Dr. Diablo
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I also like Taibbi, but.
It’s difficult to get good statistics as everyone is lying, but while the media themselves are reporting that they’re raking in subscriptions, I’m also reading that traditional media is collapsing. It was reported that Taibbi’s CNN was doing so well that it was out-placed by 50 year-old reruns of Yogi Bear, a 3rd rate cartoon. People liked the new CNN coverage so much, it’s being banned in airports and doctor’s offices, some of their last remaining viewership.
But like I said, it’s hard to get honest numbers. So let’s look at the backbone of U.S. coverage, the NY Times. Raking in so many new subscriptions they have long since abandoned overseas coverage, doing so well that they shut down and rented out several floors of their office, so well that they laid off more workers in the month after the most-watched, most-read, non-stop media bonanza campaign festapalooza…and then had pickets and riots in their own staff as they cut their remaining copy editors — one of the few things, along with overseas reporters, that distinguish the amateurs from the pros. …But maybe that’s what happens when you hire reporter Glenn “Please don’t call me a Clinton hack” Thrush AFTER his totally-biased, pre-approved reporting was front page news, I couldn’t say.
Doing well? Even if the CNN thing is spurious, the NY Times clearly doesn’t think so, and they’re the newspaper of record. And Taibbi doesn’t know this? Or he completely ignored it in order to make his argument? Disturbing. Because by doing so, he sure made mine.
“The link between unemployment and inflation has disappeared”
What a shock! And Lo! It started happening in 1979, just when they started rigging the unemployment numbers, then progressively got more disconnected as the statistics were increasingly fabricated. Who knew? Then today, with 4% official unemployment – effectively 0% — and 100M out of the workforce we’ve reached the event horizon of mendacity and fabrication. And for some reason, the Phillips Curve no longer works! I’ve got an idea: why don’t you this thing we call science and run the numbers again with similar statistical methodology giving a 22% real unemployment rate and tell me if it seems to work any better for you. K? #stoplying
Should be called the “misanthropocene”.
I’m sure you know your business, but you could blow $20,000 in a few days of intensive care. At your ages, if you live close enough to a hospital to get there, it’s quite likely. So thanks to our system, you could go from flush to broke in 30 days, a life change perhaps faster than you can adjust to it or liquidate assets.
“If we’ve got growth at trend, which most places appear to have, if we’ve got the unemployment rate at full employment, which most places appear to have…”
Stop right there, because you don’t. Real US GDP has probably been declining 5% a year for a decade, and half of it is probably statistical rigging and paper-churning. 100M out of work and 25M on food stamps is only full employment in the looking glass world you Ceasar Flickerman types live in, and if you don’t believe me ask Sears how 100% employment leads to sector-wide retail bankruptcies. The only mystery here is how people like you get away with lying for so long without someone storming your Bastille. I don’t mean to sound alarming, but outside the glass tower you can tell which way the wind blows.
Brodsky, like other Wall Street types, is the dumbest guy I’ve ever seen. Spreading it on thick, what does he think the U.S. is supposed to do? We’ve done so well sending our entire business and industry overseas? It’s been fabulous for financialization types like him for the condo-dwellers of the remaining 12 blessed cities, but a disaster for almost 100% of all citizens here. Listen: what do you think is going to happen? The U.S. with no industry, a ground-up military, and ships that can’t even dodge a 1,000-foot tanker, is just going to keep getting free goods with a $1.5T deficit forever and ever in a new 1,000 year Reich? Tell me he’s just lying and isn’t actually that stupid.
So if the ruined, gutted, helpless U.S. is not going to get free stuff from the world that much longer, what should they do? Possibly work faster-than-light to rebuild some industry and infrastructure before the world shuts the door on imports and they can’t even buy shoes, much less rare-earths and iPhones? World wages aren’t relevant here, when a) we’re going to be shut down, and b) the U.S. can make and consume almost everything internally should they wish to. And newsflash Brodsky: the U.S. has ALWAYS been a world trade power. Decades before the nation began we were already the center of sugar, rum, lumber, tea, wool, cotton trade. Yet in that 250 years of history there have been great variations in tariffs, protection, and deregulation. We DO NOT need to export at all, nor import at all, which means we don’t need to have wages lower than China. But to do that, we would need to re-set the rigorous industrial protectionism we had during our most prosperous 100-year period. American wages then are not going to get “higher” — God forbid! The most horrible, un-thinkable thought of all! To both his types in business and the Fed. But wages relative to what they’re buying WILL rise, because otherwise the 100M already on the edge and the 25M on food stamps would simply die, and those 125M citizens who own 300M guns are not going to just sit around while the Brodskyites happen.
It’s fine to disagree with that, and we can look into which way tariffs, trade, wages, are better or worse, but he just assumes it’s insane or impossible, the same way it’s “impossible” to leave the EU and go back to independent nations. It’s only impossible because you won’t say, “um, bye!” “You and whose army?” right, Brexit? Brodsky’s impossible is inevitable, both with the EU, and with the U.S. having to re-build themselves, if for no other reason that we need steel for ships and machinery to support the army, or else we will cease to exist.
Thank you anticlimactic. There are so many problems with renewables it’s hard to know where to start — particularly the grid, the infrastructure, and line losses. It’s also astonishingly bad as a transportation fuel, and no one calculates the huge input energy for mining and re-refining lithium, etc.
If anyone were serious about anything, they would use renewables according to their engineering parameters: they are a weak but dispersed power source and therefore cannot tolerate any transmission losses, much less the up to 20% loss here in the U.S.. Therefore any renewable, wind, solar, etc needs to be used on site in small-scale, distributed manner. This cuts off concentrated, centralized control, as power made is power used, and as no one is buying power through the money system, steadily cuts GDP even as it improves society, the environment, and quality of life. These three items are the reason it will never, ever be promoted or used, and instead is installed in the diametric opposite of its engineering logic: a concentrated, centralized, controlled, and monetized use which is a blatant wealth transfer from the poorest (rate and tax payers) to the rich (government-approved and connected, subsidized corporations and insiders. Lookin’ at you, Tesla).
Nevertheless, we can buck the trend and for modest cost, install low-level, distributed energy collectors in our own houses. …At least until none of us own our houses anymore, which seems increasingly likely.
Yes, definitely. But clearly it’s also impossible to have an ever-more common good become ever-more valuable. The break would not be here, or in the debt; as you point out, the contradiction is that they’re not printing, but borrowing. Presently, any decrease in debt is deflation, a decrease in the money supply. That makes our present monetary system act somewhat differently than previous ones.
As the economy fails or there is economic pressure, people will attempt to break free by economizing and paying off debts, while a second group will default entirely under the pressure, again reducing money supply and adding pressure to their now naked creditors. This is an enormous demand for money.
However, if I were any other nation, I would be desperate to get clear of the sinking ship of black hole deflation. If Vietnam trades with China, they can exchange like normal actors building young economies, free of the crushing spiral by avoiding the US$ which is still demanded in so many worldwide contracts. Yet no one wants the contradiction of the world’s reserve currency, which would strengthen their exchange rate and crush their industry. Not even China.
