Debt Rattle April 25 2019

 

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  • #46906

    Giovanni Bellini Pietà 1505   • There Will Be No Soft Brexit Now. It’s No Deal, Revoke Or Another Vote (G.) • More British Families Than Ever Dep
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle April 25 2019]

    #46907
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    Kudos to Graeber; as an economic historian he has only one equal; Michael Hudson…

    #46908
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    I often refer to being grounded; in a literal sense, being directly in touch with the earth itself with your bare skin; as in barefoot on the dirt/earth.
    Ilargi offers exactly that; fully grounded reportage on the relevant events on planet Earth.
    Keep it coming….

    #46910
    Dr. D
    Participant

    “She Wrote The Patriot Act. Her Next Job Is With Facebook (ZH)”

    Always has been CIA. Google “LifeLock”. Or Zuck’s history, his funding, and how he stole the company. This is exactly as predicted since when, 1949?, and exactly as hundreds of people like me said the day the Patriot Act appeared. “Oh no,” they said, “the terrorists are real, you’re just an unhinged conspiracy theorist. When have governments ever done anything wrong or abused their power, say by using the new secret courts to wiretap and rig Congressional and Presidential elections? It will never happen.” Sigh. Now the Death Star is practically fully-built, facial recognition is installed at airports, DNA tracking is widely used and people are still denying it, but Assange is the villain here. Beam me up.

    “I really have never seen a listed company in China America that did not have material and significant fraud.” – Anne Stevenson-Yang”

    Fixed it.

    “Global Grounding of 737 Max Will Cost Boeing More Than $1 Billion (G.)”

    The least they can do. I hope they lose more. Problem is, they’ll just go bankrupt and then I’LL pay the billion in bailouts. …Ya know, with all that money we citizens have laying around, stacked in boxes and hiding under the bed.

    “Tesla Reports Another Doozie (WS)”

    Besides leveling mountains for lithium in Afghanistan and burning all their owners alive, doesn’t Tesla make like 1/10th as many cars as a niche carmaker Porche? They’re the definition of nobody: total failure. Their only success was in making the government steal the money of poor people in Flint, to subsidize ultra-expensive cars and solar arrays for the ultra-rich in Potrero Hill on the Bay. …Somehow they’re amazed that MI seems to be mad at them and voting against the virtue-signaling rich robbing people so poor they have rabbit hutches in their living room for food. But I don’t mind, I’ll just reach under the table for another stack of cash Powell just printed for me. …Oh wait, I forgot that was for BlackRock and Sachs. Somehow my check is lost in the mail.

    Speaking of Tesla: “‘That future was sold so that a small number of people could make unimaginable amounts of money. It was stolen from us every time…”

    Go Green! Remember it’s ‘Capitalism’ when the government takes your money and hands it to a private billionaire corporation and their stockholders and it’s Socialism and Fascism when… Oh wait, that IS Socialism and Fascism, not ‘Capitalism’, my mistake. ‘Capitalism’ is when the government DOESN’T combine and pick winners and losers, so the losers go bankrupt like honest men, not slimy, whinging thieves.

    To Manbiot’s point, was Medieval Europe ‘capitalism’? Were the Navaho? Um, yes: they made things, including capital goods, got to keep the fruits of their labors, and traded with their neighbors. Golly gee Batman, yet they were also a sustainable, non-growth economy and their behavior and ‘capitalism’ did not go feral. …So maybe you’re just making up this stuff about ‘Capitalism’ when really you mean something completely different. It’s not like I’m making this up, everybody knows these examples and hundreds more. Engage thinking. Make it so.

    The problem is not one of ‘capitalism’ or non-capitalism, although non-capitalisms like Socialism have killed 100 million people so far and are gunning to kill some more. It’s about our culture and priorities, so you can use the economic system as a tool to overgrow, extract and destroy the same way you can use a shovel as a hammer. It’s not what it’s made for, it’s not even related, but if that’s your intent…

    He speaks of resource use, but the top users are China and India, who are not really ‘capitalist’. Maybe he should tell the centrally-planned communist party to knock it off? But then he couldn’t call for centrally-planned schmarty-pantz guys like himself to decide everything for the poor and powerless. Note that his meta on “seizing of commons” is by definition a repudiation of the very IDEA of private property. If I kill a deer or catch a fish, it’s not mine under his theory. It’s a “bizarre assumption” that the real owner isn’t HIM, being one of the schmarty-pantz warlords or their ear-whispering advisors.

