EURO CHEAT: German Hidden Banks Subsidies Destroy Europe!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Past Currency Problems: Rome, China, Europe:

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

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

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

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Common European Currencies Never A Problem:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Germany Banking Subsidy Trick:

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

It is a good system.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Patrice Ayme’

France Taking Command After Breakshit

How The Empire Fell:

The Goths, refugees from the Huns, were attacked once on a sweltering 9 August 378 CE by decision of Roman emperor Valens. The Oriental Roman field army was hot, tired, thirsty, after a forced march in the morning. Some of the Roman commanders were arrogant. Rested, the Roman field army would have been invincible. Moreover, the Occidental Roman field army, itself also invincible, if rested, was marching in. But senior emperor Valens was in charge of the Oriental army and his nephew Gratian in charge of the Occidental army, full of Franks.

The Frank Richomeres, head of Gratian imperial guard, sent ahead, told Valens to wait for the second field army (Richomeres would later become Consul, and head of all the Oriental Part of the empire, militarily; as a Frank, and non-Christian, he was refused the purple of an Augustus, yet he had imperium). But Valens wanted a victory of his own (Gratian and other commanders had theirs in preceding months). Valens decided to attack (his mind perhaps afflicted not just by the heat, but also the desire to self-annihilation of old fashion Christianism). His decision was all about hubris. A few hours later, the Oriental Roman field army was mostly annihilated, and Valens was dead. 

The Roman state would never recover from this disaster. Twenty-two (22) years later, the Franks were put in charge of the Roman defense of Gallia and Germania (400 CE). Twenty-eight (28) years later, the legions would be withdrawn from Britain, to save money, and hordes of savage Germans would break through the Roman empire, all the way to Africa. The Goths would take Rome, 32 years after the defeat of Hadrianopolis (410 CE). Now Hadrianopolis is a city in Turkey. And Turkey is full of exploding Muslims (mass attack of ISIL/Daesh on Constantinople’s airport, today).

The Franks would exterminate the Goths, 129 years later, and impose the Imperium Francorum over Gallia, Germania, and, soon enough, other regions (Italy, Spain)…  

European Parliament: French President & Girlfriend Telling British Europhobes To Get Great Britain Out Of The European Union. October 2015

Contempt For France and the Latins:

I was talking Brexit with an American friend with very long blond hair. I told her that, initially the language of the European Community was French rather than English, and that now things would change a bit. She was amused to no end: don’t worry, French is never coming back. Ever. Again. Never.

Her arrogance made me think. Was it Hadrianopolis all over again? I mean, really, why would “Anglo-Saxons” and what I call the “West Country Men” mentality, be in natural control of the world? Because they are naturally born killers?

West Country Men mentality, essence of lurid Anglo-Saxonia: Greed is the thinking reed which makes humanity wisely bend, as required by reality. Voltaire thought it was very philosophical to let such a mentality in charge of the World. Well, I don’t.

It’s true, in part, but just in part, that greed as the reed can be useful. Yet, there are many other, even more crucial, dimensions to the human existence.

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France Is Different:

In the US, and much English imagination, the “Latins” are viewed as bit players. At most good lovers. Yet, in Europe, Spain, Italy, France and their satellites have 200 million people.

The situation of France is peculiar, because this is where the core of the mother civilization was, and rose. France is mother to Britain and the US, secularism, nationalization, mandatory education, and the anti-slavery movement, among others. All that was achieved way back in the past, and cannot be changed, even by Allah. (To finance war against the fanatics of Allah, in the early 700’s, the Franks confiscated all valuable Christian church property, and paid the army with it.) 

The English love to talk about the Magna Carta, forgetting that the rebellious barons were French. And when the French Revolution started, the “National Assembly” decided it was a “Constituent Assembly”. Where did that come from? Well what became known as the “National Assembly”, with 578 representatives, had been elected in 1788 CE (a year before the official start of the French Revolution).

The English say: ‘we have this, too, Parliament…” Actually the powers of Parliament were set-up by a Frenchman who wanted to be elected king, way back. The English have Parliament, but it’s not really a National Assembly, as it is entangled with the non-elected “Chamber of Lords”. In 1789 France, the “National Assembly” made a coalition with (most of the) the Catholic church, and ejected the “Chamber of Lords”, never to be seen again.

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The Mood Of European Unification Has Celto-German, Roman Republican and Frankish Roots:

Who were the Franks? The European Union! Indeed, the Franks were NOT a tribe. They were a “federation”. A number of people who had taken an oath. From foederare (league together) and foedus (covenant, league).

The Salic Law of the Franks was initially written in Latin by Roman lawyers. So not only the Franks were not a tribe, or nation, but they embraced the notion of being endowed by superior ideas, even if they came from others.  

When one talks about deep Europe, some go back to Charlemagne. I just showed one has to go five centuries earlier. But one should of course go even earlier. The Celts had a very advanced civilization, ocean trading and more advanced than anywhere else in the world in several technologies. They were hindered by a religion which the Romans destroyed and outlawed (as should be done to some contemporary religions!). Otherwise, the Celto-Germans were pretty much open: they had a secondary cult of Greco-Roman deity, particularly Mercury, the god of trade. Compare with present day Saudi Arabia, which will cut your head off, if you disagree with what they call Allah…

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Withdrawing England’s Privileges:

The French agreed to Great Britain entry in the European Community, 45 years ago. In retrospect, it may have been a mistake. But who could guess that Britain would be such a bad player? Refusing the free circulation of citizens of the Schengen Treaty, blackmailing for a rebate, organizing tax havens, grabbing most Euro trading, refusing the Euro, while staying inside the European Monetary System to sabotage it, fostering global plutocracy while spreading outrageous lies about the European Union’s alleged lack of democracy?

Britain was needed, because of its heft, and its military power. But the latter, and its connection with morality, has faded in recent years, witness the Assad debacle: the UK Parliament refused to attack plutocrat Assad, because the UK does not attack plutocrats. Great Britain loves plutocrats and especially their money, no questions asked. Due to budget cuts, and ethical cuts, Britain is much less than what it used to be militarily.

The French Republic then is the only significant military power in Europe, and can make Germany pay for it, by running deficits (that’s the implicit accord, obviously).

Europe is just a trading place, say Europhobes. However, it is more. It is a place of solidarity. Solidarity is a better way for interacting harmoniously than hatred and alienation. So, in a spirit of solidarity, and to bring up its abysmal economy, London was enabled to get away with much, enriching itself, impoverishing the others.

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After Ejecting UK PM Cameron,

the City of London should no longer be able to clear euro-denominated trades, the French president said on Tuesday, June 29.

François Hollande said at the end of a summit in Brussels where EU elected leaders started trying to consider the wreckage of David Cameron’s referendum catastrophe, that it would be unacceptable for the trading of Euro derivatives and Euro equities to take place in the UK.

“The City, which thanks to the EU, was able to handle clearing operations for the Eurozone, will not be able to do them.  It can serve as an example for those who seek the end of Europe . . . It can serve as a lesson.”

High time. Amen. Let’s do it. Move London over to Paris and Frankfurt.

Patrice Ayme’

Long Live The Euro: 3) Exiting By The Top

“SORTIR PAR LE HAUT”:

The Euro is one of the elements necessary to unify France and Germany. Fully constructing the supporting apparatus the Euro needs, entails, by itself, an entire hierarchy of unification projects subordinated to it.

So the problems the Euro creates are supposed to appear, and being solved, thereafter. How? By “coming out on top”. Division and bitterness, is coming on the bottom. Coming out on top means higher ideas, unification, harmony.