Nevertheless, as international contracts try to avoid the troubles of the US$, they will ring-fence the U.S. in trade and imports. When the U.S. can’t import necessary goods, as they have inadequate industry at home, they would be forced to exchange externally in another way, regardless of their own internal inflation/deflation. We have seen several nations have internal/external currency situations which are unhealthy, and worse, the sickness is stable and lingering. In our case, however, it can still be remedied with default/restructuring of external obligations. How can that happen? Well, we may owe it, but since 1979 we were never going to pay it, a child could tell that. In fact, we told them in our white papers and the quote “It may be our currency but it’s your problem.” And with one of the world’s most active militaries, I doubt anyone will try to invade and collect the $20T from us, so again we will be ring-fenced and embargoed, our external assets confiscated in default. But that’s what happens when you act like a dummy and go bankrupt.
When that happens, industry will expand and sales will drop to fill the trade deficit, we will default on any social obligation we can get away with, and go to par on imports. –Believe it or not, we almost are already, if we cut useless spending and driving and exported slightly more oil. You can see the motions of the present insiders to get industry advanced and pipelines built before the walls go up.
So is that inflation or deflation? Outsiders won’t take U.S. dollars, and will no longer use them for international contracts — or will call them I-Dollars as opposed to Domestic Dollars as a legal expedience. External dollars may or may not be adequate to close out existing external contracts, I don’t know. All I can say is the problem will be made smaller and smaller as the US$ footprint gets smaller, even within the U.S. I imagine like other deadbeat nations, the internal currency will be terrible and inflationary as the government issues money, crushes demand to have something to export, wrecks industry to favor monopolies, then demands scarce goods and what little money normal people have will gravitate to cryptos, Amazon cards, and the like. Surely Argentina and Brazil use the same borrow-money-into-existence plan that we do, yet they have inflation.
Later, after the import/export balance is stabilized, to solve the internal/external currency problem, they would return to a single currency of some sort. In any case, this isn’t necessarily inflationary or deflationary, it just winds down the footprint until it’s manageable then rotates into a different, less dysfunctional system, which is disruptive.
The US$ is certainly failing, but as you say, may take an inconvenient path to get there. It’s the nature of history to be cantankerous like that.
I suspect Trump was quite correct, as is his business: stocks are in a bubble; any fool can tell that. But I also suspect that now he placed Sachs’ top IT-market-rigger in the Treasury to continue rigging markets because they believe, as Bernanke and Greenspan that “we have a device called a printing press…” and can cause inflation and a lower dollar at will. So Bennie, Yellen how’d that work out for you? But that’s the reason Trump is confident the Dow will rise. Contrary to common opinion stocks definitely and wildly rise in an inflationary dollar drop as savers hide: the best performing stock markets are those with the worst economies of all, Zimbabwe and Venezuela. In real purchasing power terms, they do not keep up, although they are a place for the wealthy to lose less money as the 99% return to picking garbage on the streets of the stone age.
But that’s a theory on why Trump believes he’s responsible for the stock market high (he rigged it, like the last 5 Presidents), and why he doesn’t have to worry about it falling (he’s printing buckets of money and handing it to insider pals, like the last 5 Presidents).
However, I’m not so sure Diogenes isn’t right, and DJT is wrong. If inflation were in the offing, wouldn’t it have happened by now? They could get inflation by handing money directly to the people, but which the people would use to pay off their debts (shrinking the money supply), a contradiction. Also they could have paid off every mortgage in America for like $10T, and they spent an audited $23T just in TARP1 alone and helped no homeowner yet, and in fact INCREASED the debt. Does that look like they wish to let the people free if it hasn’t happened already?
I have a feeling this is a case of fighting the last war, or neglecting an underlying premise, like the difference between a debt-based vs. equity-based system, so they flip the boat left when they should have leaned right. Capsize.
I’m happy to laud Keen’s whole article. Although there’s even more he could go into, who would have to time in one essay?
$65.5 million fine on $90,000,000 million churn? Be still my heart. Surely that larned ’em. Every time I get a parking ticket for $0.00001 I stop double parking right away, I do.
The Pence article was interesting, the presentation again. Pence has enthusiastically backed the policies by the lobbying firms. So only the firms he agrees with have been lobbying him? That seems careless of the Sierra Club and the Net Neutrality Interest Association. Shouldn’t we be mad at them for NOT lobbying him like they were supposed to?
Or maybe you mean that they DID lobby Pence, but Pence liked the other lobbyists better. In which case, he is resisting lobbyists — so fierce! — but spinelessly caving in to other lobbyists, because you have to decide something. …Just like every other politician had since lobbyists were invented.
Newsflash! Politician talks to lobbyists then picks a policy position! Just like every other day.
So, why was it reported this way? I suspect a lack of experience and cynicism by the reporter, which led him to a bias he himself was unaware of — which is at least a pleasant change. But in many ways is quite a bit more dangerous than when it’s obvious. Let’s try to keep our wits about us and help each other, shall we?
Back in 1930, there were a million or so people who wanted to solve the Depression. Like good engineers, they input the parameters and used science to come up with an emminently logical plan. They determined that, logically, the most efficient economy would create only and exactly the goods demanded using economy-wide just in time data, — even down to your electric meter — and logically, the currency should be an energy proxy, an inescapable BTU-Dollar, or in today’s parlance, a carbon credit.
Using this mass-data central planning to run the economy of an unified North America logically — but far better than the competing Soviet system — had a third arm: if individuals stockpiled or “hoarded” anything, it would be inefficient. Therefore, they were both prohibited from stockpiling goods or stockpiling money. If your paycheck from creating this month’s goods wasn’t spent, it would expire. Note that this is a direct pathway to neo-serfdom, as, like the Soviet system it would have owners, capitalists, party-members, oh-so smart, important, naturally benevolent deciders sitting on palacial American Dachas, and the rest of the nation, unimportant people, non-deciders, non-owners, who must live hand-to-mouth, owning nothing and unable to own or store any life security: food, shoes, money, anything.
Wow, sure is a good thing that never happened! Boy if they had got in the BTU-credit and negative interest rates that made your paycheck vanish, locked in with no alternative, and universal tracking of inventory through every worker from factory to landfill, the whole middle class, stability, independence, and even free human agency would disappear! Dodged that one!
Thanks to Rogoff, we won’t have to worry about that. He means only the best for us by running the economy logically, efficiently. …You know, like any good sociopath.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy_movement
‘Technocracy is the science of social engineering, the scientific operation of the entire social mechanism to produce and distribute goods and services to the entire population of this continent. For the first time in human history it will be done as a scientific, technical, engineering problem. There will be no place for Politics or Politicians, Finance or Financiers, Rackets or Racketeers. Technocracy states that this method of operating the social mechanism of the North American Continent is now mandatory because we have passed from a state of actual scarcity into the present status of potential abundance in which we are now held to an artificial scarcity forced upon us in order to continue a Price System which can distribute goods only by means of a medium of exchange. Technocracy states that price and abundance are incompatible; the greater the abundance the smaller the price. In a real abundance there can be no price at all. Only by abandoning the interfering price control and substituting a scientific method of production and distribution can an abundance be achieved. Technocracy will distribute by means of a certificate of distribution available to every citizen from birth to death. The Technate will encompass the entire American Continent from Panama to the North Pole because the natural resources and the natural boundary of this area make it an independent, self-sustaining geographical unit.’ Notes:
– Social engineering as a foundation of control
– Presumably zero tolerance of resistance or alternate systems/lifestyles
– Elimination of national governments in favor of a merged corporations / bureaucracy
– Therefore, elimination of democracy and citizen rights in favor of Philosopher Kings/Scientific Dictatorship, decided by them, not the people.
