Nov 042020
 
 November 4, 2020  Posted by at 10:18 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,


Pablo Picasso Etude Pour Mercure 1924

 

The Democrats and the Presstitutes Will Not Admit a Trump Win (PCR)
Trump: Presidency Has Been ‘Mean’ And Filled With ‘Horrible People’ (Pol.)
How Violence Became A Forecastable Event In America (Turley)
Field Evaluation Of A Rapid Antigen Test For The Diagnosis Of COVID19 (medrxiv)
Radio Host Crushes Leading UK Epidemiologist’s Credibility (ZH)
No Matter Who Wins (Nate Hagens)
China Halts Ant Group’s Mega IPO (R.)
Jack Ma: Traditional Banks Are Operating With A ‘Pawn Shop’ Mentality (TC)
US Pushes Greece To Stop Acting As China’s ‘Dragon’s Head’ Into Europe (SCMP)
Refugee from Moria Camp Signs Professional Football Contract in Greece (GR)

 

 

Been following election news bits for hours now, and still nothing is sure. Both sides claim a win, both sides accuse the other of cheating.

I’d say Trump won, but then I just get more people claiming I’m a Trump supporter. Got another mail from an “ex-reader” asking me why I changed so much. Never occurs to these people that maybe they’re the ones who changed, not me. Sure, I’m not anti-Trump, but why should I? Everytime such mails come in, and the frequency has increased, there’s also always generous donations coming in. Balance.

Trump is doing much better then most of the pollsters said, but we’ll have to wait. There certainly is no landslide for either side. Some states just stopped counting mid-way in, and some counters took the ballots home with them.

I’ll cover this is a series of tweets I picked up along the way. I know it looks crap in mailing lists, but I still haven’t figured out why the tweets stopped appearing in mails. Something to do with javascript, but they did use to appear.

 

 

Trump wins in all demographics except white men.

 

 

@joelpollak “And so we have the anticipated scenario: on Election Night, it looks like a Trump victory based on votes counted so far, but there are enough uncounted states that Biden can tell his supporters that he will win. Media, lawyers, tech companies, and protesters will try to help him.”

 

 

Greenwald Biden Landslide

McEnany Rustbelt

@PpollingNumbers

Tucker zero credibility

Biden

 

 

Paul Craig Roberts from October 29. The documentary The Plot Against the President is no longer available on YouTube.

The Democrats and the Presstitutes Will Not Admit a Trump Win (PCR)

If Trump wins the election, unless it is an overwhelming victory that cannot be challenged, the Democrats and the American media will not admit that Trump won. The plan in place is to blame Trump’s win on fraud and to use the tactics of the “Maidan Revolution” in Ukraine, recently employed again in Belarus, to prevent Trump’s inauguration. The documentary, The Plot Against the President, explains the “Russiagate” plot by the FBI, the Democrats, and the media to remove President Trump from office. The venality and corruption of FBI Director Comey, the American media, and Democrats, such as Adam Schiff, is scary. That such an obvious plot against American democracy involving the country’s security agencies and one of the two ruling political parties could go on for three years without a single question by the media proves that the Establishment will not tolerate a non-establishment President or those who support him and that the media dares not cross the Establishment.

The fact that Comey is not in prison testifies to the power of the Deep State. Had it not been for US Rep. Devin Nunes of the House Intelligence Committee the coup would have succeeded. The coup attempt is not over. The documentary, which consists of the testimony of members of the House Intelligence Committee, National Security officials, and outside experts, shows that both Democrats, especially Adam Schiff, and the US media simply denied that Independent Prosecutor Mueller and the House Intelligence Committee failed to find any evidence of the Russiagate charges. Adam Schiff stood before the American media and lied time and time again. The media knew he was lying and never called him on his lies. Not even once. The undeniable fact that Russiagate was a three-year hoax, an orchestrated deception to foreclose the Trump agenda, has not been admitted by Democrats or the presstitutes.

In other words, nothing is true unless the media admits it. And they don’t admit the truth. The Elite use the presstitutes to control the explanations and to keep the population in a false reality. As our Founding Fathers said, without a free and independent media, there is no liberty. The United States does not have a free and independent media. It has a propaganda ministry for the ruling Elite. Be sure you comprehend the implications, because you are about to see it again. If Trump wins the election, the media and the Democrat Party are not going to acknowledge the fact that Trump won–unless Trump’s win is so overwhelming that it cannot be challenged.

