Saving The Animals, Thus Ourselves

Animals die in great numbers trying to cross human transportation systems. When one provides the animals with crossings, they rush to use them (so are used even before they are finished, by a Noah’s ark of species). Respecting nature is not just about the beauty and naturalness it provides us with, it is about respecting how we became who we are, at our best. We have to learn to share the planet with animals. Not just because we are smart, but also because they are smart and our smarts evolved from interacting with their smarts. So interacting with wild animals is smart all around… and it has made our species smarter! Wildlife interaction is how we evolved our smarts. Not book smarts, but the deepest smarts.

Hence by respecting animals, we respect how we became human… and it keeps on being human to do so.
Economy means managing the house, in particular, managing earth, which is our common house. As the greenhouse heating proceeds at an accelerating pace, we then have to reserve an increasing part of our economic activity to save the animals by helping them to cope with the changes we have brought.
Morality comes from the mores, the old ways, the ways which perdured, and thus, insure survival. Having a natural environment, full of animals, is the ultimate morality. If we can’t save them, how can we learn to save ourselves? So it is not just smart and economic to save the animals, but also moral. The money engaged so far is quite small. But the price of an unbalanced environment tottering towards ruin, is incomparably higher. For a nice article with nice videos of animals using their smarts crossing freeways and roads, consider:

As a badger digs, say for ground squirrels whose borrows have many exits, could not it be that the coyote would seize a fleeing squirrel, and share the meal? This is basic economics and strategy, and it turns out that coyotes and badgers have figured out that behavior, and cooperate together. The next question would be this: do the individuals concerned figure it out by themselves, as cephalopods do, or is the behavior culturally instigated, namely both badgers and coyotes learn elements of interspecific cooperation from teaching by their elders? I believe the latter.

After all, I trained the (wild) nesting birds on my balcony to benignantly ignore my weird and intrusive ways… which thus had to learn to be a bit more respectful than they usually are. But of course these ways tend to incite the red tail hawks to not land on this particular balcony on a determined culinary mission (as they have been seen doing…) And the birds know this [1].

Saving the animals is first of all about saving us… Not just our sense of beauty.

Patrice Ayme

[1] Hummingbirds set their nests below hawks’ nests, as this protects them from gays. Local hawks do attack nests of birds who are big enough (like gays, crows, etc).And I have seen them pass 10 feet from me, eyeing me suspiciously… Their feathers can be two feet long…

https://www.audubon.org/news/why-hawk-hummingbirds-best-friend

A Civilization Whose Media Is Controlled By A Few Is Despicable

The New York Times wants us to worry about the cruelty directed to avian dinosaurs. Why chicken? Why not rats tortured by rat poison, dying over hours in indicible suffering? Aren’t rats closer to humans than chicken? Being too concerned by animal welfare was the mark of the Nazis: they passed very advanced animal welfare laws. That enabled them to present themselves as “humane”. It was a cover-up, a change of conversation.

On April 21, 1933, almost immediately after the Nazis came to power, the parliament began to pass laws for the regulation of animal slaughter. On April 21, a law was passed concerning the slaughter of animals; no animals were to be slaughtered without anesthetic. Those Nazis were obviously keen to project an image of goodness.

It is scornful to let a few wealthy families, who all know each other, control the world media. Therein the source of monothinking… And its erroneous outcomes. The climate catastrophe could have been mitigated. But it’s not going to be. Record beating temperatures in North Eastern Siberia (the world’s coldest place, outside of Antarctica) were recently measured: 38 Celsius, more than 100 Fahrenheit, more than Houston, Texas… The mad greenhouse is supposed to cook the polar regions, as it starts rampaging. And it is. So Siberia is burning, unleashing gigantic quantities of CO2 and methane. Two weeks ago, the area on fire was as large as Switzerland, and affecting air quality in North America.

So far, so funny. But when global HEATING goes nonlinear, it’s going to be even less funny than the COVID virus… (Picture NASA, July 2, 2020)

Nicholas Kristof of New York Times in his blog, Saturday 11, 2020:

I noted in my last newsletter that I was wondering, as we pull down controversial statues, what our great-grandchildren will find bewilderingly immoral about our own times — and about us. Some of you sent in your thoughts, and the thought nagged me enough that it became my Sunday column.

I think our descendants will find our passivity on climate change unforgivable. They’ll be staggered by our indifference to human suffering. And I think they’ll be baffled by our systematic cruelty to animals, especially poultry and livestock. Read the column and then post in the comments about other moral blind spots of our time that I missed.

I sent this:

A characteristic of the recent indignation of the upper middle class reminds me of the Puritans or old: namely, they think they are so pure, and they are not. But, to make sure that they feel pure, all howling the same way, while enjoying the spoils, they accuse The Devil… namely Trump.

However, Trump is a newcomer in politics, and he did not originate most of the well installed evils in place. An obvious evil is the housing crisis, and it came directly from NIMBYism (Not In My Back Yard). Where I have lived for decades, the NIMBYists argued that non single family housing had to be demolished, because it spoiled the views. Even billionaire Feinstein (married to a Senator) said this.

What upper class “democrats” didn’t say was that, by strangling supply, they caused enormous price appreciation of their houses, and homelessness. Better to talk about “systemic racism”,as it accuses We The People to be vicious, perverse, and… despicable. Besides, it accuses of what we are not, thus confusing us.

Meanwhile public transportation was also strangled to make IPOs (Uber, etc.) while Google (etc.) enjoy their own private transportation bus system (using regular bus stops which they stole for themselves, as they generally did not pay for them).

Another despicable manoeuver? Obamacare was rolled out: 25 million new insured (getting government money to pay for it), but small people can’t see their doctors anymore, although they pay private corporations for insurance they don’t get the fruits of (I have used Obamacare for real: it’s a rip-off). Single family housing is also causative of the climate catastrophe, by the way…

***

Not holding my breath that the employees of the conspiracy of the world’s wealthiest men will dare to publish such a contribution to global thinking (the most sedate, cogent, and polite parts above constituted comments to the New York Times; they were all censored; this puts a question towards the honesty of individuals such as mr. Kristof: he reads individual comments. Then he blocks them because, well, his salary depends upon it… La grande excuse des pires salauds à travers les ages: my salary made me do it…)   … They don’t want us to think thoughts we are not supposed to have. Bleating, they like.

A Civilization Whose Media Is Controlled By A Few Is Despicable… and also idiotic. That’s why they die… but it can take a while…

Patrice Ayme

Krugman’s New Trade Theory Would Be Idiotic, Were It Not So Criminal, Enslaving Us All To China

A problem preventing progress in the USA, thus the world is that plutocracy masters (and owns) the media, the universities, the international prizes, international organizations, and the intellectual discourse, even the haughtiest (as I have argued all top philosophy is in its grip, over as a vaccine against progress, rather than as a treatment against progress).

