Dr. Diablo
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They don’t call it the Empire of Chaos for nothing. You have to examine the possibility that the goal of the present situation IS to cause war and chaos in Europe, just as they did throughout MENA and Sudan/Nigeria et al. Very profitable. And kills people. And people demand solutions of governments and security corporations by ceding more individual power. So really, what’s not to like? Of course if it’s NOT intentional someone has to explain what’s going on here because nothing makes sense.
Is it possible to support the Middle East population? Well of course it is! We’re doing it right now, this very minute. We did it all the decades up until we decided to bomb and destroy them. So clearly it’s very, very possible.
Is it possible for them to live without outside food imports, something that hasn’t happened in 100 years? Well you don’t live with local shoemakers, local cell phone manufacturers, local fish farms, why should they have to live only locally when you don’t? But let’s say they had to. There have been a wide variety of people and methods that turned the desert back into green. As green likes green, once you start, it actually feeds on itself. Australian Permaculture specializes in water conservation and development, but Africa has also created oasis from raw desert many places. There are the water-collection devices for trees, https://designtoimprovelife.dk/groasis-waterboxx-self-watering-trees-reclaim-desert-land/ a man in Nigeria I believe had 15 minutes of fame for creating an oasis in the desert using nothing more than a shovel and water conservation (similar to permaculture techniques) and Fukuoka has applied his practices to reversing the desert. https://www.context.org/iclib/ic14/fukuoka/ which is brutally simple: take desert seeds, roll in clay, and spray everywhere you can. The seeds themselves decide which and when to sprout, greening the land with natives. Once they start water conservation and soil remediation, men can follow on later with more food-friendly varieties. Africa has been developing a high-intensity rotational grazing with MORE cattle which is improving the land. And on and on.
They problem is not that you CAN’T reverse the desert and feed the people, the problem is that nobody WANTS to. Even an illiterate farmer with a shovel could do it guerrilla-style, like “The Man Who Planted Trees.” But no one values it. They value, war, power, and telling other people what to do. Even here, we are arguing what the *government* ought to do when they have overwhelmingly proven they could care less what the people tell them, AND how many thousands or millions die from it. Why would you talk to or include them? Go around them and help yourself, help your brother.
You don’t need a big EU initiative to green the desert and make food throughout the Middle East. If you wanted to feed those potential refugees and stop them from fleeing you Europe, you could just fly there, buy a shovel, and get started. So do YOU want to? Or just tell someone else to do it? Or just opine about the refugee crisis and how important men are corrupt? We know they are. So proceed accordingly and go around their plans.
No doubt Lord F is gone, but “only ever considered OK to invade and change the culture of a country that is caucasian?” Um, who invaded and spent Trillions (now no exaggeration) to change the culture and/or borders of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria, and to a lesser extent, Serbia, Ukraine, Sudan, Yemen, Iran, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Turkey (via Kurdistan)? Considering there are 3 million refugees from Syria and Ukraine alone, I think the Caucasians are getting the better half of it. …And after clearly and openly starting it. You can’t really say that the war in Libya didn’t boomerang on Italy and France, both of which gleefully supported destroying all those non-Caucasian countries when it started. If the Caucasians don’t want someone invading and changing their home culture, maybe they shouldn’t spend trillions impoverishing and bombing non-Caucasians worldwide.
Jenda — you would outlaw the US government? How would you do that? Would we be a failed state with no government, or offer regime change? Nevertheless, point taken.
All the people from all these countries can take care of themselves, and like most people would proudly stay home and be Syrians, Egyptians, Serbians or whatever, improving their home state one household at a time. Africa more than has means to grow their own food and settle their own business, never bothering outside of their enormous continent, larger than the US, China, and Russia combined. They would. BUT. But other nations come in by force, demand Western/European agricultural methods that don’t work, western cultures that don’t fit, and western economic and political structures that are failed. And it’s not an accident. It destroys these states politically, economically and socially to get cheap chromium, copper, oil, rubber, and other commodities and always has. It’s colonialism or neo-colonialism. Then after robbing them, they ask why they ain’t rich. If you don’t want them on the road as desperate highwaymen, maybe you should rob them and burn their village. Karma is like that; causes have effects, like science.
What to DO about it is another issue, but at very least we should name the primary cause, because I bet if you stopped bombing and robbing them they WOULD be happy to go back home and stay there, saving Europe a heap of trouble and expense.
Don’t kill your neighbors. Hey, it’s so easy a caveman could do it.
The super-wealthy certainly will try the digital currency and to further concentrate power, but the problem is that their power also rests on a fabulously complex chain of specialization. Whether that breaks because it’s fragile, or whether because the drop of energy overwhelms their resistance (just as Mixte notes the New Deal was overwhelmed by the energy rise) doesn’t really matter. Sure you can IMAGINE a world where a few have a digital full-surveillance state (Hunger Games, eg) but the details of the REALITY of that aren’t really so practical. In a world of intermittent power for the masses, where being more wealthy will be seen as part of the cause and the enemy, where all the rare earth supplies, magnets, chips, tens of thousands of specific plastics, bearings, metals, parts, all become harder to source with ever-fewer companies still open, then the computer of the surveilled will be broken or won’t be on. You can no longer just go down to the mall and get a night vision drone. Or gasoline. Or even from Lockheed for that matter, as their creations also depend on the nut-and-screw manufacturers still being open much more than you’d imagine. Short answer, seems like a good idea– to them, as we see from their own white papers–but practically will fall apart. Like the Iraq war funding itself.
What is wealth made of? Take a look at the underlying premise: wealth to whom? Human beings in this case. Well a forest is a storehouse of wealth in wood, water, but if you were dropped in the middle of one you’d probably starve. So it’s not exactly the wood, the ore, the fields, the sea that is wealth. It’s human imagination and activity that transforms these raw resources into forms that humans use, into wealth for humans. So in a strange way, WE are the wealth, not them, not “it.” That’s what several writers (like yourself, but also Charles Hugh Smith and others) mean by weathering the storm by focusing on skills and connections to make ourselves resilient. If we are the wealth, our skills, our knowing, our trading amongst ourselves, then we can be okay if only people can get their minds around not trading for money owned and dispensed by a third party, but among ourselves for our own benefit. –Far easier said than done, unfortunately.
