John Day
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
This could also have been a gambit.
It is now known that Greece will accept whatever that draft was.
It will now form an outer boundary of further negotiation.Hi Greenpa,
I was busy cooking breakfast for family in San Antonio, then doing about 5 hours of tree work, which leaves me king of stiff and crampy today. Ausflippen seems to mean “flip-out”, a direct translation. My German is pitiful, though I took a year in college and traveled there summer of 1981.
ausflippen [ugs.]
to rage [go wild]
to throw a tantrum
to lose it [coll.]
to go nuts [coll.]
to flip out [coll.]
to freak out [coll.]
to go bananas [coll.]
to psyche out [coll.]
to get freaked out [coll.]
to psych out [coll.] [freak out]
to go ape [sl.]idiom
to get into a froth [coll.]idiomThe wrong model is currently prevalent, but changing to the right model will benefit all parties.
The current model in western business, politics and war is basically the Roman model, of predator and captured prey, of absolute ownership of the individual or entity (corporation, nation, etc.).
That’s not the only model. In Islamic banking, for instance, money is not lent at a set interest, to be paid, come hell or high water, or assets forfeited to the lender. That is a one-sided predatory model, where all the risk is born by the junior partner. Even without compound interest, lenders would eventually come to own everything, if they lived long enough (corporations, families).
In Islamic banking, there is no periodic “Jubilee” of debt and slavery forgiveness, but there is a shared distribution of benefit and risk in any loan. The lender profits if the venture profits. The lender takes losses if the venture takes losses.
The predatory model has been able to “thrive” in this time of massive resource exploitation, since coal-fired steam engines began the industrial revolution and the age of empire.
Empire is everywhere and resources are depleted. We are at peak everything. There will not be plentiful resources for any possible survivors to exploit after WW-3.
Plan-B?
Information symmetry is necessary for trust to exist in a new game based upon fairness and mutual benefit.
The internet is pretty good for that, but needs to be fed nutrition, not poison.
We all sort out some wheat from the chaff already. It is possible for there to be pretty good information symmetry in the world, once it is seen as clearly in the best interests of all.
Do you think Russia and China, Israel, Germany, Japan, Brazil, etc all know approximately the same truths about what is going on in our world behind the scenes?
It’s gotta’ be pretty close, because they are all monitoring highly filtered and processed information feeds, eliminating most of the disinformation, which is used to herd the “sheeple”.
Their information feeds tell them which player has the fatal-advantage in which economic, political or military venue at any given time.
They all still spring some traps on each other, but mostly on us.
Big military and big covert operations networks provide the ability to spring traps, and that includes predatory finance, of course. (please phase out)
Resetting the rules to phase out predation, benefiting by the bleeding of another entity, is what is needed.
Greece, Ukraine, Palestine, Syria, Iran Iraq, etc. all have solutions which can be approached in the cooperative framework, which is what is often pretended, anyway…In the great game of global power, heading into acute global crisis, Greece offers a big enough economy to reliably model financial reset techniques for the rest of the world.
Those who face immediate losses of book-value, and those who face losses of political power/position are against starting the reset today.
They are doomed, anyway.
The top tier elites know that vast losses are unavoidable, but that you don’t actually “lose” something which never existed yet.
Credit goes bad periodically.
Global banking and the military industrial complex are creating complex tensions all over the world.
It has been painfully evident since 2008 that it is time to cut liabilities by shifting them to somebody (everybody), while gaining title to hard assets, like oil, water, mines and farmland, and making sure that there is plenty of enforcement to back the sanctity of (global) “property-rights”.
Syriza gets to flirt between the great powers, offering a veto within the Euro, for a modest sum of money over the next 6 months or so. The EU is run by those who never laid out contingency plans for the loss of leverage to force compliance, which they just lost.
Russia could invest in Greece, block further sanctions, trade with Greece in the EU, and explore joint EU/Eurasian-Union membership issues through Greece. This would likely expand to Spain this summer, and Italy and France are certainly watching with interest.
China would find ways to quietly help Russia and Greece, out of the spotlights.
The US seems to have banking and militaristic camps at odds with each other lately.
Both of those camps have some stressed divisions, too.
A military coup could be arranged, basically destroying Greece, but it would lose popular support.
