Doubling Back I often find it somewhat more productive than doubling down. Doubling Down is a form of denial and Doubling Back is a retracing of steps to find where one took a misstep.
Whilst the end of the World is not nigh, the end of the current monetary arrangements is nigh, and also the old social contract is up in flames and withering away as I type this.
This is the Dawning of the new Grub Street in Exile Age of Aquarius, as we shall see the Going Direct Spring 2024 is upon us, and whilst the distractions are many the core issue remains the same. Going Direct is a suicidal pathway to Techno Fascist Feudalism and the common themes of the new “Nobel Lie” revolve around;
I've spent the week going around the block sort of recapping, it's something that I like to do when I get the time or, feel the urge to that I find it quite useful. I think it is because you need to take a longer time to context along a timeline as we've just discussed before you can get a handle on the direction of travel. It’s a sort of triangulation to check the context, and motivation seeing what people's actions follow words and sometimes those actions can be several years after the words were initially spoken. Going direct as you know is the Black Rock plan put before the pandemic to deal with the next financial crisis which most people that follow these things agree started in September 2019 with the New York repo Spike. Well Going Direct is a big subject so I made a mind map sort of just covering some of the areas with which I've studied and blogged about which are climate science, Information Technology blockchain, and monetary reform. Now and then the last four years I've gone back to my profession of being a property developer now there's a brilliant book called um land policy money and climate the new TrifectaClimate Change, Land Use and Monetary Policy, The New Trifecta. by someone called, I think it's Geraldine Ryan Perry it's a brilliant book I've got it on Kindle I often read bits of it on the airplane when I'm coming back and forth to Sweden
If one observes the long game the dominant Narrative of the past 30 years is Climate Change and CO2 emission being the only thing anyone needs to focus on. The Carbon footprint narrative is by a long chalk well ahead of the curve even with the relatively short but seemingly endless Pandemic and Vaccine Narratives of the Past two years. Naming names, Larry Fink of Blackrock and Blackrocks Going Direct is considerably more powerful a control lever on what happens next than the efforts of Bill Gates and Dr. Fauci to enrich Big Pharma and themselves, Gates also has a bigger card in the game, and that is Digital ID and its relationship to both Near earth Satellite networks and the 5G networks, which coincidentally really were rolling out at the Same Time as the Wuhan Event, also in coincidentally? Wuhan. The Vaccines and Vaccine Injury are very much closely related to the Adjuvants and not necessarily the Pathogen dose delivered in the solution of the Adjuvant. It is the Adjuvant rather than the disease that is of interest to the 5G / ID aspects of what the past two years have really been all about. The Repo Spike in Newyork on September 19th, 2019 was the starting pistol, of course, the dress rehearsal was Event 201, The Objective was almost certainly to gain widespread acceptance of Digital IDs on SmartPhone devices and possibly by stealth through Nanotechnology, within the Adjuvant solutions in the MRNA vaccines( Experimental Gene Therapies?). So what about Climate Change, CO2, and all that, no it’s not the Graphine found in some adjuvant samples but the Rationing of Carbon through a Carbon-based currency which is why the Climate Change Agenda particularly the CO2 control knob is so important. The ratio of Good Energy ( renewables) for which Carbon Credits will be created and Bad Energy of "Fossil Fuels which represent Carbon debits, is 16:1. There are various combinations that could see the ratio vary but essentially as with The Gold Standard a Carbon Credit Renewables Standard has the same ratio as the Historical Bi-Metallic ratio known to numasticist's the world over. A deflationary centralised banking regime will be able to impose Austerity to an authoritarian extent extending to a population control mechanism. This is a far more likely delivery mechanism for Rapid population reduction policies than any Vaccination regime, Famine equally, is a far more effective and efficient means of population reduction than certainly War or any other form of genocide, for the Authoritarian regime deploying it, it is also complete with a shield of plausible deniability.
The Monetary Tactics of the Banking Oligarchy ( TO 1933)
The inability of the investment bankers and their industrial allies to control the Democratic Convention of 1896 was a result of the agrarian discontent of the period 1868-1896. This discontent in turn was based, very largely, on the monetary tactics of the banking oligarchy. The bankers were wedded to the gold standard for reasons we have already explained. Accordingly, at the end of the Civil War, they persuaded the Grant Administration to curb the postwar inflation and go back on the gold standard (crash of 1873 and resumption of specie payments in 1875). This gave the bankers a control of the supply of money which they did not hesitate to use for their own purposes, as Morgan ruthlessly pressurized Cleveland in 1893-1896. The bankers’ affection for low prices was not shared by the farmers, since each time prices of farm products went down the burden of farmers’ debts (especially mortgages) became greater. Moreover, farm prices, being much more competitive than industrial prices, and not protected by a tariff, fell much faster than industrial prices, and farmers could not reduce costs or modify their production plans nearly so rapidly as industrialists could.
The result was a systematic exploitation of the agrarian sectors of the community by the financial and industrial sectors. This exploitation took the form of high industrial prices, high (and discriminatory) railroad rates, high interest charges, low farm prices, and a very low level of farm services by railroads and the government. Unable to resist by economic weapons, the farmers of the West turned to political relief, but were greatly hampered by their reluctance to vote Democratic (because of their memories of the Civil War). Instead, they tried to work on the state political level through local legislation (so-called Granger Laws) and set up third-party movements (like the Greenback Party in 1878 or the Populist Party in 1892). By 1896, however, agrarian discontent rose so high that it began to overcome the memory of the Democratic role in the Civil War. The capture of the Democratic Party by these forces of discontent under William Jennings Bryan in 1896, who was determined to obtain higher prices by increasing the supply of money on a bimetallic rather than a gold basis, presented the electorate with an election on a social and economic issue for the first time in a generation. Though the forces of high finance and of big business were in a state of near panic, by a mighty effort involving large-scale spending they were successful in electing McKinley.
Money Power Seeks to Control Both Political Parties
“NEXT PLUNG’D A FEEBLE, BUT A DESP’RATE PACK, WITH EACH A SICKLY BROTHER AT HIS BACK: SONS OF A DAY! JUST BUOYANT ON THE FLOOD, THEN NUMBER’D WITH THE PUPPIES IN THE MUD. ASK YE THEIR NAMES? I COULD AS SOON DISCLOSE THE NAMES OF THESE BLIND PUPPIES AS OF THOSE.”(B 305–310)
There is one direction in which Mr Streit’s proposals are open to improvement. Let us turn to another in which he does not seem to have realised all the implications of his proposal. This great Union is to have a union money and a union customs-free economy. What follows upon that? More I think than he realises.
There is one aspect of money to which the majority of those that discuss it seem to be incurably blind. You cannot have a theory of money or any plan about money by itself in the air. Money is not a thing in itself; it is a working part of an economic system. Money varies in its nature with the laws and ideas of property in a community. As a community moves towards collectivism and communism, for example, money simplifies out. Money is a necessary in a communism as it is in any other system, but its function therein is at its simplest. Payment in kind to the worker gives him no freedom of choice among the goods the community produces. Money does. Money becomes the incentive that “works the worker” and nothing more. Ed. NB
But directly you allow individuals not only to obtain goods for consumption, but also to obtain credit to produce material for types of production outside the staple productions of the state, the question of credit and debt arises and money becomes more complicated.
Here and there in the book, though not often, there are references to the ‘dependencies’ of the democratic states. ‘Dependencies’ means subject races. It is explained that they are to go on being dependencies, that their resources are to be pooled among the states of the Union, and that their coloured inhabitants will lack the right to vote in Union affairs. Except where the tables of statistics bring it out, one would never for a moment guess what numbers of human beings are involved. India, for instance, which contains more inhabitants than the whole of the ‘fifteen democracies’ put together, gets just a page and a half in Mr Streit's book, and that merely to explain that as India is not yet fit for self-government the status quo must continue. And here one begins to see what would really be happening if Mr Streit's scheme were put into operation. The British and French empires, with their six hundred million disenfranchised human beings, would simply be receiving fresh police forces; the huge strength of the USA would be behind the robbery of India and Africa. Mr Streit is letting cats out of bags, but all phrases like ‘Peace Bloc’, ‘Peace Front’, etc contain some such implication; all imply a tightening-up of the existing structure. The unspoken clause is always ‘not counting niggers’. How can we make a ‘firm stand’ against Hitler if we are simultaneously weakening ourselves at home? In other words, how can we ‘fight Fascism’ except by bolstering up a far vaster injustice?