And perhaps we should focus more on the solutions, on what type of leaders and governance we would like to see and has been proven to work, rather than re-hashing the problems again.
@Ken Possibly. But part of the alternative theories is that it is earth changes leading to undersea volcanoes that are the cause of the acidifying. In which case, our activity is a flea on a dog. In any case, as I’ve said many times, the issue is now dead and irrelevant: we are in a Depression, energy use is dropping worldwide, and the intense poverty and capital destruction is going to stop way more CO2 than any government initiative ever could. So why isn’t everyone happy and cheering? The single bright point now is that we do NOT have the Global Warming Carbon Tax + Exchange they were planning.
@donttread Sort of like markets or Armstrong’s energy theory: in order to get the extreme we see must happen, the market pendulum of economic action and sentiment must first be extreme in the other direction. Could look at it in what some call the “Wolf Wave”, where constantly adding stimulus and removing market feedback mechanisms leads to ever-increasing instability. Look at the chart from 2000: ever higher highs and lower lows in a megaphone pattern. To stop the instability requires market–and social, and political–reform.
Diogenes, don’t sweat the Climate change stuff. We all have different points of view and are all wrong about one thing or another, too often the things we are sure of. No one is ever going to have opinions in lock step with our own. And good thing, right?
Of course the deleveraging/deflation is not going to “wipe away wealth”: It’s just making visible all the wealth that’s been destroyed over the last 40 years. –And I know we all know this, just worth bringing it up because all the “QE”, all the “Bailouts” INCREASED claims on the existing pool of wealth even as the value of that wealth (e.g. miles of plastic chachkie factories in Asia) was dropping. And of course the purpose of that was never that anyone believed it, but to transfer the losses from some individuals to society at large, i.e. “Privatize the gains, socialize the losses,” using political and military force.
Adding notes that the U.S. also has 20M empty houses itself while surely 20M people could use them. 20M unproductive assets that need repair, maintenance, and ever-spiralling taxes (>$4,500 per in Chicago) out of a stagnant and shrinking income base. China’s not the only one in trouble here.
Okay, so last point: these countries are all devaluing: EU, US, China, Japan. Devalue against what? We can’t all devalue at once, nor has anyone devalued their way to prosperity. Yet they are determined to devalue as a way to “reduce the debt” — rather than simply writing it off as legally required. This is Triffin’s Dilemma and the Dutch Disease: the world needs a reserve currency that is NOT a national currency–a thing we had for millennia before these Brain Trusts got too smart by a half. It was called “gold.” Hey, we could use oil, as the Petro-dollar/yuan, gas, copper, whatever, but hear me out.
Single nations can devalue away their debts with great pain, but the entire world cannot co-devalue their debts–what would they devalue against? But if you were to return the world’s defacto currency to gold –as a gold Yuan, gold-$, gold-Euro, or Dinar — and kept the debt denominated in the presently existing paper currencies, then you CAN devalue. Against gold. Which is how it has always been done before with the Roman Dinarius, FDR’s change of the gold:US$ ratio, etc. I’d prefer writeoffs, but historically that’s not what happens.
The financial system is collapsing for lack of adequate capital that hasn’t already been collateralized. We’ve financialized babysitting, we’ve financialized taking pictures, even having friends. There’s nothing left. That’s why Europe wants Greece’s $50B in islands, to lever up 100:1 and keep the now-exponential debt increase off for one more month. But the islands are real things and indebting them only slows the economy more. You need to collateralize the world’s most useless asset, so that it’s leverage doesn’t destroy anything real, but one that also can’t be counterfeited and has trust (unlike, say, Treasury Bonds or reports of Shale Deposits). Increasing the gold price:currency to 10:1 ratio, as was restored in the 1980 top re-collateralizes the banks, restores trust, and since it’s totally, completely, hilariously useless, gold is never consumed but only moves from bank to bank, always collateralizing someone. Once the debt is defaulted, or you default the entire currency by replacing it, or the two-tier currency system reduces the debt burden to a tolerable level, the economy can move again.
Looking ahead, so as the Reserve core, the world is now forcing deflation on the U.S., an ever-higher currency which will crush what’s left of the real U.S. economy. How long do you think they’ll stand for that before devaluing voluntarily? And if they want to and must, HOW do they do it, against WHAT, and how do they restore TRUST to the U.S. system afterwards? Because they will. Because they have to.
There is absolutely another alternative, another possibility; there’s no such thing as TINA. The alternative possibility someone will discover, is where someone goes up to their house and makes them stop looting and start following the law. There are 11 million Greeks and what, 100 oligarchs? And that’s the only thing they’re afraid of–and possibly the only thing that can make them stop killing thousands of citizens with despair, violence, and poverty.
Not saying it’s a GOOD alternative, or may or may not cause more trouble, but if we have discussions, we need to be mindful of all the possibilities to choose, all the things that might happen, whether good or bad.
“China dumped four tons on the market, causing the price of the precious metal to fall almost 4% within a matter of seconds.”
Yeah…*sure* they did. They said to themselves, “I’ve got an idea, let’s sell 2,700,000oz of our gold. What’s the best way to do that? I’ve got it: drop all $3 Billion on the market in 5 seconds, by market order, in the thinnest market hours of the week.” Sounds legit, said no one ever. But it’s CNBC so you know it’s not news.
The immigrant thing: maybe Britain and everyone else should tell their “bloated” leaders not to bomb and destroy other nations. Then those nations would be happy and prosperous and their people wouldn’t try to flee to Europe and the Calais tunnel by the millions. I mean, maybe we could start the discussion with the real genesis of the problem? It’s not that Britons go on vacation; it’s not even global warming. It might have a bit more to do with Gen. Tommy Franks’ youtube video describing how the U.S. planned to topple every government in N. Africa and the Middle East in a specific order, regardless of whether they were peaceful, legitimate, or the slightest threat to the smallest U.S. interest. Don’t want 2M people fleeing Syria? Don’t bomb them 4 years continuously. Ain’t rocket science.
