A new front has opened in the long saga of Israeli expansion, but this time, it is not fought with tanks and artillery in the dusty hills of Judea and Samaria. It is a silent, methodical, and alarmingly effective campaign waged with checkbooks and property deeds on the sun-drenched island of Cyprus. By 2025, what was once a beloved Mediterranean escape for Israeli tourists has transformed into a de facto Israeli province, a contiguous territory where Hebrew has become a second language, the shekel is king, and local Cypriots are being priced out of their own homeland. This is not mere tourism or benign investment; it is a calculated strategy of demographic and economic acquisition, creating ex-pat enclaves that answer more to Tel Aviv than to Nicosia.
Showing posts with label Economics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Economics. Show all posts
Tuesday, 2 September 2025
Sunday, 31 August 2025
U.S. Military Budget Tops $1 Trillion
Covert Action Magazine | Jeremy Kuzmarov
S. President Donald Trump has signed off on the first-ever trillion-dollar military budget.
When the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released its budget request for fiscal year 2026 in May, it included a base defense request of $892.6 billion, plus a $119.3 billion allocation of additional resources from the Republican-controlled Congress’s budget reconciliation bill.
On July 4, Trump signed the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” which, according to the Council on Foreign Relations, solidified the $1 trillion defense budget.
The act also cuts funding for Medicaid and food stamps, and mandates tax cuts for Corporate America and the wealthy, thus adding $3.4 trillion to the national debt, according to a Congressional study.[1]
Subsidizing “an emerging military and nuclear technology wish list,” the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” allocates $12.8 billion for Trump’s Golden Dome initiative, a promised missile defense shield modeled after Reagan’s ill-conceived Strategic Defense Initiative (ie. Star Wars).
$29 billion is further allocated to enhance Pentagon resources for domestic shipbuilding, $1 billion to secure the southern border, and tens of billions for autonomous weapons, and an expansion of nuclear-weapon modernization and space capabilities.
Monday, 26 August 2019
South American Shockwaves Bring the New Silk Road Into the Americas as Neo-Liberal Order Crumbles
Matthew Ehret
Strategic Culture
Over the past several years Latin America has become a strategic battleground which involves much more than merely “geopolitical power plays” between the USA vs China as many commentators are asserting. Of course this is not to say that there are no geopolitical battles occurring. The entire western sponsored regime change operation in Venezuela couldn’t be understood unless one realized that China and Russia see Venezuela as a strategic ally in the Americas and a future zone for Belt and Road projects which are sweeping across the world… but something more is happening.
Over the past three years, over 17 Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) nations have signed onto the new operating framework of the Belt and Road Initiative which extends far beyond the limited China-to-Europe corridor which many presumed it to be when it was announced in 2013. With its focus on long term planning and interconnectivity, China is already number one in vital infrastructure investments globally and while not number one in overall trade in the Americas, has now produced over six times more investment into Latin American energy infrastructure than the World Bank.
This new paradigm has been a breath of fresh air for many nations of the south that have been gripped by Western drug money laundering, poverty, debt slavery and organized crime which has been kept in place by over four decades of IMF-World Bank dictates enforced by London/Harvard trained economists positioned as local governors over the bodies of nationalist leaders.
In spite of the 17 nations on board the BRI, the big four powers (Mexico, Argentina, Brazil and Colombia) have not yet joined, which has been a frustrating obstacle for the greater vision of integrated infrastructure to blossom. However, in the past few weeks, even this has begun to change.
Read more
Strategic Culture
Over the past several years Latin America has become a strategic battleground which involves much more than merely “geopolitical power plays” between the USA vs China as many commentators are asserting. Of course this is not to say that there are no geopolitical battles occurring. The entire western sponsored regime change operation in Venezuela couldn’t be understood unless one realized that China and Russia see Venezuela as a strategic ally in the Americas and a future zone for Belt and Road projects which are sweeping across the world… but something more is happening.
Over the past three years, over 17 Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) nations have signed onto the new operating framework of the Belt and Road Initiative which extends far beyond the limited China-to-Europe corridor which many presumed it to be when it was announced in 2013. With its focus on long term planning and interconnectivity, China is already number one in vital infrastructure investments globally and while not number one in overall trade in the Americas, has now produced over six times more investment into Latin American energy infrastructure than the World Bank.
This new paradigm has been a breath of fresh air for many nations of the south that have been gripped by Western drug money laundering, poverty, debt slavery and organized crime which has been kept in place by over four decades of IMF-World Bank dictates enforced by London/Harvard trained economists positioned as local governors over the bodies of nationalist leaders.
In spite of the 17 nations on board the BRI, the big four powers (Mexico, Argentina, Brazil and Colombia) have not yet joined, which has been a frustrating obstacle for the greater vision of integrated infrastructure to blossom. However, in the past few weeks, even this has begun to change.
Read more
Tuesday, 23 July 2019
War Profiteers And The Demise Of The US Military-Industrial Complex
Dymitri Orlov
Club Orlov
Within the vast bureaucratic sprawl of the Pentagon there is a group in charge of monitoring the general state of the military-industrial complex and its continued ability to fulfill the requirements of the national defense strategy. Office for acquisition and sustainment and office for industrial policy spends some $100,000 a year producing an Annual Report to Congress. It is available to the general public. It is even available to the general public in Russia, and Russian experts had a really good time poring over it.
In fact, it filled them with optimism. You see, Russia wants peace but the US seems to want war and keeps making threatening gestures against a longish list of countries that refuse to do its bidding or simply don’t share its “universal values.” But now it turns out that threats (and the increasingly toothless economic sanctions) are pretty much all that the US is still capable of dishing out—this in spite of absolutely astronomical levels of defense spending.