To reconstruct a European state is as if one were constructing a cathedral: one has to do the following. One decides to build it, and then make it so. Cathedral construction was modified, as needed. Arches were progressively added, and, when problems were found, they were fixed. When it was discovered that the gigantic Amiens cathedral was bulging out, and was going to collapse, and enormous iron belt was added to its waist. It survived the world wars.

Paris had an enormous Roman cathedral for nearly a millennium. However, in the Twelfth Century, Parisians decided that, instead of refurbishing it once again, and expanding it, it would be better to build an entire new cathedral in what was known then as the “Frankish style”. The church leaders explicitly stated this as a technological project to awe the masses, and instruct the plutocrats as to the new possibilities technology offered. So the old cathedral was demolished, and the present one built. (There are no picture of the previous building, it stood fifty meters west of the present one.)

What present day, patritotic Europeans do not want to see again:

By 1200 CE, The Renovated Roman Empire of the Franks Had Become A Big Disunited Mess. Wars Blossomed All Over

One thing can be picked up from the map: it is the French themselves, the Western Franks, those based around Paris, who created the mess, by insisting on going their own way, and that everybody had the right to go their own way.

Charlemagne himself had launched the way towards that mess: he let Venice stay sort-of independent (although the Frankish empire needed Venice’s fleet), and then Charlemagne outright created the Papal States (by giving territories to the Pope upon which he could exert material power).

It is finally Francois I who understood that France and Germany had to be unified again. But, although he had been elected king of France (by the kingdom’s council), he failed in the 1519 CE election as Roman-German emperor.

Instead, Spain, Germany and Italy (plus the Americas) got united. The result was nearly 200 years of war between France and Spain, which created the independent, tolerant, somewhat republican Netherlands, while finishing with still another world war, the War of the Spanish Succession, which France barely won (losing territory in the process, and fostering British and Dutch power).

By then the Netherlands, Britain and France, the former two created by the latter, and long the same polity, were at each other’s throats. To win, Britain heavily financed Prussia, while France enjoyed a succession of ill advised dictators (Louis XIV, Louis XV, Napoleon).

Clearly one should go back to basic principles:

Europe Was A Creation Of The Franks, Not Just As A State, But As A Concept:

The power, and vision, of the Franks created Europe. It was originally mostly motivated by survival, and the will to set right was Late Romans had set wrong.

We actually know enough about the rise of Frankish power to discern the philosophies at work. Aetius, a Roman commander-in-chief who had been brought up (from an exchange/hostage program) among the Huns all too long, naturally used the Huns all too much. After Aetius was assassinated in one of these conspiracies Late Rome was rife with, his closest collaborators took over. They switched back to the 150 year old alliance with the Federated Franks, the fiercest enemy of the Huns (who thereafter disappear from history).

Europe is a modern concept created by the Franks anew in the Eighth Century; the original Europe, in the Eighth Century BCE, 16 centuries earlier, designated continental Greece. But that name, itself, the name of a Princess, was an older myth which acknowledged the debt Greece had to Phoenicia (nowadays Lebanon, and, more generally, the Middle East).

If one wants to build something great, one has to start somewhere. A European currency exists, and France and Germany constitute an “optimal currency area”, all by themselves. They have very similar republics. Both have a very high minimum wage, German police can pursue thugs inside France at will (and reciprocally). Both consult continually, Germany has agreed to help France’s wars in a supportive role.

In truth, Germany has become France, after around two centuries of error under Prussian misguidance.

So what are the problems with the common currency? Well, all these problems it was supposed to bring. A first one, of course, is the problem of making a Banking Union. The situation there is quite complex, yet unification is under way: the 200 largest banks are supposed to be inspected (smaller banks are crucial to the German economy, but they tend to be bankrupt, so they have been spared the present inspection regime).

What is there not to like? Well, don’t ask American plutocrats and their obsequious servants; they will stat to recite again Friedman’s hare-brained, shallow and disingenuous arguments.

Finally all what the American plutocrats and their butlers have to stay is that, never, ever, could France and Germany get unified again, so they could not possibly share a common currency (aside from the dollar, which American plutocrats control, through their rogue financial system). What they should stay, if the truth was their goal, is that they dread an ever greater unification of France and Germany.

First, because they won’t control it as readily. Secondly, because of the tradition of revolution, for which France, in particular, is known.

Civilization means revolutions, plutocracy, its obsequious servants and greedy opportunists, hate both. Thus they hate European Unification.

Why is the USA different? Simple: countries such as the USA, Canada, Australia are gigantic, and full of recent immigrants. Recent immigrants in a giant country can always go somewhere else, where construction, expansion, conquest, fracking, tar sands, coal and iron ore, lithium, what-not, is going on. No such possibilities in Europe, or then tightly regulated.

Recent immigrants are also anxious not to be seen whining, complaining, talking back, agitating, rebelling, lest they be not trusted anymore. In countries such as France, or Greece, if you do NOT whine, complain, talk back, argue, rebel, it is the exact way around: it is a servile, anxious to please, fit and conform attitude, which is not trusted.

One could see this with Obama: for years, it was said by his opponents that he was not a genuine American. Actually, he was not even an American, they asserted. The American Constitution invites this: it distinguishes American-born Americans, and immigrants (the French and now German Constitutions do not). An immigrant American cannot be elected president.

Discrimination is more American than mother or apple pie. Anxious to conform, American Jews, such as Milton Friedman, who could not even bother to express concern on behalf of their brethren while they were in danger of being exterminated, now have the infuriating impudence to teach us about strife being hindered by division. Verily, some people learned nothing, and are the lowest of the low.

So should the French and the Germans have a common currency? Well, in a sense, they used to have one, what was called “Euro-dollars”. The dollar, was, de facto, Europe’s common currency.

France and Germany do not discriminate against their citizens on ground of their origins. This is one of many ways in which France and Germany are similar. Why so similar? Well, they spend a lot of thinking finding out which French, or German qualities, laws, regulations, habits, appreciations, they should adopt.

France and Germany are now closer in spirit with each other than they are with the USA. So they should have rejected the dollar as a common currency, and get their own, according to the very argument the Euro haters have been using. And that’s exactly what they did.

Patrice Ayme’

Long Live The Euro: 2) Friedman Ignorant Anti-Euro Rant

Is Europe an “optimum currency area”? Milton Friedman believed it was not, and he gave apparently cogent, and now much repeated reasons, why it was not. However one should remember that appearances are deceiving, the most venomous snakes look like pretty leaves. Some people do not know how to add, but they claim they can multiply.

American economist have been lying, they are paid to lie, because their lies in economy give justification to otherwise unjustifiable policies. The policies of the USA have been, overall comfortable: having eliminated the Natives, American and Canadians, like the Australians, enjoy entire continents for themselves, far removed from the rest of the world, and its often crowed, overwhelmed realities.

Whereas France is in a different situation. French major policies have not been comfortable, since 360 CE (when the elite Parisian legions revolted, refused to leave France, and proclaimed the Caesar Julian, Augustus; the central government in Constantinople was not happy, and those in-between, distinctly uncomfortable).

France did not just declare war to the Nazis in the 1930s, when the USA was busy doing profitable business with them. France has been fighting Islamists since 721 CE (before that the Franks’ James Bonds were spying on said Islamists in the Middle East).

The war with the Islamists requires much power and determination. Here is a picture from April 2015, taken at night, with a high resolution radar. The famous Second Foreign Parachute Regiment (2 REP) is dropping at night on the Salvador Pass, in the middle of the Sahara, at the Libya-Niger border. It then engaged Islamists in combat:

Reality Check: Economics Serves War. Combat In More Than Half A Dozen Countries Costs France Beaucoup Euros

[The dots are French soldiers, and equipment, not trees. The area is the most barren desert on Earth.]

