palloy

 
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  • in reply to: Biden IS the Swamp #65307
    palloy
    Participant

    Republican Party = Democratic Party = Economic Growth
    Biden = Swamp Creature
    Trump “found himself surrounded by the likes of McMaster, John Kelly, Tillerson, and many other swamp creatures, and today he still has people like Mike Pompeo”, therefore = Swamp Creature

    Are you surprised ?

    World Peak Oil was in 2018, so Economic Growth is in permanent decline now. It won’t be pretty, in fact it will be horrible. No one has developed a plan for how to manage it with the least pain. And the Swamp Creatures have known about Peak Oil for 63 years and not done anything about it.

    The people deserve everything they get.

    in reply to: What? Default? Where? Dollar? #61608
    palloy
    Participant

    > A “Crash” depends on how fast you feel “fast” is.

    So let’s agree on a definition of “crash”. My favourite is:
    “… collapse happens when a system crosses a tipping point and is driven by negative feedbacks into a new and structurally and qualitatively different state, one with a different arrangement between parts and a fall in complexity. ” – Korowicz ( see http://www.feasta.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Trade-Off1.pdf ).

    Obviously this change is going to be resisted by USG/Fed/banks/wealthy, who want shrinkage rather than collapse, “same system” rather than “different arrangements”. The only problem is that markets can and do move at electronic speeds under automatic algorithmic control, so that before anyone realizes what’s happening, it has already happened. This is how the stock market can be crashed by the players themselves, even when it is to their own detriment.

    The bankruptcies in the shale oil sector are piling up now, and the sharks are circling the corpses:
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-22/shale-s-bust-shows-basis-of-boom-debt-debt-and-debt-quicktake
    1. How bad is it?

    More than 230 North American oil and gas producers, owing at least $152 billion in debt, have filed for bankruptcy since the beginning of 2015, according to the latest report from law firm Haynes & Boone. In the second quarter alone, companies that went bankrupt had total debts of $29 billion. The restructurings are showing no signs of letting up, as June tied for the busiest month on record with seven oil and gas bankruptcies, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That month, the shale bust marked a grim milestone by claiming the pioneer of America’s drilling renaissance, Chesapeake Energy Corp. For other parts of the shale supply chain, 2020 is also on pace to be the biggest year of bankruptcies in terms of debt owed.

    It isn’t going to take a genius to work out that whoever buys up these loss-making buinesses is only going to make a further loss, and once the realization gets out, no one will want to touch them. Their value goes instantly to zero, no bids, no manageable shrinkage. Suppose that it gets out that the banks have been lending to investors based on a broken business model, which they surely know, and that this is on a nod from the Fed that they won’t actually be held accountable for this.

    When Ilargi says it won’t happen, and Trump’s brilliant financial skills will manage the situation, I am shocked.

    in reply to: What? Default? Where? Dollar? #61533
    palloy
    Participant

    Kitco has Gold at $1,938/oz – a 4,000 year old record.
    USD Index is at 93.81 – 8.2% down from May 12.
    The markets are fundamentally sound.

    in reply to: What? Default? Where? Dollar? #61531
    palloy
    Participant

    Ilargi > I don’t see a US dollar default or collapse in the near future. But by all means enlighten me.

    So I gave 3 scenarios showing how the USD might not even last the week. All are very possible, even likely. The system is extremely fragile at the moment, and the President is weak and out of touch with the population and reality. Collapse is LOOMING right now.

    To which you (VA) said “I posit that … the U.S.$ will remain the world reserve currency”. How many people feel comforted by that, do you think ?!

    in reply to: What? Default? Where? Dollar? #61522
    palloy
    Participant

    SPFS has only been implemented for Russian banks, not the whole world’s banks. It has been in development for so long because it doesn’t work properly. China has been working on its own SWIFT system for an unreasonably long time too. Perhaps there is another reason why it is not being implemented, like the US threatening WW3 if it is started up. SWIFT is for managing the banking paperwork, all costed in US Dollars, so you still need a new reserve currency. Gold, silver, oil, Matobili Gumbo Beads and Yuan would all do, you just have to have the value converted into all national currencies before you start.

    I should just mention that Saudi Arabia is the spiritual home of Wahhabism, which the US has been fighting in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, etc for the last two decades. The only reason the Saudis are still selling oil in USDs is because they are very weak militarily. One mistake and they are gone, and the system will change.

    in reply to: What? Default? Where? Dollar? #61518
    palloy
    Participant

    > Long story short: I don’t see a US dollar default or collapse in the near future. But by all means enlighten me.