A famous example, the self-described “Conscience of a Liberal”, Paul Krugman. I stopped arguing with him, a few years ago, because I was tired of his censorship, and I was hoping Trump would demolish Krugman’s great work, GLOBAL PLUTOCRACY, and becoming all slaves to China. Krugman got the Nobel for his “New Trade Theory”. There have been Trade theories and practices since before the Bronze Age Era, the civilization of which collapsed spectacularly, and simultaneously, 33 centuries ago. 

Trade is engaged into for a myriad of complex reasons, from the point of a lance poking one’s behind, to “comparative advantage”. Trade was a matter of survival for hundreds of thousands of years, as local tribes couldn’t get that obsidian, or flintlock from far away, that is, necessary material to make superior weaponry. So much of trade theory consists into rediscovering the obvious and long-well-known. 

Even if it worked, NTT would work only between similarly sized countries. But China is much bigger, 40 tiimes bigger than the average country in population. I guess Krugman is reading that her for the first time…. And because it’s a dictatorship organized by US plutocrats, another type of dictators, decorated fro freedom by Obama, China is alway first, an advantage NTT venerates…

In NTT Krugman focused on returns afforded by scale. The bigger the industrial corporation, the cheaper quality/price it can fabricate goods. Krugman loves to talk in non understandable ways, here is on his own work: “The idea that trade might reflect an overlay of increasing-returns specialization on comparative advantage was not there at all: instead, the ruling idea was that increasing returns would simply alter the pattern of comparative advantage.” Whatever, the “Conscience of a Liberal” tries to obscure his evil work with what he calls “wonkish”.

New trade theory suggests that the ability of firms to gain economies of scale (unit cost reductions associated with a large scale of output) can have important implications for international trade… namely you will wallop the competition.

New trade theory suggests that: 

a)through its impact on economies of scale, trade can increase the variety of goods available to consumers and decrease the average cost of those goods.

b) in those industries when output required to attain economies of scale represents a significant proportion of total world demand, the global market may only be able to support a small number of enterprises.

c) Government may play a role in assisting its home based companies. This implies that all jobs will go to China, a dictatorship. Indeed, Chinese companies can achieve the largest scale: their interior market is nearly five times the US. Also it’s OK that China intervenes to assist its own behemoths: see point c).

Reading this, Stalin may have ordered Krugman send to Siberia for plagiarism. Stalin used to say:”Quantity is its own quality”. (He was referring to T34 tanks and planes, many of them from the US…) My point? none of this is new. What’s new is for richly educated economists (as they serve the rich) to discover those old truths.

As most Western European countries have no scale, they are just Hong Kong without financials, they will only be nations of “consumers”. But where will their money come from? Will they have to sell their children to the Chinese dictatorship?

“Variety And Reducing Costs” (one more lie!)

Without trade, nations might not be able to produce those products where economies of scale are important. With trade, markets are large enough to support the production necessary to achieve economies of scale. So, trade is mutually beneficial because it allows for the specialization of production, the realization of scale economies, and the production of a greater variety of products at lower prices.

NTT is either geographically challenged idiotic… Or takes us for geographically challenged idiots. His idiotic reasoning works only if the trading partners are all of the same size, roughly, and of the same political nature. But they are not. The average country population is only 35 millions, and the median country population is less than ten million, a fraction of one percent of the size of China. 

NTT is correct that the pattern of trade we observe in the world economy may be the result of first mover advantages (the economic and strategic advantages that accrue to early entrants into an industry) and economies of scale.

New trade theory suggests that for those products where economies of scale are significant and represent a substantial proportion of world demand, first movers can gain a scale based cost advantage that later entrants find difficult to match. The US and China have been acting accordingly, while piously preaching the opposite, namely economic liberalism, open borders. An excellent example is SpaceX, launched under Bush, which received billions under Obama, under the table (and above the table, from Trump). Now Space X excellent products will destroy all and any aerospace industry, worldwide… except in the countries which decide to have their own aerospace (China, Russia, India… others not clear…).  

Official Implications Of New Trade Theory:

Nations may benefit from trade even when they do not differ in resource endowments or technology (so the Europeans have been persuaded to open to China and the US, because they may benefit… just like a fly may benefit from being devoured by a spider).

A country may dominate in the export of a good simply because it was lucky enough to have one or more firms among the first to produce that good (as we Americans are always first we shall DOMINATE, because we dominated first). Bing first becomes a respected form of comparative advantage (watch Tesla opening a giant plant in Germany next year).

An extension of the theory is the implication that governments should consider strategic trade policies that nurture and protect firms and industries where first mover advantages and economies of scale are important.

If progressives want to progress towards human rights and a better planet, they will have to learn to realize they have been led by crooks who made “theories” to justify the disappearance of local employment, dignity, education and income, fostering instead exploitation by a dictatorship.

Does Krugman realize what an abominable role new Trade Theory has played in the imposition of global plutocracy? Apparently not. He spews, editorial after editorial, horrible insults about Donald Trump… But, remove the insults, and the substantial thing he complains about is less “New Trade”, a euphemism for selling the world to China, in exchange for getting cheaper goods, which presumably we will pay for with money produced by China, as China produces everything…

In many countries, dozens of thousands of death happened, during the Corochinavirus, because everything, including masks, were made in China. Thanks, NTT and its comparative advantage to… China. China had no more death than Sweden (China lies, of course) All these deaths in these other countries would not have happened if we had the right NECESSARY TRADE THEORY.

As long as the crooks and even their crooqkery, have not been detected… where is the hope?

Patrice Ayme

    

 

Say: WEAT, Wealth Economic Activation Tax. Rather Than: “Wealth Tax”.

Applauded in US, Reviled in China:

To justify the mass deportation of maybe as much as a million Chinese (Muslim) Uighurs, the Beijing authorities observed:  “Did they commit a crime? No… It is just that their thinking has been infected by unhealthy thoughts… Freedom is only possible when this ‘virus’ in their thinking is eradicated and they are in good health.”

Well, in the West, it is unnecessary to hold such a discourse: the submissives don’t even know the names of their masters… basically the media owners, all wealthy beyond belief. (By the way, the link above is to the New York Times. The real hero is the high level insider in China who leaked the documents. Amusingly, the greatest leaker has been Edward Snowden, who revealed US spy agencies spied on all US citizens with the complicity, conscious or not, of the tech monopolies. Snowden is reviled by the US establishment, the Chinese leaker has already obtained sainthood…)

***

Plutocrats are not just greedy: they want to put us in chains, because they like us to suffer: 

(This is the little point Rousseau overlooked, earning the scorn of De Sade.) To put us in chains, plutocrats confiscate much of the capital of the economy. (Not just because they want ever more capital, as Marx erroneously believed, but because they are… sadistic). To counteract the evil designs of those addicts of the Dark Side (however unconscious they claim to be), I advocate WEAT. 

