RAGFLATION: Inflating Poor In Rags, Wealthiest, Wealthier

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Patrice Ayme

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

Hedge Funds And Financial Bandits Financed Biden: The List

BEST PRESIDENT THUGS’ MONEY WANTED TO BUY. Read All About The High Finance Thugs Below!

Janet Yellen received $810,000 in speaking fees in 2019 and 2020 from Citadel, the hedge fund wrapped up in the Gamestop saga. Citadel has spent $240k per year lobbying Congress and the Treasury Department. The Gamestop story has thrown a light on one of the many ways in which the elite colludes. 

The collusion between immense financial wealth and politics is not new. President Jackson, a duellist with unextracted bullets in his body, the greatest general of his time, massive invader of a giant swath of what became the present USA, ethnic cleanser of civilized Native Americans on an epic scale, defeater of the British, declared on his deathbed that he was most proud of having kept the USA safe from European bankers. 

Well, they finally arrived through the backdoor… For example by secretly financing some American banks. This helped bring World War One, but was not really noticed. Next came the crash of 1929-1930, which ushered the Great Depression. The bankers had pulled the strings during the boom… but the politicians took the erroneous decisions, mostly by rising tariffs too brutally and letting everything collapse… In any case, bankers hated President Roosevelt, and he “welcomed their hatred” as he put it… FDR signed the Banking Act of 1933, repressing the financial plutocracy by separating speculative banking (investing in the financial markets), and industrial banking (investing in the real economy). However, under the reign of king Clinton I, the Banking Act of 1933 was greatly dismantled. The consequences were the collapse of an elite hedge fund, LCTM, which threatened the entire financial system. The Fed intervened, saving the system. The work of Clinton I came to light again in 2008, with a somewhat similar crash. This time the Fed , and kings Bush II and Obama I intervened and saved the wealthy, with taxpayer money, to the great applause of the ignorant Commons.      

President Joe Biden’s electoral campaign raised a known total of more than $1.6 billion that we know of so far, according to OpenSecrets (January 2021). This amount includes donations to his official campaign committee and outside groups like single-candidate super Political Action Committees and hybrid PACs. Many of those contributing to Biden belong to the Financial Plutocracy, the core of the Global Deep Plutocracy (the sort that already existed in the Sixteenth Century, when Francois I and Charles Quint, fighting each other, were financed by bankers… And the sort which financed the war against the French Republic in the Eighteenth Century, and their descendants which never seemed to have seen since something nefarious enough not to finance…)

During the Gamestop scandal, some financial institutions blocked trading to buy shares, advantaging massive hedge funds which were short. When Internet critters spoke about it, Big Tech shut down their babbling… Because it is nefarious to the elite, by suggesting that the elite conspires, which, obviously it does on a planetary, global scale. Not much of that Internet censorship differs in essence upon what is done in the Chinese dictatorship. The only difference is that in China, it’s the government which represses, whereas in the “West”, it’s the bandits themselves, without any pretense at governance, as they claim to be driven by greed… Whereas the Chinese Communist Party claims to be driven by its desire to make We the People thrive (and can justify this to a great extent!)

Where Is Big Money Funneled?

Large donations in U.S. presidential elections are directed toward super PACs (super Political Action Committees), or hybrid PACs because of the $5,600 limit on how much an individual can give to a candidate’s official campaign committee per election.

Priorities USA Action, a liberal, hybrid PAC in its fifth election cycle, has received the most money of any pro-Biden, single-candidate organization. Millions of dollars have come into the PAC from the affiliated Priorities USA nonprofit, but since it doesn’t disclose donors, it is a “dark money” group: we can’t be certain who contributed to it. Biden supporters may also give to joint fundraising committees set up for the presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee like the Biden Victory Fund and Biden Action Fund.

Top Industries

The biggest industries represented among Biden donors are (thuggish) Finance, Securities & Investment, and Internet plotters, known as “Big Tech”.

The following were the top donors to the Biden 2020 election cycle, according to processed Federal Election Commission data.

1. Donald Sussman, Paloma Partners – $9 Million

The founder and chief investment officer of hedge fund Paloma Partners, Sussman has been a long time major donor to Democrat candidates. He gave to the Priorities USA Action and Pacronym political action committees. What is the problem with hedge funds? First only the hyper wealthy have access to them. OK, next donor, and here comes evil so deep, most people are never heard about it, as they pursue their enslaved low lives:

2. James Simons, Euclidean Capital – $7 Million

Jim Simons, a mathematician of definite renown (“Chern-Simons differential form”), co-founded the legendary, but all too real, hedge funds of Renaissance Technologies. Renaissance was founded in the 1980s by Simons and other mathematicians (who crucially contributed mathematical trickery). Simon, an award-winning mathematician and former Department of Defense code breaker, is known as the “Quant King“. 

The idea is actually extremely primitive: it consists in stealing people before they know it. As the idea is rather embarrassingly simple, pigeons do this everyday to each other, it is hidden below a mathematical mumbo-jumbo to make the naive and easily dazzled, believe in wizzardy. All what Simons and his henchmen do is to process massive trades a tiny bit faster than everybody else, while leading the market where they want it to go (by using their size and an arsenal of tricks). 

This sort of trading is thoroughly unethical that it should be unlawful, because it is a sure way to transfer more wealth to the wealthier, by giving a systematic trading advantage to the wealthiest. From there to systemic racism, there is a distinction without any difference. Thus, Simons is a revered figure, especially among mathematicians (he gives them crumbs, founding an institute… where I was hosted, sort of). Simons gave to the Priorities USA Action and Unite the Country political action committees.

3. Deborah Simon, Retired – $6.1 Million

Her father was the late Melvin Simon, the co-founder of America’s largest mall operator, Simon Property Group. This self-declared friend of man, “philanthropist”, gave to the American Bridge 21st Century and Unite the Country political action committees. Her sister Cynthia also donated $1.75 million.

4. George Marcus, Marcus & Millichap Co. – $4 Million

The billionaire real estate magnate is the founder of Marcus & Millichap Company and chairman of Essex Property Trust. Last year he co-hosted a fundraising event for Biden, and he has contributed money to the Priorities USA Action, Unite the Country and American Bridge 21st Century political action committees.

PPP On September 23, 1998, the chiefs of some of the largest investment firms of Wall Street—Bankers Trust, Bear Stearns, Chase Manhattan, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, and Salomon Smith Barney—met on the 10th floor conference room of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York 

5. Michael Moritz, Sequoia Capital – $3.5 Million

The Welsh native is a partner at venture capital firm Sequoia Capital. He’s also an author and former tech journalist. The venture capital firms and Silicon Valley in general have been operating in concert with the US Deep State. They too use tricks which should be illegal (founding startups which are bound to get sure contracts with Big Tech down the street, in exchange for what are basically kickbacks…)

It is better than the anti-innovation attitude of the Roman imperial state… But not that much better. After all, Louis XIV financed the famous physicist Huyghens… And this sort of pseudo-intellectual pseudo-goodism may have persuaded Louis he was a good person, enabling him to engage in repression against Protestants, which brought tremendous wars which were catastrophic for civilization and Europe in general and France in particular. Moritz gave to the Pacronym and American Bridge 21st Century political action committees.

6. Kenneth Duda, Arista Networks – $3 Million

Duda is the co-founder, chief technology officer and senior vice president (software engineering) at cloud networking solutions provider Arista. He gave to the Pacronym and American Bridge 21st Century political action committees.

7. Seth Klarman, The Baupost Group – $3 Million

Billionaire investor Seth Klarman is a longtime independent and has given to the Republican Party in the past. “I’ve seen meaningful numbers of people put aside what would appear to be their short-term economic interest because they value being citizens in a democracy,” he grandly told The New York Times in August. He gave to the Pacronym, Priorities USA Action and Unite the Country political action committees.

