Friday, May 30, 2014

#0 Felix Martin's Money, The Unauthorised Biography

Source

[In most respects, Eric Lonergan said it far better than I could have done. His comments are reprinted here with my occasional comments.]

Felix Martin tempts fate by opening with a quote from A. H. Quiggan: "Everyone, except an economist, knows what 'money' means." Martin is a former World Bank economist, and at the end of this book, I sympathised with Quiggin

After 260 pages of heavy-going argument, Martin concludes that money is: "not a thing but a social technology - a set of ideas and practices for organising society. To be precise (!) ... [money] is a concept of universally applicable economic value.

Earlier he states that: "Coins and currency ... are useful tokens to record the underlying system of credit accounts and to implement the underlying process of clearing."

Rather than providing a new and counter-intuitive insight into money, which he claims, there is analytical confusion.

A logical fallacy in much analysis of money is repeated here: because debts have often been used as money, it does not follow that money is a debt. Martin's novel version of this fallacy is to argue that because we use credit accounts and a clearing system to net off payments, this makes the credit and clearing system "money". This is a logical error. The standard definition of money - anything accepted as payment for goods and services - is clear, and distinguishes it from debt and the clearing system. This definition does not assume, as Martin implies, that money is a "commodity". The accepted means of payment, as his many examples illustrate, can be physical, or abstract (or virtual).

This is really a history book, which claims to have identified an unconventional and more relevant understanding of what money is. There is lots of history, but the central thesis is unconvincing. Martin goes as far as to suggest that a flawed definition of money, with intellectual roots in Locke and even Aristotle, explains the economics professions' failure to foresee the financial crisis. We know this to be false. Economic policymakers and academics ignored the financial system. The reason is not because they had incorrectly defined money, it is because they focus on the last problem. The obsession with inflation targeting was a prolonged response to the inflation shock of the 1970s and 80s. Unsurprisingly, economists - academics and policymakers - are now producing a vast literature on the financial system, banking and asset bubbles, without any re-definition of "money" (and it goes without saying that the next problem will lie elsewhere). [...we presume he is saying that “the next problem” will likewise be dealt with by them, as arising from somewhere other than the present financial system.]

Consistent with this mainstream response, Martin places far too much faith in the idea that "narrow" banking will save the world. It is a variant of the old proposal that when you deposit money with a bank, it should hold an equivalent amount of cash in reserve. This view re-emerges in some form after every major banking crisis. Friedman was an advocate in the 1950s. The interesting question, which Martin evades, is why it is never adopted. Perhaps it is not such a good idea. [... or perhaps the whole matter needs critical re-evaluation. We suggest, for just one instance, that the credit clearing or transaction clearing functions of a financial system are one activity and that finance is a separate activity and that the two should not be combined as they are in traditional banking.]

I had looked forward to reading this book. Martin's main argument is initially intriguing and there's plenty of history, but ultimately it is unconvincing and confused. For really good histories of money, I would first read Milton Friedman's Money Mischief or Paper Promises by Philip Coggan. The absence of reference to either of these is odd. Even more so is the superficial dismissal of Hayek, without reference to his views on money. Hayek's economics is flawed [we're certainly glad to see this in print as we share this view], but his insights into money, drawing on David Hume, are profound, and close to Martin's. Indeed, Martin's "novel" idea - that money is a social institution, not a physical object - originates with Hume, who is unacknowledged. These omissions, and errors of fact, do not reassure the reader. For an example of the latter, Domingo Cavallo, Argentina's former economy minster and a central figure in Chapter 4, is re-christened "Domenico," an error repeated in the Index. [LOL!]

[I had one major quibble with Martin on page 69. It dealt with his attitude toward those in Argentina who went about creating and issuing their own money. He's clearly a statist; since money is a social institution more than anything else, it should be run by government and banks, etc. We're sorry to inform him, his backers, fellow pundits, etc. that these remarks and attitudes amount to a JEER to all of us who will not be bamboozled by the elites and their shills, including Martin. Those people in Argentina and elsewhere needed to continue their lives and could not be bothered by people who had claims on their national currency due to the actions of people operating well above their heads. Society springs from individual people making agreements among themselves, not from a distant and often disinterested state. All real society everywhere is local, globalism is an illusion and without FORCE would certainly fade away. But while we would agree with Lonergan concerning the book's flaws, it does present a very good description of conditions in ancient Mesopotamian and Greek societies. The ancient bureaucracies of Babylon are back, as is the craze for mass planning of all kinds. Ancient Babylon was a Soviet style state operated by and for an elite. This system will ultimately fail precisely because it has already defied natural laws to scale, size, efficiency and responsibility. We have adequate proof of this in history; since it has happened before it shall with certainty happen again. The only solution; “come out of her, my people” into something better that does not require either governments or banks, awaits serious consideration.]

Saturday, May 17, 2014

#0 Agenda 21: The Plan for a Global Fascist Dictatorship

"Climate change propaganda is a No-Problem-Reaction-Solution technique to justify Agenda 21 and its stable-mate the Biodiversity Treaty. This is an internationally-binding document involving nearly 200 countries. The United States signed the treaty, but it was not ratified by the Senate after people like ecologist and ecosystem scientist Dr. Michael Coffman exposed its true consequences and implications. He said that he realized during the 1980s and 1990s that the plan was to use the excuse of protecting the environment to confiscate half the land of the United States. Similar plans exist for every other country. America may not have ratified the treaty, but it is being implemented by the day. Agenda 21 demands the central global control of all land; all private property; all water sources and distribution; all other resources which includes people in its definition; all energy supplies and distribution and all food production and distribution."