In the last few weeks, the conspiracy against Warren has born fruit: she is not first in the polls, even in Iowa, the first state to vote, where Mr. Buttsomegig, apparently one of those pseudo-democrat from the school of pseudo-progress, is now leading. As I explained long ago, the impeachment targets Warren, not Trump. (Nobody seems to understand this.)

Hyper wealth reduces access to property, economy, and democracy for most people. Even health care gets confiscated: plutocrats organize health care as a source of profit. Patients who pay less, get less. I just ordered glasses. I have very high astigmatism. There were ten levels of quality of the lenses, the prices varied from one to five. The lowest level guaranteed a very reduced field of view. The most expensive, made by French Essilor, used special lenses, recut by computer driven laser. Not everybody can afford $500 lenses. If not, much less good vision, with consequences on driving, walking, etc. 

The failure of Obamacare, Reaganism for health care, shows up in the graph of life expectancy. Obama is the life expectancy inflection curve guy…

Obamacare acknowledged the necessity of organizing society around plutocratic profit (a Reagan moral imperative). Thus it compensated for those able to afford ‘less” by bringing in taxpayer money; however Obamacare didn’t change the basic picture, although it confused the issue… dental and eye care was still out of the picture… So was the little detail that Medicare is just 80%…

So the rise of plutocracy, Obamacare, Transferring Assets to Rich People, has corresponded to a lowering of life expectancy. 

One interest of a wealth tax is to reduce this confiscation of much by a few. Just taking wealth and reducing the national debt would reduce economic activity, and increase the worth of wealth, thus confiscate more from the commons, and make the wealthy relatively wealthier, achieving the exact opposite effect. So using a wealth tax to reduce debt… the latter being an obsession of the wealthiest and less economically active, would serve the wealthy, not most of the population. 

Instead, one has to use a wealth tax to augment economic activity and avenues for most people to increase their worth. Some of the wealthy argues that seizing two cents of their wealth would reduce the recycling of their wealth, the recycling of these two cents, into economic activity. A way to avoid this would be to enforce the recycling of 100% of the taxed wealth into economic projects. To avoid this, one should allow no injection of taxed wealth in the general budget. Thus one could present the wealth tax not as a redistribution tax, but a Wealth Economic Activation Tax. WEAT

Thus a wealth tax will have the following beneficial effects on civilization:

1. Economic Activation of the US wealth tax, the Wealth Economic Activation Tax will be its first effect, forcing money out of the vaults of the wealthy. Those vaults could be bonds, real estate, money losing media… So WEAT will increase what is technically known as the “speed of money”.
2. Removing even the possibility to plot to confiscate wealth from the general economy, society and democracy will be the second effect, it will inflect the economic organization of society. In today’s society, the plutocrats have so much clout, they establish government for all to see (Davos). Once the wealth tax is in place, connivence of the government and Deep State with plutocracy will be replaced by an adversarial relationship. The Davos mindset will look for what it is: a conspiracy of criminals. 
3. The Wealth Tax will foster progressive diminution of plutocracy, that is will save civilization from the control of the mentality which a few power obsessed, evil inhabited families impose at all levels of government, and society.  

The wealth tax is a must if we want the biosphere, and, a fortiori, civilization, to survive. The wealth tax is why the Roman Republic lasted five centuries (and arguably longer). Learn from history, to be spared the same catastrophes, just, way bigger, and radioactive too.

Patrice Ayme

Emptying The Core Through Unemployment: the Plutocratic Way

There is no democracy, without an economy flush with employment. A society which doesn’t employ people disempowers them: they can’t even go on strike. Thus those who don’t want democracy, can destroy the economy first. That’s sneaky, and most efficient,  

This is exactly what has been happening in the last three decades, as employment and economy has been sent increasingly from the wealthiest countries to developing countries… This brought decreasing employment in those wealthiest countries. Thus it disempowered workers while empowering the investors, owners and managers who employed dirt poor workers overseas unprotected by social laws… basically slaves. The more the owners and the international elite were empowered, by this displacement of the economy overseas, the more they manipulated the ruling ideology which they controlled through the media they own and the universities they finance.

This is not the graph I was looking for, which was world trade versus inequality. However, that’s a good proxy, as patents tended to be deployed in places like China… as the economy was displaced there!

…Actually the US Supreme Court, starting in 2006, and boosted by Obama after 2008, gutted the US Patent System: it’s always the same idea: favor the giant monopolies (patents are micro, temporally limited monopolies…) and overseas production… Disempower normal US citizens…

We saw it all before, with the Roman Republic. It disappeared when its elite escaped the absolute wealth limit taxation by going overseas, and sending the economy there, while controlling the political process. This voided Rome, and later Italy, of employment, thus power. They remembered that, early in the Roman Republic, to protest the elite, the Plebs had gone on strike… forcing more equalitarian laws.

Beijing just accused Washington of “economic terrorism”. China can self develop now. Time to bring jobs back to the USA, the EU. That will bring back not just employment, but democracy.

Patrice Ayme

***

***

This was a comment to the NYT, which was approved so fast, they couldn’t possibly have read it (do I have friends?) Here is the beginning of the article:

“Trade War Starts Changing Manufacturers in Hard-to-Reverse Ways
ControlTek, which makes circuit boards in Vancouver, Wash., has begun shifting supply chains out of China and designing products that don’t require Chinese parts.

The New York Times
By Ben Casselman
May 30, 2019

PORTLAND, Ore. — When the Trump administration first imposed tariffs on $34 billion in Chinese imports in July, Andy LaFrazia figured it was just another curveball for his company.

“Everyone was saying: ‘Oh, it’s a negotiating tactic. It won’t last long,’” Mr. LaFrazia recalled.

But nearly a year later, the trade war shows no sign of cooling off. So ControlTek, the electronics manufacturer that Mr. LaFrazia runs near Portland, is taking steps to protect itself, a strategic shift that has been repeated in boardrooms and executive suites around the world in recent weeks.

ControlTek is rewriting contract language to make it easier to pass the cost of tariffs on to its customers. It is shifting supply chains out of China where possible, and redesigning products to avoid Chinese components where it isn’t. And as a tiny player in an enormous global industry, it is discovering that there is only so much it can do.

“We’re very much at the end of the whip getting thrown around,” Mr. LaFrazia said.

Despite dire warnings from economists, Mr. Trump’s trade war has so far done little to derail the decade-long recovery from the Great Recession. Economic growth has remained strong, and the unemployment rate last month hit a 50-year low.”

 

 

EURO CHEAT: German Hidden Banks Subsidies Destroy Europe!

More generally, the collapse of the European economy is caused by too much economic “liberalism”, while the rest of the world does the opposite, by providing strategic state help. This dichotomy happens within the Euro zone itself, where Germany found a trick to provide stealthy government help.

Abstract: The collapse of industrial production in France, Italy and Spain, while it soared in Germany, under the Euro regime, has a simple technical explanation. Using bankrupt banks, Germany subsidizes massively its industry. However, under vicious European Union rules, Germany insists that countries other than Germany do not get any STATE subsidies… while Germany enjoys them quietly. This cannot be allowed to go on.