8.Reid Hoffman, Greylock Partners – $2.5 million

Hoffman is the co-founder and former executive chairman of LinkedIn. The billionaire tech investor is currently a partner at a venture capital firm. He backed Alloy, a data exchange platform for the Democratic party which will begin to wind down its operations next year. He gave to the American Bridge 21st Century and Unite the Country political action committees.

9.Stephen Mandel, Lone Pine Capital – $2.5 million

Mandel founded hedge fund Lone Pine, which has an excellent long-term track record. He was among the top 10 highest paid hedge fund managers in 2019, with an income close to $1 billion. He gave to the American Bridge 21st Century political action committee.

10. Phillip Ragon, Intersystems Corporation – $2.5 Million

Also known as “Terry,”Ragon is the founder and CEO of private healthcare software company Intersystems. He and his wife, Susan, have signed The Giving Pledge, a trick to persuade the Commons that the plutocracy will redistribute all its money to them: so no need to tax plutocrats, aka “philanthropists”. Ragon gave to the American Bridge 21st Century political action committee.

Other Biden Loving Plutocrats:

Renaissance Technologies director Henry Laufer and his wife, Marsha, together contributed $4 million to back Biden. Stewart Bainum Jr., the chairman of Choice Hotels International, gave $2 million to the Unite the Country political action committee.

Big donors from the media industry include director Steven Spielberg and his wife, Kate Capshaw, who together gave $2.5 million. Jeffrey Skoll, the first president of eBay and founder and chairman of Participant, which has produced more than 100 feature and documentary films, gave $2 million. Family Guy creator Seth Macfarlane donated $700,000 and media mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg gave $200,000. Kathryn Murdoch and James Murdoch, son of News Corporation executive chairman Rupert Murdoch, together contributed $1.6 million. That’s called hedging, in case you wonder. The demolition of Donald Trump by Fox News’ “moderator” Chris Wallace in the first presidential debate looks less of a coincidence in this light….

Is Biden hopeless for progress? Not necessarily. As he put it long ago:

“Politics is a damn expensive business. I had one hell of a time trying to raise money as a candidate. I had to put a second mortgage on our house to get that campaign started, and I ended up spending over $300,000 to get elected. I believe that public financing of federal election campaigns is the only thing that will insure good candidates and save the two-party system. It is the most degrading thing in the world to go out with your hat in your hand and beg for money, but that’s what you have to do if you haven’t got your own resources.”

Well, it’s not just about little Biden getting humiliated. This is about the planet. When vicious thieves become the wealthiest, most influential persons in the world, we get a world founded on vice and thievery. No way to ensure the survival of civilization, being guided by the most despicable. This is a lesson to meditate worldwide, including with the Russian and Chinese dictators.

These bandits did not steal pizza slices. They stole the future.

Patrice Ayme

“Right” and “Left” Both Agents Of Plutocracy

The “left” and “right” labels don’t mean much these days. The next French president, Macron, is going to be a 39-year-old Rothschild “banker”, who earned millions a year (being a future president, thus a Rothschild agent, in all appearance). Astoundingly, the 32 year old, unqualified in economics and finance, was making 60,000 dollars a week, from the world most notorious bank, which US President Jackson hated already, two centuries ago. Even more revealingly, Macron is the official “socialist” candidate, with the full might of french state propaganda behind him (my rather placid comments to French state media on how the Euro works, are censored)

Macron was economic and finance adviser, on the right side of French president Hollande always, apparently representing the powers that be, and then he was economy and finance minister, front and center.

In a presidential debate against his opponent, a lawyer, Macron exhibited blatant, baffling, mesmerizing ignorance in what he is supposed to be expert in, economics and finance. (However, because he speaks with total verve and self-assurance, exhibiting “finesse” as he mostly intimated, Macron was believed by all too much of the rabble Macron who watched him on TV.)

“Representative Democracy” is neither representative, nor a democracy.

In the presidential debate, golden banker boy Macron got the history of French unemployment, in the last few decades wrong (it’s the highest now, something he did not know, and which has everything to do with the fact the Euro is the direct tool of German plutocracy, with the complicity of the French plutos, who profit handsomely of the present ECB system!)

More surprisingly, Macron did not hide his initially baffled surprise when confronted by Le Pen about the history of the ECU (European Currency Unit), the predecessor of the Euro. Macron behaved as if he had never heard of the ECU, and as if Le Pen were out of her mind when she talked about an imaginary ECU (however, Macron just flaunted astounding ignorance with such aplomb that he convinced the watching rabble, all over France that he could only be right and Le Pen could only be wrong). Finally Macron, as part of his deep, yet subterranean, systematic French bashing, claimed that France was uniquely doing bad economically in Europe (so, by using uberization, and making France into a start-up, Macron will whip the French into shape…)

Whereas everybody is doing badly in the Eurozone is, except for Germany, the former explaining the latter. Why is Germany doing so great? Because of its hidden banking subsidies, of a sort which are outlawed in the rest of the Eurozone. (Great Britain is out of that exploitation scheme, because the UK has its own currency.) France used to have large banks fiancing small industry such as the now defunct Dexia and the Credit Agricole fulfilling that role. But no more since 2008. Whereas Germany has thousands of small, bankrupt banks financing its crucial “middle industry”.

Macron, the Rothschild roquet is the SOCIALIST candidate… Don’t laugh, this is serious: hordes of “socialist” sheep are voting for him, so that they can be be fleeced. Sled driving cars soon, self fleecing sheep, now! Macron, in his early thirties, without having ever studied economics or finance, earned money at the rate of millions a year. But now all his money is gone, or maybe not, and nobody serious asks where it could have gone (except for yours truly). In any case, he did not pay the ISF (welath tax) which is curious for someone so suddenly rich.

Macron is supported, loudly,  by Obama, the “left” president who presided over the greatest rise, and furthest height of inequality in the USA ever, after sending trillions of dollars of government money to the world’s richest men, to make their main assets, government bonds, more valuable..

Marine Le Pen, has plenty of really socialist propositions, but all the French establishment calls her “extreme right”, and the “end of the republic” to defeat her… and, more importantly making sure that the inequality machine which feeds them, with the European Central Bank buying bonds at the rate of three billion dollars a day, keeps on churning.

The crushing of those who have had enough, be they Melanchon (Unsubmitted France) and Le Pen (National France), and quite a few other rebels adding to another 10% of the electorate is working splendidly… this time. Yet this is probably for the last time. The Macron elite will probably not change what needs to be changed, because it needs to be changed at a European level. As those who strongly disagree with the present system total around 50% of the population (or more), after another 5 years led down the abyss by the same crowd, things will blow up (or well before then, thanks to Merkel obdurate financial behavior)..

Meanwhile in the USA, a (Republican, somewhat “Libertarian”) Senator such as Rand Paul, a Medical Doctor by training, is unhappy. with the modification of Obamacare passed by the Republican Congress. Rand Paul is viewed as extreme right by the established pseudo-left. But what Paul resents, I listened to him, is actually that Obamacare sends public money to private companies to make plutocrats wealthier… That sounds rather more Marxist, pro-equality, than “right”. So is Rand Paul extreme right, or extreme left?

Meanwhile “left” worshipped ex-president Obama gets 400,000 dollars to talk 50 minutes to Cantor-Fitzgerald, the sort of establishment outfit he helped trillions of dollars towards (Cantor-Fitzgerald mostly sells US government bonds to the wealthiest)… No problem says the “left” he is our guy (our “son of a bitch” as president Truman put it, speaking of a Central American president). And indeed, Obama sent a detailed support message to Macron. Obama is widely and wildly popular in France. (For reason having to do with generalized naivety, and lack of knowledge, French Political Correctness, the same reason which made the French vote for Macron, and being so complacent with the system they have… Until it becomes fully dysfunctional!)    .