Here is Milton Friedman, that supposedly great economist, as we will see a great liar, a little man, a European war lover, in the conclusion of his famous essay supposedly demolishing the Euro. That essay is oft-repeated with glee since, by pseudo-”liberal” luminaries such as Paul Krugman, and, in general, all faithful, one should even say, obsequious, servants of Uncle Sam:

“The European Commission based in Brussels, indeed, spends a small fraction of the total spent by governments in the member countries. They, not the European Union’s bureaucracies, are the important political entities. Moreover, regulation of industrial and employment practices is more extensive than in the United States, and differs far more from country to country than from American state to American state. As a result, wages and prices in Europe are more rigid, and labor less mobile. In those circumstances, flexible exchange rates provide an extremely useful adjustment mechanism.

If one country is affected by negative shocks that call for, say, lower wages relative to other countries, that can be achieved by a change in one price, the exchange rate, rather than by requiring changes in thousands on thousands of separate wage rates, or the emigration of labor. The hardships imposed on France by its “franc fort” policy illustrate the cost of a politically inspired determination not to use the exchange rate to adjust to the impact of German unification. Britain’s economic growth after it abandoned the European Exchange Rate Mechanism a few years ago to refloat the pound illustrates the effectiveness of the exchange rate as an adjustment mechanism.”

This sounds all very smart, but, it’s mostly poorly informed BS. When one knows enough, and when one is in a mood favorable to European Unification, Milton Friedman just sound like a highly paid prostitute. What he sells is lies.

Examples of Friedman ignorance, or deliberate lying:

1. The member countries are more important, true, but only to some extent.Even France and Germany are tied up by the various European institutions, because the latter are part of the member countries national laws (that’s called the Single European Act). So France, for example, cannot contradict the European Court of Justice, without contradicting the FRENCH Constitution.
2. Member countries are of three types: great powers (France, Germany, Britain), middle powers (Spain, Italy, Poland; Italy is a middle power because its north is more Franco-German than Sicilian, so it’s de facto divided; Spain has the same problem: Catalonia historically is more French, or Roman, than Spanish). And then small powers. Small powers can stand in the way, but not for long (Greece being the best example).
3. That “regulation of industrial and employment practices… differs far more from country to country than from American state to American state” is simply, a lie. A lie disguised as a truth. European regulations are extremely similar to each other, and very far from the American ones. The exception is Great Britain, which asked for an exemption, and got it.
4. Labor is less mobile in Europe, because Europe is made of different nations talking different versions of English.
5. “If one country is affected with negative shocks”: the entire idea of Europe, Friedman, is to have no more “negative shocks”.
6. When Friedman talks of France, he brays like an ass. The strong Franc policy is an atavism of France. France invented the strong currency thing, like 12 centuries ago. Those who did not believe in it, were boiled in wine. Alive. France applied it in the 1920s and 1930s, when the USA, the UK, Germany, and other critters tried to devaluate themselves to health (some got mad in the process). The strong Franc is a case of Germany coming to think like France, not conversely. (True France devalued in the 1960s, but then Germany wrote off more than half of its debt, with the benediction of its allies, in the 1950s.)
7. The United Kingdom has been highly successful with its currency policies in the 1990s, and after 2008. However that is, first of all, because enough money was provided to run the economy. Although having a national currency allowed it to do so, currency independence is neither necessary, nor sufficient.
8. Wages, prices, regulations, national laws are under convergence in Europe. Recently Germany finally imitated France and introduced a high minimum wage. German workers are now for the first time as expensive as French workers.
9. Friedman ignores ways in which European countries are more similar to each other, than to American states: no death penalty, universal health care, strong privacy laws, labor protection are examples.
10. The important political entities in the Eurozone are France and Germany. United, they form a superpower, especially when adding their automatic influence zone (Austria, The Benelux, Northern Spain, including Catalonia, Northern Italy, and yes, Switzerland). Since May 8, 1945, France and Germany did not have ONE serious differences, and have pursued a steady program of “ever closer union” (to use the language of the European de facto constitution). The heads of France and Germany sit together at the European Parliament, during important events. I believe, and French and German leaders believed

All right, so Friedman does not know what he is talking about.

Friedman also asserts what is well-known, that the Euro is a political project (what he does not say is that it is a French political project, because he is not anxious to spoil his hidden bias with obvious francophobia). Notice that, if some project is mostly driven by politics, that does not mean that it cannot turn out to be economical. Says Friedman:

“The drive for the Euro has been motivated by politics not economics. The aim has been to link Germany and France so closely as to make a future European war impossible, and to set the stage for a federal United States of Europe.”

Of course a USE, a United States of Europe, would be a formidable rival to the USA, and probably less friendly to the people who paid Friedman for his flood of BS venom. Then Friedman, in his conclusion, slips into psycho-politics, a domain which mixes psychology and politics, for which, considering the long list of erroneous ideas I exposed above, he has no expertise whatsoever. Friedman is like somebody who does not know how to add, and now he wants to multiply:

”I believe that adoption of the Euro would have the opposite effect. It would exacerbate political tensions by converting divergent shocks that could have been readily accommodated by exchange rate changes into divisive political issues. Political unity can pave the way for monetary unity. Monetary unity imposed under unfavorable conditions will prove a barrier to the achievement of political unity.”

The truth? Milton Friedman, the economist does not the history of economics. Let me give him a F. F for “Failed”. The Thaler/Tollar, functioned as a currency in Europe for centuries without any political unification.

The truth? France and Germany are unifying ever more. The last divergence was about Libya: France decided to overthrow the dictator there, and Germany did not help. However in Syria, Germany, and Britain are now helping France. Germany is presently sending troops for occupation and control in Mali, because and while France is getting its shock troops for attacks in Syria and Libya.

The truth? When Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s president, decided to switch to the Euro for international transaction, thus exiting Washington’s orbit, Washington decided to make Iraq an example for those who switch to the Euro. The Washington strategists wanted a murderous mess for those who switch to the Euro, and now they have it, and one must them chuckling at night, far from prying eyes. (People like Paul Krugman absolutely refuse to understand any of the preceding, as it would murder their careers to do so. At the very least.)

The truth? In the 1940s, the Nazis and the French resistance, the Free French and the French Republic agreed that “divisive political issues” and “exacerbated tensions” came from “converting divergent shocks”. To eliminate divergent shocks, eliminate differences. In this respect, the Euro is helping France and Germany achieve an ever closer union. (Notwithstanding the sea of lies American economists swim in.)

And it’s all that matter. American Jews such as Friedman, Krugman, and all these other “mans”, should remember that, when “Francia”, the Renovated Roman empire, Franco-Germania, extended from Barcelona to Berlin and beyond, there was no discrimination against the Jews.

Why? Because the very nature of a sustainable, vast empire, is tolerance. So let a common European currency be, it will be more comfortable to divergences, hence ideas.

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’

Puerto Rico’s Default: Back To The 1930s?

We were told, for years, the outrageous lie that Greece’s debt crisis was “caused” by the Euro… Even by supposedly left wing economists of the USA (Paul Krugman, etc.), and their European parrots. I exposed this as a cover-up of the outrageous state of banking under a thick layer of Europhobia, even more than four years ago. Now Puerto Rico exhibits an increasing unwillingness to pay interest on its debt. Now what?