Club Orlov
Within the vast bureaucratic sprawl of the Pentagon there is a group in charge of monitoring the general state of the military-industrial complex and its continued ability to fulfill the requirements of the national defense strategy. Office for acquisition and sustainment and office for industrial policy spends some $100,000 a year producing an Annual Report to Congress. It is available to the general public. It is even available to the general public in Russia, and Russian experts had a really good time poring over it.
In fact, it filled them with optimism. You see, Russia wants peace but the US seems to want war and keeps making threatening gestures against a longish list of countries that refuse to do its bidding or simply don’t share its “universal values.” But now it turns out that threats (and the increasingly toothless economic sanctions) are pretty much all that the US is still capable of dishing out—this in spite of absolutely astronomical levels of defense spending.
It is important to note that the report’s authors were not aiming to force legislators to finance some specific project. This makes it more valuable than numerous other sources, whose authors’ main objective was to belly up to the federal feeding trough, and which therefore tend to be light on facts and heavy on hype. No doubt, politics still played a part in how various details are portrayed, but there seems to be a limit to the number of problems its authors can airbrush out of the picture and still do a reasonable job in analyzing the situation and in formulating their recommendations.
What knocked Russian analysis over with a feather is the fact that these INDPOL experts (who, like the rest of the US DOD, love acronyms) evaluate the US military-industrial complex from a… market-based perspective! You see, the Russian military-industrial complex is fully owned by the Russian government and works exclusively in its interests; anything else would be considered treason. But the US military-industrial complex is evaluated based on its… profitability! According to INDPOL, it must not only produce products for the military but also acquire market share in the global weapons trade and, perhaps most importantly, maximize profitability for private investors. By this standard, it is doing well: for 2017 the gross margin (EBITDA) for US defense contractors ranged from 15 to 17%, and some subcontractors - Transdigm, for example - managed to deliver no less than 42-45%. “Ah!” cry the Russian experts, “We’ve found the problem! The Americans have legalized war profiteering!” (This, by the way, is but one of many instances of something called systemic corruption, which is rife in the US.)
Read more
The World Is Dedollarizing
Global Research
What if tomorrow nobody but the United States would use the US-dollar? Every country, or society would use their own currency for internal and international trade, their own economy-based, non-fiat currency. It could be traditional currencies or new government controlled crypto-currencies, but a country’s own sovereign money. No longer the US-dollar. No longer the dollar’s foster child, the Euro. No longer international monetary transactions controlled by US banks and – by the US-dollar controlled international transfer system, SWIFT, the system that allows and facilitates US financial and economic sanctions of all kinds – confiscation of foreign funds, stopping trades between countries, blackmailing ‘unwilling’ nations into submission. What would happen? – Well, the short answer is that we would certainly be a step close to world peace, away from US (financial) hegemony, towards nation states’ sovereignty, towards a world geopolitical structure of more equality.
We are not there yet. But graffities are all over the walls signaling that we are moving quite rapidly in that direction. And Trump knows it and his handlers know it – which is why the onslaught of financial crime – sanctions – trade wars – foreign assets and reserves confiscations, or outright theft – all in the name of “Make America Great Again”, is accelerating exponentially and with impunity. What is surprising is that the Anglo-Saxon hegemons do not seem to understand that all the threats, sanctions, trade barriers, are provoking the contrary to what should contribute to American Greatness. Economic sanctions, in whatever form, are effective only as long as the world uses the US dollar for trading and as reserve currency.
Once the world gets sick and tired of the grotesque dictate of Washington and the sanction schemes for those who do no longer want to go along with the oppressive rules of the US, they will be eager to jump on another boat, or boats – abandoning the dollar and valuing their own currencies. Meaning trading with each other in their own currencies – and that outside of the US banking system which so far even controls trading in local currencies, as long as funds have to be transferred from one nation to another via SWIFT.
Many countries have also realized that the dollar is increasingly serving to manipulate the value of their economy. The US-dollar, a fiat currency, by its sheer money mass, may bend national economies up or down, depending in which direction the country is favored by the hegemon. Let’s put the absurdity of this phenomenon in perspective.
Read more
What if tomorrow nobody but the United States would use the US-dollar? Every country, or society would use their own currency for internal and international trade, their own economy-based, non-fiat currency. It could be traditional currencies or new government controlled crypto-currencies, but a country’s own sovereign money. No longer the US-dollar. No longer the dollar’s foster child, the Euro. No longer international monetary transactions controlled by US banks and – by the US-dollar controlled international transfer system, SWIFT, the system that allows and facilitates US financial and economic sanctions of all kinds – confiscation of foreign funds, stopping trades between countries, blackmailing ‘unwilling’ nations into submission. What would happen? – Well, the short answer is that we would certainly be a step close to world peace, away from US (financial) hegemony, towards nation states’ sovereignty, towards a world geopolitical structure of more equality.
We are not there yet. But graffities are all over the walls signaling that we are moving quite rapidly in that direction. And Trump knows it and his handlers know it – which is why the onslaught of financial crime – sanctions – trade wars – foreign assets and reserves confiscations, or outright theft – all in the name of “Make America Great Again”, is accelerating exponentially and with impunity. What is surprising is that the Anglo-Saxon hegemons do not seem to understand that all the threats, sanctions, trade barriers, are provoking the contrary to what should contribute to American Greatness. Economic sanctions, in whatever form, are effective only as long as the world uses the US dollar for trading and as reserve currency.
Once the world gets sick and tired of the grotesque dictate of Washington and the sanction schemes for those who do no longer want to go along with the oppressive rules of the US, they will be eager to jump on another boat, or boats – abandoning the dollar and valuing their own currencies. Meaning trading with each other in their own currencies – and that outside of the US banking system which so far even controls trading in local currencies, as long as funds have to be transferred from one nation to another via SWIFT.