Right versus left is so yesterday. What matters is truth versus fake. Schools such as Oxford PPE (Philosophy, Politics, Economics), French Science Po and ENA (Ecole Nationale d’Administration: National School of Overlording), and the US plutocratic universities (with their tuition equivalent to median family income) are just into faking democracy, while, and thus, ensuring the rule of the establishment.

Patrice Ayme

Eight Billionaires As Rich As Half The World, Thanks Obama!

What does Obama have to do with it? All the men below are globalocrats: they earn locally, avoid taxes, globally, and thus are used to the outlaw lifestyle. For example Bezos owns Amazon. Not making any “profits”, forever, he destroyed bookstores, worldwide, while being protected by his servants in the White House. Unsatisfied by this global heist and destruction, he bought for himself one of the four “newspapers of report” in the US, the Washington Post, violating antitrust laws more than a century old (he may have a problem after Friday, when Trump becomes president, as he is in The Donald’s crosshairs…) 

Thanks to Obama’s Cultivation of The Richest, the Situation Has Got Much Worse Than This Prediction Of 2010

Indeed the richest men exploit the mood of tax evasion, beyond tax evasion: that mood has mushroomed into legal evasion in all ways.

Most of the men below cooperate with the governments, to augment their power and influences, sucking on the health care system, or providing the governments with industrial strength spying, or acting as corsairs (say Gates doing business with Monsanto’s GMOs, and pesticides, worldwide), One can say they have captured the governments.

https://www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/pressreleases/2017-01-16/just-8-men-own-same-wealth-half-world

I will have a trick question. One can guess what it is, by scrutinizing the list. Here it is:

The world’s 8 richest people are, in order of net worth:

1. Bill Gates: America founder of Microsoft (net worth $75 billion)
2. Amancio Ortega: Spanish founder of Inditex which owns the Zara fashion chain (net worth $67 billion)
3. Warren Buffett: American CEO and largest shareholder in Berkshire Hathaway (net worth $60.8 billion)
4. Carlos Slim Helu: Mexican owner of Grupo Carso (net worth: $50 billion)
5. Jeff Bezos: American founder, chairman and chief executive of Amazon (net worth: $45.2 billion)
6. Mark Zuckerberg: American chairman, chief executive officer, and co-founder of Facebook (net worth $44.6 billion)
7. Larry Ellison: American co-founder and CEO of Oracle  (net worth $43.6 billion)
8. Michael Bloomberg: American founder, owner and CEO of Bloomberg LP (net worth: $40 billion)

Oxfam’s calculations are based on global wealth distribution data provided by the Credit Suisse Global Wealth Data book 2016

The wealth of the world’s richest people was calculated using Forbes’ billionaires list last published in March 2016.

Remarks: Bill Gates’ wealth has been evaluated higher: 90 billion dollars. On top of that, Gates controls the Gates Foundation. The influence of that Foundation is well beyond 50 billion dollars.

Indeed, and moreover, passed some wealth, the influence of wealth is well beyond its mere size. At least three of the men above, and maybe four, are (extremely well paid) spies for the US government, operating worldwide. (When this was revealed in some of its full glory by E. Snowden, the US establishment went bersek: US high officials’ future salaries depend fully in keeping this sort of police and spook state not just secret, but unimaginable.)

The Facebook guy is under investigation in Germany for not removing death threats, holocaust denial and hate speech within 24 hours, as required by law (that case has been brewing for years). So are some of his multi-bilionaire underlings. They don’t care: evading the spirit of the law is their business model (as it is, for all the others!)

Buffet has long been interested by health care, and he has defended the health care plutocracy of the US, for decades. He is also a main pillar of the so-called “Democrats”. Guess what? He made more than ten billion in health care alone (some of it through HMOs).

Thus, do you notice anything?

Five of the eight richest men in the world are US citizens and were very much, and very loudly anti-Trump in 2016. (2017 will of course be the opposite story: since they couldn’t beat him, they will try to join him.)

Only fools will think that’s a coincidence.

Patrice Ayme’

Happy New Year, Pluto!

Pluto is glad to inform you that 2016 is going to be an excellent year for Him, and that’s all you should care about. Pluto is extremely pleased with the three candidates to the presidency who have a chance to (formally) “lead” the USA. Instead of an obsequious servant from Kenya, once removed from little black boys conditioned to please wealthy white masters, anxious to please the powers that be, we are going for full bloodied plutocrats to “lead”, once again. Instead of an uneducated schmoozer from Arkansas, Pluto is happy to renew with unabashed lovers of the Dark Side, to lead you all, clueless, sport scores and celebrity obsessed losers! Remember when (Prescott) Bush and Hitler were friends? No, you don’t! Very good.

To see you all squirm uncomprehendingly while the waters get too hot, will be most pleasing. To augment your discomfort, Paul Krugman published: “Privilege, Pathology and Power”. Nothing of what he wrote, or my comments below, will surprise regular readers of this site, but it’s all worth reiterating. Krugman:

“Wealth can be bad for your soul. That’s not just a hoary piece of folk wisdom; it’s a conclusion from serious social science, confirmed by statistical analysis and experiment. The affluent are, on average, less likely to exhibit empathy, less likely to respect norms and even laws, more likely to cheat, than those occupying lower rungs on the economic ladder.

And it’s obvious, even if we don’t have statistical confirmation, that extreme wealth can do extreme spiritual damage. Take someone whose personality might have been merely disagreeable under normal circumstances, and give him the kind of wealth that lets him surround himself with sycophants and usually get whatever he wants. It’s not hard to see how he could become almost pathologically self-regarding and unconcerned with others.

So what happens to a nation that gives ever-growing political power to the superrich?”

Well, we have a glaring example: the Roman Republic, which started to get a fatal disease, 22 centuries ago.

Plutocratic Collapse Was Made Explicit 3 Centuries Before The Goths Took Rome. Same Exact Mechanism is At Work Today, For All To See, But Celebrity Obsessed Critters

[Plutarch was a Greek historian who died 19 centuries ago; the Greeks were smarter than the Romans; yet six centuries of Roman plutocracy, capped by mad, apocalyptic, Death Cult  Christianism hobbled them enough to make them lose the war with Islamism, an even more degenerated form of Christianism.]

We also have other, more subtle, examples of plutocracy killing civilization: several in China, at least one with the Baghdad Caliphate (which the Mongols and their Georgian, Armenians and Frankish Christian Allies killed, while asserting, loud and clear that the plutocracy had been the cause of the war, and the loss).

Detailed examination of the collapse of American societies under the Conquistadores also showed that plutocracy played a major role: the Aztecs had the major military power, 200,000 soldiers, dwarfing the Castilan’s 2,000 soldiers. However, the Aztecs’ plutocracy was hated by all too many of the Natives (who provided Cortez with a 80,000 men army, at some crucial point).

Krugman:

“Modern America is a society in which a growing share of income and wealth is concentrated in the hands of a small number of people, and these people have huge political influence — in the early stages of the 2016 presidential campaign, around half the contributions came from fewer than 200 wealthy families. The usual concern about this march toward oligarchy is that the interests and policy preferences of the very rich are quite different from those of the population at large, and that is surely the biggest problem.

But it’s also true that those empowered by money-driven politics include a disproportionate number of spoiled egomaniacs. Which brings me to the current election cycle.”

Krugman then gives explicit examples: “Sheldon Adelson, the Las Vegas gambling magnate. Mr. Adelson has been involved in some fairly complex court proceedings, which revolve around claims of misconduct in his operations in Macau, including links to organized crime and prostitution… What was surprising was his behavior in court, where he refused to answer routine questions and argued with the judge, Elizabeth Gonzales. That, as she rightly pointed out, isn’t something witnesses get to do.