Virginia vote count stops, counters take ballots home with them.
https://twitter.com/JusticeMAGA/status/1323856601858494464

Read more …

Well, he’s been fair game for 5 years.

Trump: Presidency Has Been ‘Mean’ And Filled With ‘Horrible People’ (Pol.)

President Donald Trump on Tuesday offered a bitter assessment of his tenure in the White House, saying the experience has been “mean” and marked by “horrible people.” The comments came in an Election Day interview on “Fox & Friends,” after co-host Ainsley Earhardt asked Trump whether he has enjoyed being president and if the job has been “worth it.” “Well, it’s been mean. It’s been — you’ve dealt with horrible people,” Trump replied, adding: “You deal with people that are very deceptive.” Trump, who participated in five campaign rallies Monday, sounded noticeably hoarse throughout his phone interview Tuesday, and seemed relatively despondent compared with his previous appearances on his preferred cable morning news show.


Reflecting further on his time in office, Trump said that his friends “used to call me Donald, [but] now they call me president,” and he argued that the United States itself was more “difficult to deal with” than America’s international adversaries. “They’ll go, ‘Mr. President, tell me, who’s the country that’s most difficult to deal with? Is it Russia? Is it China? Is it North Korea? Sir, is it North Korea?’” Trump said. “And I go, ‘No. Well, by far, the most difficult country to deal with is the U.S. It’s not even close,’” he continued. “And they all say, ‘You’ve got to be kidding.’ And I say, ‘No, I’m actually probably not kidding.’ We have very, very deceptive people.”

Read more …

So far so good. But then, both sides still think they can win.

How Violence Became A Forecastable Event In America (Turley)

Driving around Washington, D.C. a couple days ago was a shocking experience. Block after block of businesses are boarded up and anything throwable or movable has been removed from the streets. In the meantime, faculty, staff, and students at George Washington University (where I teach) have been told to stockpile medicine and food “as you normally would for a hurricane or a snowstorm.” The reason? We are about to have a democratic election. The expectation is that is, unless it is a landslide for Biden, there will be rioting and arson in Washington and other cities. A warm front moving in with “possible election related disruptions” is being reported like an electoral meteorological event.

When exactly did election rioting become as forecastable as inclement weather? The forecast for rioting with a chance of passing looting and arson is being repeated across the country as if it is now an inconvenient truth of the political version of global warming. The most likely disruption would come a close election or Trump lead. That risk is heightened after Democratic leaders like House Majority Whip James Clyburn, D-S.C. declared on Sunday that the only way Democrat Joe Biden could lose the election would be “for voter suppression to be successful.” Thus, if Trump is close or winning on election night, it can only be due to unlawful conduct. When President Trump made such statements about stealing the election, the media went into full alert over his laying the foundation for a coup.

Yet, the media seems entirely comfortable with Clyburn’s pre-election declaration that either Biden wins or the election is invalid. The fact is that the odds are against President Trump. However, the current polling shows a tightening of the race in critical states. The country remains sharply divided with even the best Biden polls still showing a solid 45 percent for Trump. Yet, Democratic members like Clyburn are already stating that either Biden wins or the election is stolen. No wonder officials are declaring a violent front moving into major cities with political doppler readings with developing protest vortexes and political depressions. Yet, rioting is not an act of God, but the criminal acts of those who only embrace democratic elections to the extent that they result in the “right” outcomes.

Read more …

“NEW terrific study on rapid tests The importance of this figure canNOT be overstated! Rapid tests caught 80% of PCR positives but all missed had very low viral loads. Thus, as expected it will successfully capture ppl most likely to be contagious.”

Field Evaluation Of A Rapid Antigen Test For The Diagnosis Of COVID19 (medrxiv)

Previous studies evaluating SARS-CoV-2 rapid antigen test (RAD), tests either used retrieved specimens, which had been cryopreserved for a wide range of times, were conducted at central laboratories or both [3-7]. To our knowledge this is the first report on the performance of a RAD assay conducted at POC. As such, it may provide a realistic view of how implementation of RAD tests in clinical practice can contribute to the management and control of the COVID-19 pandemics. When compared to RT-PCR, the Panbio™ COVID-19 AG Rapid Test Device assay yielded an excellent specificity and a fairly good overall sensitivity (79.6%); the latter slightly improved when the time to testing was less than 5 days since the onset of symptoms (80.6%).