The Obama global warming? Shouldn’t waste his breath. 1st, nobody on earth is going to cooperate even if the U.S. reduced CO2 to zero. Every other nation on earth would be happy to burn the cheaper fuel we made available.
2nd, as if nobody noticed, usage is already collapsing due to the economy. Lower CO2=problem solved! And nobody had to lift a finger! It’s the Wu Way. If you really believe in the urgency of Global Warming, then why isn’t everyone happy about it?
3rd, wind and solar? Really, guys, still? Have we not had enough studies showing how grid-tied mass projects require equal buildout in conventional on-demand generators? The same ones you just closed, with the double-effect of wildly increasing energy costs in the teeth of a Depression?
And 4th, the real answer of lower, more efficient consumption, with distributed generation and consumption? This will happen naturally when the people are so broke they can’t afford their heating bills, abandon inefficient means, and create any replacement they can find as the grid totters from lack of finance. –Again, the Wu Wei, but they don’t have to make it as bad as possible, either. No one has the slightest interest in promoting this real, cheap, tangible, proven solution because there’s no chokehold or boondoggle associated with it.A waste of breath. He’s no longer in control of anything. Ignore them all.
So “Any hope of a fresh start” now depends on Varoufakis not having a blog? Wow, Reuters. If so, I guess that would be news.
“Opinions are treason.” https://dilbert.com/strip/2007-06-12
Like.
So…Thoughtcrime? The real crime is simply having THOUGHT and explored the possibility of acting, without actually doing it? And that is now treason? Interesting times, indeed.
True. At the same time, this is the anniversary of NY which was supposed to be underwater in 2015 (as predicted in 2008). https://armstrongeconomics.com/archives/33435 After 20 years explaining how massive change is just about happen we’re hardly inches higher much less feet, so I haven’t been wowed by the accuracy of their models.
To take the other side, now we’re supposedly about to enter a new mini ice age–it’s the latest rage in the news. Although possible, we have no real evidence to support a model that predicts such a dramatic outcome. The earth is a very large system that tends strongly to homeostasis. It takes a lot to change it and despite thousands of very dramatic events (volcanoes, asteroids, solar changes) over millions of years, large changes have happened extremely seldom throughout its history. Like once every 10,000 years or less. Until their models start working accurately, I’ll bet on gradualism.
One thing that comes to mind, both with Nicole and the pattern-arc above, is that the vulnerability of Greece has a lot to do with their lack of self-sufficiency. Nor is this an accident, in my opinion. If the U.S. makes no shoes, but China can’t feed itself, then either nation can be cut off the way Greece has and brought to heel. One of the advantages of globalization is that it demands a maximum of international money-agents, and therefore a maximum of profits, with a built-in stranglehold. If Greece were largely self-sufficient, there would be far fewer imports and it would be far harder and take far longer to cripple them. We see this with nations who have already adjusted, like Cuba, Russia, and Iran.
But let’s phrase this more positively: how do we eliminate the vulnerability to banking and globalism, of being politically choked or economically murdered? By preferring local and self-sufficient patterns and solutions to those that are distant and have intermediaries. At this point, those additional intermediaries are adding to cost, so the higher apparent cost of local work can be offset by the savings from cutting out intermediaries. As a welcome addition, living in a robust, varied, and unique local culture makes for a far better life experience, every day.
Now can we get to employing our neighbors and helping each others’ dreams instead of fueling untrustworthy men far away?
There may be other factors in play with the now-open “German” approach (meaning the oligarchs that direct their system, not their otherwise good people). Rumor has it the black hole of debt –a mathematical fact of the system–has gotten so large it’s going to collapse. In short, if Germany, DeutscheBank, and some of the other massive financial players–banks, corporations, and billionaires alike–don’t get some collateral RIGHT NOW, the illusion of solvency and normalcy will pop and the whole system goes down. That’s why they no longer care about Greece, appearances, Europe, the survival of the EU project, or anything else. They need new collateral to monetize the size of a whole nation, and if that nation is Greece, so be it.
Actually, it would be a surprise if this WASN’T the case, since systems that rise as a percentage, like debt at 3-5% go “exponential” at some point. So what if they get Greece, what then? Won’t they have to find a country twice that size to collateralize and devour next year? Then one four times the size the year after that? This changes nothing because regardless of what they do, an exponential system cannot survive in a finite world. No repression, no military action, no level of fascism, violence or destruction can alter it now. The numbers are just too big. They’re talking about killing thousands of Greeks and the whole Euro system just to push the timeline out a month or two.
No help anywhere else, either. The U.S. just released retail numbers solidly in recession territory. Wikileaks released a inter-diplomatic memo saying France “is worse than you can imagine.” Germany is astonishingly in debt if you multiply down through the city levels. China may have jacked up their market to crash it and capsize the fragile western boat. –And those are the good countries. Spain just passed anti-citizen laws so bad it’s like 1930 all over again. https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/archives/34287 Portugal and Italy are generally considered as about to collapse. Belgium and the Netherlands aren’t in such great shape. Austria just lost a major bank.
There is someone who still has assets to collateralize, and who are not much in debt: Russia and allies like Iran and Cuba, two of which may have just been collateralized. In any case, with a runaway compounding of interest, you can see the intense urgency which helps explain the otherwise inexplicable behavior of Germany and Greece.
“The goddess that gave its name to our continent is at the heart of our mythology.”
That’s a fascinating meme to draw upon in, what may be out of context, but seems a non-sequitor in that article. So “they” call upon the Goddess? Who is doing the calling? Who feels that the story of Europa is their guiding star? Who was Europa anyway? Isn’t she the one raped by Zeus, at least in the arcane meaning of “kidnapped and stolen”? So they’re calling on Europe to be raped and plundered, never to be seen again?
The other angle of Europa is her quite likely association or equivalence to Ashtare, Ashteroth, Ishtar, the female god of sex and war from Babylon also related to the moon. So…what, again? “In these perilous times we call on the forces of sex and war”?
Okay, my head hurts now. Let’s not try to make too much of it.
@ V. I’ll look for it. I was having trouble composing a search term for: “So you want to be a racist.” It tends to be more softer in delivery. But if it’s there, it’ll come to the surface.