– Elimination of money or means of exchange instead using centrally-tracked citizen vouchers
– A North American union.Did I miss anything? Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.
“jeopardizing the future of many” “younger generations.”
If you mean young people were screwed white for the pleasure of Boomers/Insiders for the past 15 years, such that they already have never started families, own nothing, have no stability, are now +30 and can never mathematically recover, then yes, they are “jeopardized”. They make this sound like a risk that might happen someday, not a historical event that already happened…and the reporter knows full well has already happened.
…Sort of like the 17 year Recession/Depression we’re in. #stoplying.
He is correct, and there are about a dozen things here. First, they haven’t made it out of the Sea of Japan, even Guam is very, very far from there, much less America. Second, although their regional missile can hit Japan, which is very, very serious, the last one probably broke up in flight again, which seems less so. Third, they already said they *might* get 2 missiles on the pad, it will take 15 days, and it *might* reach as far as Guam. That’s very very different from having 6,000 Minutemen on quick-launch. Four, that brings to mind they will cease to exist 30 seconds after attacking, so since they haven’t attacked anyone in 50 years, they suddenly will this August 2017 when Congress goes home? Really CNN? Really Brian “Live-from-the-moon” Williams, who said “our job is to scare the hell out of America.”? Five, you don’t just pop a warhead on like a laundry basket: it needs to tolerate an explosive launch and bumpy ride. If it’s a nuke, you can’t just drive it into the ground: it needs an elevation sensor, nano-exact timing switches and matched explosives, etc. That’s very, very different. And in just a few months suddenly NK can hit Chicago despite having never exceeded 400mi. Where did that come from? Why not Miami? Or London? Or Jupiter? And a week later they miraculously created a launch-capable micro-nuke? In August, when Congress is away and the U.S. starts a war every year? SMH.
Okay, that’s not to say the situation isn’t quite serious: it is. **That’s why we shouldn’t lie about it.** Remember those “half the world lives in this circle” pictures? Well they’re all his neighbors. Yet somehow he has no trouble getting along with the 4 Billion other guys next door – just us. Wonder why. Could it be something like last week he said “a great way to show good faith and de-escalate would be to stop having massive live-fire drills on the DMZ, and the U.S. immediately had a massive live fire drill? Like that? Or how he says, “Hey, if you attack us, we’ll attack you back.” No duh. Every nation on earth will do that, and our press makes it sound outrageous. He’s just cray-cray.
Speaking of, so now in the bizarro looking-glass world we’re in, the press is HELPING Trump by lying savagely about this war. Why? They suddenly like him so much? Or did we already see how he’s “our President” and have Maddow do a breathless full fangirlz scream on TV provided he’s bombing some farmer in Syria? Really, people? Meanwhile, McCain, who never never left blood unspilled in his life and has dedicated his legacy to starting wars worldwide is decrying Trump to give peace a chance. Again, why? Meanwhile Newsweek, which stopped being a real magazine years ago, is presenting the truth 1st time in 30 years. Discuss?
Why are they all at it, why does this suddenly need to be solved? I have my ideas. But rhetoric aside, look at the chessboard: NK is on on the silk road and needed to join SK, her industry and ports, through China all the way out to Lisbon and London. Pipelines again. There are trillions of assets on ice in NK Barclay could leverage 100:1. If you must have that, something needs to change. But considering the U.S. has attacked like 15 countries in the last 15 years, and we say we’ll assassinate him every other week for 25 years, change is very dangerous for Kim Jong: he wants intense stability to hold his country and his head. That’s justified. So to change anything, you need action, to flush him out, make him move. You saw earlier, the same old rhetoric didn’t work, as expected, so they’re trying something new.
Trump just got buy-in from Russia and China for unanimous sanctions, the first time ever — a real coup, but don’t hold your breath for anyone to report it. This shows Kim there’s something different and serious. Next, China and the U.S. play-fence off and on, so it looks like China’s not just a servant of U.S. policy. That’s true, but the show in the S.C. Sea helps keep it fresh. Then Russia does what they do best: calm diplomacy, while China says they are NK’s best friend right now and will defend them against a(nother) illegal U.S. strike. That’s also true — they are, as much as NK has friends. Then Trump is such a lousy liar he says openly on T.V. “You’re closed to us, Kim Jong had better find another way.” Really, Donald, really? Your bad acting could blow the whole thing. The “other way” of course is for NK to work with China, get a settlement brokered by Russia, and the U.S. “reluctantly” is forced to agree — although they staged the whole play, although Trump has to be tarred as “unstable” to play his part. Why not? Let them call him a stupid buffoon again. Who cares if it fixes it? China goes up in world esteem, the U.S. settles this canker, and the press and Congress are made busy chasing their tails for a few months while both sides are completing their competing internal investigations.
…If no one double-crosses anyone, and the plan goes well. Complex plans have a habit of not going well, especially with competing internal forces all sabotaging each other, every nation being sick of America, ready to dump the US$, and the temptation for China to let things go bad and shove the U.S. out of the China Sea will be high. But, in theory, you can see the outlines. China and Russia both gave diplomatic hints supporting it, and if it doesn’t work, they have have Plan D. Thats HOW to do it, does anyone know why to do it?
Congratulations Greece, you’re the country with the most slavery!
Greece among the countries with the most slave labor within the EU
Congratulations Europe, you’re the guys who made it all happen! Can I get a round of applause for a job well done, mates? #yourvaluesareshowing
If you remove the electoral college, you can pretty much guarantee a civil war, with the secession of flyoverland. Everyone is still playing together because they have the sense (illusion?) they are represented. “Only won by electoral” is a bit off-color. Those were the rules since 1789 and everyone campaigns accordingly. List of Presidents who lost the popular vote:
1824: John Quincy Adams.
1876: Rutherford B. Hayes.
1888: Benjamin Harrison.
2000: George W. Bush.
2016: Donald Trump.That’s not going into arcana like the 1992 election where Clinton won, but with less than half the vote (split by two candidates), or how so few people vote there hasn’t been a plurality in decades. Are we going to say Quincy shouldn’t be President? Maybe we should give Florida back? Really, all this loose talk without legal and historical context can be damaging — like when I hear now everything is treason or sedition: it’s not. Those words have very specific legal meanings we might educate ourselves about and why each exists. Not everyone who disagrees is therefore Hitler or Mao. Words have meanings. Actual history exists.
Since we already burned all the furniture, no one cares about truth or knows history, everyone who has any inside experience is ipso facto corrupt, and most everything said in the last 50 years is a lie of some sort, it was always going to be bad. We just have to work a plan to make the practical best of a bad show without getting zealous or dogmatic about it. I think that’s what Raul is saying.
Apparently the EU finds that Greece is still too wealthy. They must needs send them a few tens of thousands more people to take care of.