    Do I overstate myself? If it’s not owned by me, by a person, then it’s owned by whom? That’s right, the government, the “people”, which because he styles HIMSELF as speaking on behalf of the people as a great and benevolent leader, means that property is owned and controlled by HIM, and therefore NOT by me or anyone at my level. It’s owned by the ‘special animals’ who are more equal than others. I pay tax on that fish the King didn’t grow, didn’t catch, and never knew existed but for me. It’s the King’s deer, and I need permission from the Chancellor in triplicate to move a dunghill in Nottingham. Right! Got it! Can you show me anyplace that ever worked or you didn’t kill a million people trying it? Well-meaning Utopians have killed more people than smallpox and plague combined. I will resist them killing me, my family, and my community yet again, until someday they stop their tyranny and learn to leave others alone in their insane gambit for power and control.

    ‘Capitalism’: the worst possible system expect for all the others.

    “Death by a Thousand Cuts’: Vast Expanse of Rainforest Lost in 2018 (G.)”

    Trying to be positive, approach this another way: we are learning the Rainforest isn’t ‘wild’ at all. Humans have planted, groomed, and chosen the species that exist there. Even the soil there is fake: once supporting 20M people in the Mayan-era with cities larger than London, they hand-created the soil, created the floating garden islands up through Mexico City out of soil as impassible as terra-cotta, as barren as Mars. And it doesn’t take that long, only some brains. So saying ‘People” are bad, ‘Capitalism’ is bad, the people were both complete terra-formers and ‘capitalists’ (in a way) over the whole peninsula and yet created a jungle garden from sea to sea. It was their model, their intent that was different. So whose model are we pushing today that is so annihilistic? The ‘people’s’ model? Or the banks’?

    For Graeber, the malaise that is taken us, that is killing 45,000 in suicide and 60,000 in opioids each year, is the loss of meaning in our lives. If the model is annihilistic, if it is killing everyone and everything ‘human’, why WOULD we push on the gears for them? The system has been engineered to be so anti-human that the humans are now revolting and would rather die, would rather be shot in the face by a gendarme, than participate. This is what they are most mad about, and what cannot now be stopped. Despite Manbiot’s and AOC’s attempt to kill us all, we will beat the Authoritarian Fascists yet again.

    #46911
    Dr. D
    Participant

    * LifeLOG.

    #46914
    zerosum
    Participant

    I recall seeing cows standing in a feedlot after the rain had soften the shit. They were stuck, up to their belly. I’m sure that they did not think that the shit had hit the fan.

    #46916
    John Day
    Participant

    @V.Arnold:
    I’m in agreement with Graeber, Hudson and being grounded literally by planting and harvesting in real soil, and watching it. I’m looking out at the Austin garden now. We got 2 inches of rain yesterday, had fresh spinach last night, and I pulled a bunch of big carrots just now. this link is oldish news, provided just for pictures of my new and established Texas gardens, weekend before last.
    http://www.johndayblog.com/2019/04/the-pompeo-doctrine.html

    #46917
    tabarnick
    Participant

    https://www.rt.com/news/454328-france-minister-brexit-cat/
    “I’ve ended up calling my cat Brexit,” the paper quoted France’s Europe Minister Nathalie Loiseau as writing. “It wakes me up meowing like crazy every morning because it wants to go out, but as soon as I open the door, it just sits there undecided and then looks angry when I put it outside.”

    #46918
    John Day
    Participant

    @Dr D:
    If it’s not owned by a person it is owned by…?
    Corporations…
    I think Corporations are forms of oligarchy.
    Whaddayuz think?

    #46919
    John Day
    Participant

    Milo Minderbinder’s “Syndicate” corporation, in Catch-22, provides a good, and increasingly complex and conflicted model of global corporate governance.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milo_Minderbinder
    Milo Minderbinder is the mess officer at the United States Army Air Corps base who becomes obsessed with expanding mess operations and trading goods for the profits of the syndicate (in which he and everyone else “has a share”). Milo is a satire of the modern businessman, and beyond that is the living representation of capitalism, as he has no allegiance to any country, person or principle unless it pays him.[3]
    Minderbinder, unlike most characters in Catch-22, who are only the subject of one chapter, is the subject of three chapters (Chapter 22: “Milo the Mayor”, Chapter 24: “Milo” and Chapter 35: “Milo the Militant”). He is one of the main characters in the novel. His most interesting attributes are his complete amorality without self-awareness, and his circular logicality in running his Syndicate.
    Minderbinder’s enterprise becomes known as “M&M Enterprises”, with the two M’s standing for his initials and the “&” added to dispel any idea that the enterprise is a one-man operation. Minderbinder travels across the world, especially around the Mediterranean Sea, trying to buy and sell goods at a profit, primarily through black market channels. Everyone has a “share”, a fact which Minderbinder uses to defend his actions, stating that what is good for the company is good for all. For example, he secretly replaces the CO2 cartridges in the emergency life vests with printed notes to the effect that what is good for M&M is good for the country.
    Eventually, Minderbinder begins contracting missions for the Germans, fighting on both sides in the battle at Orvieto, and bombing his own squadron at Pianosa. At one point Minderbinder orders his fleet of aircraft to attack the American base where he lives, killing many American officers and enlisted men. He finally gets court-martialed for treason. However, as M&M Enterprises proves to be incredibly profitable, he hires an expensive lawyer who is able to convince the court that it was capitalism which made America great, and is absolved only by disclosing his enormous profit to the investigating congressional committee.

