The Greek Issue Just Got Personal
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Dorothea Lange Water supply in squatter camp near Calipatria CA 1937 It was already present over the past two weeks, for example in Yanis Varoufakis’
[See the full post at: The Greek Issue Just Got Personal]The wrong model is currently prevalent, but changing to the right model will benefit all parties.
The current model in western business, politics and war is basically the Roman model, of predator and captured prey, of absolute ownership of the individual or entity (corporation, nation, etc.).
That’s not the only model. In Islamic banking, for instance, money is not lent at a set interest, to be paid, come hell or high water, or assets forfeited to the lender. That is a one-sided predatory model, where all the risk is born by the junior partner. Even without compound interest, lenders would eventually come to own everything, if they lived long enough (corporations, families).
In Islamic banking, there is no periodic “Jubilee” of debt and slavery forgiveness, but there is a shared distribution of benefit and risk in any loan. The lender profits if the venture profits. The lender takes losses if the venture takes losses.
The predatory model has been able to “thrive” in this time of massive resource exploitation, since coal-fired steam engines began the industrial revolution and the age of empire.
Empire is everywhere and resources are depleted. We are at peak everything. There will not be plentiful resources for any possible survivors to exploit after WW-3.
Plan-B?
Information symmetry is necessary for trust to exist in a new game based upon fairness and mutual benefit.
The internet is pretty good for that, but needs to be fed nutrition, not poison.
We all sort out some wheat from the chaff already. It is possible for there to be pretty good information symmetry in the world, once it is seen as clearly in the best interests of all.
Do you think Russia and China, Israel, Germany, Japan, Brazil, etc all know approximately the same truths about what is going on in our world behind the scenes?
It’s gotta’ be pretty close, because they are all monitoring highly filtered and processed information feeds, eliminating most of the disinformation, which is used to herd the “sheeple”.
Their information feeds tell them which player has the fatal-advantage in which economic, political or military venue at any given time.
They all still spring some traps on each other, but mostly on us.
Big military and big covert operations networks provide the ability to spring traps, and that includes predatory finance, of course. (please phase out)
Resetting the rules to phase out predation, benefiting by the bleeding of another entity, is what is needed.
Greece, Ukraine, Palestine, Syria, Iran Iraq, etc. all have solutions which can be approached in the cooperative framework, which is what is often pretended, anyway…Growth of the kind needed to service the highly leveraged debt we now have is no longer possible due to resource contraints.
The financial institutions have created supersaturated levels of risk and false accounting in order to pretend growth is happening. This has accelerated an international catabolism where the strongest economies have to destroy and feed on smaller economies just to give them enough resource to pretend for another day. This would explain the frantic geopolitics happening at the moment. It’s all to maintain the economies in their precarious dream state.
I think this system is so fragile and out of equilibrium that it will not be able to withstand Greece’s challenge to the european looting of their country.
There will be price discovery in 2015, hold onto your hats!
Just kick the can onto the next watch. Nothing new here but a different set of pandering politicians.
Would a Grexit really have any more impact on Europe than a Detroit bankruptcy would have on North America? Did the Detroit mess cause a domino reaction here?
Seems to me TPTB have such a tight rein on it all that we could go for years before they “lose it.” Hell, we’re 7 years into the “imminent” total implosion which was supposed to happen back in 07/08. What’s another decade? That said, we haven’t even entered Full on Japan Phase yet, which can extend the circus another many years.
Demand being unlimited, and Central Banks and their governments believing money creation can always feed demand,,,well, I guess all one can do is sit tight and wait for that monetary blizzard. From FF rates of zirp, where will they peak in the eventual money storm coming up? 18%? 25%? Maybe 80%, before full reset?
QE4>> is going to be big! Really big!
We haven’t had China dropping its Dollar-Yuan peg, dumping its Dollar-denominated assets and pulling out of the Dollar/IMF/World Bank/SWIFT system yet. It is all set up and waiting for some event to blame it all on. The break-up of the EuroZone would do it.
Every country that has been hurt by the old system, like Greece, Cyprus, Iran and Syria, will be eager to join the new system of Yuan/BRICS-Bank/RosSWIFT and start afresh, hopefully with a little less superpower domination.
US/EU/Japan will have no alternative but to hyperinflate their debts into worthlessness with QE4-5-6.
The Ukraine is personal too. I’m agnostic on Putin at best. He’s a politician right? However he is held in total contempt by our foreign policy elites and where the elites go Obama follows. It has been apparent from Obama’s rhetoric that he holds Putin in total contempt also.
I think it got worse when Russia brokered a sort of deal when the US was just about to commit to directly working with the Syrian opposition fighters. Among which was what is now ISIS you may recall. (We were training these guys in Jordan before that) While any more Syrian involvement had almost no popular support and not that much in congress the moment Russia got involved it was seen as a humiliation for Obama. Go figure. I think the NY Times constant and absurd Ukraine narratives can be understood to reflect what is coming from the White House. The dodgy cease fire just announced will settle nothing. The US position is that the rebels have to surrender control and unbelievably, that Russia has to give Crimea back to Ukraine. Since that will never happen say hello to another several decades of cold war with Russia. Which is the point. We will not stop until Russia is a neo liberal paradise so global corporations can ‘own’ Russian oil and gas.
I agree with Professorlocknload. Maybe I am conditioned to expect can kicking, but I think Syriza will agree to an extension. Of course, the rationale for the agreement is that the EU has made some sort of concession.
I am just a humble blog reader, not a Big Expert on these matters. However I have some sympathy with the points made by Professorlocknload and Ken Barrows. Yes we can see there are massive, contradictory and unstable forces at work. The question is one of timing. The history of the past 7 years shows these contradictions can be papered over, at the expense of most of the ordinary folks who don’t have millions of $$ stashed away. Who is to say they cannot be papered over for another 7 years?
The rest of the world may have to deal with rising rates but probably not the US.With trillions of excess US bank reserves and the strong dollar and markets attracting money here the Fed is not going to be able to raise rates. They don’t have a magic wand. They can raise the Fed Funds rate,that’s it. As I said the world is awash with money looking for a short term home so there is no reason why US short rates should rise and the US safe haven status will put a bid under longer term rates.
One can imagine that this could create a circular reinforcing cycle for awhile with the strong dollar being a primary driver. We are in a currency war after all and the US to my mind is playing hardball now. King dollar is the policy. That’s why we are working to destroy the ruble and all that stuff about a dollar alternative system. They system only really works unless the dollar is king. Such is an existential necessity for the continuation of the status quo in all its forms and to the benefit of those now at the top.
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