There’s 1,000 things going on right now, but does anyone know why Greece hasn’t nationalized the banks, Sweden-style, as promised during elections? Seems like time and could solve the banking issue: if the government is open, the banks will be open, perforce, with scrip and digital transactions only, if necessary. Was the strange AEP report that Tsipras wanted to lose true?
Also the focus is being foolishly set on Greece alone, let’s not lose sight of what might be out of the news worldwide. Example: Did we just start 2nd level hack attacks on the U.S. yesterday, focused on St. Louis, shutting down the airlines, the subway, the WSJ, ZeroHedge, NYSE, and possibly a few isolated areas of the grid? If so, why? Ukraine isn’t especially heating up. Don’t hear much out of other proxy wars. Is the U.S. spiking China up and crashing it to their anger, or vice versa: China insiders spiking to dump on the rubes and be out as they suck $4T of liquidity out of a fragile system starting the world financial reboot? Or was their bubble mostly organic? ‘Cause it seemed a strange time to double their stock values in 6 months.
What’s going on out there that we’re NOT seeing?
I’m lost: Kunstler openly rails against the “Corn-pone racists” of the American south which he expects will rise and behave as stupidly and violently as ever. I believe he is himself Jewish, and I’ve missed any homophobia at least in his popular articles. Do you have something I can read on this?
I believe his point on Greece is the same one he makes far more often concerning Japan: that in a world with ever-decreasing oil and energy, the technological clock will tick backwards into more primitive, more localized, and probably more feudal patterns. That’s really a key peak oil argument, not a race/culture one, although naturally the core falls last.
The problem with him being hyperbolic and wrong on timing is very true but also pretty familiar on Doomer sites, although one would think he would adjust accordingly. That’s alright I guess: very few have although the slow burn or muddle through thesis seems to be winning.
The transfer was pretty straightforward: when you start a monetary union with a big credit expansion, the PIGS, periphery, south, –someone– mathematically gravitates toward debt, while the core, north, –someone– ends up being the creditor. Where the cutoff between the states (or elements) would be is fluid, but we know where it turned out in this case. Important note: Germany is ONLY rich because they are OWED money by countries/people who were bad credit risks and couldn’t pay. That is, their “good” choices, power, etc is also an illusion, because in reality Greece, Spain, Italy cannot pay, and the loans should never have been made, and therefore Germany will never receive the wealth they have written on their books. This German illusion wouldn’t be possible without the credit expansion, and preventing the illusion of Germany’s wealth from popping back to a much poorer reality is what the war is all about.
Anyway, once the debtor nations had a crisis–which was mathematically inevitable–the debts could have been written off, reality conceded, balance restored. It was not. If not, then it’s a matter of choosing–politically–WHO takes the loss. Well obviously the taxpayers, not the bank corporations, otherwise, what are all your lobbyists for? To do this, the banks needed several HUNDRED BILLION, minimum. And you bet that taxpayers of Germany, Austria, Spain, are not going to go lightly into paying more trading losses and big bonuses. So how to hide a $300B transfer as the minimum to save this pig? Easy: you say Greece needs a “bailout”, which sounds plausible, sounds like help, doesn’t it? I mean they’re in a crisis, right? Until you realize–as argued today–that it was NOT a bailout, was NEVER a bailout, it was selling $300B in additional debt to a country that already couldn’t pay its $80B in debt–and everyone knew it since before the Euro began. Ok now you added the $300B, and when Greece tried to have any parliament, Democracy, discussion, referendum, you illegally remove their government and put in a Goldman Sachs rep, oh and in Italy too.
So who is owed the $300B you just added? Well, back then lots of people–soon to be solved. You have Greece default on the unimportant outsider bondholders to reduce the pressure, then have your pals determine that it is not a “default” so your bond insurance (part of the derivatives you hear about) doesn’t have to pay out. P.S. They’ve already decided that Greece’s July ’15 default is also not a default, no matter how long they refuse to pay. Then you use the ECB “stimulus” to rapidly buy all the bonds so they are now owned by the TAXPAYERS of the EU and not the private banks of the EU. So now no matter what happens, the taxpayers now take the loss.
End state: smaller bondholders illegally screwed, banks have garbage dumped on the EU taxpayers, Greece $300B in debt that still can’t be paid. –But way more plausible than saying “Let’s liquidate Greece, kill 5,000 people, to bail out UBS and DeustcheBank.” That’s the short process of how the EU/ECB bailed out the wealthy and the private banks at the expense of Greece and the working taxpayer of Europe.
Next step is–when sucking more blood is too expensive–to let Greece inevitably fall, then have a “crisis” that the ECB can only cure by printing even MORE money and handing to their friends while watching the EU taxpayers suffer the further loss you’ve already arranged for them. We could of course use technical financial language to describe all this. But why bother? It’s not that complicated. The wealthy and influential are using the violence of governments to transfer the wealth and assets from the poor to themselves. The only obstacle is to create enough plausible crises, and “solutions” that provide stories to cover their actions of raw power and violence. So if their public narrative no longer makes sense, that’s why: their violence and greed has outrun their credibility.
Looks like Goldman believes as I do, that the EU has been trying to push Greece out on purpose–thus the incredible negotiating style that’s hard to comprehend otherwise. Better to push them out and be in control of it, than allow something organic and out of control to occur–like a democratic referendum. And also get the exit to happen in your desired time and place–classic Art of War. But Greece, like Russia, is not cooperating with the right moves, right response, and right time frame.
Hey, maybe they can pull off a clean exit anyway–their actions suggest they think so.
Look for the Turkstream to be the real focus now, whatever the day’s news. Greece being de-facto tied into Russia, and the Balkan Stream, (not Eastring through EU-friendly Bulgaria and Romania) would be a key to re-open the Slavic Balkans back to Russia and the Eurasian Trade Union/BRICS.
Look at the chessboard: if that happens, Russia can poach Greece from NATO, breaking it, own the land connection from the middle east to Europe for energy, and reclaim the whole peninsula to their influence right up to Italy. –A big step towards going around the U.S., and getting the “Lisbon to Vladivostok” road moving without obstructions. You might say this is not what it’s about, but if so, why did Nuland spend $5B to take Ukraine and obstruct it, doing some amazing things there, like sending NATO troops, creating military support treaties, and bailing out them endlessly with the IMF while refusing Greece?