Many countries have also realized that the dollar is increasingly serving to manipulate the value of their economy. The US-dollar, a fiat currency, by its sheer money mass, may bend national economies up or down, depending in which direction the country is favored by the hegemon. Let’s put the absurdity of this phenomenon in perspective.
Read more
Sunday, 21 July 2019
Space Exploration and Humanity’s Struggle for Open System Economics
Matthew Ehret
Strategic Culture
The 50th anniversary of mankind’s first landing on the moon on July 20, 1969 has created an opportunity to rethink some of the fateful decisions that set western society onto a trajectory of zero-technological growth and mindless consumerism in the early 1970s. Rather than speed up the momentum of ambitious goals for a permanent lunar settlement, nuclear rockets, terraforming and Mars colonization which leading NASA administrators had promoted after the successful landing of 1968, the very opposite occurred.
First the dollar was floated onto the international speculative markets on August 15, 1971 followed by the destruction of the Apollo program in 1975 and cancellation of most of the cutting edge projects that were meant to break humanity out of the closed system of geopolitics and finiteness of the earth’s limits for the first time in history.
Today, America has not only lost the capability to place a man on the moon, but cannot even send an astronaut into orbit without hitching a ride on a Russian Soyuz shuttle. While certain forces within America led by current NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine and the sitting President earnestly do wish to revive those capabilities, America’s 50 year visionless dance with monetarism have annihilated the memory of how such funding and long term planning occurred in the post war decades. Ironically, nations like China, Russia and India have discovered these modes of thought and economic practice to such an extent that China has quickly become a leader in Space technology, being the first nation to land a rover on the far side of the moon while all three Eurasian nations have unveiled ambitious programs for lunar-Mars development.
The fact that America put itself onto a course of action that has hollowed out its technological capabilities, and brought about the creation of the largest speculative bubble in history, can be largely accounted for by recognizing the existence of two worldviews at war. Only one of which will win.
Read more
Strategic Culture
The 50th anniversary of mankind’s first landing on the moon on July 20, 1969 has created an opportunity to rethink some of the fateful decisions that set western society onto a trajectory of zero-technological growth and mindless consumerism in the early 1970s. Rather than speed up the momentum of ambitious goals for a permanent lunar settlement, nuclear rockets, terraforming and Mars colonization which leading NASA administrators had promoted after the successful landing of 1968, the very opposite occurred.
First the dollar was floated onto the international speculative markets on August 15, 1971 followed by the destruction of the Apollo program in 1975 and cancellation of most of the cutting edge projects that were meant to break humanity out of the closed system of geopolitics and finiteness of the earth’s limits for the first time in history.
Today, America has not only lost the capability to place a man on the moon, but cannot even send an astronaut into orbit without hitching a ride on a Russian Soyuz shuttle. While certain forces within America led by current NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine and the sitting President earnestly do wish to revive those capabilities, America’s 50 year visionless dance with monetarism have annihilated the memory of how such funding and long term planning occurred in the post war decades. Ironically, nations like China, Russia and India have discovered these modes of thought and economic practice to such an extent that China has quickly become a leader in Space technology, being the first nation to land a rover on the far side of the moon while all three Eurasian nations have unveiled ambitious programs for lunar-Mars development.
The fact that America put itself onto a course of action that has hollowed out its technological capabilities, and brought about the creation of the largest speculative bubble in history, can be largely accounted for by recognizing the existence of two worldviews at war. Only one of which will win.
Read more
WHAT THE GREEN NEW DEAL IS REALLY ABOUT — AND IT’S NOT THE CLIMATE
Watts Up With That?
By Allan M.R. MacRae,
B.A.Sc., M.Eng.
On July 4, 2019, I published the article “THE COST TO SOCIETY OF RADICAL ENVIRONMENTALISM”.
There was a reason why this article was published on July 4. My article begins:
Read more
By Allan M.R. MacRae,
B.A.Sc., M.Eng.
On July 4, 2019, I published the article “THE COST TO SOCIETY OF RADICAL ENVIRONMENTALISM”.
There was a reason why this article was published on July 4. My article begins:
Ever wonder why extremists attack honest scientists who oppose global warming and climate change hysteria? Ever wonder why climate extremists refuse to debate the science?Some people may think this was statement was inaccurate, or that I was being unfair. However, one week after my article was published, Democratic New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff, Saikat Chakrabarti, fully verified my statement. He said, as written in the article below:
IT IS BECAUSE GLOBAL WARMING AND CLIMATE CHANGE ALARMISM WAS NEVER ABOUT THE SCIENCE – IT WAS ALWAYS A FALSE NARRATIVE, A SMOKESCREEN FOR THE TOTALITARIAN OBJECTIVES OF THE EXTREME LEFT.
“The interesting thing about the Green New Deal, is it wasn’t originally a climate thing at all,” Chakrabarti said… … “Do you guys think of it as a climate thing? Because we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing,” Chakrabarti added.Following is another excerpt from my July 4 article that demonstrates how utterly impractical the Green New Deal is – the Green New Deal is energy and economic lunacy – it cannot work:
Read more
A Bank With $49 Trillion In Derivatives Exposure Is Melting Down Before Our Eyes
Michael Snyder
The Economic Collapse blog
Could it be possible that we are on the verge of the next “Lehman Brothers moment”?