Puerto Rico’s Default Has Got To Be Europe’s Fault:

It’s only a matter of time before the plutocratic press, or, if you want, the Main Stream Media, make the Euro and Greece the reason for Puerto Rico’s failure. (For such a devious reasoning, see below.)

After 2008, the economy turned bad, and governments borrowed heavily to keep the society going. As the prospects got dimmer, https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2014/06/21/new-york-vulture-justice/, bought Puerto Rican debt. Vultures hate education, as education makes for rebels, and they are in position to reduce educational spending, in Greece or Puerto Rico. When Vulture Funds had their fill, of Puerto Rican debt, they sprang the trap: mistaking Porto Rico for Greece, they required the Porto Rican government to reduce spending in education… So that Porto Rico could pay them the extravagant interest payments.

Is Puerto Rico The Object Of A (Financial Engineered) Genocide?

Debating Puerto Rican debt appears to be about finance, state debt, schools, hedge funds. Yet, ultimately, it’s about who owns Puerto Rico.

The Guardian, and magazine such as Slate, bought the hedge fund propaganda, bait, hook, line, sinker, if not the boat itself. Jordan Weissmann in Slate, a famous electronic magazine, blared: “Hedge Funds Think Puerto Rico Should Shut Down Schools to Pay Its Debts. Is That So Wrong?”

No, of course, it’s right. Hedge Funds should have all rights you can possibly imagine. They already buy and sell entire countries.

***

The Truth About Porto-Rico: Tax Haven, Millionaires’ Haven:

The total tax receipt in Puerto Rico is 10%, a small fraction of what it is in advanced countries (at least 23%). Taxes on the rich are small, full of loopholes. Moreover, the USA treats Puerto Rico like an exploited colony, so full reimbursements and compensations available to full citizens of the USA are not available in Puerto Rico.

Another truth is that educational spending is exploding in the USA, because health spending (Obamacare”) does not control costs (contrarily to what propaganda says). So plutocrats from hedge funds profit from an inflation which fellow plutocrats in health care engineered, thanks to an arguably too Machiavellian by half White House.

Porto Rico is a weird island, a territory of the USA which is neither destined to independence, nor a state. In the 1950s, four Puerto Ricans went to the Congress of the USA, and shot 30 rounds onto the Representatives, to ask for independence.

Krugman says Puerto Rico is not Greece: indeed, Puerto Ricans flee massively to the USA. Greeks no doubt ought to do the same and contribute free, or menial labor, to the splendor of the economy as celebrate by Krugman. People who are in the know stridently contradicted Paul Krugman’s positions and exposed them for what they are: the term “neo-colonialism” is too good. Pursued to the end, Puerto Rico would just vanish, except as a tax haven (just as the Virgin Islands next door).

***

Mussolini Fustigated What He Called “Demoplutocracies”:

Hitler joined the Italian dictator in complaining about the “plutocrats”… whom he knew all too well (top Nazis commiserated with him for having to dine with “plutocrats”, and make small talk to “plutocrats“, etc.)  

Does that mean that those who complain about “plutocracy” a lot, such as yours truly, are also fascist?

No. Of course not. First it shows that Mussolini and Hitler called their dinner guests “plutocrats” because that’s what they, all often, were. It also reveals that, in the 1930s, it was a common political truth, worldwide, that plutocrats had caused the financial and economic crisis… As they had, since they were in command (the bubble of the 1920s was deliberately engineered by Lord Montague and his American alter ego, to mitigate British debt from World War One by inflation and over-activity).

***

President Roosevelt, Knight Of The Dark Side:

People often ask me what the Dark Side is. Neither “Evil“, nor “Star Wars” do justice to the notion. That force is strong, but its strength varies. The politician who acted the best, for his own country, when faced with that plutocratic crisis, was President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Roosevelt devalued the dollar, shackled Wall Street and the banks, created a Command and Control economy (headed by a young Canadian!). Roosevelt, himself a plutocrat, behaved in an extremely progressive, socialist way. Because he had to. Sometimes, the Dark Side is all about doing what is necessary (I see Obama chuckling in the distance with his drones). Embracing many of the solutions of the hard left, was the price Roosevelt paid to save plutocracy.

Maybe to compensate, for his own exuberant socialism, Roosevelt was abusive with the French (who still adore him), and exploitative with the British. He also helped making sure that Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini could devastate Europe… To the great profit of the USA. In 1939, or early 1940, Roosevelt could have declared war to Hitler. That would have probably made him win re-election in November 1940 in a landslide.

Roosevelt ran for an unprecedented Third Term. President Washington had refused to do so; Roosevelt was not obligated to run for an unprecedented third term. But he was morally, civilizationally, and strategically obligated to declare war to Nazism. FDR never did: Hitler declared war TO him. So why did not he?

Because Roosevelt was a master of the Dark Side: he let Nazism being used as a blunt instruments to destroy the competition in Europe, the other representative democracies (France, UK, Netherlands, Belgium, Norway… and their allies: Czechoslovakia, Poland, etc.) In the USA, this makes him a great man, an immense patriot, the founder of the “American Century”. The judgment of history, is another matter, entirely, let’s hope I contribute to it with my own point of view (“theory“).

In any case, President Roosevelt was a master plutocrat, whereas Hitler and Mussolini depended upon plutocrats. The case of Stalin is different: the Dark Side was so strong with him, he was able to surf over lots of plutocrats, as if they were waves, one after the other. Early on plutocrats of the USA (such as the Harriman Brothers) financed him (say to develop Baku oil fields). Engel in his theoretical book had said to do away with marriage, and embrace, free, secxual love. So Stalin’s satanic approach was pragmatic. Allied to German fascists, from 1916, until savagely attacked by his colleague Hitler, Stalin dictated his conditions to a weakened Roosevelt who was all too happy to give him half of Europe to chew on.

The Pragmatic Approach Can Be Opposed to the Principled One:

The USA stays highly pragmatic, never having ratified the Kyoto Protocol. Obama presented a plan to lead from behind technological progress (it affects energy production, about 30% of the CO2 production, but not transportation, another third, or industry). The solution, of course is to take out all subsidies for fossil fuels, starting with the richest countries, and doing so progressively. If Europe and the USA decided this, they could impose it, worldwide, through a carbon tax.

A conference in Paris is supposed to make desperate efforts to stop the rush through the two degrees Celsius, but the largest sub-arctic zone, Russia, has already barreled right through.

As long as hedge funds feel they can order the world around why should it be any different? What else?

Plutocrats say: all the problems arise from French-like socialism, and the European Unification related to it. Thus, they have got to say that so it is, with Puerto Rico’s debt crisis.

Puerto Rico’s debt crisis has to be related to the hydra of European unifying socialism, sneakily propelled by the French.  How could that not be? Contagion, what plutocrats fear the most, this what Greece and France brought: contagion of rebellion. Destroying direct democracy is why Persia financed the war of Sparta against Athens. Plutocrats have profited of this Persian investment, ever since.

The Greeks did not want to pay for their banks’ errors, and the state debt resulting from it. So the Greeks started a mood, a mood where those who owe resist their lords, the lenders. Hence the Puerto Rican legislature sudden decision to resist its masters, the hedge fund managers. So, you see, European leftists are not innocuous, they are already attacking on U.S. soil.

And the climate crisis? Purely a French invention. Proof? The climate conference is to be held in Paris in four months.

Nowadays, thanks in part to the Multiverse fanatics, no proofs are really necessary, screaming insanities is sufficient, to qualify for respect (as long as you have a big gun, or pocketbook, or aura given by those with guns, or pocketbooks). Everybody knows this, by now: the tedium of the medium is the message, and the massage.