I guess we’ll find out. But it’s larger than just whether Greece pays their debts. –They’re re-configuring the very balance of Europe. Or trying to, anyway.
This is an ad hominem attack. What is my error and what is your counter-proposal for where we should be headed?
How is “Libertarianism” different than what Raul describes of the many problems of centralizing in Europe, or Nicole about the urgency of smaller organizational scale?
To me Left and Right are a false paradigm and hazy to the point of being meaningless. I only brought them up because Raul mentioned that unwavering belief in the EU project as presently constituted is a weakness of the “Left”—whatever the faults of the Right, which are many. Like our host, I’m equally describing the faults of the Right and Left. Like our host, I am of the opinion that concentrating power attracts the wrong sort of people and leads to problems. From the Wiki: “Libertarians generally share a skepticism of authority…however, they diverge on the scope of their opposition to existing political and economic systems [and] offer a range of views…” I share that skepticism, and like everyone I have a personal view that is similar to some and different from others. That view cannot be European, as I am not from Europe. However, my view is that countries and people should do as seems best for them, and have no need to follow an American model, or even one that represents freedom or democracy if they don’t wish to.So how would you construct a successful Europe? With more concentration or less? With more representation or less? With more personal Freedom and autonomy or less? And with more responsibility corresponding to that freedom, or less? With power that is more restrained, or less? Proceeding from the present pattern, or with criticism and skepticism of the present authorities? The article above from our host suggests he believes in less centralization, more freedom and autonomy, more community responsibility, with oversight of power and a healthy skepticism of the present powers; all principles that I agree with.
Dr. Diablo is a name having a high degree in being the Devil’s Advocate, asking difficult, disturbing, or uncomfortable questions, and presenting views the most when they are least wanted. The opposite of the popular person and the popular view. Sounds like at least one of those worked.
An excellent explanation of why central power must be pushed down to the lowest effective level.
In general, the Left believes in Statism, in centralized power, in ordering people around for their own good, as represented by Technocrats, Socialism, and the blizzard of regulations put out by the EU bureaucracy. Ironically, this shows a deep lack of belief that people are pretty good and if left to themselves will be okay–or at least no worse than otherwise. Of course the Right believes in war, and that a lack of government will lead to increased morality. This is not the “lowest effective level” of enforcing rules, but rather “let’s have no checks on power.” But ironically, the Right, who presents as suspicious of others, has a deep belief that if people were left alone they’d more or less organize themselves no worse than now…but a lot cheaper.
In either case, Left and Right are two feet of the same duck, headed in the same direction. There is no party representing decentralization, non-statism, and Liberty. Liberty is distinct from Freedom for in Freedom, you do whatever you want: the law of the jungle, the strongest prevails. But Liberty is the Freedom to do what you want, so long as it does not infringe the Freedom of others–that is, Freedom + Responsibility. And law. And therefore a means to agree upon and enforce that law. For example, you have the right to say mean and dumb things. The other guy also has the right to say mean and dumb things. But you do not have the right to PREVENT him from saying mean and dumb things. However, he does not have the right to transform his meanness into violence against you. It’s a restraining force with the minimum of involvement (which is cheapest, and also errs on the side of Freedom), but which protects the individual, the minority, and has the smallest, most decentralized power, so the centralization of power doesn’t lead to the different peril we now see in Greece and Europe. (With the note that Democracy, which we clearly don’t have in Europe, protects no one, as seen in the French Revolution. Any 51% mob can do anything, and the rights–and lives–of the 49% have no protection whatsoever. Made far worse if the mob opinion is engineered by a centralized media.)
When all this falls apart, they’re going to ask for MORE concentration, centralization, and absolute authority. There is so much said about what is wrong and how it isn’t working that sometimes we should keep our eyes on the goal of what has worked and we can all agree on. And get back there, quickly.
“We need the stabilizing capacity of the European Union”
Hahahahahaha! You mean the European Union that is causing riots in every nation in the EU? The one that has now inspired a great number of secessionist movements, collapsing their nations? That EU?
Speaking of, when was Europe ever a stabilizing influence in the first place? Old Europe did a lot of things, both good and bad, but they were generally messy, multilateral, and often a bit meddling to the periphery Ischinger frets over. That’s not the same adjective-group you might use to describe a thing that is “stabilizing.”
PS, Pope might look deeper to how exponential growth on a finite planet is incompatible with ecology and Global Warming. It’s more the point. And why after thousands of years of solid state, then hundreds of years of growth without exponents, we suddenly must have either this exponential growth or collapse.
And now we hear Greeks are being paid to protest FOR austerity! You can’t make this up. Classic repeat of Venezuela, which didn’t work, Ukraine, which didn’t work, and Hong Kong, which didn’t work. Let’s try it here! Yes, I can see it now:
“What do we want? Less!! When do we want it? Now!”
“2, 4, 6, 8, We will not recuperate!”
“Say no to income, no to pensions!”The IMF and EU deals were always lethal of course, as demonstrated by a sister country, Ukraine. Ukraine, which likewise violates every EU and IMF rule, mandate, and constitution, including not funding war zones, not funding military coups, and only lending to solvent nations, didn’t need to ask or negotiate to get all the money they needed. Now they are being ordered to default on their creditors (Russia, of course). Nothin’. Not a hint of self-awareness crosses anyone’s mind. Not enough remaining sense shame of hypocrisy to even hide or spin it. Doesn’t even occur. The one thing they have in common, of course, is that the IMF uses their billions to savage, impoverish, and murder both peoples. As they have all along, everywhere they’ve ever been. Google “IMF successes” and you’ll find basically zero, none, nada, ever in their long and checkered history. Greece is not an accident. Every country that has ever followed IMF advice has languished in crippling debt, eternally subservient to colonial powers. Those that refused or shake off the IMF method quickly recover. Funny coincidence, no? You can find out more by reading John Perkins.
With a 50 year history of 100% death and failure, 0% help, so easily researched and proven, I’m at a loss to why every nation doesn’t publish exactly the Greek Special Committee conclusions which states
“the Committee considers that Greece has been and still is the victim of an attack premeditated and organized by the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank, and the European Commission. This violent, illegal, and immoral mission aimed exclusively at shifting private debt onto the public sector.”