For of course it is vaster. What we always forget is that the overwhelming bulk of the British proletariat does not live in Britain, but in Asia and Africa. It is not in Hitler's power, for instance, to make a penny an hour a normal industrial wage; it is perfectly normal in India, and we are at great pains to keep it so. One gets some idea of the real relationship of England and India when one reflects that the per capita annual income in England is something over £80, and in India about £7. It is quite common for an Indian coolie's leg to be thinner than the average Englishman's arm. And there is nothing racial in this, for well-fed members of the same races are of normal physique; it is due to simple starvation. This is the system which we all live on and which we denounce when there seems to be no danger of its being altered. Of late, however, it has become the first duty of a ‘good anti-Fascist’ to lie about it and help to keep it in being.
What real settlement, of the slightest value, can there be along these lines? What meaning would there be, even if it were successful, in bringing down Hitler's system in order to stabilize something that is far bigger and in its different way just as bad?
But apparently, for lack of any real opposition, this is going to be our objective. Mr Streit's ingenious ideas will not be put into operation, but something resembling the ‘Peace Bloc’ proposals probably will. The British and Russian governments are still haggling, stalling and uttering muffled threats to change sides, but circumstances will probably drive them together. And what then? No doubt the alliance will stave off war for a year or two. Then Hitler's move will be to feel for a weak spot or an unguarded moment; then our move will be more armaments, more militarization, more propaganda, more war-mindedness — and so on, at increasing speed. It is doubtful whether prolonged war-preparation is morally any better than war itself; there are even reasons for thinking that it may be slightly worse. Only two or three years of it, and we may sink almost unresisting into some local variant of austro-Fascism. And perhaps a year or two later, in reaction against this, there will appear something we have never had in England yet — a real Fascist movement. And because it will have the guts to speak plainly it will gather into its ranks the very people who ought to be opposing it.
Orwell summarises Burnham’s ideas in The Managerial Revolution and The Machiavellians and highlights inconsistencies. He believed Burnham was fascinated by power and was sympathetic to Nazi Germany while they appeared to be winning, but by 1944 had transferred his sympathy to the USSR. He noted, however, that the theme of a new (and probably servile) society—neither capitalist nor socialist—was predicted in many works such as Belloc’s The Servile State, and dystopian novels such as Wells’ The Sleeper Awakes, Zamyatin’s We and Huxley’s Brave New World.
Capitalism is disappearing, but Socialism is not replacing it. What is now arising is a new kind of planned, centralised society which will be neither capitalist nor, in any accepted sense of the word, democratic. The rulers of this new society will be the people who effectively control the means of production: that is, business executives, technicians, bureaucrats and soldiers, lumped together by Burnham, under the name of ‘managers’. These people will eliminate the old capitalist class, crush the working class, and so organise society that all power and economic privilege remain in their own hands. Private property rights will be abolished, but common ownership will not be established. The new ‘managerial’ societies will not consist of a patchwork of small, independent states, but of great super-states grouped round the main industrial centres in Europe, Asia, and America. These super-states will fight among themselves for possession of the remaining uncaptured portions of the earth, but will probably be unable to conquer one another completely. Internally, each society will be hierarchical, with an aristocracy of talent at the top and a mass of semi-slaves at the bottom.
END OF OWNERSHIP, CIRCULAR ECONOMY PROOF OF BRAIN AND PRIMARY, INTERMEDIARY AND CONSUMPTION ENERGY TOKENS. A FRAMEWORK EVOLVES.
If one just accepts that there is nothing to redeem the existing Finance System getting on with rebasing money to either Joules or KWH equivalents in the three categories of Primary Intermediary and consumption and noting the Hoarding aspects of energy in long-term capital assets and applying something akin to the single land tax on them, we really can get somewhere near to a sustainable Birth Right economy. Where it gets very interesting is in the Information economy where shared knowledge doubles the knowledge it does not half it. Richard Stallman (GNU) often makes that very point. To satisfy the need for Status in the Social Animal humankind ( see Pigou Dalton Principle for a Theoretical framework for Taxation boundary conditions. ) Anyhow it is in the space of non-monetised social interactions where the second sort of discretionary token can be created on a blockchain providing the necessary ornament and display trinkets that determine the mating game? I will not elaborate here but Forres / Lagom the community system I have been working on has the idea that it is Mineable or winnable or giftable, The Distributed computing platform Steemit has something called proof of Brain which is a species of the sort of online social success measure which can easily be monetised to provide a competitive element to the Production of both the Birth Right token and the Discretionary speculative mating game side of the sustainable circular economy.
HALF THE WORLD'S METALLIC MONEY DESTROYED Alexander Del Mar, estimated that the silver demonetizations cut Europe's money supply in half: "Mr. Carlisle (later Secretary of the Treasury, 1893-97) said in the House of Representatives, February 2 ISt, 1878, 'The conspiracy which seems to have been formed here and in Europe to destroy by legislation and otherwise, from three-sevenths to one-half of the metallic money of the world, is the most gigantic crime of this or any other age.", 19TH CENTURY MONETARY CRIMES-THE GREAT DEFLATIONS p.485 Zarlega Lost Science of money
This is an excellent article and analysis. The driving motivation behind the accelerated rush to a Techno Fascist Feudalism has been occupying my mind for the years leading up to the Repo Spike in New York in September 2019. In the Financialised economy and with the CBDC push tied to Digital IDs, we see a symptom of the appearance of what the system is trying to preserve, namely itself and its Monopoly ingroup. The real economy is put in the position of trying to make bricks without straw, a misallocation of resources, and the Credit tokens to acquire those resources. The Dominant Resource that ties the Financial system’s real potential to the Real potential of the real economy is the Flow of Energy resources and Primary resources through the economy. It would seem that a Hard limit on available energy to sustain the present industrial output of the global economy has been hit ( Not due to peak oil or even peak cheap peak oil but to Peak disinvestment in Hydro Carbons)*, what seems inexplicable is the Priorities touted in narratives regarding Why our largest Energy Sources the Hydro Carbons, Gas, Oil, and Coal, and the largest potential replacement for them Nuclear are being demonised?
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sYJ4CFfKtqGFOoWPWjIDHIaONXNnCpI7/view?usp=sharing (ED, arch 2023, ISSU embed replaced with cloud document , ISSU account now closed.) Central Bank Coup Det Tat. The Central Bank Balance Sheet Pandemic. UK Banks and Bank of England Balance Sheet Ratio 2010 350,000,000,000 central bank 4,000,000,000,000 banks 8.75%
September 2021 1,000,000,000,000 cb 4,200,000,000,000 banks 23.81%
us Fed 2008 balance sheet 1 Trillion 2021 8 Trillion Us Private banks balance sheet 2008 10 Trillion 2021 22trillion
from 10% to 33% from 1/10th to 1/3rd
Conclusion Princes of The Yen.
With the end of the Cold War, traditional politicians have lost out to central bankers as the driving force in the world. Central bank decisions can open the floodgates for capital flows to pour into one market and out of another, redenominating prices, quantities, and currencies. As the movement to strengthen the independence of central banks has gained momentum, the discreet individuals in dark suits, who are not known for verbosity, have become the de facto rulers over economies, countries, and regions. They create booms, busts, and crises; they reflate and deflate, appreciate and devalue, affecting the daily lives of millions of people.
“Facebook seems to have removed the FB Live video i did with 23,000 views in which I warn that ‘vaccine passports’ are ACTUALLY a ‘social credit system.’ So I’ll pin this here, another version of the same warning”. Naomi Wolf’ Dr Naomi Wolf @naomirwolf its a Digital bank passport not a vaccine passport #QED.
The pandemic presented forensically for what it is, namely, a massive theatrical edifice intended to distract popular attention away from the fact that criminal bankers running the monetary system are making a concerted push toward full-on totalitarianism through monetary and financial control.
Special thanks to Robert D. for removing the air conditioner from the audio track.