Patrice Ayme’

Plutocracy’s Fascist, Europhobic Dream

“Europe’s Impossible Dream” proclaims the New York Times’ Paul Krugman. What dream is that? The dream that Europe needs another currency, besides the dollar. All right American supremacists do not say this in so many words… Instead they use convoluted, illogical reasoning, as I will presently demonstrate.

Good propaganda starts with correct facts. Krugman:

“Greece is experiencing a slump worse than the Great Depression, and nothing happening now offers hope of recovery. Spain has been hailed as a success story, because its economy is finally growing — but it still has 22 percent unemployment. And there is an arc of stagnation across the continent’s top: Finland is experiencing a depression comparable to that in southern Europe, and Denmark and the Netherlands are also doing very badly.

How did things go so wrong? The answer is that this is what happens when self-indulgent politicians ignore arithmetic and the lessons of history. And no, I’m not talking about leftists in Greece or elsewhere; I’m talking about ultra-respectable men in Berlin, Paris, and Brussels, who have spent a quarter-century trying to run Europe on the basis of fantasy economics.”

Commodities Crashing Worldwide: Not A Euro Problem, Mr. Krugman!

Then Krugman operates his bait and switch:

“To someone who didn’t know much economics, or chose to ignore awkward questions establishing a unified European currency sounded like a great idea. It would make doing business across national borders easier, while serving as a powerful symbol of unity. Who could have foreseen the huge problems the euro would eventually cause?”

Several remarks here: first, for people like Krugman, apparently society and economics is reduced to “doing business”. In truth, having multiple currencies was a major hindrance, I have said this many times. Try a currency in New Jersey, one in New York, one in Connecticut, one in Massachusetts. It’s not just business which will be inconvenienced. Europe has as many states as the USA. Krugman can’t understand this: not smart enough, or with an agenda? You judge.

Commodity Deflation, In Dollars. Not A Euro Crisis, Mr. Krugman!

Good propaganda accuses the scapegoat with wild abandon. According to Nazis, everything was the fault of the Jews, and the French. According to Krugman the ills of the economic world can all be traced to the Euro. Bankers who feed him, are beyond any suspicion. The bait is to enounce correct facts, the switch is to accuse the innocent, in this case “Europe’s Impossible Dream” and the common currency, thus causing unfathomable distraction, away from the real culprits. Krugman:

“Who could have foreseen the huge problems the euro would eventually cause?

Actually, lots of people.”

Who are Krugman’s heroes? Eurosceptics, naturally. Krugman:

“The only big mistake of the euroskeptics [sic] was underestimating just how much damage the single currency would do.

The point is that it wasn’t at all hard to see, right from the beginning, that currency union without political union was a very dubious project. So why did Europe go ahead with it?”

The problem with someone as Krugman, is that he has no idea about European history, whatsoever, except the pro-Nazi propaganda of Lord Keynes. Krugman affects to think Europeans are idiots anxious to please plutocrats, and their obsequious servants:

“Mainly, I’d say, because the idea of the euro sounded so good. That is, it sounded forward-looking, European-minded, exactly the kind of thing that appeals to the kind of people who give speeches at Davos.”

***

Krugman, Or The Pseudo-Left: 

Who is Paul Krugman? Not only does he have a bully pulpit at the New York Times, and a Nobel, but he is, according to polls, the most trusted voice by the left… in Europe. Listening to him too uncritically can only lead to anti-Europeanism.

The domination of English is also the domination of the Financial Times, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, and the ever more sneaky New York Times. The Anglosphere’s tendrils are definitively plutocratic in their outreach.

In his very anti-European article, Krugman says that the case for devaluing the Greece currency is overwhelming: I agree with this, the Euro ought to be devalued.

If Greece had its own currency, and devalued massively, it would not profit much economically: Greece’s main import-export activity is to buy petrol and then sells it refined: all these transactions are priced in dollars. Leaving the Euro would make Greece ready to become a satellite of the USA again (complete with colonels).

***

Why are we submitted to so much anti-Europeanism?

Because the plutocrats and their obnoxious servants have interest to say that the problem is the Euro, not banksters, and banksterism, the situation where bankers create money (as credit) and give it to they friends.

Then said friends run away with the money, banks turn around, and ask treasuries and central banks to allow them to make money again. (One way to do this is Quantitative Easing, something Krugman love as it feeds the banksters, who feed him.)

None of this giant financialo-economic drama has to do with the Euro. To imply that Denmark, the Netherlands and Finland have problems because of the Euro is inaccurate (to put it mildly). Switzerland is also pegged to the Euro, and does great, because of its diversified knowledge economy (where pharmaceuticals dominate).

Krugman is aware, but disingenuously denies, that loving the dollar is hating the euro:

“if you were an American expressing doubts you were invariably accused of ulterior motives — of being hostile to Europe, or wanting to preserve the dollar’s “exorbitant privilege.”

And the euro came. For a decade after its introduction a huge financial bubble masked its underlying problems. But now, as I said, all of the skeptics’ fears have been vindicated.”

***

Why the Euro?

Because France and Germany have had enough to fight each other. The two countries are roughly comparable in all ways, economically and financially. They are converging demographically. They used to be the same country for five centuries, a time during which a unified Germany, and a German language was created.

The re-creation of a unified Germany, after 1,000 years, without, led to near continuous war between France and Germany, for, fundamentally, philosophical reasons.

France won, both sides are now sister republics, ready for total reunification. Thus they need a common currency. Then the in-betweens (truly pieces of France which were torn away from France, to make France weaker) cannot survive without using that same currency. Then one has to add contiguous areas with the same socioeconomic level (Austria, Northern Italy, Catalogne; the latter two long part of French territory, especially if one defines France as more than just the so-called “kingdom of France“, which was often a very small, relevant territory  inasmuch as it was supposed to be the imperial seat). At this point one is well above 200 million people with the same currency, and a GDP only second to the USA.

This territory is the old Francia which founded Western Civilization. Western Civilization is not just Jerusalem, Athens plus Rome, as many have it. It’s also the Franks and the tolerant melting pot they imposed on the Germano-Gallo-Romans, with their home made, advanced, pseudo-Christian philosophy.

How can the rest of Europe be excluded?

The USA acquired its common currency during the Secession War. So far, the attempt to secede in Europe are rather meek. Let’s keep them this way.

Naturally, the USA’s patriots can only hate to have a second world reserve currency. The dollar as world currency was imposed on Keynes through the substitution of the crucial document for another one.

Paul Krugman never mentions the felony that gave rise, over Keynes’ obstinate resistance, to the dollar as world currency.

Europe is not an impossible dream. Should it become so, so will human civilization. Because Europe is a toy model of the global problem of nationalities.

More fundamentally, today’s civilization, all the way to China, Japan and Patagonia or South Africa, was invented mostly in Europe. Admitting it is impossible, is admitting a nice future is impossible.

Is all lost? Did American europhobic university professors win? Not sure. Hollande and Merkel are working on a Eurozone government, democratically anchored through a subset of the European Parliament. It’s high time. “Le nationalisme, c’est la guerre!” (nationalism is war) said French president Mitterrand in one of his last discourses. Ironically, Chancellor Kohl had proposed further political union when he signed on the Euro project, and Mitterrand, then hindered by a divided government, turned him down.

I am sure Frau Doktor Merkel remembers this, and will seize the opportunity.

Patrice Ayme’

Europe Trapped By Masochism, Intellectual Laziness?

Greece, Euro, Algerian FNL, Colonialism, Bullying, Whining and Depression.

