Dr. D
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I’m the worst at this, and as you say it’s all hidden, unconfirmed, double-crossing, in motion, BUT:
It seems to me we have the U.S./Israel/Saudi axis in trouble since they lost their blood and treasure trying to own the pipeline through Syria. S.A. then attempted to shore up their nearly-depleted reserves by exploring Yemen, whose hillbillies (compliment intended) gave them a tanning they’ve never before experienced, even with a trickling of Iran/Russian weapons facing multi-billions of U.K./U.S. weapons, even with the abundant use of Geneva-prohibited war crimes material.
So what’s a –probably dead– King to do? MBS is almost certainly the smartest, and one of the youngest princes, so with the decay of the CIA-Saudi-Bandar Bush nexus, MBS finds it not too difficult to reach the fore. However, he is both progressive, apparently peaceful at least in a relative sense, and is half-Syrian through his mother. So the CIA was agitating hard to have him sidelined for a more favored son. …Not that the U.S. would interfere in elections or internal politics, perish the thought! Because I hear that would be an act of war.
However, nothing doing, as their guy is lousy and stinks and no one likes him. And no one likes us. And we have no money and no army left in MENA. MBS on deck.
So, having lost in Syria, Israel suddenly realizes they have a fully mobilized million-man army on their borders, headed by Hezbollah, and DJT doesn’t look to follow the plan of invading everyone, everywhere, at every cost, including Iran. So they fallback to containing Shia, and getting their neighbors to fight, by arranging a Saudi-based war in Lebanon, and chew up a bunch of Hezbollah soldiers in the process. You could see this winding up.
However, it appears somebody unnamed put them on the game, told MBS we’d be on board if he cleaned house, and leaked a worldwide Israeli cable confirming it. 12h later, the Saudi PM of Lebanon (can you do that?) and all the CIA-Saudis are camping on the floor of the Carlton-Ritz Hotel. No coup, no Lebanon-Iranian war, and the pipeline going through on behalf of the rightful nations. –Oh and just solved their budget problem too. It’s not like the Saudi princes WEREN’T corrupt.
Back at the ranch, MBS is progressive, Saudi is going to modernize, stop exporting violent Wahhabism, get their refining, water, tourism, and other employment-businesses going, and open up to China and Iran for the investment money. Ending the petro-dollar and forcing the U.S. to openly compete. Trump is helpfully under China’s wing and out of the way the day this happens.
So does this make sense? S.A. is going to forcefully modernize and make nice-nice with the world whether they like to or not? China (and Russia) as their real power, and the real controlling force in the new middle east is going to make Shia and Sunni knock it off, and leave Israel out in the cold? Pepe and Taleb should know better than I do, but I find that older people are locked into outdated paradigms about the innate evil of Iran, and the innate power of Arabia, where the U.S. dictates and China owns nothing at all. None of those things are true anymore, and it doesn’t pay to be blinded by the past in an over-persistence of vision.
True.
And in a nice world, where we don’t let anyone take the consequences of their actions, is it any surprise?
Catalonia — or its leaders at least — suddenly learned it takes more to gain independence than a flag and an iPhone. Much as I understand the impulse to a public referendum, it’s a very serious business and Jose Hevia is largely correct. There actually is a legal framework to secede which they did not follow. The drive was supported by Catalonian oligarchs looking for power and to avoid enclosing law. They didn’t have adequate public support and no contingency plan either as a coup, or for subsequent governance. Doing this is legally sedition and treason, and clearly so with good reason. Because if it were that easy and legal I’d secede my house and not pay taxes too if it only took a referendum of ME. History shows that no one secedes — ever — without force of arms that is long, ugly, and desperate, and possibly not without the lasting support of a powerful assisting nation.
Here in the United States, post-“Hamilton” I should hope we are up to speed on this. We know it took eight dark and crippling years, splitting of every church and township, thousands of men willing the die for a truly impossible cause, massive, widespread guerrilla arms, and the wealth and influence of France to win — and even THAT was terribly unusual, lucky occurrence. Followed by how rebellions inevitably collapse into military tyranny like Napoleon, leaving everything far worse than before, which was only avoided here because Britain was too busy and the Founding Fathers disliked and distrusted each other too much.
