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If We’re Going To Borrow Against The Future, Let’s Borrow To Invest
If We’re Going To Borrow Against The Future, Let’s Borrow To Invest
We are at an important juncture as a global society: either we immediately prioritize a new trajectory focused on creating a positive, functional future or — by continuing the consumptive, extractive, exploitative status quo — we will default into a nasty nightmare.
What will determine which future path we take is our collective narrative. It’s the story we tell ourselves — who we are, what we value.
The Power Of Narrative
Under the old narrative, the one currently operating and taking us towards disaster, powerful people and interests simply perpetuate a regime of More of the same.
And I do mean ‘More.’ The old narrative rests upon an ideology of endless growth. It wants and requires moreof everything. More cars sold, more houses built, more jobs created, and more goods and services of every description sold next year than last.
Everything flows from that want for more. The defenders of the old ideology are therefore defenders of our astonishingly-wide wealth gap, rapid energy depletion, emptying aquifers, disappearing pollinators, ruined soils, and dying oceans.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
A subtext of the old narrative is that humans are destroyers: we wreck natural systems. Put humans somewhere and first the large animals go extinct. Then the waters become polluted. Next, the soils are stripped.
Less well known, possibly because it shines a bitter light on our common practices, is that humans can be incredible forces of positive change, using their big brains to build natural abundance at rates far faster than nature by itself is able.
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The Undebtors: Sworn Enemies of the Vampires of Debt
The Undebtors: Sworn Enemies of the Vampires of Debt
Those who refuse debt, regardless of the sacrifice, are starving the parasitic, exploitive machine; those with debt are feeding it.
We hear a lot about debtors, and very little about undebtors. I define an undebtor as an individual or entity that has sworn off debt or considers debt a necessary evil that must be paid off as quickly as possible regardless of the sacrifices required to do so.
Undebtors are created by these conditions:
1. People with cultural/familial values that eschew/fear debt.
2. People who have been crushed by debt in the past and refuse to repeat the experience.
3. People who recognize debt as the status quo’s favored instrument of oppression, control and exploitation.
4. People who understand that paying off debt is the easiest way to earn a zero-risk significant return on one’s money.
If you pay off a 12% credit card, that’s the equivalent of earning 12% on your money.
There’s no mystery as to the low profile of undebtors in the mainstream media: undebtors are the equivalent of the cross to the vampire-parasites peddling debt. How can banks and other financial parasites make money off the undebtors? They can’t, and therein lies the problem for the status quo, which lives off the blood of debt extracted from debt-serfs.
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The Three Acronyms That Best Describe This Era: TINA, TANSTAAFL and FUGAZI
The Three Acronyms That Best Describe This Era: TINA, TANSTAAFL and FUGAZI
TINA and the complacent belief in free lunches strip the resiliency from a system and leave it vulnerable to collapse.
It’s tough to select three acronyms that best capture the current perfection of central planning, central banking and centralized propaganda. FUBAR (f**ked up beyond all repair) is tough to beat, and for those with a taste for absurdist humor, ROTFLMAO is equally appropriate–especially when “official” economic data is issued by various Ministries of Truth.
After long deliberation, I’m going with TINA, TANSTAAFL and FUGAZI as best defining our era: there is no alternative, there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch, and f**ked up, got ambushed, zipped in (to a body bag).
Let’s start with TINA, there is no alternative, because this drives the other two. TINA is the favored phrase of those benefiting from the current arrangement; if they can sell everyone on the idea that this is the only possible arrangement, the tax-donkeys and debt-serfs (i.e. the bottom 90%) will passively accept their lot in life and those at the top of the heap will have a free pass to most of the wealth and power.
But TINA also expresses a systemic rigidity that suppresses the variability and volatility needed to maintain real stability and not just a phony extend-and-pretend pseudo-stability.
Even When the Sociopaths Lose They Win
Even When the Sociopaths Lose They Win
How exactly do you cook a nutritious meal if all you have are spoiled ingredients? The answer depends upon your definition of nutritious and who is eating the meal……and, of course, your level of hunger and growing desperation. It is telling how much less discerning we become when the hunger pains boom in our belly and our mind becomes ever more focused on the single minded obsession of relieving our pain rather than pursuing our pleasure. Although at some point down the slippery slope relieving our pain is pursuing our pleasure.