References
(1) BIS General Manager Agustin Carstens explains with gusto that central banks will have full control over retail CBDC transactions, including ability to block individual transactions:
Regular Thaler’s Corner readers are well aware of the importance I assign to money circulation, as per the famous MV of MV=PQ equation, which has enabled to avoid a good number of pitfalls in recent years.
But it is crucial to view this equation in the context of today’s real world, and not as some of our Stone Age monetarists would have us believe, with a more or less stable V, and a confusion between money supply and monetary base!
As such, my approach is at the polar opposite of that adopted in the ECB statutes. I admit to taking cruel pleasure in citing the relevant excerpts (emphasis mine, link here)
Essentially this is a post showing the Bricks Without Straw, “Straw-manness” of the pseudo sovereign debt crisis that has been in preparation since the 2008 GFC.
This book is buried buried buried. This book is a sensational deconstruction of the myths of scarcity and the creation of artificial scarcity to maintain a cartel that spans energy and Exchange.
” in the long run, the antitrust approach offers greater protection to the public interest than any conceivable form of regulation. In mutual dislike rather than in mutual understanding there is strength. Moreover, by making an industry’s behavior depend on the judgment and actions of many buyers and sellers, the competitive approach minimizes the harm that can be done by any small group of individuals, thereby making influence and corruption more cumbersome, expensive, and of most importance, ineffective. “
Would that we had listened and learned from the book published in 1976.
When the Blair book the subject of this post first appeared it had, of course, to be smeared, He died so suddenly after its publication that the Smear had to be published posthumously but here it is nevertheless
JOURNAL ARTICLE
Review: Reviewed Work: The Control of Oil by John BlairReview by: Darius W. Gaskins, Jr. , John R. Haring, Jr. , William A. Vogely
For these two years hath the famine been in the land: and yet there are five years, in the which there shall neither be earing nor harvest.
Sunday The Sixth of February 2022 NOVEMBER 10, 2016
Of the First Way. I shall not be crucified upon this cross of Carbon Credits.
Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” Speech: Mesmerizing the Masses The most famous speech in American political history was delivered by William Jennings Bryan on July 9, 1896, at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The issue was whether to endorse the free coinage of silver at a ratio of silver to gold of 16 to 1. (This inflationary measure would have increased the amount of money in circulation and aided cash-poor and debt-burdened farmers.) BRYANT CROSS OF GOLD SPEECH
Question. What is the World’s Energy Budget?
Energy and Money are intimately related, which of the two is real? That might sound like a strange question why would I pose it here? Fredrick soddy called money the Nothing you get for something before you can buy anything. Essentially money is a measuring unit whether applied to exchange prices or Net worth ( wealth) calculations when all is said and done though it is the “Something” that has real use-value in Soddy’s little rhyme, not the Monetary unit. Energy is an equally slippery something to nail down but whether its the Tiger in your tank or Energy for life and creature comforts.
Measuring Energy with monetary units gives us pence or cents per Kilowatt hour or dollars or Kronor per Gallon or Litre in £kw/h and £per Gallon you see that the £sign is the nothing you get and the Gallon or KW/h is the something you get for that nothing. Before deciding which unit of measurement to allocate any something by, one has to decide how much of the something is available and how much of it we feel we need before the next occasion we need to access some more. As individuals we may fill our gas tanks every week, have a propane gas delivery or oil delivery for heating once a quarter, Where our Electricity and gas services or sewage and freshwater services are connected to a utility service then our metered supplies will come with the particular payment plan each utility provider offers, usually these days according to our credit scores.
Energy though is something which does something, money is a ticket price of entry or access and that is the important point to take away from The First day to Sunday.
Of the Second way. He who has the Gold makes the rules.
Notes from the talk:
Gold was primarily an energy currency because more energy meant more gold, and cheaper energy made cheaper gold.
Gold standard broke down when the Spanish raided America and then Spain started to import everything and lost their interest in making things themselves.
The curse of oil — too sudden an influx of money.
If you have a source of energy under your control, then you have the power to decide what is done.
Importing energy is like a loss of sovereignty.
The late Richard Douthwaite explains very well how Energy and economic activity are intimately related, for this second day on the way to Sunday, we will continue to focus on how much energy is available over the period in which we can sensibly plan our budget. The slide in the screen capture shows the anticipated Peak Oil moment in around 2015, as it turned out the Peak was shortlived, in any event by a pretty well documented and accepted view there are at least 50 years of Oil reserves available, and should we be making a sensible plan 50 years ahead is actually pretty ambitious after all predictions are difficult, especially about the future.
The third way to Sunday. Control the debt. Control the Access to energy.
The two bounded orders, which are beginning to form, will include institutions that aim to foster economic cooperation among their members, while seeking to gain economic advantage over the rival order. The Obama administration, for example, explicitly designed the Trans-Paciic Partnership for this purpose, although Trump withdrew from it after he became president. China’s highly ambitious “One Belt, One Road” initiative, which was launched in 2013, is designed not just to help China sustain its impressive economic growth, but also to project Chinese military and political power around the globe. And because the United States refused to join the Asian Infrastructure Development Bank, that impressive institution is likely to become a central part of the China-led bounded order. In short, the rivalry between the China-led and U.S.-led bounded orders will involve both full-throated economic and military competition, as was the case with the bounded orders dominated by Moscow and Washington during the Cold War
The Fourth Way to Sunday, Swing production control through Carbon Credits.
Carbon credits and carbon footprints even tons of carbon equivalent metrics are ubiquitous in much modern Sustainable economics literature. Carbon emissions are a handy proxy for how much “Fossil fuel is burnt” Some more Sophisticated analysis from say the WEF tends to use Hydrocarbons instead of “Fossil Fuels” but the big three energy sources are Coal, Gas, and Oil, and in that order regardless of the present consumption patterns which are definitely not! Market determined. Following the big three, there are two other Staples of modern Energy production and these are Nuclear and Hydro Electric. Then there are Wind, Wave, and Solar which are usually referred to as “Renewables.” In the Carbon Credit and Carbon debit system of Cap and Trade and Al gores Billions, The Big Three are Debits, Nuclear is a Don’t know, and Hydro Wind Wave and Solar are Credits. In the available energy budget on the Debit side, we have 94% and on the credit side 6% The Ratio is interesting, Bear in mind, it also appears in the slides in the William Jennings Bryan video above.
Oil continues to hold the largest share of the energy mix (31.2%). Coal is the second-largest fuel in 2020, accounting for 27.2% of total primary energy consumption, a slight increase from 27.1% in the previous year. The share of both natural gas and renewables rose to record highs of 24.7% and 5.7% respectively. Renewables has now overtaken nuclear which makes up only 4.3% of the energy mix. Hydro’s share of energy increased by 0.4 percentage points last year to 6.9%, the first increase since 2014.
So the good credits for renewables amount to 5.7% of 2020 production and growing if the current dispute at the EU where Nuclear and Natural gas are touted for inclusion in the definition, In any event, the blueprint for the Credit side of the Carbon monetary equation has 5.7% of the supply of good energy ranged against 94.3 % of the energy supply which is bad. let’s say 6/94 or a ratio of 15.6 to 1.
The History of the Gold-Silver Ratio Historically, the gold-silver ratio has only evidenced substantial fluctuation since just before the beginning of the 20th century. For hundreds of years prior to that time, the ratio, often set by governments for purposes of monetary stability, was fairly steady.
The Roman Empire officially set the ratio at 12:1. The ratio reached 14.2:1 in Venice in 1305 and remained at this level up until 1330 when it fell to 10:1. In 1350 it fell to 9.4:1 in some places across Europe. It climbed back to 12:1 in the 1450s.1 The U.S. government fixed the ratio at 15:1 with the Coinage Act of 1792.2
The discovery of massive amounts of silver in the Americas, combined with a number of successive government attempts to manipulate gold and silver prices, led to substantially greater volatility in the ratio throughout the 20th century.
The Fifth Way to Sunday. Carbon Rationing and programmable money.