Then Mr. Adelson bought Nevada’s largest newspaper. As the sale was being finalized, reporters at the paper were told to drop everything and start monitoring all activity of three judges, including Ms. Gonzales…. O.K., but why do we care? Because Mr. Adelson’s political spending has made him a huge player in Republican politics — so much so that reporters routinely talk about the “Adelson primary,” in which candidates trek to Las Vegas to pay obeisance. Are there other cases? Yes indeed, even if the egomania doesn’t rise to Adelson levels. I find myself thinking, for example, of the hedge-fund billionaire Paul Singer…

Krugman could have spoken about the countless billionaires friendly to Obama, and who became front and center in the society and economy of the USA. But he chose not to. That limits him tremendously.

Krugman finally concludes: “Just to be clear, the biggest reason to oppose the power of money in politics is the way it lets the wealthy rig the system and distort policy priorities. And the biggest reason billionaires hate Mr. Obama is what he did to their taxes, not their feelings. The fact that some of those buying influence are also horrible people is secondary.

But it’s not trivial. Oligarchy, rule by the few, also tends to become rule by the monstrously self-centered. Narcisstocracy? Jerkigarchy? Anyway, it’s an ugly spectacle, and it’s probably going to get even uglier over the course of the year ahead.”

I sent comments, which were published (my comments, when sent to Krugman, have been published again… The (supposedly leftist) Guardian keeps threatening and censoring me, though, rest reassured…). Here they are below. And let me go skiing, after an epic in the snow yesterday, to feed many a philosophy…,

Plutocracy Is Bad For Soul And Horrible For Intelligence:

So what happens when these bad people have the power? Well, the god of hell, Pluto, rules (It was known before as “Hades”, and later as “Satan”, in Christianism, or “Shaitan” in Islam). Oligarchy means “rule of the few”. Plutocracy means rule, not just of wealth, but viciousness. (Christ, following Greek philosophers, asserted both are basically the same.)

Those who have so much power cannot justify it, except by saying, and first saying to themselves, that they are exceptionally good (and thus the others are relatively bad, as demonstrated by the fact that they are less able).

This is why plutocrats call themselves “philanthropists”. Just as polar bears are white as snow, to hide the fact they exist, plutocrats claim their souls are innocent, and actually examples of all what’s best about humanity. Indeed, one of the attributes of Pluto was invisibility.

Plutocrats also hide the obvious in plain sight. Through the media they control all over, they claim that the private moral system they use, founded, as it is, on greed and a high idea not just of themselves, but also of greed itself, should be the template of world morality. Thus Obama, following Nixon, made health “care” a profit center. Some more.

It’s not just ethics which is affected. Intelligence itself also is, as the top decisions are taken only under the influence of a few brains (the brains of those who rule). Actually, the main interest of democracy is that, when The People (demos) rules, all minds rules, all ideas get debated, and all these debates create new ideas. When only a few brains are allowed to take part, much fewer ideas appear.

Historically plutocratization has been the greatest enemy of civilization. The Roman Republic knew this, and came equipped with tough anti-wealth laws. Wealth above some limit was simply outlawed.

However, the Second Punic war caused havoc; Hannibal roamed Italy for more than a decade, winning tremendous battles, and the Roman elite got killed on the battlefileds, while a new elite of greedsters acquired wealth (mostly by renting space inside fortifies cities which Hannibal could not take, to impoverished peasant refugees).

After the war, in a few years, Rome lashed back at Hannibal’s allies, and carved a global empire. Globalization led to plutocratization: the wealthiest could escape Roman law by gathering wealth overseas. They quickly became so rich, they could pass laws friendly to extreme wealth. There was a civil war. The private armies of the wealthy killed those who wanted to crack down on plutocracy (notice that the anti-plutocratic leaders, the Gracchi were of the highest Roman nobilitas; still they were killed like dogs, in spite of tribunal immunity; at some point 5,000 of their supporters were assassinated in street fighting).

This is how Rome went down. After that, efforts of various leaders of the Populares (Marius, and certainly Julius Caesar) were unable to reverse the power of the Senate (through which plutocracy organized society; the Senate lasted more than 12 centuries in Rome, dying sometimes around the late Seventh century, when the Franks took over).

When a plutocracy rules, not only depravity reigns, but so does stupidity. Thus as plutocracy overwhelmed Rome, the people was made stupid by the passions it was conditioned to have: “Paenem unde Circenses” (Bread and circuses), as Juvenal put it in 100 CE. The increasing stupidity of the fascist empire made it increasingly unable to take the right decisions not just financially or in economics, but also in education, health care, or even military matters.

All the West is experiencing the same syndromes now. It’s not happening just in the USA. Plutocracy is global, legislation is local. We are at the stage where the plutocrats are imposing legislation friendly to them, through the Supreme Courts, or private tax systems.

According to the charity Oxfam, in 2013, the 92 richest multibillionaires had as much wealth as the bottom 50 percent of world society. In 2014, this dropped to 80 billionaires. A bunch of individuals who can fit into a bus control more wealth than 3.5 billion people. Three and a half billion people is equivalent to the combined populations of China, India, the United States and the European Union.

One has to realize that the influence of this 80 people gets leverage well beyond their wealth as all “elected” “representatives” are anxious to please them so they can prosper beyond their own, generally short, tenure in office.

Let’s cap it off by a few quotes from our elders:

“We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.”  George Orwell

“Men are so simple of mind and so dominated by immediate needs that the deceitful man can easily find those ready to be deceived.” Machiavelli

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one… credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality. – Shaw

What’s life for? It depends if you are a master, or a slave, and whether you want to be a master, or a slave. Entire populations can be taught to love to be whipped into submission by princely plutocrats: just contemplate Saudi Arabia. And that state of sadomasochist metaphysics can last more than a millennium: contemplate the entire Middle East, which, for millennia prior, had been the world’s most advanced, a cradle of democracy, and the richest place we are still indebted to. But now it’s all gore, and Cult of Death. Verily, Pluto has much to thank for!

Patrice Ayme’

Long Live The Euro: 1) Basic History of Romans & Franks

Marine Le Pen proposes to go back to the Franc. This is rather ironical for a nationalist, as the Euro, a French invention, extends French power. However, as it is, in the present international context, the Euro is not functioning optimally, and indeed, seriously hindering the French Republic. Nevertheless, I will demolish the stale anti-Euro arguments imagined by servants of the USA’s plutocratic order, the ones Le Pen is following like a bleating sheep. There is a glaring problem with the Euro, indeed, but not the one talked about by those who dislike the Euro. And that problem has an obvious remedy (long found by the USA), a change in the mandate of the European Central Bank.

In a nutshell, the Euro was conceived as a top down mechanism to force one more unification device inside Europe. The idea is to create problems which only further European unification can solve. The Euro is functioning correctly that way, albeit too slowly. And no wonder: at this point, European finance is led by an ex-partner at Goldman Sachs, a Wall Street bank, under the mandate of making the Euro a store of value (even if kills the European economy). That has to be changed. Along… American lines.

Common Currency Area: Roman Empire Europe, 815 CE. In 1066 CE, the Franks Launched Their Re-Conquest of Great Britain

Those who don’t understand the map above, should not talk about the Euro. As we will see, though, they do talk about the Euro, while not minding whether, or not,France and Germany were actually part of the same polity, for half a millennium.

(For the election of Holy Roman emperor in 1519, the two candidates were the Duke of Burgundy, ruler of the Netherlands and Loraine, and the King of France, Francois I; both were native French speakers, born not far from Paris. The former became emperor as Charles V.)

Those who don’t know European history, including hordes of American pseudo-intellectuals, can only talk foolishly about the Euro. That’s the whole idea: they are supposed to make us all stupid. Once we are stupid enough, we will be eager to serve them, or so they have observed.

That despicable horde of greedy disinformers and impudent liars includes one of the leading (diminutive) bulls, Milton Friedman, bullying his way into a thicket of absurdities which he himself erected.

Friedman learned nothing, absolutely nothing, from the Second World War. That, too, is no accident. It’s a disease frequently found in American Jews. It’s not just the usual francophobia. There is a much more sinister mechanism at work. American Jews are supposed to know nothing much about the Second World War, except there was a big bad “The Holocaust”, and, somehow, the French were involved.