    Numerous heavily-armed “NFAC” branches pop up all over the place, and corresponding “Three Percenters” branches are created to face them. The Police thugs don’t even try to keep the two sides apart, so battles break out everywhere between them, and the US Civil War 2 begins. Protests and riots, looting and burning run rampant, with the local population evacuating to camps in the countryside where all catch Covid-19 due to the lack of social distancing, good hygiene and medical services.

    The FX market in New York stops working because all the IT sys-ops have evacuated, and physical Gold goes thru the roof because it can’t be delivered in the chaos. The Feds support of small fracking corps with no business plan stops. They declare Chapter 11 but no one will buy them. The truth about Peak Oil being real gets out and Exxon and all the oil majors go bust overnight.

    A nuclear power plant on the Texan coast gets hit by a hurricane and floods and suffers a meltdown. In the ensuing muddle, all nukes are shutdown pending safety audits. The whole electricity system suffers a cascading failure, and the lights go out everywhere. And the computers that run the telephone system, and the internet. The banks are forced to close. All retail trade stops because of the insecurity and the inability to order further stock or pay for it. The water treatment centers, and the reticulation systems, and the sewerage systems stop.

    Systemic failures cascade in the US, and the rest of the world sets up a new SWIFT system using a new reserve currency to buy Saudi and Russian oil and gas.

    in reply to: Joe Biden Works for Donald Trump #46986
    palloy
    Participant

    The world is ten years past Peak Oil and conventional US oil production has slumped to half of its peak. Tight shale oil has NEVER made a profit. And you think whether Joe Biden will get the Democratic nomination MATTERS? Does he have a solution for Peak Oil? Of course not.

    You can argue all you like about who would make the best US leader, while the world slides into the abyss, but Industrial Civilisation is FINISHED, because there is NO SOLUTION. Renewable energy will take too much energy to build out. Electric cars will require charging at home overnight, but the grid in the suburbs can’t handle supplying all that energy. The whole lot will have to be rebuilt, and THAT will take a lot more energy.

    Get real.

    in reply to: The Day America Died #46679
    palloy
    Participant

    When Assange received Manning’s leaks he would have known the US Empire would be angry and would never forgive and forget. He has probably been surprised at how long he has been able to remain at large. But unless he were to die in the Equadorian Embassy, he was sure to end up in the US on serious charges. They will try him and find him guilty, but whatever the outcome, they will look bad, vengeful and full of hate, all part of Fall of Empire.

    Corbyn has spoken in support of Assange, as has Tulsi Gabbard. In Australia, both PM and Opposition Leader have said “he will get consular assistance”, further degrading the meaning of the expression.

    in reply to: His Name Means Peace #46194
    palloy
    Participant

    What has intrigued me is that in Australia the morning news on ABC Radio and the evening news on SBS TV has been led by the tragedy in New Zealand, every day since it happened (9 days now), even when there has been absolutely no news to report. I spend a lot of time comparing and contrasting these Government-funded news services with the non-MSM, and this overwhelming splurge is definitely unusual. Today there is a General Election in New South Wales (polls suggest it’s neck-and neck), so that should see an end to this record media blitz, unless NZ Foreign Minister, Winston Peters, is assassinated by Islamic terrorists in Turkey.

    Yesterday it was revealed that the Security Services’ Anti-Hate Squad consists of only 1 fully assigned person, so it is not surprising that the Anti-Hate Squad didn’t pick up on Brendon Tarrant.

    in reply to: David Holmgren: A Baby Boomers’ Apology #46082
    palloy
    Participant

    I am of the same generation as Holmgren, and I feel the same need to apologise to the younger generations for what my generation has done and is still doing today. I have tried apologising to my daughter, but she says she cannot be so negative about life and is quite confident about her ability to cope quite well.

    What have I personally done wrong? Consume, of course. I have learned how to manage without much of the stuff my generation consumes, but computers have been my biggest weakness. I have never thrown anything remotely useful away, so have boxes and boxes of old computer gear in my storage room, which no one will ever use or even understand. I have been thinking of labelling it all as “E-waste: don’t throw this in the standard waste stream”, but there is no E-waste stream in this part of the world. TV tells me most E-waste streams simply go to India, or some other third world sweatshop for partial dismantling, while the rest is burnt.