Syriza, a Party in Greece, threatens to win elections on January 25. Its leader has announced Syriza was not a danger for Europe, but that Merkel was. His views are those I long held within these pages. “To Save The World, Devalue!”

Some Germans, claiming to have talked with officials, uttered that Greece could leave the Euro. Why don’t those Germans mind their business? The Euro is Greek money. Greeks want to keep their money.

Meanwhile Lithuania adopted the Euro. All European countries are supposed to adopt the Euro. Even the Swiss Frank is locked to it (and is going down accordingly).

If Germans want a clean Europe, they can accept the official French proposal to create a European Banking Union, the equivalent of the FDIC of the USA. Conservative Germans are not anxious to do this.

Indeed the German Landbanks, the local banks, crucial to finance the German “Mittelstand”, the middle companies, are bankrupt, and live on accommodations with the authorities. In other words; disguised subsidies.

“Austerity” in Europe means not enough money to operate the economy. Let Syriza bite Merkel’s well fed derriere!

Euro Still Way Too High:

Politics, when not totally democratic, can be absolutely Machiavellian. The Euro reached 1.45 dollars, a few years ago. Clearly it should rather be half that.

Based on the very long range equivalence of the French Franc with the Dollar, the Euro was made to be worth one Dollar. However, the economy of the USA has been much stronger, for years. Thus the Euro should be lower than its lowest level ever (when Germany was in trouble, a decade ago). That was 83 Dollar cents.

A way out of the European crisis is to boost the economy and lower the Debt/GDP by lowering the Euro. This has been zehr klar, for years. After the article in Der Spiegel saying Berlin wanted to expel Greece (which cannot be constitutionally done), Siebert, spokesman of Merkel, said policy had no changed.

However, the Der Spiegel article may have been planted, just to hasten the lowering of the Euro (which reached 1.18 Dollar, lowest in nine years). If so, it would be in agreement with France (which has to be pushing for a Euro at 80 cents, if still endowed with brains).

It will not escape conspiracy theorists that a collapse of the Euro would be painless, as oil, paid in Dollar, has seen its own price cut quickly by half. Hopefully, Putin is also been cut in half.

Maybe God is a conspiracy theorist?

***

Too Much Mushy Whining, No Action:

Women tears’ smell lower testosterone in human males. In other words, if women want some action, they better act as activists, or even aggressors (“bitchy”) and not as whiners.

Instead of whining about “colonialism”, Europeans ought to have found what was wrong about it, and how to correct it for the best.

Shrinking onto oneself, that’s called depression.

***

Colonialism: Very Bad, Indeed, But the Wrong Notion

What’s the difference between an immigrant, a migrant, a colon, an invader?

I was always a fanatic of cultural, and ethnical mixed background. Why? Because the more cultural ingredients around, the wealthier the minds.

Example. Although I vigorously attack both Bible and Qur’an, my dirty little secret is that I live very faithfully according of some of the elements of both I approve of… For example I don’t touch alcohol (being drunk on my own thoughts all day long, will cynics no doubt notice).

In the 1950s, it was fashionable for French intellectuals to be “anti-colonialist”. This, in turn was amplified worldwide, and became the credo of the left and progressives.

According to the theory, the French had conquered the world, and needed to go back to their barracks. They did, and were replaced worldwide, by American plutocrats, and their GIs. The same was extended to other European colonialists, of course.

Did French intellectuals realize they had been had?

Most died without being officially aware. But some who were the youngest, and most frantically anti-“colonialism” are changing their tune. Decades of history have instructed them forcefully.

Rene’ Vautier, a French movie maker joined the Algerian FNL (to the point he was implicated in factions struggles therein, and got imprisoned because of this). He just died at 86, and gave a final interview.

Interestingly, this FNL fanatic, changed his music in recent years (“before I get senile” he added).

Vautier fought as a teenager against the Nazis in the French resistance. A communist he was sent to Africa. At the age of twenty-one years old in 1949 the Ligue de l’enseignement en Afrique sent him to make a film about life in the French African colonies. It was filmed in the Ivory Coast.

Under French administration, Ivory Coast was peaceful.

(I was left free as a toddler on the beach there; my only fear, whom I had been instructed to have, was of a vicious, roguish wave that would appear from time to time; ever since I have a healthy fear of waves… That does prevent me to surf, occasionally, or even been swept in recent year by a rogue wave in California, and losing a camera, but when I am by the ocean, I worry.)

Since the French left, as with many European ex-“colonies”, from Pakistan to Fidji, Shri Lanka to Somalia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Congo, Cambodia, or the CAR, Ivory Coast was wrecked by a vicious civil war (about who was really an Ivorian).

In his last interview, Vautier, a worldwide icon of anti-“colonialism”, declared he wished the struggle against “colonialism” had not been all in vain.

But in vain it was. In many places, where imperial states had blocked plutocratic excess, now the worst of the worse were free to roam and feast.

In The Trap Again?

Krugman wrote a blog post “Europe’s Trap”. It’s entirely correct. However, Europe fell into the trap when the Kaiser and his generals listened to the songs of Colonel House, right arm of American president Wilson.

Sure that the USA would help, the Prussian (also known as German) army attacked the French Republic in an all-out attack, August 3, 1914, invading and declaring war to secondary countries in the process. A month later, after retreating for three weeks, the French army successfully counter-attacked.

American help to trade with the Kaiser’s dictatorship, through the “neutral” Netherlands, extended the First World War three years. But that was only the beginning of the involvement of the USA in European submission affairs.

However, nowadays, the USA has come to realize that it cannot rule the world alone. So the enlightened ones agree that the European Union is a precious ally, and it needs its own currency. As Keynes had pleaded in 1944, the Dollar cannot do it all.

It’s nicer to have a peaceful union under Franco-Germania, rather than a West fighting itself to death.

If we want peace, we need as little exploitation as possible, and it starts in the neighborhood. To have a strong Europe is in the USA’s best interest.

Example: the disastrous, trillion Dollar price F35 flounders. This is the worst fighter plane ever put into production, and is a threat to the security of the USA (but not to North Korea or Putin).

However Europe has two excellent canard fighter-bombers, the Eurofighter/Typhoon and the Rafale, both armed with the excellent Meteor ramjet missile (Mach 4, 100 miles range). Both have excellent Infrared vision, and can fire infrared long range missiles. The Rafale has active stealth, and that works, whereas passive stealth not only does not work, but cannot work.

An astute U.S. Air Force could ditch the dangerous F35, and build one of the Euro canards, under licence and renovated. Thus Euro strength would profit USA strength. An example of many. At the Las Vegas consumer electronic show, January 2015, the second largest delegation, with more than 100 companies, is… French.

Meanwhile French president Hollande declared that the rise of the Islamist State is directly attributable to the refusal to strike mass bloody dictator Assad (in the end, only the French wanted to attack). Indeed (as I said for years).

Colonialism? No. Where are the colons? And are immigrants replenishing Europe, colons?

Just administering the empire. The worldwide empire we need to run good enough to survive, civilizationally speaking.

… And which is already running, albeit in plutocratic form.

Patrice Ayme’

Free Scotland From Thieves

Scotland: Off With Pluto?

For 35 years, increasingly deranged British politicians have been pushing for ever more selfishness, ever more power for money, and their hatred for the Union. In truth, all what they did was to foster increasingly lucrative financial plots based in London, the world’s premier center of the sort of money changing activities which should be destroyed like the Ebola virus.

This is not just about finance: London’s friendliness to plutocrats, that is, all satanic proclivities, have favored the likes of Assad and Putin, bloody dictators who are threatening civilization.

Vade Retro Plutocrats!