If I carefully tend my garden, making certain the soil is thoroughly turned and pulverized, the seeds and seedlings properly planted, the area fertilized, weeded and watered and yet my garden’s yield is poor year after year after year, at what point do I begin to question the basis for my assumptions? And clearly there is an assumption of a better yield if I continue to do the same thing and expect different results.
Perhaps the soil is too acidic or alkaline, the area in shadow too long or the crop selection not suited for the soil or geographic location. The issue might be any or all of the above, or it might be something entirely different. Only a fearless and thorough examination of both the garden and gardener will reveal the systemic faults, and thereby the remedies to be employed.
It is a common belief in the West that revolution, at least when ‘successful’ (which usually means a forced change in leadership) produces reasonably good outcomes for the population at large. I contend this is wishful thinking and a deliberately seeded misnomer designed to obscure and conceal the ugly recognition that most often the new boss is quite similar in method and madness to the old boss. Change via revolution should not be conflated with better, nor should it be assumed better is the inevitable outcome.
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What Thomas Piketty and Larry Summers Don’t Tell You About Income Inequality
In a paper for the Institute for New Economic Thinking’s Working Group on the Political Economy of Distribution, economist Lance Taylor and his colleagues examine income inequality using new tools and models that give us a more nuanced — and frightening —picture than we’ve had before. Their simulation models show how so-called reasonable modifications like modest tax increases on the wealthy and boosting low wages are not going to be enough to stem the disproportionate tide of income rushing toward the rich. Taylor’s research challenges the approaches of American policy makers, the assumptions of traditional economists and some of the conclusions drawn by Thomas Piketty and Larry Summers. Bottom line: We’re not yet talking about the kinds of major changes needed to keep us from becoming a Downton Abbey society.
Lynn Parramore: In America, the top 1 percent has steadily increased its income share while the rest are either treading water or sinking. Let’s talk first about how you’re measuring the problem of inequality.
Lance Taylor: I think we need some detail to really understand what’s going on. So I look at inequality across low, middle and top groups. How does the share of income of the richest group compare to the others? Where do these groups get their income and what do they do with it? Is the middle getting squeezed? What’s driving income toward the rich?
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How the Powerful Try to Rule Through Cybersecurity
How the Powerful Try to Rule Through Cybersecurity
Michael Daugherty is President & CEO of LabMD, an Atlanta-based clinical and anatomic medical laboratory with a national client base. Daugherty exposes how business was cyber bullied by federal contractors in his book The Devil Inside the Beltway, He summarizes his incredible story below:
…click on the above link to view the video…
The Lesson of Greece: Only Collapse Makes Real Change Possible
The Lesson of Greece: Only Collapse Makes Real Change Possible
When the illusion that the Status Quo can fulfill all its promises to everybody dies, the Status Quo starts the terminal slide to effective collapse.
Of the many lessons we can learn from Greece’s difficult path to rejection of debt-serfdom, the most important is perhaps the most obvious: no real change is possible until the Status Quo can no longer fulfill its promises, i.e. it effectively collapses.
The collapse of the Status Quo has two distinct features: the process is highly variable, and the process affects the social classes in different ways.
The process of collapse is neither sudden nor smooth. Things do not necessarily cease to function overnight; rather, the decline to effective collapseoperates much like energy states in physics: systems decay and then drop to a lower energy level, where they are stable until further decay causes the next drop to an even lower level.
Pension payments provide a ready example. The pension payment is reduced, and the recipient tightens his/her belt and gets by. The next reduction (either outright or via inflation) forces drastic changes in consumption, and subsequent reductions reduce the pension to a supplement that cannot possibly support a retiree, much less their family.
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Greece Just Blew Up the Empire’s Death Star of Debt
Greece Just Blew Up the Empire’s Death Star of Debt
The Greek Elites and kleptocrats are terrified of the discipline that leaving the euro will impose, but the general public should welcome the transition to an economy and society that has been freed from the shackles of Imperial debt and the kleptocracy that has bled the nation dry.