Deutsche Bank is the most important bank in all of Europe, it has 49 trillion dollars in exposure to derivatives, and most of the largest “too big to fail banks” in the United States have very deep financial connections to the bank. In other words, the global financial system simply cannot afford for Deutsche Bank to fail, and right now it is literally melting down right in front of our eyes. For years I have been warning that this day would come, and even though it has been hit by scandal after scandal, somehow Deutsche Bank was able to survive until now. But after what we have witnessed in recent days, many now believe that the end is near for Deutsche Bank. On July 7th, they really shook up investors all over the globe when they laid off 18,000 employees and announced that they would be completely exiting their global equities trading business…
Read more
The Economic Collapse blog
Could it be possible that we are on the verge of the next “Lehman Brothers moment”?
Deutsche Bank is the most important bank in all of Europe, it has 49 trillion dollars in exposure to derivatives, and most of the largest “too big to fail banks” in the United States have very deep financial connections to the bank. In other words, the global financial system simply cannot afford for Deutsche Bank to fail, and right now it is literally melting down right in front of our eyes. For years I have been warning that this day would come, and even though it has been hit by scandal after scandal, somehow Deutsche Bank was able to survive until now. But after what we have witnessed in recent days, many now believe that the end is near for Deutsche Bank. On July 7th, they really shook up investors all over the globe when they laid off 18,000 employees and announced that they would be completely exiting their global equities trading business…
It takes a lot to rattle Wall Street.These moves may delay Deutsche Bank’s inexorable march into oblivion, but not by much.
But Deutsche Bank managed to. The beleaguered German giant announced on July 7 that it is laying off 18,000 employees—roughly one-fifth of its global workforce—and pursuing a vast restructuring plan that most notably includes shutting down its global equities trading business.
Though Deutsche’s Bloody Sunday seemed to come out of the blue, it’s actually the culmination of a years-long—some would say decades-long—descent into unprofitability and scandal for the bank, which in the early 1990s set out to make itself into a universal banking powerhouse to rival the behemoths of Wall Street.
Read more
Thursday, 11 July 2019
Predatory "Green Capitalism" Is Monetizing the Air, and It's Going to Cost You
Charles Hugh-Smith
Of Two Minds
You want to reduce CO2? Then trigger a global depression that reduces global consumption of everything by 50% and destroys 95% of the phantom wealth owned by the global elites trying to monetize the air.
I recently asked What’s Left to Monetize?, and longtime correspondent Mark G. provided the answer: the air we breathe, via carbon taxes and markets for trading carbon credits, i.e. financializing / monetizing Nature to benefit the few at the expense pf the many.
See also: Dark Green series
Of Two Minds
You want to reduce CO2? Then trigger a global depression that reduces global consumption of everything by 50% and destroys 95% of the phantom wealth owned by the global elites trying to monetize the air.
I recently asked What’s Left to Monetize?, and longtime correspondent Mark G. provided the answer: the air we breathe, via carbon taxes and markets for trading carbon credits, i.e. financializing / monetizing Nature to benefit the few at the expense pf the many.
Here’s Mark’s commentary:
You asked, "What’s left to monetize? It appears the answer is 'very little.'"Read more
I respectfully disagree. The Biggest Enchilada of all is left. Air. Specifically carbon dioxide, CO2. We just have to figure how to get the yokels to agree to pay for that which was formerly free. Got it! First we browbeat them into believing its evil and that we have to tax it to save all life on Earth. Then, following in the finest traditions of the degenerate late medieval Catholic Church, we’ll commission sellers of "Indulgences" to allow sinning at ever rising prices. a/k/a "Carbon Credit trading". This doesn’t require any value added and the profits on "buy zero sell high" are limitless.
This is the specific outline and the very same agencies that so love financialization of all kinds, $2 trillion dollar student debt to sustain obscenely paid college administrators and academics, endless academic credentialism and huge Hipster Cities sitting on container ports and mediating the China Trade, are all promoting this financialization of CO2 as hard as possible.
This is why a nullity like the Paris Climate Accords continues to be pushed even after its proven every way possible that a) the biggest emitters like China and India won’t adhere to them and b) even if they did the prescribed regimes will do nothing anyway.
And its why I "don’t believe" in it. Or rather, its why I believe its just the next and biggest financial scam.
See also: Dark Green series
Thursday, 13 June 2019
Putin Sets The Table To Leave The Dollar Behind
Rory Hall
The Daily Coin
This is twice that Russian President Putin has said on the global stage the Federal Reserve Note no longer deserves the status and privilege of “world reserve currency” that allows unlimited printing of the currency. The first time he made mention he actually said that it was a threat to Russia’s national security.
In a speech at the International Economic Forum, in St. Petersburg, Russia, “Russian Davos”, President Putin reaffirmed his position regarding the Federal Reserve Note and it’s international role. For the record, we see the abuse of the Federal Reserve and the Federal Reserve Note, U.S. dollar, in similar light as President Putin. The current status of “world reserve currency” should not be allowed in this day and time. The absolute abuse of power, excessive power granted and the ability to shackle entire nations through the use of a currency that is not even their own should have never been allowed but it is way past time for this system to be dissolved.
Read more
The Daily Coin
This is twice that Russian President Putin has said on the global stage the Federal Reserve Note no longer deserves the status and privilege of “world reserve currency” that allows unlimited printing of the currency. The first time he made mention he actually said that it was a threat to Russia’s national security.
In a speech at the International Economic Forum, in St. Petersburg, Russia, “Russian Davos”, President Putin reaffirmed his position regarding the Federal Reserve Note and it’s international role. For the record, we see the abuse of the Federal Reserve and the Federal Reserve Note, U.S. dollar, in similar light as President Putin. The current status of “world reserve currency” should not be allowed in this day and time. The absolute abuse of power, excessive power granted and the ability to shackle entire nations through the use of a currency that is not even their own should have never been allowed but it is way past time for this system to be dissolved.