The existence of a, de facto, common currency is nothing new in Europe: it was practiced during most of the last 2,000 years. It is a drastic economic advantage. Thus, so it should be with the Euro. However the present unfair and imbalanced German practice is unsustainable. The solution is for the rest of Europe to get state help, just as Germany, Japan, China, the USA and the UK (massive quantitative easing and other interventions), and also India, do: extend state subsidies to non-German Euro nations. (Either by creating banks similar to the bankrupt state supported German banks, as used to exist in France, or by some other subsidies…)

Several facts can be observed: first that the fossil fuel countries, Canada, US, Australia, did pretty well, thanks to their smothering of the planet in compensation for them making lots of money (figuratively or not). Second, that the Euro has become a Germany-first, a über alles Germany device. As I explained, that’s caused by bankrupt banks, which can lend to small, crucial industries, while being fed by state subsidies…

***

French presidential elections are 3 weeks away. Marine Le Pen wants to leave the Euro, and the European Union (however, she also intent to change to a Swiss-like system of plebiscites, so she would submit any big change to these). Marine Le Pen was received both by Putin and the presidents of Chad and Lebanon.

Many opinion leaders have clamored for years to destroy the Euro, such as the well-known establishment propagandist Paul Krugman. Except for howling together, the reasoning is not obvious. The anti-Europeans’ basic argument is that various economies need to devalue their currencies at different rates, because otherwise they won’t change.

On this site Picard 578 and Lovell said:”The problem of the Euro is its existence”. I disagree: common currencies are very advantageous, but this one has a poisonous hook inside.

***

Past Currency Problems: Rome, China, Europe:

It is true that the gigantic Roman empire ran into a currency problem, characterized superficially both by dearth of fiduciary currency and inflation. One reason was the weakening of the application of Roman Civil law by centuries of fascism. Another is that, like China, the Romans did not have enough precious metals (anymore: they had exhausted the mines).

The Franks solved both problems: they yanked law enforcement from the Roman Catholic bishops, re-establishing good old fashion cruel punishments for malefactors: currency counterfeiters were slowly boiled to death, alive, in special long cages where they slowly cooking twitching bodies could contribute to leaving a lasting impression to the obtuse masses.

The other way the Franks solved the problem of precious metals was by conquering Eastern Europe, something the Romans (except for imperators Caesar and Trajan) had not even envisioned. There were abundant silver mines in Eastern Europe. (The Chinese solved, sort of, their currency problem with paper currency. That lasted seven centuries, until collapse of the Yuans under hyperinflation. The Ming and Manchus got Bolivian silver from Bolivia, through the Philippines held Spain.

***

Common European Currencies Never A Problem:

When there is no common currency, there is no common trade..Clearly common currency collapse contributed to the fall of the Rome of the Third and Fifth centuries, and the Roman Catholic bishop government of around 400 CE. The same holds for the Yuan. The Chinese used cumbersome copper as precious metal, or potentially worthless paper. When people cheated with currency in 400 CE Rome, the local bishop from the local plutocratic family, would admonish them. Six centuries later, the Franks had them bathe in boiling water, wine or oil.

Charlemagne was actually Roman EMPEROR. The currency system he refurbished had existed for 8 centuries and would exist for centuries more. Although various mints did various things, there was interoperability of the coins.

The Franks did re-establish the Roman currency, both by ferocious enforcement of the law, and by making the coins themselves more valuable (by augmenting their precious metal content).

From 650 CE to 1000 CE, temperature increases of the Middle Age Warming and the re-establishment of a stronger state (very strong in 800 CE, when the Roman empire was officially “renovated”, much more fragmented later in West Francia) brought more than a doubling of the population of Europe (from 18.5 million to 39 million). In spite of all the disturbances and massacres caused by invasions of rabid, voracious, pitiless Saracens, Vikings and Magyars.

Although West Francia (present day occidental two-thirds of France) was cut up in 60 local states (some duchies, some counties, some free cities, some church states), after the death of emperor Charles the Bald, counterfeiters were boiled all over, and thus (roughly) the same currency worked in northern Germany, Rome, or Austria.

I insist on this for good reason: the government of Roman bishops of 400 CE had decided, as the good Christians they were, not to apply the death penalty anymore for highwaymen. Result: the currency became extremely fake, and the road extremely unsafe. Too much goodness leads to too much crime for civilization to keep on operating. This is what the government of bishops of 400 CE proved (at the same time, realism forced the bishops to agree to let the Franks receive military control of three Roman provinces, including Gallia and Germania).

Charlemagne was Imperator Romanorum (Emperor of the Romans, approved by Constantinople, Oriental Rome). The Franks viewed Rome as “renovated”, but the fact is Roman civil law, Roman roads, and Roman currency had survived the collapse of the Roman state in the Fifth century (when it was progressively replaced by the imperators/elected kings of the Franks). The Belgian historian Pirenne suggested that it is the rise of the Muslim Caliphate which really caused a problem. That’s pretty much obvious as Islam was explicitly contrived to destroy the Greco-Roman state, promptly conquered more than half of it, by the sword, in 80 years, and then embargoed the rest!

In any case, the pure gold Roman Solidus was still used in 1000 CE, and the basic coin was still the Denarius (pfennig, penny, French “denier”). England, not yet part of the empire in 800 CE was still part of the currency system. Although England had 70 mints then, the English penny paid two-third of one basic worker’s day, same as on the other side of the Channel. As it took months to travel across Europe, the fact that there were many local mints does not mean that the (“Renovated”) Roman currency could not be viewed as global.

Charlemagne was the first Roman emperor who was officially sacred by the Pope. Hence the notion of “Holy” Roman empire, which surface several centuries later. By 1500, a common central European (Holy Roman-German currency) appeared: the Thaler (hence the word “Dollar”). The Thaler was used for nearly four centuries… until 1873, when Bismarck’s imperial maneuvering eradicated it…)

Europe had common currency before: the Thaler, covering Mittel Europa, lasted four centuries.

The Euro and EU intervention in economy is well beyond just having a common currency. For example it prevents to re-establish order in Africa, because France does that, France then gets punished for it in diverse ways, including by having not enough money for the rest of her economy. The proper usage would be to subtract France/Europe defense from deficit computations and, more generally, spending.

In particular money and plotting should have been spent as needed to establish a proper democracy and state backing it up, in Libya. Same for all subsahelian countries (Mali, Chad, etc.)

***

Germany Banking Subsidy Trick:

Thousands of medium German banks are crucial to finance the “middleling” German companies (of the “Mittelstand”) which produce crucial equipment for larger companies (say specialized brakes for fancy cars, or specialized LED lights used in characteristic German cars like my own). Such companies can then evolve and produce in a very protected, stable environment, favorable to apprenticeship.

