[John Day]

This Just In:
Global CO2 emissions in 2014 were unchanged from 2013.
“CO2 decoupled from economy” is the idiotic interpretation, of course.
Whaddaya think? Still 100% correlated?

[John Day]

Michael Hayden is really an ideal poster-ghoul for the neocon-commanded military-industrial-complex.
Merkel “should know her place”, but places change and no battle plan survives the first contact with the enemy, and so on.
There have been lots of different character assassination attempts against Ray McGovern, because he is damned awkward for the empire, and so clear and analytical, and has had a lot of facts supporting him.
In Ukraine, as in Greece, as in all of Europe and our whole world, this is a really important time to NOT go to war, as a means to work it all out.
We, the human critters on this finite planet, can see that there is less and less to keep going, that acceleration has changed directions already.
Shooting at each other as we plummet from Seneca’s cliff is the proper analogy right now.
Big test, 100% of grade, open-book…

[John Day]

Can it be that we have now entered the future we borrowed so much from?

Oh, Shit!

[John Day]

@ V.Arnold,

I get a “404 File Not Found” on that, but it’s ok.
This link still works. Same story about Pilot Voloshin.

Meet The Pilot Who Shot Down Malaysian Boeing MH-17 – Vladislav Voloshin: “The Plane Was In the Wrong Place at the Wrong Time”

The story came out in December, and not much has happened with it since then, unless Voloshin provided the facts for the analysis I posted above to confirm, which is possible.

[John Day]

Let’s be careful about what Gordon Duff is really saying in that RT piece.
He is NOT saying that an SU-25 didn’t shoot down MH17.
He specifically says that a Buk missile didn’t, or the trail would have been seen, something that many others have said.
He does say that radar “spoofing” technology makes radar identification of planes unreliable, since one fighter with this technology can appear as two, and one plane can show as another model altogether.
So, if a Buk didn’t shoot down MH17, and we cannot rely on radar completely, what other evidence is there to tell us what actually happened?
I’m glad I asked myself that.
Global Research is often a conduit for Russian government information (I have observed).
Look at this, which is clearly Russian government level technical analysis of the wreckage.

How the Malaysian Airlines MH17 Boeing Was Shot Down. Examination of the Wreckage

This is very specific, giving angles of attack with cannon, then with air to air missile after damaged MH17 veered to the right.

[John Day]

Here’s the Nature article on the Anthropocene
https://www.nature.com/news/anthropocene-the-human-age-1.17085

[John Day]

In deflation, property “ownership” has to be enforced, as creditors attempt to take possession from debtors. ‘This leads to violent disagreements, since it is human livelihood at issue.
The bigger ones are wars.
The smaller ones get a lot of different names, depending on size and parties involved, huh?
The enforcers-of-property-rights are all arrayed in their ranks, with their tanks and running practice plays, as far as the eye can see.

@Bluebird
Janet Yellen was chosen to Chair the Fed.
I don’t think it’s an “honor” one can refuse, when one’s shoulder is tapped, no matter what is about to happen.
“We think you’re right for the job.”

[John Day]

@V.Arnold
I think Thailand will do relatively well, since it is so diverse, the Thai’s work well together, solve problems, and keep having problems to solve. Agriculture and weather are good, except for flooding, but flooding keeps people problem-solving. Government/military/business corruption is the ongoing big problem, huh?
Chiang Mai would be my choice, but then, I wouldn’t choose to be where I’d be an outsider, either. We left my older son’s appendix in Bangkok. He got very good care.
https://www.google.com/search?q=chiang+mai,+thailand&client=gmail&rls=aso&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=jT8AVer9I4e1ggSGlIGIDQ&ved=0CB4QsAQ&biw=842&bih=351&dpr=1.62

@Boogaloo,
It’s all controlled by the system until the system breaks. Then nothing is controlled, and there is financial regime change. This happens periodically in history.
Can you time the market peaks and get in and out just in time?
There is no use in hand wringing, and no use in taking Xanax (or self-delusion) for your worries, either.
What’s useful is preparation and diversification through lifestyle modification.
Downsize, grow food, ride a bike, live with less of energy and stuff, well within one’s means.