Whether Catalonia should be independent is not for me to decide. But I can tell you they did not treat it as a grave, desperate, hanging offense that would get half of themselves and a quarter of Spain killed in a Franco-style civil war. Seriously. Haven’t 40 years of entirely useless, unproductive protests shown you that it takes more than a rally and a headline to effect real change on power? You need to be excruciatingly, maddeningly legal and moral, diabolically serious, incredibly brave, and angelically long-suffering as a whole people to have even a chance of winning. It’s possible to find those things in yourself in the middle of an existing war, but I wouldn’t count on it. If you’re not going to bring that, stay home: you’re just going to get a lot of people killed.
I could say the same to Antifa. Do you have the resources it takes to accomplish your plan? Okay, suppose you win, then what? What’s your restoration of government plan after a violent coup? If not, please save your lives and stay home. And thankfully, so far, they have. We hope it is to effect change peacefully through legal and proper channels, which is the better way if at all possible.
“Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.” True, dat.
Sure. Apparently I’m writing them anyway. I’m just concerned I’m not the measured and responsible voice TAE is known for. Email my account.
Is Donna Brazile insane? While I appreciate some discussion of what has been truth apparent for decades, her story is just another, lesser, barrier of transparent lies.
She was core Democratic Party her whole life and didn’t know, had never heard rumors of the DNC’s financial position? Really? Likewise, Hillary gave them what must have been the biggest side-deal since Andrew Jackson, and nobody knew nothing? None of the State heads, the Staffers had any idea? You’re fired. Incompetent, out of touch…
But it goes on. Like the Greek bailout, Hillary’s campaign didn’t “fund the DNC”, since Obama stiffed her by leaving an empty bag, the money HRC raised only passed through the DNC pro forma back to herself and campaign. So what was she “bailing out?” Herself, of course, and to get hold of the tiny remaining state funds, except perhaps to fund raise once President, as BO traditionally should have.
Next question: if JDT was so bad, why was the party having so much trouble raising money? Was it, as other rumors suggested, everyone in the party hated HRC too, not just those reprehensible American people?
“Interim DNC chairman Donna Brazile, the first black woman to hold the position, was singled out by Hillary during the rant. She screamed at Donna, “I’m so sick of your face. You stare at the wall like a brain dead buffalo, while letting that f – – – ing Lauer get away with this. What are you good for, really? Get the f – – – to work janitoring this mess – do I make myself clear?”
A female NBC executive said that Donna Brazile looked at Mrs. Clinton and never flinched, which seemed to enrage Hillary all the more. The executive continued, “It was the most awful and terrible…and racist display – such a profane meltdown I have ever witnessed from anyone, and I will never forget it. https://investmentwatchblog.com/she-was-in-full-meltdown-hillary-unleashe… “
Okay, so she had nooooo idea, and had to investigate this for Bernie, who had nooooo idea. And discovered that Whatshername Shultz was making all decisions and telling the Board of Directors after the fact, even about the hack/leak. Who all said, “Meh, she’s like that.” And this was “perhaps” unethical, but not illegal. I’m sorry, but the DNC is a registered corporation, if you don’t follow corporate governance, that’s a serious offense. If money goes missing, is transferred in any way, to any one improperly, it’s embezzlement, and a felony. Since one person had the checkbook with no oversight, draw your own conclusions.
So she tells Bernie, aw, there’s nothing she can do. And Bernie, unsurprised, says, aw. Wait–he was unsurprised there was no longer corporate governance and the party, the election, the whole 220-year U.S. Democracy had been hijacked? Hold on, this was the same guy and gal who openly endorsed her and cried at the nomination? But now she’s shocked and appalled.
Okay, so knowing that, Brazile cheated by handing HRC the CNN test answers, getting herself fired, but only to take the place of Schultz, who got HERself fired.