It is a good system.

Too bad other countries are not allowed to have one too. To have one, other countries would have to massively invest, in full, enormous catastrophic deficit mode, before then going-on in a chronic deficit mode (as Germany presently does).

Weirdly, I am the only one to talk about this.

By the way, China’s local communities (sometimes cities with 25 million people…) do the same as Germany: massive deficit spending to sustain massive local industrialization. Right, the Chinese system is suffering from terminal debt. However, the fact is Chinese industry is thriving and expanding worldwide (Example: a Chinese drone company has a contract for taxi drones in Dubai, to operate in a few months…).

Meanwhile, French industry has collapsed, most governmental help being outlawed by European institutions (which did not discover the German trick therein described…) 

Thus General Electric, saved by 60 billion dollars from Obama, was able to swallow its French competitor, with Brussels’ benediction… That was helped by US “Justice” condemning said French competitor to a billion dollar fine, for… alleged corruption in Indonesia… The European Union has prevented its actors to act dirty. Except for those, like Germany, which play dirty.  

Goodness is always last to play dirty, by definition. However, if goodness never plays dirty in the end, goodness will be devoured by badness, malefaction. Voltaire recommended that we “ought to crush infamy”. That means not turning a blind eye towards those who exploit the rest of the world, just because we are good, and aspire to goodness. Now more than ever.

Patrice Ayme’

Economics As Science: Quesnay, Not Smith

Where it is revealed that Adam Smith was Quesnay’s Feeble Student…

Faithful Anglo-Saxons love to evoke Adam Smith and Ricardo, who are famous British economists.

Adam Smith is viewed as the first temple of economics, inventor of the free market. And that is the first set of deep mistakes. First, there was never any free market, ever since there are tribes, and they are governed. Even a government of pirates has laws. Which its market obeys.

Second, Adam Smith was actually a student. All right, we all are, but some of us do like Einstein, and get “their” main ideas somewhere else. They are not the ultimate creators. Ultimate creators are the ones worth pondering: their reasons are always deeper and more interesting than that of their parrots.

Adam Smith went to France, and learned from the physiocrats. The most prominent physiocrats were towering personalities. One, Turgot, became France’s Prime Minister (under Louis XVI), another was king Louis XV’s surgeon and “first doctor” (so economy was a love of his, as it was with the philosopher who named and founded economics, Xenophon. Lovers tend to think better than those paid to think correct thoughts).

What was the idea of physiocracy? Well, it’s in the name: the power of nature. Physiocracy views economics as an application of the laws of nature, hence its great reverence to agriculture. 

Mercantilism Is Much Smarter Than This Sorry Abstract Puts it. Physiocracy Insisted That Nature, Not The Sovereign, Should Guide Economics. True, But Naive…

As The Economist put it at some point: “If YOU asked twenty well-educated souls to identify a physiocrat, only a couple could help you out. Writers like A.R.J. Turgot, the Marquis de Condorcet and Francois Quesnay are not household names, unlike Adam Smith or David Ricardo. But they are important. According to one late-19th century historian, the physiocrats (who called themselves the “économistes”) created “the first strictly scientific system of economics”.

Adam Smith was half the age of Francois Quesnay when the latter instructed the former (43 versus 72). At the time, intellectuals from Britain and France heavily influenced each other, to the point theater has been written about them. The phrase laissez-faire, coined by fellow physiocrat Vincent de Gournay, came from Quesnay’s writings on China

Some say that physiocracy was a theory of wealth. In this reduced vision of physiocracy, the physiocrats, led by Quesnay, believed that the wealth of nations was derived solely from the value of agriculture. In that parody, Quesnay’s understanding of value-added was rather primitive—he could not see, for example, how manufacturing could create wealth. But that is certainly not true, as Quesnay greatly admired the Chinese universal education system, and its vaunted examinations producing mandarins who ruled the empire (without aristocracy).

Moreover, as Quesnay was France’s top doctor, he could not possibly believe that there was no added value in science and medicine. Quite the opposite. Quesnay, Louis XV’s esteemed friend, was called by the king, “my thinker”. Quite a compliment, as another friend was Voltaire. So that physiocrats believed in agriculture alone is a parody.

Farmers certainly produced wealth. To quote Karl Marx in “Das Kapital”, “the Physiocrats insist that only agricultural labour is productive, since that alone, they say, yields a surplus-value”.

The physiocrats are most commonly known for these most simplistic economic ideas which do not reflect their subtlety. Indeed these parodies are not their most important contribution to economic thought. Rather, it was the physiocrats’ methodological approach to economics that was revolutionary.

Before physiocracy, economics was not viewed as a scientific discipline, but rather a strategic one (this is what is called “mercantilism”). Mercantilist thinkers sometimes assumed that amassing gold, or military power was the best economic strategy… And indeed, it often was. Economic efficiency was irrelevant.

But Quesnay was a scientist (for most of his life, he was a surgeon, trained with the best, who then, at age 50, became an official medical doctor). And Quesnay wanted to apply the scientific principles of medicine to the study of economy. The “Tableau Economique”, which shows in a single page how an entire economy functions, and the abstruse book which contained it, is Quesnay’s most famous contribution.

Quesnay,an immensely respected figure, showed that the economy was something to be respected, analysed and understood—much like a human body. It could not simply be moulded by the will of a monarch (or government, or a bunch of know-nothing aristocrats).

This was a hugely important step forward. The elder Comte de Mirabeau, father to the main leader in the first few months of the Revolution, before an untimely death at age 40, considered Quesnay’s Tableau to be one of the world’s three great discoveries—equalled only by the invention of printing and the discovery of money. As The Economist says:

Familiar notions of contemporary liberal economics, laissez-faire, the invisible hand, etc. derive from Quesnay’s scientific approach. The physiocrats, like many other thinkers of the eighteenth century, believed in “natural order”. They showed that unchanging laws governed all economic processes. Consequently, it is generally thought that the physiocrats were opposed to government intervention: the dead hand of the state would only corrupt the natural evolution of the economy.(but, as Quesnay’s admiration for the Chinese governmental system based on erudition, and for Confucius, and Quesnay’s de facto appartenance to the government shows, that’s another nefarious Anglo-Saxon parody). T. Jacob Viner, a Canadian economist, referred to the physiocrats as one of the “pioneer systematic exponents” of laissez-faire… Alongside with Adam Smith.

But the root of physiocracy was much more general. Adam Smith was the student.

Why is the preceding important? First it destroys the Anglo-Saxon hubris that the Anglo-Saxon culture invented modern economic theory and practice. And that it succeeded because of it (whereas the proper application of gunnery has more to do with it).

In truth, it is quite the opposite. When Louis XIV, the self-flattered “Sun King” took control of the state, he discovered, to his dismay, that France had only twenty (20) major capital ships. England and the Netherlands each had one hundred (100). Each.

Why?