“…if you spend less money – surprise, surprise – your economy shrinks…”
Omg Keen, the government is not the economy, the government is not the people. Okay, to make this short, government spending is good, right? He’s argued exuberantly that deficts are good, and the only evil in government is to reduce deficits and live within your means. So we should take him at his word: if deficts have no downside, clearly we should print all the money the country needs and hand it out. I mean, why stop at $20 Trillion? Why not $200 Trillion? Or $200,000 Trillion? Giga Trillion? Peta Trillion? I want a Mercedes, an underwater Atlantis resort, and those $1,000,000 condos for every homeless person aren’t going to build themselves, you know.
Oh wait — you mean there ARE limits? Every nation that ever printed money without real productivity to back it up had inflation, savage income disparity, and social unrest due to how inflation helps the richest and devastates the poorest even to total collapse and wars killing millions? Gee, who would have heard of that before? Maybe an economist or economic history professor?
Keen, for heaven’s sake, try not to kill every one in the nations you’re advising — at least leave a couple alive to tell the tale.
Even if apparently, after 2,000 years and a 100% failure rate, economists STILL think there’s a magic goblin money tree made of free lunches where no one ever has to work again.
“A hostile White House…” “…is part of an unprecedented assault on the State Department”
This article and approach is truly bizarre. It’s like saying “the decommission of the F150 assembly line to make F250’s is part of an unprecedented attack on Ford. Will they survive?” Newsflash: the State Department is the exclusive playground of the Executive. Then can fire 100% of all men there, hire circus clowns, and be in their rights. The Neocons + the opposing party have been there for a minimum of 16 years. Entire careers have been established on the basis of illegal intervention, theft, mass-murder, extortion, and war. The election presumably happened to put in something new. (Of course the last 4 elections were too, but…) Is Tillerson supposed to do something new, something he was elected for, by keeping the people positioned and promoted by his enemies, firing no one and changing nothing? You know, like Obama did when he kept the entire pro-bank, pro-war Bush team in place? Or do we somehow believe that entire departments of the government, put in during the last 16+ years of intense acrimony, are entirely non-political?
That’s why this is so bizarre it’s almost notes from a parallel universe where apparently the State Department and Washington insiders are deeply caring, non-political patriots, while the voters are dirty reprehensibles trying to topple the state, and Presidents and elected officials are traitors and rebels to be ignored, stymied, opposed, blackmailed, and brought to heel by the real government: the kind, wise, benevolent insiders. That the government is for them, not for us? It does what they say, not what we say?
Or, perhaps, that really IS what we believe? What this employee, what this reporter, even what so many readers believe? That we voters, we citizens are nothing, and our lord and master is groupthink, is bureaucracy, is government and we are but poor subjects to their eternal will?
Maybe this article is not as far off in reporting as first appeared; it’s just that we –and apparently a tiny majority of the people — have wildly differing views of the relationship between people and government.
The readings were rounded up and discarded because readings 10c lower than the norm are considered “anomalous”. However, readings 10c higher than the norm are NOT considered “anomalous.” Discuss?
#confirmationbiasDisagree. Who were you going to use as a source, CNN and MSNBC? There are now websites dedicated to listing the official daily retractions of major news sources. There’s so much lying and failure to source-check that even the weather sources are posting official retractions now. I’m sorry they can’t do their job and threw us in the soup but there you are.
Bilbo, why is no one prosecuted? Because they WANT it to be this way, they’re HAPPY with it–since the birth of the IMF. They if they weren’t happy, if they were stepping on someone’s toes, losing some billionaire’s fortune, then he’d use his remaining billions to buy a Minister, take revenge, and someone would get prosecuted.
The fact that no one is prosecuted is your ipso facto evidence that everything is happing exactly the way they want it to happen, all the right people are winning and the correct people are losing by handing more of their wealth to the people in control. It’s called “Disaster Capitalism” and like 50 books have been written on it. What does it take to admit that no “accident” where no one is prosecuted and no reforms are made, that therefore the accident is the plan? Is it that hard to believe that power people like more power, that money people like more money? Or can they just not conceive that anyone would ever lie about anything?
The IMF has a clean, 100% failure rate, so what in the last 60 years would ever make you think anything else was going on? Just a very, very slow learner?
Really boggles my mind sometime how hard it is to tell the simplest, most basic, obvious truths. There is such a thing as gravity. The sun comes up in the east. The IMF was established exclusively to provide plausible cover for powerful nations to savage poor ones for profit. There.
“This is a full-blown scandal — again,” said New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer, who oversees public pension funds that hold roughly 11.6 million Wells Fargo shares. “It’s unbelievable, outrageous, sad, and yet quintessential Wells Fargo.
OMG, are you for real? So you will go in public to say corruption and fraud is “quintessential Wells Fargo business model, and you still own 11M shares? You haven’t even sold them in the months since the last scandal? This is what is wrong with the system. Under a normal, profit-based, non-rigged, system, companies who, I dunno, commit serial multi-billion dollar frauds, overpay their boards 50-fold, or, say, have had no profits ever (lookin’ at you, Amazon) would be SOLD. Instead they are actively BOUGHT.
So this drooling idiot, like his NYC brethren like “I-don’t-pay-my-taxes” Geithner, have never heard of “fiduciary duty” which would mean if he owns 11M shares or $583B in a company he openly admits he knew all along is fraudulent he would get class-action sued into the next galaxy, because that means he knows NYC will have a $500B pension hole taxpayers will be asked to fill, Chicago-style. But it no longer even occurs to him, a) to have shame or b) to have caution, because no banker in the NY District court has gone to jail in 40 years. A judge just retired of old age there and proudly bragged that he had never settled in the public’s favor once, and this was lauded as work well done.
Moving on from our complete lack of a free market or a justice system, Wells’ solution is to fire managers. Okay, were those managers guilty of anything? If so, why aren’t they being charged? If not, does that mean the felons just ousted all the honest men, concentrating the power into ever-fewer insider hands? And so you’re going to fix a problem–presumably of oversight–by having 50% LESS oversight, as apparently all those managers now need to do twice the work and oversee twice as much territory as they “weren’t able” to oversee without felonies before? I mean because, like the creating-fraudulent-accounts scandal, all those minimum wage phone reps for some reason committed all these crimes although no one in the company had directed them to. –Gotta watch those minimum wage workers! Never know what they’ll get up to compared to us clean, white-shirted Yale graduates!
And this is the “right structure” — for further profitable fraud, graft, and insider paychecks. I’m sure now that they make no money and are proven to be a business model based on theft, financial rape, and accounting fraud, their stock should soar in pursuit of those other open fraudsters, Amazon, Facebook, and Tesla. Go US!
I’m a little confused by the McCain vote. His voting against Trump and the Republicans was the least surprising thing so far this year. Did anyone actually think he WAS a Republican? What on earth would make them think that?
So Republicans could vote 60/30 to repeal back when Obama would veto it, but now, when they can not only repeal but create any solution whatsoever, they somehow can’t figure it out? Gee whiz, does this seem to anyone like political theatre? In that we already know from the “Let’s not fund terrorists” bill that Gabbards(D) put out that 232 GOP members of the House are not Republican as only 8 Republicans backed this clear non-interventionism and rule of (international) law? (–Let’s skip the equal number of fake non-Democrats for now).
Or maybe a better explanation is that the House has 421 Deep State Insiders, and only 14 Representatives of the People to Congress? Maybe this describes the present lunacy a little better?
