Pacific Treaty, which democratic presidential contenders oppose. All over, public opinion has been cornered into impotence: the public wants one thing, they tolerate the opposite. The public’s mind has been made into boiled pasta: easy to gobble, no backbone.

Angus Deaton just got the Nobel in economics. Here is an example of his prose: “There is a danger that the rapid growth of top incomes can become self-reinforcing through the political access that money can bring. Rules are set not in the public interest but in the interest of the rich, who use those rules to become yet richer and more influential… To worry about these consequences of extreme inequality has nothing to do with being envious of the rich and everything to do with the fear that rapidly growing top incomes are a threat to the wellbeing of everyone else.”

Where Does “Austerity” Comes From? The Richest Are Sucking Us Dry Through Debt Service

As I have explained for more than a decade, this is nothing new. This exponentiating growth in wealth, and thus power, for the few is how the Roman REPUBLIC was destroyed (and replaced by the despicable and stupid Roman plutocracy, aka “empire”).

The same phenomenon also happened when the Imperium Francorum (Empire of the Franks) went from the mild plutocracy known as the “Renovated Roman Empire” to the hard, abusive and demented plutocracy of the Late Middle Ages, “Renaissance”, and “Enlightenment”.

158 families, some of them not even bothering to reside in the USA, are busy buying themselves a president of the USA. Hey, why not? This has been working ever better for nearly half a century, ever since Mr. Nixon using public money to boost Mr. Kaiser’s health maintenance scheme (the President and the Kaiser: quite a program!). Say NYT’s Confessore, Cohen and Yourish, October 10, 2015:

“They are overwhelmingly white, rich, older and male, in a nation that is being remade by the young, by women, and by black and brown voters. Across a sprawling country, they reside in an archipelago of wealth, exclusive neighborhoods dotting a handful of cities and towns. And in an economy that has minted billionaires in a dizzying array of industries, most made their fortunes in just two: finance and energy.

Now they are deploying their vast wealth in the political arena, providing almost half of all the seed money raised to support Democratic and Republican presidential candidates. Just 158 families, along with companies they own or control, contributed $176 million in the first phase of the campaign, a New York Times investigation found. Not since before Watergate have so few people and businesses provided so much early money in a campaign, most of it through channels legalized by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision five years ago.”

Notice that the New York Times admits that the Supreme Court has “LEGALIZED” ways to channel the power of the few. Notice that Judicial power legislates. Notice that a new form of power has appeared: it’s expressed not just by the wealthiest, by a subclass of the wealthiest, a subclass which profited from the reorganization of the ultimate values of the USA:

“These donors’ fortunes reflect the shifting composition of the country’s economic elite. Relatively few work in the traditional ranks of corporate America, or hail from dynasties of inherited wealth. Most built their own businesses, parlaying talent and an appetite for risk into huge wealth: They founded hedge funds in New York, bought up undervalued oil leases in Texas, made blockbusters in Hollywood. More than a dozen of the elite donors were born outside the United States, immigrating from countries like Cuba, the old Soviet Union, Pakistan, India and Israel.”

Something the New York Times does not imagine is that these people became so rich precisely because they changed the laws first. An example is the entire financial industry, because of the dismantlement of the Banking Act of 1933 (Glass-Steagall). Hedge funds get money from banks and shadow banks, and that would not have happened before Clinton. If the New York Times does not understand it, those politically connected “donors” do, as the New York Times itself observe:

“But regardless of industry, the families investing the most in presidential politics overwhelmingly lean right, contributing tens of millions of dollars to support Republican candidates who have pledged to pare regulations; cut taxes on income, capital gains and inheritances; and shrink entitlement programs. While such measures would help protect their own wealth, the donors describe their embrace of them more broadly, as the surest means of promoting economic growth ….”

Obama went to a hall in Los Angeles. It cost only $33,400, per person, to be there. A fracking family (family making money from fracking), gave $15 million to a particular Republican candidate. Another family, which made a fortune from a hedge fund, gave eleven million dollars. And so on. Even French TV is taking note, and discovers “it’s a threat to us all“. What? No appreciation for a short and brutish life as in the Middle Ages, serving great lords of finance and drinking fossil fuel water?The New York Times admits wealth prevents democratic expression. Actually the paper seems to be a bit confused between the notion of “democracy” and “demography”:

“In marshaling their financial resources chiefly behind Republican candidates, the donors are also serving as a kind of financial check on demographic forces that have been nudging the electorate toward support for the Democratic Party and its economic policies. Two-thirds of Americans support higher taxes on those earning $1 million or more a year, according to a June New York Times/CBS News poll, while six in 10 favor more government intervention to reduce the gap between the rich and the poor. According to the Pew Research Center, nearly seven in 10 favor preserving Social Security and Medicare benefits as they are.