Because the Netherlands and England practiced the exact opposite theory to Physiocracy (which would be created in name a century later). The Great Powers, starting with the Imperium Francorum, Francia, and, seven centuries later, Portugal, Spain, etc., practiced Mercantilism, or how to create economic opportunity with big armies and then, big guns. And you know what? Right now the super states of the USA, China and Russia are practicing Mercantilism, while Europe practices Physiocracy. Obama has turned out to be a major practitioner of Mercantilism. Mercantilism has been his main activity. Europeans have not understood this at all.

Guess who is winning?

Patrice Ayme’

Corrupt CEOs & Their Evil Boards

Plutocracy is a global phenomenon. It is worldwide, and it integrates fully religious extremism, which is part of its arsenal. The corporate board of Renault-Nissan is made of CEOs of other corporations. The board decided that Carlos Goshn, its CEO, deserved 15 million euros in 2016. Never mind that 54% of the shareholders voted against it. Never mind that the French government, which holds 16% of the shares of Renault-Nissan was outraged by it. In this world, CEO boards and their CEOs are a church of their own, ruling the world.

CEOs and their boards argue they are exceptional, irreplaceable, and they could get a job somewhere else. However, many in France dare to now point out that if such is the case, they should be fired, go get their job somewhere else, and that many in France are trained, willing and capable of replacing them and playing CEO for much less money.

Notice That The Ratio Between CEO & Workers Salaries Exploded Up Under The Clintons. Just As Corporate Profits Exploded Up Under Obama, Higher Than Ever (Why Taxes On the Wealthy Peaked Down To Lowest Ever).

(For exploding up corporate profits, consult my “Doomed Dems“, and the Federal Reserve Economic Data graphs therein. Confronted to catastrophic, anti-democratic evolutions under their reigns, the Clinton-Obama crowd of “leaders” and “advisers” and sycophants, always accuse the Republicans. If “Republicans” are always in charge when “Democrats” rule, why to vote for the latter?)

Extravagant CEO salaries convey the mood that extravagant inequality should rule the world. That the world cannot function without extravagant, horrid inequality.

In truth CEOs are not as important as engineers. In France, a musician and engineer found a way to 3D PRINT a violin similar in sonic quality to the proverbial “Stradivarius”. The 3D printed violin is lighter, stronger, and is made in one part, so it does not have parasitic sound generated by the junctions between different parts (as in traditionally made violins).

Meanwhile in California, in a university lab, after years of trying, a researcher and her colleagues found a way to coat the nanowires used in Lithium batteries, which allows said batteries to cycles 200,000 times before a diminution of function (something which happens after 7,000 cycles in existing batteries.)

Also in California, a French professor (now in Berlin) and her UC Berkeley colleague found a revolutionary gene selecting technique.

Such individuals are the real creators. They are the hard-to-replace persons. They are also the sort of people, inventors, creators, thinkers, we need, as the biosphere threatens to go up in smoke.

Extravagantly high CEO pay not a question of “capitalism”, or “offer and demand”: in the graph above one can see that CEOs used to paid much less, relative to the average workers. And it was the same for all celebrities, including in sports and acting. Still “capitalism” was doing just fine. Actually, private capitalism was then a larger part of the economy.

Thus the rise of the mood conducive to high CEO, and other celebrities’ salaries has nothing to do with the “invisible hand” of the market. Instead, the mood of high CEO salaries is synchronous with the rise of plutocracy (lower taxes on the richest, maximal tax avoidance enabled for the richest, influence of the richest on politics, etc.).

So what is going on?

Moods make the ground from which ideas grow. Outrageous salaries for boards and CEOs make the mood more favorable to plutocrats.

An example: nowadays, major plutocrats like the kings of Saudi Arabia and Morocco, or the Sultan of Turkey, finance ideologies in countries such as Belgium. More precisely, those plutocrats finance the ideology known as Salafist Islam (which is supposed to strangle Islam, the way it used to be in Belgium, for generations, namely low key, Belgian state financed, Sufist).

Thus one sees that the rise of Islamism is actually related to the rise of CEO salaries. And this ties up to “climate denial”, as major plutocrats and their corporations support the latter. Facing the plutocratic phenomenon, one is confronted to a high dimensional metastasis of the soul. Celebritism and CEO salaries are part of it. No wonder that it is hard to treat, and beat back plutocracy: acting punctually here, or there, displaces the problem, instead of treating it.

One speaks of globalization. Left unsaid is that this is globalization of evil.

Patrice Ayme’

Doomed Dems

So Donald Trump will be the Republican committee (;-)) for the presidency. And Trump will, probably, be elected US president. Why? Because people want change, and they did not get it. Instead they got more of the drift down, after the reign of the teleprompter reading president. Average family income is DOWN $4,000 since (“Bill”) Clinton’s last year as president. According to a FOX News poll, 64% of Americans blame Wall Street. Meanwhile in a vast report in the New York Times, Obama celebrates, in May 2016, the alliance he said he made with Wall Street in 2008.

Obama Can Make All The Excuses He Wants: He Gave Money To TBTF Banks, Not To We The People. And Here Is The Result Of This Wall Street President.

Corporate profits have been rising, and wages have been declining. The following graph is from the FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data). Since the mid 1970s, wages have gone down 7% while corporate profits went up 7%. The average board member of an S&P 500 company works 250 hours, and gets $250,000 (more than $800 an hour).

Wages Are Going Down, Because Pluto Profits Are Going Up. And Other Pluto Policies

[Profits and Wages are as function of GDP above. Wages in red, corporate profits in blue. Notice the huge jump of corporate profits after Obama became president, and while he and the demonic Dems had total control of the US Congress, and the US Senate. Obama and his Dems can accuse the Republicans all they want, they are accusing reality. The reality is that they, and not the Republicans, did it.]

Warren Buffet is a hero, for many Americans. He bought Heinz (using money from Brazil’s 3G Capital: did you hear about corruption in Brazil?), and fired 600 workers. Then Buffet merged Heinz with Kraft, and another 2,500 workers got the axe. Buffet made ten billion dollars out of these two operations, 3,000 workers lost their livelihood. However, trust him, Buffet will give it all back, after he is dead (so he clamors to all MSM propaganda outfits, which religiously repeat that, as if it were the word of god).

But back to our other hero, the one who feels unappreciated. President Bush called Candidate Obama, and told him to come inside the White House, to take his orders from Secretary of the Treasury Paulson. Obama, feeling honored, obeyed, and did just like Paulson (ex-CEO of Goldman Sachs, and a possibly brain damaged professional football player) told him to do.

Now Obama feels underappreciated, although he should be appreciated, he insists, because he exhibited such great “bipartisan”.

But that is precisely the point: Americans are starting to appreciate less Wall Street and its servants. Americans are getting tired of “bipartisanship”: half professional politician, half Wall Street. Soon average Americans will even see that multigenerational Harvard families are the problem. It feels to them increasingly like a conspiracy is going on, just like Trump says, again and again:”the system is wrong, I know, I was part of it”. And you know what? It is.

