Recent Globalization Meant Plutocratization, So It has Got To Go

There have been many globalizations of trade in sizable parts of the world before: unable to feed itself in small and desiccated Attica, Athens imported its wheat from the Black Sea and paid for it with high tech wares made in her factories. The philosopher Demosthenes was the owner of such a high tech small company. 

The city of Rome became huge. Unable to feed itself, it imported its food from overseas. Its metals, including for making currency, came from Spain, its swords and helmets were made by Gauls. However, Roman globalization soon took a sinister turn: wealthy Romans learned to escape the Roman absolute limit on wealth by fiscal optimization.

When Roman oligarchs became wealthy enough, by plundering overseas, just like Russian oligarchs who plunder inside Russia (mostly, but not only), they used their gigantic wealths to buy all they needed in Rome, in particular all arable land, and not just tribunes, and votes. Rome became an evil-power: pluto-kratia. Democrats (under this name) and Populares (Marius and his nephew Caesar) fought the plutocrats to death. But they lost. In the end, after generations of massacres, the population was greatly diminished, the Roman army, hiding behind the young Octavian, took power, and gigantic immigration from the Eastern Mediterranean replaced the ancient dead Romans [1].

The present globalization has much to do with the globalization which killed the Roman Republic and its direct democracy [2]. Immense fortunes have been made by the wealthiest, whose definition is that they pay little or no tax, and buy themselves politicians, laws, media, and conspiracies and plots all over the planet.

First thing to do is to tax the plutocrats, worldwide! (Biden just announced the wealthiest Americans paid only 8% tax, a very small fraction of what average US taxpayers pay!)

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The preceding comment was censored by Paul Krugman and The New York Times: perhaps because it identified globalization and plutocratization, a terrible  thought crime… Noble Nobel Krugman, famous for his celebration of globalization and his ilk explicitly say, and Krugman repeated that the end of globalization will cause us all to be less wealthy (as if we were all wealthy!) I was not surprised by this censorship, so I sent another comment, which was published, after being delayed 12 hours (so that nobody would read it while the NYT can claim that it doesn’t censor!) Here it is in a fuller version below. The version sent to the NYT was weaker, and didn’t have the first paragraph below. NYT is a crucial part of the world plutocracy presently bombing Ukraine… When I undermine that effort, and this link between the WEF/Davos and Putin, I get censored…

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The price of globalization through plutocratization, which we benefited from, according to plutocratic propaganda, was right… for the world’s wealthiest people, our masters and owners. They particularly liked the fact they could buy democracy on the cheap that way. 

Our freedom is surely worth paying a bit of it through lesser GDP, especially considering most of that GDP has been going to oligarchs…  

Russian oligarchs are a product of this system, globalization through plutocratization, same as Rome, with Putin playing a role similar to Jugurtha, the homicidal Numidian usurper.

Globalization through plutocratization made dictators in Russia and China very powerful. Xi made alliances with many US oligarchs and developed a murderous surveillance tyranny in close cooperation with the biggest global tach firms. All of this without paying taxes, claiming to be tax free foundations and advising, or controlling even the mightiest states, even in an educational role (foxes teaching chicken the ways of the world).

As this global corruption festered, pressing issues such as nuclear weapons and the CO2 crisis were not addressed beyond smoke, mirrors and windmills…

Evil-power, plutocracy, is a corruption of hearts, desires, and even pleasure. Plutocrats take pleasure in other people’s misery: this is why Putin goes around, saying that his war in Ukraine is going according to plan: what Putin wants is flattened cities. As they hog resources for their clans, global plutocrats want to flatten the rest of the planet, knowing well that increasingly more miserable conditions will lead to war, the unspeakable evil. 

A detailed analysis of what went wrong with Carthage shows the same pattern. Carthage was an oligarchic democracy (one could say). Out of rage and anxiety from Roman gathering might, Carthage expanded forcefully in Spain. That was led by the Barca family (think Barcelone). So doing the Barcas, those ancient plutocrats cum generals, spurned Carthaginian legal control, and made the confrontation with the Roman Republic worse.

Plutocratization, especially when global, brings war. It brought it to Rome, it brought it to 1914, it brought it to us. In all cases, the origin of the global plutocratization was unbridled globalization, escaping the control of local laws, hence civilization.

Patrice Ayme

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[1] We have genetic proof of this, since 2019… Published in Science. Here is an extract: 

By the founding of Rome, the genetic composition of the region approximated that of modern Mediterranean populations. During the Imperial period, Rome’s population received net immigration from the Near East, followed by an increase in genetic contributions from Europe. These ancestry shifts mirrored the geopolitical affiliations of Rome and were accompanied by marked interindividual diversity, reflecting gene flow from across the Mediterranean, Europe, and North Africa.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aay6826

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[2] https://www.resilience.org/stories/2018-05-29/new-data-reveal-the-hidden-mechanisms-of-the-collapse-of-the-roman-empire/

I wrote a lot on the subject, for decades…

Metal pollution in Greenland from the economic and technological activity of Roman civilization. One can ssee clearly the rise of activity corresponding to the growth of the Roman Republic, then the collapse due to the civil wars brought by the fight to death between plutocration and the democrats (Romans used that exact word: democrats… They also use massively “oligarchs” to qualify whom I prefer to call “plutocrats” (evil oligarchs). One can see the collapse of the fascist empire and its attempted recovery, from more fascism, starting with Diocletian… Circa 300 CE. On the far right one can see the Merovingian then Carolingian Frankish recovery, with the peak by Charlemagne’s coronation as Roman emperor… The Franks had conquered Eastern Europe, all the way to Ukraine…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

New trade theory suggests that: 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Official Implications Of New Trade Theory:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Patrice Ayme

    

 

It Should Be An Economy, Instead It Is An Ecocaust

… Not to say an Ecocide, and US Politicians have made it so:

Eco-nomy means house management, it’s not eco-caust, burning the house. So how come it’s happening nevertheless? Because brains are washed with petroleum media.

The world is dominated by a monopoly, the financial plutocracy, which is entangled with another, the fossil fuel plutocracy.

For example fracking was financed by Wall Street. Both are even entangled with Literal Islam (Wahhabism, etc.)… thanks to a conspiracy by FDR on the Great Bitter Lake in 1945 with the Abdulaziz, founder of Saudi Arabia.

Is it greed, or outright thievery by, and addiction from, fossil fuel pushers? Because finance and oil control media: how else to explain nuclear killed nobody at Fukushima, while fossil fuels kill ten million a year, and still everybody is indignant about the former?

Obama The Great Fossil Fueled! As one can see Obama/Democrats made the fossil fuel orgasm of the USA possible as never before (with preliminary work from Bush Senior to Bush W) to make US fracking profitable to Wall Street

Or how to explain Obama killed hydrogen… which was massively used in Europe already in the 1950s (“urban gas/gas de ville)? Hydrogen, and its derivatives (ammonia, etc.) would enable the storage of renewables, and could be used all over in transportation. Instead Japan, Germany, are closing nuclear, and switching to coal. Germany fear periods, which can last two weeks, with no wind and no sun.

The correct solution should be “green hydrogen” (hydrogen from renewables). Expanding these new technologies will cause a formidable economic expansion. Fossil fuel economy and finance are fundamentally fascist economic activities: they require only oligarchs, a few workers. Renewable economy is the exact opposite

Patrice Ayme

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And yes, it will all burn, this is how climate will change!

A simplified version of the above comment was finally published by the NYT, after much tergiversations, apparently, as a comment to Paul Krugman… Except the New York Times sat nearly 48 hours on my comment before publishing it, long after the other comments. That tells me they read it very carefully, while making sure nobody else would read it (hide your sources, if you want to pass for a genius, as Einstein would say). Now the Paul Krugman editorial was pretty good, and he said things I have said for years… So I reproduce big chunks of it below, as after all, this is mostly what I have long said (and which was many times carefully read at NYT, before being censored…). As usual, Trump is accused (more or less implicitly, of Obama’s policies (look carefully at the graph above!), or policies of the US Deep State, in place for a century). Here is Paul Krugman:

Greta Versus the Greedy Grifters
Why a 17-year-old is a better economist than Steve Mnuchin.