Your point, Herr Doktor? When HRC collapsed in fair weather, back when any discussion of her increasingly poor health was a crazy conspiracy, Brazile was then looking for new candidates. She picked Joe Biden and Corey Booker. This is the insane part. A MONTH before the election? Heart-attack Biden who’d been passed over a dozen times? Booker with no name recognition? Golly, if only there were a candidate with name recognition, someone who’d been in the election already, someone with massive excitement and inertia, if only someone could galvanize the Democratic Party with new blood and excitement.
Yes, the only person she didn’t choose, couldn’t choose, apparently would never choose even to death, is the only candidate that actually won the nomination, and could win the general election, and she, and he, both agreed had been unfairly stiffed, and she had the power to set right, Bernie Sanders. Discuss?
Oh, and when minor PC Tech and general nobody Seth Rich was killed in a simple mugging in crime-prone D.C., she feared for her life and holed herself up in her apartment with security for weeks. Apropos to nothing.
But seriously, after all that, she picked Biden. And in a book of newly polished lies, she comes out and says it, so self-evident to everyone, it’s not even commented.
This is not accounting for the $6-9 Trillion missing from the Pentagon budget, and we have reason to believe both the Fannie/Freddie and funds such as Madoff’s were funneling money to the GWOT. We now have planes that can’t fly, and carriers that can’t steam and can’t turn, with no catapults and no planes to go on them. Our current missile is from 1975. So…where’d the money go again? It wasn’t into the military as we know it. Russia is one or even two generations ahead of us with 1/10th the budget.
Bitcoin rests on nothing but the need for trust in a world of incredible deadly liars. Shows how much we need trust and how badly they’re failing at it. So if it costs that much to mine, that’s a basic input cost, same as for gold, another totally, stupidly useless token. Given that input cost to mine, bitcoin is then wildly UNDERvalued. Bizarre, I know. But if you mine one useless thing per energy unit and it’s X, and you mine another useless thing per energy unit, and it’s Y, shouldn’t the price of bitcoin try to arbitrage to the actual mining cost? Nobody knows, because we’ve never done this before.
If they want to sink Bitcoin, it’s perfectly simple: stop lying, cheating, and stealing, and re-establish trust. It’s cheap and easy. Trouble is, then they would lose all their corrupt, ill-gotten, and ill-used power. So bet on Bitcoin for now. Wotaworld.
What will happen? As you point out, if prices fall, everyone will be underwater and uncollateralized, and the system will collapse, the rich lose money.
So that won’t happen.
On the other hand, wages could rise, taking their higher pay from the rich and unprecedented corporate profits.
So that won’t happen.
But if your standard currency collapses in confidence with rising interest rates, you have massive inflation, banks remain collateralized, the rich can hide in inflation assets, and real wages fall.
But with lower wages, who will be left own the houses and rentals? Same people who do now: the rich. They’ve all been bought by BlackRock, foreign investors, and Hedge Funds. And the wage earners will then own nothing, even less than they do now.
So what do YOU think will happen?
Now if only we could own and issue the new currency when we destroy the old currency, that’d be jake. Ripple, anyone?
Europe is pleased to announce they have re-started open air slave markets in Libya after a 100 year gap. Yes, come one come all and you too can buy a pretty lady on the streets of Tripoli! So proud. Perhaps we should headline with art like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Slave_Market_(G%C3%A9r%C3%B4me_painting) Winning!
Because sometimes you just can’t say something strongly enough. This is war, people, this is what it means. And as much as Europe applauded, it would be a miracle if one of its prime progenitors, the United States, were to escape as well. We’ll see. As you can tell from the news, it’s pretty toxic to live here already, even in the fairylands of L.A. and N.Y., even back when “Rent” was the sensation.
So Europe: 10 years of 50% unemployment. A few plug numbers in the interest calculator tells me that over 10 years, that would be $450,000 lost wages for even a modest job. That would be your retirement, which, if not compounded early, means you’re now an elderly pauper. Done deal, past tense.
But that’s not all! Fail now and there’s much, much more! No job, no money, no prospects? You win no relationships! No marriages! No children! And now your clock ran out. So sad. We know you don’t care, so how about this: no GDP, no stock market, no home sales, no retail, no arms sales, no cannon fodder for international armies.