“I know a lot of Americans are angry about the economy, and for good cause,” Hillary Clinton said, February 11, 2016. “Americans haven’t had a raise in 15 years.”

So why not Trump? After all, the great leaders of the Democratic Party are often incomprehensibly wealthy (with fortunes in the hundreds of millions of dollars: the Clintons, Pelosis, Feinsteins, Bowles, etc.). And their financiers, those who tend to finance them and are explicit supporters, are among the planet’s richest people. Most of them are more or less involved in government for their business (for example, here is the latest: NASA is now giving help, for free, for Elon Musk’s Space X to go to Mars: it will be interesting to see if Trump pursues these policies of tapping public institutions for making particular plutocrats and their corporations ever wealthier).

Trump got rich from inheritance, and then building things. The plutocrats connected to, or inside, the Democratic Party seem to be rather into other sorts of deals: Feinstein’s husband set-up deals in China (wait until Trump gets on that blood trail!)

In other words, people who vote for the Democratic Party have been trumped. (Originally, in the 1500s, “trump” in English meant exactly what it means in French to this day: lied to.)

People already voted for change eight years ago (when they selected Obama over his conservative rivals). Unfortunately, all the change Obama brought was none at all. (Very recently Obama started to do little progressive things, like taxing the rich a bit more, or his clemency project: too little, too late.)

The big picture with Obama was conservative, not progressive. Obama pursued what Bush did: giving money to the biggest banks. I am not saying it should not have been done, but what was needed is what Hoover (yes, Hoover) and Roosevelt did in the 1930s: a massive stimulus program (instead Obama did a short, small stimulus program; the stimulus of the 1930s extended, overall, for more than 25 years, as it extended into WWII, and then into the “Cold War”.

Under president Hoover, masterpieces such as the Chrisler and Empire State Buildings, and the Hoover dam (across the Colorado, and still watering Las Vegas) went up, some of them in a matter of months. Roosevelt ordered the construction of an unbelievably massive armament program, the construction of 24 fleet carriers (Japan would start a world war with 10).

Obama, long an admirer of Reagan in economic matters, reduced the taxes on the hyper rich by 20% in his first mandate (then brought them back up, the rather trite story of the arsonist who douses the fire later, while posing as a great hero…) The idea was to stimulate the rich, so they stimulate you.

All what We The People Who Vote are going to feel increasingly like, is that Obama was Bush III, or Clinton III-IV. Indeed, where was the “Change We Can Believe?” Yes, none at all. It was all the way down further.

Meanwhile a friend of mine went to Yosemite ten days ago. She told me she could not believe the devastation of the forest. Most of it is fiery red. It is devastated by the Pine Bark Beetle. To kill the Beetle, one needs twenty days well below freezing. However, this hard freeze is now a memory. So the Beetle invades, and kills forest. Treating tree by tree is hopelessly expensive, and futile. Yes, the forests will burn soon, adding to CO2 in the atmosphere. And it is all the way like that to Alaska.

Fort McMurray, Alberta may not have seen the worst of a devastating wildfire.

Massive walls of flames prompted authorities to order the evacuation of all the city’s more than 80,000 residents last night. The blaze has been caused by un-naturally high temperatures. Such giant fires are our immediate future. Nobody said the Greenhouse crisis was going to be nice. More evacuations coming.

These are not normal times. Ever since the universe was seen expanding, and, like the all-seing eye, we have contemplated possibilities we never dreamed of, we have come to realize that the world was in our very large hands (even larger than Mr. Trump’s hands…). Obama had very small ambition. Just like the Clintons, he surrendered to Wall Street, preferring big bucks to come to the dreams of his father. Now Charles Koch, the notorious fossil fuel multibillionaire, and great influencer of US politics, is saying he may support Hillary Clinton (instead of Trump). All plutocrats sucking at the public teat, are scared stiff of Trump. As Trump himself observed, in his boldly introspective style: “They say, what is he doing? We can’t buy him!”.

At least, through all the smokes and mirrors (in which Obama admires himself), this has the merit of clarity. By choosing Hillary Clinton, the Dems will choose business as usual. But this is not business as usual. And, increasingly, through all the smoke and mirrors, people feel that way, all around the most advanced countries, from Siberia, to California.

Change means Trump or Bernie Sanders. Clinton will surely bring only doom, as she did, ever since she and her husband helped fellow traveler, and implicit mentor, president Ronald Reagan with Iran-Contra…

Patrice Ayme’

Economy: Moods Are Changing

“TROUBLE” WITH EUROPE? WHY NOT THE US?

New York Nobel economists viewed from Europe, or the US, as “liberal”, or “leftist” do not like Europe, nor do they understand that the USA’s superior economic performance is just something the Clinton crowd likes to crow about. When one looks inside, and compares, ain’t pretty. Joseph Stiglitz: The Euro is the Problem (April 14, 2016) https://youtu.be/30xfMtJZ6iY  http://bit.ly/24k2oC2  #video #lecture.

No, the Euro is not the problem. Actually, Europe just smashed growth forecasts. The problem is that Europe is managed by people from Goldman-Sachs, or who wish to be employed by Goldman-Sachs, or who have a high opinion of Goldman-Sachs, or by people who take advice from people affected by the preceding disease. (As usual, I use here “Goldman-Sachs” as a shorthand for the malevolent, parasitic “money changers”, as Roosevelt and the Bible called them, based mostly in New York and London, with state machinery at their beck and call).

European Productivity, Especially In Franco-German Euro Zone, Has Long Been Higher Than In the USA. So The Scorn Of US Economists Should Consider This Important Fact

Question to Stiglitz: Do you think any of the groundwork has been laid to reduce that inequality going forward?

Stiglitz: “We’re in a little bit of better place, but not a lot better. It’s obviously better to have 5 percent unemployment than 10 percent unemployment. And there’s been the beginning of a housing recovery that has helped restore some of the wealth of ordinary Americans. But the damage that has been done is very deep and has persistent effects. The labor force participation rate of people in their 40s, 50s, is still lower than it’s been in decades. People who lost their jobs in 2008, didn’t get jobs in 2009, ‘10, ‘11, maybe aren’t likely to get a job ever. If they do, it’s not going to be anywhere near as good as their old job. There are many people for whom they lost their job at 50 or 55 and are unlikely to ever work again. The scar is permanent.

Another aspect of what I would say is the imperfect recovery, is that the marginalized groups remain marginalized. And while they’ve benefitted, the levels of unemployment are still very very high.”

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/04/stiglitz-inequality/…

Entirely right, Mr. Stiglitz. So why do American economists give lessons to Europeans? The US economy is chugging along at 2% per annum, rather less than Franco-Germania at this point. And it can be argued that the inflation of the US GDP is mostly asset inflation.