I’ve never been a fan of Davos, that annual gathering of the rich and fatuous. One virtue of the pageant of preening and self-importance, however, is that it brings out the worst in some people, leading them to say things that reveal their vileness for all to see.

And so it was for Steven Mnuchin, Donald Trump’s Treasury secretary. First, Mnuchin doubled down on his claim that the 2017 tax cut will pay for itself — just days after his own department confirmed that the budget deficit in 2019 was more than $1 trillion, 75 percent higher than it was in 2016.

Then he sneered at Greta Thunberg, the young climate activist, suggesting that she go study economics before calling for an end to investment in fossil fuels…

… burning fossil fuels is a huge source of environmental damage, not just from climate change but also from local air pollution, which is a major health hazard we don’t do nearly enough to limit.

The International Monetary Fund makes regular estimates of worldwide subsidies to fossil fuels — subsidies that partly take the form of tax breaks and outright cash grants, but mainly involve not holding the industry accountable for the indirect costs it imposes. In 2017 it put these subsidies at $5.2 trillion; yes, that’s trillion with a “T.” For the U.S., the subsidies amounted to $649 billion, which is about $3 million for every worker employed in the extraction of coal, oil and gas.

Without these subsidies, it’s hard to imagine that anyone would still be investing in fossil fuels….

But maybe Mnuchin thinks that the I.M.F. should also take some courses in economics — along with the thousands of economists, including every living former Federal Reserve chair, dozens of Nobel laureates, and chief economists from both Democratic and Republican administrations, who signed an open letter calling for taxes on emissions of greenhouse gases.

In short, Greta Thunberg may be only 17, but her views are much closer to the consensus of the economics profession than those of the guy clinging to the zombie idea that tax cuts pay for themselves.

But could the economics consensus be wrong? Yes, but probably because it isn’t hard enough on fossil fuels.

On one side, a number of experts argue that standard models underestimate the risks of climate change, both because they don’t account for its disruptive effects and because they don’t put enough weight on the possibility of total catastrophe.

On the other side, estimates of the cost of reducing emissions tend to understate the role of innovation. Even modest incentives for expanded use of renewable energy led to a spectacular fall in prices over the past decade.

I still often find people — both right-wingers and climate activists — asserting that sharply reducing emissions would require a big decline in G.D.P. Everything we know, however, says that this is wrong, that we can decarbonize while continuing to achieve robust growth….

The bigger issue, however, is sheer greed.

Given the scale of subsidies we give to fossil fuels, the industry as a whole should be regarded as a gigantic grift. It makes money by ripping off everyone else, to some extent through direct taxpayer subsidies, to a greater extent by shunting the true costs of its operations off onto innocent bystanders.

And let’s be clear: Many of those “costs” take the form of sickness and death, because that’s what local air pollution causes. Other costs take the form of “natural” disasters like the burning of Australia, which increasingly bear the signature of climate change.

In a sane world we’d be trying to shut this grift down. But the grifters — which overwhelmingly means corporations and investors, since little of that $3-million-per-worker subsidy trickles down to the workers themselves — have bought themselves a lot of political influence.

And so people like Mnuchin claim not to see anything wrong with industries whose profits depend almost entirely on hurting people. Maybe he should take a course in economics — and another one in ethics.

Vote For Truth & Other Recommendations

OFF WITH THE CLINTON ‘GLOBAL INITIATIVE’ WORLD OF PLUTOCRACY UNCHAINED

I support much of Clinton’s program. However… It is not just that she is not “inspiring“ as Obama just said. She belongs to a party whose elite has done the opposite of what they claimed they wanted to do, and lied about why and how that happened. Moreover herds of idiots out there, believe said elite of plutocrats, hook, line, sinker, and the entire boat. For 24 years. Yesterday I was walking in my neighborhood, along the shore of the world’s greatest ocean. On the other side of the giant 4 miles bridge, apartments have been sold for 60 million dollars. In the streets, in the nooks and crannies, homeless people moved, in the last few weeks. They will not vote. They live in absolute garbage, worse than in the worst of India. Indeed, unbelievably, they build their refuges from garbage. It smells, there are broken bottles everywhere. They are on the move, police is hunting them, bulldozing them here and there.

Even in the poorest parts of Africa, I have never seen such misery. And those are mainly young white men, with the occasional woman and the slightly Afro-American white man thrown in. They are real US citizens, not recent (often illegal) Hispanic immigrants (those stick together, and have work). That’s the other side of the Clinton-Obama global imperial plutocracy. Or, as the Clintons like to call it “The Clinton Global initiative”. To see who support that “Global Initiative” look at the long list of dictators who have given money to the Clinton family, or look at the picture below:

The CEO Of Goldman Sachs (on the right) Is Inseparable From Hillary Clinton & The Clinton Global Initiative: Global Plutocracy Is The Clinton Global Initiative. GS Was Not Prosecuted For Its Crimes In Greece

But don’t say that to wealthy Californians: they have immensely profited from the global corporate fascist crony capitalist state. A few miles from these hordes of homeless drifters pushed around by police, the world’s richest corporations have their headquarters, paying no taxes and doubling as spy agencies for the global security state. Those who earn their lives well in the SF Bay Area are professionally bound to sing the praises of that system, lest they be ostracized (same story in New York).

Well known philosopher Zizek observed that:”“Humanity is OK, but 99% of people are boring idiots.” No wonder they vote for that:

Baby Is Hungry! Wealthy Idiots Found A President For Hire. But Destitute Idiots Did Not Hire Her. Instead, They Just Admire

Thanks to Donald Trump, the idiots are getting less boring. Now they have coprolalia, and it’s Hillaryous. The insults are flowing, thick and innovative. I roll out FRED (Federal REserve Data), and posers who claim to be “Democrats” pile up derogatory terms to describe me.

Funny how Trump went from pillar of the establishment, to universally reviled as a “populist”. The same reproach was made to Caesar; Caesar was the leader of the “Populares”.  Trump is a man who dared to campaign, with his own money, against Ronald Reagan, as early as 1987. You have to understand that Trump critics such as Paul Krugman and Bill Clinton had actually worked for Ronald Reagan, years prior to 1987. Paul Krugman was officially in the White House, advising him how to fleece the little guys by setting a worldwide global plutocracy of outlaws. Now the outlaws are in power, and they have bought the Main Stream Media. Worldwide .

Bill Clinton helped Reagan set Iran-Contra (see  Arkansas governor Bill Clinton president George Bush CIA drugs for guns connection for crusty details).

Ironically Daniel Ortega, Reagan’s great enemy in Nicaragua,  was re-elected this weekend president of Nicaragua for the fourth time, with his own poetess multilingual wife as Vice President; Ortega just got 71% of the vote… and Washington based World Bank recognized that Ortega has done a good job reducing poverty! So Clinton and Reagan killed all these people for no good reason.

(Yes Ortega practices crony capitalism, as the Dems do in the US; but the difference is that the median income in Nicaragua has shot up, whereas in the USA, the median family income is down 5% from what it was under Bill Clinton.)

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Voting Recommendations:

I vote for truth! Some will say it’s not on the ballot. Well, in California there are more than 12 propositions to vote on. Including: Outlawing the death penalty (I recommend yes), extending by twelve (12) years the supplementary taxes on wealthy income (I recommend yes), augmenting taxes on cigarettes (I recommend yes).

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How Come Victims Support Their Oppressors?