Republican candidates have struggled to improve their standing with Hispanic voters, women and African-Americans. But as the campaign unfolds, Republicans are far outpacing Democrats in exploiting the world of “super PACs,” which, unlike candidates’ own campaigns, can raise unlimited sums from any donor

What does the concentration of wealth at the top do? Mostly shape minds in a way which serves the top guys.

The degree of manipulation of opinion is astounding, and obviously deliberate. (Media are mostly owned by plutocrats: so it’s no surprise!) One could call it a science. A technique is to write an article relating scientific, or sociological facts, say about global melting of ice, or medical care, or guns, and then allowing only commentary derisive of the article. (The Daily Mail in the UK apparently does this to a particularly obvious extent, I observe.)

Another technique is to (implicitly) present banks, and the money-changers as the savior of humanity (the New York Times’ Krugman does this), while not talking about Too-Big-To-Fail banks, Shadow Banking, or the dark connections between banking, derivatives, and politicians.

Angus Deaton, the Nobelist from Princeton University, has looked at the Dark Side: he observed that a lot of financial help to poor countries backfires, as it makes more sustainable for governments to mismanage the society and economy they rule. So the problem with development is more governance (what I call “empire”) than anything else.

Governance is failing worldwide, and this explains why 80 plutocrats are richer than the rest of the world combined.

New Middle Ages Rising

The recipient of the “Prize of the Bank of Sweden in Economic Science” is a harsh critic of economic aid from rich countries, like the United States of America, to poor countries. “I have come to believe that most external aid is doing more harm than good,” he wrote in his 2013 book, “The Great Escape.” “If it is undermining countries’ chance to grow—as I believe it is—there is no argument for continuing it on the grounds that ‘we must do something.’ The something that we should do is stop.” The Scottish born Deaton, indeed, is not afraid of controversy: he questions the widespread presumption that rising inequality is always a bad thing.

In other words, Deaton dares to say aloud that the hysterical pursuit of wealth may be good for economic activity. But Deaton claims to have found evidence that wealth brings happiness… until an income of $75,000 income. After which it starts to backfire.

Patrice Ayme’

WHY Did GERMANY LOSE World War Two?

Abstract: Germany could only lose World War Two, because obviously Germany was too small, weak, demented and stupid to win a world war. If it was that obvious, why did it start it? Why does the shark eat the bait? World War Two was a trap for many populations and many old world orders. For enlightenment to find the root cause of what happened, look at who profited: US plutocracy. The US government, the Deep Dark State, the revolving door between US capitalism and the US government, organized several bait and switch schemes, worldwide, from Japan, to Germany to even France. Those schemes were rendered possible by carefully organized divisions and cognitive dissonances (many of which have not been made explicit to this day by conventional scholarship). The Nazis themselves got entrapped, but they understood this too late, September 3, 1939, when they anxiously discovered that they were at war with France and Britain, leaving them with a very low probability of winning (especially considering France and the UK are the parents of the US).

***

Hitlerian Germany lost World War Two because the nasty don’t deserve anything else, of course. But there is much more to say, bearing on the astounding way all too many Germans, starting with their crippled, not to say creepy, finance minister find normal to treat part of Europe, even today.

Salvador Dali pointed out that Germany launched World War Two, just to lose it. The same German sadomasochism is fully obvious with all Germans who proposed to throw Greece out of the Eurozone. Indeed, violent ones, explain to me what to do next with the Greeks? Use German high tech to displace Greece east of New Zealand?

Thankfully, Germany is not Europe’s hegemon (contrarily to what superficialists believe). The French Republic leads a coalition with more economic power than Germany, and (hopefully) is determined to keep Greece under its wing. France is also flouting the restrictions on deficit (Germans can go fight in Africa and the Middle East, to help if they want: the Légion étrangère, which defeated elite Nazi soldiers in Norway in 1940, just got new tanks, which will go into combat in a matter of days)

Hundreds Of Thousands Died In The Battle Of France. Calais, May 1940. The USA Sat On Its Hands, Apparently Waiting For Better Things To Come

[France was allied with the entire British Commonwealth; however, in May 1940, much of the British army was barely getting over. In particular a promised British armor division supposed to show up where the Nazis broke through, had not arrived. The USA, was, at the time, de facto allied with Hitler.]

After winning his referendum on the NO (“oxi”) to Greece’s creditors, Tsipras operated close to a 160 degree turn. But it makes sense. Now Tsipras has popular support, and he requests help for three years (rather than three months). Greece should be given all what he wants. Enough of starving Europe with lack of money, just as European were starved of food in Nazi extermination camps.