    Anway, I’m sorry, I really am.

    in reply to: The Real New Deal #45907
    palloy
    Participant

    Just to put anticlimactic straight on a few things:
    1. no one is saying we should reduce CO2 to 0 ppm, only getting it back to levels where it was before industrial civilisation – about 275 ppm, even 350 ppm would do.
    2. there is no such thing as a Thorium reactor. Thorium can be transmuted into Uranium-233 and you can make a reactor out of that. But the EROEI of current nuclear reactors is about 6, which is less than wind turbines, at about 15, with no toxic, radioactive waste.
    3. Australia had a program to insulate residential houses, but four stupid young employees electrocuted themselves by stapling the insulation sheets over the mains wiring, and the whole thing was scraped, including the Minister, Peter Garrett.
    4. Oil WILL NOT last 50 years, because as soon as it costs more than people can afford, they stop buying it and profits go to zero, and oil majors declare bankruptcy.

    The world is going to run out of energy, politicans are going claim they know the solution(s) but always fail to deliver it. We are NEVER going to take all the excess CO2 out of the atmosphere because of the energy that would take, see “The Energy of Mixing”.

    THERE IS NO SOLUTION. We have raped the beautiful Planet Earth, and that’s it, good wasn’t it?

    in reply to: The Green New Art of the Deal #45781
    palloy
    Participant

    To implement the Green New Deal will be hiddeously expensive. That is because it will take a LOT of energy to build/re-build all that crumbling infrastructure. What kind of energy will that be? Is there enough of it lying around un-used at the moment? How about in the future?

    This is where we need to sit down and calculate if there is enough energy available to complete the transition, and when you do that you can easily see that there isn’t a snowball in hell’s chance of it being possible, not even close. So what will happen if this impossible dream is started on? The world will run out of energy and industrial civilisation will implode and collapse.

    The price of oil on the US markets, fell from $80 /barrel to $50 /b during the months of October and November 2018, but that doesn’t indicate that there is plenty of oil. In fact they were selling oil from Strategic Petroleum Reserve at the time, just enough to slowly depress the auction price without making anyone question the situation, and when they stopped, the price started rising again. This was timed to coincide with US’s displeasure with Saudi Arabia over the Khashoggi incident.

    in reply to: The CIA Lost In The Orinoco #45023
    palloy
    Participant

    If this whole thing has been prepared months ahead, then they have been doing a really bad job – the “military coup” this week was over in 24 hours, and the “diplomats” in their vast ugly embassy building will be cut off without electricity and water. Venezuela exports their heavy crude to the US, so stopping that would cause refining chaos in the south of the US.

    Venezuela has NEVER been a socialist country (except in comparison with the ultra-capitalist single party with two factions), but it does have a super-rich elite class with big interests in land and finance., which they use to hurt the people. Chavez and Maduro have strong backing from the military, the courts and the people. The nonsense about one million percent inflation has been around for over a year, and Maduro is still well-liked. How long would Amerikans put up with queuing for 5 hours for bread without rioting?

    Putin picks his causes carefully, but I wish he would stand up more forcefully in this case.

    in reply to: The Fed IS the Ugly Truth #44760
    palloy
    Participant

    > As if it’s completely natural, and desirable, for an economy to grow forever. It isn’t and it won’t happen …

    To me it sounds like you think if we could only get rid of the Fed, everything would be hunky-dory, and we all could get back to becoming millionaires without doing any hard work. But Capitalism won’t make everyone rich, it won’t eliminate poverty or racism or sexism, it won’t repair the environment, and it won’t lift a finger to protect the world’s biodiversity. Fortunately, it can’t create Energy, and THAT is the one thing that will bring Industrialised Civilisation to a grinding halt, Fed or not, markets or not. We have got so used to digging up energy and using it to drive the modern machinery we need to live.

    When the fossil energy has peaked and gone into decline, it will be too late to start thinking about building a solar panel factory or a wind turbine factory or any kind of factory – they take an awful lot of energy.

    People will have to forget about buying their food in supermarkets and taking it home by car, and join the Third World who have always planted their own seed stock, and fertilised it, and watered it, and harvested it and stored it for the winter time, with some left over to plant again in the spring.