This is the eternal question when looking at history. But the answer is always the same: oppressors manipulate the victims’ minds (except for outright brutal military invasions like those of the Mongols, or France in May 1940, invaded by the Nazi army)

The obvious flaws in USA (and most of the West) are inequality, global plutocracy, the richest paying the less tax, mass crony capitalism, mass media lies. Clinton-Obama, following the initiative of Reagan, himself following Reagan, set it up.

To what John Michael Gartland commented: “I don’t think that I will ever live long enough to understand the fanatical devotion and level of irrational denial of their minions.”

Dear JMD: You have several types of minions. Those who are in for money, power, the REAL minions (in the etymological sense of Henri II’s court) who have a vested interest in it, that is all the Hollywood, celebrities, Crony Capitalists, wealthiest paying little tax, plutocrats made by the Deep State, etc. Those have interest, pecuniary interest and power interest in the Clinton-Obama world.

Then there are the multitudes who vote Clinton, and are in DENIAL. Then there are the multitudes who really believe Trump set-up the world as it is, because they have not been paying attention. They really believe that it is all the fault of the “Republicans” (when Dems were in full supermajority power in 2009, say; this is why some on the Internet went insane at that notion which I long exposed… in 2009, or even in an essay last week…)

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Why Are People So Idiotic? Media Propaganda.

Under the Soviets, the main newspaper was “Pravda” (“Truth”). It was full of lies. Now all the media in the West is under control.

It told the truth in 2009: I wrote in a comment to the New York Times that Obama lowered taxes a lot on richest incomes. The New York Times censored my comment. The. NYT recognized that was true only in 2016. Meanwhile, their readers were led to believe that Obama has brought taxes up on the rich (Obama did raise them a bit in 2012). Too many comments like that, and the NYT censored me totally (they don’t even bother to answer me anymore when I ask them why). I think that should be against the law, BTW (as the NYT has special prerogatives granted to it by the state, supposedly representing We The People).

Paul Krugman just accused Trump of anti-Judaism (by innuendo, Krugman did not produce any quotes). Paul Krugman is a an efficient propagandist of global plutocracy employed at White House under Reagan, while Trump raged against Reagan. At the White House, Reagan had put Krugman in charge of plutocratic globalization. So maybe we should call the “Clinton Initiative” the “Krugman Initiative”.

Says Krugman: “I had arranged for a leave from MIT and was on my way to Washington, to be the chief staffer for international economics at the Council of Economic Advisers.

It was, in a way, strange for me to be part of the Reagan Administration. I was then and still am an unabashed defender of the welfare state… I am also unable to pretend to respect “policy entrepreneurs”, the intellectually dishonest self-proclaimed experts who tell politicians what they want to hear. The Reagan Administration was, of course, full of people who hated the welfare state and had very little interest in the truth.”

Whatever. Power is power, some can’t resist the appeal of exerting power. Thus we end up, or rather, down, led into the abyss by the worst, those who are mostly motivated by power greed.

Paul Krugman became a professional, efficient propagandist of global plutocracy, singing the praises of trade. While Krugman was employed at White House under Reagan, Trump raged against Reagan about middle-income Americans being fleeced through international arrangements. Krugman got a Nobel for explaining scholastically that global trade was good. It’s good for global plutocrats (which pays the Nobel committee).

Trump kept raging against the system, sending millions to a succession of politicians who talked big about helping all (such as the Clintons).

Were Krugman and his ilk dishonest, or simply idiotic?  Paul Krugman, not a philosopher, behaved as if he did not suspect that global trade without global law would bring global plutocracy, world slavery, no more jobs in the West.

The median income in the USA is down 5% over what it was under Bill Clinton. Meanwhile the cost of quality health care and quality education has gone through the roof. So did real estate. Obama has been a disaster, but, because he is a “cool” guy, he is still wildly popular. Weirdly, whether Trump or Clinton, the president will be more up for the job. Obama is probably smarter than either, but he did not have either the temperament, nor the experience: he was too young when he became president. This being said, either Clinton, or Trump, will have a much more difficult situation… because the “cool” guy was so cool, he stayed below a rock for eight years, like a cool snake. 

With plutocracy owned Main Stream Media skewing the mood on all the financial-economic & social news & opinion, sanity can’t be regained. The Democrats found for themselves one of the world’s most corrupt family to lead the world again. Same old, same old, eight years after their financial conspiracies led to the world’s most spectacular financial crisis ever (the Great Depression went out of control when it was amplified as an economic-political crisis, starting July 1930). 

Oh, last but not least, Slavoj Zizek is viewed as a “Hegelian” Marxist philosopher. He said that he would vote for Trump. Zizek’s explanation:

“Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. When Stalin was asked in the late 1920s which deviation is worse, the Rightist one or the Leftist one, he snapped back: They are both worse! Is it not the same with the choice American voters are confronting in the 2016 presidential elections? Trump is obviously “worse.” He enacts a decay of public morality. He promises a Rightist turn. But he at least promises a change. Hillary is “worse” since she makes changing nothing look desirable.

With such a choice, one should not lose ones nerve and chose the “worst,” which means change—even if is a dangerous change—because it opens up the space for a different more authentic change.

The point is thus not to vote for Trump—not only should one not vote for such a scum, one should not even participate in such elections. The point is to approach coldly the question: Whose victory is better for the fate of the radical emancipatory project, Clinton’s or Trump’s? Trump wants to make America great again, to which Obama responded that America already is great. But is it? “

Zizek rightly dismisses the analogies with Hitler, pointing out that the hierarchies and geology of power in the USA are very complex. I agree with much of what Zizek says, especially the iconoclastic aspect, although I know the situation better than he does, and I know that on some important points Trump is way left of Clinton. What we have is two rightist plutocrats fighting, one global, the other national. [I will comment Zizek more in the future, if I find time.]

Electing Trump is the best reward Obama’s plutocratic, corporate fascism rule deserves. That will fit even better than his Nobel prize. However, electing Clinton is the best reward her idiotic, fanatical supporters deserve. Plus, she is a woman (and we need a woman leader). Decisions, decisions…

Patrice Ayme’

Economy: Moods Are Changing

“TROUBLE” WITH EUROPE? WHY NOT THE US?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Patrice Ayme’  

Voting Clinton Is Voting Trump

Why choosing Clinton as democratic candidate guarantees the election of Trump? There are two main reasons. The first is that Donald Trump is going to defeat Hillary Clinton. Trump, however, would be defeated by Bernie Sanders (and he knows it, hence the virulence of Trump’s attacks against Sanders).

Why would Trump defeat hillary Clinton? Just look at Hillary Clinton’s tax returns, if nothing else. In 2014, she made more than 24 million dollars, in 2015, more than twenty-seven millions. Who would not love to earn three million dollars more, from a year to the next? How did Hillary make this money? Through influence peddling, and the promise of more to come. By contrast, Bernie Sanders made less than 1% of what Clinton made.

Private (Including Corporate) Investment Versus Corporate Profits. Under Clinton-Obama-Establishment Rule, The Gap Between Monopoly Profits And Lack Of Investment In The Economy, Has Never Been So Wide. Can’t Accuse Bush, Reagan, and The Great bad Wolf Out There. The Wolf Has Been Obama’s Policy

Some will say Trump makes more than Clinton. Yes, but it’s the nature of their jobs, which differ. Donald Trump is going to accuse Clinton of corruption. Because that’s all what her immense fortune is about. When asked why he lived so modestly, ex-President Truman pointed out that, doing otherwise, using influence peddling, “would demean the office of the presidency”. And Truman was no shrinking violet: among other things, he dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (shortening considerably, by a psycho-political shock effect, a war that killed much more than 10,000 persons a day).

Trump also has favored single-payer, and, or, socialized medicine, in many declarations, for decades. He extolled the Canadian (single-payer) or Scottish (socialized) systems in the past, Hillary has declared that the richest country in the world could not afford either (differently from all other rich countries, and many, not so rich).

