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The Financial System Is A Larger Threat Than Terrorism
The Financial System Is A Larger Threat Than Terrorism
In the 21st century Americans have been distracted by the hyper-expensive “war on terror.” Trillions of dollars have been added to the taxpayers’ burden and many billions of dollars in profits to the military/security complex in order to combat insignificant foreign “threats,” such as the Taliban, that remain undefeated after 15 years. All this time the financial system, working hand-in-hand with policymakers, has done more damage to Americans than terrorists could possibly inflict.
The purpose of the Federal Reserve and US Treasury’s policy of zero interest rates is to support the prices of the over-leveraged and fraudalent financial instruments that unregulated financial systems always create. If inflation was properly measured, these zero rates would be negative rates, which means not only that retirees have no income from their retirement savings but also that saving is a losing proposition. Instead of earning interest on your savings, you pay interest that shrinks the real value of your saving.
Central banks, neoliberal economists, and the presstitute financial media advocate negative interest rates in order to force people to spend instead of save. The notion is that the economy’s poor economic performance is not due to the failure of economic policy but to people hoarding their money. The Federal Reserve and its coterie of economists and presstitutes maintain the fiction of too much savings despite the publication of the Federal Reserve’s own report that 52% of Americans cannot raise $400 without selling personal possessions or borrowing the money. http://www.federalreserve.gov/econresdata/2013-report-economic-well-being-us-households-201407.pdf
Negative interest rates, which have been introduced in some countries such as Switzerland and threatened in other countries, have caused people to avoid the tax on bank deposits by withdrawing their savings from banks in large denomination bills. In Switzerland, for example, demand for the 1,000 franc bill (about $1,000) has increased sharply. These large denomination bills now account for 60% of the Swiss currency in circulation.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Western Peoples Are Being Re-Enserfed
Western Peoples Are Being Re-Enserfed
Following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, free farmers were defenceless in the face of Viking, Magyar, and Saracen raiders. The need for protection led to the enserfment of free people who accepted the suzerainty of those able to provide walled defenses and armed fighters to ward off attacks. As time passed, the attacks ceased but the feudal arrangements persisted, and the system became exploitative.
Today jobs offshoring and the financialization of the economy are again enserfing the people, but the cause is debt, not armed invaders. Today’s rentier class, unlike the one that emerged from feudalism, has never provided any service in exchange for the debt peonage that it has imposed.
Below is an excerpt from the Introduction to the German edition of Michael Hudson’s book, Killing the Host to be published in November by Klett-Cotta:
Today’s reversal of progressive values is a historical transition point much like what occurred from the Roman Republic to Empire during the century of Social War, 133-29 BC. Rome’s debtors and plebs lost in a wave of political violence. It was by murder that the oligarchic party prevented the reforms of Tiberius Gracchus in Rome after 133 BC. Julius Caesar suffered a similar fate in 44 BC after moving to take the demos into his camp. Other politicians urging debt cancellation also were killed.
Rome survived not by prosperity at home but by looting foreign regions. Arminius made a brave stand to resist Rome in 9 AD in the Teutoburg forest. But by that time the die was cast. Over the next few centuries the oligarchs imposed debt bondage on a quarter of the population, plunging the imperial economy into serfdom.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
Important Interview With Julian Assange
Assange explains how Washington coerces the world and keeps its citizens under a blanket of deception and disinformation.
Do Americans Live In A False Reality Created By Orchestrated Events?
Do Americans Live In A False Reality Created By Orchestrated Events?
Most people who are aware and capable of thought have given up on what is called the “mainstream media.” The presstitutes have destroyed their credibility by helping Washington to lie—“Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction,” “Iranian nukes,” “Assad’s use of chemical weapons,” “Russian invasion of Ukraine,” and so forth. The “mainstream media” has also destroyed its credibility by its complete acceptance of whatever government authorities say about alleged “terrorist events,” such as 9/11 and Boston Marathon Bombing, or alleged mass shootings such as Sandy Hook and San Bernardino. Despite glaring inconsistencies, contradictions, and security failures that seem too unlikely to be believable, the “mainstream media” never asks questions or investigates. It merely reports as fact whatever authorities say.