    The thought of all that hard work makes bashing the Fed seem like something insignificant.

    in reply to: Nationalists and Patriots #43834
    palloy
    Participant

    I must admit I gagged at “Patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism. ” too. My thought is that Macron, like all others of his kind, have always cheered Patriotism, but he wants to criticise Trump. Therefore, they must be opposites.

    The more telling point was that Merkel rushed to the microphone and backed Macron up by saying that an EU army was a sensible idea, (and NATO therefore is a bad idea). I don’t know why they didn’t list all the problems Trump has caused them recently: JCPOA, INF, oil/gas pipelines from Russia via Baltic and Turkey, Ukraine/Crimea sanctions, ejecting Iran from SWIFT, all of which they would be much happier about if Trump would stop bullying them so brazenly.

    The SWIFT system is a standardised system for banks to exchange paperwork ahead of big international transactions. The interface is tightly defined in ISO 9362, so Russia wouldn’t have much trouble in writing an equivalent version of the central server. Russian banks are using RosSwift for 80% of their transactions right now, so could invite Iran and Venezuela into their system easily, undermining the US domination of SWIFT. China is doing likewise, even more so because they import so much oil.

    in reply to: Quantum, Jazz and Dada – 1 #43755
    palloy
    Participant

    “Cognitive Archeology” , eh. Seems like a good opportunity to talk about the future in ways so vague that nobody can ever say you are wrong. It will never out-perform the Laws of Thermodynamics.

    in reply to: Trump Is America’s National Piñata #43589
    palloy
    Participant

    > When is the last time they complimented him, other than perhaps when American rockets landed in some remote and deserted Syrian sandbox?

    They were certainly quiet when Trump wanted to strike Syria (Hersh reported that the military knew the chemical weapons attacks weren’t Assad’s, and told him). Same goes for all the attack rhetoric against Russia, China, Iran, North Korea. Do Democrats want WW3 as much as Hillary? Xi certainly thinks so with his “prepare for war” speech “leaked” to the public this week.

    in reply to: Debt Rattle October 21 2018 #43459
    palloy
    Participant

    Khashoggi is NOT a WaPo journalist only interested in Human Rights, Freedom and Democracy and The Truth. He is an islamist, fought with the Mujihadeen in Afghanistan against the Russians, friend of Osama bin Laden, and courtier (fixer) for various Saudi Princes, including the evil Turki bin Abdulaziz. As a part of the ruling court, he never spoke out against the brutal royal government, but was critical of MBS’s one-man rule as opposed the old ruling council.

    That’s according to Professor As’ad AbuKhlil – https://youtube.com/watch?v=zRGB8lA3v0sg

    in reply to: The News Just Ain’t The News No More #43037
    palloy
    Participant

    You’ll have to be a lot more specific than that.
    The exact filename you downloaded – should be *.iso.
    That you burned it DVD OK.
    That the computer you are loading to has boot settings to use DVD if present.
    Precisely what happened, error messages etc.

    “Mount” means to make a disc drive recognisable to the users programs.

    in reply to: The News Just Ain’t The News No More #43026
    palloy
    Participant

    > I wouldn’t know how to do that (run parallel systems).

    You need an empty partition on your main HDD or SSD to hold the Lubuntu OS. You can get one by resizing something else. Then when you install Lubuntu, you tell it to use the empty partition. Then when you start up, a menu with Windows and Lubuntu appears and you choose which one you want – if you get horribly stuck on Lubuntu, you still have Windows available.

    in reply to: The News Just Ain’t The News No More #43024
    palloy
    Participant

    > Haven’t made the jump to Ubuntu though; a bit intimidated to learn a whole new operating system at this point in my life.

    If you use Firefox and Thunderbird then the Ubuntu versions are exactly the same as the Windows versions. Everything is “point-and-click” as before. There are a bewildering number of distributions of Linux OSes, for no apparent reason. Ubuntu itself comes in several varieties, I use Lubuntu. You can set it up alongside Windows to try it out.

    in reply to: The News Just Ain’t The News No More #43005
    palloy
    Participant

    > Duck duck go is google “enhanced” (whatever that means) so that’s a no no IMO.