So Trump is going to run to the LEFT of Hillary. This is all the clearer as Trump declared, also many times that his friends in the financial industry should pay taxes at the same rate as anybody else (in particular Trump accused his friends, the hedge fund managers New York is crawling with, of getting an unfair break with “carried interest”).

Hillary, like Ted Cruz, is financed by the likes of Goldman-Sachs.

At this point, Trump is running fully on the right against the Goldman Sachs puppet who says things won’t be right “until the body of Christ rises agian”. I said in December Cruz was the true candidate of the plutocrats, and, indeed, here we are.

I used to consider, very long ago, Trump as the poster boy of what was wrong with the US banking system (long story). However, in the meantime, the Clintons got to power, and unleash the banks onto the world. The Clintons made finance so domineering that “Shadow Banks” sprouted all over.

And what of Obama, in all this. Paul Krugman himself, a strident Hillary partisan, admits, in his latest editorial, that Obama increased the powers of monopoly (in a similar vein, the New York Times admitted that Obama lowered the tax rates of the 400 richest US taxpayers by 20%, in 2009. Ironically, when I used to notice that, as it happened, I was taxed with racism, and the NYT censored my comments; this mentality of censorship of an inconvenient reality explains why said inconvenience was allowed to grow).

***

Anxious To Please Progressives, Krugman Suddenly Gets It:

In “Robber Baron Recession”, the hard core Hillary supporter opines that:

“ In recent years many economists, including people like Larry Summers and yours truly, have come to the conclusion that growing monopoly power is a big problem for the U.S. economy — and not just because it raises profits at the expense of wages. Verizon-type stories, in which lack of competition reduces the incentive to invest, may contribute to persistent economic weakness.

The argument begins with a seeming paradox about overall corporate behavior. You see, profits are at near-record highs, thanks to a substantial decline in the percentage of G.D.P. going to workers. You might think that these high profits imply high rates of return to investment. But corporations themselves clearly don’t see it that way: their investment in plant, equipment, and technology (as opposed to mergers and acquisitions) hasn’t taken off, even though they can raise money, whether by issuing bonds or by selling stocks, more cheaply than ever before.

How can this paradox be resolved? Well, suppose that those high corporate profits don’t represent returns on investment, but instead mainly reflect growing monopoly power. In that case many corporations would be in the position I just described: able to milk their businesses for cash, but with little reason to spend money on expanding capacity or improving service. The result would be what we see: an economy with high profits but low investment, even in the face of very low interest rates and high stock prices.”

I have, of course been saying this for years. I even saw in the root phenomenon of all this, the plutocratic phenomenon, the cause of the Fall of The Roman Republic, and thus, ultimately, of the Roman Empire.

Basically elites profit from the established order, and thus work against changing it, at all cost. Technology itself is disruptive (and, a fortiori, science), so they are limited as much as possible (while claiming to not being doing so).

So, in 2014, Paul Krugman wrote that growing importance of monopoly rents is producing a disconnect between profits and production. Is that new? No. Actually the word “rentier” was the number one class distinction in Nineteenth Century France. There was the “rentier” class, and the “working class”.

What we have here, though, is rentier monopolies. So the extent of the phenomenon is new.

Krugman:

“And such an economy wouldn’t just be one in which workers don’t share the benefits of rising productivity; it would also tend to have trouble achieving or sustaining full employment.”

What Krugman should have said here was: “quality employment”. There is plenty of employment in the USA, as there are in many a slave society. There USED to be quality employment.

Krugman: “… when investment is weak despite low interest rates, the Federal Reserve will too often find its efforts to fight recessions coming up short. So lack of competition can contribute to “secular stagnation” — that awkwardly-named but serious condition in which an economy tends to be depressed much or even most of the time, feeling prosperous only when spending is boosted by unsustainable asset or credit bubbles. If that sounds to you like the story of the U.S. economy since the 1990s, join the club.”

There are, then, good reasons to believe that reduced competition and increased monopoly power are very bad for the economy. But do we have direct evidence that such a decline in competition has actually happened? Yes, say a number of recent studies, including one just released by the White House. For example, in many industries the combined market share of the top four firms, a traditional measure used in many antitrust studies, has gone up over time.

The obvious next question is why competition has declined. The answer can be summed up in two words: Ronald Reagan.

For Reagan didn’t just cut taxes and deregulate banks; his administration also turned sharply away from the longstanding U.S. tradition of reining in companies that become too dominant in their industries. A new doctrine, emphasizing the supposed efficiency gains from corporate consolidation, led to what those who have studied the issue often describe as the virtual end of antitrust enforcement.”

***

Krugman Then Dropped A Bombshell: Bad Obama

Obama, if anything, made monopoly powers greater than ever. A deer in the headlights is the charitable explanation. Here is Krugman again, suddenly coming over to the side of those who want justice, and wealth for all:

“… the Obama administration — preoccupied with the aftermath of financial crisis and the struggle with bitterly hostile Republicans — has only recently been in a position to grapple with competition policy.

Still, better late than never. On Friday the White House issued an executive order directing federal agencies to use whatever authority they have to “promote competition.” What this means in practice isn’t clear, at least to me. But it may mark a turning point in governing philosophy, which could have large consequences if Democrats hold the presidency.

For we aren’t just living in a second Gilded Age, we’re also living in a second robber baron era.”

So Obama was the Robber Baron-In-Chief, I presume? (I am very sorry… Barry, please, tell us it ain’t so…)

***

Brazil’s Standards Higher Than The US For Corruption?

The president of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff, has been impeached. The charge? Not personal enrichment, but cheating with the numbers of the Brazilian economy when she ran again for office (and was re-elected president). Hillary Clinton is an even bigger cheater, in the category of lying with the numbers of the government. But nobody knows about it, because nobody has called her lies.

Hillary, following Obama, pretends that the banks reimbursed 800 billions of TARP money. That’s technically correct. But a lie nevertheless. The Treasury was reimbursed TARP, modulo a Quantitative Easing program of many trillions which dwarfed TARP.  The Federal Reserve, another branch of government, bought Treasury Bonds, and Mortgage Securities from the banks at inflated prices (that what QE is).

Rousseff did not profit materially personally (whereas many of her accusers, about half of them, are under judicial examination for corruption!) The Clintons did, tremendously profit from the institutions they unleashed on the world.

The preceding reasonings are not too difficult: even New York democrats should be able to follow them, and even discover them, on their own.

Conclusion? All too many well-to-do New York democrats secretly, subconsciously, want to have Trump elected president.

And what is the “candidacy” most supported financially so far in these elections? Arguably the anti-Trump campaign paid by nominal Republican “PACs”’. Indeed, the Obama administration gave oodles of public money to plutocrats (in direct gifts, or taxes not perceived, or monopolies powers encouraged). Those plutocrats at the government teat want to keep it that way: that’s why their candidate is Clinton, not Trump (Cruz would be even better, because he is only a multimillionaire; not at the head of a 200 million dollar fortune as the Clintons are).

Trump has a long track record of suing the government, thus a rather adverse relationship with said government. And, whereas the likes of Elon Musk, Sergey Brin, Bill Gates, etc. can buy simple multimillionaires, they cannot buy a multibillionaire financed by real estate such as Trump. So they detest him, and this is why the anti-Trump movement is the most financed.

I worked for Obama two years before his first election. I recognize (now!) it would have been smarter to have Clinton as president, first, before Obama (Obama was promising, but proved too naïve). I recommended Clinton for Secretary of State. I recognize it is high time to have a woman president. I even appreciate many of Hillary’s smarts, and of her neocon ways.

However, it’s disturbing to see so many democrats have embraced obsessively sheer plutocratic propaganda, against Trump, or against Sanders. Indeed, crafty propaganda accusing Trump to be a “demagogue” or “populist” has been used to smear Sanders, in the guise of smearing Trump.