Right now, high degrees of popular support are rare and valuable, going into a reset.
The quid pro quo for Greek cooperation is about 10 billion Euros, right?
The US arm of global banking would make an error to let Russia get the benefit and goodwill from Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal, France, etc.
They might make that error by seeing the bleeding of Russia as a tactical victory.
Everybody in the world stands to gain maximally from resetting the debt overhang without WW-3. That is the maximum benefit situation in the game analysis.
The tough question is how to assure universal cooperation.
Israel, for instance, has the Samson Option, of nuking friend and foe if Israel comes under “existential threat”.
Israel is a critical player, and very much unused to any compromise.
This whole political forced-roll-call coming up in the US Congress, with Netanyahu arriving just before Israeli elections, breaking protocol, looks like it could be “a bridge too far”. The coordination of US response right now may be even poorer than usual.
That could give Russia a brief but critical edge.
I still wonder how much overshoot Israel will go for if Netanyahu gets re-elected, especially with a huge electoral “mandate”.
I suspect this is a dangerous time to overshoot. Putin knows Judo.
Hollande looks interested in Judo lately.
There may be many in American politics and military who chafe in their current yokes.It’s Populism Time!
ZH has this 5 minute video of a Ukrainian town, where a military officer is up on some steps, announcing conscriptions, and a woman takes the mic, takes charge, and he stands respectfully still and quiet for 5 minutes as she clearly states the popular stance against giving up any more sons/husbands. Ukrainian conscripts are reporting for duty at an impressive rate of 6%.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-02-10/ukrainians-rage-against-military-draft-were-sick-war#comment-5767089
The EU oligarchs are desperate to cut out Greece, since they cannot negotiate a continuation of their parasitic status quo with Tsipras and Varoufakis. They cannot conceptualize a change of financial regime where they get something like 70% haircuts and lose control of the system.
Maybe the Fed can envision cutting them out, as per the Bernie Sanders plan. Maybe Russia and/or China can consider cutting them out.
If the Fed cuts them out, the financial regime stands. If Russia/China support Syriza, even the Fed, and the Empire are directly threatened.
Somebody will put a fat finger down to help this Greek straw break the camel’s back.
It’s that time in history. This beats WW-3, which is universally unpopular in Europe.The US response to European financial crisis, not appreciated by anybody in Europe, seems to be to ramp up the war in Ukraine, creating a military/humanitarian crisis.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-02-08/europe-fractures-france-pivots-putin-cyprus-offers-moscow-military-base-germany-us-s
That seems like the wrong plan, “counterproductive” in the openly stated German view.@ Ken Barrows,
Yes, of course the economy based on fairly unlimited and growing use of cheap resources is doomed in the near term. The graph from “Limits to Growth” places the peak of industrial output, food per capita and service per capita in 2015-2016.
What about the transition happening now, this month, this spring 2015?
Can Greece use the ELF funds up to 2/16/15 to distribute through banks as cash Euros? What is that total, EU 59 billion?
What is the transition out of the status quo? The actual transition in all things such as this is critical.
It will take some form. I vote cash-in-hand NOW.I recall that between 2008 and 2010 Germany was reported to print a vast hoard of New Deutsche Marks. I assume that exists, as much as the new $100 bills eventually came out in the US.
Does Greece have Drachmas? Where are the Drachmas? It seems necessary to have some piles of them ready for distribution, doesn’t it?
Things are getting very tight, and completely speculative. This could be a Mexican standoff where everybody pulls the trigger at the same moment.
A step-down of unpayable debt, without eviscerating real economy, is needed.
TPTB are seemingly choosing catastrophic collapse, or at least bluffing quite convincingly.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-02-07/greece-gambles-catastrophic-armageddon-europe-warns-it-only-has-weeks-cash-leftPetrodollar Dead? What’s Plan-B?
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-02-07/death-petrodollar-was-finally-noticedAll rational Greeks with bank accounts will pull out the cash or transfer elsewhere, before the ELF runs away. I hope the trains full of cash keep coming.
Monday should be a big day for cash withdrawals and long bank lines.
ELF’s EU 59.5 billion might be gone by Valentine’s Day.
Technically, the Greek central bank will owe that to the ECB, right?It seems that the land valuation being separate from “improvements” is problematic to the socializing intent, and the intent to eliminate parasitic renting of owned assets.