The sign of a totalitarian or authoritarian state is a media that feels no responsibility to investigate and to find the truth, accepting the role of propagandist instead. The entire Western media has been in the propaganda mode for a long time. In the US the transformation of journalists into propagandists was completed with the concentration of a diverse and independent media in six mega-corporations that are no longer run by journalists.
As a consequence, thoughtful and aware people increasingly rely on alternative media that does question, marshall facts, and offers analysis in place of an unbelievable official story line.
The prime example is 9/11. Large numbers of experts have destroyed the official story that has no factual evidence in its behalf. However, even without the hard evidence that 9/11 truthers have provided, the official story gives itself away.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Public Is Being Looted By Privatization And Deregulation
The Public Is Being Looted By Privatization And Deregulation
The privatization movement and the deregulation movement have turned out to be failures.
Privatization in Britain under the Thatcher government had its origin in the belief that the absence of incentivized managers and shareholders with a stake in the bottom line resulted in nationalized companies operating inefficiently, with their losses covered by government like the big private banks’ losses today. Thatcher’s government believed that privatizing socialized firms would reduce the UK budget deficit and take pressure off the British pound.
Today privatization is a way that governments can reward cronies by giving them valuable public resources for a low price. When the UK government privatized the postal system, there were news reports that one postal property in London alone was worth the purchase price of the entire postal service.
Privatization is also a way that conservatives, who object to social pensions and national health, can stop “taxpayer support of welfare.” In the US conservatives want to privatize Social Security and Medicare. In the UK conservatives want to privatize the National Health System.
It looks like the UK Conservative government is taking a step in the direction of privatizing the national health system, one of the great social reforms in British history. https://www.rt.com/uk/333270-nhs-professionals-privatized-deloitte/
In the US there are advocates of privatizing the national forests. In some ways the forests are already privatized as private timber companies are allowed to “harvest” the trees at favorable prices, and often the government even builds the roads for them.
In the US deregulation has resulted in high prices and poor service. When airlines were regulated, they competed on service. They had spare equipment so that mechanical problems did not mean cancelled flights. Stopovers did not involve additional costs.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Evil Empire Has The World In A Death Grip
The Evil Empire Has The World In A Death Grip
In my archives there is a column or two that introduces the reader to John Perkins’ important book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. An EHM is an operative who sells the leadership of a developing country on an economic plan or massive development project. The Hit Man convinces a country’s government that borrowing large sums of money from US financial institutions in order to finance the project will raise the country’s living standards. The borrower is assured that the project will increase Gross Domestic Product and tax revenues and that these increases will allow the loan to be repaid.
However, the plan is designed to over-estimate the benefits so that the indebted country cannot pay the principal and interest. As Perkins’ puts it, the plans are based on “distorted financial analyses, inflated projections, and rigged accounting,” and if the deception doesn’t work, “threats and bribes” are used to close the deal.
The next step in the deception is the appearance of the International Monetary Fund. The IMF tells the indebted country that the IMF will save its credit rating by lending the money with which to repay the country’s creditors. The IMF loan is not a form of aid. It merely replaces the country’s indebtedness to banks with indebtedness to the IMF.
To repay the IMF, the country has to accept an austerity plan and agree to sell national assets to private investors. Austerity means cuts in social pensions, social services, employment and wages, and the budget savings are used to repay the IMF. Privatization means selling oil, mineral and public infrastructure in order to repay the IMF. The deal usually imposes an agreement to vote with the US in the UN and to accept US military bases.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The US Economy Has Not Recovered And Will Not Recover
The US Economy Has Not Recovered And Will Not Recover
The US economy died when middle class jobs were offshored and when the financial system was deregulated.
Jobs offshoring benefitted corporate executives and shareholders, because lower labor and compliance costs resulted in higher profits. These profits flowed through to shareholders in the form of capital gains and to executives in the form of “performance bonuses.” Wall Street benefitted from the bull market generated by higher profits.