This figure is less impressive than that claimed by the manufacturer (93%); however it is close (86.5%) to that reported by Linares and colleagues [3] in a mixed cohort including patients attended at the Emergency Department or primary healthcare centers and centralized testing at the hospital laboratory. Sensitivity of SARS-CoV-2 RAD assays has been reported to vary between 45%-97% [3-7]; yet, direct comparison between studies is hampered by relevant dissimilarities regarding clinical characteristics and age of patients, site of testing, type of specimen processed, and time to testing, among others. Interestingly, the sensitivity was higher in adults (82.6%) than in pediatric patients (62.5%). Previous studies found no age-related differences in SARS-CoV-2 RNA load in the upper respiratory tract [8]. Although speculative, dating the accurate onset of symptoms could have been less reliable in children than in adults.

[..] In summary, we found the Panbio™ COVID-19 AG Rapid Test Device to perform well as a POC for early diagnosis of COVID-19 in primary healthcare centers. More importantly, our data suggested that patients with RT-PCR-proven COVID-19 testing negative by RAD are unlikely to be infectious. Further studies are warranted to confirm this assumption. The inconsequentiality of false negative RAD results, from a public health perspective [12], would support the implementation of a laboratory diagnostic approach which excluded confirmatory RT-PCR testing for negative RAD tests in non hospitalized patients, even when the pretest probability is high. This would certainly alleviate laboratory workloads while dealing with RT-PCR supply shortages.

Read more …

The costs and risks of having a lockdown vs NOT having a lockdown. Nobody’s done the math. They didn’t even try.

From John Day, TAE resident physician, a few days ago: “COVID-19 is here to stay [..] It has become endemic. It’s never going away. There is no way to make it go away. Immunity lasts something like 6 months, though some reinfections occur before that. A good vaccine will always be 6 months away. Then you will need another, different one in 6 more months, but the first one is still 6 months away. “

Radio Host Crushes Leading UK Epidemiologist’s Credibility (ZH)

In the most thorough demolition of an ‘expert’ epidemiologist who unabashedly advised the UK government of the desperate need for a second lockdown to “suppress” the virus, Independent SAGE member Professor Gabriel Scally was completely unable to respond when LBC’s Maajid Nawaz cornered him on how severely a lockdown would cost the nation. As LBC’s Seán Hickey reports, Maajid asked whether the member of the Independent SAGE considers “the potential cost and deaths from having a lockdown and weigh them up.” Professor Scally insisted that “you can’t have a response to this virus that doesn’t take into account the economic factors, social factors and the psychological factors” and his department would definitely take these factors into consideration.

He reiterated the over-used mantra that the bottom line is that “we have to stop the virus – we have to stop it spreading,” and a second national lockdown is the best way to do so. However, when pushed on the cost, Scally told Maajid he hasn’t seen it, to which Maajid asked the epidemiologist after explaining that the sum is £2.4billion a day whether such funds could be spent elsewhere. “I would imagine as a public health expert you would have some idea,” Maajid noted. And that’s when Scally lost all ‘science’ credibility and barked back at Maajid: “Oh, don’t be silly, you are really now being stupid…” Which Maajid did not take kindly to the President of Epidemiology & Public Health at the Royal Society of Medicine’s response.

“Is the scientific evidence for why we need to go into lockdown being compared with the scientific evidence for what happens if we don’t and then the death that can come from lockdown versus the death that can come from not locking down compared and the costs compared so we can have a holistic approach to it. Have you done that work?” “I would have done that work if I was a member of cabinet,” Professor Scally said, when Maajid Nawaz turned the screw.

Read more …

Long from my old friend Nate.

No Matter Who Wins (Nate Hagens)

Humans – during periods of growth – and contraction – self-organize around energy. Oil is central but our entire energy balance sheet is going to be a critical issue in the coming decade. Under a Biden win, various Green New Deal schemes will massively scale renewable energy. In many ways this is good news, because it will be good for GDP, it will create jobs, and grow our supply of low carbon energy. But there are many problems with this because it won’t be approached systemically. Briefly: 1) renewable energy isn’t renewable, it’s rebuildable, 2) only 20% of (current) energy mix is electricity which is the type of energy produced from most renewables 3) the higher % of RE in our mix the more important back up (NG and coal) become – and the US is facing an impending gas shortage as US drilling has plummeted. (the largest growth component of supply was the associated gas from tight oil production), 4) the full system cost of integrating RE into the grid is higher than consumers currently pay, weighing on the economy 5) all RE plans expect a LARGER economy in the future when (see above) most realistic scenarios using systemic inputs point to a smaller economy.