You can get back the $450,000 — maybe — but can’t get back those ten years. If you were out at 20 and are now 30 and nothing has happened for you, for your friends, for your country. And that’s the good outcome, the German one. In Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy, you’ve gone straight down with no hope in sight. How are you going to recover, to get back your time, your life? Are you going to be surprised when patience wears out and nothing they promise works anymore?
And it ain’t very different over here. You think we’re better than Libya? We aren’t in human trafficking? Watch Entertainment Tonight and tell me what you see, how all those people passed through for 25 years and nobody saw a thing. “But Herr Doktor, ve are ze good guys.” Sure, Corey, sure we are.
15h week is still entirely possible. In fact it’s easy, pleasant and free. Difference is you must adopt a Spartan, monastic lifestyle.
“There is enough for everyone’s need, but not everyone’s greed.”
Kunstler article on Peak Oil and Suburbia Fantasy Factories.
You’re right: he clearly has no resonance with the press or the American people, and almost everyone dislikes him, that’s why he was elected President.
Because he’s so entirely alien to America and it’s people, his comments have no impact, and are uniformly met with a big “Huh? Who cares?” We all ignore him because he just doesn’t push any buttons. In fact, it’s been a struggle just to get in the news.
Yes, it’s been quite a mystery how someone so foreign, so un-American-like, who was reported at a 30% approval rating after the election, who apparently 60% wanted impeached on the first day, somehow got the job by turning safe states that haven’t been lost in a generation.
Or perhaps that’s not what’s been happening? Maybe he knows the people and players of America well enough to attract attention and get the goat of supporters and detractors alike, chewing up the sacred cows into a spectacle of hamburger no one can turn away from? His antics seem to have a traction, a captivation, for better or for worse, with quite a few of that diverse body called “America”, and I think that’s the point here.
As for leaving the country, where would I go? Spain? Scotland? South Korea? South America? Seems the same wherever you go: trouble. And it’s meant to be. How else am I going to get everyone to give up their rights for my beautiful overarching “solution”(tm)? If I didn’t pay billions to insure the whole world was stirred up, violent, and broken, with people running everywhere, sensible people would ignore me, and then how would I become Grand Pooh-Bah of All the Earth, buyer and seller of your daughters? Don’t get distracted. They need this struggle. We don’t. Stick to your knitting.
That seems odd and uncalled for. Does it show the recent worldview that anyone to right of Mao is now Hitler? Or is it that anyone to the right of ourselves is now Hitler?
Trouble is, such cutting away has found the Left perched on a tiny branch made solely of the Trotskyist, identity-politics wing, and not only are they too purging themselves ever-smaller with a Neo-Cultural Revolution of ideological purity, but far worse, they don’t win elections. Being ever-smaller never does.
Point being, TOLERANCE is the winning hand. Tolerance not just for races, nations, classes, but for diversity of all peoples. That is, people who are different from ourselves and think differently. Why? Because EVERYONE thinks differently than everybody else: that’s what makes the world work and what makes it worthwhile. Since that simple gradient has no clear markers, we have to let each other speak and address the concrete points of their argument, and not jump to logical fallacies like overgeneralization or false equivalence. It’s not true that all Conservatives are Fascists. It’s not even true that ZeroHedge sympathizes with Fascists. (It is, however, true that Fascists are Socialists and are therefore Leftists)
In any case, the point, the legacy of Western Civilization itself, the culmination of all we’ve learned and proven in practice, is to let the other guy speak and assume in him as much goodwill as any facts will allow. After that, after the debate, discussion, the fact-proving by due process, then we make our determination.
But not just by slinging words and adjectives, saying he once read something or met someone, that since he saw the enemy’s flag once, he must therefore be the enemy. That’s McCarthyism. That way madness lies. As we see in the news every day now.
“Did you ever notice that anyone who drives slower than you is an idiot, and anyone who drives faster than you is a maniac?” —George Carlin.That’s interesting. Volatility is, by markets, the lowest ever on record. Volatility for people is also low: it’s a steady, inexorable, unchanging collapse downward. No change here. Volatility elsewhere, Catalonia seceding today? Nothing in my experience could be more predictable. That’s hardly volatility when water is wet, yet I agree the world is unstable.