Saving Greece now depends upon defeating (whatever remains of) the fascist mood in Germany. So it’s timely for little recaps on recent German exploits. How did Germany end up killing more than 800,000 Greeks, a little while back?

Starting in 1792, and ending apocalyptically in 1945, the obsession of German speaking plutocrats was to destroy the French Republic. In the process, Jewish European and Prussia got annihilated.

I don’t like Muslim Fundamentalism, nor do I like German Fundamentalism. The latter’s ugly mood has resurfaced recently. Fortunately, the hegemon in Europe is not ugly obsolete, tribal moods, but the French Republic. (For all the claims that Germany is Europe’s superpower, the Eurozone coalition of countries indulgent with Greece led by France had 54% of the GDP, a few days ago.)

The correct lessons of how Germany got crazy in the Twentieth Century have not all been drawn. Reading Nietzsche helps, as he forecast in a general fashion what happened next, including with the Jews, although it turned out perhaps even worse than he expected.

The French Republic nearly annihilated the Prussian plutocracy in the first week of September 1914, in a bold counterattack, east of Paris. After that, the, entrenched, frontlines did not move for four years.

In 1919, at the Versailles Peace conference, the French Republic tried to make sure Germany could not try the same sort of attack again, as easily. In vain: Great Britain and the USA had interest to keep the French Republic down, and Germany was the best way to insure that. France was left to face German fascism alone. Germany refused to repair its deliberate destruction in France and Belgium, and soon turned to a maniac to help getting even more crazy.

Ever since 1792, the greatest enemy of plutocracy is not plutocracy, German or not, but the French Revolution. In 1815, at Waterloo, France was partly dismembered, losing parts of Gaul (otherwise France would be a 100 million superpower now; instead a French pilot from Airbus had to content himself today with traversing the channel in an electric plane; Airbus plans hybrid electric jetliners soon).

Besides the necessity to keep the French Revolution down, Germany could be made into a plutocratic province of Anglo-Saxon plutocracy… As it was. Such facts put plutocracy in a bad light, and are certainly not official historical analysis.

French leaders expected Germany to try to destroy the French Republic again within 20 years. As happened.

So the question arises naturally. Why, if the Germans were so keen to make another world war, did they not learn from their mistakes? The question surfaces all over. Here is a short one:

Why did Germany lose WWII?

This is a short compendium of well-known reasons. It is entirely correct, yet entirely silly.

Its main argument is that Germany did not have the economic capability to take on the UK, the USA, and the USSR.

Yes, true: but how did it get to that? In, say, 1935, 1936, Nazi Germany was de facto, or formally allied to Great Britain (with a formal treaty in 1935), the USA (massive investor and even monopolist in the Dritte Reich), and the USSR (the secret alliance between Germany and the Bolsheviks, dating from 1916 was made official in 1939).

The other two reasons given are second, or third order (not false, but secondary, consequential to much more important reasons).

One should not forget everything really important, such as history, computing, intelligence…

Where to start in exposing why Germany lost World War Two? First of all because Germany was perverted by an abominable mentality.

France Then, Greece Now?

The Nazis used to point out that France started World War Two. Indeed, sort of:

***

Nazi Germany lost the so-called Second World War because the French Republic declared war to Hitler on September 3, 1939, while dragging Great Britain into the conflict.

It required guts on the part of the French. When the French Republic declared war, Hitler was allied to Stalin, Mussolini, the Japanese fascists, and not least, a giant panoply of plutocrats from the USA who made sure Congress did as they wanted.

American plutocrats provided the Nazi dictator with an entire economy, not just enough weapons to kill an estimated 10,000 opponents in 1932. American plutocrats provided Hitler with advanced secret technology, such as how to make synthetic oil (Exxon, then under another name) and computers (IBM: did not change names, just covered up the story), and near infinite financing: Prescott Bush, grandfather of W. Bush managed the most important Nazi war industry, American Silesian. And so on. Books on all of this are given the very cold shoulder by (plutocratically financed) universities of the USA.

Hitler had no oil, at all. But Texas, and, in particular, Texaco, had plenty, and so did the USSR. They sold it to Hitler.

Without American plutocratic corporations input, Hitler could not have driven one single mile inside France.

Nazi computers? The IBM corporation of the USA had been given the monopoly of computing inside the Reich. The vaunted Nazi organization was all managed from New York (starting in 1942, after Hitler had declared war to the USA, said detailed management went on, but passed through Geneva).

