Patricia
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My final words. Trade is mostly equal but free trade is not. It comes with many so-called advantages which are designed so that over a period sovereignty is lost by many many small steps. Once sovereignty is lost it can never be regained.
`My agenda!!! I don’t want my country to be able to be exploited and damaged by more powerful countries in the thrall of free trade “by mutual agreement and for mutual benefit.” Words David just words. They are sweeteners. The benefit is not there and even if there were, look for the dangers and there are many. Sovereignty is, in my view, the most important thing and to give that up is stupid.
David, history is written by the victors. Just ask the people of those countries where Corporations were allowed to exploit them usually by pillage with a little rape on the way…
In my view the CPTPP is likely, and should, bring down the new New Zealand Government. Although if that were to happen we would get the other mob back in which would be a catastrophe. Why is a ‘suspension’ of many of the odious clauses a good thing? Suspension means reinstatement at a future date. Even if it is signed in March, Parliament still has to vote on the Treaty. As there are many Treaty of Waitangi issues yet to be resolved if sufficient MPs refused to bow to their Party’s orders then we, hopefully, would not ratify it. We should not allow Corporations to rule the World let alone our little Country and there are so many clauses, whether suspended or amended, that can do that especially when they can be cut and pasted into other treaties. Free Trade is never the panacea for any Countries problems. It is just a synonym for rape and pillaging. Just look at history.
A country is only sovereign if it can print its own money. Therefore any country that can’t is just like a state or a council. I have also thought that the EU is how Germany has actually won World War 11. It has done with Banks what it couldn’t do with Tanks.
And if they regulate/tax crypto curriences then all taxation will have to be paid in ‘real money”. I can’t see the IRD accepting bitcoins as payment.
I have thought for a long time that income tax had passed its use by date. Now if all existing taxes and exemptions were abolished and we started again I would have a tax on all Bank deposits with no exemptions whatsoever. Then I would impose an inequality tax on all income over say $150,0000.00pa. That should get those big companies. I think……
I agree with the comments about the money tree. As a Government only prints 3% of all money in circulation and Commercial Banks create 97% then there is a lot of leeway for a Government to create more money for the benefit of the people. More bridges, roads, a UBI etc. Commercial Bank creation of money just creates bubbles – we can see that in housing and the stock market while creation of money by the governments helps society as a whole. I have often wondered why there has to be income tax at all though. I have come to the conclusion that originally it was designed as an inequality tax but because of all the exemptions then that now has no effect. If I had my way I would abolish all income tax on incomes under $100,000.00 and tax those above that at a rate of 40% with no exemptions at all.
Nassim, what we have experienced, in the name of neo liberalism over the last forty years is definitely a form of capatilism that we never had expetienced before.
For any Country to be run successfully there needs to be a combination of capitalism, communism and socialism.. When anyone of those isms becomes paramount then the country starts to fail. Certainly in my country, New Zealand, since around 1984 capitalism has become paramount and that has caused a deterioration in the standard of living. Certainly some people have benefited but not the majority. Hopefully the new Government will start to rctify it but it will take a long time. So much damage has been done.
Yes, it is a most peculiar World we live in when the only way you can buy stuff you do not need is by borrowing the money you do not have!
Okay Ilargi. I will comment on your article on Diem25 which I am taking at face value despite the comments of Judith Meyer. I think you are absolutely right. If you look at what is happening in the World a lot of people think the same. Viz Brexit, Scotland. Ireland, Catalonia etc etc. People want their own Country back. Small is beautiful and it works. Nobody wants to be part of a Federation. Federations do not work. Look at America. Nobody wants to leave their own familiar Country to go to the unknown. It is only when your and your own family’s circumstances are so bad that you have to. To then label those people as trouble makers because of their religion, for god’s sake, is unbelievable. It is so similar to Germany’s treatment of the Jews in WW11 but it is now the Muslims that are blamed!! If you want to stop migration stop bombing their countries. If you want to continue the bombing, the migration will continue and so you have to provide the infrastructure and jobs for them. It sounds simple I know but there seem to be vastly different agents, who have a different agenda, at work for that to happen.