In a speech at a plenary session, Mr Putin accused Washington of seeking to “extend its jurisdiction to the whole world.” “But this model not only contradicts the logic of normal international communication. The main thing is, it does not serve the interests of the future.” SourceAs recently we pointed out Russia has been and is, apparently readying, a gold backed cryptocurrency to use as global trade settlement. When a man steps up to the microphone and says to the world – “The main thing is, it (U.S. dollar) does not serve the interests of the future.” while at the same time announcing that Russia, along with China, are working on a global trade settlement mechanism outside the dollar, well, you would have to be some kind serious stupid to ignore those words.
Read more
Monday, 10 June 2019
Something Huge Just Happened In Europe
John Rubino
Dollar Collapse
Critics of modern monetary policy have been predicting that the day would come when a central bank would cut interest rates (or at least promise to), and the financial markets, instead of throwing a party, would fall. Then it would be game over for easy money.
This has yet to happen in the US. Both when the Fed stopped tightening in January and when it promised to resume easing more recently, stock prices soared, which implies that the addict is still responsive to new injections.
But in Europe, where monetary policy is further down the road to universally-negative interest rates, the story is different. On Thursday, European Central Bank chair Mario Draghi went back to his tried-and-true “whatever it takes” script, promising to restart QE and cut interest rates even further if the weak EU economy doesn’t pick up steam.
The markets, instead of reacting with their typical euphoria, seemed to recoil. Most EU member bond yields went up rather than down, bank stocks fell and the euro — which would normally be expected to fall on the prospect of easier money — rose.
This is both huge and, like I said, expected. Once a central bank has pushed interest rates below zero and bought up most of the available high-grade bonds, lower interest rates and more bond purchases ought to lose some of their punch. And it appears that they have.
Read more
Dollar Collapse
Critics of modern monetary policy have been predicting that the day would come when a central bank would cut interest rates (or at least promise to), and the financial markets, instead of throwing a party, would fall. Then it would be game over for easy money.
This has yet to happen in the US. Both when the Fed stopped tightening in January and when it promised to resume easing more recently, stock prices soared, which implies that the addict is still responsive to new injections.
But in Europe, where monetary policy is further down the road to universally-negative interest rates, the story is different. On Thursday, European Central Bank chair Mario Draghi went back to his tried-and-true “whatever it takes” script, promising to restart QE and cut interest rates even further if the weak EU economy doesn’t pick up steam.
The markets, instead of reacting with their typical euphoria, seemed to recoil. Most EU member bond yields went up rather than down, bank stocks fell and the euro — which would normally be expected to fall on the prospect of easier money — rose.
This is both huge and, like I said, expected. Once a central bank has pushed interest rates below zero and bought up most of the available high-grade bonds, lower interest rates and more bond purchases ought to lose some of their punch. And it appears that they have.
Read more
Friday, 24 May 2019
The Next Economic Crisis, The Looming Post-Multipolar System And Hybrid War Forever
The Impending Crisis
At one time, specifically during the post-World War 2 Bretton Woods era, it looked like as if the capitalist model could be indefinitely sustainable and avoid plunging the world into major world conflicts. That era began to come to an end during the stagflation crisis of the 1970s, and came to a complete end at the end of the Cold War which ushered in the era of the so-called "globalization" which took form of unbridled competition for markets and resources. At first this competition did not show many signs of trouble. There were many "emerging markets" created as a result of the collapse of the Soviet bloc into which Western corporations could expand. However, the law of diminishing returns being what it is, the initial rapid economic growth rates could not be sustained and attempts to goose it using extremely liberal central bank policies, to the point of zero and even negative interest rates, succeeded in inflating-and bursting-several financial "bubbles".
Even today's US economy bears many hallmarks of such a bubble, and it is only one of many. Sooner or later the proverbial "black swan" event will unleash a veritable domino effect of popping bubbles and plunge the global economy into a crisis of a magnitude it has not seen since the 1930s. A crisis against which the leading world powers have few weapons to deploy, since they have expended their monetary and fiscal "firepower" on the 2008 crisis, to little avail. The low interest rates and high levels of national debt mean that the next big crisis will not be simply "more of the same." It will fundamentally rearrange the global economy.
Read more
At one time, specifically during the post-World War 2 Bretton Woods era, it looked like as if the capitalist model could be indefinitely sustainable and avoid plunging the world into major world conflicts. That era began to come to an end during the stagflation crisis of the 1970s, and came to a complete end at the end of the Cold War which ushered in the era of the so-called "globalization" which took form of unbridled competition for markets and resources. At first this competition did not show many signs of trouble. There were many "emerging markets" created as a result of the collapse of the Soviet bloc into which Western corporations could expand. However, the law of diminishing returns being what it is, the initial rapid economic growth rates could not be sustained and attempts to goose it using extremely liberal central bank policies, to the point of zero and even negative interest rates, succeeded in inflating-and bursting-several financial "bubbles".
Even today's US economy bears many hallmarks of such a bubble, and it is only one of many. Sooner or later the proverbial "black swan" event will unleash a veritable domino effect of popping bubbles and plunge the global economy into a crisis of a magnitude it has not seen since the 1930s. A crisis against which the leading world powers have few weapons to deploy, since they have expended their monetary and fiscal "firepower" on the 2008 crisis, to little avail. The low interest rates and high levels of national debt mean that the next big crisis will not be simply "more of the same." It will fundamentally rearrange the global economy.
Read more
Wednesday, 22 May 2019
Direct Democracy Is the Future of Human Governance – Part 1
Michael Krieger
Liberty Blitzkrieg
Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it. That is the point at which the negation of Catholicism and the negation of Liberalism meet and keep high festival, and the end learns to justify the means.