It’s unbalanced, but winter is unbalanced until spring, and summer is unbalanced until fall. Then the longer cycles turn, right on schedule, 8 year, 72 year, 200 year, as expected.
Are people really irrational? We have a name for perfectly rational people: psychopaths. They behave with perfect logic. Is someone in the way of your promotion? Ruin their reputation and get them fired. Want to sleep with someone? Lie to them. Are there too many people on earth? Kill a couple billion with well-planned, perfectly rational policies. Are profits low? Start a war. Obviously.
It’s the “irrational” part that makes humans “human.” The part where we keep old people alive after they’re productive, keeps infants and young disabled alive and their lives better when it costs society and ourselves personally. It’s part of adding that intangible, undefinable “humanity” that drives the panoply of psychopaths at the top crazy. It’s why they hate our guts, mock us, and try to kill us every day: we’re stinking up their perfect world, the perfect vision of the Junkers, the Barosos, and Merkels, the Lenins, Che’s, and Pol Pots. They see our irrationality as “weakness”, when in fact it’s part of an innate human culture, innate human strength they can never understand, and causes them to lose to those idiotic, deplorable, mud-stained commoners time and time again.
As they’ve probably lost again this time. No, you might want to examine this “irrationality” and what it means before you purge it from humanity. You might find it’s a highly evolved system that loses battles, but wins all wars.
Because we know how much Englishmen hate good weather. And shopping.
Jacinda may want to brush up on another leader:
“Like fire, [government] is a dangerous servant and a fearful master; never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action…Government is not reason, it is not eloquence—it is force!” -Geo. Washington
At least here government is not meant to make people “feel good”. That’s not its purpose. A wheelbarrow can make you feel warm and happy inside if you’re a wierdo, but its purpose is to cart things around, not give the feels.
We were never going to pay it, why would we pay it now? All we need is someone to blame.
In a debt-system, there is no money, only power.
Over time the system has become as far away from Capitalism as is possible to be. They claim the failure of Capitalism, then proceed in their own words an examples to highlight a hundred trillion, possibly a quadrillion of market interventions worldwide, naming central banks, bond control, stock buybacks, etc. What did I just read on $400k tax incentives per employee to attract Amazon’s new HQ? And Pa’s Diner in Muncie is going to get a $400k incentive for each busboy? No? That’s not Capitalism.
Practically speaking, if you make employees expensive, like France or using Obamacare, and you make capital equipment free with 0% money then you guarantee, you force, on pain of instant bankruptcy, you demand, coerce, and enforce mass unemployment and the replacement of man with robots. It took $100T bailout and $10s of Trillions a year in interest rate suppression to insure that happens. Does that sound like it’s happening naturally? Does that sound like a free market? 90% of the NYSE is below the 200dma. But you’re going to “wealth distribute” from the 10 remaining companies — most of which like Amazon, Tesla, Netflix, have never made a single day’s profit — back to the people Tesla just destroyed with robots and autonomous cars? And since those 10 companies and their brethren SET the policy, TOOK the $100 Trillion in subsidies, and DEVASTATED their entire host populations, they’re going to say, “Oh sure pal, take all the profits I don’t have and never made, and set up a UBI. It’s the least I can do.” No, Tesla, Amazon, Excellus, they take UBI FROM the people at the point of a gun. That’s how and why they exist at all. If government didn’t steal for them, they’d collapse. Mussolini had a name for this system.