It will be left to the rising mists of the future to explain how a Panacea administered in such a manner to fight the Pandemic of Covid 19 Sars 2 Coronavirus, will also deal with
FILL in blank for your own particular Ill here. Some suggestions, Climate Change, Climate Change, Peak Oil, Climate Change, Climate Change, Rising Sea Levels, Donald Trump, Populism, Conspiracy theories, LGBTQ 8 XYZ rights, The Far Right, the Alt-Right, Hate Speech……………
“Tripartite accords of old, a Gold StandardAs Piggs Shit Brics and Lutheran Shardsprofer Gaping anuses and Calvinist certaintiesDivine providence and eminent domain democracy perverted. Union now as then in ´38, current quarrels Mr. Streit’s Union and Mr. Orwells Niggers Not counting Niggers, the other´s not like us six hundred million disenfranchised, is it more today? Russia is brazenly refusing to learn from the EU’smistakes and may walk directly into its trap How can banking union serve the tributaries of society. Pigs do not fly nor water flow uphill real brothers can curse each other, friends. Someday. Britannia will give Columbia a piece of her mind, Elysium also needs telling and she is curiously afflicted offering no teet for the eastern bear. an exasperated Englishman: “I pray to God they keep out of the end of this war anyhow. We shall never hear the last of it if they don’t….”Cabalists, Gnostics, Manichaeans, the Old Man of the Mountains, Knight Templars, Satanists, Rosicrucians, Illuminati, Freemasons, Rousseau, Voltaire, Cagliostro, Madame Blavatsky, Mrs. Besant, Trade Unions, Anarchists, Socialists, Theosophists, Communists, Those Bolsheviks, a frightful horde all plotting and getting hold of power and handing it on and doing down Christianity and the Christian life”
Here is an extremely interesting article which goes through the core topics of energetic economics, based on a research project funded by the Finish government, worth reading the summary and the complete report (link inside the article). An utter importance is given the concept of ‘debt exhaustion’, previously discussed here by Dr.Morgan. Enjoy the read! https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8848g5/government-agency-warns-global-oil-industry-is-on-the-brink-of-a-meltdown
Good article (with the caveat that renewables aren’t a fix for this problem).
Fundamentally, the ‘real’ economy of energy-determined prosperity, and the ‘financial’ economy of money and credit ‘claims’ on that prosperity, have diverged beyond any sustainable relationship. The financial economy is like a car with no brakes and extremely faulty steering.
Nafeez Ahmed does not, in my opinion, do the report justice, he does link to the original document though. http://tupa.gtk.fi/raportti/arkisto/70_2019.pdf The report is 500 pages long but not text dense and an easy read and a very good reference source, due to the fantastic graphics of all of the data sets it analyses. The Report is very strong on the geopolitical and petrodollar aspects of the question and does not major on EROI although it does a good job of introducing the concept. The report hints at Circular economy but does not go deeply into it, Embodied Energy concepts are absent and the difficulty of applying the Energy insights to an economy historically modeled in Financial metrics is quite apparent, I do not think the report successfully separates the two things out although it does highlight the apples and oranges comparison problem.
Counsel for the people charge usury of its crimes.
This baron abstract that claims fruit.
This heavy invisible burden,
a yoke. Fashioned in language,
felt but never seen.
inflicting scars as deep as any lash,
claiming lives as real as any canon.
This nightmare device of imagination.
Who are the slayers of this mythical dragon?
Coleridge saw beauty in nature where sweet amaranths bloom. And Shakespeare compared his summers day.
What of this hamlets ghost of a spectre?
something is rotten in the danegeld,
many more promises are written than can be kept.
So much nectar strained from thin broth,
which bargains can be made?
When the music stops and the dancers
sit down. Chairs are our metaphor for the real.
Always too few.
Rascals become clothed in robes
and honesty is reduced to rags.
Elisabeth lease had a purchase on truth.
”When people starve how can overproduction stand charged. It is money promises, kept short in supply that causes starvation. The consumption in the lungs of the community, is the usurers confection.
A counterfeit Nobel laureate, theres an irony.
Denies that in money there can be a place that gertrude stein called there, home once but no longer there , there in Oakland. A precursor to some sub prime heritage.
A speaker of truth to power could follow Pauli ´Das ist nicht nur nicht richtig, es is nicht einmal falsh!
Not even wrong, not even there.
All counterfeit, yet to counterfeit the counterfeit? a crime.
The courtiers of the Exchequer address the king;
We economists beholden as we are to the princes of usury and the false prophets of usury fit the horse foot to the shoe that suits us best it matters not that the horse becomes lame and less furlongs are ploughed. As we deny the posion in our own usurious medium we also deny that what ills our patient could be from any panacea concocted in our own alchemists crucible.
”Money is usually defined
from a functional perspective as a “unit of account, store of value
and medium of exchange.” However, this definition does not take into account the quintessential attribute of money that money always trades at par on demand and the institutional arrangements that underpin this attribute. Money claims are also hierarchical (see Mehrling, 2012),
in the sense that not all money claims are equally strong in their par on demand promise in all states of the world, and that always and everywhere money is something different for central banks, banks, shadow banks and all other participants in the financial ecosystem.
As humans, we know we can change our own conditions and of course, we can do much to build a better life and better conditions for ourselves our families and our loved ones. In this, we develop a curiously human-centered world. A world where we place our species at the center of things, this is called Anthropocentric. It is natural that we see ourselves as the object at the center of things it is our ground zero from where we need to measure our own progress and experience. It is a large jump from there, to believe then, that the cause of things is for our benefit or stems from us or is Anthropogenic. Our efforts are a small sum of all the work done in the world and we recycle What Is and harness What Is rather than create What Is. That is, our ability to build what we build is limited by the feedstock that preceded us and which will outlive our species as far as anything we can gather from our earnest and ingenious scientific inquiries and human industry. Man is his own false idol, and oftentimes religions prohibit idolatry. Whether one is of religious faith or not there is a secular atheistic substitute for the prohibition of idolatry found in Islam, Christianity, and Judaism (the Abrahamic Faiths). In other faiths and in most cultures, the idea of Pride or Narcissism is warned against. The story of Narcissus is found in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, a myth arising from ancient pagan beliefs. For me, Narcissus is a story of a disconnected ego, estranged from a true sense of the individual singular self and of course a self that refuses to recognize Echo’s presence. Echo is the scorned suitor of Narcissus and Narcissus falls in love with his own image as a punishment for tormenting Echo, surely a story of pride and idolatry.
Shadow Banking
: The Money View
Zoltan Pozsar
Put more bluntly, the hybrid character of banking – always a joint venture between private capital and governmental liquidity safety nets – is morphing more and more towards government-sponsored banking. Yes, I know that is harsh, but sometimes the truth is harsh. Capitalism and banking may not be divorced, but certainly are engaged in some form of trial separation.
Paul McCulley
”The monetary and financial system of an economy are part of the socio-politico-economic control mechanism used by every state to connect the economy with the polity and society. This neural network provides the administrative means to collect taxes, direct investment, provide public goods, trade. The money measures provide a crude but serviceable basis for the accounting system which in turn, along with the codification of commercial law and financial regulation are the basis for economic evaluation and the measurement of trust and fiduciary responsibility among the economic agents. A central feature of a control mechanism is that it is designed to influence process. Dynamics is its natural domain. Equilibrium is not the prime concern, the ability to control the direction of motion is what counts.
Money and financial institutions provide the command and control system of a modern society. The study of the mechanism, how they are formed, how they are controlled and manipulated and how their influence is measured in terms of social, political, and economic purpose pose questions not in pure economics, not even in a narrow political economy, but in the broad compass of a political economy set in the context of society. ”
Martin Shubik
7th April 1823. The national debt has, in fact, made more men rich than have a right to be so, or, rather, any ultimate power, in case of a struggle, of actualizing their riches. It is, in effect, like an ordinary, where three hundred tickets have been distributed, but where there is, in truth, room only for one hundred. So long as you can amuse the company with any thing else, or make them come in successively, all is well, and the whole three hundred fancy themselves sure of a dinner; but if any suspicion of a hoax should arise, and they were all to rush into the room at once, there would be two hundred without a potato for their money; and the table would be occupied by the landholders, who live on the spot.