– Lord Acton
You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.
– Buckminster Fuller
If you’ve read anything I’ve written over the past several years, you’ll be acutely aware of my belief that human civilization is currently in a major transition period between two great paradigms of world history. The old world we all grew up in no longer works for most people, yet is being relentlessly propped up by the powerful and their minions who benefit from its parasitic and destructive nature. Despite their best efforts, a system so poisonous, decrepit and corrupt cannot and will not last. At this stage, it’s little more than a Potemkin village fraud barely kept standing courtesy of increasingly intense deception, manipulation and the sheer will of those who profit handsomely from it.
By stating we’re in the transition period, I want to make it clear I believe things are very much already being disrupted and altered beneath the hood of a world which appears indistinguishable from what it was a decade ago on a superficial level. Specifically, I think there are two core aspects of human existence that will be completely transformed in the years to come. First, within the monetary and financial systems that define how commerce, savings and entrepreneurship function. The emergence and continued momentum of Bitcoin offers evidence that disruption in this realm is already very much underway, albeit still in its infancy. The second realm I expect will experience massive transformational change relates to forms of human governance. We’ve barely scratched the surface on this one, but nascent signs have started to appear, and I suspect a push towards political systems more defined by direct democracy will become increasingly common in the years ahead. I’ve spent many hours writing about the financial and monetary system, so today’s piece will focus on what appears to be coming with regard to human political evolution.
Direct democracy is something that’s been tried before, so there’s some history to it. Once you start exploring the concept you’ll be immediately confronted with a plethora of terms such as eDemocracy, liquid democracy, referendum, initiative, and recall to name just a few. The purpose of this post isn’t to dig into all of that, although it’s certainly a useful exercise and I’ll provide some helpful links at the end. The purpose of this post is to distinguish direct democracy from the most common form of democratic government functioning on earth today, representative democracy.
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Liberty Blitzkrieg
Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it. That is the point at which the negation of Catholicism and the negation of Liberalism meet and keep high festival, and the end learns to justify the means.
– Lord Acton
You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.
– Buckminster Fuller
If you’ve read anything I’ve written over the past several years, you’ll be acutely aware of my belief that human civilization is currently in a major transition period between two great paradigms of world history. The old world we all grew up in no longer works for most people, yet is being relentlessly propped up by the powerful and their minions who benefit from its parasitic and destructive nature. Despite their best efforts, a system so poisonous, decrepit and corrupt cannot and will not last. At this stage, it’s little more than a Potemkin village fraud barely kept standing courtesy of increasingly intense deception, manipulation and the sheer will of those who profit handsomely from it.
By stating we’re in the transition period, I want to make it clear I believe things are very much already being disrupted and altered beneath the hood of a world which appears indistinguishable from what it was a decade ago on a superficial level. Specifically, I think there are two core aspects of human existence that will be completely transformed in the years to come. First, within the monetary and financial systems that define how commerce, savings and entrepreneurship function. The emergence and continued momentum of Bitcoin offers evidence that disruption in this realm is already very much underway, albeit still in its infancy. The second realm I expect will experience massive transformational change relates to forms of human governance. We’ve barely scratched the surface on this one, but nascent signs have started to appear, and I suspect a push towards political systems more defined by direct democracy will become increasingly common in the years ahead. I’ve spent many hours writing about the financial and monetary system, so today’s piece will focus on what appears to be coming with regard to human political evolution.
Direct democracy is something that’s been tried before, so there’s some history to it. Once you start exploring the concept you’ll be immediately confronted with a plethora of terms such as eDemocracy, liquid democracy, referendum, initiative, and recall to name just a few. The purpose of this post isn’t to dig into all of that, although it’s certainly a useful exercise and I’ll provide some helpful links at the end. The purpose of this post is to distinguish direct democracy from the most common form of democratic government functioning on earth today, representative democracy.
Read more
Monday, 20 May 2019
The Spider's Web: Britain's Second Empire (Documentary)
At the demise of empire, City of London financial interests created a web of secrecy jurisdictions that captured wealth from across the globe and hid it in a web of offshore islands. Today, up to half of global offshore wealth is hidden in British jurisdictions and Britain and its dependencies are the largest global players in the world of international finance.
The Spider's Web was written, directed and produced by Michael Oswald, you can sponsor his future films on Liberapay (supports one time donations) and Patreon:
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The Spider's Web was substantially inspired by Nicholas Shaxson's book Treasure Islands you can read an extract of it here: https://www.theguardian.com/theguardi...
Translate this documentary here on youtube or contact us for the .srt file
contact@independentpov.org
For those interested to learn more about tax justice and financial secrecy, read about the Tax Justice Network's campaigning and regular blogs - become part of the movement for change and listen to the Tax Justice Network's monthly podcast/radio show the Taxcast https://www.taxjustice.net/taxcast/
Review on Filmotomy: https://filmotomy.com/the-spiders-web...
Review on Open Democracy: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/open...
Website: www.spiderswebfilm.com
German Version: https://youtu.be/1ZZR8vBKqwc
Spanish Version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85dsT...
French Version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hizj_...
Italian Version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwmvX...
Subtitles: French, Spanish, German, Italian, Russian, Arabic, Korean, Hungarian, English, Turkish, Portugese.
Sunday, 19 May 2019
The Normalization and Institutionalization of Fraud
Charles Hugh-Smith
Normalizing and institutionalizing fraud undermines the foundations of the economy and the financial system.