[John Day]

This is clearly prime time to be getting one’s own affairs, financial and support-system, in good order for a long bad patch.
Get a good food garden going, and figure out how to be comfortable with way less, especially if you can’t control the timing of the way less…

[John Day]

@jjhman
Russia is playing completely a defensive game against the Empire.
Ukraine is as close to Russia as Canada is to the US.
We all have a lot to consider going into this world of less squandering.
We are all spoiled princesses, aren’t we.
Don’t worry so much about Putin.
Worry about where you are being directed by the keepers of your zoo.
I’m worried.
I’m growing food and riding a bike.
That’s a small down-payment on change, nothing more…

[John Day]

173 Airborne Brigade , paratrooper boots-on-the-ground landing about now in Ukraine.
https://russia-insider.com/en/2015/03/04/4100
https://www.defensenews.com/story/defense-news/blog/intercepts/2015/03/03/ukraine-russia-putin-war/24327263/

Despite Russian Warnings, US Will Deploy a Battalion to Ukraine by the End of the Week

[John Day]

Here is the plan for QEU:
Start slow.
Make it up as we go.
Do it for as long as we want.
It will all be good.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-03-05/ecb-releases-qa-and-terms-and-conditions-europes-first-q%E2%82%AC

[John Day]

The real de a ocha, “Spanish Dollar” was the first global trade currency, and legal tender in the US until 1857 (just my “two bits”). It worked out pretty well for hundreds of years.
Silver dollars could make a comeback. It’s my humble suggestion.
Call them “Thaler’s” if you prefer.

[John Day]

The EU apparatchiks are already pretty pissed-off and fed up with the straightforward and unconventional style of Varoufakis, and Tsipras, too.
Just doggedly getting right back in front of them and innocently asking the “impossible” again, maybe with a little Peter Falk “Colombo” style thrown in, will wear them down, or make them blurt something out that they want to keep hidden.
Damn, Colombo was good.
Go for it, guys!

[John Day]

@ Nassim
Yeah, remember the cease fires in Vietnam?
It’s damned hard to stop shooting in a war.
This was on day #1 of the cease fire, and the main issue there was the trapped/surrounded assault force of Ukrainian army in Debaltsevo was trying to get out with their weapons, and the separatist militias would only let them leave freely without the tanks and artillery.
That got sorted out. The dudes finally left on foot through the fields.
Here’s the junk they left behind.

All’s well that ends,…well….

[John Day]

The Eurogroup approved the Monday night Greek reform proposal letter, because the Eurogroup wrote the letter for signature about 10 PM Monday, before getting it back at 11:15 PM, signed.
It has very short funding strings and more and more decisions have to be approved every little while.
Greek banking needs the IV bag changed. It’s about empty.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-02-24/stunning-reason-why-eurogroup-rushed-approve-greek-reform-package

[John Day]

@ The Greek One,
Thanks for the perspective on the elites and their media assets.
@ Sage Eurasian,
I’m moderately good at reading people, and Varofakis is hard to read. (Good style, though.)
We shall see before the weather gets too hot, what Varoufakis and Tsipras are actually made of.

[John Day]

I read Holmgren’s Permaculture book so slowly and carefully over the course of last year, studying and meditating. I’ve done a lot of kitchen garden and fruit tree work in the past 17 months, after years of developing “insight”, but now I grow food, too.

[John Day]

Nicole, that was the most perfectly honed 10 minutes of lucidity, spoken with perfect articulation of each syllable, no uncertain pauses, and brilliantly illuminated by the clearest vision, which shone through.
Tar sands and fracking as “sucking beer out of the carpet” will be the header on my news compilation for today.
Go Girl!