This is a nation of inconsistencies. The Puritans fleeing from oppression became oppressors. We fought England for our liberty and put chains on four million of blacks. We wiped out slavery and our tariff laws and national banks began a system of white wage slavery worse than the first. Wall Street owns the country. It is no longer a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, but a government of Wall Street, by Wall Street, and for Wall Street. The great common people of this country are slaves, and monopoly is the master. The West and South are bound and prostrate before the manufacturing East. Money rules, and our Vice-President is a London banker. Our laws are the output of a system which clothes rascals in robes and honesty in rags. The [political] parties lie to us and the political speakers mislead us. We were told two years ago to go to work and raise a big crop, that was all we needed. We went to work and plowed and planted; the rains fell, the sun shone, nature smiled, and we raised the big crop that they told us to; and what came of it? Eight-cent corn, ten-cent oats, two-cent beef and no price at all for butter and eggs-that’s what came of it. The politicians said we suffered from overproduction. Overproduction, when 10,000 little children, so statistics tell us, starve to death every year in the United States, and over 100,000 shopgirls in New York are forced to sell their virtue for the bread their niggardly wages deny them… We want money, land and transportation. We want the abolition of the National Banks, and we want the power to make loans direct from the government. We want the foreclosure system wiped out… We will stand by our homes and stay by our fireside by force if necessary, and we will not pay our debts to the loan-shark companies until the government pays its debts to us. The people are at bay; let the bloodhounds of money who dogged us thus far beware.
As Paul Krugman the Riechsbank prize holder in Economics in honour of Alfred nobel has remarked regarding another Ecomonists views from the hetrodox school steve Keen, ”There is No There There.”
“What was the use of my having come from Oakland it was not natural to have come from there yes write about if I like or anything if I like but not there, there is no there there.” -Gertrude Stein, Everybody’s Autobiography (1937), ch. 4
Keen may well equally have replied to Krugman that he was not even wrong?
Pauli remarked sadly, ‘It is not even wrong’.”[2] This is also often quoted as “That is not only not right, it is not even wrong.” or “Das ist nicht nur nicht richtig, es ist nicht einmal falsch!“ in Pauli’s native German.
p.49 Tragedy and Hope
The Two Major Goals of Bankers
Hundreds of years ago, bankers began to specialize, with the richer and more influential ones associated increasingly with foreign trade and foreign-exchange transactions. Since these were richer and more cosmopolitan and increasingly concerned with questions of political significance, such as stability and debasement of currencies, war and peace, dynastic marriages, and worldwide trading monopolies, they became the financiers and financial advisers of governments. Moreover, since their relationships with governments were always in monetary terms and not real terms, and since they were always obsessed with the stability of monetary exchanges between one country’s money and another, they used their power and influence to do two things: (1) to get all money and debts expressed in terms of a strictly limited commodity—ultimately gold; and (2) to get all monetary matters out of the control of governments and political authority, on the ground that they would be handled better by private banking interests in terms of such a stable value as gold.
These efforts … [were accelerated] with the shift of commercial capitalism into mercantilism and the destruction of the whole pattern of social organization based on dynastic monarchy, professional mercenary armies, and mercantilism, in the series of wars which shook Europe from the middle of the seventeenth century to 1815. Commercial capitalism passed through two periods of expansion each of which deteriorated into a later phase of war, class struggles, and retrogression. The first stage, associated with the Mediterranean Sea, was dominated by the North Italians and Catalonians but ended in a phase of crisis after 1300, which was not finally ended until 1558. The second stage of commercial capitalism, which was associated with the Atlantic Ocean, was dominated by the West Iberians, the Netherlanders, and the English. It had begun to expand by 1440, was in full swing by 1600, but by the end of the seventeenthcentury had become entangled in the restrictive struggles of state mercantilism and the series of wars which ravaged Europe from 1667 to 1815.
Supremacy of Charter Companies
The commercial capitalism of the 1440-1815 period was marked by the supremacy ofthe Chartered Companies, such as the Hudson’s Bay, the Dutch and British East Indian companies, the Virginia Company, and the Association of Merchant Adventurers (Muscovy Company). England’s greatest rivals in all these activities were defeated by England’s greater power, and, above all, its greater security derived from its insular position.
Industrial Capitalism 1770-1850
Britain’s victories over Louis XIV in the period 1667-1715 and over the French Revolutionary governments and Napoleon in 1792-1815 had many causes, such as its insular position, its ability to retain control of the sea, its ability to present itself to the world as the defender of the freedoms and rights of small nations and of diverse social and religious groups. Among these numerous causes, there were a financial one and an economic one. Financially, England had discovered the secret of credit. Economically, England had embarked on the Industrial Revolution.
p.57
The Key International Banking Families The names of some of these banking families are familiar to all of us and should be more so:
They include Baring, Lazard, Erlanger, Warburg, Schroder, Seligman, the Speyers, Mirabaud, Mallet, Fould, and above all Rothschild and Morgan.
Even after these banking families became fully involved in domestic industry by the emergence of financial capitalism, they remained different from ordinary bankers in distinctive ways:
they were cosmopolitan and international;
they were close to governments and were particularly concerned with questions of government debts, including
foreign government debts, even in areas which seemed, at first glance, poor risks,
like Egypt, Persia, Ottoman Turkey, Imperial China, and Latin America;
their interests were
almost exclusively in bonds and very rarely in goods, since they admired “liquidity” and regarded commitments in commodities or even real estate as the first step toward bankruptcy;
they were, accordingly, fanatical devotees of deflation which they called
“sound” money from its close associations with high interest rates and a high value of money) and of the gold standard, which, in their eyes, symbolized and ensured these values; and
they were almost equally devoted to secrecy and the secret use of financial influence in political life. These bankers came to be called “international bankers” and, more particularly, were known as “merchant bankers” in England, “private bankers” in France, and “investment bankers” in the United States. In all countries they carried on various kinds of banking and exchange activities, but everywhere they were sharply distinguishable
International Bankers Felt
Politicians Could Not Be Trusted With Control of the Monetary System
The influence of financial capitalism and of the international bankers who created it was exercised both on business and on governments, but could have done neither if it had not been able to persuade both these to accept two “axioms” of its own ideology. Both of these were based on the assumption that politicians were too weak and too subject to temporary popular pressures to be trusted with control of the money system; accordingly, the sanctity of all values and the soundness of money must be protected in two ways: by basing the value of money on gold and by allowing bankers to control the supply of money. To do this it was necessary to conceal, or even to mislead, both governments and people about the nature of money and its methods of operation.
Money Power Is More Concerned With Money Than Goods
The obsession of the Money Power with deflation was partly a result of their concern with money rather than with goods but was also founded on other factors, one of which was paradoxical. The paradox arose from the fact that the basic economic conditions of the nineteenth century were deflationary, with a money system based on gold and an industrial system pouring out increasing supplies of goods, but in spite of falling prices (with its increasing value of money) the interest rate tended to fall rather than to rise. This occurred because the relative limiting of the supply of money in business was not reflected in the world of finance where excess profits of finance made excess funds available for lending.
The Money Power—Controlled by International Investment Bankers—
Dominates Business and Government In the various actions which increase or decrease the supply of money, governments, bankers, and industrialists have not always seen eye to eye. On the whole, in the period up to 1931, bankers, especially the Money Power controlled by the international investment bankers, were able to dominate both business and government. They could dominate business, especially in activities and in areas where industry could not finance its own needs for capital, because investment bankers had the ability to supply or refuse to supply such capital. Thus, Rothschild interests came to dominate many of the railroads of Europe, while Morgan dominated at least 26,000 miles of American railroads. Such bankers went further than this. In return for flotations of securities of industry, they took seats on the boards of directors of industrial firms, as they had already done on commercial banks, savings banks, insurance firms, and finance companies. From these lesser institutions they funneled capital to enterprises which yielded control and away from those who resisted. These firms were controlled through interlocking directorships, holding companies, and lesser banks. They engineered amalgamations and generally reduced competition, until by the early twentieth century many activities were so monopolized that they could raise their noncompetitive prices above costs to obtain sufficient profits to become self-financing and were thus able to eliminate the control of bankers. But before that stage was reached a relatively small number of bankers were in positions of immense influence in European and American economic life. As early as 1909, Walter Rathenau, who was in a position to know (since he had inherited from his father control of the German General Electric Company and held scores of directorships himself), said,
“Three hundred men, all of whom know one another, direct the economic destiny of Europe and choose their successors from among themselves.”