So here we are: New York democrats have a real choice. If they vote Sanders, they vote for the needed revolution (at least, the revolution in perception which has to precede the revolution in legislation). If New York democrats vote for Clinton, they vote for New Pork.

Patrice Ayme’

US Plutocrats: Delaware, Not Panama

I long said that the USA was the world’s number one tax haven, followed by Great Britain. And this is exactly why these two countries are the seat of global plutocracy. (London boasts that it is the world’s number one financial place, ahead of New York.) The New York Times in “Need to Hide Some Income? You Don’t Have to Go to Panama”, April 8, 2016:

“For wealthy Americans looking to veil their assets and shield some of their income from taxation, there is no need to go to Panama or any other offshore tax haven. It’s easy to establish a shell corporation right here at home.

“In Wyoming, Nevada and Delaware, it’s possible to create these shell corporations with virtually no questions asked,” said Matthew Gardner, executive director of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a nonprofit research organization in Washington.

In some places, it can be more difficult to get a fishing license than to register a shell company. And it doesn’t cost much more.”

Delaware Is The World’s Pluto Center. 285,000 Companies Are Registered In That Delaware Building Alone.

Delaware allows companies to shift the seat of their business and their profits to Delaware, where, conveniently, there is no tax.

Speaking of the Panama Papers, “This is just one firm [Panamanian Mossack Fonseca law firm] in one place,” said Gabriel Zucman, an economist and the author of “The Hidden Wealth of Nations: The Scourge of Tax Havens,” “So it cannot be representative of what’s happening as a whole in the world.”

“But Mr. Zucman, who estimates that about 8 percent of the world’s financial wealth — more than $7.6 trillion — is hidden in offshore accounts, said another reason was that it is so simple to create anonymous shell companies within the United States.

Wealthy individuals and businesses that want to mask their ownership can conveniently do so in the United States, and then stash those assets abroad.

Yet while the United States demands that financial institutions in other countries share information about Americans with accounts overseas, its reciprocation efforts fall short, critics say.

“You see a ton of wealth in tax havens in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands that is owned by shell companies that are incorporated in Panama or in Delaware,” he said. “The bulk of this wealth does not seem to be duly declared on tax returns.”

The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy in “Delaware: An Onshore Tax Haven” observed that the state’s obscurity, combining with a loophole in its tax code “makes it a magnet for people looking to create anonymous shell companies, which individuals and corporations can use to evade an inestimable amount in federal and foreign taxes.”

***

Not to think the New York Times is going against the branch on which it sits, plutocracy. The preceding extracts were hidden away from the electronic front page. What we found on the front page was Krugman going all-out against Bernie Sanders in Sanders Over The Edge.

A good way to say bad things is to sound reasonable’ Krugman excels at that:

“…most liberal policy wonks were skeptical about Bernie Sanders. On many major issues — including the signature issues of his campaign, especially financial reform — he seemed to go for easy slogans over hard thinking. And his political theory of change, his waving away of limits, seemed utterly unrealistic.

Some Sanders supporters responded angrily when these concerns were raised, immediately accusing anyone expressing doubts about their hero of being corrupt if not actually criminal. But intolerance and cultishness from some of a candidate’s supporters are one thing; what about the candidate himself?

Unfortunately, in the past few days the answer has become all too clear: Mr. Sanders is starting to sound like his worst followers. Bernie is becoming a Bernie Bro.

Let me illustrate the point about issues by talking about bank reform.

The easy slogan here is “Break up the big banks.” It’s obvious why this slogan is appealing from a political point of view: Wall Street supplies an excellent cast of villains. But were big banks really at the heart of the financial crisis, and would breaking them up protect us from future crises?”

Actually Krugman is a specialist of trade, not banks. Bank specialists like Simon Johnson, have called for the break-up of the 21 biggest banks (which are recognized as special by the present US government).

Krugman detests Sanders saying Hillary has no clothes:

“It’s one thing for the Sanders campaign to point to Hillary Clinton’s Wall Street connections, which are real, although the question should be whether they have distorted her positions… But recent attacks on Mrs. Clinton as a tool of the fossil fuel industry are just plain dishonest, and speak of a campaign that has lost its ethical moorings.

And then there was Wednesday’s rant about how Mrs. Clinton is not “qualified” to be president.

What probably set that off was a recent interview of Mr. Sanders by The Daily News, in which he repeatedly seemed unable to respond when pressed to go beyond his usual slogans. Mrs. Clinton, asked about that interview, was careful in her choice of words, suggesting that “he hadn’t done his homework.”

But Mr. Sanders wasn’t careful at all, declaring that what he considers Mrs. Clinton’s past sins, including her support for trade agreements and her vote to authorize the Iraq war — for which she has apologized — make her totally unfit for office.”

Speaking of exhibiting extremely deep, vicious dishonesty, I sent the following comment, it was censored:

It was obvious, during the ramp-up to the Iraq war that the top leaders of the USA had lost their mental balance. The United Nations did not believe their lies and refused to give them an authorization to attack Iraq. Bush attacked, without a UN Security Council authorization, because he was supported by New York Senator Clinton. The invasion of Iraq by the US caused millions of people to die or being wounded. It brought the Islamist State.

Those who engineered this debacle should have been prosecuted for crimes against humanity. Suggesting they are decent, because they apologize, is to deny civilization has merit. Proposing to be led by them again is proposing to learn nothing from the past.

Specialists of banks long suggested to break big banks and big shadow banks (Simon Johnson, 2009). This is not a revolutionary proposition. Teddy Roosevelt broke big oil. When President Franklin Roosevelt came to power, he closed all the banks. That was much more revolutionary.

Global trade treaties enabled giant corporations to extend their monopolies to the entire world. This way, they escape local legislation. An example is the “Double Irish” Apple Inc. and many other corporations use. The CEO of Apple admitted that two-third of the profits of Apple were not taxed.

End of my comment. Krugman never mentions subjects such as the preceding with the angle I use. In his world, big banks, big trade, big bucks, etc. are absolute big goods.

Hillary is his “sis”, with a bit of luck, she will be grateful, and make him big something, some more. Heathens such as me, with their strident Clintonophobia, have no doubt “not done our homework” because, like Sanders, we are just reprobate school children of no intellectual merit.

Try not paying taxes, as big fishes do, if you are a little guy. You will be sent to jail, anywhere in the West. Plutocracy central? You bet!

Another, completely innocuous comment of mine to Krugman later in the day was also censored. Krugman’s post was entitled “Why Cruz is worse than Trump“. Exactly what I have been saying for five months. I guess the dear professor noble Nobel whatever, is not too keen to expose where he gets (some of) his inspiration from. These are sad, nervous days, for those who love plutocracy, the old fashion way.

Nine 5 Star Hotels In Bariloche, Argentina, & Golf Courses To Receive Obama & His Secret Service, In Style, Next Year

In “USA Financial Extortion“, the essay linked to at the beginning of this essay, I pointed out the connivance between New York “Justice” and financial “Vulture Funds”. Meanwhile, the son and scion of one of the richest persons in Argentina was duly elected president, and Obama rushed to celebrate him, after 15 years of cruel, demented, anti-Krugman, anti-financial plutocracy rule in Argentina. That new Argentinian plutocrat and president is called Macri. He is a dancer. It turns out he was the name on shell companies in several places of the Anglo-Saxon plutocratic empire (such as the Bahamas). That was just revealed in the Panama Papers. Never mind.

Macri, as president, reduced the arrogant financial demands of the lower classes in Argentina: he needs all the money in the world, to pay his Vulture Fund friends in New York, whom Obama serves so well. So brand new president Macri threw more than one million people in poverty, by gutting their allowances: more than 2.5% of the total population of Argentina. Such is the way of the admirers of Reagan: make the rich richer, and the economy will reward you (thus, when Obama came to power, he saw the economy and its big banks were sick: so he gave all the money in the world to the big banks, and reduced the tax rates of the hyper rich by 20%, and now you can see the economy is right).