The British Parliament friendliness to the galaxy of evil orbiting Assad as the black hole he is, undercut the strike France and the USA were preparing against that monster. This, in turn led to a further disintegration of the Middle East into savagery, and incited Putin to invade Eastern Europe with tanks.

Now it’s payback time.

So London feels that the Union is the enemy, and money can solve everything? Then why should Scotland stay in an Union with London, taking orders from that blustering kleptocracy, while seeing its own oil money go south?

Scotland is conducting an independence referendum on September 18. All the enthusiasm is on the side of the independentists, and the polls are tight. Facing them, the high finance supremacists in London have called all their propagandists to present arguments to keep Scotland in chains.

Naturally, the pseudo-progressive Krugman, ultimate weapon of hyper finance, has been rolled out. One can see the hour is grave. For years I have insisted that Krugman, whether he realizes it, or not, is truly a double agent for Wall Street banks (after all, all he proposes is to send more public money to private banks).

Krugman used his New York Times pulpit to hurl disingenuous arguments at a free Scotland. Krugman: “Scots, What’s The Heck? The Very Bad Economics Of Independence” is a new low in anti-European propaganda. Krugman goes all out, using the oldest fascist trick: huge, irrational fear. Says he: “I have a message for the Scots: Be afraid, be very afraid. The risks of going it alone are huge.”

Is there something about Wall Street goons we do not know? because yes, it has everything to do with Wall Street, see below. Then Krugman forgets that Scotland is in Europe, and compares it to… Canada… Before enouncing in passing that “Canada pays a price for its independence”. This astounding Freudian slip reveals that, in Krugman’s mind, to be free means to be enslaved to New York banks. Canada should do like Krugman, be dependent upon Wall Street, and be paid that way. This is what Krugman’s liberal conscience says.

I will presently demolish Krugman’s false ideas, while exposing his crass ignorance. I will not bother to repeat Krugman’s unhinged disinformation: that would give it some consideration, and be confusing, as it deserves none. Instead, I will tell the truth. Raw.

(To be fully honest, Krugman published (part of) my critique; as usual the Times censors did their best to attenuate it, with various behind the scenes tricks.)

Krugman makes the argument that Scotland could not share the Pound with the rump UK, that it would be disaster. His reasoning is a piece of Wall Street banks’ religion. Wall Street propagandists identify the 2008 crisis with a “Euro crisis”. Naturlich, there was not such a thing, not anymore than there was a Jewish crisis when Hitler came to power. Hitler had a crisis, not the Jews. Similarly the banks have a crisis, not the Euro.

Indeed, since 2008 there is a crisis of the giant banks, or, more generally, of the fractional reserve system, and it’s part of the Plutocratic take-over.

But the Euro has little, if anything, to do with it. Actually the Euro spared the European countries from a devastating devaluation, and destruction by the rampaging banks and their associated politicians, judges, and the rest of the oligarchies. Corrupt them all.

For an inkling of the imaginable scale of corruption, watch Brazil: an ex-director of Petrobras, the Brazilian fossil fuel companies, risking 30 years in jail, is admitting that dozens of top politicians and lawmakers were paid 3% on all contracts for a ten year period, under presidents Lula and Roussef.

The Euro was a savior, and not a destructor, contrarily to what Krugman says. So why is Krugman insisting it’s a terrible thing? Moreover Scotland ought not, and will not, share the Pound, after a transition period. However, that’s not a problem. Why?

In the long run, the Pound is NOT supposed to exist. The Pound is just an ephemeral currency doomed to vanish (and not because it went down 10% in the last few days).

Disappearing the Pound is what the Brits signed on, when they got into the European Union. That they don’t understand this is a testimony to a lack of reading skills: it’s written black on white in the European Constitution.

OK, Britain does not have a written Constitution, so maybe the politicos there are not used to read such a document?

ALL EU countries are supposed to adopt the Euro. So Krugman’s whining is entirely inapplicable, and just demonstrates his gross ignorance of the EU Constitution (a few countries are provisionally allowed to go on with their own currency, or just peg themselves to the Euro, as Denmark does).

Obviously Scotland could go, and will go with the Pound for a while, as it is the present Scottish currency: London does not own the Pound exclusively.

Then discard the Pound Scotland will, like the old paper it is. As it is what the European Constitution says.

The United Kingdom Nuclear Strategic submarines are supposed to get out of Scotland by 2020 (that’s part of the framework proposed by the Scottish Independence Party).

That gives plenty of time for Scotland to elaborate a currency, and peg it to the Euro. Easy as pie. Many countries do this, including Switzerland.

Contrary to what ignorant American propagandists such as Krugman assert, the NCBs, the National Central Banks, print Euros. And guess what? They can also “print” as many Euros as they want.

Krugman always makes a big deal that Spain could not print as many Euros as Britain could print Pounds. That Spain decided not to do so, was a Spanish, not European decision. As it turned out, it was not needed. In recent months, Spanish long bonds were viewed as more valuable than long bonds from the USA.

So Krugman’s screaming against the Euro falls flat on his face. I guess it hurts, so he is screaming louder than ever.

The Euro is a major currency: more than half a billion people are either in the Eurozone, or enjoy a currency pegged to the Euro. That’s a more direct empire than the Dollar of the USA itself enjoys. As more and more countries stock up on Euros, the possibility of a world trade system shunning the Dollar keeps on increasing.

Keynes, Krugman’s hero, would have been very happy about this. Keynes had been tricked at Bretton Woods, in 1944: to make the Dollar into the world’s reserve currency, the USA forged false documents which the foreign delegations signed unwittingly.

Keynes knew that the Americans made it so to impose their currency to the world, as a cheap way to hardwire their supremacy. So here we are, and Krugman is one of the many attack dogs against the Euro.

It’s natural that people who depend upon Wall Street (as Princeton professors) do not like the Euro: the stronger financial Europe gets, the weaker Wall Street and its conspiracies.

There London comes in as a crucial part in the world plutocratic machine. Many of the financial practices In London are unlawful in Paris, Frankfurt, but also… New York. That’s why the branch of AIG, the AMERICAN International Group, whose dramatic derivatives trading crashed the world in 2008, was based in London, not New York. What they were doing in London would have been unlawful in New York.

So the plutocrats hates the Scottish Independence movement. Scottish independence would clearly weaken London (it would lose access to Scottish oil and gas, to start with; the British nuclear submarines would have to ask… France for hospitality: the British nuclear deterrent is exclusively based in Scottish fjords).

That den of crooks known as London would receive a huge blow to its prestige if Scotland . All the more as Northern Ireland and Wales may well follow. One may ask why the rump UK deserves a permanent UN Security Council seat, while its nuclear sub sulk in Britany’s Brest (that would be the second time the British Navy would flee to Britany in 15 centuries!).

Krugman’s objection to Scottish Independence is not the only fraudulent scheme the higher plutocratic circle have devised against those who don’t want to spend their lives on their knees, adoring “The City” of London.

Higher European circles are vassals of Wall Street (which gives them juicy jobs and contracts in return). Accordingly, just like an unreal Krugman barks against Scotland, pro-Wall Street Eurocrats loudly bellow that Scotland’s membership in the EU will not happen. That’s how mad and corrupt some Eurocrats have become.

They can say whatever. Decisions in the EU are taken by the governments of the nation-states, also known as the Paris-Berlin axis. (It’s fashionable to say all decisions are taken in Berlin, but that’s just a carefully maintained illusion.)

Thanks to those nuclear subs, and many other messy aspects of a divorce, I am sure that Scotland’s government will persuade London that it is in its best interest to help Scotland become a member of the EU.