Still, renewables are our only hope – they are mature, robust and inexpensive vis-à-vis even a decade ago. The problem will be how to ‘add renewables to a smaller and more complex system’. No matter who wins the election, we will have to face a more complex and less certain energy future. One of the silver linings (if you will) of the pandemic is that now a great number of people personally are aware US GDP/ 330 million does not represent how well we are doing as individuals or as a nation. The constant media reminders that the SP500 and Dow Jones just made all-time highs is incongruous with most peoples real lived experience (and most of whom have zero money in the stock market).

Whether one understands or agrees with the risks of climate change, energy depletion or limits to growth, tens of millions of people are now hungry for living a decent life with access to basic needs, while doing something good. The coming decades – by definition but also by desire – are going to be more about well-being than they are about growing our consumption of stuff. No matter who wins the election, our nation needs to embark on a deep conversation about what our cultural goal is – we are going to need complementary metrics to the econometric measures quantifying how much energy we burned. What is all this energy for is a question that should be part of our national discourse.

Read more …

And people thought the US would do it.

China Halts Ant Group’s Mega IPO (R.)

China suspended Ant Group’s $37 billion stock market listing on Tuesday, thwarting the world’s largest IPO with just days to go, in a dramatic move that left investors and bankers scrambling for answers.

Fraser Howie, independent commentator and author of several books about china’s financial system: “It is embarrassing for Ant Group, it also looks bad for sponsors and the exchange and regulators.The SSE (Shanghai Stock Exchange) says the suspension is based on changes of structure which breach the listing disclosure rules. How could this happen? No excuse at all for such failings around disclosure. Or perhaps this is really politics at play, the state is reining in the private sector in the most embarrassing of ways but that I think is somewhat foolish an approach. Ant Group should be regulated as a financial company but China has made a major push to open its markets and welcome foreigners and then this happens. The world’s largest IPO, China’s most famous tech group and this mess. Everyone looks foolish.”

Dave Wang, portfolio manager, Nuvest Capital, Singapore: “For now, markets will sell off Alibaba and likely Tencent as well as other relevant exposures like HSCEI Tech due to anticipation of Ant’s listing. Chinese banks may be a beneficiary and given they are underowned, we could see a rally. More details will come and if this is an isolated incident to Ant, then the new economy stocks that have done well so far should be fine, which is the base case now. If not, markets may start to price in uncertainty on tighter regulations on private enterprises and we could see a significant pull back on Chinese growth stocks.”

Francis Lun, CEO of Geo Securities : “The Communist Party has shown the tycoons who’s boss. Jack Ma might be the richest man in the world but that doesn’t mean a thing. This has gone from the deal of the century to the shock of the century. Jack Ma got ahead of himself by criticising the commercial banks and the regulatory regime.”

Read more …

Some background to the Ant Group IPO fail.

Jack Ma: Traditional Banks Are Operating With A ‘Pawn Shop’ Mentality (TC)

Whenever Alibaba founder Jack Ma makes a speech, it often becomes a hot topic. This past week, the Chinese internet has been abuzz with a speech of his. This time though, he seems to have gotten more brickbats than praise. At the Bund Summit in Shanghai last weekend, while Ma self-deprecatingly said that he was an unofficial and non-professional member of the financial sector, he nonetheless criticised the financial supervision system in front of top financial leaders like Zhou Xiaochuan, former governor of the People’s Bank of China, and Yi Gang, current governor of the People’s Bank of China. His fiery speech quickly made the rounds on the internet and sparked debate in the financial circle.


In his speech, Ma referred to the Basel Accords – a set of internationally agreed banking supervision regulations – as a “club for the elderly” and stated that these regulations should not apply to China, which does not have a mature financial ecosystem yet. He also claimed that the world now “only focuses on risk control, not on development”. As a representative figure of innovation in China’s financial industry, Ma believes that innovation comes with a price. He said: “Risk-free innovations stifle innovation.” He also added this blunt criticism: “Your risk-free departments are putting the entire economy at the risk of non-development.” Ma further criticised traditional banks for operating with a “pawn shop” mentality, saying that they will be unable to support the financial needs of the future world.

Read more …

Still can’t read the name “Geoffrey Pyatt” without getting nauseous.