In any case, throwing more than a million to the poor house is glorious: not bad in a few weeks of assuredly very presidential work. Maybe Macri’s dad can propose newly retired super star noble Nobel Obama some 5 star stay in Bariloche, next year? Just an idea. What are friends for, among the world’s rulers, if not grateful?

Patrice Ayme’

Global Trade Outlaws Rule

FREE TRADE IS NEITHER FREE, NOR A TRADE

Sanders’ surprise victory in Michigan, a big industrial state, is attributed to his attacks against so-called “free” trade (Clinton has never seen a “free” trade treaty she did not love). Ditto for Donald Trump’s victory in the same state (Trump has proposed a 45% tax on Chinese imports). Polls show angry white males and the young (for Sanders) are voting against the system which brought to them the globalization of pauperization. Rightly so.

Let me provide more needed theory:

As it is, globalization means plutocratization.

First, globalization without redistribution implies plutocratization. (As Paul Krugman asserts.)

Second, globalization of trade without globalization of law amounts to trade without law. Thus, organizations, corporations and plutocrats presently engaged in global trade are, technically, out-laws.

Third the immense fortunes gathered by the trade outlaws have enabled them, in turn to pay well their servants in politics and national administration to further the very out-lawfulness which has made them prospered.

Fourth, under the Clintons in the 1990s, the Banking Act of 1933 was replaced by financial deregulation, which spread worldwide, making financiers masters of world trade.

Real Family Income Is Going Down. Real = Including CPI. If One Included Real Costs Beyond The CPI, The Real Income Would Collapse Even More. If I had Put On This Graph GDP or Trade, Both Of These Curves Would Be Shooting Up

One of my commenters and friends told me that it is president Carter, a democrat, who had started the degeneracy we presently enjoy. I was surprised, and initially denied. However, I looked and various graphs, and, to my dismay, he turned out to be right. As I learn more about what happened, I will integrate it in my discourse (Carter, of course, attacked, secretly, Afghanistan on July 3, 1979, so he was not highly considered here; but now he is heading evwen lower!)

In other words, we are engaged in a nonlinear process: the global trade outlaws are getting ever more powerful, and, the more powerful they get, the more they advance their plots and breathing together (con-spirare, conspiracies),

Meanwhile, We The People, are getting ever more destitute (the CPI, the Consumer Price Index, does not include LIFE ESSENTIALS such as education, health care, retirement).

Let me give you an example of the degeneracy of US society: I had an insurance agent for two decades, who worked at one of the most prestigious insurance companies in the USA. Last Spring he got sick. Although a well paid professional, he did not get health care in a timely manner. So he died of pneumonia. He was in his forties (basically the age when one gets sick the less). I know dozens of similar stories. Meanwhile, US healthcare is 50% more expensive, per head, than health care in the most performing healthcare systems in the world.

What does that have to do with the globalization of trade? Massive globalization led to massive plutocratization, and that, in turn, led to US politicians and civil servants doing exactly what plutocrats and their corporations wanted them to do (so that politicians and civil servant would make their future income up, as the good agents of plutocracy whom they are).

 Then the one who led us for 40 years, the one who makes more than 200,000 dollars in an hour, giving secret talks to financiers, claims to represent We The People. We The People are earning 10,000 times less (2,000 x 4.5) than she does, per hour. How can she represent, or even understand, us? Is that realistic? No wonder some of us want to protect themselves.

Paul Krugman, the architect, under president Ronald Reagan of “free” trade, presents as self obvious that Sanders’ program is “unrealistic”. Says Krugman: “The Sanders win defied all the polls, and nobody really knows why. But a widespread guess is that his attacks on trade agreements resonated with a broader audience than his attacks on Wall Street; and this message was especially powerful in Michigan, the former auto superpower. And while I hate attempts to claim symmetry between the parties — Trump is trying to become America’s Mussolini, Sanders at worst America’s Michael Foot — Trump has been tilling some of the same ground. So here’s the question: is the backlash against globalization finally getting real political traction?”

Well, I tell you why, Paul: We The People are getting tired of ‘the conscience of a liberal” who got to work engineering Ronald Reagan’s sinister plot to claim that giving to the rich was the best way to give to the poor. Krugie boy is on his best defending his position at the altar of “power”:

Paul Krugman: “The truth is that if Sanders were to make it to the White House, he would find it very hard to do anything much about globalization — not because it’s technically or economically impossible, but because the moment he looked into actually tearing up existing trade agreements the diplomatic, foreign-policy costs would be overwhelmingly obvious. In this, as in many other things, Sanders currently benefits from the luxury of irresponsibility: he’s never been anywhere close to the levers of power, so he could take principled-sounding but arguably feckless stances in a way that Clinton couldn’t and can’t.” 

That’s obviously a ridiculous thing to say: the USA has basically to get accord from just one power, the French Republic, which is all for putting the brakes on soul-less globalization (always has been, for about a century, whether governments are from the so-called right, or left). Then, automatically Germany, Italy and Spain (with, or without a government), will follow. Tax cheats such as Great Britain, Belgium and the Netherlands are going to increasingly feel the whip, and better shut up. (A few days ago, France told Britain that she would open the refugee gates, if Britain left the EU. So Britain is going to have to face unexpected costs, in all ways.)

The World  Trade Organization, prodded by France, already announced that a carbon tax, imposed worldwide, was NOT in violation of WTO rules. So one can start with that, on day one. See what it does for the price of Chinese steel and Chinese solar panels.

In all justice to Krugman, he finishes this way: …”the elite case for ever-freer trade is largely a scam, which voters probably sense even if they don’t know exactly what form it’s taking.

Ripping up the trade agreements we already have would, again, be a mess, and I would say that Sanders is engaged in a bit of a scam himself in even hinting that he could do such a thing. Trump might actually do it, but only as part of a reign of destruction on many fronts.

But it is fair to say that the case for more trade agreements — including TPP, which hasn’t happened yet — is very, very weak. And if a progressive makes it to the White House, she should devote no political capital whatsoever to such things.”

It is a huge “if”. I would be astounded if Clinton made it to the presidency.

After decades of increasingly corrupt, venal, lying politicians whose idea of policy is to do what the world’s richest corporations and their plutocrats want them to do, what could be worse?

Having someone reigning again who got paid a fortune repeatedly for plotting in secret talks with financiers what would be the next move to enrich that elite? Under Bill Clinton, the Banking Act of 1933 was destroyed, bringing the reign of unrestrained finance. Moreover global trade treaties got signed, which allow corporations and their corporations to escape taxation and legislation. How electing Trump or Sanders could make it worse?

When Clinton was asked why she accepted so much money from Goldman Sachs, for so little “work”she replied: “I guess that’s their rate!” She refused to release any transcript to the flood of talks she gave to financial conspirators and outlaws. And you know what? Thanks to the stubborn work of individuals such as yours truly, this sort of rotten mentality is now exposed, and nobody wants to be led by it anymore. Not even the people supporting Ted Cruz.

Paul Krugman’s dream of another cabinet job, 35 years after the one he enjoyed with his boss, Reagan, is fading away…

Patrice Ayme’

“Democrats”, Plutocrats, & Plutophiles

Clearly, we are not in democracy. The Clintons made more than one hundred million dollars out of politics, just telling (financial) plutocrats that they deliver, and can deliver even more, again. Indeed, the Clinton gave financial plutocrats… the world. (With the help of Bushama since.) The official American  “left” is presently ready to select those world famous corrupt politicians as their leaders. (That does not mean I prefer Ted Cruz to Clinton; not at all, just the opposite. I stay faithful to the Lesser Evil Principle.)