…And makes McCain’s vote all that much less shocking. What have people been doing that they didn’t already know this? Did they just miss the last 25 years?
• US Sanctions Have Taken A Big Bite Out Of Russia’s Economy (CNBC)
They are actively strengthening Russia, which in 3 years has now dramatically revitalized agriculture and certain other critical industries, wildly improving their military and economic independence while avoiding any backlash at home. “Thanks!” they say, “Couldn’t have done it without you.” Now with the new sanctions trying to stop Nordstream gas and shut down Germany, Europe will have no choice but to also break away from the U.S. Break away, and then what? Join with Russia and the Silk Road of course –the only profitable project on earth– the East-West union the Anglos fought two world wars over and have been actively stopping since the MacKinder days, and the charge of the light brigade. Turkey has already gone, if the Anglos needed an example of what will immediately happen to them and NATO if they make such ill-conceived attempts at extortion.
So I dunno, go ahead and have your sanctions and lose not only Russia but all of Europe from your sphere of influence, following the loss of China, the Pacific Rim, the Middle East, and Africa. I guess common sense can’t stop them if they don’t have any. Have to ask when the consequences are so bad and so obvious: we knew from their white papers going back to NAFTA and before they intended to bring down the U.S., grind up their military, discredit it morally, and isolate and ruin it economically. Not like this hasn’t been discussed since “that giant sucking sound” and every year they choose the same path against the overwhelming will of the people. Since the results have been so clear, so devastating, so impoverishing, so Congress-ruining, so well-advertised, and it isn’t the U.S. or its people who would actively, consistantly turn America into Zimbabwe for unremitting decades, who’s actually pulling the strings? The vote was 419-3, the mirror image of Gabbard’s “Let’s not fund illegal terrorists” bill. That’s a lot of pull indeed.
Did anyone catch this? https://www.macrovoices.com/288-dr-pippa-malmgren-cryptocurrencies-libertarian-dream-come-true-or-orwellian-nightmare
https://www.macrovoices.com/macro-voices-research/podcast-transcripts/1043-2017-07-20-transcript-of-the-podcast-interview-between-erik-townsend-and-dr-pippa-malmgrenPPT member and insider points out that:
”if the size of your debt problem is so big that it can’t be paid off and in fact even inflation, which is the usual way you would seek to default on your debt slowly over time, you can’t get enough inflation generated, then there is one further option. And that is you literally abandon the entire system of money, and accounting. I know that sounds unbelievably radical, but we have seen it happen before. I explained the example of Britain in 1834, when they abandoned the traditional system they had used for 1,000 years at that time, which was called the Tally Stick system. So when we say we tally things up or the word stock market refers to the use of little wooden stocks. They were little pieces of wood on which you record every transaction during your life, every borrowing, every lending deal, every asset acquisition, every tax payment.””You can imagine everyone said I am going to hand over this record, this ledger of my entire net worth, and you are going to give me a piece of paper. Really? This is a joke. In the end, what the government had to do was confiscate the tally sticks, and they took them to parliament to burn them. They misjudged how much heat the fire would throw off, and that is what caused Parliament to burn to the ground in 1834. It was the destruction of the system of accounting and money. In its place, we adopted what we now use, which is piece of paper we call cash. Today, we are on the brink of similar step change, and the way you will do it is you move to electronic money in conjunction with blockchain. Blockchain is the new ledger, and e-money is the new currency.”
Ding!
As predicted and publicized back as far as 1971, we shoot right past any possibility of “fixing” the system, and Greenspan is instrumental in both a) making the system entirely unrecoverable without a worldwide collapse and death of billions, and b) keeping it actually functioning while it is this catastrophically malformed. But Reagan, all the guys told us on national TV back then the debt wasn’t their problem, it was ours. It was pretty clear even before 1989 that it would cause a complete collapse to even attempt to pay it, and that this would cripple, enslave, and destroy our children. Yay! they said. Yay!!!!!! Sign my kids up first! As long as we don’t have to wear sweaters in the White House, it’s all worthwhile.
So…you see, right beyond paying it back (I can’t believe anyone is still talking about this), right beyond “collapse”, and right into the recorded and published plan back as far as 1981 — a complete digital currency replacement, completely tracked and controllable. The paper currencies burn like the phoenix and are replaced with a different system. And here we go, in 2018, right on schedule from 37 years previous. Like they promised, and told to us in public on national TV by a PPT insider, on the front page of national magazines.
Anybody listening? Of course not. It will all be a big accident, unforeseen and unforeseeable, that makes certain pre-planners rich and the rest of us paupers. Because, at this point, you have any other ideas? Cake? Or death?
So many things wrong with Bilbo, it’s hard to know where to start.
1) The U.S. has universal health care: if you present yourself, you will be served good and hard.
2) Universal Healthcare in the U.S. is also completely illegal and would require a Constitutional amendment to grant proper authority. This has not gone well in many past Amendments.
3) It could be and has been done at the State level, which is already legal and enacted. It also bankrupted all of those states, including RomneyCare in Massachusetts. California discovered this year that providing health care would consume 100% of tax receipts alone.
4) The U.S. already (illegally) provides universal Medicare for the poor or old and forces the States to pay half. In effect, this means that the Upper and lower classes have access to affordable health care while the larger middle class pays for but does not have health care. This is because of points 1, 3, and 4. Perhaps giving health care to those who are not working and productive, but NOT giving health care to hard working and productive people is economically counterproductive?
5) As all health care is already given, hospitals must pay for it. They therefore overcharge clients, which is an open violation of collusion and antitrust laws. This causes the price of health care to get completely divorced from cost, which is divorced from its value or success. The system then literally has no idea how much things cost, how much effort they take, and how much social good they create. Billing therefore becomes irrational with 1,000-fold price discrepancies being common. This is perhaps the single greatest issue in healthcare, not intent to overcharge, but randomly charging as there is complete separation from reality.
6) The 1980 starting point Bilbo points to the U.S. pretty much had 90% private health care. Yet the costs were reasonable and the outcomes good. Why? This seems to undermine his entire argument, as that implies we should go BACK to 1980 structure and AWAY from our foray into socialized national health care. Every step the U.S. has taken toward his Bilbo’s stated goal has increased costs and lowered outcomes. It may have elsewhere as well, as the cost chart of all nations is rising.
7) MMT is a joke the same way that “pretending” health care comes from general receipts is a joke. Printing money is not free, it’s the most regressive tax possible, hitting the poorest and most vulnerable via inflation and economic destruction. Bankrupting the entire government is hardly as he claims, “irrelevant”, as Greece and Spain can attest. After several decades experience with MMT nonsense, we ought to be up to speed. Health care costs what it costs in lives, time, and resources. There is no free money tree.