Why so ignorant? Preservation of their own Jewish sanity. If American Jews knew more of the history of the Second World War, they would have to explain why they did nothing, while their brethren and relatives were mass assassinated in Europe.

In particular, American Jews would have to explain why they did nothing, while racist American plutocrats were totally, massively supporting and enabling Hitler and Mussolini. Where was Friedman then? Well, he was employed by Roosevelt’s National Resources Committee (on which he more or less spit later, naturally).

Fortunately the Nazis and their enemies, the French, did learn from WWII what had to be learned. And what they learned, is that they had to unify.

Whereas, it is telling that people who allegedly claim to care about holocausts in Europe, want to divide Europe some more, when it is precisely those divisions which caused the holocausts. The basic flaw of Eastern Europe, where most American Jews are from, is that a divided, divisive, grotesque patchwork of little authorities at each other’s throats, some of this nation, some from another, some from one religion, some from one other, some from a language, or sect, some from another language, or sect.

The first fact of European history is that those who invented the modern usage of the word Europe, the Franks, conquered, unified, and… (to a great extent) created Germany. Including the German language! (The Franks, being themselves Germans, were in excellent position to bark out orders to other Germans.)

To understand the Euro, one has to go all the way to the first Roman State, and why it failed spectacularly:

The Roman empire’s border inside Germany, anchored on the Rhine and Danube, was too long, too fractal, hard to defend. The one and only solution was to conquer all of Europe (and make a short border across the European peninsula). The only Roman who decided to do this, Julius Caesar, was assassinated on the eve of his departure at the head of the most formidable army Rome ever had. After that unfortunate event, the assassination of the leader of the Populares, Roman plutocracy took over enough to impose its agenda. Roman plutocracy was more interested to exploit the Roman people, rather than to call on the Republican spirit to make Rome safer, and more sustainable.

Actually, the history of the next five centuries of Rome showed that Roman plutocracy preferred to be invaded by barbarians, rather than to call back the Roman Republic (analogies with what is going on today, are invited). In the end, it was the Franks who brought back enough Roman republican elements to progress beyond Greco-Roman civilization, and, later, thoroughly destroy the invading Islamists (once again, comparisons with today jump to mind).

As it sank in ever thicker plutocracy, the first Roman State never conquered Germania. The result was half-baked military solutions, beating the German hordes back, each time they raided the much richer Roman empire. It brought constant, expensive wars which Rome could not afford. It also brought catastrophe, when the Huns, charging through the steppe, all the way from Mongolia, pressured the Goths, and the latter decided to take refuge inside the Roman empire. It was a refugee crisis second to none, yet the refugees came in, fully armed and battle trained, and the Christian dazed Roman emperors confronting the problem, may have longed so much towards the apocalypse, promised by the Bible, that they may have spurred it along. (Once again, comparison with today, are invited.)

However, the Franks turned Augustus’ strategy on its head. As soon as it succeeded the first Roman State, the Second Foundation of the Roman State, the empire of the Franks, threw overboard Augustus’ stupid advice, to leave Germania alone. The Franks relentlessly pursued the conquest of all of Germany, and more. It took three centuries. Charlemagne, Carlus Magnus, finished the job.

The preceding map of Europe is not understood by despicable people such as Milton Friedman and his ilk, who are paid not to meditate upon it (supposing they ever came across it). Friedman is paid to entertain the idea that Germany is bad for France.

Low intellectual lives such as Friedman typically don’t know that, under the Franks, freedom of cult was extended to all those who did not have a Cult of Death (thus the safe Sufi practice of Islam was tolerated). They don’t know that the Franks three times, earlier than Charlemagne, broke three massive Islamist, Cult of Death invasions, and that the Damascus Arab Caliphate fell consequently, having lost its armies (750 CE). They know nothing, these haters of Europe, and still they talk, exuding their venom, because they are paid to do so: it helps the American empire and its overlord, global plutocracy, to tell the world and themselves that the Europeans are self-destructive idiots. At this point the Friedman-Krugman venom is feeding Marine Le Pen (who has opportunistically jumped on it; as a Member of the European Parliament, she probably knows better; in any case she could only hope to implement her program if she had an absolute majority at the French National Assembly).

The Roman Currency failed, because Rome did not conquer Eastern Europe:

The Romans ran out of precious metals in the Third Century: using the technology they had, the mines were exhausted. By 300 CE, Rome, under emperors Aurelian and then Diocletian, had switched to a complicated mix of Fiat Currency and command economy. As the state, weakened by plutocracy, was not strong enough, the Roman Fiat Currency suffered inflation (although the Roman gold currency would not, and was used for another millennium).

China had the same problem, lack of precious metals and invented the ultimate Fiat Currency, paper money, in the Seventh Century to circumvent it (Bolivian silver traded by Spain would solve the Chinese problem nearly a millennium later).

The Franks solved the argentum/argent problem the old fashion way: they did what the Romans did not find the force to do. The Franks conquered Eastern Europe, where the silver mines were. Suddenly, there was enough money to operate the economy again, and, by 1000 CE, the Franks were the richest per person and per unit of energy (my AWE), in the world (contrarily to what the “China-on-top” school of thought has it).

[To be continued… Next: Milton Friedman ill-informed, asinine and biased observations about the Euro, and whether the Eurozone is not an “optimum currency area”]

Patrice Ayme’

Uber Greece: When The Main Industry Is Lying

Paul Krugman in  Uber and the New Liberal Consensus  points out that:“Uber actually brings two things to the taxi market. One is the smartphone revolution… The other is the company whose workers supposedly are free contractors, not employees, exempting the company from most of the regulations designed to protect employees…

…The “new liberal consensus“, argues (based on a lot of evidence) that wages are much less rigidly determined by supply and demand than previously thought, and that public policy can and should nudge employers into paying more. If that’s your policy plan, you really don’t want to see employers undermine it by declaring that they aren’t really employers…promote the use of new technology without prejudicing the interests of workers. But progressives need to work on doing that, and not let themselves get painted as enemies of innovation.”

Notice that Uber got lots of mileage from lying that they are an employer without employees. As technology and innovation advance, the law is left behind, and thus so are the punishments for violating it, or its spirit. We have seen a lot of that in the case of Greece. Lying has been supreme about how and thanks to whom, and most prominently, for whom, money is being created. Sometimes it feels as if we belong to an age where lying is the main industry. Engineering is good, lying, more profitable.

Another day, another economist from Munich lying about Greece, in the New York Times, while quoting (favorably) Goldman Sachs. “Why Greece Should Leave The Eurozone“:

“To compete, Greece needs a strong devaluation — a relative decline of its price level. Trying to lower prices and wages in absolute terms (for example, by slashing wages) would be very difficult, as it would bankrupt many debtors and tenants.

It would arguably be better to inflate prices in the rest of the eurozone…If the rest of the eurozone posts inflation rates of slightly less than 2 percent, as the E.C.B. hopes, Greece would be competitive after a decade or so, provided that its price level stays put…

What about the solution favored by leftists: more money for Greece? No doubt, enormous government spending would bring about a Keynesian stimulus and generate some modest internal growth. However, apart from the fact that this money would have to come from other countries’ taxpayers, this would be counterproductive, as it would prevent the necessary devaluation.”

The question of corrupt economic advice keeps coming back. Dreadful advice keeps on coming: first rescuing the private banks with state money, ruining the state, then austerity, ruining the economy. Now they want to make Greece worthless, because they say it will improve the economy.

By forcing on it a devastating devaluation, do Germans want to buy Greece on the cheap? Often it looks like it. The Greeks own more worthy property than Germans do. This property is valued in Euros. Germans cannot buy enough of it. But they could, if the currency used by Greeks became worthless, which is what many German economists advocate.