Why they don’t just report and repeat this every day, before every meeting, at every press conference, until the world finally gets it through their petrified skulls, I don’t know. Protecting the lies is protecting the liars. It’s high time somebody told the truth before we drown.
Congratulations Raul, looks like you’re first with this, what a scoop!
Nailed it. And very likely nationalizing the banks, just as they promised. Defaulting, because from day 1 they were clear it couldn’t be paid. If Europe doesn’t want to work with them, given every chance, that’s how it goes. “Europe”, read: “The Elite” don’t care because all they needed was time to transfer (also illegally) all the bank and fund exposure to Euro taxpayers. So long as the important people are in the clear, who cares, right?
Not so fast. While that may be true, what makes you think Euro citizens (long forgotten term) are going to be in the mood to be generous with banks and elites anymore? Winning the round, losing the field. When that happens, the precedent of voiding illegal debt will become a fashion, and if there’s one thing we’ve learned in the last 15 years it’s that it’s ALL illegal. There’s hardly a debt out there that was written in good faith in accordance with law. Robosigning, anyone? If EVERYONE reneges on illegal, fraudulent debt, there won’t be much left, because what makes “The Rich,” rich, is what they are owed. If the debtors say they owe nothing, the rich aren’t rich anymore, are they? And at that point, where is their leverage over society?
I guess we’ll see.
“Syriza Left Demands ‘Icelandic’ Default as Defiance Stiffens”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/11673989/Syriza-Left-demands-Icelandic-default-as-Greek-defiance-stiffens.htmlHey wait–wasn’t it a platform of their election to nationalize the banks? And wait — by negotiating clearly, openly, with unchanging demands up front, hasn’t Tsipras now dropped an additional 100B Euro on Germany (et al) in Tier 2 liability by giving his people and businesses time to prepare and stack cash? 100B in transition cash that European taxpayers who refused to voluntarily write off now have to write off involuntarily?
I see the problem: the world, and especially Europe, has never seen a government that told the truth. They simply assume that it’s lies, that it is promises, that’s it’s all “game theory”. It was: a game theory where they tell you what they’re going to do and do it, but you’re too incredulous to believe it, and too psychotic to recognize reality. The reality that all power has limits, and they are not invulnerable. If the EU banks couldn’t tolerate a Greek default back when it was 80B Euro, how are they going to weather a 280B Euro hit? Leveraged 30:1 (conservative and official, likely the real exposure is over 100:1) 280B is 8.4 Trillion. 8,400B Euros. As the movie goes: “Dodge this.”
DeutschBank is top contender for ceasing to exist 30 seconds later, taking the Eurozone with them. Money will flood to the US$, rightly or wrongly, likewise driving the US deeper into Depression and Deflation than they already are. After that, likely US will have to capitulate and re-value or even erase their currency, like Bretton Woods, the Washington Agreement, or the 1933 gold default.
Hey, it’s not like Syriza didn’t warn you. They’ve been totally honest: the one thing the present leaders cannot understand.
Certainly weather seems to be changing from its 100-year norms, and not localized but all over. Question is what is causing the change? CO2 thesis is looking less promising lately, on the anniversary of ABC reporting that by 2015 NYC would be underwater. https://armstrongeconomics.com/archives/33435
Whew — narrowly averted disaster! Just kidding!Not to say it can’t happen, but climate is by definition a LONG event, which tends to more local cycles. The CO2 thesis–or the pop version of it–depended on scaring the pants off non-science types by erasing the Medieval Ice Age and then claiming a straight-line rise in temperatures leading to runaway effect, Armageddon, cats and dogs living together!! …you get the idea. This was easy to question, as such an effect has NEVER happened on earth, and it has been very, VERY hot at times (like the 1930s), and also very cold. Even with a more nuanced approach that climate would get pretty hot and the seas would in fact rise, it would still take time in the range of 100 years, enough to adjust habits and infrastructure. Expensively, annoyingly, but plenty of time.
However, as you point out above, there hasn’t been a straight-line effect. No sooner was Global Warming popularized than the temperatures plateaued for 15 years, and now may even be normalizing. This could be a local effect, the way trending stocks halt before breaking up through a big round number, or it may be headed down, it’s hard to say. The one thing that we CAN say, however, is that the CO2-thesis for the temperature rise seems to be in trouble. If it were CO2, then by the theory, it should rise more or less steadily. 15 years is a pretty generous time to wait for confirmation, and it hasn’t been following the predictions–which is the only thing that proves a theory. So if CO2 doesn’t cause temperatures to rise in a straight line, what did we miss? Is it man-made CO2? Is it even CO2? If it’s CO2 why do the other planets in the solar system appear to be warming as well? What else could it be? How do we find out?
Well, one way we WON’T find out is by erasing the inconvenient data set, then replacing with an adjusted data set that has been chosen to fit the theory that doesn’t seem to be working. That’s not science.
But what IS happening with the weather: hot some places, cold others, reversing suddenly, having more extremes but without more rise in temperatures, well, I’m not sure we know yet.
But we won’t find out by erasing the data.
Pro Tip: Don’t believe ABC News. They’re wrong in everything they report, and this is no exception. Consider it paid advertising for expensive agendas.
Oddly, we have heard that the CIA was involved in the setup of the Euro-concept in the 1950’s. So why would the world’s predominant currency, and Union of States use taxpayer money to actively create a competing and replacement currency and Union, then work tirelessly for years to insure it happens over the voting disapproval of the Euro citizens?
Yes, if you use law to outlaw coal, for whatever reason, you then will have a market with all sellers and no buyers. This will lead to a near-100% writeoff of any value represented in coal investments, therefore the implosion of those pensions and funds, unlikely the offset even by a rise in gas or other competitors. It’s a dead loss, and including all the coal jobs, countries, and tax base, as well as the pension, insurance pools, and funds. That’s what happens when you mothball a Trillion-dollar 200-year-old infrastructure.