US Pushes Greece To Stop Acting As China’s ‘Dragon’s Head’ Into Europe (SCMP)

As Europe was fighting a seemingly unmanageable Covid-19 outbreak in September, Greece’s Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis rolled out the red carpet for an inconspicuous foreign guest. Neither a state leader nor a health expert called in to fight the virus, Adam Boehler heads the US International Development Finance Corporation, created last year and hailed by Washington as an alternative to China’s Belt and Road Initiative, the multibillion-dollar Beijing plan to fund infrastructure projects and expand trade ties around the world. Fresh in his job, Boehler’s visit – quickly followed by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo – was a clear signal of Washington’s concern over China’s expanding interest and influence in Europe, especially Greece.

The country is home to one of the most iconic belt and road projects: the port of Piraeus, among Europe’s biggest and now controlled by China’s state-owned shipping giant Cosco. Greece may be on the fringe of the European Union geographically, but it has become a key focus in the intensifying scramble for global influence between the US and China, which has spilled over into Europe, Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America. “China itself has identified [Greece] as the dragon’s head of the Belt and Road Initiative in Europe,” the US ambassador to Greece, Geoffrey Pyatt, told local newspaper I Kathimerini earlier this year. “We’re going to have a debate in terms of how we get the balance right in dealing with the challenge that China presents. China’s not going to go away.”

Boehler’s specific goal was to convince Mitsotakis that Greece’s second-largest but near-bankrupt shipyard in Elefsina – just 13km west of Piraeus – should accept investment from the US body, lest it “fall into the wrong hands”, according to a diplomatic source briefed on the matter, who declined to be identified. US companies are reportedly interested in buying controlling stakes in Alexandroupoli port, according to local media. Alexandroupoli is being privatised by the Greek state and, while much smaller than Piraeus, is strategically located near the border with Turkey. Washington has piled the pressure on Greece regarding the future of Piraeus, said to be the oldest port in Europe and just 12km (7 miles) from the capital Athens. That showed when Cosco found itself struggling to get approval from Greek authorities to build a fourth container terminal in the port.

The Chinese shipping giant has said it will invest 600 million euros (US$698 million) in the Piraeus port to make it the biggest commercial shipping hub in Europe. This would also allow it to boost its stake in the port to 67 per cent from the 51 per cent it bought in 2016 for 280.5 million euros under a deal with HRADF, Greece’s privatisation agency. Greek officials have reassured Beijing that the delay in expansion approval was caused by local opposition based on archaeological and environmental concerns, not global politics.

Read more …

Let’s end with some good news.

Refugee from Moria Camp Signs Professional Football Contract in Greece (GR)

The Historic Greek football club Panionios announced on Tuesday that a refugee from the West African nation of Guinea signed a contract to play with the team in late October. Twenty-two-year-old Alia Camara came to Greece on a boat from Turkey when he was just 17 years of age. He traveled to Turkey from his home country after he was promised a contract with a football team there. Since it had been Camara’s dream to play football, naturally he eagerly accepted the deal — which turned out to be a scam which left the teenager penniless. Upon arriving in Greece, Camara was sent to Moria, Greece’s notoriously overcrowded refugee camp, the largest in Europe, which burned down after a series of fires in September.

While in the camp, located on the Greek island of Lesvos, Camara explained his situation to everyone he could — including his love for football, the scam he fell victim to in Turkey, and his desire to play the sport in Greece. With the help of a Greek couple, whom he calls his parents, who heard his story, Camara was able to submit his papers to legally reside in Greece, and was put in contact with Panionios, the historic Greek football club. Panionios, the oldest such club in Greece, was founded in 1890 in Smyrna, in what is now Turkey. After the destruction of the city in 1922, the surviving Greek residents of the city, including the entire club, were forced to relocate to Greece as refugees.

Panionios, along with many refugees from Smyrna, found a new home in the Athenian suburb of Nea Smyrni (New Smyrna). The connection between Camara’s refugee status and the club’s history moved the owners of Panionios, who offered the talented young player a contract to play for the team.

Read more …

 

 

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Home Forums Debt Rattle November 4 2020

Viewing 16 posts - 1 through 16 (of 16 total)
  • Author
    Posts
  • #65172

    Pablo Picasso Etude Pour Mercure 1924   • The Democrats and the Presstitutes Will Not Admit a Trump Win (PCR) • Trump: Presidency Has Been ‘Mean’
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle November 4 2020]

    #65175
    John Day
    Participant

    I’ve been wondering how Nate Hagans was doing lately.
    Now I’ll jump back up and read what he wrote.
    I can already tell he’s addressing some of the things I think about.