The European Union, as I have said many times, just as the SDN (now known as the United Nations) is, fundamentally, a French idea. The reason that France gets this sort of ideas is that France was always the center, being at the center (and that’s actually why the Franks, originally German, went down there to start an empire). Nothing new, just a question of geography, it was already true in Neanderthal times: the three main trans-European routes between the Mediterranean and the Northern Seas go through France.

So the real question about Scotland becoming instantaneously the 29^th European Union member boils down to the opinion of the French elite. And what’s the important fact here? Before it got united with England, Scotland was united with France. France, thus the EU, will be delighted to welcome Scotland back.

The vicious clowns in London have, ever since the Iron Lady left the scene, become ever more irrationally anti-European. In particular, London refused to join Schengen, the passport free union between the countries at the core of Europe.

Just as it would be highly inconvenient to propagandist Krugman to change currencies when he goes from Manhattan (when he is finished talking on TV) back to Princeton, it would be also inconvenient that he would have his passport scrutinized. Yet, although downtown Paris and downtown London are only two hours of train ride apart, the arrogant servants of Mammon in London force what they call “subjects” to change currency and have their passports inspected.

Full European citizens do not have to do so, as they switch between their countries of Spain, France, Italy, Germany, etc. Notice that Switzerland and Norway are also in the Schengen Area (no passport controls).

London is welcoming to Russian plutocrats, not to vulgar Europeans.

Out of 59 Scottish MP, only one is a so called “Conservative” (the word “Conservative” is misleading: they would sell their mother, if they could make a buck that way; actually they are more like anti-civilizational revolutionaries). There are more pandas in Scotland, the joke goes, than conservatives. Thus Scotland has already divorced herself from the mad financial piracy in London and its obsequious sycophants.

It’s high time to separate Scotland formally from the organized financial criminality in London to show the world inhuman plutocracy is not omnipotent, and can be rejected. The time is past due. London and its 100 tax havens can go to hell, to conspire further with Putin and Assad, among the flames, smoke, and mirrors. Hopefully the gross and pathetic lies of Wall Street servants with ready access to Big Brother propaganda will not change this.

Let Wall Street’s devoted cockroaches roar in vain. Free Scotland! Vote Yes!

Patrice Ayme’

Bring Euro Down, Save Germany’s Soul

Another day, another sneak remark of Krugman against the Euro which mars an otherwise well thought of train of ideas. However, our student the dear professor is learning. He just made an excellent editorial “The Fall of France” about which I commented, and that was published (whereas the Times censored my observations about Putin’s naked aggression in Ukraine: comparisons with Hitler, however scholastic, are not welcome!). More on this later.

Krugman’s tendency to fall into Euro bashing prevents him to see the (obvious) solution. Let alone mention it. The solution lays for all to see in history, when the Euro solved the German problem for the best:

History As A Sum Of Solutions

Question: what did I exactly mean? See below, for those who do not see the blatant answer in the violent graph above. Here is part of Krugman’s “Germany’s Sin”.

“Simon Wren-Lewis has two very good posts about the European situation, first laying out the problem, then taking on those who don’t get it. I just want to add a bit to one of his key points: the impossibility of a resolution unless Germany accepts higher inflation.

In Germany, there’s a strong tendency to moralize, with appeals to the country’s own recent economic history. We pulled ourselves out of our late 90s doldrums, the Germans say, so why can’t Southern Europe do the same?

But a key part of the answer is that Southern Europe now faces a much less favorable environment than Germany did then — and Germany is the reason why.”

For a full decade, eurozone inflation was 2 percent, while inflation in Southern Europe was considerably higher. Germany could gain competitiveness simply by having low inflation — no need to deflate. But these days German inflation is only one percent, French inflation close to zero percent. Thus eurozone inflation is no more than one percent. Gaining competitiveness means that Southern Europe should deflate.

And Krugman to conclude:

…”deflation worsens the debt burden. Add onto this the fact that the eurozone as a whole remains depressed thanks to fiscal austerity and inadequate monetary expansion, and Germany is in effect demanding that Spain and others accomplish a task vastly harder than the Germans themselves had to achieve. 

And the worst of it is that there’s no sign that Berlin understands, or is willing to understand, this reality. And if the euro fails, that refusal to think clearly will be the fundamental cause.”

Right. And also wrong. “If the euro fails” is not really a possibility. It would cost so dearly, to so many people, that it would be akin to war, and Europeans have learned a few things that way. A lot of milder drastic changes can be effected before coming to blows.

Notice an obvious help Germany had when it was the sick economy of Europe: a Euro which was 40% lower. It’s curious, but no accident, that Krugman fails to notice this.

Bringing the euro to 83 dollar cents has happened before, and was there to help Germany, then. The good professor should mention this more. That would help the German miscreants to remember the past better. (Of course, the Euro at 83 Dollar cents would be a disaster for the USA, hence Krugman’s failure to notice the obvious!)

Instead, to brandish the “failure” of a currency directly used by so many people is not serious. More than 50 countries and 530 million people use the Euro (counting both the 340 million of the Eurozone, plus nearly 200 million pegged to the Euro, and unilateral users).

Even if the euro disintegrated, the nasty mood of some in Germany would not just persist, but prosper further. Ultimately that bad mood has to be crushed at close quarters.

Germany has become the world’s greatest produced of lignite, the dirtiest coal. It’s high time for some serious German bashing. Just slamming the door is not enough: historically Germans understand barking best (as Nietzsche may have said).

Bringing the euro down would help the suffering European countries a lot. Let’s remind the Germans of this. Remind them of their own past, and other previous pasts: German currency manipulations to gain advantage go all the way back to the early 1920s (thanks to Dr. Schacht, head of the central bank, and later one of Hitler’s main promoter!)

Bringing the euro 35% down: that would be a triumph, a real euro success. (That would just put the Euro where it’s supposed to be, in long term parity with

Hating the Euro is hating Europe. This being said, differently from the Federal Reserve Bank of the USA’s mandate, the ECB’s mandate makes the “value of the currency” the “principal object” of its activities (that’s article 127 of the European Constitution). By contrast the Fed has a DOUBLE mandate: insuring the value, and optimizing economic activity.

I had a fight with a French economist when I pointed out the flaw of the ECB mandate. She told me: ”No, the ECB’s mandate is like the Fed’s!”. Her own son, himself a high flying interest rate analyst in London, agreed with me. She erupted: “I have taught these things, for years!”. She brandished books. I told her to look it up in the Internet.

Article 127(1) of the Treaty defines the primary objective of the Eurosystem:

“The primary objective of the European System of Central Banks […] shall be to maintain price stability”.

Article 127 continues as follows: “Without prejudice to the objective of price stability, the ESCB shall support the general economic policies in the Union with a view to contributing to the achievement of the objectives of the Union as laid down in Article 3 of the Treaty on European Union.”

Even as my friend, aghast, looked at the screen, and read those words, she could not understand what they meant. yet, it’s simple: it meant the destruction of the European economy.

Why? Because “price stability” is unsustainable, just as a plane cannot fly at ground level. In economics, the ground is zero percent inflation. Right now it’s only .3% in the Eurozone. For why inflation too close to zero is a disaster, see “Inflation Good, Stagnation Bad” or the older: “4% inflation best”.

We are led by imbeciles. Some are politicians, some are bankers, some are economists, some teach what they call economics, or politics. Many are greedy, and profiting from the stupidity they advocate.

Who gave them their drivers’ license? The license to drive entire economies, and even the biosphere, into the ground, while insulting common sense, let alone common science? Yesterday’s oligarchies?

Patrice Ayme’