Hitler wanted a world war, but he knew he was not ready. He had 1,000 medium tanks (although he got another 1,000 from Czechoslovakia). France had more than 3,000 tanks, most of them heavy, or superior to German tanks. (Let alone the UK’s two armored divisions.)

Hitler knew he was not going to be ready before 1945, just to confront France and Britain (supposing those two did not arm themselves even more!).  By 1945, the new German weapons would have been massively produced (jet fighters and bombers, anti-aircraft rockets, aircraft carriers, new silent submarines, mass production of Panther and Tiger tanks, etc.)

The French knew all of this. They could see Hitler had constituted ten armored (“Panzer”) divisions (the French had seven armored division, and three super heavy, unstoppable armored divisions). By declaring war on September 3, 1939, France short-circuited all of Hitler’s strategy.

France Bet All In Opposing Hitler. Roosevelt Had Pledged To Help, But He Lied: see France, above, holding the empty “ROOSEVELT PLEDGE” card above. More Than 50 Million Europeans Died, from the result of Roosevelt’s and the US Deep State’s, US plutocracy’s, betrayal… But the USA Prospered… As intended…

By the time Hitler attacked the USSR, the campaigns against Poland, France and Crete, and the defeat suffered in Norway at the hands of the French Foreign Legion, had cost Hitler the death, or “disappearance” of no less than 150,000 of his most fanatical soldiers, and the Wehrmacht was actually less powerful than when it attacked France.

The Luftwaffe (Nazi Air Force) had lost more than 4,000 planes, and thousands of its best pilots. By December 1940… Between the battles of France and the Battle of Britain…

Not only this, but because the Nazis were forced to mass produce existing equipment, they could not develop, and mass produce, new weapons. By the Battle Of Brody (June 1941), the Germans discovered that the new Soviet T34 tank was nearly as impervious to their weapons, as heavy French tanks had proven, a year earlier (one heavy French tank had taken 400 hits before being destroyed).

And so on. The Brits broke German codes very often, all too often. For example, British intelligence was even able to warn the USSR about the detailed Nazi attack plan at Kursk in 1943. Kursk was the last ditch Nazi effort: failing it meant failing the war in the East; it failed, because the Soviets mysteriously anticipated all German moves. Thus the greatest tank battle ever was lost, and after that the Nazi empire was just a fat, obese, soft belly facing Stalin’s 600 divisions.

Stalin counter-attacked at Moscow in December 1941 because his spy Jorge, and others, who had told him in advance that Japan would attack the USA (instead of attacking the USSR). That allowed Stalin to put the entire Siberian Army on trains, and bring it to the front around Moscow.

Nazi Germany lost, because France and Britain surprised it by daring to attack Nazi Germany and its allies, the USSR, and American plutocracy in September 1939. As a devastated Hitler said with insane fury to his collaborators on September 3, 1939, after receiving the Franco-British declaration of war, and watching Berlin silently for ten minutes: “NOW WHAT?”

Goering mumbled: “If we lose this war, God help us.”

Indeed. The Americans, not amused by Nazi war crimes, hanged very slowly (around twenty minutes, or more), some of the top Nazis. (They claimed disingenuously that it was all accidental.)

A year later, a year after France (and Britain) declared war, the war was lost. Just like Napoleon, and for the exact same reason, Hitler could not cross the channel: the First French army, making a circle of steel and fire, had allowed the entire British army to escape at Dunkirk.

Hitler had to secretly prepare to attack his Soviet ally. As he explained to 10,000 Nazi Generals, there was no choice: Britain could not be defeated. The Nazis had to crush the USSR before Stalin understood that.

An attack was planned in mid-Spring 1941, to make sure Moscow would fall before the following winter. However his ally Mussolini had a mind of his own. After being severely defeated by the French in June 1940, he was anxious for revenge, and virile behavior worthy of his alleged ancestors. The Italian buffoon gave an ultimatum to Greece, invaded, and was promptly defeated by the Greeks.

That was a serious problem: with an hostile, British (and Free French) allied Yugoslavia and Greece to the south, Hitler was in danger of a British (and French) counterattack to the south. So Hitler attacked Yugoslavia and Greece. while the British rushed to the rescue. The Nazis could not swim tio Crete, so they flew all their paratroops. They won, after severe losses. In the end, the attack of Russia was differed by six weeks. And it’s a significantly diminished German army which attacked.

The battle of France had been lost for a number of factors, most of them accidental (several unlikely accidents together, at the same time, brought a catastrophe).

So why did Germany lost World War Two? What was the fundamental cause?

Because the French Republic attacked in a timely manner.

Patrice Ayme’

Beware Of Those Who Brought Greeks Gifts

The hidden logic in various human activities is often different from the apparent one. This is true in sociology, politics, economics. Consider NAFTA (North American Free Trade Accord), QE (Quantitative Easing: make banks richer so they be gooder), TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership: Terrifying Plutocracy Punishing China), etc.