    Yeah. COVID is here to stay. This is the new “normal”.
    Gimme those rapid POC tests, please.
    I know what to do with ’em.

    #65177
    johnsteinbach1
    Participant

    Hagens thoughtful as usual. Been reading him since Oil Drum. I think he is much too optimistic regarding the ability of renewables to replace fossil fuels. Regardless, he outlines a near term future not even imagined by the establishment- rising expectations meeting hard and shrinking limits.

    #65178

    Gimme those rapid POC tests, please.
    I know what to do with ’em.

    No kidding. Have you been following tests of the various rapid tests at all, John?

    #65179
    John Day
    Participant

    We were supposed to have our rapid tests at my clinic by mid October. We don’t.
    I did influence the clinic towards rapid test acquisition when the data came out that the “missed cases” were the ones with really low viral (debris) loads, probably not infectious, so clinically irrelevant.
    Testing in Texas is backing up again, with wait times for results out to 4 days, commonly, and $500 rapid tests not covered by insurance. My wife’s friend is still waiting on her result from Saturday. Her symptoms are mild to moderate. She has asthma. I’ll treat her informally, as I have another of Jenny’s friends, if it is positive. She was told that Saturday and Sunday don’t count in days to result-report.

    #65180
    zerosum
    Participant

    USA election
    Still tabulating the people’s choice.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum_jelly

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-Y_Jelly

    #65181
    zerosum
    Participant


    Blue Wave Crashes: Democrats’ Hopes For Senate Majority Fizzle; House Margin Eroded

    http
    s://www.zerohedge.com/political/blue-wave-crashes-democrats-hopes-senate-majority-fizzle-house-margin-eroded