Newsflash: Unemployment, Welfare, the Dole, was never about helping the poor. If they ever wanted to help the poor, they’d just stop stealing from them. Illegally. With bribery, fraud, extortion and graft. ”Welfare” is about protecting the Rich Protecting them from having the poor come over to their neighborhood and burn their house down. It’s a payoff, hush money, a racket. Let me say again, They do not care at all, in any way, in the slightest about the poor, their life or death or suffering. The sale of their men into desperation, opiates, suicide, violence, into the Army, and the sale of their women into rape, pedophilia or prostitution is an active side benefit to be actively encouraged. Think I’m kidding? Visit Greece, Chicago, Akron, or Manchester. That’s why you want a UBI: you’ll really have them by the balls then because anyone who ISN’T on the dole will be instantly be priced out and die in a box, just like happened to honest farmers when farm subsidies started. So let’s not have a sanctimonious discussion about “helping” anyone, Varoufakis. If they cared they wouldn’t murder Greeks, much less Syrians. You of all people know power structures help no one but themselves. Ever. In history. That’s why you want them as small as possible, not ever-larger. OUT of the market, not in it. It’s been 100 years, can we stop doing the same wrong thing now? Just ’cause it has backfired and increased wealth disparity 100 times in a row?
PM of NZ is a gold-framed example to all: after decades of standard Democratic Socialism lite which has all the interventions above, after those 50 years of tax subsidies, 0% rates, and market rigging have driven housing prices in AU and NZ to the highest on earth, locking out a generation and holding them as indentured servants, holding both nations hostage to some form of financial terrorism, she finds the PROBLEM to be the market and the ANSWER to be more government, more intervention, more market rigging. Miss, we have 0% interest rates worldwide and purchases exceeding $100B a month for 10 years, and that is the free market? More than 100% of stock prices are from spiraling debt from rigged 0% rates. Draghi and Abe have bought up their ENTIRE markets. Is that somehow inadequate to you? Requiring more control, MORE intervention? I’m sorry, what “Capitalism” was it you were talking about? Because with no price for money, no possible failure, and government choosing E.V.E.R.Y winner and loser from Beijing to Berlin, we don’t have that. But she has to say it, because the alternative is to say, “We screwed up. You don’t need me, you don’t need government. Honestly, we sociopathic screw-ups need LESS power, to do LESS for you, and do more for yourselves, like honest men and neighbors.”
And your solution? We’re going to “Redistribute wealth?” MNC’s already don’t pay any taxes, ‘hon. Billionaires already pay practically zero taxes. If anything, the taxpayers pay THEM, in bailouts, in monopolies, in S&P futures levitation, in 0% rates that advantage only the 0.001%, probably less than 100,000 total people. So I don’t think raising a 30% tax rate they don’t pay, to a 90% tax rate they don’t pay, will make any difference. They didn’t pay it in 1965 either, that’s why the Beatles moved to the U.S. and why the French have left Paris now. But I’m sure since as they admit, the rich own the government, they’ll be sure to tax themselves good and hard this time and make themselves not rich any more. Breathtaking.
Boghosian is nearly so. He ran numbers from 1989? Gee, why not since Thursday last? That data set is probably just an artifact of one era’s fashion, one flow of tax policy, of one or two Administrations. In short, it means bupkis. You’d have to run at least 2 Kondratieff waves of 72 years to know anything this big. All it means is, yes, when rich people are allowed to bribe and murder at will, — with entire armies killing a million civilians each by invading 15 countries if they so choose – can print money freely, run competitors out by law, shift 3-5% of total GDP to themselves each year, they can indeed collect a lot of money. And you think tax policy, redistribution will fix this? Are you for real? And this is because, like apparently everybody else, he actually believes we live within 1,000 miles of a Capitalist system, anywhere on earth, east or west. Bruce, neither trickle down or trickle up is going to work if the oligarchs own the government and can bribe, collude, arraign, and murder at will. But he’s set to give the bribers and murderers ever more power to “fix things” by redistributing wealth away from themselves. Sure pal. Just this time.
Leads to the next conclusion: The society is not the government. They are not the same thing. Society will decide what governments, what oligarchs are permitted to do, what their incentives are. Right now, like Boghasian and Ardern, society is working tirelessly to give the violent, oppressive, extractive force more violence and more force and wonder why there is yet more extraction. They, with society, are applauding every underhanded, illegal, immoral payoff and act of violence, and lying, cheating and stealing to give the liars, cheaters, and stealers more power. Until that changes, it won’t matter what you do.
But please for the love of things holy, let’s not call this “Capitalism”, shall we?