“Socialist” Senator Sanders is running close behind plutocrat Clinton in Iowa, first state to vote, tomorrow. Some people may object that Clinton is no plutocrat, because her fortune is not yet in the billions, and only multi-billionaire qualify as plutocrats. That lack of imagination arises from a very narrow, low dimensional, naïve, obsolete, culprit definition of what “plutocrat” is.

Is There Anyone In The World More Officially Corrupt For All To See Than The Clintons? Give Me The Name! I Want To Know! Is That Stench The Best “Democrats” Can Do? These Are Serious Questions.

In truth lots of money provides with lots of power. It is this power on others which is intrinsically evil, intrinsically corrupting. Clinton has it, and she proved it aplenty since she controlled the White House.

Rants of the .1%, and their clients to explain why being ruled by the Clintons is best, are all over. The plutophile New York Times included. In “Plutocrats and Prejudice”, the excellent professor and Ubermensch Krugman claims, with Hillary, that there is a multidimensional causality of evil: racism, sexism, etc. play a role. They have to be fought. And if that leaves no time to fight big money exclusively, claims Paul Krugman, that’s only “realistic”. He denounces the “naive” Sanders and his supporters:

Krugman: “Like many people, I’ve described the competition between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders as an argument between competing theories of change, which it is. But underlying that argument is a deeper dispute about what’s wrong with America, what brought us to the state we’re in.

To oversimplify a bit — but only, I think, a bit — the Sanders view is that money is the root of all evil. Or more specifically, the corrupting influence of big money, of the 1 percent and the corporate elite, is the overarching source of the political ugliness we see all around us.

The Clinton view, on the other hand, seems to be that money is the root of some evil, maybe a lot of evil, but it isn’t the whole story. Instead, racism, sexism and other forms of prejudice are powerful forces in their own right. This may not seem like a very big difference — both candidates oppose prejudice, both want to reduce economic inequality. But it matters for political strategy.

As you might guess, I’m on the many-evils side of this debate. Oligarchy is a very real issue, and I was writing about the damaging rise of the 1 percent back when many of today’s Sanders supporters were in elementary school.”

Krugman can write all he wants, he did, and acted, differently. In 1980, Ronald Reagan was viewed as an extreme rightist (now he is viewed nearly as a leftist!). Paul Krugman went to serve Ronald then-an-extreme-rightist. At the time, Reagan’s economic theory was “trickle down”: make the rich richer, they in turn, will enrich the 99%.

Instead, what happened is that now the .1% are the only people the president of the USA listens to, and worries about. And so it has become around the world, in consequence.

Krugman was always a little Hillary, no wonder they like each other: splurging at the trough of big money and big oligarchic power, while talking, and posturing left. Actually, Krugman was a predecessor: he was helping Reagan, before Bill Clinton helped Ronald Reagan with Iran Contra (a complex conspiracy to sell weapons to Iran secretly and illegally, and using the profits to finance a guerilla in Central America). Governor Bill Clinton provided Reagan with Mena airport in Arkansas. Planes full of CIA employees brought weapons to Nicaragua, came back with drugs. One was shot down over Nicaragua, another crashed in Arkansas. (Thanks to sufficient assassinations, not too many people are minding the subject anymore.)

As Krugman was economic adviser to Reagan inside the White House, he was obviously co-responsible with “Trickle-Down”. So we see history demonstrates that Krugman-Reagan-Clinton-Trickle-Down-Cult of the .1% is all the same universe. The roots of G. W. Bush: then W. Bush was just a playboy making money thanks to his bin Laden connections and the like. (Ex) president Bush and (the brother of Osama) Bin Laden met in New York, on 9/10/2001, the day before 9/11.

OK, ready for another bout of disinformation? Krugman: “But it’s important to understand how America’s oligarchs got so powerful.

For they didn’t get there just by buying influence (which is not to deny that there’s a lot of influence-buying out there). Crucially, the rise of the American hard right was the rise of a coalition, an alliance between an elite seeking low taxes and deregulation and a base of voters motivated by fears of social change and, above all, by hostility toward you-know-who.”

So here Krugman is claiming that it is racism against Obama which made people vote to the right, and that this caused plutocracy. No, lies, lies, lies.

Clinton deregulating finance, destroying FDR’s work was the main engine of today’s plutocracy. (And I don’t like FDR, but I recognize what was, because that’s what is.) Even under Obama, the supposed victim of racism, tax rates on the 400 richest went down 20%. So clearly it’s rich democratic politicians who passed laws favorable to plutocrats.

Krugman:  “Yes, there was a concerted, successful effort by billionaires to push America to the right. That’s not conspiracy theorizing; it’s just history, documented at length in Jane Mayer’s eye-opening new book “Dark Money.” But that effort wouldn’t have gotten nearly as far as it has without the political aftermath of the Civil Rights Act, and the resulting flip of Southern white voters to the G.O.P.

Until recently you could argue that whatever the motivations of conservative voters, the oligarchs remained firmly in control. Racial dog whistles, demagogy on abortion and so on would be rolled out during election years, then put back into storage while the Republican Party focused on its real business of enabling shadow banking and cutting top tax rates.”

Disinformation again: the flip in question, while real, does not explain the rise of plutocracy, which mostly went ballistic under the rule of Clinton-Goldman-Sachs.

At a time when the biosphere is faced with extinction, the sort of dance the Clintons and Obama did, with Bush laughing in the middle, goes nowhere: the middle class has not progressed in the last 25 years. The Clintons freed the financial sector and its “money changers” (FDR) and now those dragons of the apocalypse roam the world.

A bushel of wheat is bought and sold 2,000 times (two thousand) between the Middle West and Africa. That’s fine with Clinton, let her have one to one dinner with the head of Goldman-Sachs again: her husband did what Goldman-Sachs’ Rubin told him to do. How melts, and wheat is bought and sold, to infinity?

Krugman persists. In “Pre-Iowa Notes“, he claims that:

“For those who were joyful and uplifted on inauguration day 2009, the years that followed have been a vast letdown: American politics got even uglier, policy progress always fell short of dreams. Now comes Sanders…. some people really want to hear that message, and don’t want to hear that they’re being unrealistic.

But there’s something else, which I keep encountering, and which I’m sure I’m not the only one to notice: even among progressives, the two-decade-plus smear campaign against the Clintons has had its effect. I keep being told about terrible things the Clintons did that never actually happened, but were carefully fomented right-wing legends — except I’m hearing them from people on the left.”

Krugman is smearing us by claiming we are smearing the Clintons. He is also disinforming us. Well the Clintons, or at least Bill Clinton, gutted the “Banking Act of 1933” (“Glass-Steagall”). When Hillary gets 675,000 dollars from Goldman Sachs for speaking a few hours, what’s the difference between that and a bribe?

There Are Countless Pictures Of Hillary Clinton Apparently In Love With The Chair Of Goldman-Sachs (Left)

I am not exaggerating: I have dozens of these. What’s going on guys? Bernie Sanders has raised concerns over the $675,000 she made from Goldman Sachs. Asked if she would release the content of her speeches to Goldman Sachs, Hillary just laugh with her fabulous goat laughter.

In 2011, Chelsea Clinton, then a 31 year old graduate student, was installed on the corporate board of Barry Diller’s Internet media holding company. When she was barely twenty years old, she was made a “hedge fund manager” by other family friends. Undoubtedly, for her outstanding talent in financial matters, and vast experience in media management. Chelsea then got an annual salary of 600,000 dollars from NBC (as a “special correspondent“). She is a high multimillionaire in her own right, and now an “investment banker”. Chelsea recognizes a personal net worth of 15 million dollars (1916). We should all become “investment bankers”, and then become presidents and get the Nobel Prize, for whatever.