However, jobs offshoring also offshored US GDP and consumer purchasing power. Despite promises of a “New Economy” and better jobs, the replacement jobs have been increasingly part-time, lowly-paid jobs in domestic services, such as retail clerks, waitresses and bartenders.
The offshoring of US manufacturing and professional service jobs to Asia stopped the growth of consumer demand in the US, decimated the middle class, and left insufficient employment for college graduates to be able to service their student loans. The ladders of upward mobility that had made the United States an “opportunity society” were taken down in the interest of higher short-term profits.
Without growth in consumer incomes to drive the economy, the Federal Reserve under Alan Greenspan substituted the growth in consumer debt to take the place of the missing growth in consumer income. Under the Greenspan regime, Americans’ stagnant and declining incomes were augmented with the ability to spend on credit. One source of this credit was the rise in housing prices that the Federal Reserves low inerest rate policy made possible. Consumers could refinance their now higher-valued home at lower interest rates and take out the “equity” and spend it.
The debt expansion, tied heavily to housing mortgages, came to a halt when the fraud perpetrated by a deregulated financial system crashed the real estate and stock markets. The bailout of the guilty imposed further costs on the very people that the guilty had victimized.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Neoconservatives Are Brewing A Wider War In Syria
The Neoconservatives Are Brewing A Wider War In Syria
While you are enjoying your Sunday, the insane neoconservatives who control Western foreign policy and their Turkish and Saudi Arabian vassals might be preparing the end of the world.
Any person who relies on Western media has no accurate idea of what is happening in Syria.
I will provide a brief summary and then send you to two detailed accounts.
The neoconservative Obama regime set-up the Syrian government headed by Assad for overthrow. A long propaganda campaign conducted in Washington’s behalf by the Western media portrayed the democratically-elected Assad as a “brutal dictator who uses chemical weapons against his own people.” Washington organized and supported a front group posing as democrats and involved them in conflict with the Syrian military.
With conflict underway, Washington began predicting that something had to be done to overthrow Assad before he used “chemical weapons against his own people.” Obama turned these predictions into a “red line.” When Assad used chemical weapons against Washington’s puppets, the US would invade Syria.
With the “red line” drawn, a false flag chemical weapons attack was staged, or an accident occurred, that Washington used to say that Assad, despite the US warning, had crossed the “red line.”
Preparations for an invasion began, but hit two roadblocks. David Cameron, Washington’s puppet prime minister of Great Britain was unable to deliver British support for the invasion as the Parliament voted it down. This left Washington uncovered and vulnerable to the charge of naked aggression, a war crime.
Russian diplomacy threw up the other road block by securing the removal of all chemical weapons from Syria.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
President Kennedy and His Brother Robert Kennedy Were Murdered By The Military-Security Complex
President Kennedy and His Brother Robert Kennedy Were Murdered By The Military-Security Complex
Presstitute Media, such as the UK Telegraph, spend a lot of energy debunking exposes of government conspiracies. For example, the thousands of highrise architects, structural engineers, physicists, nano-chemists, demoltion experts, first responders, military and civilian pilots, and former government officials who have provided vast evidence that the official story of 9/11 is a made-up fairy tale at odds with all evidence and the laws of physics are dismissed by presstitutes as “conspiracy theorists.”
Similarly, those, such as James W. Douglass, who have proven beyond all doubt that President John F. Kennedy was not assassinated by Oswald but by his own paranoid anti-communist military-security complex, are dismissed as conspiracy theorists.
The 9/11 Commission Report and the Warren Commission Report were cover-ups. VP Dick Cheney and the neoconservatives he sponsored needed a “new Pearl Harbor” in order to begin their military assaults on the Middle Eastern countries that had independent foreign policies instead of being US/Israeli vassals. 9/11 was their orchestrated “new Pearl Harbor,” and this fact had to be covered up when 9/11 families persisted in their demands for an investigation and could not be bought off for large sums of money.