Those who want to make Greece worthless say: that would improve the Greek economy. However, the Greek economy depends upon tourism (which is roaring ahead), petroleum imports (which would become immensely expensive if Greece devalued), refined petroleum products (those contracts are in dollars, so would not profit from a devaluation) and shipping (all contracts are in dollars).

Ridiculous ideas are rolled out. Take Finland: it’s in recession, with 10% unemployment, still Finland accuses Greece. But, truly, what Finland needs is the same as what Greece needs: easy money and tons of it. Same observation for the Netherlands. That same “leftist” solution, the one the USA implemented for itself.

Hence why the nefarious advice? Because Europe has many enemies and many economists’ repute depends upon sinking the EU, while Wall Street profits from it.

The advice has been to bleed the patient, until he gets better: that’s austerity. Now the advice is to bury the patient, until it revives, raising from his ashes.

All what Greece needs is an anti-oligarchic revolution. Some in the EU will help achieve it.

And that’s why precisely the hysteria has been so great about sabotaging the EU by kicking Greece out. The powers that be don’t want a successful anti-oligarchic revolution. As all European states are supposed to be in the European Monetary Union, and Greece does not want out, this is the violence one was talking about.

Patrice Ayme’

California Is Sovereign, Not Europe

A sovereign state ought to be able to decide what its currency is, and provide enough to employ its citizenry. California does, not so Europe.

In 2008, bankers told the government of the USA that ATMs and all banks would shut down immediately, if the government did not provide banks with the hundreds of billions of dollars to keep money in the banks. The government  obeyed, and now the total aid to the American economy is said to be of the order of 13 trillion dollars, not far from the entire GDP of the USA. The European “welfare” states instead plunged into austerity, making sure that the value of the money of the rich would only augment, even if it meant European youth would have to immigrate to the USA to find work.

The USA talks one way, through its plutocrats, and the Main Stream Media they own. The reality is often the opposite of what they depict. Although the USA criticizes Europe for being too socialist, the truth is the opposite.

The California Republic Is So Sovereign, That It Decides Whatever Its Currency Is

The fact is Europe is not socialist enough to provide its banks with money for We The People. At least, We The Greek People: from lack of liquidity, Greek banks have been closed for two weeks and counting.

What kind of a sovereign is Europe?

Knowing what sovereign means help. It comes from the Old French soverain “highest, supreme, chief,” from the quite Vulgar Latin *super-anus ” (literally, superior inferior opening of the alimentary canal; as contemporary American urban linguo would have it, on face value, “sovereign” means super bad ass). An economist from India who has long contributed to this site, Partha, has made the following cogent observation:

***

pshakkottai Says, July 7, 2015:

“Hi Patrice:

Extinguishing Greek debt is equivalent to Europe being monetary sovereign which is what regarding all Europe as one country means. Greece would not be subject to austerity, wouldn’t have large debt payments and can grow. The created money will save banks and the investors in those banks. There will be no panic. At this point many banks can be nationalized. Which nation owns what is a question to be decided.

As it is Greece which needs energy will go with Russia and its own currency and will do well in a few tears. Energy was the only thing Greece was short of. This is a plus for Putin and a minus to EU.”

Well, I will not focus on Partha’s second point, where my perspective is different: Grexit, like Brexit, would mean a diminution of European sovereignty (thus a greater influence of other superpowers).

Although Britain can take care of itself, not so for Greece, thus Grexit is, de facto, an impossibility: kick Greece out, it will still be at the door (same problem with deluded England).

It’s easier to help Greece inside the EU, than outside. Moreover, Western Europe did not fight for Greece independence against the Ottomans to replace them by worse. Finally Russian methane is putting in danger Russia itself, the latest Russian numbers reveal. Solar PhotoVoltaics will make Greece energy independent: as soon as massive investments are done, existing technology allows this.

More saillant is Partha’s first point. European and World (IMF) authorities decided to led bankers escape punishment. Thus hundreds of billions of bad loans from banksters to plutocrats were reimbursed by the Greek state, itself borrowing from the so-called “institutions” (EC, ECB, IMF, etc.) AS IF this were a public utility.

In practice it meant reimbursing gangsters for their expenses. Thus, the behavior of authorities is tantamount to demonstrating that they have been captured by outlaw bankers.

Instead, a sovereign ought to have enough authority to decide what We The People are going to use as currency. Californians did not bat an eyelash, when they were told the State of California

***

Some say financial rectitude is everything. False:

Look at the USA. California is, by far the largest economy in the USA. The GDP of California in 2014, pulled by technology, was $2.3 trillion. The only states in the world with a higher GDP are Britain, France, Germany and Japan (in ascending order).

However, a few years back, California, which was bankrupt, was paying its employees with pieces of paper called IOUs. There was some grumbling, yet, so great is the awe of California in the minds of its 40 million denizens, that the Californian economy ploughed, right along. One of the reasons of California’s superiority is that it takes six hours, by jet plane to cross the continent, where some decisions centers are. Far away.

By a very long shot, the American state with the best finances is Alaska, giant in territory, tiny in population. What is its economy doing? It’s shrinking:

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2015/07/08/alaskas-got-a-great-balance-sheet-and-a-shrinking-economy/

So much for deficit spending being the end all, be all.

***

True Speak Means Deeper Considerations:

Everybody speaks of the Greek debt, but not how it originated. Everybody speaks of the Euro and Greece, but not how the German government agreed to make Greece twice richer than it really was, by deliberately converting Drachmas into Euros at twice the real rate. Surely that does not have to do with some places in Greece having the highest concentration of German luxury cars, in the world.

One is never better served, than by oneself. Papandreou, a SOCIALIST Prime Minister of Greece, was asked to help clean up after Goldman-Sachs had cooked the books of Greece to underplay the amount of deficit Greece had. As if European “authorities” did not know that Goldman-Sachs had cooked the books (I could have told them; cooking and plotting, this is what Gold Men do).

But the truth is dire: Goldman-Sachs (largest private contributor to Obama 2008 presidential campaign), had “captured”: European decision making. Many European decision makers were connected to Goldman-Sachs and its ilk. All of them probably hope to be in the good graces of Goldman-Sachs, and its ilk.

Papandreou is from one of Greece’s top three plutocratic families. So most of the aid to “Greece” was actually an aid to private bankers, many of them, not Greek. That was accompanied by such propaganda that most Europeans think that common Greeks are “splurging” (yes Greek plutocrats, ship owners, Greek church and military are splurging… with the help of northern European banks; hopefully the Trotskyist PM Tsipras will fix that next week).

Iceland did not go that route, the route of welfare for bankers: Iceland jailed its banksters. France, instead, judged and jailed a trader. Wall Street was delighted to find its own French trader to accuse, judge and condemn. So two traders, both French were accused of everything, and the City of London also found some foreign born trader to accuse.

So what happened to the Peoples’ Sovereignty? It’s over: High Finance has captured not just democracy, but the mind of We The People, and is the real sovereign. At least, more so in Europe, than in California. Even though California is the America, of America.

Something got to give. (That may be why Tsipras caused a crisis, knowing full well only a crisis would provide the needed energy.)

Next we will study a bit “Germans and Their Lies” (to steal Luther’s title about Jews). I am happy to report that dear Krugman is finally catching up on that subject.

You want to change the world? Change the mood.

Patrice Ayme’

 

 

 

Why Euro Wrecks. So Argue About It.

In Greece, some of the upper class, including conservative officers high in the army, or investors who absolutely did not vote for the leftist Syriza, plan to follow Prime Minister Tsipras’ advice to vote NO to the referendum. In other words, the country is very divided.

(In the same vein, I have, unusually, no strong advice: there are great arguments for both the YES and the NO vote; however, I think it’s a good thing to vote, people ought to do this all the time, because they are all forced to go out and think about the process; it’s too bad Tsipras called the referendum with such short notice, though; the arguing process needs time, as the “votations” in Switzerland show: one can see opinions change, over a period of months. If I had to vote, I would vote NO. But it’s not a vote against the Euro, of course. It is just a vote against the obsequious butlers of arrogant plutocrats, their institutions, the so-called “creditors”, and the wanton cruelty, viciousness and outrageous lies, and sneaky misrepresentations and red herrings.)