    I think duckduckgo says it doesn’t keep logs and never clicks on ads, so Google does all the work and never gets paid or builds any profiles on people.
    8. use vimeo.com for your videos, not youtube.com
    9. use Firefox+Privacy Badger + uBlock Origin to avoid ads
    10. use WordPress.com for free blogging, not Google Blogger

    in reply to: The News Just Ain’t The News No More #43003
    palloy
    Participant

    Most of the USians I know, think they understand the way propaganda works and don’t trust their Government at all, but nevertheless believe that “Putin is a thug”, Kim is a stupid fat boy, Venezuela is a communist wreck of a country , and China murdered millions in Mao’s time. Eventually they tired of my “Stalin had a bad press” explanations and I was driven out. It was quite an eye-opener to see the pervasiveness of the power of propaganda at work.

    My efforts to instill some basic computer security into them were met with “If you’ve done nothing wrong, you’ve got nothing to fear”. It makes you wonder why NSA is capturing ALL that data.
    1. don’t use Windows, (use Ubuntu (Linux) instead)
    2. don’t use Android (that only leaves Apple)
    3. don’t use Google/Microsoft/Yahoo to handle your email (use Citadel to do it yourself)
    4. learn how to set up your own encrypted messaging system (GPG4USB)
    5. use a paid VPN service to anonymise your IP (PIA) to a non-friendly country (Hong Kong)
    6. don’t use Google for searching, use DuckDuckGo or Yandex instead
    7. don’t use Facebook or Twitter or ANY of those money-making sites

    The Empire is falling, and the crash is going to be terrible, affecting your imperialist-consumerist way of life.

    in reply to: Talk Cold Turkey #42297
    palloy
    Participant

    What surprises me is the vehemence of Erdogan’s speeches and the fact that he takes every opportunity to answer every US statement. This is consistent with an intention to have Turkey thrown out of NATO, rather than leaving. It would stop the need for finding someone to blame. I’m sure Putin and Xi will have set up a good deal for him to join the SCO bloc.

    What I can’t understand is what Trump thinks he is doing antagonising him so – the priest has been in jail for 2 years and is obviously only a token. The S-400 purchase, the F-35 sale suspension and the Gulen non-extradition are far more important issues.

    With Turkey looking east instead of west, all thoughts of linking Israel to NATO-territory via land is gone for ever.

    in reply to: Assange, Infowars and the Constitution #42199
    palloy
    Participant

    I signed it, but the petition needs qualification – how can Assage be pardoned when he hasn’t done anything wrong?

    in reply to: Gross Incompetence #41670
    palloy
    Participant

    So why does she come with version 826 of what she already knows will not be accepted?

    David Davis, Secretary of State for Exiting EU, Steve Baker, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State and Suella Braverman, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, have all resigned.

    I expect May to call a spill vote at which she doesn’t stand. Boris will win. When it becomes clear he can’t do it either, he will call a General Election. Corbyn will win and call another referendum. Brexit will lose. Democracy in action.

    in reply to: When Trump Met Fibonacci. And Won. #41138
    palloy
    Participant

    But none of this metaphorical Fibonacci/fractal/Mandelbrot stuff has anything to do with G7 power politics. Can we start again, please, and just use plain English that can only be understood in one way? Why would the hidden state, and/or Trump, want the Empire to crash itself, when they are the primary beneficiaries of the Empire? I can understand why WE would want it to crash itself, but why would the people who benefit the most from it already?

    in reply to: When Trump Met Fibonacci. And Won. #41116
    palloy
    Participant

    Er, what?! What has a Fibonacci series got to do with a photograph? The photo shows lots of people looking aggressively at … Trump, who looks quite unconcerned. Should he be unconcerned about the G6 talking openly about excluding him? – Yes, I think he should, they are his only allies! They want action on Climate Change, and the stupid sanctions against Russia, and the stupid sanctions on Iran, and the stupid hostile attitude towards China and North Korea, Syria, Iraq, Afghanisan, Libya, Yemen, etc. The world is shaping up into two blocs, headed by US and China-Russia, and they will soon have to decide whether they leave the US bloc and join the China bloc. If they do so, the US Empire will have collapsed. And the Emperor will have lost the lot because of his hubris. History will record this man as a colossally stupid egomaniac.