The apartment building is an improvement, which dramatically increases the rent extraction from the underlying land. A single family dwelling may have been next door, built 50 years ago, and owned by an elderly retired couple.
There is devil in such details.
Taxing “unearned income” very highly might be a modern equivalent, and capital controls on absentee-owners would be a battleground.
The intent needs to be revamped periodically, because rentiers will figure out ways around any set of fixed defenses. Each advantage will be leveraged to further advantages, as this story tells.LVT seems to assume capital controls and domestic capture of the wealthy class, not the global multinational corporate elites who now govern.
The elites would control Greece, while owning no land there.
LVT arose within a world where landed aristocracy was already losing primacy to financiers.
I am no expert on it at all, but it arose at that stage, where in England the landed lords were beginning to lose power, compared to investors in the East India Company, and such.Debt Jubilee Time:
Varoufakis is probably the guy to be the toe in the water before the world (necessarily) jumps into global debt restructuring.
There is a win-win-win aspect to the reduction of catastrophic systemic risk.
Everybody (almost) can agree to that.
It’s like global warming, though, in that it is really hard to choose the sequencing of debts to be forgiven, entirely, or incrementally. There are a whole lot of vetoes who want “an edge”.
I suspect that Varoufakis can’t sell a Greek haircut plan, that isn’t fundamentally a strategy to save the EU, with a sprig of parsley.
He may have the outlines of something which could be widely accepted.
I sure hope he does.Somewhere between this description, and what we have in the US, is the right place for medical spending and provisioning.
I say that as an American physician for 29 years.Hi Greenpa,
Gotcha on the Paul Wellstone reference.
It was determined to be another murder-suicide, wasn’t it? (Bad joke, but you know what I mean.)
Varoufakis says he wants the best deal for all the citizens of Europe, and I believe him.
Having a deep insight into game theory, he will see that the best overall solution for the majority is something which can be sold, will have good political appeal, and will be terribly prone to sabotage for parties seeking a little gain, at a huge loss for most others.
He first has to sell it to exactly those parties who assume that they will get a gain, while others lose. Perhaps he has a plan which they look at and think, “that will sell well, and I see just how to turn it to my benefit”.
Widespread debt jubilee is in the interests of all, and those who run the game would naturally expect to profit greatly from assymetries in debt forgiveness/repudiation.
He may be 2 moves farther into this game than somebody like Osborne or Draghi.
We may see what he has to offer. I hope he lives that long, lives to sell the new game to the current players, then survives the announcement of the trick which forces actual compliance.@ Raleigh,
Thanks for the opportunity to compliment you on this thread.
Good stuff. No disagreement from me.Varoufakis is probably THE economist to broker a format of “new deal” that will give the best average outcome for all Europeans, and by implication, for the reset of western finance.
That puts him at VERY high risk of sudden accidental death, doesn’t itLet me float a transitional solution for Greece, the EU and global finance.
Rules can’t be “broken” by banks, so they will need to be changed by politicians.
As part of the EU QE, the Greek Central Bank gets approved to conjure Euros to buy ALL the Greek government bonds being held by the Troika.
Others must be allowed to take their turns at this, of course.
Going forward, Greece will balance her budget on taxes and fees, the old-fashioned way.
Others will do the same after they monetize their debt.
The plan Lord Keynes presented at Bretton Wood in 1944 (from this article posted here https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/30/syriza-finance-minister-big-idea-will-germany-accept-it ) to recycle surpluses from creditor to debtor nations, allowing a gold system to function well as a more minor buffer for trade, could then be instated, and the 1944 system, allowing, but not demanding growth and contraction, would work.
This could go global.
There would be a one time monetization of debt, then something more akin to Islamic banking, where investments in a venture pay off as the venture fares, with a long term link, and no transfer of all risk to the working-partner from the financial partner.
It could be done without war, and it would cut rentiers from the system, but most of them could find useful tasks somewhere, in time.
The fact of one generation supporting it’s parents and grandparents would be recognized as a fact. That has to happen. We need to deal with it as such.
It’s gonna’ be hard.
Charles Hugh Smith has it worked out how he can comfortably retire at 91. https://www.oftwominds.com/blogjan15/retirement1-15.htmlThere is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.