For a decade the Greeks, having had their Drachmas converted into Euros at twice their natural worth, brought gifts to the rough Germans, by buying their luxury cars. Now Germany is rich and powerful, and Greece poor, and weak. Best conditions to pay for Greek arrogance.

There is totally no economic reason to keep on punishing Greece at this point. So why do the punishments keep on coming? One has to resort to a few twisted psychological explanations.

Lots Of Debt: Some Can Be Turned Into Tax, Some To Foreign Extortion

My twisted psycho analysis will complement the excellent editorial from Krugman: ”Greece on the Brink”.

“…Can Greek exit from the euro be avoided?

Yes, it can. The irony of Syriza’s [the present governing party, in alliance with nationalists] victory is that it came just at the point when a workable compromise should be possible.

The key point is that exiting the euro would be extremely costly and disruptive in Greece, and would pose huge political and financial risks for the rest of Europe. It’s therefore something to be avoided if there’s a halfway decent alternative. And there is, or should be.”

Notice that Paul Krugman has now an opinion on the “Grexit” exactly opposite to the one he had just two years ago. What he and others have not understood, is that I do not see why Greece could not default and stay in the Eurozone. To identify both concepts, is a way to terrify, but it does not have to be, except as a terror instrument.

Krugman: “By late 2014 Greece had managed to eke out a small “primary” budget surplus, with tax receipts exceeding spending, excluding interest payments. That’s all that creditors can reasonably demand, since you can’t keep squeezing blood from a stone. Meanwhile, all those wage cuts have made Greece competitive on world markets — or would make it competitive if some stability can be restored.

The shape of a deal is therefore clear: basically, a standstill on further austerity, with Greece agreeing to make significant but not ever-growing payments to its creditors. Such a deal would set the stage for economic recovery…

But right now that deal doesn’t seem to be coming together… the creditors are demanding things — big cuts in pensions and public employment — that a newly elected government of the left simply can’t agree to, as opposed to reforms like an improvement in tax enforcement that it can. And the Greeks, as I suggested, are all too ready to see these demands as part of an effort either to bring down their government or to make their country into an example of what will happen to other debtor countries if they balk at harsh austerity.

Rightly so: if Greece default, students in the USA, with an outstanding, non-extinguishable debt of 1.2 Trillion dollars (!) may think: ’Why not us?’

Greece has a ratio of 170 per cent of debt to GDP. However, the debt has a very low interest rate and a maturity of over 15 years. Its impact on the economy is much lower than in Portugal, Spain, or Italy. And that is the entire point: the Italian economy is terrible. Last year 170,000 refugees flooded Italy (they came back to be colonized again by the big bad colonialists!)

A new round of Greek restructuring would create political problems for Eurozone governments which, as a percentage of GDP, face a higher interest bill than Greece. How can the Spanish or Italian Prime Minister tell their aghast subjects: ‘Greece has a lower interest burden than we have, but we need to alleviate their burden! And not yours!’

And then there is the question of countries like France, where austerity is applied, while the country is paid by investors to consent to store their money there. That can only mean that, in the light of our guides, austerity is an absolute good.

Krugman detects the will to torture the Greeks, because:

“To make things even worse, political uncertainty is hurting tax receipts [and investing!!], probably causing that hard-earned primary surplus to evaporate. The sensible thing, surely, is to show some patience on that front: if and when a deal is reached, uncertainty will subside and the budget should improve again. But in the pervasive atmosphere of distrust, patience is in short supply.

It doesn’t have to be this way. True, avoiding a full-blown crisis would require that creditors advance a significant amount of cash, albeit cash that would immediately be recycled into debt payments. But consider the alternative. The last thing Europe needs is for fraying tempers to bring on yet another catastrophe, this one completely gratuitous.”

None of these apparently absurd policies imposed on Greece, are absurd. They just look absurd to those attached to human rights. From the point of the perpetrators, they are fully logical. And they are certainly not gratuitous.

Contemplate this: If the Greek government succeeded to augment tax revenues, it would succeed to tax the 1% significantly, especially the super-rich. If, in combination with a primary surplus, that was deemed sufficient for the rest of Greece creditors (including those based in Washington, like the IMF), that would be a demonstration for all to see that the present economic crisis has to do with NOT taxing the hyper rich enough. As taxing them would be enough to solve everything.

This is exactly the lesson the plutocrats and their servants do not want to be advertised.