I am indebted to Manoj Samanta (twitter: @flation_debate) for the insightful concept the commoditization of fraud. The first step in the commoditization of fraud is to normalize fraud as Business as Usual (BAU) to the point that it's no longer viewed as "wrong," destructive or an aberration of evil-doers but as an accepted way to maximize gain and offload risk onto others.
The last step in the process is to institutionalize fraud within central banking and government policies.
How is selling shares in a money-losing corporation at outlandish valuations not the commoditization of fraud? The fraud has been normalized into a game of hoping that greater fools will be so enamored of the normalized fraud that they'll take the IPO shares off your hands at ever-higher valuations until the fraud breaks down.
But by then, the instigators of the fraud--the IPO--have escaped with billions in gains and zero liability.
How is private equity loading companies up with debt as a means of paying outlandish dividends to themselves not commoditized fraud? How is paying dividends with debt rather than earnings not fraud? The net result of this fraud is the debt-burdened company eventually defaults on its debt, defrauding the investors who were suckered into the scam.
But once again, the instigators of the fraud--private equity--have escaped with billions in gains and zero liability.
Read more
Normalizing and institutionalizing fraud undermines the foundations of the economy and the financial system.
I am indebted to Manoj Samanta (twitter: @flation_debate) for the insightful concept the commoditization of fraud. The first step in the commoditization of fraud is to normalize fraud as Business as Usual (BAU) to the point that it's no longer viewed as "wrong," destructive or an aberration of evil-doers but as an accepted way to maximize gain and offload risk onto others.
The last step in the process is to institutionalize fraud within central banking and government policies.
How is selling shares in a money-losing corporation at outlandish valuations not the commoditization of fraud? The fraud has been normalized into a game of hoping that greater fools will be so enamored of the normalized fraud that they'll take the IPO shares off your hands at ever-higher valuations until the fraud breaks down.
But by then, the instigators of the fraud--the IPO--have escaped with billions in gains and zero liability.
How is private equity loading companies up with debt as a means of paying outlandish dividends to themselves not commoditized fraud? How is paying dividends with debt rather than earnings not fraud? The net result of this fraud is the debt-burdened company eventually defaults on its debt, defrauding the investors who were suckered into the scam.
But once again, the instigators of the fraud--private equity--have escaped with billions in gains and zero liability.
Read more
Monday, 6 May 2019
Planting the Seeds of Regime Change: How GMO Seeds and Monsanto/Bayer’s “RoundUp” are Driving US Policy in Venezuela
Mint Press News
Yet the influence of another notorious American company, Monsanto — now a subsidiary of Bayer — has gone largely unmentioned.
While numerous other Latin American nations have become a “free for all” for the biotech company and its affiliates, Venezuela has been one of the few countries to fight Monsanto and other international agrochemical giants and win. However, since that victory — which was won under Chavista rule — the U.S.-backed Venezuelan opposition has been working to undo it.
Now, with Juan Guaidó’s parallel government attempting to take power with the backing of the U.S., it is telling that the top political donors of those in the U.S. most fervently pushing regime change in Venezuela have close ties to Monsanto and major financial stakes in Bayer.
In recent months, Monsanto’s most controversial and notorious product — the pesticide glyphosate, branded as Roundup, and linked to cancer in recent U.S. court rulings — has threatened Bayer’s financial future as never before, with a litany of new court cases barking at Bayer’s door. It appears that many of the forces in the U.S. now seeking to overthrow the Venezuelan government are hoping that a new Guaidó-led government will provide Bayer with a fresh, much-needed market for its agrochemicals and transgenic seeds, particularly those products that now face bans in countries all over the world, including once-defoliated and still-poisoned Vietnam.
Read more
While numerous other Latin American nations have become a “free for all” for the biotech company and its affiliates, Venezuela has been one of the few countries to fight Monsanto and other international agrochemical giants and win. However, since that victory — which was won under Chavista rule — the U.S.-backed Venezuelan opposition has been working to undo it.
Now, with Juan Guaidó’s parallel government attempting to take power with the backing of the U.S., it is telling that the top political donors of those in the U.S. most fervently pushing regime change in Venezuela have close ties to Monsanto and major financial stakes in Bayer.
In recent months, Monsanto’s most controversial and notorious product — the pesticide glyphosate, branded as Roundup, and linked to cancer in recent U.S. court rulings — has threatened Bayer’s financial future as never before, with a litany of new court cases barking at Bayer’s door. It appears that many of the forces in the U.S. now seeking to overthrow the Venezuelan government are hoping that a new Guaidó-led government will provide Bayer with a fresh, much-needed market for its agrochemicals and transgenic seeds, particularly those products that now face bans in countries all over the world, including once-defoliated and still-poisoned Vietnam.
Read more
Friday, 3 May 2019
For Lower-Paid Workers, the Robot Overlords Have Arrived
Morning Star
It's time to stop worrying that robots will take our jobs -- and start worrying that they will decide who gets jobs.
Amazon's system tracks the rates of each individual associate's
productivity and automatically generates any warnings or terminations
regarding quality or productivity without input from supervisors," a law
firm representing Amazon said in a letter to the National Labor
Relations Board, as first reported by technology news site The Verge.
Amazon was responding to a complaint that it had fired an employee from a
Baltimore fulfillment center for federally protected activity, which
could include union organizing. Amazon said the employee was fired for
failing to meet productivity targets.
Perhaps it was only a matter of time before software started firing people. After all, it already screens resumes, recommends job applicants, schedules shifts and assigns projects. In the workplace, "sophisticated technology to track worker productivity on a minute-by-minute or even second-by-second basis is incredibly pervasive," says Ian Larkin, a business professor at the University of California at Los Angeles specializing in human resources.