These crypto currencies: I just can’t get beyond the fact that you have to pay cold hard cash for them. It is not like the stock market because there are no annual reports on which to base a decision to purchase. To me it just sounds like the tulip mania of the 1600s all over again.
Audio. I bought the book but it was so heavy to read – I must be getting old – so when you suggested the audio I down loaded it. So now, when I am in the garden – it is spring here now – I listen to it and garden!!
By the way V Arnold I am enjoying “Debt” so much. Once I managed to download it that is. A bit of a performance. Thank you for that referral. So interesting.
Zerosum. Most Countries provide health care for their people. Some, like NZ, pay for it through taxes – top income tax rate here is 38%. Others do a sort of insurance system like Australia. There are are also private hospitals but they are mostly, but not exclusively, for elective surgery. For anything urgent or serious you would go to the Public hospital. I do not know of any country who has a system like America. Perhaps only third world countries
You could turn that around olo530. What is the reason for Romania having a lower living standard than Greece other than they are accustomed to it?
I find it extraordinary that we get told over and over again something that is totally untrue. Banks do not lend savers money to borrowers. I repeat Banks do not lend savers money to borrowers. Rinse and repeat a thousand times a day. When Banks lend money they create it by crediting an account. As the money is repaid that money is deleted from the record. The Banks collect the interest. Government deficits and surpluses are not good or bad; they are merely tools that help run an economic system. A sovereign Country is not limited by the amount of money it collects by taxation. If anything income tax is a method to reduce inequality. Deflation and inflation are description of consumption that is all.
This globalisation thing has no boundaries. Unfortunately it is the boundaries that protects each and every Country. China house prices are going to collapse they say. Is that going to have an effect on house prices in Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland Vancouver? Some how I think that will happen. No Central Banker is going to go outside the square to protect his country. It is just a whole lot of hot air coming out of Jackson’s Hole. Nobody is going to say those Central Bankers are not wearing any clothes. In my view each and every Country’s Government must take back those powers they gave to the Central Bankers in the 1980s. The Central Bankers are the servants of the people not their masters. Until that is done there can be no democracy anywhere in the World.
Here in New Zealand we have an election in a month. One of the parties is promoting renationalisation of our electricity. Bring it on I say. Before it was privatised in the 1990s we had such a good system and it was cheap. Now we a a myriad of private companies providing electricity and the cost is horrific.
What will those financial wizards suggest when it gets to a stage when everybody’s income goes into paying interest on their loans? Once a man’s wage was sufficient to support his family. Now both have to work full time and put their children into care. The world is mad.
But what if the electricity used to charge the electric car batteries is hydro electricity? Doesn’t that alter the argument?
It is not the Reserve Banks or Governments that will control us when there is a cashless society, it is the Commercial Banks. 97% of all money in circulation today is created by the Commercial Banks. Only 3% by the Reserve Banks. We are already hanging on by our finger nails. What do you think it will be like when everybody’s money is controlled by private enterprise. Governments will have next to no power other than to legislate for zero interest and who do you think will be taking our money? It will be the bloody Commercial Banks.
The elemination of all cash is the ultimate in the privatisation of the world. Private Banks will completely control the money supply and take a cut on the way. A Brave New World indeed…….
V.arnold. It is not about you. It is about our children and grandchildren and I do give “a shit’ about them.
I find it interesting the way TPTB are selling us a cashless society. It is designed to stop the black market they say. In reality it is designed to enable private enterprise to take over, completely, the control of the money supply. At the moment only 3% of all money in circulation is cash. The rest is created by the Banks. When you look at the way the TPPA and the equivalent Investment Treaty – I have forgotten its abbreviation – provide for dispute resolutions then the future of the world will be run by the shareholders of corporations. How on earth did the world which post WW11 was designed to create a better life for its people degenerate into what we have today.