The Power of Investment Bankers Over Governments
The power of investment bankers over governments rests on a number of factors, of which the most significant, perhaps, is the need of governments to issue short-term treasury bills as well as long-term government bonds. Just as businessmen go to commercial banks for current capital advances to smooth over the discrepancies between their irregular and intermittent incomes and their periodic and persistent outgoes (such as monthly rents, annual mortgage payments, and weekly wages), so a government has to go to merchant bankers (or institutions controlled by them) to tide over the shallow places caused by irregular tax receipts. As experts in government bonds, the international bankers not only handled the necessary advances but provided advice to government officials and, on many occasions, placed their own members in official posts for varied periods to deal with special problems. This is so widely accepted even today that in 1961 a Republican investment banker became Secretary of the Treasury in a Democratic Administration in Washington without significant comment from any direction.
The Money Power Reigns Supreme and Unquestioned
Naturally, the influence of bankers over governments during
The age of financial capitalism (roughly 1850-1931)
The Development of Monopoly Capitalism This conflict of interests between bankers and industrialists has resulted in most European countries in the subordination of the former either to the latter or to the government (after 1931). This subordination was accomplished by the adoption of “unorthodox financial policies”—that is, financial policies not in accordance with the short-run interests of bankers. This shift by which bankers were made subordinate reflected a fundamental development in modern economic history—a development which can be described as the growth from financial capitalism to monopoly capitalism. This took place in Germany earlier than in any other country and was well under way by 1926. It came in Britain only after 1931 and in Italy only in 1934. It did not occur in France to a comparable extent at all, and this explains the economic weakness of France in 1938- 1940 to a considerable degree.
The Monetary Tactics of the Banking Oligarchy ( TO 1933)
The inability of the investment bankers and their industrial allies to control the Democratic Convention of 1896 was a result of the agrarian discontent of the period 1868-1896. This discontent in turn was based, very largely, on the monetary tactics of the banking oligarchy. The bankers were wedded to the gold standard for reasons we have already explained. Accordingly, at the end of the Civil War, they persuaded the Grant Administration to curb the postwar inflation and go back on the gold standard (crash of 1873 and resumption of specie payments in 1875). This gave the bankers a control of the supply of money which they did not hesitate to use for their own purposes, as Morgan ruthlessly pressurized Cleveland in 1893-1896. The bankers’ affection for low prices was not shared by the farmers, since each time prices of farm products went down the burden of farmers’ debts (especially mortgages) became greater. Moreover, farm prices, being much more competitive than industrial prices, and not protected by a tariff, fell much faster than industrial prices, and farmers could not reduce costs or modify their production plans nearly so rapidly as industrialists could. The result was a systematic exploitation of the agrarian sectors of the community by the financial and industrial sectors. This exploitation took the form of high industrial prices, high (and discriminatory) railroad rates, high interest charges, low farm prices, and a very low level of farm services by railroads and the government. Unable to resist by economic weapons, the farmers of the West turned to political relief, but were greatly hampered by their reluctance to vote Democratic (because of their memories of the Civil War). Instead, they tried to work on the state political level through local legislation (so-called Granger Laws) and set up third-party movements (like the Greenback Party in 1878 or the Populist Party in 1892). By 1896, however, agrarian discontent rose so high that it began to overcome the memory of the Democratic role in the Civil War. The capture of the Democratic Party by these forces of discontent under William Jennings Bryan in 1896, who was determined to obtain higher prices by increasing the supply of money on a bimetallic rather than a gold basis, presented the electorate with an election on a social and economic issue for the first time in a generation. Though the forces of high finance and of big business were in a state of near panic, by a mighty effort involving large-scale spending they were successful in electing McKinley.
Money Power Seeks to Control Both Political Parties
The Growth of Monopolies and the Excesses of Wall Street The agrarian discontent, the growth of monopolies, the oppression of labor, and the excesses of Wall Street financiers made the country very restless in the period 1890- 1900.The Primary Goal of Capitalism The third notable feature of the whole development is closely related to this special nature of capitalism. Capitalism provides very powerful motivations for economic activity because it associates economic motivations so closely with self-interest. But this same feature, which is a source of strength in providing economic motivation through the pursuit of profits, is also a source of weakness owing to the fact that so self-centered a motivation contributes very readily to a loss of economic coordination. Each individual, just because he is so powerfully motivated by self-interest, easily loses sight of the role which his own activities play in the economic system as a whole, and tends to act as if his activities were the whole, with inevitable injury to that whole. We could indicate this by pointing out that capitalism, because it seeks profits as its primary goal, is never primarily seeking to achieve prosperity, high production, high consumption, political power, patriotic improvement, or moral uplift. Any of these may be achieved under capitalism, and any (or all) of them may he sacrificed and lost under capitalism, depending on this relationship to the primary goal of capitalist activity—the pursuit of profits. During the nine-hundred-year history of capitalism, it has, at various times, contributed both to the achievement and to the destruction of these other social goals.
Commercial Capitalism
The different stages of capitalism have sought to win profits by different kinds of economic activities. The original stage, which we call commercial capitalism, sought profits by moving goods from one place to another. In this effort, goods went from places where they were less valuable to places where they were more valuable, while money, doing the same thing, moved in the opposite direction. This valuation, which determined the movement both of goods and of money and which made them move in opposite directions, was measured by the relationship between these two things. Thus the value of goods was expressed in money. and the value of money was expressed in goods. Goods moved from low-price areas to high-price areas, and money moved from high-price areas to low-price areas, because goods were more valuable where prices were high and money was more valuable where prices were low.
Money and Goods Are Different
”Thus, clearly, money and goods are not the same thing but are, on the contrary, exactly opposite things. Most confusion in economic thinking arises from failure to recognize this fact. Goods are wealth which you have, while money is a claim on wealth which you do not have. Thus goods are an asset; money is a debt. If goods are wealth;money is not wealth, or negative wealth, or even anti-wealth. They always behave in opposite ways, just as they usually move in opposite directions. If the value of one goes up, the value of the other goes down, and in the same proportion.”
Merchants Became Concerned with Lending of Money
In the course of time, however, some merchants began to shift their attention from the goods aspect of commercial interchange to the other, monetary, side of the exchange. They began to accumulate the profits of these transactions, and became increasingly concerned, not with the shipment and exchange of goods, but with the shipment and exchange of moneys. In time they became concerned with the lending of money to merchants to finance their ships and their activities, advancing money for both, at high interest rates, secured by claims on ships or goods as collateral for repayment.
The New Bankers Were Eager for High Interest Rates
In this process the attitudes and interests of these new bankers became totally opposed to those of the merchants (although few of either recognized the situation). Where the merchant had been eager for high prices and was increasingly eager for low interest rates, the banker was eager for a high value of money (that is, low prices) and high interest rates. Each was concerned to maintain or to increase the value of the half of the transaction (goods for money) with which he was directly concerned, with relative neglect of the transaction itself (which was of course the concern of the producers and the consumers).
The Operations of Banking and Finance Were Concealed So
They Appeared Difficult to Master In sum, specialization of economic activities, by breaking up the economic process, had made it possible for people to concentrate on one portion of the process and, by maximizing that portion, to jeopardize the rest. The process was not only broken up into producers, exchangers, and consumers but there were also two kinds of exchangers (one concerned with goods, the other with money), with almost antithetical, short-term, aims.The problems which inevitably arose could be solved and the system reformed only by reference to the system as a whole. Unfortunately, however, three parts of the system,concerned with the production, transfer, and consumption of goods, were concrete and clearly visible so that almost anyone could grasp them simply by examining them, while the operations of banking and finance were concealed, scattered, and abstract so that they appeared to many to be difficult. To add to this, bankers themselves did everything they could to make their activities more secret and more esoteric. Their activities were reflected in mysterious marks in ledgers which were never opened to the curious outsider.