    Incidentally, the Fibonacci series doesn’t start at 0, because you can work backwards from there to get a series of negative numbers going to -∞ that still conform to the defining relationship: Fib(n) = Fib(n-1) + Fib(n-2)

    in reply to: A Life Wasted #40650
    palloy
    Participant

    McCain knows that to maintain the US Empire, it has to bully the smaller countries into alignment with US interests. So he is locked in to being a hawk, no escape. Bolton and Pompeo the same. And they have convinced Trump, if he wasn’t already on board with the imperial plan. WW3 is inevitable under these circumstances. How can they extricate themselves from Korea merely to make peace with Kim’s piddling little country?! – they can’t, Empires don’t collapse gracefully.

    in reply to: Bitcoin Doesn’t Exist – 1 #37496
    palloy
    Participant

    BitCoin relies on there being an internet and 100,000 mining computers running. But there’s no chance of that continuing past the collapse of the system, at most a year away, and possibly only hours. Start watching “Primitive Living” videos on YouTube to learn how to survive after the collapse, and you need to be somewhere warm, with good soil and plenty of rain – probably on a Pacific Island currently growing rainforest. So get started now.

    in reply to: CON21 #25581
    palloy
    Participant

    “It’s going to cost many trillions of dollars to replace even a halfway substantial part of our fossil energy use with renewables, and we already don’t have that kind of money today.”

    That implies that enough money would be able to buy the fossil energy needed to make the renewable infrastructure necessary for the transition (as it always has in these pre-Peak Fossils times). But the timing of Peak Fossils is very close, if not here already, and the ability to buy more fossil energy to make wind turbines and solar panels (over and above everything else that we need it for) has passed. We could make a start on the transition, if it weren’t for the problems you so clearly describe, but it is energetically impossible to complete the transition. At some point in the future fossil energy will be in such short supply that even the wisest of politicians would have to make a decision between making more solar panels and keeping the lights on, the TVs working, and the internet running.

    Industrial civilisation will collapse when that point is reached, if not before.

    in reply to: Obama Has A Big Fat Greek Finger #21208
    palloy
    Participant

    It is already Syriza policy to leave NATO. ( https://www.syriza.gr/article/id/53894/The-political-resolution-of-the-1st-congress-of-SYRIZA.html point 13.28)

    Greece is the only NATO member to have Russian-built S-300 anti-missile defence system – in 1998 they took over a Cyprus order for them when Turkey complained. ( https://greece.greekreporter.com/2013/12/14/greece-tests-russian-made-s-300-air-defense-system/ )

    Greece recently asked Russia for more/updated S-300 missiles. ( https://www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/15/us-russia-nuclear-greece-missiles-idUSKBN0N62A720150415 ) and presumably could be tempted by the offer of S-400 on special terms.

    Russia’s longstanding friendliness with Greece and Cyprus (and EU’s harsh treatment of both), plus its new friendship with Turkey could see a big geopolitical realignment in the Black Sea/Mediterranean – certainly something the US has to avoid if at all possible.

    Since this is only a fiat money problem which the US/IMF/EU/NATO has to fix, it WILL be fixed.

    in reply to: Greece Prepares To Leave #20166
    palloy
    Participant

    > Syriza insists on needing a mandate from its voters for everything it does, whether that may be kowtowing to Greece’s EU overlords or walking away from them.

    Is that something they have actually pledged, or just good politics? A mandate from the people only applies until the circumstances change. Once they have exhausted the possibilities of how to please the Troika and also not implement more Austerity, I should have thought the old mandate falls by the wayside, leaving the Government to do whatever it feels is necessary.

    To exit the Euro would need preparations lasting at least a month, (printing new, or more likely overprinting old, banknotes). If they have to win a referendum first, that extends to 2 months. Capital controls would have to be used to stop bank runs, and having those on for 2 months would be impracticial.

    On the other hand, if the decision is made by Government secretly, capital controls are only needed on redenomination day. In the paper “Leaving the Euro: A Practical Guide”,
    https://www.policyexchange.org.uk/images/WolfsonPrize/wolfson%20economics%20prize%20winning%20entry.pdf
    by Roger Bootle and his team from Capital Economics, which won the Wolfson Economics Prize, they look at the constitutional legalities and come to the conclusion that the secretive way is the way to go.

    It may already be happening, and the grovelling to the Troika for just a few more days of lenience, is just a necessary charade for the time being.

    in reply to: It’s Time for Angela Merkel to Stand Up #19892
    palloy
    Participant

    You didn’t spend much time writing about why Merkel might be AWOL. Do you think maybe someone was FORCING her to go quiet? Who would do such a thing? Well, we all know who has an interest in “winning” against Russia – the US. And we all know the World Bank, IMF, international banking elite have a strong interest in all debts being paid in full.