Hence their reluctance to accept that taxing the hyper-rich is enough. But there is a further twist. The “Socialist” French Finance Minster, Sapin, is as hysterical as his German colleagues to insists Greece should pay… Until catastrophe ensues. Of course, as all the others, he has to think about his income once he gets kicked out of government within 2 years (probably). But there is still another angle.

Suppose catastrophe ensues: Greece defaults, exits the Eurozone. Then what? The Euro probably goes down much more (for a long number of reasons… no least that there would have been a default, and Greece would still have to be helped!)

Then the Euro, may go as low as it was when Germany was in great difficulty, a decade ago. So it would be good for Europe: whereas the USA depends only for 13% upon international trade, France depends at 28%, and Germany much more.

Right wing individuals, many of them who have been partners at Goldman Sachs (Monti, or the head of the ECB), or in general are tied in to High Finance, are not interested in seeing a left-wing government succeed, where the right has failed. Creditors will keep destroying the Greek economy. They may be nice people, but mostly with their kind.

One could point to creditors that they were the ones who converted the Drachma at twice its real rate against the Euro. As co-responsible, they should be punished too! However, this would not go in the sense we are supposed to attribute to history.

This Greek tragedy makes sense. Plutocratic sense. This is a world where the weak and small is in debt to the mighty, and has to learn living that way, as serfs did, in the Middle-Ages. Otherwise, they can be made an example of.

Patrice Ayme’

Europe’s Greek Tragedy

Finance Without Morality, Is Only Ruin Of The People:

People like a good cliffhanger. It beats difficult analysis, any day. Will Greece be pushed out of the Euro? Everybody wants to know.

The answer is simple: no. Before I explain why, let me point out that Paul Krugman, over the years, said many silly things about the Euro. However, he is learning, and his last effort, “Europe’s Greek Test”, is pretty good.

“In the five years (!) that have passed since the euro crisis began, clear thinking has been in notably short supply. But that fuzziness must now end. Recent events in Greece pose a fundamental challenge for Europe: Can it get past the myths and the moralizing, and deal with reality in a way that respects the Continent’s core values? If not, the whole European project — the attempt to build peace and democracy through shared prosperity — will suffer a terrible, perhaps mortal blow.”

OK, Krugman should not call it the “euro crisis”. It’s not anymore a “euro crisis” than the related 2008 crash was a “dollar crisis”. And the point is not to get “past moralizing”, but to get, precisely, in the thick of true moralizing.

Krugman: “But doesn’t Greece have an obligation to pay the debts its own government chose to run up? That’s where the moralizing comes in.” And the moralizing is not just the way plutocrats and their parrots claim it to be. Krugman has finally discovered that only one side is submitted to beating until the masters’ mood improves:

“It’s true that Greece (or more precisely the center-right government that ruled the nation from 2004-9) voluntarily borrowed vast sums. It’s also true, however, that banks in Germany and elsewhere voluntarily lent Greece all that money. We would ordinarily expect both sides of that misjudgment to pay a price. But the private lenders have been largely bailed out (despite a “haircut” on their claims in 2012). Meanwhile, Greece is expected to keep on paying.”

Paying for what? Banksters! Krugman has finally come across the great truth of the so-called rescue of Greece:

“…to oversimplify things a bit, you can think of European policy as involving a bailout, not of Greece, but of creditor-country banks, with the Greek government simply acting as the middleman — and with the Greek public, which has seen a catastrophic fall in living standards, required to make further sacrifices so that it, too, can contribute funds to that bailout.

One way to think about the demands of the newly elected Greek government is that it wants a reduction in the size of that contribution.”

Krugman concludes:

“Objectively, resolving this situation shouldn’t be hard. Although nobody knows it, Greece has actually made great progress in regaining competitiveness; wages and costs have fallen dramatically, so that, at this point, austerity is the main thing holding the economy back. So what’s needed is simple: Let Greece run smaller but still positive surpluses, which would relieve Greek suffering, and let the new government claim success, defusing the anti-democratic forces waiting in the wings. Meanwhile, the cost to creditor-nation taxpayers — who were never going to get the full value of the debt — would be minimal. 

Doing the right thing would, however, require that other Europeans, Germans in particular, abandon self-serving myths and stop substituting moralizing for analysis. 

Can they do it? We’ll soon see.”

The usual moralizing analysis that is done is not just completely wrong, but thoroughly superficial: the average Greek has been punished for a crime she and he did not commit. They are been punished with their lives. Meanwhile, the culprit bankers are not giving back their mansions.

So Germany is going to become reasonable about Greece. Why? Because it is co-responsible: the Drachma was converted into Euro at twice its real value. Germany agreed to this. That instant wealth for Greece was going to bring a lot of purchase of German luxury cars by wealthy Greeks, and it did. So the average Greek was set-up by wealthy and controlling Germans, whose influence made German economists consent to malversation.