8) As such, “the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health” cannot possibly be “one of the fundamental rights”. Why? Because to GIVE the highest possible care to every human who asks, they can only take FROM doctors, nurses, caregivers, and taxpayers. You cannot have a fundamental human right to appropriate my work for your “enjoyment”. That’s literally the definition of slavery, which is not a human right. If the society CHOOSES to tax itself to provide that, because we as a people WISH TO, that’s common taxation, but is not a human right to own my money and my life. We must examine the other premises of anyone who thinks these things very, very carefully, as they are very, very dangerous, because:
9) “Once you run a rights agenda then the only sensible health care option is a universal public system.” Yes, once you accept a false premise, horrors are indeed possible which seem good indeed at first. He says “If all available real resources are being fully utilised then to expand their use in one area requires another area(s) give up its (their) claim on those resources.” Quite so, and once it is a human right, we can legally take 100% of all other social resources, and you MUST do so when your stated goal is to provide the “Highest possible” level of care to 100% of the citizens. This thinking quickly leaves nothing for any other purpose: economic progress, research, defense, food. Since it is a human right, we must sacrifice those things and those people. By now a child can see you have a false premise running. Stop.Need more?
10) “There is no revenue constraint…government checks don’t bounce.” Really? How’s that working out in Greece, Venezuela, or even Spain, France and the U.K.? They’re governments, why do they appear to have revenue constraints, even at threat of complete collapse? Maybe once we have Mad Max gangs running down sugar trucks on the open highway, in Mexico and Caracas there is a constraint? Maybe also long before this point, a high level of health care is also not being provided?
11) “Any attempt to link the two via erroneous concepts” [i.e. money and the real world] is crazy and unnecessary according to Bilbo. Are we far enough into the weeds to stop listening to him yet? That there are no physical constraints, no limit of wishful resources, but that we dream of them, write them on a (legal) paper and they magically exist? This thinking would put Robespierre to shame, and has already killed more people worldwide.I wouldn’t be so harsh, but the longer we all remain inside a psychotic break, divorced from reality, the harder it is to address the difficult and necessary work of allocating fair and appropriate real resources, with real constraints, to help real, actual citizens. Bilbo is provably a maniac and I would have him institutionalized for his own safety if I could. Otherwise, he might decide there’s no longer a physical constraint of “gravity” or “automobiles” and jump in front of one. Instead, he’s trying to push us in front of one instead. Good heavens.
New Study Finds U.S. Healthcare System Ranks Dead Last Compared To Other Developed Nations
Helping! See us helping! We’re helping sooo much!
When can I have back the terrible care I got in 1990?
Student loans are a $1T+ receivable to the U.S. government. Therefore, the U.S. bond market will collapse as students (already) don’t pay. They can’t. They don’t have the money because we don’t have an economy. That’s not even a taxpayer bailout really, it’s a systemic collapse and reboot.
the ….(CBO) estimated that repealing Obamacare without a replacement would result in 32 million people losing insurance by 2026, including 19 million who would lose Medicaid coverage. It would also cause premiums to rise by as much as 50%
Newsflash: Obamacare ALREADY caused millions of people to lose their coverage. That was BECAUSE of the law. There are what, 47 counties with zero coverage, and 1,300 with one, while more insurers bail every day? Wisconsin, Indiana and Virginia are leaving. This is WITH the law. Also, barely anyone was added in the first place, because those reported as added were mostly added to the existing Medicaid system they were already eligible for, NOT Obamacare.
It will raise premiums 50%?? They ALREADY rose premiums 50% in many states, UNDER Obamacare. That was after multiple compounded 10% rises going in to ACA, and a couple 20% rises DURING ACA coverage. It’s measurably doubled from nosebleed levels since they started pushing it. Single owner small businesses are paying $20,000/year, while care and coverage has gotten catastrophically worse. –What person under this law could foot the $4,000 deductable? Are they insane? We’re talking about people who barely see $4,000 pass through their hands in an entire year. As bad as it was for Americans in 2010, it’s amazingly worse now, while providing virtually no care. In 2009, the average cost was a deadly $15,000/year. That’s $1,000/mo for very poor care, crippling families, businesses and the economy. Yet thanks to Obamacare, by 2016 it was nearly $26,000 a year, a +70% increase. This is your law, the one they support. The one they panic about repealing. https://www.oftwominds.com/photos2016/medical-costs6-16a.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_the_United_States#/media/File:International_Comparison_-_Healthcare_spending_as_%25_GDP.pngNow that’s what I call affordable! 30% more than Switzerland or France to get no care whatsoever. I can only DREAM of having care as bad and as expensive as it was before the ACA, a mere $15,000/yr, when I might get service at a hospital, maybe, that wouldn’t bankrupt me.
And the ACA exchanges and participation continues to collapse today, both among insurers and participants. …But don’t worry: we will very likely see the collapse of the entire United States because of it. Maybe then we can at last admit it’s not working. Or not, if history so far is any guide.
Meanwhile, no one will address the real problem: COSTS ARE TOO HIGH. And that’s clearly not due to the care — we’re getting almost no care, and little measurable success for the money spent. It’s strictly wasted in paperwork or funneled out to insurance profits and pharmaceutical companies, who have been so protected by bribery, we’re not even having the discussion of limiting profits. That’s equally or more true of bulk-rate Medicare as it is private care, because that’s how multi-billion dollar Congressional bribery works.
And yet, you expect the same people who just spent 10-40 years PROTECTING the insurers and corporations while savaging the citizens at every turn to suddenly write single-payer laws that PROTECT the citizens and destroy the corporations…and collapse 20% of U.S. GDP, at first. What on earth would make you think after 40 years of killing citizens and destroying the health care system for profit, the exact same people would suddenly change their minds? That’s simply illogical.
So I don’t know what MIGHT happen, or what’s possible in other nations, but in the U.S., either overall or just this point in history, no lawmaker, no law, and no one in medicine is going to do the right thing, slit their throats and spontaneously reform themselves while collapsing the outsized GDP of the nation during the transition. What that leaves as an option is anybody’s guess, but historically it usually involves a complete collapse, disarray, and a cash-only + charity system you see in other failed states. Sorry I can’t be more positive about it, but I live in those areas and down at those levels and have regular interactions with the system and its care. $4,000 for 6 stitches? Being admitted but not being seen in a hospital for 2 days? Those are the least bad outcomes. Accidentally killing people with poor practice and leviathan procedures AND charging $100,000 for the priviledge? All. The. Time. Please, please, please let’s not have someone as functional as the U.S. Congress help us. They’ve helped enough already. They can’t even help themselves.
Wait, it was just the COLDEST winter a few months ago. It Greece was snowed in 2m and it snowed in the Sahara. Syria was snowed for months. Again, cold is a signal of hot, hot is a signal of hot, wet is a signal of hot, dry is a signal of hot. Call me crazy, but this is science?
“Keynes contended that…when there is a lack of demand from consumers…”
Speaking of idiots… There’s never a lack of demand. People always want all the things. There’s a lack of WAGES to buy those things with. Also if there are resources (because we can build things and warehouse them unsold), and there is demand because people want those things, then what is it that is preventing the people, those workers, from using their labor to convert the resources and make the things they want? Because I suspect if you landed in America from outer space in 1932 –or Greece in 2017– you’d be amazed at all the resources, factories, fields, railroads, and electrification enough for everyone to use. Yet somehow the population is prevented from enjoying the resources of their nation, even though they’re working and willing to work. ….And it wasn’t a “lack of aggregate demand” that was the cause.
Seriously, can we bury these stupid, provably false ideas yet, or do more people need to die first? This nonsense from Keynes simply provides cover to divert from the real people and the real problem.