    So that’s the motive, now, what about the means? How could the US possibly threaten Germany with something sufficiently dire that Merkel is forced to go along with the NATO anti-Russian push, despite Germany’s dependence on Russia’s energy and profits from Russian trade? And what could WB/IMF/banking cartel threaten Germany with, bearing in mind the hopeless state of EU finances and their complex interdependencies?

    Any study of Merkel’s political life will acknowledge that she is very good at bringing parties together and finding ways to bring about compromises. So when she has to placate a war-like US and crash-like financial institutions and 28 independent-minded European states, not to mention the German political parties, do you think that would be best done by making loud speeches all the time, or working behind the scenes to use what little bargaining power she has against these massive forces?

    in reply to: Great Big Fat Greek Expectations #19623
    palloy
    Participant

    When the experts put their minds to how to best manage some country leaving the Euro, they came up with this: “Leaving the Euro: A Practical Guide” https://www.policyexchange.org.uk/images/WolfsonPrize/wolfson%20economics%20prize%20winning%20entry.pdf

    It makes it clear that the country CANNOT have a public discussion about leaving, because it will cause ” large capital outflows from the country as international investors and domestic residents withdrew their funds; associated falls in asset prices and increases in bond yields; runs on banks, perhaps causing a banking crisis; and negative effects on consumer and business confidence.”

    So the decision has to be made by a small number of people, and kept secret while preparations continue. Should leaks occur, capital controls would have to be instituted immediately, which is illegal under EU law, but would have to be done anyway.

    So I don’t think Syriza is bound to discuss anything publicly, now that it is clear that there is no compromise on Austerity to be had from the EuroGroup. The decision to leave may already have been taken, and we will only hear about it on close of business on the Friday before the Monday that it happens.

    That would explain the apparent backdown – all they needed was funding to cover the few weeks until the grexit happens, and the terms didn’t really matter except for saving face at home.

    Read the report, it’s really good and has had a lot of thought put into it.

    in reply to: 50 Shades of Greece #19388
    palloy
    Participant

    Most new governments need 6 months to find their feet, so this delay isn’t so important. They have to make changes to the finance departmental staff, who up till now have been selected for their willingness to go along with Austerity. They have to get the media on-side, or at least get their message out to the people that the Eurogroup is the one forcing the situation. They have to physically print the new Drachmas, and reprogram the government’s computers. Syriza isn’t a 100% unified party either, and so they need to ensure they can get the votes through parliament. It all takes time.

    When the terms of the Eurogroup are clarified, and the alternative Grexit plans are formulated, they then need to hold a referendum, asking: “Do you want more Austerity?” Nobody ever rioted for Austerity, and no one ever voted for it either, so then the government will have an even stronger democratic mandate to do what is necessary.

    The only question then will be how harshly the EuroZone will devalue the Drachma. Everyone thinks they will be very harsh, “pour encourager les autres“, but that might not be how it turns out at all. The harsher they are, the more cheaply Russia and China will be able to give the Drachma the international support it needs, and the more likely that Greece will also leave NATO (it is already part of Syriza’s party platform).

    in reply to: Trapped in a Narrative #19169
    palloy
    Participant

    This from RT today mentions IISS – see if you think they are unbiased, RT obviously thinks so, but they are biased too, of course.

    https://rt.com/news/232347-russia-military-balance-isis/
    A UK think tank’s annual report on global military capabilities has its first and biggest chapter devoted to Russia, “challenging the European security order”. Political analysts said the document was biased and could lead to a new Cold War arms race.

    The ongoing conflict in eastern Ukraine is what the bulk of the latest annual Military Balance report by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) is focused on. The group describes itself as “a world-leading authority on global security, political risk and military conflict” and has former US and British government officials among its members.

    “The Kremlin… appears to desire a fractured Ukraine, unable to move beyond Russia’s orbit and get closer to western institutions,” argue the authors of the Military Balance 2015 report.

    “Western countries are now having to devise a strategy… to deal with an apparently revisionist Russia,” the report goes on to say, concluding that “Europe is facing a more belligerent Russia” and calling for “dissuasion of Russian adventurism on EU or NATO territory.”

    The language of the report is something that betrays a non-impartial approach to some of the report’s readers.