Another point: Germany saw its debt cut down four times during the Twentieth Century, and the last time was in 1953. Basically Germany did not have to pay for Nazism and reconstruction.

If Germany did not have to pay for Nazism, why should Greece have to pay for German bankers? (Hmm… Wait. It actually makes sense…)

In particular Germany did not pay in any commensurate fashion for the Greeks it killed in World War Two. How many Greeks did Germany kill when it attacked Greece in Spring 1941, and for the next four years of brutal occupation, complete with sending tens of thousands of Greek civilians to extermination camps? Or killing them on the way?

So many Greeks were assassinated by the Nazis that one does not know how many died. Up to more than eleven percent of the population. Scaled up to the present population of the USA, that would be around 33 million dead.

33 million dead, and now you ask for more?

The sort of governments which has been in power throughout the West, has been serving the wealthy capital class, from the USA to Greece. It’s not just the Eurozone.

The British Royal Mail was evaluated by some financiers at 12 billion Euros. But the “Conservative” government sold it 4 billion. In a few hours of trading, the privatized company gained 60%, making a lots of instant wealth for investors.

Plots everywhere by the plutocrats, what could go wrong? A Great Bitter Ocean to drown in.

Some ponder the nature of man, the Dark Side French ex-justice minister Badinter spoke about.

Yet, that’s another mistake. One does not avoid cruelty by just becoming a vegetarian, or a vegan. Actually, it’s easy to argue that this is an immoral mood.

Instead, blame General Economics.

It has been thoroughly documented that, in national parks such as Amboceli, elephants kill goats and cattle, just because they don’t like them crowding around water holes.

MORALITY HAS TO REACH ACROSS CENTURIES:

Spain, now followed by Portugal, has decided to allow Sephardic Jews to return. Five centuries after throwing them out. This is worth pondering as a morality play. After 381, the Catholic Church became not just a terrorist organization burning libraries, but an officially sanctified one lethal one killing all groups it did not like, and, first of all “philosophers”. The Church came close to annihilating the Jews, but then the Franks took power and re-established the civil rights of non-Catholics. In the following centuries, many Catholics converted to Judaism: whereas the Pope and his goons always threatened to burn alive miscreants, Judaism was more relaxed.

However, for a number of reason, such as Saint Bernard, Saint Louis and the like, and the death struggle against the Islamists who occupied most of the Mediterranean, the Catholic Church and its Inquisition came back in force.

Millions of Jews were thrown out, or forced to convert to Catholicism, or terrified, tortured to death, burned alive. Even towards the end of the Eighteenth Century, Voltaire condemned the execution of a young Jewish girl, burned alive in Portugal, just because she was a Jew.

Well, last week, a ten year old Nigerian girl was covered with explosives, and detonated in a market place, by Boko Haram, an Islamophile terrorist organization.

That would have been unimaginable in Nigeria, sixty years ago (you know, under the dirty colonialists). But now, it’s happening, and it’s the leaders of the world who are culprit. Because that’s the world they organized. With their lies.

So let’s talk truly now, and start with Greece. When one of the world’s most despicable men, Jean-Claude Juncker, a tax evasion specialist serving plutocrats for decades, enabling trillions of dollars to be stolen from the people, say that Greece, the Greek people, should pay, we should retort.

Retort that it is his kind that should pay, so we can start to put an end to the systems of moods and lies they set in place.

Plutocrats and those who enable them, have been full of audacity, for decades. But, without audacity, you cannot save the Republic. Because the world, or at least the ecology, always moves on.

Ah, and of Greece and the Euro?

The Greek Central Bank can actually print all the Euros it needs. So the charade in Greece was made possible by the complicity of the ruling elite. Syriza can put an end to that.

And what of Germany forcing Greece? How? By bringing back the Schliefen plan, and swinging millions of robotic soldiers, through France, as in 1914? Hahaha. Sorry, I am obnoxious. Not likely, anyway, as 98% of the military muscle in Europe is held by France and Britain.

The Euro is the Greek currency. Germans can’t change that. It would be easier for them to adopt the rubble of the Rouble as new German currency instead.

Not that force should not be used. Banksters and their accomplices should be made to regurgitate the ill profits they made from Greece and other places they victimized.

Patrice Ayme’

Economic Incompetence A Cover-Up?

Senator Elizabeth Warren (Democrat, Massachusetts) is one of the couple of American politicians with a progressive mindset. She has criticized the latest government funding bill because it repeals part of Dodd-Frank (notice that the Democrats are still in power, doing this re-augmentation of the power of financial plutocrats, just before leaving office, no doubt to reap their rewards when they will be looking for juicy compensations in a few weeks).

