Obama’s Fault

For eight years, I have been writing that it was Obama’s fault. I had seen Obama go “work” at a “Hedge Fund”, on November 5, 2008 (Did Obama EVER work, let alone think?) You may be elected to be a Saint to fight evil, and, next day, go work for Satan, for all to see.

I have been writing about this for eight lonely years, but now, finally, the Main Stream Thinking is catching up:

Obama Is A Financial Plutocracy Agent. Just Look At The Facts

[Obama had also control of the Congress. Or, more exactly, the Democratic Party, truly the Demoncratic Party, had control of Congress. Congress was headed by Nancy Pelosi, a woman who made a colossal fortune from politics, and was head of Congress since 2006. Congress is truly the National Assembly, and passes laws. So Obama and his Demoncrats controlled all, so what did the do? They did what Demons do: they lied. Donald Trump is already demonstrating that a US president with a simple majority can govern (or, at least, govern the EU). Obama had a supermajority.]

Yannis Varoufakis is a university professor in economics who taught in the UK, Australia (where he became a citizen!), Belgium Sweden, and of course, Greece. By 2004, he started to advise the Greek government on how to get out of the crushing debt engineered by the crafty lying plutocrats (Goldman-Sachs, etc.) When the extreme left took control of the Greek government, Varoufakis became the finance minister of Greece. Varoufakis confronted the European Central Bank, the devilish instrument of the obdurate right-wing Merkel and the crooked semi-fascist French President, Sarkozy. Varoufakis won, and saved Greece, in no small part because he went directly to Greek and European public opinion, and shamed the financial fascists to do the decent thing (besides winning a plebisciste).

However, the resentful plutocrats asked for Varoufakis’ head in exchange for giving the far-left (present) Prime Minister of Greece, Alexis Tsipras, was he needed. There is much more on this, and for the better, now that the Trump Revolution is launched in the USA: suddenly everybody is thinking like Varoufakis. Varoufakis first, then Tsipras, then France running deficits in violation of Brussels’ orders, then the Brexit vote, then Trump. Varoufakis was a hero, because, alone against all, having all to lose, but for the glory of being right, he dared. Compare to Obama’s mental frailty. (To put it politely…)

I have made for years, and most recently in: Obama is a (stealth) regressive, not a progressive, the remark that net investment by governments of the G7 is the lowest in at least 60 years.

I called TARP, Transferring Assets To Rich People. Crooked Hillary and the misinforming Obama administration then pretended that TARP had been fully reimbursed. Maybe it was, but what was reimbursed was reimbursed thanks to Quantitative Easing (where the Federal Reserve bought at inflated prices assets of the richest).

Meanwhile Trump is concentrating on interesting change. No more talk about Mexicans, Wall, even Obamacare… And Trump does not “wish” to “prosecute Hillary” as the Clintons “have suffered a lot already in many ways“… “I want to move forward,” Trump said. “I don’t want to move back. I don’t want to hurt the Clintons, I really don’t.”

Yes, OK, but history is prologue, as the other one said.

Why did I say that Trump presided over Europe already?

The European Commission suddenly wants Eurozone countries to boost spending by 0.5 percent of GDP next year. It’s, at the very least, a belated gesture to counter Trump-style anti-establishment revolts on the continent. Or maybe there is a more sinister explanation: the European leaders in Brussels have suddenly understood that their masters in Washington, the Goldman-Sachs government of Clinton-Obama, have lost (momentary) control. So, suddenly they do what is right.

The European Commission’s wishful proposal is an acknowledgment that Eurozone spending restraints don’t work for the European continent as a whole (the UK engaged in massive deficit spending around 5%, year after year, while doing ultra massive immigration of the order of .5% of the population, year after year; that brought a boom, except for little Englanders, who got even at the voting booths…)

To make a sustainable difference, however, wealthy countries (mostly Germany) would have to help struggling ones.

Rules that require the 18 countries of the Eurozone to limit deficits make overall policy way too tight. The Eurozone’s combined budget deficit should be just 1.6 percent of GDP next year, even though unemployment remains above 10 percent. Lack of transfers exacerbates the divergence between the member states. Countries like Italy, where youth unemployment is nearly 40 percent, are forced to keep skimping on investment… to the point that Italy cannot even have a sustainable economy (crucial repairs are not done, from antique monuments to recently ravaged earthquake zones). Meanwhile wealthy Germany is still bathing in absurd surpluses, which, instead of being directed at helping to make plenty of little Germans, serve in part to shelter migrants (just because Germanydid not join the France, yet, in re-establishing a Republics in Syria and all over Africa…)

Whatever happens next, don’t forget it was all Obama’s fault. Or the fault of those who pulled his strings (and are now scrambling to pull Trump’s!) Next a more interesting subject: can we have, as NASA claims, propulsion without fuel? Classical Physics says that  question is insane. But conventional wisdom also says Obama did great, and is a friend of the small fry.