When Stiglitz obsesses about unemployment, it’s obviously neither here, nor there: Unemployment is not the end-all, be-all, of the wellbeing of a socioeconomy. Slaves, in all and any economy, tend to be fully employed.

In the San Francisco Bay Area, unemployment is only 3%. However, a one bedroom rents for $3,000 a month, and that’s more than half the median family income (pre-tax). So is that good, or is that hell? I want you to contemplate a twenty lanes freeway, all gridlocked, and the eight lanes overpasses above, too, if you approve, Stiglitz style. (Jam augment GDP!)

Meanwhile, Trump is going parabolic in California, because tolerating the intolerable has become intolerable. Only when tolerating the intolerable becomes intolerable do revolutions happen. Maybe Trump should pick up Sanders as running mate, ha ha ha.

Revolutions are the engine of evolution. They re-unite Homo with the natural ethology from which plutocracy had torn him from. To evolve again, for the better.

Another editorial from Krugman along the same half-wit lines as Stiglitz: “The Diabetic Economy”. Krugman: “LISBON — Things are terrible here in Portugal, but not quite as terrible as they were a couple of years ago. The same thing can be said about the European economy as a whole. That is, I guess, the good news.

The bad news is that eight years after what was supposed to be a temporary financial crisis, economic weakness just goes on and on, with no end in sight. And that’s something that should worry everyone, in Europe and beyond.

First, the positives: the euro area — the group of 19 countries that have adopted a common currency — posted decent growth in the first quarter. In fact, for once it was better than growth in the U.S.

Europe’s economy is, finally, slightly bigger than it was before the financial crisis, and unemployment has come down from more than 12 percent in 2013 to a bit over 10 percent.

But it’s telling that this is what passes for good news. We complain, rightly, about the slow pace of U.S. recovery — but our economy is already 10 percent bigger than it was pre-crisis, while our unemployment rate is back under 5 percent.

And there is, as I said, no end in sight to Europe’s chronic underperformance. Look at what financial markets are saying.”

Children such as Stiglitz and Krugman have great oracles, called “markets”, and they “look” at what they “say”. (Beats saying what they look like, any day!)

Krugman: “Responding to critics of easy money who denounce low rates as “artificial” — because economies shouldn’t need to keep rates this low — [A Fed Reserve Bank governor] suggested that we compare low interest rates to the insulin injections that diabetics must take.

Such injections aren’t part of a normal lifestyle, and may have bad side effects, but they’re necessary to manage the symptoms of a chronic disease.

In the case of Europe, the chronic disease is persistent weakness in spending, which gives the continent’s economy a persistent deflationary bias even when, like now, it’s having a relatively good few months. The insulin of cheap money helps fight that weakness, even if it doesn’t provide a cure.

But while monetary injections have helped to contain Europe’s woes — one shudders to think of how badly things might have gone without the leadership of Mario Draghi [ex-Partner Goldman-Sachs, Patrice Ayme nota bene], president of the European Central Bank — they haven’t produced anything that looks like a cure. In particular, despite the bank’s efforts, underlying inflation in Europe seems stuck far below the official target of 2 percent.

Meanwhile, unemployment in much of Europe, very much including my current location, is still at levels that are inflicting huge human, social and political damage.

It’s notable that in Spain, which these days is being touted as a success story, youth unemployment is still an incredible 45 percent…”

For once, Krugman gets it half right. Right for Germany, but not for France, which has discarded the Euro 3% deficit spending limit, and is going at an official, near-British like 4.5% (official):

“The thing is, it’s not hard to see what Europe should be doing to help cure its chronic disease. The case for more public spending, especially in Germany — but also in France, which is in much better fiscal shape than its own leaders seem to realize — is overwhelming.

There are large unmet needs for infrastructure and investors are essentially begging governments to take their money. Did I mention that the real 10-year interest rate, the rate on bonds that are protected from inflation, is minus 0.8 percent?

And there’s good reason to believe that spending more in Europe’s core would have big benefits for peripheral nations, too.

But doing the right thing seems to be politically out of the question. Far from showing any willingness to change course, German politicians are sniping constantly at the central bank, the only major European institution that seems to have a clue about what is going on.

Put it this way: Visiting Europe can make an American feel good about his own country.”

Why is Krugman feeling so good? Because the US is “producing” three times more GreenHouse Gases (GHG) as the French? Not a non-sequitur, or just a slap in the face: the US expansion, in the last six years as largely been driven by fracking for oil and gas.

***

Patrice’s Grain of Salt: MOODS THEY ARE CHANGING:

The “trouble” in Europe is not just economic. A new philosophy, a new mood, is taking over. Monetary spending, what GDP looks at, is increasingly looked at as a sin. In France, exchange and repair Internet sites are booming. People increasingly repair the devices they use, and recycle and, or, exchange them for others.

Another point, well-known, is that, to re-establish the economy, banks were given money, lots of money. But the bank driven economy comes short. If anything, banks are viewed as organized crime institutions. In other words, people have had enough of the way the economy is organized.

Who needs a car, when public transportation, or the occasional rental will solve the problem? Some car companies sell electric cars, yet, when people need to go on a family trip, they can get a fossil fuel driven machine, which goes much further. The end result is to lower demand. This is also the effect of increasing efficiency. Solar cells on a roof kill a lot of the old economy, the more efficient they get.

The economy serves the society, not vice versa. Moods have to change to incorporate more of the society. A recent example: two professors working at UC BErkeley (one of them French), invented a revolutionary method to cut DNA into desired pieces. They applied for a US Patent. The US PTO sat on it: indeed, what could two women invent? Six moths laterr, a macho team of males from MIT applied for the same patent, for the same invention. Ah, males, thus pillars of society, said Conventional Wisdom. The MIT gentlemen (or is that horsemen charging, Genghis Khan style?) were immediately granted the Patent.

A lot of the economy organized according to the old mood is just organized thievery, or crime. Giving twenty trillion of dollars to the very same banks and connected financial types who organized the 2008 crisis is organized mismanagement of the economy to replenish the criminals. It would have been more just to give the money to We The People directly, instead of giving it to our oppressors. Ah, but it could not be done, because conventional economics prevent it.

Conventional economy right now is little more that the instauration of a feudal order. Malia Obama, eldest daughter of president Obama, will enter Harvard University. There the peers of Stiglitz and Krugman will teach her of the rightful place of the haves, and why it is just that they own the world. And the fault of the have nots, that they do not.

Malia’s present school is “Sidwell Friends School“, a “very exclusive” (as it self-defines) school. Her sister attends it too. Tuition is a modest $40,000 a year. So the two girls, together, cost $80,000, just to enjoy the “very exclusive” position they earned in life. That’s a third higher than US family median income, pre-tax.

It cost significantly more to attend the school where great liberal economist Stiglitz preaches from (Columbia). American economists are right to trash Europe. After all, the European model is the enemy. Should it win, American economists would earn just a fraction of what they presently get.

Patrice Ayme’