Similarly, the Warren Commission had no choice but to cover up that a popular American president, John F. Kennedy, had been murdered by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the CIA, and the Secret Service, because he was believed by paranoid anti-communists to be “soft on communism” and thereby a threat to the security of the United States. The cold war was on, and the Warren Commission could not hold those responsible accountable without destroying the public’s confidence in the American military and security services.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Compare Mike Whitney’s Truthful Account Of Syria With The Disinformation Published By The Washington Post
Compare Mike Whitney’s Truthful Account Of Syria With The Disinformation Published By The Washington Post
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article44174.htm
vs.
There is no such thing as “the Syrian opposition.” The “opposition” consists almost entirely of the Washington-backed ISIS, which Washington sent to Syria to topple the government when Russia blocked the neoconized Obama regime from its plan to invade Syria. Washington, the presstitute media and various bought-and-paid-for “experts” pretend that ISIS is not really ISIS but a “democratic Syrian opposition.” Only an utter fool could believe this fantasy lie.
Privatization Is the Atlanticist Strategy to Attack Russia
NOTE: Readers are asking to know who, in addition to the Western-financed NGOs, are the Fifth Columnists inside Russia. Michael Hudson and I left the description general as Atlanticist Integrationists and neoliberal economists. The Saker provides some specific names. Among the Fifth Columnists are the Russian Prime Minister, head of the Central Bank, and the two top economics ministers. They are springing a privatization trap on Putin that could undo all of his accomplishments and deliver Russia to Western control.
http://thesaker.is/putins-biggest-failure/
Privatization Is the Atlanticist Strategy to Attack Russia
Two years ago, Russian officials discussed plans to privatize a group of national enterprises headed by the oil producer Rosneft, the VTB Bank, Aeroflot, and Russian Railways. The stated objective was to streamline management of these companies, and also to induce oligarchs to begin bringing their two decades of capital flight back to invest in the Russia economy. Foreign participation was sought in cases where Western technology transfer and management techniques would be likely to help the economy.
However, the Russian economic outlook deteriorated as the United States pushed Western governments to impose economic sanctions against Russia and oil prices declined. This has made the Russian economy less attractive to foreign investors. So sale of these companies will bring much lower prices today than would have been likely in 2014
Meanwhile, the combination of a rising domestic budget deficit and balance-of-payments deficit has given Russian advocates of privatization an argument to press ahead with the sell-offs. The flaw in their logic is their neoliberal assumption that Russia cannot simply monetize its deficit, but needs to survive by selling off more major assets. We warn against Russia being so gullible as to accept this dangerous neoliberal argument. Privatization will not help re-industrialize Russia’s economy, but will aggravate its turn into a rentier economy from which profits are extracted for the benefit of foreign owners.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
There Is No Freedom Without Truth
There Is No Freedom Without Truth
“This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military–industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together.” — President Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight D. Eisenhower was a five-star general in charge of the Normandy Invasion and a popular two-term President of the United States. Today he would be called a “conspiracy theorist.”
Were Ike to be issuing his warning from the White House today, conservative Republicans like Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Marco Rubio (R-FL) would be screaming at Ike for impugning the motives of “the patriotic industry that protects our freedom.”
Neoconservatives such as William Kristol would be demanding to know why President Eisenhower was issuing warnings about our own military-industrial complex instead of warning about the threat presented by the Soviet military.
The presstitute media would be implying that Ike was going a bit senile in his old age, a tactic the presstitutes used against President Reagan as he struggled to end stagflation and the Cold War.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The West Is Traveling The Road To Economic Ruin
The West Is Traveling The Road To Economic Ruin
Michael Hudson is the best economist in the world. Indeed, I could almost say that he is the only economist in the world. Almost all of the rest are neoliberals, who are not economists but shills for financial interests.
If you have not heard of Michael Hudson it merely shows the power of the Matrix. Hudson should have won several Nobel prizes in economics, but he will never get one.
Hudson did not intend to be an economist. At the University of Chicago, which had a leading economics faculty, Hudson studied music and cultural history. He went to New York City to work in publishing. He thought he could set out on his own when he was assigned rights to the writings and archives of George Lukacs and Leon Trotsky, but publishing houses were not interested in the work of two Jewish Marxists who had a significant impact on the 20th century.