Obama goes around, suggesting he will play a sort of philosophical role after his presidency. Assuredly an ambitious goal for a puppet of financial vultures. Well, real philosophers are introspection experts. Since when do puppets acquire introspection? That, surely, would be new physics.

Patrice Ayme’

Wisdom Is Not An Itch, But Economy Hitching The Dark Side, Is A Gangrene

Is Philosophy Just An “Itch”? Far from it. Even if it were, as Wittgenstein had it:

“Philosophy hasn’t made any progress? – If somebody scratches the spot where he has an itch, do we have to see some progress? Isn’t genuine scratching otherwise, or genuine itching? And can’t this reaction to an irritation continue in the same way for a long time before a cure for the itching is discovered?”

It is not true that philosophy asks always only the same questions, and it is not true that philosophy has not progressed in 3,000 years. Philosophy has progressed enormously in 3,000 years. But short term, there is a lot of noise, and often, what passes for “progress” is truly regression (looking at Hellenistic regimes show much of thinking in regression, and that degeneracy accelerated after the fascist Roman empire and its corrupt officials (such as Cassius and Brutus) took control of Greece during the last century of the Republic… Let alone when Justinian closed the schools, five centuries later, in 529 CE, and this time, for good.

Instead the opposite is true. contemporary with Socrates was Xenophon, who named and defined “Economics”. Xenophon was student and friend to Socrates, a writer, historian, soldier, general, and retired as a horse breeder. Differently from Plato and Aristotle, Xenophon was not on the take.

Paul Krugman, appropriately surrounded by the Dark Sides. Krugman Is A Philosopher, He Rules The World Socioeconomy With His Insane Globalism. And Who Pulls His Strings?

Paul Krugman is one of the world’s most respected – and most feared – economists of our time. The illustration above is by David Simmonds.” – from Handelsblatt which adds: “Many think the U.S. Nobel Prize winner is the most influential economist of our time and a leading voice on the left. But many of his major ideas are controversial. And rightly so.”

I don’t know what the “left” is (although I know what it should be). But I certainly know that “Liberalism”, in the US manner is not from the left… Although common opinion in the USA at this point is that “liberalism” is not far from “socialism” (a huge mistake, and why dozens of millions of US citizens have no health insurance, after decades of “liberalism”).

Those familiar with my disagreements with Krugman know that we differ philosophically. Our differences are mostly about finance, banking… And especially believing that, if only bankers had even more money, through Quantitative Easing, the world would become richer, fairer, and more comfortable. That is anathema to me, for many reasons, including the fact I do not trust too much power in too few hands, whatever the reasons evoked, or even if one calls these people bankers, and even if Obama admires them very much.

Philosophy named and defined much progress.

Behind all and any empire is an economic organization backed up by a philosophy. Darius, founder of the Achaemenid Persian empire, changed economic organizations very quickly, according to circumstances, , from military to command and control, to building the world’s first fast road system, to libertarian capitalism.

It is possible to argue that the Greco-Roman empire failed, because it failed PHILOSOPHICALLY. Namely, its philosophy failed. It failed because the (Macedonian) military leaders got imprinted on the erroneous, despicable, and lethal philosophy of their friend Aristotle, itself all too inspired by Plato, Socrates, and other golden youth, or their fellow travellers.

One can view the Middle Ages greatly as a struggle against much of Aristotelian philosophy: not just against Aristotle’s physics, which was egregiously wrong, but also against his Ethics and his, related, preferred theory of government. Aristotle embraced dictatorship, also known as monarchy, hence theocracy.

In Socrates’ times, democratic institutions were, in many ways, brutally primitive and inappropriate for sustaining the Athenian Republic. These brought not just the death of Socrates, but were decisive to bring the defeat of Athens in the Peloponnesian war (which nearly brought the annihilation of Athens, and certainly an eclipse of democracy for more than 2,000 years). The People’s Assembly had decided to massacre entire populations (Melos), and brought hatred against Athens.

Much of Socrates’ work was about improving the Athenian democracy, and many of the philosopher’s critiques were addressed during the Middle Ages, by inventing new institutions.