Times article is misleading. (Of course: it was written by a journalist.) The NYT is collapsing. It’s doing so well it had a strike over laying off its staff which internal memos referred to as “dogs”, including the copy editors, which is one of the few things a real paper has over a blog, and they’ve long since discontinued overseas and investigative reporting. Sure it has a small bump but they’re cannibalizing readers already in their echo chamber.
Other media is likewise collapsing, and the reason isn’t that hard to understand: something like 40% of the country is “conservative”, however you define it. Yet newspapers and editors have become outrageously, overwhelmingly liberal, such that insulting anyone who disagrees with them five times an article is considered a job requirement and civic duty. …That’s fine as it goes. It’s a private paper, and since the beginning there were papers each proudly displaying their political bias– the “Democrat” something-or-other, the “Union” or “Standard” such-and-such. However, since the 40’s, virtually all conservative papers were driven out. That’s history. At the same time, insulting and alienating 40% of your market audience is not exactly an earmark of good business. I couldn’t, for instance, rail on the inadequacy of women, how they shouldn’t vote, how their candidates should be removed for mere existence, how their entire platform was laughable and idiotic, everything they did was emotionally unhinged, and yet expect that 51% of the population to patronize me. I mean, really. Yet this is exactly what newspapers are doing. Proudly, forcefully, as their readership collapses, as year after year letter after letter pours in, telling them exactly what they’re doing. This is true of major corporations as well, who proudly get involved in social justice on one side or the other, whose advertisements are targeted toward themselves and big-city values which alienate 40% of the nation, who seem as bizarre as Effie Trinket and Caesar Flickerman from the Hunger Games. That is, not just different, not just out of touch, but aggressively, offensively, even murderously so. And then they wonder why advertising is failing to be as successful now.
It’s easy to say it’s the paper, it’s the internet, but guess what? There are quite a number of successful papers in America, who are gaining audience buy buying out these failures and printing what the audience wants and needs. Others just do their darned job and get by, Warren Buffett’s Buffalo paper being one we hear about sometimes. This is similarly true for ads, which can be a success across lines and locations if anybody cares to, and I thought the point of advertising was to not alienate your audience but inspire good feelings about your product among everyone. It’s just that they don’t. Many have no self-awareness, and tell 40% of the customers “you’re wrong and I’m doing all I can to keep you and your money away from my brand. Please don’t come here; we don’t serve your kind.” Well, mission accomplished. Now you have 40% fewer customers and 40% fewer sales.
YouTube is a stellar example. They are systematically purging conservative, verboten thoughts from their platform. Yet those channels very likely represent 40% of their content, and 40% of their customers, and therefore 40% of their ads. However you may personally feel, how do you survive a downturn by cutting your own customer base 40%? How will the advertisers, once they figure out that they’re now advertising in the same echo chamber they already have? You have to reach people with money, not just people you like–that’s one of the awkward parts of business. So the banished 40% moves to Steemit, and is unlikely to be re-captured again. Worse, part of YouTube’s model is to spy on and sell user information: YOU are their real product. What good is your information if it’s a warped subset of the nations involved? How do you sell, say, election predictions, or influence society when half the nation is missing? So…what’s the new value of your newly inaccurate, non-influential data?
Seriously, these people who make these decisions aren’t smart enough to know which end of a shovel to pick up, and deserve the untimely death they’re experiencing. IYI indeed.
• German Banks Pose A Threat That Politicians Want To Hide (CNBC)
So the German Banking problem is too much competition? The IMF regrets there has not been more vertical monopolization? Also these banks traffic in real business, like manufacturing and shipping, and not phantom profits of paper-ginning? And that they still provide capital to real production is a major concern? They are also deeply concerned profits are inadequately high. Efficiencies to create profits (via monopolization) have not been realized, but effiency is the enemy of resiliency. Meaning, because there are thousands of small, inefficient, home-town banks in Germany, who only collect modest and fair profits while insuring capital flow so real-world things get done, when they pull the plug on the large ones, like DeutscheBank, which must go down, they cannot justify taxpayer payouts to insiders as they re-monopolize the system, as local banks will be there, providing service, ready to fill the gap left by the dinosaurs.
Is this what you’re trying to say, IMF? Because that’s what I’m hearing.
You’re just making my point.
Corporations that need monopoly protection, handouts and bailouts because they fail to do the work of corporations: satisfying customers without open extortion take money from businesses that have to operate honestly. Check.
A military that can’t win against Afghanistan, and now produces planes that can’t fly, ships that can’t sail, and carriers that can’t land. The U.S. spends more than the world combined yet cannot accomplish their job while taking resources that hollow out the strength and infrastructure of the country. Check.
A medical industry that is monopoly protected, yet with the highest costs in the world, provides some of the deadliest care, also failing their job and not doing any actual health work while consuming 20% of the national income of those who do work. Check.
Again, our national industry is take money, aka scarce resources, away from those who produce at a net energy profit, and give it to those who function at a loss. And only that largest of all ravenous consumers, government, could make this possible.
Well, at least it’s over now in Peurto Rico and Illinois, and soon to be Maine, Connecticut, Kentucky, and California. There need to be checks and balances, and San Juan and Springfield just reached them.
“Maine, New Jersey Lawmakers Scramble To End Partial Government Shutdowns”
Why the surprise? This is just following the normal procedure. We give money to those who are NOT working (pensioners) and take money from those who ARE working (new State employees and taxpayers). That’s how we all get rich! Winning!
Completely unrelated: would we have perverse incentives if we reward sloth and graft and punish thrift and industry? What effects might this have on society?
Bonus question: in Illinois, if we pay retired, non-working policemen first, and have no money left for active, on-duty policemen, would that be a problem? Would taxpayers feel happy and well-served, willing to stay in state, create revenue, and be taxed?
The U.S. government is so against terror that only 2% of Congressmen would stop funding it.
Not vote to start fighting it, but pass Gabbard’s law to stop actively funding it’s increase.
This is reported in all the papers (page 26) and no one bats an eye, carrying on with how we’re “fighting” those naughty other people who are coming to get us.
At some point you run out of words.
Scientists Fear “Supervolcano” Eruption
I’m a little lost on this fascination. Mankind has never seen a supervolcano, well, ever. Never and ever. We had Mt. Tambora, Krakatoa, and some others, but nothing like the Siberian Traps 250M BCE. They’ve almost never happened in geological history, either, like less than ten times? In addition, like most science they know very little and their predictions are still terrible going back decades — not that we shouldn’t try, but really, check your stats in the PeeWee league before claiming to be in the NFL. When you can predict anything having to do with volcanoes and earthquakes, maybe then speak. I don’t see any particular reason why Yellowstone should erupt now. More, should it erupt, there’s literally no body of scientific evidence that says it would do so as a supervolcano. Hyperbole much? (A: Nevermind, yes. Is there any other way to speak anymore?)
Yellowstone is already active. It always has been. It may have been swarming 10x harder from 1550 to 1850 and nobody would know. As it’s seismically and volcanically active and always, always has been, it’s all the more reason to presume there is a pressure relief valve that operating correctly: we’re looking at it in the photos, it’s called “Yellowstone.” So since we have fine and normal activity, why would the activity not just increase measurably, perhaps even to the point of actual eruption, Kilauea or Etna-style? That would be the normal, scientific conclusion, not to immediately presume a world-ending cataclysm which tends to shorten careers.