And also a good example of what happens when government gets involved in things. They don’t evolve slowly, allowing transitions, but have sudden dislocations with pre-approved winners and losers. Sometimes this may be necessary, in a crisis for example, but is still massively expensive and complete loss for society. That’s what happens when you have resources, benefits, technology available to you, or previously available, and you simply choose not to use them. It hurts. A lot.
“Life is tough, but it’s tougher if you’re stupid.” –John Wayne…Unless of course you use law to run the price down, to buy it all up at 2c on the dollar, then reverse the law to make coal legal again. That’d be smart.
Glysophate is “probably safe”: this is why we ban it. No wait, it’s really hazardous, but no official will stand up with a study and say so. Which is how we know it’s proven dangerous, because they won’t admit it?
Ah, science at it’s finest. Or today’s science for hire, anyway. You can prove all the results you want, but they’re not “real” but “political” if you’re crossing the wrong people–in addition to losing all funding, and, as farmers have found, being sued into bankruptcy. On the other hand, innuendo is scientific proof if it’s in someone’s interest for it to be. –We’ve seen this recently with the cholesterol evidence and the quiet re-issuing of the USDA food pyramid. (P.S., even with recent developments reversing beliefs that cholesterol is bad, drug companies are still releasing a profitable new anti-cholesterol drug for daily use.)
Facts: Before its branding as an herbicide, glysophate was developed and used as a highly successful boiler cleaner. Its function is to strip metals out of solution, which it does in a boiler, or a plant, or a body. Not claiming to be an expert, but removing key metals from one’s cells sounds somewhat dangerous to me. It is registered in the U.S. “as safe as water” without any science supporting that claim–none, not even hack science. This would seem unlikely as it is the world’s most successful poison. In 2015, a Monsanto spokesperson repeated that “it was safe as water”, whereupon the reporter said he had some in his bag if he would like to drink it on camera. His exact reply was “No…I’m not stupid.” Many such Monsanto products are banned by their own cafeteria, which also seems odd.
However, the point here is about science, which seems to be of two minds about a very simple question. It will not state the truth and simply list the evidence and the predominant, easily-reached conclusion. Could science be influenced by money, by profit, or by well-financed agendas that would drive out inconvenient facts, studies, and researchers? You be the judge.
Thank you. I looked at it and brrrrrr, data errors everywhere. –They still have posted the drought map of OK, TX, and the northeast.
Top story on the NOAA site–since this is being covered elsewhere today–NOAA now decided there hasn’t been a pause in global warming. They revised all the data and it disappeared. Although adjusting data is not outside the scientific norm, this conflicts with the recent raw data sets like satellites, which are fairly reliable, replacing them with ship intake-water readings, which are unreliable. Sigh.
Okay, so not having to disassemble the whole argument, confirm the data reliability, and compose my own interpretation, a simpler question is: they claim their avowed data for the last 15-20 years was wrong. But the new data they readjusted this week is right? And also all the data going back 100 years is right? The only error they had was just this one multi-decade gap where they totally screwed up. But now it’s fixed.
Look buddy, if you screwed up simple bulb readings for a multi-decadal period and didn’t notice, that’s not an “adjustment”, that’s a scandal, and somebody needs to be discredited, then fired, and their work peer-reviewed by somebody else. Otherwise, which of the three data periods am I supposed to trust? The old, the new, or the revised? Again, are these guys even scientists? Crikey!
Keep in mind that not allowing anyone to question science would not be science.
Scientists must discuss the failings of the present models in order to prove the models and go beyond them. Imagine if we prosecuted and persecuted the 10,000 established scientists who “knew” Copernicus’s new solar-centric model was right: we’d never have gotten to Kepler’s more accurate model of elliptical orbits. Copernicus’s orbits-within-orbits looks pretty silly now, doesn’t it? What if we outlawed any discussion about the obvious and provable theories of Newtonian Physics? Newton was the PLANET of physics. Nothing contradicted it. It was finis, kaput, a done deal. …Except there was this wee little problem with the model, we examined it and made a yet more refined model, courtesy of Einstein. Now Einstein’s model is what’s “proven”, yet we still question it with String Theory (among others) Why? Because we’re scientists and it’s not perfect. Should we be imprisoned for asking questions? How will science progress then?
All science, all progress comes from the people who question the old science and old progress. Shutting down “deniers”, i.e. those who ask questions, is a witch hunt and against everything science stands for.
Back to science, wasn’t it just last month they posted an article about how the US expected record drought this summer? (Probably the one where I pointed out there wasn’t a lack of precipitation from Buffalo to Boston in April, having just had 3m of snow)
Well, how times change:
“Last month was the wettest on record for the contiguous United States, according to federal meteorologists.” https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/forget-april-showers-may-was-wettest-month-u-s-records-n371981Total failure only 30 days in advance. And hey–that’s normal; weather is complicated. But we need to admit it and don’t pretend we know more than we actually do, to scare people into desperate action that is counterproductive. Because who profits from that?
The last sentence is interesting: “More frequent downpours also are expected as the world warms, but Crouch said there’s no way to connect climate change to a single soggy month.”
1. Perfectly true! Yes, short-term fluctuations are not indicative of overall climate. But that’s not what I hear when there’s a month’s drought, or rain, or cold, or heat. Generally they report it as proof of warming. So is it or isn’t it? If not, what penalty do we have for journalists that erroneously report a 30-60 day fluctuation IS proof of warming?
2. Wait–I thought last month when there was a drought it was caused by global warming, but now warming causes overall rain? Make up your mind: does it drought or rain? I don’t think the science changed in the last 30 days.
3. If weather is moderating, droughts are ending, temperatures are more average, is that proof there ISN’T warming? Of course not. Weather extremes are proof, but weather moderation is proof too. Everything is proof! Rain is proof, dry is proof, hot is proof, cold is proof. It’s an un-disprovable theory.
Which means it’s not science. Science is capable of telling a thing from its opposite. At least I should hope so.
Anyway, probably some were frustrated with me doubting and calling shenanigans on the winter drought and calls to panic over a summer drought. I’m not giving them a hard time: I just know the practical limits of their models. So don’t panic! They once again prove they don’t know what they’re talking about.