    #46920
    John Day
    Participant

    And now for something really NOT completely different…
    http://www.johndayblog.com/2019/04/calling-shots.html
    Did Israel Kill both Kennedy Brothers?​ Thanks Eleni.
    This article focuses on the motive of Israel to save it’s nuclear weapons program at Dimona, which JFK opposed most firmly, then the need to keep everything covered up by preventing a President RFK from investigating.
    The article is long, detailed and focused on Israel. Why does it come out in Russia Insider? More Russian interference?
    I personally think the deposed CIA Chief, Alan Dulles, the CIA, the Pentagon, the “military industrial complex” and the Federal Reserve Banking System all had ample interest in the elimination of JFK right away.
    This was the Globalist Deep State blood-inauguration. Note: Sirhan Sirhan is a Palestinian Christian, not Muslim.
    Let’s now conclude our overview of the evidence: beside the fact that John and Robert were brothers, their assassinations have at least two things in common: Lyndon Johnson and Israel.
    First, their deaths are precisely framed by Johnson’s presidency, which was also the context for other political assassinations, such as Martin-Luther King’s. Johnson was in control of the State during the two investigations on John and Robert’s murders.
    Secondly, in both cases, we find the fingerprints of Israel’s deep state. In the case of Robert, it is the choice of the manipulated patsy, which was obviously meant to disguise Robert’s assassination as an act of hatred against Israel. In the case of John, it it is the identity of the man asked to kill the patsy, a Jewish gangster linked to the Irgun.
    Johnson and Israel, the two common elements in the Kennedy assassinations, are themselves closely linked, since Johnson can be considered as a high-level sayan, a man secretly devoted to Israel, or owned by Israel, to the point of committing high treason against the nation he had been elected to lead and protect.
    The causal link between the two assassinations then becomes clear: even if Robert had been pro-Israel, which he was not, Israel and Johnson would still have had a compelling reason to eliminate him before he got to the White House, where he could—and would—reopen the investigation on his brother’s death.
    What should have been obvious from the start now appears brightly clear: in order to solve the mystery of the assassination of John Kennedy, one has simply to look into the two other assassinations which are connected to it: the assassination of Lee Harvey Oswald, the man whose trial could have exposed the hoax and possibly put the plotters into the light, and the assassination of Robert Kennedy, the man who would have reopened the case if he had lived. And both these assassinations bear the signature of Israel.
    At his death in 1968, Robert Kennedy left eleven orphans, not counting John’s two children, whom he had somewhat adopted. John’s son, John F. Kennedy Jr., aka John John, who had turned three the day of his father’s funeral, embodied the Kennedy myth in the heart of all Americans. The route seemed traced for him to become president one day. He died on July 16, 1999, with his pregnant wife and his sister-in-law, when his private plane suddenly and mysteriously nose-dived into the ocean a few seconds after he had announced his landing on the Kennedy property in Massachusetts.
    https://russia-insider.com/en/did-israel-kill-both-kennedy-brothers/ri26455?ct=t(Russia_Insider_Daily_Headlines11_21_2014)&mc_cid=b1223a98e3&mc_eid=7a06d680cf

    #46921
    John Day
    Participant

    Oh, My! I seem to be on a roll this morning.
    Let me defend Monbiot, by way of “agreeing with what he meant”, as Hillary Clinton recently did, while explaining Nancy Pelosi’s reluctance to push for Trump impeachment.
    I do present a process for development of a new market economy, which needs to develop to meet the emerging economic circumstances, which have never exactly existed in the past.
    They will change, too. This adaptation in groups is what we do that sets us apart in the ecosystem on the surface of the blue planet.
    First, a Monbiot quote, with which we can agree, basically about thermodynamic principles. To run any process requires a reduction in total energy/entropy in a system. Something must be “dissipated”.
    “A system based on perpetual growth cannot function without peripheries and externalities. There must always be an extraction zone – from which materials are taken without full payment – and a disposal zone, where costs are dumped in the form of waste and pollution. As the scale of economic activity increases until capitalism affects everything, from the atmosphere to the deep ocean floor, the entire planet becomes a sacrifice zone: we all inhabit the periphery of the profit-making machine.”
    What this thermodynamic analysis leaves in the long term is the work done from sunlight by photosynthesis, but we are not suddenly reduced to that, because we still have so much order and knowledge, and analysis capacity, which has come from burning coal, oil and gas.
    That technical capacity is currently dedicated to burning more coal, oil and gas, as rapidly as possible, but that directive is already foundering.
    The big question right now, the immediate problem, is how 7 billionish people stop running down hill faster and faster, and do something less doomed.
    Individuals with wiggle room can make adaptive changes in the right direction, and they will need to expend available energy and technical resources to make those small changes. Any of those changes will be open to logical attack for being wasteful, but in that analysis, we can only curl up and die.
    Our greatest potential as a species lies in optimizing our strong suit to the cultivation of photosynthetic living ecosystems on the face of the planet. It’s something we do.