So there has been progress in philosophy, and also considerable social and political progress in implementing progress in wisdom.

We need more. Behind Krugman’s vision of the world, lays a benign, naive trust in human beings benevolence. At least, that’s the excuse.

Friends, Not To Say Lovers Of The Same Values. How Far Are We?

Instead, I go further than “French Theory“. French Theory, generalizing Nietzsche’s approach, is suspicious of all and any institutions. I propose to remember what the Marquis De Sade implicitly proposed: those who take, those who are entitled, those end up being able to take decisions on behalf of the many, are, intrinsically, moved by the Darkest Side. Even if they did not start this way, the stress they are subjected to, insures that they end up that way.

Yes, Krugman is a philosopher, in the sense that his work, and advice, and popularity among, thus, power on, the mighty, depends upon his philosophical positions. Yet philosophers to the Dark Side, by their very presence where they are, embrace it.

This is not all just words. I love and respect Paul Krugman. in some ways. However, contemplate this: “Enron, a notorious corporation which conspired in organizing energy shortages in California, later to collapse in scandal and bankruptcy, employed Krugman. Paul’s fee? $37,000 for three days work. It provoked outrage. Wasn’t this excessive?. Mr. Krugman used his column to respond: not at all, he wrote. At the time his fee for a one-hour talk was $20,000. Enron got a deal.”

And the worst? Paul Krugman is very small fry, in the plutocratic world, as far as income is concerned. Donald Trump recently pointed out he “knew hedge fund managers. They pay no tax.” And some of those earn billions. General Electric got (60) billion dollars from the Obama administration, paid no tax for years, and then proceed to buy its French competitor, Alstom. Even the European Commission found that not kosher (although the plausibly secretly compensated by huff and fluff ,French government had approved).

Krugman at some point proclaimed himself the “lonely voice of truth in a sea of corruption”. The worst? It’s true. Because Krugman had dared to say the Obama administration was soft on punishing Wall Street after the 2008 corruption affair (the so-called “crash”), he was not invited to participate in said administration of the useless and redundant (as plutocrats connected to the so-called “Deep State” take all the decisions).

Handelsblatt: “Somehow Mr. Krugman’s fury keeps on growing. The source of this anger may be the man’s greatest enigma, since in fact worldwide there has never been as much Keynesian intervention as there is today…”

The answer to this, Handelsblatt, is simple: the crisis is getting ever worse. To the point the spectrum of war is rising. Even the Pope, noticed this.

Handelsblatt: “Since the crisis began, the largest central banks have flooded the world economy with liquidity, and brought their base rates close to zero. The governments of the industrialized world, with the exception of Germany, are still running huge budget deficits. They have put together enormous rescue packages, partly to rescue the banks, partly to bail out bankrupt states, partly to invest in infrastructure.”

Well, and this is my main difference with Krugman, rescue packages were all about the (“PRIVATE”) banks, and they bankrupt(ed) the states. To correct this, the entire banking system needs to be completely overhauled. In first approximation, the spirit of the reforms of president Roosevelt, ought to be re-introduced.

In Great Britain Jeremy Corbin, an anti-dictatorial (anti-monarchist) was elected to head Labor. Tony Blair, one of the world’s most corrupt politicians, ever (Bliar gets money from various dictator, including that of Kazakhstan) suggested that: “those who say their hearts are with leftwinger Jeremy Corbyn should ‘get a transplant’.”

Darius, like the Incas, like Diocletian’s Rome, or the Tang in China, or the empire of the Franks (which mutated into the “West”), or Themistocles Athens, let alone Stalin’s USSR, or today’s China, let alone the mercantilist USA, show that the primary actor, and author, of the economy is not the little capitalist, but the massive state. Handelsblatt claims not to understand this, and calls Krugman a fool.

However, the USA’s government institution revealingly known as the “Fed”, created more than 13 trillions (yes, that’s a t: trillion) dollars of money to inject in the economy, and the European Union, less than two trillion. And yes, that’s a problem: too much money chasing too few investment possibilities. So what ought government to do? Create more investment possibilities. Titanic investment program. As Darius did with his Royal road network. Now the Royal Road ought to lead to Mars. And the Quantum Computer. And Thermonuclear Fusion. And the Space Elevator. And a research program to fight aging (a major economic, not just military problem). Those who don’t want progress get regress, not to say egress.

Imagination, ladies and gentlemen, is more important than austerity, and not just in economics.

Patrice Ayme’