[Mr.Diller is Chairman and Senior Executive of IAC/InterActiveCorp and Expedia, Inc. and the media executive responsible for the creation of Fox Broadcasting Company and USA Broadcasting. He stands number 268 on Forbes 400 list with a net worth of $ 2.3 Billion. Obama reduced the tax rate of the Forbes 400 by 20% in his first term, no doubt because they suffered a lot in the 2008 crisis they had set-up.]

During These Sumptuous Dinners, The .1% and Their Leading Plutocrats Can Plot In Public. Breathing Together, That’s What “Conspiring” Means

[Hillary and the Chair of Goldman-Sachs, again!]

Asked by the Des Moines Register on Thursday if she regretted to make money from speaking to plutocrats, Clinton compared herself to President Barack Obama, noting that significant campaign donations from Wall Street did not stop him from passing the Dodd-Frank reform law. Disinformation again: this “reform” is much weaker than the Banking Act of 1933 which the Clintons demolished. The Obama administration went easy on Wall Street by refusing to criminally prosecute the major financial institutions responsible for the 2008 economic crisis, or laundering drug money, or financing terrorist networks, etc.

The two Clintons made speaking fees totaling over $125 million since 2001. Obviously payments for services rendered. Maybe payments for future services.

Not to say Hillary Clinton is monolithic. Maybe that’s why she sent classified information over non official channels (a crime). Maybe she knew she was an evil which cannot be stopped, but by devious means. Her ambition, she knew, could not be stopped, nor her greed. But, deep down, in the greatest depths of her soul, twinges of remorse and decency wanted her stopped. So they flattered the brazen side of her who wanted to flaunt her power, and suggested she use her email for top secrets.

Democracy the way we are supposed to enjoy it, is just one letter away from demoncracy. Clearly, to feel that those, the Clintons, following directions from the CEO of Goldman Sachs (Robert Rubin) who destroyed president Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s work to limit financial plutocracy, are best to lead the nation, means the present “Democratic” Party is way right. Way, way right. The Roosevelt family (Teddy and FDR, whom he helped bring up) was itself one of the oldest plutocratic family in the USA. So the plutocrats of the 1930s are now viewed as dangerous leftists.

The first American billionaire and financial plutocrat, Carnegie was for a tax on income of at least 50% and punishing inheritance tax. Why? To help the state, which makes entrepreneurship possible, and to prevent heirs, those no-good people to have too much power (I am paraphrasing). Now, no-good people are running for an encore, and We The People who-know-nothing are applauding the ever more amazing ascent of those who gave us the chop.

Patrice Ayme’

Record Heat 2015, Obama Cool

2014 was the warmest year ever recorded. 2015 was even warmer, and by far, by .16 degrees centigrade. The UK (Great Britain) meteorological office announced that the temperature rise is now a full degree C above the pre-industrial average. At this annual rate of increase, we will get to two degrees within six years (as I have predicted was a strong possibility).

What’s going on? Exponentiation. Just as wealth grows faster, the greater the wealth, mechanisms causing more heat are released, the greater the heat. Yes, it could go all the way to tsunamis caused by methane hydrates explosions. This happened in the North Atlantic during the Neolithic, leaving debris of enormous tsunamis all over Scotland.

2015: Not Only Record Heat, But Record Acceleration Of Heat

The Neolithic settlements over what is now the bottom of the North Sea and the Franco-English Channel (then a kind of garden of Eden), probably perished the hard way, under giant waves.

Explosions of methane hydrates have started on the land, in Siberia. No tsunami, so far. But it can, and will happen, any time. The recent North Easter on the East Coast of the USA was an example of the sort of events we will see ever more of: a huge warm, moist Atlantic born air mass, lifted up by a cold front.

Notice that, at the COP 21 in Paris all parties, 195 nations, agreed to try their best to limit warming to 1.5 degree Centigrade. At the present instantaneous rate, that’s less than 4 years away. Even with maximum switching out of fossil fuels, we are, at the minimum, on a three degrees centigrade target, pretty soon.

By the way, if all nations agree, how come the “climate deniers” are still heard of so loudly? Well, plutocrats control Main Stream Media. It’s not just that they want to burn more fossil fuels (as it brings them profit, they are the most established wealth). It’s also that they want to create debates about nothing significant, thus avoiding debates about significant things, such as how much the world is controlled by Dark Pools of money.

Meanwhile, dear Paul Krugman insists in “Bernie, Hillary, Barack, and Change“, that it would be pure evil to see him as a “corrupt crook“, because he believes everything Obama says about change and all that. Says Krugman: “President Obama, in his interview with Glenn Thrush of Politico, essentially supports the Hillary Clinton theory of change over the Bernie Sanders theory:

[Says Obama]: ‘I think that what Hillary presents is a recognition that translating values into governance and delivering the goods is ultimately the job of politics, making a real-life difference to people in their day-to-day lives.'”

This is all hogwash. We are not just in a civilization crisis. We are in a biosphere crisis, unequalled in 65 million years. “Real-life differences“, under Obama, have been going down in roughly all ways. His much vaunted “Obamacare” is a big nothing. All people in the know appraise that next year, it will turn to a much worse disaster than it already is (in spite of a few improvements, “co-pays” and other enormous “deductibles” make the ironically named, Affordable Care Act, ACA, unaffordable).

The climate crisis show that there is no more day-to-day routine. At Paris, the only administration which caused problem, at the last-minute, was Obama’s. How is that, for “change”? The USA is not just “leading from behind”, but pulling in the wrong direction. Really, sit down, and think about it: under France’s admirable guidance (!), 194 countries had agreed on a legally enforceable document. Saudi Arabia agreed. The Emirates agreed. Venezuela agreed. Nigeria agreed. Russia agreed. Byelorussia agreed. China, having just made a treaty with France about climate change, actually helped France pass the treaty. Brazil agreed. Zimbabwe agreed. Mongolia agreed. And so on. But, lo and behold, on the last day, Obama did not.

I know Obama’s excuses well; they are just that, excuses. Bill Clinton used exactly the exact same excuses, 20 years ago. Obama is all for Clinton, because, thanks to Clinton, he can just repeat like a parrot what Clinton said, twenty years ago. Who need thinkers, when we have parrots, and they screech?

I sent this (and, admirably, Krugman published it!):

“No doubt Obama wants to follow the Clintons in making a great fortune, 12 months from now. What is there, not to like?

Obama’s rather insignificant activities will just be viewed, in the future, as G. W. Bush third and fourth terms. A janitor cleaning the master’s mess. Complete with colored (“bronze”) apartheid health plan.

What Sanders’ supporters are asking is to break that spiral into ever greater plutocracy (as plutocrat Bloomberg just recognized).”

Several readers approved my sobering message, yet some troll made a comment, accusing me of “racist “slander”. Racist? Yes the “bronze” plan phraseology is racist. I did not make it up. And it is also racist to make a healthcare system which is explicitly dependent upon how much one can afford. Krugman is all for it, but he is not on a “bronze” plan. Introducing apartheid in healthcare? Obama’s signature achievement. So why should we consider Obama as the greatest authority on “progressive change”? Because we are gullible? Because we cannot learn, and we cannot see? Is not that similar to accepting that Hitler was a socialist, simply because he claimed to be one, it had got to be true, and that was proven because a few million deluded characters voted for him?

We are in extreme circumstances, unheard of in 65 million years, they require extreme solutions. They do not require, nor could they stand, Bill Clinton’s Third Term (or would that be G. W. Bush’s fifth term? The mind reels through the possibilities).

“Change we can believe in”: the new boss, same as the old boss, the same exponentiation towards inequality, global warming and catastrophe, the same warm rhetoric of feel-good lies.

As it is, there is a vicious circle of disinformation between the Main Stream Media, and no change in the trajectory towards Armageddon. Yes, Obama was no change. Yes, Obama was the mountain of rhetoric, who gave birth to a mouse. Yes, we need real change, and it requires to start somewhere. And that means, not by revisiting the past.

Patrice Ayme’