Compare that to something like Mexico where activity was capped and unknown, and suddenly in 1943, a volcano appeared out of an open field and decided to be 424m (1,400′) high. Problems? Well, for the farmer who owned the field. And yes, when Eyjafjallajökull or St. Helens blows up it’s a big deal. But only for those nearby and a nuisance for those further off. Yearly floods are no doubt orders of magnitude more destructive to people and property, as are hurricanes, typhoons, tornados, and possibly bees.
So…what’s all the hubub, bub? Day not complete unless it’s the end of the world somehow? Or something else?
Did you catch this? It was all laid out quite elegantly in “Yes, Prime Minister”
Is Global Warming real? Who cares! It solves my political problems by raising taxes, paying cronies, and shedding heat.
Sad to say single payer would not save U.S. health care. Not with all the same corrupt people in charge. Aside from it being entirely, hilariously illegal (but who cares about that anymore) as there is no federal mandate whatsoever without a constitutional amendment, every. single. move. since the government got involved has made things wildly, measurably worse. U.S. health care was in some need of reform by 1992, whereupon the Clinton administration accepted the insider lobbying of the insurers to create the “HMO” initiative, under great promise: with the structure of an HMO, insurers would spend their money on preventative care and reduce costs and sickness. We know what really happened: as usual, it was a scam, and the lobbying/law structure created insured that health care would be consolidated, prescription drugs prices enshrined and their murders protected, all small offices and competition driven out of business, along with every religious or charity organization, leading to spiraling prices and a collapse of choice, with no charity or human backstop. Worse, there came to be no logic of service or pricing in the system, and no recourse regardless of whom, or how many were killed, which is now in the millions.
I don’t know what it is in the American mindset that creates this sort of monopoly corruption and abuse with such violent certainty, but there is, and always has been, perhaps before the Adams administration. So for whatever reason, the American character is uniquely unsuited for a government-run health care, just as we’ve monopolized/insider-protected banking, autos, and defense. Arguments? The government runs and/or oversees the entire health care system RIGHT NOW, and we have the world’s highest costs, higher than France or Switzerland, while providing as close to no health care as functionally possible, on par with Africa or Cuba. So if they’re ALREADY overseeing the whole thing, and ALREADY got a crack at it with a decade of Obamacare, what on earth would make you think giving them even more control would help? We just established that things only got violently worse back when they got heavily involved in ’92.
While it’s nearly impossible to solve — which all parties knew, and have been driven to make worse quickly as possible, with costs and profits higher, in order to have it collapse faster and “have to” go single-payer/nationalized health care — a more logical approach might be to make it less bad by repealing the laws one by one to reverse our system so it would ONLY be as catastrophic as it was in 1992. That is to say, about 100x better than it is now. Rather than buying a new pig in a poke, the system knows and remembers how it worked 7 years ago, 10 years ago, and 20 years ago, and it was already proven to work less bad back then. This is just simply the approach of “if you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.” Then, “if you don’t really want to live in a hole, fill it back in the way it was”. I know this sounds crazy, but that’s only because it’s logical in what has become a crazy world. Try it. We already have the worst, most expensive care on earth, practically any direction is up from here. Any direction but single payer/national health care. Foreigners may not believe this or understand it, but sadly, we already showed that completely fails here.
Presently they have been making debt-promises they cannot keep in order to falsely pump and sell oil at an energy loss. The financialization hides this until a) people cash out of oil investments and discover it’s a fraud or b) the oil stops flowing regardless and both real resources and financial resources fail to arrive when called on. I think they know this but have a larger campaign in mind.
Patricia–
Have to look at more pieces of the whole machine. The military “protection” is one of the few remaining reasons the US$ has any value. So remove the military bases and the US$ drops 50%-75%. …You can’t just close them, though close they will. And although the military budget is astronomical, eliminating it altogether would hardly make a dent in the deficit anymore. Remember, we’re talking $20T official, $300T long-term liabilities, and equal amounts in private debt, with maybe half the productive capacity we claim. Debt:GDP is over 100% but 30-50% of GDP is phony, Wall Street debt-whirling, checking accounts we pay to ourselves, unproductive government and health care, etc. So we’re already as high as 200% Debt:GDP, actual? No, we’ve never going to pay, and the Fed white papers as far back as 1979 (’72?) showed they decided back then never to pay. ..Which means they always intended to default, which is why they behaved as they did for 40 years, and had no problems putting us in this hole where we could never pay. …Because they never intended to pay. Adam Smith in 1775 ALREADY knew that governments never pay. Ever. They always, always, always default. And that was 250 years ago. Which makes the U.S. and U.K.s “austerity” all the more disturbing.
Is one man’s debt another man’s asset? By definition yes. Yes yes yes. Debt is when one party promises another they will pay. That promise to pay exists somewhere and is assigned a value, i.e. an asset. A large example is the Bond market. Bonds are a promise by someone to pay, even if that someone is the Federal Government, i.e. the tax base. Then who owes the promise to pay? The bondholder. That is to say, pension funds, retirement accounts of individuals, corporate money accounts, but generally, billionaires and insiders behaving as a group. So those are ultimately PEOPLE, actual humans. Humans are also on the promissory side, supposedly contracted to pay the billionaires as part of the tax base with $100,000 owed in “taxes” to them. There is no “bank” owing, per se, they just package and ultimately sell back to people.
How do we know? Well imagine the debtors can’t pay through bankruptcy, or the taxpayers default. (this has already happened, as Federal courts just made $1.4T in student loans uncollectable) Pensions, retirements, and insurance companies then have no money to pay to claimants, who then have no money to buy food and water. So the complete loss of passive income will matter to them. A LOT. Other owners might be corporations, who like Cyprus, suddenly find they have no cash for day-to-day inventory, upkeep, or payroll. Maybe grocers, shippers, and medical suppliers. Again, this will matter to millions. Funds like charities, colleges, scholarships, public school investments — gone. These are all real people, ones you’ll recognize from the troubles in Greece, who now no longer can eat, pay rent, get electric, or have access to medicine. Those assets are the other side of the debt. The one’s we’re going to mathematically default on.
You can’t “just” erase the debts. You also can’t “just” have Draghi and Karoda own 100% of the debt+equity market (which is the definition of Socialism). You also can’t “just” reduce all expenses for 50 years to repay it fairly, with a 50% reduction in GDP for 50 years as seen and planned in Greece. All these things have consequences.
Look at it this way: insiders got into the bank or casino years and years ago and stole all the money. The Bank/casino manager hasn’t reported the crime, but the money is still gone. Someday this will come out, and the town will realize all their money is gone, and THEY, the townspeople, are the only ones who can replace it, with more real labor. …Or so the story goes, in Greece, in the U.K. Really, if the money was stolen, shouldn’t we go to the basement of the people who stole it and claw it back? Isn’t that what happens under any normal justice system? Because the money is not “lost”, it’s not “missing”, very specific individuals have it, under illegal and fraudulent ownership, conveyed under well-tracked paper and digital means. And we can all quite legally and equitably get it back, refill the bank, and go on with our lives. …Just not under a debt based system. They must and always mathematically proceed and die in this way.