Paul Krugman in “Europe’s Many Economic Disasters” points out that:

“It’s depressing thinking about Greece these days, so let’s talk about something else, O.K.? Let’s talk, for starters, about Finland, which couldn’t be more different from that corrupt, irresponsible country to the south. Finland is a model European citizen; it has honest government, sound finances and a solid credit rating, which lets it borrow money at incredibly low interest rates.

It’s also in the eighth year of a slump that has cut real gross domestic product per capita by 10 percent and shows no sign of ending. In fact, if it weren’t for the nightmare in southern Europe, the troubles facing the Finnish economy might well be seen as an epic disaster.”

Greek Debt Service Was Reduced Too Little, Too Late

Astutely, Krugman insists that these crises are not just ubiquitous, but also that the usual plutocratic interpretation cannot be brandished, because the FRENCH Republic, the most social country of them all, escapes relatively well. Krugman:

“And Finland isn’t alone. It’s part of an arc of economic decline that extends across northern Europe through Denmark — which isn’t on the euro, but is managing its money as if it were — to the Netherlands. All of these countries are, by the way, doing much worse than France, whose economy gets terrible press from journalists who hate its strong social safety net, but it has actually held up better than almost every other European nation except Germany.”

The case of the French Republic is special: France in more ways than one, is a mini USA. The French economy does everything, from extremely high tech and science to exporting agriculture. It is the most diversified economy in the world, with the USA. However, it has been suffering immensely from too high a currency.

In comparison, Finland is a two tricks pony: timber and Nokia. Germany does well with high quality high tech exports, but one can expect China to catch up with luxury cars.

The meaning of recovery in Greece has become unreal. Krugman:

“And what about southern Europe outside Greece? European officials have been hyping the recovery in Spain, which did everything it was supposed to do and whose economy has finally started to grow again and even to create jobs. But success, European-style, means an unemployment rate that is still almost 23 percent and real income per capita that is still down 7 percent from its pre-crisis level. Portugal has also obediently implemented harsh austerity — and is 6 percent poorer than it used to be.”

European so-called “leaders”, these corruptocrats drunk on power, have a lot of explaining to do. Krugman:

”Why are there so many economic disasters in Europe? Actually, what’s striking at this point is how much the origin stories of European crises differ. Yes, the Greek government borrowed too much. But the Spanish government didn’t — Spain’s story is all about private lending and a housing bubble. And Finland’s story doesn’t involve debt at all. It is, instead, about weak demand for forest products, still a major national export, and the stumbles of Finnish manufacturing, in particular of its erstwhile national champion Nokia.”

Krugman comes close to the real explanation, but his semantics start to drift inappropriately:

“What all of these economies have in common, however, is that by joining the eurozone they put themselves into an economic straitjacket. Finland had a very severe economic crisis at the end of the 1980s — much worse, at the beginning, than what it’s going through now. But it was able to engineer a fairly quick recovery in large part by sharply devaluing its currency, making its exports more competitive. This time, unfortunately, it had no currency to devalue. And the same goes for Europe’s other trouble spots.

Does this mean that creating the euro was a mistake? Well, yes.”

Well, no. The Euro was not a mistake. The mistake was to put Goldman-Sachs and its ilk in command (see below). Competitive devaluations are a form of war. And the idea of an Union is no more war. The USA went to war for Union, and out of it came the “greenback”, the national currency of the USA (which was created for the war, and was part of the war effort). The dollar was created to make a more perfect union. Europe wants, and needs, a more perfect union.

The real mistake is that Jacques Delors, head of the European Commission,  and his team had said the Euro ought to stand on two legs. However, only one was built. National governments, power hungry, made sure that the other transnational leg not be built. It was also handy that by not building the required transnational EUROPEAN governance, one made the sure that High Finance and its plutocrats could have free rein. In other words, Goldman Sachs and its ilk were given the opportunity to lead Europe, precisely because the European “leaders” did not give the Peoples of Europe the opportunity to build a European governance in matters financial, monetary and economic. Krugman:

“But that’s not the same as saying that [the Euro] should be eliminated now that it exists. The urgent thing now is to loosen that straitjacket. This would involve action on multiple fronts, from a unified system of bank guarantees to a willingness to offer debt relief for countries where debt is the problem. It would also involve creating a more favorable overall environment for countries trying to adjust to bad luck by renouncing excessive austerity and doing everything possible to raise Europe’s underlying inflation rate — currently below 1 percent — at least back up to the official target of 2 percent.”

But there are many European officials and politicians who are opposed to anything and everything that might make the euro workable, who still believe that all would be well if everyone exhibited sufficient discipline. And that’s why there is even more at stake in Sunday’s Greek referendum than most observers realize.”

A characteristic of the Euro has been that, in spite of a terribly worsening economic situation, and desperately low interest rates, the Euro stayed very high, as if the situation was rosy. When the situation was bad in Germany, ten years ago, the Euro was at 86 cents on the Dollars. When several Euro countries hit unemployment of nearly 30% (as Spain did), the Euro was very strong, nearly 150 cents on the dollar. Who engineered that absurdity? The same Goldman Sachs specialists who (were paid to) hid part of the Greek debt The bankers lent inappropriately, and to whom did they lend? To their friends, their associates, the rich? 92% of the money borrowed by Greece since the crisis began went to banks. Why were the bankers not prosecuted? Differently from simple Greek retirees who saw their retirement collapse, they are culprit. The real question is, to whom did establishing this mess profit? The creditors? Are they trying to reduce everybody to misery?

Krugman feels that using a bit of violence against European authorities would be a good thing:

“One of the great risks if the Greek public votes yes — that is, votes to accept the demands of the creditors, and hence repudiates the Greek government’s position and probably brings the government down — is that it will empower and encourage the architects of European failure. The creditors will have demonstrated their strength, their ability to humiliate anyone who challenges demands for austerity without end. And they will continue to claim that imposing mass unemployment is the only responsible course of action.

What if Greece votes no? This will lead to scary, unknown terrain. Greece might well leave the euro, which would be hugely disruptive in the short run. But it will also offer Greece itself a chance for real recovery. And it will serve as a salutary shock to the complacency of Europe’s elites.

Or to put it a bit differently, it’s reasonable to fear the consequences of a “no” vote, because nobody knows what would come next. But you should be even more afraid of the consequences of a “yes,” because in that case we do know what comes next — more austerity, more disasters and eventually a crisis much worse than anything we’ve seen so far.”

Well, it’s not that simple. In 2008, everybody was supposed to freak out because ONE BANK of the USA went bankrupt. Now we have an entire country going bankrupt. A country with twice the population of Norway, or that of the average state of the USA.

If Greece is allowed to go fully bankrupt (no, I am not contradicting myself: in the case of the IMF, there is a three month grace, or limbo, period), we will know that European countries are allowed to go bankrupt.

And why? There are many reason, but one is particularly salient: Goldman Sachs, an American bank, and high finance conspiracy outfit, deliberately engineered a misrepresentation of Greek finance. Why are these conspirators not punished?

If countries are allowed to go bankrupt, why don’t they all go bankrupt? After all, that’s the idea of devaluation Krugman likes so much.

The referendum is a good idea, allows Europeans to accuse those who torture Europe. Already the IMF is backing off, and just announced that, after all, some of the Greek debt ought to be reduced (PM Tsipras immediately asked for a 30% debt reduction).

The referendum is good, because it allows Europeans to argue about which Europe they want.

Do they want a Europe where Goldman-Sachs is free to conspire, or one where We The People rule? Let’s have referenda and arguments all over.

That’s how baboons vote (they vote with their feet). If baboons can do it, Europeans ought to be enable to emulate them.