The Relationship Between Goods and Money Is Clear to Bankers
In the course of time the central fact of the developing economic system, the relationship between goods and money, became clear, at least to bankers. This relationship, the price system, depended upon five things: the supply and the demand for goods, the supply and the demand for money, and the speed of exchange between money and goods. An increase in three of these (demand for goods, supply of money, speed of circulation) would move the prices of goods up and the value of money down. This inflation was objectionable to bankers, although desirable to producers and merchants. On the other hand, a decrease in the same three items would be deflationary and would please bankers, worry producers and merchants, and delight consumers (who obtained more goods for less money). The other factors worked in the opposite direction so that an increase in them (supply of goods, demand for money, and slowness of circulation or exchange) would be deflationary.
Inflationary and Deflationary Prices Have Been a Major Force in History for 600 Years
Such changes of prices, either inflationary or deflationary, have been major forces in history for the last six centuries at least. Over that long period, their power to modify men’s lives and human history has been increasing. This has been reflected in two ways. On the one hand, rises in prices have generally encouraged increased economic activity, especially the production of goods, while, on the other hand, price changes have served to redistribute wealth within the economic system. Inflation, especially a slow steady rise in prices, encourages producers, because it means that they can commit themselves to costs of production on one price level and then, later, offer the finished product for sale at a somewhat higher price level. This situation encourages production because it gives confidence of an almost certain profit margin. On the other hand, production is discouraged in a period of falling prices, unless the producer is in the very unusual situation where his costs are falling more rapidly than the prices of his product.
Bankers Obsessed With Maintaining Value of Money The redistribution of wealth by changing prices is equally important but attracts much less attention. Rising prices benefit debtors and injure creditors, while falling prices do the opposite. A debtor called upon to pay a debt at a time when prices are higher than when he contracted the debt must yield up less goods and services than he obtained at the earlier date, on a lower price level when he borrowed the money. A creditor, such as a bank, which has lent money—equivalent to a certain quantity of goods and services—on one price level, gets back the same amount of money—but a smaller quantity of goods and services—when repayment comes at a higher price level, because the money repaid is then less valuable. This is why bankers, as creditors in money terms, have been obsessed with maintaining the value of money, although the reason they have traditionally given for this obsession—that “sound money” maintains “business confidence”—has been propagandist rather than accurate.
The Two Major Goals of Banker
Hundreds of years ago, bankers began to specialize, with the richer and more influential ones associated increasingly with foreign trade and foreign-exchange transactions. Since these were richer and more cosmopolitan and increasingly concerned with questions of political significance, such as stability and debasement of currencies, war and peace, dynastic marriages, and worldwide trading monopolies, they became the financiers and financial advisers of governments. Moreover, since their relationships with governments were always in monetary terms and not real terms, and since they were always obsessed with the stability of monetary exchanges between one country’s money and another, they used their power and influence to do two things:
(1) to get all money
and debts expressed in terms of a strictly limited commodity—ultimately gold; and
(2) to
get all monetary matters out of the control of governments and political authority, on the
ground that they would be handled better by private banking interests in terms of such a stable value as gold.
These efforts … [were accelerated] with the shift of commercial capitalism into mercantilism and the destruction of the whole pattern of social organization based on dynastic monarchy, professional mercenary armies, and mercantilism, in the series of wars which shook Europe from the middle of the seventeenth century to 1815. Commercial capitalism passed through two periods of expansion each of which deteriorated into a later phase of war, class struggles, and retrogression. The first stage, associated with the Mediterranean Sea, was dominated by the North Italians and Catalonians but ended in a phase of crisis after 1300, which was not finally ended until 1558. The second stage of commercial capitalism, which was associated with the Atlantic Ocean, was dominated by the West Iberians, the Netherlanders, and the English. It had begun to expand by 1440, was in full swing by 1600, but by the end of the seventeenth century had become entangled in the restrictive struggles of state mercantilism and the series of wars which ravaged Europe from 1667 to 1815.
Supremacy of Charter Companies
The commercial capitalism of the 1440-1815 period was marked by the supremacy of the Chartered Companies, such as the Hudson’s Bay, the Dutch and British East Indian companies, the Virginia Company, and the Association of Merchant Adventurers (Muscovy Company). England’s greatest rivals in all these activities were defeated by England’s greater power, and, above all, its greater security derived from its insular position.
Industrial Capitalism 1770-1850
Britain’s victories over Louis XIV in the period 1667-1715 and over the FrenchRevolutionary governments and Napoleon in 1792-1815 had many causes, such as its insular position, its ability to retain control of the sea, its ability to present itself to the world as the defender of the freedoms and rights of small nations and of diverse social and religious groups. Among these numerous causes, there were a financial one and an economic one. Financially, England had discovered the secret of credit. Economically, England had embarked on the Industrial Revolution.
Prof. Carroll Quigley: “We now have a society in America, Europe and much of the world which is totally dominated by the two elements of sovereignty that are not included in the state structure: control of credit/banking, and the corporation… These are free of political controls and social responsibility, and they have largely monopolized power in Western Civilization and in American society. They are ruthlessly going forward to eliminate land, labour, entrepreneurial- managerial skills, and everything else the economists once told us were the chief elements of production. The only element of production they (the plutocracy) are concerned with is the one they can control: capital. ……. All these processes create frustrations on every level of human experience and result in the instability and disorder we see around every day”.
“The fundamental, all pervasive cause of world instability is the destruction of communities by the commercialization of all human relationships and the resulting neuroses and psychoses”.
“Do not be pessimistic. Life goes on; life is fun. And if a civilization crashes, it deserves to. When Rome fell the Christian answer was, – Create our own communities -“.
"A little cat arrives where a few big dogs are eating in a pot. The dogs attack him and toss him away. We Italians are like that little cat: in that pot there is oil for everybody, but someone does not want to let us get close to it."
“Do not be pessimistic. Life goes on; life is fun. And if a civilization crashes, it deserves to. When Rome fell the Christian answer was, – Create our own communities -“.
Certainly! "Wiki Tactical Voting" is a collaborative platform that provides information and guidance on how to strategically vote in elections. The wiki aims to help voters maximize their impact by analyzing electoral systems and providing recommendations on how to vote in a way that aligns with their values and goals. The wiki is maintained by a community of volunteers who are committed to promoting fair and effective democratic processes.
A few more things to Chew over.
Below are links to the Posts I have made over the years which have been more than postcards to myself including my Epic Trilogy of poems, but starting with a post I made in 2016 entitled The Iron Law of Oligarchy.
Charles A. S. Hall’s Cover blurb for the Carey w King Tomb is I think a fair reaction to what is a long and complex book. The author himself says that the lengthy quotes ( for context) and juxtaposition of opposing narratives are overly long As a choice for the material, I question the wisdom of the choice but congratulate the effort, the net result if one is being generous, works and is fittingly described in the blurb by a giant in the field of Energy-Based economics( Political Economy)Prof. Charles Hall. Marx via Schumpeter makes an appearance late in the book, which saves some face on the shortcomings in monetary theory, and the influence on the Author’s thinking of Prof Steve Keen’s own flavour of heterodox Economics shows, also in reflecting Keen’s own limitations. The Authors dislike of Matt Riddley shines through and gives a tell to the Authors own inclinations, an admitted likely failing in his own introduction (“I discuss many matters as objectively as I can, but I don’t claim that either, or anyone can be perfectly objective. “) Well said. The Chapters on Debt and Finance are fine as far as they go and the Schumpeter quotes save the whole piece to my own tastes for a better grasp of Shumpeters insights into the money as credit context see Werner, much of the polemic even allowing for putting both sides is hackneyed retreaded phony “enfant terriblism” of the Leather jacket like Yannis’ variety. Getting the niceties out of the way the Lacunae is the old apples and Oranges problem encountered at the SEEDS Surplus Energy Blog of Dr. Tim Morgan, Dangerous Exponentials, and The Perfect Storm. In Short, the book is an exercise in knocking down mutually opposed straw men arguments, much of the argumentation I take no issue with whatsoever but the Ultimate apologetics for the discredited Climate Scientism and advocacy for Carbon indulgences ( SPASH #WrongKindofGreen Brave New World of Carbon Trading ) coupled with a failure to consider International Finance and PetroDollar hegemony which is an effect that the Authors own “Swing producer” price stability arguments for Texas in 1935, and in which we find ourselves living again in a deflationary age of a Quasi Petro/Carbon Gold Standard. QED.