    “This is a Cold War document, wherein Russia is depicted as a force for bad in the world and the West a force for good,” political analyst John Wight told RT. “Words such as ‘revisionist’, ‘belligerent’, and ‘adventurism’ are liberally deployed in a negative depiction of Russia”.

    Journalist Phil Butler says the report “reeks of hyperbole summoning terms like ‘hybrid warfare’ to describe the Ukraine civil war”. He finds the document to be “totally western-centric in that it’s an unbridled instigation for a new arms race”.

    The report describes prospect for peaceful settlement as “unpromising,” while the US considerations over arming Kiev are said to be “a moral obligation and a strategic duty”, or at least an option that must be “‘kept on the table’ in support of the diplomatic process”.
    [more]

    in reply to: Trapped in a Narrative #19167
    palloy
    Participant

    wroblon,
    https://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/23/us-ukraine-crisis-tanks-exclusive-idUSKCN0IC1GE20141023
    Reuters showed photographs of the two badly damaged tanks, one of which had lost its turret, to four independent military experts, who said they were of a type used exclusively by the Russian army.

    At least one, they agreed, was a T-72BM – a Russian-made modification of a well known Soviet tank. This version of the tank, they said, is not known to have been exported.
    =====

    So who were these “four independent experts” and which photograph was it? Were they truly independent? I mean Reuters has never retold the west’s lies before, have they?

    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-28961080
    But now experts at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London have told the BBC that they have identified a Russian tank in a separatist column in eastern Ukraine that they say could only have come from across the border in Russia.

    Joseph Dempsey, an IISS analyst, has studied video footage reportedly taken on 26 August in Sverdlovsk, Luhansk, in eastern Ukraine. The video shows a convoy of military vehicles.

    Whilst date and location are unconfirmed, …
    =====
    So these experts were from IISS in London, (they wouldn’t be biased, would they?) and the video date and location are unconfirmed. Apparently the Russians have many tanks removed from service that are identical to Ukrainian models, that would blend in in Ukraine, but they sent a T-72BM as well, by mistake. Silly Russians.

    And so it goes, on and on, while US satellites have never picked up anything.

    in reply to: The Greek Issue Just Got Personal #19140
    palloy
    Participant

    We haven’t had China dropping its Dollar-Yuan peg, dumping its Dollar-denominated assets and pulling out of the Dollar/IMF/World Bank/SWIFT system yet. It is all set up and waiting for some event to blame it all on. The break-up of the EuroZone would do it.

    Every country that has been hurt by the old system, like Greece, Cyprus, Iran and Syria, will be eager to join the new system of Yuan/BRICS-Bank/RosSWIFT and start afresh, hopefully with a little less superpower domination.

    US/EU/Japan will have no alternative but to hyperinflate their debts into worthlessness with QE4-5-6.

    in reply to: Behind The Global – Game Of – Thrones #19098
    palloy
    Participant

    @ Raúl Ilargi Meijer, reply # 19084 – OK, so you do nothing.

    Well, for a start you don’t waste your time emailing your Congressman – he is your enemy and will ignore you, obviously.

    For another, don’t waste your time on non-violent demonstrations – they will be ignored.

    And you know what will happen if you try violent demonstrations – you will be met with greater violence – mace, tear gas, flash grenades, water cannons, sonic cannons, baton charges, trained dog attacks, bean bags and rubber bullets.

    Don’t even think of being even more violent back – you will be declared a terrorist and then attacked with everything you see in Ukraine, Iraq, Syria and Yemen – Hellfire drones included.

    TPTB will do THAT to YOU, make no mistake about it.

    I know, start a new political party! But be prepared for being infiltrated by spies, sowing discord and splits, having all your communications read and perhaps modified, ridiculed in the MSM, character assassination of leaders, jailing and if all else fails actual assassinations. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Syriza gets a plane crash in the coming weeks. Or the “Greek Nazis” start a bombing campaign of destabilization and never seem to get caught. Or both.

    In the end though, their system will crash, due to Peak Oil if nothing else. And then you will see a cascading implosion so massive that all the transport fuels will dry up, the electricity will go off for good, the water won’t come out the taps, the toilets won’t flush, no food in the shops and no money to buy it anyway, no internet, no phones, no TV and no radio. And everyone will be saying “WTF?”

    Keep your powder dry until then, because THEN things will be ready for change.

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