@Gezelle and Greenpa,
I am absolutely uncertain about myself, but due to a higher degree of preparedness, responsibility, and a career in public health, I expect to spend a lot of the rest of my life helping my people die well, whatever that may mean. It has already begun for me, personally.
No, I’m not Jack Kevorkian. That’s not what I mean.
People don’t just die simply. It’s complex. A lot of the resources of a family and community go into the end of life. There will be a lot of that compressed into a much shorter time, and not much of it will be happening in the ICU.
Those of us who are not flailing, and know how to be of help and support to the dying and their loved ones, will have lots and lots to do, and will mainly be rewarded with quick expressions of gratitude…

[John Day]

The country best prepared to exit the EU is bound to be Germany.
Remember how they printed up all those Deutsche Marks a few years ago?

[John Day]

Here is a link to those drafts and analysis:
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-02-16/redlined-comparison-eurogroup-draft-varoufakis-was-willing-sign-and-draft-he-rejecte

Here is Yves Smith’s take:
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/02/negotiation-breakdown-exposes-widening-rift-germany-greece.html

Ambrose has his look, opening with the hard jerk on Greece’s choke-chain.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11416800/Greek-crisis-talks-collapse-in-acrimony-as-Syrza-defies-EMU.html

[John Day]

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.

[John Day]

Via con Dios, Amigo!

[John Day]

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.]idiom

[John Day]

The wrong model is currently prevalent, but changing to the right model will benefit all parties.
The current model in western business, politics and war is basically the Roman model, of predator and captured prey, of absolute ownership of the individual or entity (corporation, nation, etc.).
That’s not the only model. In Islamic banking, for instance, money is not lent at a set interest, to be paid, come hell or high water, or assets forfeited to the lender. That is a one-sided predatory model, where all the risk is born by the junior partner. Even without compound interest, lenders would eventually come to own everything, if they lived long enough (corporations, families).
In Islamic banking, there is no periodic “Jubilee” of debt and slavery forgiveness, but there is a shared distribution of benefit and risk in any loan. The lender profits if the venture profits. The lender takes losses if the venture takes losses.
The predatory model has been able to “thrive” in this time of massive resource exploitation, since coal-fired steam engines began the industrial revolution and the age of empire.
Empire is everywhere and resources are depleted. We are at peak everything. There will not be plentiful resources for any possible survivors to exploit after WW-3.
Plan-B?
Information symmetry is necessary for trust to exist in a new game based upon fairness and mutual benefit.
The internet is pretty good for that, but needs to be fed nutrition, not poison.
We all sort out some wheat from the chaff already. It is possible for there to be pretty good information symmetry in the world, once it is seen as clearly in the best interests of all.
Do you think Russia and China, Israel, Germany, Japan, Brazil, etc all know approximately the same truths about what is going on in our world behind the scenes?
It’s gotta’ be pretty close, because they are all monitoring highly filtered and processed information feeds, eliminating most of the disinformation, which is used to herd the “sheeple”.
Their information feeds tell them which player has the fatal-advantage in which economic, political or military venue at any given time.
They all still spring some traps on each other, but mostly on us.
Big military and big covert operations networks provide the ability to spring traps, and that includes predatory finance, of course. (please phase out)
Resetting the rules to phase out predation, benefiting by the bleeding of another entity, is what is needed.
Greece, Ukraine, Palestine, Syria, Iran Iraq, etc. all have solutions which can be approached in the cooperative framework, which is what is often pretended, anyway…

[John Day]

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.

[John Day]

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.

[John Day]

@ Swineherder,
Agreed.
Now, who is to bell the cat?

[John Day]

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.

[John Day]

@ 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.

[John Day]

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-left

Petrodollar Dead? What’s Plan-B?
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-02-07/death-petrodollar-was-finally-noticed

[John Day]

All 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?

[John Day]

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.

[John Day]

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.

[John Day]

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.

[John Day]

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.

[John Day]

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.

[John Day]

@ Raleigh,
Thanks for the opportunity to compliment you on this thread.
Good stuff. No disagreement from me.

[John Day]

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 it

[John Day]

Let 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.html

[Author]

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