Dr. Diablo you may, or may not, be right but surely Keen is not advocating a wiping of all debt. Or may be he is. I would like to hear his view on your comments. But there is always another way to get rid of the huge American public debt. What about not involving itself in so many wars? What about closing all those military bases through out the world? Just doing those two things would reduce the public debt dramatically. It is disengenious to say one man’s private debt is another man’s asset. Mostly one man’s debt is a bank’s asset and as Banks create that debt out of nothing they can reduce it too.
Nicole, this is just wonderful. I will be able to wriggle down in my arm chair during these cold winter months and know I have a delightful read ahead. Thank you.
If and it is a very big If, Russia did interfere with the US election so what? The US intereferes in every bodies elections and has always done so. It did in the latest French election. It did in Ukraine. It did in Brexit. All countries do. I remember the Guardian, some years ago, telling its readers to write to people, anybody, in the US, telling them who they should vote for. Trump is not a nice person but I am not sure he is the ‘bad guy’ everybody says he is. He is just a fool. Unfortunately though a fool that can activate the nuclear button. A US President has very little power. It is important that he wears a bespoke suit but in reality he is just there to distract the people from what is really happening. It has always been so.
There is no doubt the world is in a bad state but for the life of me I cannot see what we can do. While I would love to see a wall built right around America – nothing in nothing out for 250 years that is not going to happen. While they say history never repeats itself but it alway rhymes I do wonder if today’s leaders are in the same maniacal state the leaders of the world were in prior to WW1. And we know that they were from what has come out since WW1.
Getting back to more prosaic things could some one please explain to me if 97% of all money in circulation is created by the Banks why do they borrow money from overseas? Is that because some of their clients want to borrow say yen to pay for goods purchased over seas? Or do Bank rules say that they have to have to hold x amount of foreign currency. If so why not just hold the reserve currency.?I suppose, Ken, it all depends on how you administer any stimulus. If it relates just to consumption then, in my view, that is not necessarily a good stimulus but if it relates to infrastructure it is a good stimulus. At the moment all the PTB seem to do is liken a countries management of money as similar to a household when it is nothing like that. Every Government in the world it seems, presents that mantra in order to promote austerity in everything, except housing of course. When, in reality, it is just a neo liberal way of deluding the people to believe that austerity is necessary in order to reduce Government activity in running a country. I believe we are heading back to the poverty stricken era of the late 1890s early twentieth century.
What I cannot understand is how the Greeks haven’t risen up against Tsipras. You tell us how it is there, and I do believe you, but there must be many many people there who are not suffering and who allow what is being done to their Country to just continue.
I intended to go to Lyttelton today and listen to Nicole but when I looked it up to see what time it was I saw the admission fee was $300.00!! Sorry Nicole that is way too much for me!
As the Private Banks create loans out of nothing then surely a Government can pass a law saying that ALL bank debt must be reduced by say 33% with a restriction on further lending by the Banks. Surely that would be better than crediting everybody’s bank account with $x dollars a la Steve Keen. I know it would be unfair to those who don’t owe anything and that is mostly us old people but as we have shafted the youth of today I don’t think that is a big ask. The other matter of money that concerns me is the idea of a cashless society. If 97% of all money is created by the Banks and only 3% by Government isn’t a cashless society the ultimate in privatisation? Everything will then be controled by private companies.
Zerosum, as long as Canada is a sovereign Country it can NEVER turn into Greece. Greece is not a sovereign country.
The need to raise the age of a Government pension/superannuation because ‘we can’t afford it’ is arrant nonsense. Any sovereign country can print the money to support its elderly – Greece can’t because it is not a sovereign country. In fact no EU country can because they are not sovereign. Once again we are told lies, which the MSM repeats, to enable the welfare state to be gradually dismantled. And we believe those lying bastards. When will we ever learn.