Varoufakis and Tsipras have begun the crystallization of the Zeitgeist into a heretofore thwarted mass movement of humanity.
I hope they live to see next Christmas. Really, I do.
It looks like Podemos in Spain is also animated by the same spirit. Spanish elections…
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-01-31/greek-social-contagion-tens-thousands-rally-support-spains-anti-austerity-podemos-paYou know, it doesn’t have to be Greece rolling over to stay in an EU controlled by the global money-power, or Grexit.
There is the potential solution of changing the global financial system, beginning with “the shock of 2015”.
That has a ring to it, doesn’t it?@TheTrivium4TW
By “overal structure of the financial system”, I did not mean structure of debt based money, which I specifically said has to be given up and replaced with money which reflects goods already produced, as was the historical situation. The illusion of paying-back-with-interest in a declining global energy scenario is doomed.
I simply meant that there are institutions and channels of finance, which would cause much greater devastation if broken. Banks and e-commerce are quite useful to our survival.The question is that of how to balance the inevitable “anticipated losses”, while maintaining the overall structure of the financial system.
“Anticipated losses” is used to denote loss of anticipated-future-production, the promise of which is the foundation of our current monetary system.
Many “promises” must be broken going forward, which will destroy faith in “promissory notes”. There is a loss of faith in the system gestating now.
The ability to provide necessities of life, and the ability to enforce lies through violence are the foundations of “political economy”.
Let’s assume that the power to enforce lies through violence is the stouter of these two pillars now.
Those in power would rather enforce lies through violence than provide necessities of life for the proletariat when times get tough. That ends up killing the elites by crashing the system, as in French, Russian and Chinese (fairly) recent history.
Assuming some degree of pragmatic rational self interest, of a sort seen in Soros and (shudder) Kissinger, there will have to be damage-control at all levels.
Roosevelt did such damage-control with the “new deal”.
The austerity has lowered birth rates in Greece, and the creeping austerity since 1976 has lowered birth rates in the industrialized world with access to birth control, since then. That’s necessary in a no-growth world. Japan, China, Germany and many others are well into birth rates below replacement, and so is the US, but there’s immigration here.
The monetary system fails before the production system, based on the structure of things.
The failure this time goes all the way from the farthest promises ever of future production, back to the historical position of money representing existing, real, productive assets.
What percentage collapse is that? 80%? You tell me.
It depends on whether a strip club in Reno is such an asset or not, doesn’t it?
Farmland which produces without chemical inputs or irrigation is the gold standard, I think. The more temperate the clime, the better.
Russia, Iran and China are close enough to their recent resets to hold stability-options dear. They all hold precious metals, and commodities like oil, coal, food, factories, with a back-up financial system waiting in the wings. They are developing alternatives openly.
We have to assume that alternatives are developing secretly in western finance.
Western finance gets to design the social experiments like Arab Spring, color revolutions, Libyan civil war, breakup of Yugoslavia and now the Greek experiment. Iceland was an odd outlier, as I see it.
How can haircuts be applied without crashing the system, while maintaining the power structure and avoiding overt and violent regime-change?What about that “not South Stream” gas pipeline going from Russia to Turkey to the Greek border?
There is a lot of restructuring about t happen.
There are reasons for ongoing partnership and cooperation all through Europe, but the overhanging debt of a system based on exponentially-growth, now in contraction must be written off, globally, and the financial elites need to take complete losses first.
Can the Eurasian Union help with this restructuring?
I can’t see anything but a return to the gold standard, and transfers of physical gold, putting a floor under this fully rational collapse of trust.“The way it’s been since 1913”
Professor, and other “commentariat” members, David Stockman put together an excellent view of what has happened with wars and finance since 1913, and in quite a clever way, blaming it all on Woodrow Wilson.
This twist is quite odd, and yet his essay pointing out the details of the slaughters of “The Great War” and the sequel, and the inevitable lurches out of “sound money” and sound fiscal policy of nations is exquisite in it’s detail.
I know Wilson was played, and this is common knowledge.
Stockman has put something very insightful out there, and with a lot of circulation.
He knows how this went down, but could he print it that way?Hey Ilargi,
You posted that Eureka Colorado picture before, and some others from that series, maybe back in 2008-2009.