Friendships connected Hudson to a former economist for General Electric who taught him the flow of funds through the economic system and explained how crises develop when debt outgrows the economy. Hooked, Hudson enrolled in the economics graduate program at NYU and took a job in the financial sector calculating how savings were recycled into new mortgage loans.
Hudson learned more economics from his work experience than from his Ph.D. courses. On Wall Street he learned how bank lending inflates land prices and, thereby, interest payments to the financial sector. The more banks lend, the higher real estate prices rise, thus encouraging more bank lending. As mortgage debt service rises, more of household income and more of the rental value of real estate are paid to the financial sector. When the imbalance becomes too large, the bubble bursts. Despite its importance, the analysis of land rent and property valuation was not part of his Ph.D. studies in economics.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The West Is Reduced To Looting Itself
The West Is Reduced To Looting Itself
Myself, Michael Hudson, John Perkins, and a few others have reported the multi-pronged looting of peoples by Western economic institutions, principally the big New York Banks with the aid of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Third World countries were and are looted by being inticed into development plans for electrification or some such purpose. The gullible and trusting governments are told that they can make their countries rich by taking out foreign loans to implement a Western-presented development plan, with the result being sufficient tax revenues from economic development to service the foreign loan.
Seldom, if ever, does this happen. What happens is that the plan results in the country becoming indebted to the limit and beyond of its foreign currency earnings. When the country is unable to service the development loan, the creditors send the IMF to tell the indebted government that the IMF will protect the government’s credit rating by lending it the money to pay its bank creditors. However, the conditions are that the government take necessary austerity measures so that the government can repay the IMF. These measures are to curtail public services and the government sector, reduce public pensions, and sell national resources to foreigners. The money saved by reduced social benefits and raised by selling off the country’s assets to foreigners serves to repay the IMF.
This is the way the West has historically looted Third World countries. If a country’s president is reluctant to enter into such a deal, he is simply paid bribes, as the Greek governments were, to go along with the looting of the country the president pretends to represent.
When this method of looting became exhausted, the West bought up agricultural lands and pushed a policy on Third World countries of abandoning food self-sufficiency and producing one or two crops for export earnings.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Corrupt US Government Accuses Putin Of Corruption
Corrupt US Government Accuses Putin Of Corruption
The most corrupt government on earth, a government so utterly corrupt that it allows former executives of a handful of corrupt mega-banks to run the economic policy of the US solely in the interest of their banks, denying tens of millions of American retirees any interest income on their savings for 7 years and denying hard-pressed Social Security recipients any cost-of-living adjustments by falsifying inflation measures, a government so totally corrupt that it has destroyed seven countries and millions of Muslims solely on the basis of lies, this irredeemably corrupt government has accused the most admired political leader on earth of corruption.
http://russia-insider.com/en/putin-corrupt-proclaims-most-corrupt-govt-earth/ri12490
The entire world outside brainwashed America, its EU vassals, and Nazified Ukraine is laughing.
The United States, once admired, then feared, is now the laughing stock of the world. The CIA-controlled German media is being abandoned by the German people who have figured out that their media is nothing but a Washington propaganda operation against Russia. The backlash is so strong that the German media might not survive. http://russia-insider.com/en/germany/germans-abandon-major-news-sites-anger-over-slanted-russia-coverage/ri885
Here is Stephen Lendman’s take on Washington’s latest attempt to demonize Putin:
Phony US Claims About Putin’s Corruption
by Stephen Lendman
Relentless US Putin bashing persists, reckless accusations made – including invading Ukraine and murder, evidence backing up claims absent. None exists.
Putin is vilified for forthrightly defending Russian sovereign independence, supporting a multi-polar world, and challenging Washington’s imperial agenda – at the same time seeking world peace and stability along with mutual cooperation among all nations.
Comments by US officials reflect administration policy. Britain’s BBC is state-owned, controlled and operated. Propaganda substitutes for credible news and information.
Its correspondent Richard Bilton asked US Treasury Department Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) director Adam Szubin “if Putin is corrupt.”
He lied, saying “(i)n our view, yes. . . He supposedly draws a state salary of something like $110,000 a year.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