Although the financial media is blathering about negotiations and gamesmanship, the truth is Greece just blew up the Empire’s Death Star of debt. There’s nothing left to negotiate except the official admission that the Imperial Death Star of debt, the most fearsome threat in the galaxy, has been blown to smithereens.
There are three fundamental points that need to be emphasized, mostly because they’ve been lost in handwringing, fearmongering and the ceaseless chatter of propaganda shills.
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Failing Stimulus And The IMF’s New ‘Multilateral’ World Order
Failing Stimulus And The IMF’s New ‘Multilateral’ World Order
My theme for 2015 has been the assertion that this will be a year of shattered illusions; social, political, as well as economic. As I have noted in recent articles, 2014 set the stage for multiple engineered conflicts, including the false conflict between Eastern and Western financial and political powers, as well as the growing conflict between OPEC nations, shale producers, as well as conflicting notions on the security of the dollar’s petro-status and the security and stability of the European Union.
Since the derivatives and credit crisis of 2008, central banks have claimed their efforts revolve around intervention against the snowball effect of classical deflationary market trends. The REAL purpose of central bank stimulus actions, however, has been to create an illusory global financial environment in which traditional economic fundamentals are either ignored, or no longer reflect the concrete truths they are meant to convey. That is to say, the international banking cult has NO INTEREST whatsoever in saving the current system, despite the assumptions of many market analysts. They know full well that fiat printing, bond buying, and even manipulation of stocks will not change the nature of the underlying crisis.
Their only goal has been to stave off the visible effects of the crisis until a new system is ready (psychologically justified in the public consciousness) to be put into place. I wrote extensively about the admitted plan for a disastrous “economic reset” benefiting only the global elites in my article ‘The Economic End Game Explained’.
We are beginning to see the holes in the veil placed over the eyes of the general populace, most notably in the EU, where the elites are now implementing what I believe to be the final stages of the disruption of European markets.
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Who Benefits When Bubbles Burst?
Who Benefits When Bubbles Burst?
Blowing speculative bubbles cannot possibly lead to organic growth because speculative bubbles fatally undermine the real economy.
An astute reader recently posed an insightful question: we all know who benefits from asset bubbles in stocks, bonds and real estate–owners of assets, banks, the government (all those luscious capital gains and rising property taxes), pension funds, brokers and so on. But who benefits from the inevitable collapse of these asset bubbles?
If asset bubbles end badly for virtually every participant, then why does the system go to extremes to inflate them? This is an excellent question, as it goes right to the heart of our dysfunctional Status Quo.
1. The system has no choice left but to blow serial bubbles.Broadly speaking, there are three possible answers:
2. Bubbles are domestic opportunities for Shock Doctrine-type crises that enable further consolidation of power.
3. Those in charge of the Status Quo believe the fantasy that the next bubble will usher in the long-awaited return to organic growth, i.e. expansion that isn’t dependent on central bank stimulus, enormous fiscal deficit spending, ginned-up statistics, etc.
Let’s consider each possible answer more closely.
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What Is a National Nervous Breakdown?
What Is a National Nervous Breakdown?
When the citizenry cease to believe the lies, the nation suffers a nervous breakdown.
Last week I used the phrase National Nervous Breakdown without clarifying its meaning. (The War on Our Intuition That Something Is Fundamentally Amiss)
By National Nervous Breakdown I do not mean the breakdown of civil order or the economy; I mean the breakdown of the officially sanctioned narratives that underpin the Status Quo. These Master Narratives legitimize the current arrangement; once they erode or break down, the legitimacy of the Status Quo is lost.
The shell remains in place, but nobody believes the system is a fair, just meritocracy.
Let’s consider the erosion or breakdown of these master narratives.
1. No accountability for abuse of power. The core narrative is no one is above the law, which means not only that everyone is supposedly treated equally before the law, but that abuses of power are punished or limited.
Now that police departments are essentially stealing from private citizens without due process via civil forfeiture, it’s clear there is no accountability for abuses of power.