Industrial laundry services track how many seconds it takes to press a laundered shirt; on-board computers track truckers' speed, gear changes and engine revolutions per minute; and checkout terminals at major discount retailers report if the cashier is scanning items quickly enough to meet a preset goal. In all these cases, results are shared in real time with the employee, and used to determine who is terminated, says Mr. Larkin.
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It's time to stop worrying that robots will take our jobs -- and start worrying that they will decide who gets jobs.
Millions of low-paid workers' lives are increasingly governed by
software and algorithms. This was starkly illustrated by a report last
week that Amazon.com tracks the productivity of its employees and
regularly fires those who underperform, with almost no human
intervention."
Perhaps it was only a matter of time before software started firing people. After all, it already screens resumes, recommends job applicants, schedules shifts and assigns projects. In the workplace, "sophisticated technology to track worker productivity on a minute-by-minute or even second-by-second basis is incredibly pervasive," says Ian Larkin, a business professor at the University of California at Los Angeles specializing in human resources.
Industrial laundry services track how many seconds it takes to press a laundered shirt; on-board computers track truckers' speed, gear changes and engine revolutions per minute; and checkout terminals at major discount retailers report if the cashier is scanning items quickly enough to meet a preset goal. In all these cases, results are shared in real time with the employee, and used to determine who is terminated, says Mr. Larkin.
Read more
Tuesday, 30 April 2019
Countries Around The World Are Bringing Gold Home
Zero Hedge
European Central Bank’s President Mario Draghi recently announced that the ECB would be required to approve any management of gold reserves within the euro zone countries. The statement was specifically directed at two Italian members.
Why was Italy singled out? According to the Wall Street Journal, Italian citizens are preparing to take control of Italy’s gold reserves. During the past few years, a multitude of small investors lost billions of dollars due to the failure of several Italian banks. The Bank of Italy is seen as an elitist, inefficient entity indifferent to the needs of ordinary people. Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio is leading the attack against Italy’s central bank, along with the “5 Star Movement” and the nationalist “League,” all of whom blame the countries financial woes on the incompetence of the central bank.
The 5 Star Movement is asking Italy’s Parliament to approve measures that would allow private banks to sell their share in The Bank of Italy at 1930’s prices. Taking it a step further, they are also demanding that ownership of the Bank of Italy’s 2,451.8 tons of gold be taken over by the country’s citizens and spent on populist policies. The current value of these gold reserves is $102 billion.
If these laws are passed, investors would be able to sell gold and greatly deplete the central bank’s reserves. As Giorgia Meloni of the Brothers of Italy states, “The gold belongs to the Italians, not the bankers.”
Read more
European Central Bank’s President Mario Draghi recently announced that the ECB would be required to approve any management of gold reserves within the euro zone countries. The statement was specifically directed at two Italian members.
Why was Italy singled out? According to the Wall Street Journal, Italian citizens are preparing to take control of Italy’s gold reserves. During the past few years, a multitude of small investors lost billions of dollars due to the failure of several Italian banks. The Bank of Italy is seen as an elitist, inefficient entity indifferent to the needs of ordinary people. Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio is leading the attack against Italy’s central bank, along with the “5 Star Movement” and the nationalist “League,” all of whom blame the countries financial woes on the incompetence of the central bank.
The 5 Star Movement is asking Italy’s Parliament to approve measures that would allow private banks to sell their share in The Bank of Italy at 1930’s prices. Taking it a step further, they are also demanding that ownership of the Bank of Italy’s 2,451.8 tons of gold be taken over by the country’s citizens and spent on populist policies. The current value of these gold reserves is $102 billion.
If these laws are passed, investors would be able to sell gold and greatly deplete the central bank’s reserves. As Giorgia Meloni of the Brothers of Italy states, “The gold belongs to the Italians, not the bankers.”
Read more
U.S. Responsible for 36 Percent of Total Global Military Expenditure
trust.org
Global military expenditure reached its highest level last year since the end of the Cold War, fueled by increased spending in the United States and China, the world's two biggest economies, a leading defence think-tank said on Monday.
In its annual report, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said overall global military spending in 2018 hit $1.82 trillion, up 2.6 percent on the previous year.
That is the highest figure since 1988, when such data first became available as the Cold War began winding down.
U.S. military spending rose 4.6 percent last year to reach $649 billion, leaving it still by far the world's biggest spender. It accounted for 36 percent of total global military expenditure, nearly equal to the following eight biggest-spending countries combined, SIPRI said.
China, the second biggest spender, saw military expenditure rise 5.0 percent to $250 billion last year, the 24th consecutive annual increase.
Read more
Global military expenditure reached its highest level last year since the end of the Cold War, fueled by increased spending in the United States and China, the world's two biggest economies, a leading defence think-tank said on Monday.
In its annual report, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said overall global military spending in 2018 hit $1.82 trillion, up 2.6 percent on the previous year.
That is the highest figure since 1988, when such data first became available as the Cold War began winding down.
U.S. military spending rose 4.6 percent last year to reach $649 billion, leaving it still by far the world's biggest spender. It accounted for 36 percent of total global military expenditure, nearly equal to the following eight biggest-spending countries combined, SIPRI said.
China, the second biggest spender, saw military expenditure rise 5.0 percent to $250 billion last year, the 24th consecutive annual increase.
Read more
Saturday, 27 April 2019
How Much Would Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Tax Proposal Raise?
Let’s tax the rich more. It won’t hurt the economy. In the 1950’s, the top US federal income tax rate was 91%. People did not stop working and the economy was booming. We can do it again. Dead Wrong®. No “Green New Deal” can make those numbers work. Find out why from Free To Choose® Media Executive Editor and Cato Institute Senior Fellow Johan Norberg.
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