Warren also disagreed with Obama’s nomination of investment banker Antonio Weiss for the Treasury Department (not the first time Obama names such a fat cat to watch the hens, a method now copied by Hollande).

Warren will never be part of the real government of the USA (those are people such as Weiss, or (famous for her “Fuck-Europe”) Nuland who stand just below the figure heads (Obama, Hagel, Kerry, etc.) Or then she will have to do what she is told.

It is true that some American politicians instituted forceful reforms: the two Roosevelts and JFK were from a plutocratic background, and the three of them were also warriors (real ones). Johnson, however rotten, rode JFK’s assassination to pass a progressive agenda, and Eisenhower, with his 93% upper margin tax, was also a warrior.

In all cases, progressive American politicians were extremely aggressive types. In comparison, Bill Clinton, a spineless schmoozer, made it so that the financial derivatives market went from 80 TRILLION dollars to the present 800 trillions.

So the financial derivatives market is about 12 times WORLD GDP. In other words, for one transaction among the low lives, the fat cats make 12.

Here comes Krugman, in his latest, “Made As Hellas”:

“The Greek fiscal crisis erupted five years ago, and its side effects continue to inflict immense damage on Europe and the world. But I’m not talking about the side effects you may have in mind — spillovers from Greece’s Great Depression-level slump, or financial contagion to other debtors. No, the truly disastrous effect of the Greek crisis was the way it distorted economic policy, as supposedly serious people around the world rushed to learn the wrong lessons.”

Well, I have several twists on this: first, the fundamental crisis was the financial derivatives crisis in New York and London. Second, as I will show, the wrong lessons were taught by the usual cast of deviant characters and their servants. It was, it is, a case of intoxication with the wrong ideas, to poison the world’s entire economy, thus its society, and future… to profit the few who hold the strings.

Krugman pursues: “What happened last time, you may recall, was the exploitation of Greece’s woes to change the economic subject. Suddenly, we were supposed to obsess over budget deficits, even if borrowing costs were at historic lows, and slash government spending, even in the face of mass unemployment. Because if we didn’t, you see, we could turn into Greece any day now. “Greece stands as a warning of what happens to countries that lose their credibility,” intoned David Cameron, Britain’s prime minister, as he announced austerity policies in 2010. “We are on the same path as Greece,” declared Representative Paul Ryan, who was soon to become the chairman of the House Budget Committee, that same year.

In reality, Britain and the United States…were and are nothing like Greece. Now Greece appears to be in crisis again. Will we learn the right lessons this time?

…I have no idea how events in Greece are about to turn out. But there’s a real lesson in its political turmoil that’s much more important than the false lesson too many took from its special fiscal woes.”

Krugman is superficially correct, but fundamentally naïve.

An elite of sort-of thinking thieves conspiring with the world’s biggest plutocrats, rules, abuses, exploits, and splurges.

That elite of robbers has run out of sophisticated bogus arguments which everybody believes in, so, now, they are trying to present themselves as incompetent … but they then add that anybody else would do much worse than they do.

In other words, the plutocrats and their political accomplices and agents use now their own incompetence as a cover-up.

How do I know that they deliberately use incompetence as a cover-up?

I saw recently the worst accusations being flung at some cabinet ministers in France (where it is a crime to insult the members of the government) and against others, such as Juncker (a fitting name, close to “junk”).

Juncker, the new head of the European Commission, who, over a quarter of a century, as Finance Minister, and then Prime Minister of Luxembourg, organized outrageous tax evasion of the order of trillions of Euros by some of the wealthiest individuals and corporations in the world, thus putting in misery hundreds of millions of Europeans. Juncker, is arguably, one of the world’s top criminals, ethically speaking. His monstrous crimes leave him impassible: apparently he has seen, or committed, worse.

So how do these extremely high level politicians react, when they are told, in public, they are greedy, thieving, conniving, low lives? Well, they react as if they fully expected those complaints and insults: they find them natural. Why? Obviously because they did, indeed, commit them, and they know very well their crimes are in plain sight.

We have many examples of the worst regimes in the last 4,000 years of recorded history, when regimes went astray, and yet, they found many to serve them.

We are experiencing now such a case. Basically all European politicians, and the political system they grew from ought to be thrown out, and replaced by direct democracy. How? Just copy what is done in Switzerland.

The problem is the same in the USA. But, as the world’s largest national economy, and military, and networked empire, the USA plutocrats have fed their servants with more crumbs. Hence the more subdued and less revolted state of the American populace…

Patrice Ayme’