Fundamentally, plutocrats want the monopoly of money and power, which defines them. In Europe, they have made sure to starve all what We The People want or need, and they did this by restricting how many Euros, how much currency, circulates.

By the way, it’s also how the Roman economy collapsed. By 300 CE, Rome did not have enough money, and so established a control and command economy (what the USSR became famous for).

Now the corrupt clowns who lead Europe are afraid that We The People, all over Europe, is going to start fighting against the creditors. An obvious case is “Podemos” in Spain, a party similar to Syriza. All over, We The People has to ask: how come so much borrowing was made in our name, to reimburse banksters?

Things are coming to a head. The economic crisis, engineered by plutocrats, feeds the Islamist crisis, whose deep inception was also plutocratic: https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2015/01/29/great-bitter-lake/ …

The danger of an extremely violent insurrection against the established order is increasing by the day. After all, president Teddy Roosevelt took drastic measures against monopolistic capitalism. What had happened before? Well, Teddy’s predecessor, Mac Kinley, had been assassinated (1901 CE). So had been French president Sadi Carnot (1894). These assassinations were part of a general assassination campaign against political leaders of anarchist ideology. Islamist ideology may well play a similar role. Already many blond blue eyed Europeans are converting to Islam, and joining Jihad. Rage against the system is why they do. The enemies of my enemies may not be my friends, but, when violence has gone too far, only more violence can stop it.

Patrice Ayme’

IMF: NSA Trojan Horse?

It is known the German government spied France, and her state of the art industries, on the behalf of the NSA (even the New York Times mentions it in “Germany, Too, Is Accused Of Spying On Friends“, “Another Spying Scandal In Germany…”). Gregor Gysi, a prominent German from the opposition Left party, accused Ms. Merkel of “treason.”Is Merkel’s government betraying some more? Such as deliberately sabotaging the Euro?

I am not making all of this up out of thin air, in a sudden attack of crazed conspiracy fever. Please consult that other leftist institution, the Wall Street Journal:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/german-government-is-accused-of-spying-on-european-allies-for-nsa-1430437603

“What is the IMF doing in this Greek mess? Wonders Jacques Attali, Jul 1, 2015. My thesis is simple:

Sarko l’Americain & Merkel, NSA Spy, Offer IMF Trojan Horse To Greeks

The National Security Agency American spy, Angela Merkel, and the USA obsessed Sarkozy (Sarkozy’s brother worked for the Carlyle Group, a shadowy organization specializing in satanic investment in military procurement at the time; heading the Carlyle Group is the sort of dream job Obama can only dream of, when he graduates from the drone dispatching center he heads in a White House)

Attali observes:

“The Greek situation, in all its dimensions, has become more grotesque with every passing day, and more specifically in the last year, by the very negative and preposterous role the International Monetary Fund plays in this.

An observer from Mars landing on Earth this week would ask in astonishment how Europeans had allowed three non-European economists working for an institution dominated by the US, we have no idea who appointed them, to decide the fate of the euro!?”

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-imf-doing-greek-mess-jacques-attali

Jacques Attali is an important European, because of the judiciousness of his advice to many a European leader, and his heading various institutions and commissions (including one suggesting many reforms in France, few of which have been applied so far). Attali is also a classical symphonic conductor of international renown and practice. Attali was founding head of the European Investment Bank, a EU institution based in London, and close adviser to presidents Mitterrand, and Sarkozy.

Says Attali: …”the Eurogroup political leaders have allowed the IMF to creep in among the negotiators of all Greek debt… Attali notice that, whereas the Greek debt was strictly between Greece, the EU and the ECB, European leaders after a while decided they would not do anything without the IMF’s agreement.

Attali: “…when European experts came to realize that it was not by destroying the last resorts of Greek growth that their debt would be reduced, the so-called experts from the IMF, power crazy, continued to seek to impose suicidal savings on that country, without seeing that it will never be able to repay a debt that must be canceled urgently and in a formal way….

The only thing one would have hoped from the IMF, in this debacle, is that the Americans, on which it heavily depends upon, find a way to explain… the major geostrategic importance of Greek stability, and thus Greece continued participation in the eurozone. No, the Americans could not, or would not, do more than call the Greeks every day to ask them to surrender to the diktat of the IMF.

Attali thinks the IMF ought to be destroyed:

“At a time when Asians are challenging the very existence of the Bretton Woods institutions, because they are not given their rightful place there, it is time for Europeans to question the sustainability of an institution that will be, if circumstances turn for the worse, really responsible for the tragedy that would follow a Greek default.

The solution, though, is simple, and the Europeans would have probably applied it a long time ago if the intellectual terrorism of the so-called IMF experts was not present: a reasonable savings plan, socially just, without requiring further assistance, but also with a reduction of the Greek debt to below 100% of GDP, through the cancellation of a significant part of public, bilateral and multilateral debts, that they all know cannot be reimbursed, and that some continue to claim, to save face. And for that, create urgently a genuinely European Monetary Fund, precursor of a Euro Treasury, and a Eurozone Ministry of Finance.”

All excellent observations, Jacques. The IMF is located less than half a mile from the White House. Christine Lagarde was already the head of one the world’s largest law firms, an American law firm, based in Chicago, long ago. She seems to be a professional figurehead, French looking, but actually simply an agent of the empire of the USA. Much of the European leadership seems to be in debt to the USA.

Consider the head of the European Central Bank: PhD MIT, vice-chairman at Goldman Sachs (as Mario Monti, an Italian PM). So what is the IMF doing inside the Eurozone governance? Making sure that individuals employed in and by Washington DC are in command. Of Europe: https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2015/06/29/selection-of-the-dirtiest/# The empire of the USA does not have any interest in a strong and independent Europe: healthy is what it wishes, yet dependent is what it requires. Dependence means submission, a lower status, fewer riches, more work, less comfort, no control of one’s destiny. It’s about making sure structures, institutions, which favor and select for the power and wealth of the USA are in place.

***

Europe Is Under Plutocratic Attack, Hence The Need For Union:

Some suggest that one cannot have a monetary union without a political union. That’s not correct. The Dollar is named after a currency, the “Thaler”, or “Tolar” (it has other names). The Tolar existed for centuries over much of Central Europe, without any political union. It was so famous that the currency of the USA is named after it.

So what is going on now? Why can’t the Eurozone survive without political union? The reason is simple: the USA’s establishment is hostile to the Euro (it’s trying its best, and succeeding, to hide its immense anger at the uppity Europeans, with their arrogant currency).

It looks like economics, but it’s all politics. Before Greece got in the European Union, Greece was controlled by colonels controlled by the USA. Many operators in the USA, those of the “Deep State”, the Wolvowitzs of the USA, would love to see Greece revert to full control of the USA. And that was probably the entire idea of putting the IMF inside the Eurozone.

Who asked for controlling Europe with the IMF? Germany, in 2010. At the same time, we learn that Germany acted like a spy on the French government, on behalf of the NSA (French and German governments are in very close, permanent contact).

So just like the NSA asked Germany to spy on France, did the NSA ask Germany to bring the IMF Trojan Horse inside Europe?

Americans have been programmed to say that “conspiracy theorists” are insane. Indeed. One has to be insane to expose the various conspiracies which insure USA dominance. USA plutocracy makes sure that it is dangerous, and not profitable.

https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2013/06/07/plutophiles-grexit/

Europe has a social model that the owners of the USA, those who pay for American universities, find unbearable. That’s why they want to destroy it.

More prosaically and cautiously, Attali concludes that:

“Europeans, solve your problems among yourselves. Rely on your own forces alone. Do not give in to pressures or ways of thinking that came from across the Atlantic or the Pacific. Give yourself a project and take action. It really is about time you did.”

As the European elite has been put in place, or in power, or made rich, by American plutocracy, independence is not so easy to implement (Africa has long known this problem, the problem of the elite controlled by greater forces, a perfect illustration of which is Barack Obama himself).

Patrice Ayme’