Good pics, though…
🙂John
I have thought a lot about deflation, which is probably the only way that we humans can actually retreat from growth”. I seek to mitigate what is coming, however I can, for whoever I can.
This issue of nitrogen and phosphorous cycles being blown-up has presented in algal bloom, “red tide” occurances, but the degree of ecosystem threat has never been presented as so high, because nitrogen and phosphorous are so rapidly incorporated into biomass.
At least that’s how I’ve looked at it.
I wonder if we will see further fleshing out of the scientific basis for Professor Carpenter’s hypothesis.Democratic Confederalism is the social format in semi-autonomous Kurdish areas of Northern Syria, bordering Turkey. The new-improved PKK says “live and let live”, unless you are ISIS attacking Kurdish towns. Gender equality s practiced, embraced, not just preached (All dead ISIS soldiers are invited to comment here.)
The Small Miracle You Haven’t Heard About Amid Syria’s Carnage
Keep an eye on whodunnit with the French attacks.
Who is about to spring a big project like the Afghanistan/Iraq warfest that followed 9/11?
https://www.workers.org/articles/2015/01/13/charlie-hebdo-free-press-racism/
Bibi Netanyahu has his upcoming election sewed-up. How Big?
What enemy is still rich enough to attack, and weak enough to make it safe?@ V. Arnold,
The Elites are winning with every “terrorist” attack.
They steal resources and slaughter innocents far away, and seclude themselves.
The “blowback” hits the citizens of the countries whose military, industry and finance they control.
The fearful citizens support the elites more completely, and give up freedoms.
Rinse and repeat.Hi Slatzman,
That link is from September, and the author is under the mistaken impression that there was no Ukrainian fighter near MH-17, and also under the impression that MH-17 was shot down by a BUK missile from the ground, which is not born out by the physical evidence of the cockpit metal. That metal has both entry and exit holes on all of the pieces, not possible with a single projectile exploding once, but consistent with machine gun fire from a plausible attack approach.“Frexit” from the Euro as Marine LePen’s star rises and reinstitution of death penalty in France gets France expelled from EU?
“Diabolical!”
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/01/hebdo-fallout-greater-odds-frexit-marine-le-pens-star-rises.html@ Professor…
“First by inflation, then by deflation…”
It has been what bankers have done over the centuries to hasten the inevitability of their owning everything, isn’t it?All the suspects are dead in France.
Case Closed.
What seizure of property from Muslims are we about to see, and where?The one “suspect” who saw he was wanted on his smart phone and turned himself in was in class at school when the operation was being carried out.
Dead Men Walking? French Police Release Photos of 2 Likely Patsies
Where did the 2 wanted 32 and 34 y/o brothers get all the training and info? They knew people’s names and operated efficiently, then got out quickly. This looks professional and high-budget. Who benefits? Anyone who wants to make war on Muslims in oil-bearing-regions has fresh support today.GLADIO-Style: Deadly ‘Cartoon Jihad’ Attack Hits Charlie Hebdo Magazine in Paris
Germany blinked on Greek Debt:
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-01-07/dax-surges-after-germany-unexpectedly-opens-door-greek-debt-negotiationsCharles Hugh Smith has an ideal companion piece on Assymetric Warfare in oil markets.
(I got the first comment on ZH, addressing the Large number of June $30 puts, which I got from an article about $20 puts, posted here.)
https://www.oftwominds.com/blogjan15/oil-war1-15.html@Rapier
The US diplomat in the Wikipedia link is named as “John Day”, which s a relatively common name, though I was previously unaware of this person bearing “my” name, before reading it.Here is an equalizing partial-solution to the odious Greek debt.
Odious debt can be legally repudiated under international law, such as when a dictator runs up a big bill, is deposed, and the people of the country rightfully refuse to pay what was never their choice to begin with.
What if something like $68 billion of Greek military weapons purchases, half from Germany, and half from other countries, for dry-docked submarines and useless tanks, were bought with borrowed money, due to billions of dollars in bribes to Greek officials involved in purchasing decisions?
Yeah, it sounds plausible, because it happened.
(Now, let’s get back to the argument that Greece was never really a member of financial union since it joined under false pretenses when Goldman cooked the books.)