    #65182

    The game is on

    #65183
    #65184
    John Day
    Participant

    https://www.johndayblog.com/2020/11/beyond-bush-gore-2020.html

    ​Michael Hudson​ looks at another economic model of “money” to serve the needs of society.
    ​ ​When Polanyi called money a fictitious commodity, he was rejecting the idea of making it scarce by limiting its supply to that of gold, mimicking commodities as if money were part of a barter system. It also gave creditors overwhelming power over the rest of the economy, especially over its labor and land by pushing wage levels and crop prices below basic break-even needs when governments were deprived of the ability to create credit to employ labor. He criticized Ricardo for having ‘indoctrinated nineteenth-century England with the conviction that the term ‘money’ meant a medium of exchange,’ with bank notes readily convertible into gold (ibid: 196). That policy led to deflation, given gold’s limited supply. Falling prices and wages penalized debtors when countries returned to gold convertibility after wartime inflations. That occurred in Britain after 1815, and in the United States after the 1870s when it sought to roll back prices so that the price of gold – and hence, wages and commodity prices – would be driven back down to their pre-Civil War level. The result was prolonged economic depression, causing land and other property to be transferred from debtors to creditors.​..​
    ‘Land, labor and money are obviously not commodities,’ he explained. Labor is life, and ‘land is only another name for nature​.​’​.​..
    ​ ​Polanyi’s preferred alternative was to make money serve social aims by making it a public creation of law. Such token money has no inherent cost of production, ‘but comes into being through the mechanism of banking or state finance,’ and thus is not a commodity with an ultimate labor cost of production: ‘actual money, finally, is merely a token of purchasing power which, as a rule, is not produced at all but comes into being through the mechanism of banking or state finance’ (Ibid: 72).
    ​ ​Polanyi’s Austrian adversaries argued that public money creation, social spending programs, regulations and subsidies distorted the supposedly efficient ‘natural’ economy of price-setting markets. In practice this meant low wages and a transfer of land to the wealthy. Unregulated market forces and gain seeking led the social system to be run for the purely financial aim of ‘maximum money gains,’ subjecting land, labor and money to pro-creditor bias instead of favoring the population’s indebted majority. It was to prevent this economic polarization and austerity, Polanyi claimed, that ‘Regulation and markets … grew up together.’ Trade and incomes were regulated for most of history, thanks to the fact that, ‘As a rule, the economic system was absorbed in the social system.’ (ibid: 68)​…
    ​ To allow the market mechanism to be the sole director of the fate of human beings and their natural environment, indeed, even of the amount and use of purchasing power, would result in the demolition of society. … the market administration of purchasing power would periodically liquidate business enterprise, for shortages and surfeits of money would prove as disastrous to business as floods and droughts in primitive society. (Ibid: 73)​…
    ​ Mutual aid and its associated constraints on profiteering were preconditions for survival. Chiefs were expected to be openhanded, protecting the weak and needy.​..
    ​ ​Polanyi summarized his hope that society would cure itself from having disembedded markets from their social context by restoring ‘shapes reminiscent of the economic organization of earlier times.’ Society needed to re-embed market structures for goods and services by administering key prices and incomes in a new redistributive economy. Such redistribution ‘presupposes the presence of an allocative center in the community,’ a palace or temple in earlier times, democratic government offices in today’s world.​..
    ​ ​ ​Royal Clean Slate proclamations of ‘justice and equity’ annulled the backlog of grain taxes and other agrarian debts, liberated bondservants and restored land forfeited by smallholders. (I provide a history of such acts in ‘… and forgive them their debts’: Lending, Forfeiture and Redemption, From Bronze Age Finance to the Jubilee Year [ISLET 2018]). This preserved a free citizenry to serve in the army and provide corvée labor instead of falling into permanent debt bondage to non-official creditors.​..
    ​ Societies would have succumbed to bondage and monopolization of the land millennia ago they had viewed ‘free markets’ to mean the sanctity of personal debts being paid. Rome was the first major society not to cancel agrarian and personal debts. For its oligarchy, the ‘sanctity of property’ meant a license to foreclose on the self-support land and other property of debtors.​..
    ​ ​ ​Mainstream economists treat credit (and implicitly, arrears as well as loans) as always being productive and helpful, not as extractive and socially destabilizing. They depict government intervention to annul debts as leading to economic crisis, not as saving populations from impoverishment and disorder. This doctrinaire approach ignores the fact that, in practice, the ‘security of debt’ meant making ancient debtors falling into arrears liable to lose their land and personal liberty. This meant insecurity of their property rights. That is the real crisis.​..
    ​ Depicting credit and the financial business plan as having only positive economic effects produces a travesty of history. Viewing debt and its interest charges simply as a bargain between individuals fails to recognize how the economy-wide debt burden tends to grow beyond the ability to be paid.​..​
    ​ ​Throughout history debt has been the major lever privatizing land and reducing populations to bondage. Mesopotamia managed to delay this polarizing dynamic by subordinating creditor rights to the aim of dynastic survival. But classical Greece and Rome lacked the tradition of royal Clean Slates. That was the great turning point. Livy, Plutarch and Diodorus described how debt disenfranchised the Roman population.​..
    ​ ‘Free market’ advocates pick up the thread of Western civilization ‘in the middle,’ only after credit, debt and property relations became disembedded and decontextualized from the checks and balances that sustained the Near Eastern takeoff. It is as if the Bronze Age agrarian debt cancellations were a blind alley…
    ​ ​The distinctive feature of Western economies is privatization of credit, land natural and public infrastructure. That is the real detour from earlier millennia. Archaic societies treated land required for subsistence as a basic right for their citizenry…
    ​ ​We can now see that there is no assurance that societies automatically evolve onward and upward. Such determinism focuses on potential – what economies could achieve if they use all knowledge to best advantage. Warlords, creditors, landlords and monopolists have deprived populations of the fruits of technological potential throughout history.​..
    ​ Polanyi’s contribution to social history demonstrates the need to regulate finance, land and labour markets in an overall social context in order to maintain prosperity instead of impoverishment.​..
    ​ ​The financial takeover of government policy reflects a business plan of asset stripping and economy wide austerity.