    The progressive goal of this for humans is to have a good quality of life by being healthy and helpful and cooperative versions of the animals we were born as, not struggling to become more like machines, fighting distraction, fatigue and the urge to urinate. (We’re about at the end of that alley.)
    This contrasts with the capitalist prime directive of winning by being the most effective at expending energy and resources every day, and thereby dominating and displacing the other contestants in the competition. That is short-termism.
    I recently saw a genetic analysis, done over 150 years or so, that American families in a few towns with very good birth and death records, maximized their longer term growth by having fewer children later and investing in them. In the short term, breeding like rabbits won, of course, but I postulate that it failed badly in “selection events”, when things got difficult and needed sustained work and insightful innovation to adapt successfully.
    Look up there! Selection Event on the horizon! …
    Next agreeable Monbiot paragraph:
    “This drives us towards cataclysm on such a scale that most people have no means of imagining it. The threatened collapse of our life-support systems is bigger by far than war, famine, pestilence or economic crisis, though it is likely to incorporate all four. Societies can recover from these apocalyptic events, but not from the loss of soil, an abundant biosphere and a habitable climate.”
    Now, a Monbiot paragraph with which I disagree, but mainly due to the boundary conditions, which he seems to assume. Rent extraction destroys real political economy in the long term, as per classical economics, but “wealth creation” happens within certain defined boundaries, and if those boundaries are defined as “photosynthesis” and “using stuff that already exists”, and “burning fossil fuel as a transitional investment in the new system”, then it looks pretty do-able. “Growth” needs rethinking.
    “In the New York Times on Sunday, the Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz sought to distinguish between good capitalism, which he called “wealth creation”, and bad capitalism, which he called “wealth grabbing” (extracting rent). I understand his distinction. But from the environmental point of view, wealth creation is wealth grabbing. Economic growth, intrinsically linked to the increasing use of material resources, means seizing natural wealth from both living systems and future generations.”
    Here is another paragraph about reframing goals/objectives/success, with which we can agree:
    “Like coal, capitalism has brought many benefits. But, like coal, it now causes more harm than good. Just as we have found means of generating useful energy that are better and less damaging than coal, so we need to find means of generating human wellbeing that are better and less damaging than capitalism.”
    More agreeableness:
    “There is no going back: the alternative to capitalism is neither feudalism nor state communism.”
    I accept Monbiot’s closing summation, a call to cooperative problem solving:
    “So what does a better system look like? I don’t have a complete answer, and I don’t believe any one person does. But I think I see a rough framework emerging. Part of it is provided by the ecological civilisation proposed by Jeremy Lent, one of the greatest thinkers of our age. Other elements come from Kate Raworth’s doughnut economics and the environmental thinking of Naomi Klein, Amitav Ghosh, Angaangaq Angakkorsuaq, Raj Patel and Bill McKibben. Part of the answer lies in the notion of “private sufficiency, public luxury”. Another part arises from the creation of a new conception of justice based on this simple principle: every generation, everywhere, shall have an equal right to the enjoyment of natural wealth.
    I believe our task is to identify the best proposals from many different thinkers and shape them into a coherent alternative. Because no economic system is only an economic system but intrudes into every aspect of our lives, we need many minds from various disciplines – economic, environmental, political, cultural, social and logistical – working collaboratively to create a better way of organising ourselves that meets our needs without destroying our home.
    Our choice comes down to this. Do we stop life to allow capitalism to continue, or stop capitalism to allow life to continue?”

    #46924
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    @ John Day
    I’m not sure it’s accurate to say we’re a species that’s gone completely off the rails; or, more likely, it’s just us westerners and our industrialised view of this world and life specifically.
    But we are prosletising our toxic belief system across the planet. Fortunately, not all are attracted by or to this system.
    Russia and China offer a glimmer of hope; but our kamikaze policies may yet kill us all…
    Keep on keeping on…

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