This is simply one example of many in which blatant abuse of power is sanctioned by the Status Quo, and there is little recourse for citizens who have been abused unless they are wealthy enough to fund a high-powered legal team.
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Bilderberg – Part 1 | Economy |Axisoflogic.com
Bilderberg – Part 1 | Economy |Axisoflogic.com.
Meet the Bilderberg Group – an annual gathering of 130 of the Western world’s top financial, corporate, political, academic, media, military and policy elites, held every year since 1954.
They meet behind closed doors, at five-star hotels, where participants are encouraged to speak frankly – meaning “off the record” and away from the prying eyes and piercing ears of the public. Some journalists and media executives are invited, but they don’t actually cover the meetings: they simply attend them as guests.
The famous exclusivity and secrecy of the Bilderberg Group, we are told, is designed to encourage frank and open discussions among some of the most influential people in North America and Western Europe. But unlike its portrayal as a place where powerful people simply “talk shop,” critics for years have considered the meetings a form of secret world government, and a shadowy cabal.
The truth, as it often is, rests somewhere between these extremes.
The Cradle of Democracy Should Defy the Autocrats & Kleptocrats | StealthFlation
The Cradle of Democracy Should Defy the Autocrats & Kleptocrats | StealthFlation.
On the old continent, this December 29th, a succinct political showdown is scheduled to take place which may well become a defining moment for our entirely unsettled new millenium. What is at stake is none other than the prosperity of the common man pitted against the privilege of concentrated power. Lamentably, this deliberate dogmatic divide has relentlessly defined human civilization for the ages.
What is at hand isn’t so much about lofty ideals. It’s not about Socialism. It’s not about Capitalism. It’s not about Communism. It’s not about being a progressive, or a conservative or a liberal. It’s not about left vs right. Forget all those dumbed down dichotomies. It’s much more fundamental than all of that. Quite simply, it’s about People vs. Power, that’s it, nothing more. Those that have and wield institutional power, and those that do not. It’s as elementary and base as that I’m afraid.
Take a good look around, I defy you to point to a single socioeconomic construct in our supposedly enlightened and advanced society of today which is not essentially determined by that crude polarizing characterization. Whether it be our bought and paid for Political Class, our rapacious Banking Sector, our entitled Multinational Corporations, our entrenched Governmental Agencies, our marauding Military Industrial Complex, our fleecing Healthcare Providers, our muzzled Free Press, our hijacked Justice System, or our grossly overpaid CEOs, Athletes, and Entertainers, they all have one thing in common, and I assure you that it’s not the common good that they share. What they seek above all else is to expand the existing institutional dominion and their own privileges within it.
Epsilon Theory – Salient Partners | Now There’s Something You Don’t See Every Day, Chauncey
Epsilon Theory – Salient Partners | Now There’s Something You Don’t See Every Day, Chauncey.
Like every other male homo sapiens I know, I watch a lot of sports. There’s only one team that I watch as a fan – the University of Alabama football team (my grandfather and uncle played there, and I was raised in the Church of Bear Bryant) – by which I mean that these are the only games I watch where I could not care less about the quality of the gameplay, but only care about winning in as lopsided a fashion as possible. For example, while the rest of the world thought the 2011 Championship game where Alabama beat LSU 21-0 was a miserably boring affair, a Bama fan like myself thought it was a performance of absolute beauty. Roll Tide.
Fans and gamblers care about outcomes. For everyone else watching a game, we’re there for something else. One of those things – and for me the centerpiece of any non-Bama, non-Hunt-participant sporting event – is the chance that we might see something we’ve never seen before. For example, a few weeks back I was watching the Sunday night Giants-Cowboys game on television even though I don’t really care about the New York Giants and the last time I rooted for the Dallas Cowboys was when I was 6 years old and wearing footie pajamas with a big blue star on them. A year from now I will no longer remember (and don’t care today) who won that game. But I will never forget the greatest catch I have ever seen – Odell Beckham, Jr. throwing himself backwards, reaching out behind his head, and cleanly catching the long pass with 3 fingers of one hand for a touchdown. That’s why I watch the games – for moments like this where something happens that I’ve never seen before and almost certainly never will again.