Dr. Mackintosh’s book is a risible screed of cliche and Teenaged emo angst pseudo-intellectualism. The seriousness of the academic rigor is amply illustrated with quotes from Greta(fig 1)( No Climate facts then?) and Attenborough.(Fig 2) The pessimistic predestined Calvinist would be commissar gives Gem Bendell of Deep adaptation fame a serious run for his money, in the inauthenticity of their “Clinton Thumb Sincerity”
The better Book to read if one wishes to explore these issues is The economic superorganism by Dr. Carey King. Mackintosh’s effort can be viewed as an absurdist caricature along the lines of Zinoviev’s The Yawning heights, read straight it’s just a Yawn I’m afraid.
AUTHOR:ROGERGLEWIS PUBLISHED DATE:JANUARY 26, 2022 https://notthegrubstreetjournal.com/2… The driving motivation behind the accelerated rush to a Techno Fascist Feudalism has been occupying my mind for the years leading up to the Repo Spike in New York in September 2019.
In the Financialised economy and with the CBDC push tied to Digital Id’s, we see a symptom of the appearance of what the system is trying to preserve, namely itself and its Monopoly ingroup. The real Economy is put in the position of trying to make bricks without straw, a misallocation of resources, and the Credit tokens to acquire those resources. The Dominant Resource tieing the Financial system’s real potentials to the Real potentials of the real economy is the Flow of Energy resources and Primary resources through the economy. It would seem that a Hard limit on available energy to sustain the present industrial output of the global economy has been hit, what seems inexplicable is the Priorities touted in narratives regarding Why our largest Energy Sources the Hydro Carbons, Gas, Oil and Coal, and the largest potential replacement for them Nuclear are being demonised? It is more properly described as being stood down, why? Climate Change, The Climate Crisis, The Plague of Humans. (1)
“The purpose of the 4th Industrial revolution is to stymie the development of energy resources and to control Population and growth and instigate rapid population decline”.
The cakes currently burning King Alfred style were placed in the Oven in the pivotal period. 2015 Election, Feb 2016 oil price low, 2016 Brexit/trump, 2017 Election, September 2018 Repo Spike 2019 Election, Covid 19.
Covid 19 is a distraction the main currents date back to policy following the break up of the Soviet Union, 1990, 2000 Dot Com Bubble, 9/11, 7/7, 2008 GFC 2010 Coalition and
Build Back Better Going Direct and 4IR are all Political Slogans for the Trilateral World Government party, which represents only the hybridized Elite Billionaire class and their lackeys. Differential accumulation is their only concern and also of course population control. Mackintoshes book shares the following “Quality” with Carey, it is an apologetic, a Polemic, A Narrative. Careys is better disguised Though. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5… “In Short, the book is an exercise in knocking down mutually opposed straw men arguments, much of the argumentation I take no issue with whatsoever but the Ultimate apologetics for the discredited Climate Scientism and advocacy for Carbon indulgences ( SPASH #WrongKindofGreen Brave New World of Carbon Trading ) coupled with a failure to consider International Finance and PetroDollar hegemony which is an effect that the Authors own “Swing producer” price stability arguments for Texas in 1935, and in which we find ourselves living again in a deflationary age of a Quasi Petro/Carbon Gold Standard.” QED.
An Excellent look at the UK property Market. All the parameters are defined clearly and the Authors own take is refreshingly present throughout. This book along with Chloe Generation RentTimperly’s Generation Rent, Both add significantly to the DIalogue which should be happening around the “Housing Crisis” These are questions which this reviewers own Volume House Building company is actively engaged with. Home@ix The Affordable Homes Series https://www.yumpu.com/s/p9OtGg7RBbMsUnAY Well done Bob Colenutt on setting out this intractable perennial of British Political Economy.
KKR were a precursor to the re-emergence of the new breed of Philanthro/Oligarch robber barons. The genesis of the 1980’s boom-bust looting was the “Energy Crisis of the 1970s, re-read this book after this one. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3…
I read this book in the summer of 2010, to say it had a profound effect on my own critical thought processes is to do the book a huge injustice. My appreciation of the book has only grown as I have explored wider implications of some of the political realities of the cartoon of Capitalism sold to me as I studied land economy in the first half of the 1980’s. The path I set out on reading this book in many ways ends with a review of a book I am still studying and that is this one. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3… Would that we had listened and learned from the book published in 1976.
That anyone could doubt, that the mind that wrote this thesis has wrought considerable influence on subsequent events, is, incredible. The Real Politik of surface appearances and presentation of events is less than “Honest” “True” “Accurate” “Real” or indeed “Politik” and for a glance at the cards of the real game Dr. Kissinger has been playing all these years read this book. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3…
“The key fact in the new development of plutocracy is that it will use its own blunder as an excuse for further crimes. Everywhere the very completeness of the impoverishment will be made a reason for the enslavement; though the men who impoverished were the same who enslaved. It is as if a highwayman not only took away a gentleman’s horse and all his money, but then handed him over to the police for tramping without visible means of subsistence. And the most monstrous feature in this enormous meanness may be noted in the plutocratic appeal to science, or, rather, to the pseudo-science that they call Eugenics.” UTOPIA OF USURERS G K Chesterton. https://notthegrubstreetjournal.com/2…
This satire I read one summer back in the later half of the naughties on a visit to Sweden, I found it in the English books section of the local book shop in Ängelholm. It is a crushing satire of the binary mythologies that obscure the blindingly obvious. The Mythologies in question of, the “early swervers” and the “work to rulers” could have been tailored for the Mask/no mask , or any of the red/Blue team binaries dominating the Narcissism of small difference engendered by and amplified mercilessly by endorphin fueled social media tribalism. https://notthegrubstreetjournal.com/2…
@37.35 "At the end of that hour-and-a-half meeting I was told by the conservative party spokesperson. ""Andrew, there is currently no political appetite for your views on the vaccines, there may well be in 20 years time and you're probably going to be proven right. In the meantime, you need to bear in mind you are taking on the most powerful vested interests in the world, with all the personal risk for you which that will entail."" And I said I think this meeting is over.
Pier Paolo Pasolini
1,375,170 views 8 Nov 2023
Pier Paolo Pasolini is the mind behind the most controversial movie ever made: Salo or the 120 Days of Sodom. He is far from being one of my favorite directors, but there are few I respect more than him. Here is an artist with the courage to relentlessly stand up to corruption. An artist with ironclad beliefs, principles, and values that he would die for, and he did. Admiration.
“Pasolini was assassinated by Society in a Savage Act of self-defense a society which could not bear his Defiance his undisguised equation of commitment and life the hatred Unleashed against him was expressed in the staging of the crime a public execution at High Noon so that everyone might see”
“what Pasolini seems to be saying is that the powerful have an incredibly tenuous grasp of power over themselves and their basis urges and therefore quell their inner feelings of weakness by exerting force and violence on their perceived lessers especially the non-conformists”
When it became apparent that the domestic resource base would not be sufficient to meet Italy's growing energy demand, Mattei recognized the need to secure foreign supplies. Driven by his ambition to make ENI a player on par with the Exxons and Totals of the world, Mattei expanded abroad and turned his attention to the international oil markets.[8] He invented, or at least used to tell very often, the story of the little cat:
"A little cat arrives where a few big dogs are eating in a pot. The dogs attack him and toss him away. We Italians are like that little cat: in that pot there is oil for everybody, but someone does not want to let us get close to it."
“None of this should ever happen. No government should ever allow free circulation and acceptance of a foreign currency. If it does, it is committing treason against its own people. This is what has happened in Argentina for many decades. The People have been robbed by their political class. Corruption at the highest levels of government mixed with dreams and promises of a socialist nirvana have effectively destroyed the nation. Gross mismanagement of the money supply is at the very heart of the tragedy.”
The New York Post last week praised his management with the headline – “Javier Milei’s Argentine Success is Paving the Way for Freedom and Prosperity”.
No, He is the new Pinochet just another Chicago Boy of the Freidman School of Shock doctrine sadism.