    Debt, Land and Money, From Polanyi to the New Economic Archaeology

    ​Another DIA document from Oct 2012 (also released in May 2015), reported that Gaddafi’s vast arsenal was being shipped from Benghazi to two Syrian ports under the control of the Syrian rebel groups.
    ​ ​Essentially, the DIA documents were reporting that the Obama Administration was supporting Islamist extremism, including the Muslim Brotherhood.
    ​ ​When the watchdog group Judicial Watch received the series of DIA reports through Freedom of Information Act lawsuits (FOIA) in May 2015, the State Department, the Administration and various media outlets trashed the reports as insignificant and unreliable.
    ​ ​There was just one problem; Lt. Gen. Flynn was backing up the reliability of the released DIA reports.
    ​ ​Lt. Gen. Flynn as Director of the DIA from July 2012 – Aug. 2014, was responsible for acquiring accurate intelligence on ISIS’s and other extremist operations within the Middle East, but did not have any authority in shaping U.S. military policy in response to the Intel the DIA was acquiring.
    ​ ​In a July 2015 interview with Al-Jazeera, Flynn went so far as to state that the rise of ISIS was the result of a “willful decision,” not an intelligence failure, by the Obama Administration.​..
    ​ ​Flynn was essentially stating (in the 47 minute interview) that the United States was fully aware that weapons trafficking from Benghazi to the Syrian rebels was occurring. In fact, the secret flow of arms from Libya to the Syrian opposition, via Turkey was CIA sponsored and had been underway shortly after Gaddafi’s death in Oct 2011. The operation was largely run out of a covert CIA annex in Benghazi, with State Department acquiescence.​..
    ​ ​ ​Flynn was taken out before he had a chance to even step into his office, prevented from doing any sort of overhaul with the intelligence bureaus and Joint Chiefs of Staff, which was most certainly going to happen. Instead Flynn was forced to resign on Feb. 13th, 2017 after incessant media attacks undermining the entire Trump Administration, accusing them of working for the Russians against the welfare of the American people.​..
    ​ ​ ​The question thus stands; in whose best interest is it that no peace be permitted to occur in the Middle East and that U.S.-Russian relations remain verboten? And is such an interest a friend or foe to the American people?

    Wild Conspiracy Theory? The Truth Behind the Biggest Threat to the ‘War on Terror’ Narrative

    #65185
    Dr. D
    Participant

    Similar to last time: 100% of votes in Philly for HRC. Zero protest votes. 110% of all people voted in Detroit on the Stein recount.

    Today, 138,000 votes found in a box. 100% were Biden. Claiming literally zero votes. Not a single one even on accident. But like the attempt at 200k by Republicans in Texas, there’s a lot going on all over and it will all go to the courts.

    Hudson and Polanyi aren’t wrong, but as with Progressives, they think that humans will just “do the right thing” and never, ever cheat, enrich themselves, or buy up the wheels of government/society. It’s not that Keyneseanism isn’t better: it well might be. But NO man, group of men, cartel, lawmaker, king, judge, or society has ever NOT fallen to temptation once given the power. THAT’S why you use gold or whatever. Keynes said “I’ll pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today” yet when Tuesday comes and the economy is running, they never, ever pay anything back. Never have, not in the last 100 years or the last 1,000 either.

    And yes it can cause boom-busts, or rather the boom-busts are MEN promising too much then being found out and admitting they can’t pay. Stopping that is like stopping the seasons of life. Stopping men from lying is like stopping air. So IF you were on a hard standard — and there have only been a few that weren’t cheating as well — then like Jubilee, you see the season the market is in an adjust, pro-rating your risk according to how close you are to the 49 years. In our sense, we pro-rate according to when the banks collapse. …Except we lie about it and screw the poor, instead of being honest about the times. BuyBuyBuy.

    Now it’s even worse, because they want only men and no solid base at all anywhere, the government has backed the banks to infinity, so it depends on the GOVERNMENT collapsing.

    …I’m sure having not just the upper field be in contention but the entire government and society collapsing as well is a much better solution. Very Progressive.

    This is why generally what we have is the worst system…except for all the others.

    #65186
    Bill7
    Participant

    ‘England underestimates the costs of lockdown at its peril’ , by Jonathan Sumption-

    “We need to think hard about whether the benefits outweigh the harm for young people and those struggling with mental health..”

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/04/england-lockdown-peril-young-people-mental-health

    It’s not about the coroni, of course: it’s about the Very Few and their minions destroying civil society on the fast track. Same as with our curious election here in USA..
    Still, good to see this in the Grauniad.

    #65187
    Arttua
    Participant

    Looks like Biden has got the lock on 270. I didn’t think the CIA and FBI would let Trump win. 
    When I met Nate Hagans as a possible tenant, when he was going to the U of Vt., he said, “I saw the light.”  I thought to myself, hmm, I think that’s an on coming freight train.

    #65188
    zerosum
    Participant

    Coooome ooon!
    I know that the people at TAE can tell who lost on this USA election.
    We, the people have lost.
    The elites have won.

    #65189
    papanca
    Participant

    @John Day and Dr. D

    Thanks to you both for all you post.

    #65190
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    Ah, Thursday morining here; looked at the election results (for Wednesday evening) and much to even my own surprise; I find I’m indifferent…
    …and anxiety free… 😉

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