Are these guys high? They can’t understand the simplest things. If you want to sequester carbon, you plant trees: plants, green things, seeds. You know: “life.” Dirt cheap, measurable, proven to work, improves life and not just for humans. Instead their techno-fantasies involve spraying the air and water with toxic metals at unknown cost, with unknown results, many of which involve the possibility of a sparking a runaway effect worse than the warming they’re claiming to counter.
No one notices? No one comments on how they didn’t know what they were doing before, which is how we got into this mess, so they’re going to do more things they don’t understand? And devastate our lives, our standard of living to pay for it?
And I’m sure it’s a coincidence that the thrust and outcome of all this is inevitably anti-life? We’d rather pollute the seas, bomb our neighbors, we’d rather block out the sun, cover the world with nuclear plants and waste zones–heck, we’d rather fly to the planet Mars–than we would to plant a tree. Anything but life. If it’s life, especially human life, it’s hateful. Burn it, kill it, wreck it, control it. If it’s steel, concrete, nuclear, glass-tube wasteland, we can’t spend enough on it. No price is too high or challenge too hard.
What is it with these people?
Maya? Surely you mean Mara, the God of dischord. She seems to be running gangbusters lately.
Canada’s going to give Russia what-for! Just you wait and see!
On Greece: “the International Monetary Fund, which was not represented at the meeting, had imposed new conditions that had not been tackled in earlier negotiations”
That is to say, “We already decided that you’re going to default, now quit screwing around and do as we say.”
Or as Varafakis says, “…if Delaware brought down the United States economy. That would be the fault of the U.S., not Delaware.”
So it’s not whether you win or lose, but where you place the blame. Even if you have to hold them down and shove the blame down their throat.
https://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/e01061d4-0ad8-11e5-9df4-00144feabdc0.html?siteedition=intl#axzz3cAHImOGS
via https://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/#X40xEGWz2VY3wuoL.99Science has become embarrassingly non-responsive and non-policing. Here’s an article from the Lancet explaining how half of all published science is probably garbage:
https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736%2815%2960696-1.pdf
(Also here: https://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2009/jan/15/drug-companies-doctorsa-story-of-corruption/ )This is after last year’s hilarious (though perhaps not to society) practical joke where 200 papers were published in respected journals that were made up by a computer and a dictionary assembling plausible sentences. I.e. NO ONE WAS READING THE PAPERS AT ALL, much less peer-reviewing and re-running the experiments as required. Be careful citing “science” as your support or priesthood. There’s not a lot left of it at a time we need it more than ever.
Says Lancet (who are clearly the pinnacle of respected science):
“The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness. As one participant put it, “poor methods get results”. The Academy of Medical
Sciences, Medical Research Council, and Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council have now put their reputational weight behind an investigation into these questionable research practices. The apparent endemicity of bad research behaviour is alarming. In their quest for telling a compelling story, SCIENTISTS TOO OFTEN SCULPT DATA TO FIT THEIR PREFERRED THEORY of the world. Or they retrofit hypotheses to fit their data.” etc, etc.Other articles decry how only those fashions that are popular or profitable get funded. Only the funded get research. Only researchers that support the theory of the funding organization survive even one study. Everyone else loses their job and are therefore no longer “science”, because they cannot afford independent research but also are not backed by an authorized institution. In one iteration we can see how money can, and arguably has, corrupted science, from pharmaceuticals selling known-bad products, to psych and behavioral studies, to history and archeology supporting various nation-claims, to nutrition selling product for oat bran or green tea, to God-knows-what. We have the proof of the 50% or more of science being fabricated right here in the Lancet, and if there was no motive, why bother fabricating results?
Be careful citing “science”. Not only is it not hard to suppose a large number of scientists are wrong or on the take, we have positive evidence by the most respected journals that they provably are. And then where do we stand?
More here in the Archdruid’s weekly, discussing other fabrications and their corrosive effect on science, and society in general. https://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2015/06/the-era-of-breakdown.html
Strangely he, like so many, decry paid and suspect science on one subject, then unquestioningly believe it concerning another subject of study. How? Wouldn’t you have to do a mass investigation and expulsion of the unsupported parties before the field could be trusted again? That’s like saying “we all know YOUR kid (bank) is corrupt, but my child (bank) would NEVER do what all the other kids are doing.” Unlikely.
The WSJ article is amazing, but far more amazing are the comments (mostly hidden now, but available here). 99.9% seem have references to rope and tall objects. Pages and pages and pages of them. Each comment of which the person knows is being recorded and/or is a possible crime. Pretty concerning stuff. More is that Hilsenrath may have meant this somewhat tongue-in-cheek. The people clearly are not in the mood.
Link here, see for yourself:
https://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2015/06/02/grand-central-a-letter-to-stingy-american-consumers/tab/comments/You can never choose between one or the other because they will both always exist. What Free Market advocates miss in a big way is that although markets are larger than governments, cultures are larger than markets. Markets are a subset of the population they live in, they exist in that ecosystem.
That being so, markets can NOT exist without a wide and crucial variety of social norms and guarantees. Property rights. Trust. Enforcement of contract. Penalties for theft, fraud, murder. Relative Peace. Lack of the neighboring tribe coming over and taking your things.
Guess what? All those things are part of (although not exclusive to) government. Without a functional government you don’t have a free market in the way they describe. You have warlords. Maybe Sarajevo or Mogadishu or Ukraine are their idea of “free markets”, where anything can be bought and sold, but they’re not. They’ll let you show up, sell you goods, then kill you and take both the money and the goods. If they like your business, your property, your wife and daughter, they’ll muscle you out of them. When that happens, people stop working, capital drops to survival levels and stays down for 1,000 years if necessary, as the fall of Rome proved.
So your Ayn Rand level of free markets is not going to work. You need a social contract that is solid, understood, and vigorously enforced, whatever it is or however you do that. A rule of law that doesn’t have two tiers, one for Lords and one for the rest of us. It’s what we in the west call the “Rule of Law”, and it’s what we don’t have anymore. Without it, “Free” markets don’t work anymore either, and goods don’t move when the only law is power.
An exhaustive study of nations found there is one and only one predictor of whether a nation will be prosperous. That was property rights and rule of law. With it, the poorest nation like Japan can succeed. Without it, the richest nation like Congo wallows in poverty and war. Free markets aren’t free.