Agenda 21: The Plan for a Global Fascist Dictatorship

Tuesday, May 13, 2014

#13.14 Peace Revolution Podcast 83

2014-05-11: #83 America and the Great Game: A Strategy of Tension

The Great Game, as it has been known among the elite, is elucidated in this episode. After the last one, we thought Richard Grove and associates had perhaps set a record for the possible length of a podcast, but this episode is of about the same length, dependent on the previous episode as a basis. Here, you will get more background information that few know and acknowledge as the facts of history. Many books and sources are provided.

As an idea of history, we see the pattern which can be extended as far back as you may see; the finance of competing terrorist regimes, war as a preferred result. The Great Game itself is world empire; the crass motivations of profit and power matter, human values as they are known and understood by the vast majority of humanity, do not. At the bottom of it all is money; what it is, who controls it, who issues it and who has it.

You'll learn more of how despicable these people really were (and are); famous people that you would have no trouble recognizing. You and your children are encouraged by the prevailing culture to empower and admire these people and as far as possible try and become part of their club as a measure of personal success. But of course, all this is an elaborate charade. Part of our education on this blog has considered the psychopathic nature of these people and their predilections, how they naturally interact with narcissists; the predator and its prey. This is a recurring theme.

Some startling facts are revealed. We suggest that further research be done wherever there can be any shadow of doubt as to the verity of some rather incredible allegations being made by some of the presenters, “allegations” which we confess at this point in time are becoming more credible by the day.

INTERMISSION 

[14 May, 2014:  Mr. Burton.  This episode contains 8 hours of material from a show in 1984 hosted by Dave Emory (see here).  I expect that what he says may be so, but he's relatively uncritical of the communists who ran Russia and Eastern Europe.  I just think you should remind people to draw their own conclusions.

Agreed, and thank-you!  

In particular, I'd point out that all the material dealt with in this episode is statist in both reference and action; all statism leads to war, tyranny, genocide, all the rest and the other point the episode highlights is the power of organized money and corporatism; owning something as an absentee owner, as an investor, even governments using the market for securities in these organizations to raise money for this or that.  

Also recall that all money issued by governments is used to buy what they want, not what you or I want, so they would buy things like spies, thugs, assassins, terrorists, special forces, etc.  You or I have no need of such things and certainly would not buy them if we were using our own money.  Just saying!

Ecotechnics, properly understood, is not a science. It may be characterized as an engineering philosophy, attempting the management of technology, to achieve the balance they believe in. Much of what they say sounds like the blog's proposed VEN. What are the limits to this vision? “Machines of loving grace,” is an actual impossibility, it violates many obvious connections; if people are machines and people are capable of love, then their logic runs, machines are capable of love. In the process, the very definition of love is changed to something like a person's individual comfort level in a computer enhanced perpetual order. Most of us are involved with this philosophy to some degree, whether we like it or not. It seems to me that the idea that any possible human mental picture of the natural world can possibly be accurate or adequate is frankly an impossibility. I'd like to know just how your VEN proposal addresses the fact that people in diverse places may place differing values on the same goods or services? I don't ultimately see one interconnected system as possible.

I think you're answering your own question. The VEN may be the totality of all transactions running through all local exchange nodes and the trades running through each local exchange may represent different price levels for many goods or services based on the usual economic forces of supply and demand. The Value Unit is like a ruler used to measure the value of an exchange. You can take it anywhere and it will measure anything based on its scale; for instance in inches or centimetres. There may be any number of scales. Some scales are best used to measure things based on size; big objects or long distances are measured in miles or kilometres rather than inches or microns. Yes, the balance of nature is an illusion. We are not suggesting that anything like a self sustaining egalitarian world order that supposedly works best for everyone is even a possibility. Money, however it appears or who issues it, remains nevertheless a tool, a very powerful tool, but a tool nevertheless. Offering another tool does not imply that people can or will make the best use of it.]

Friday, May 9, 2014

#0 Origins of the US Intel Community & Spying on Americans

History… The Origins of the U.S. Intelligence Community & Why It Spies on Americans

The promotion of political activism is not this blog's interest: knowledge of the system, on the other hand, should be everyone's business. Everything discussed in this program has many independent sources and cannot be easily refuted. We note in particular that the jeer “conspiracy theorist” was actually anticipated and deliberately chosen for use by an agency of the US government as a standard response to any criticism. Again, per usual, the rule is “follow the money” and gather the names and connections. It is everyone's right to know.

#0 John B. Wells Sheila Zilinsky-Nazi Takeover or Evil Eugenics Plan?


Brought to my attention by a young associate, there is much of interest in this interview.  Whether one agrees entirely with their views or not, Zilinsky and Wells certainly know how to talk.  
John B. Wells

Wednesday, May 7, 2014

#0 US Economy Is A House Of Cards

Paul Craig Roberts 
Posted 30 April, 2014
Source

The US economy is a house of cards. Every aspect of it is fraudulent, and the illusion of recovery is created with fraudulent statistics.*

American capitalism itself is an illusion. All financial markets are rigged. Massive liquidity poured into financial markets by the Federal Reserve’s Quantitative Easing inflates stock and bond prices and drives interest rates, which are supposed to be a measure of the cost of capital, to zero or negative, with the implication that capital is so abundant that its cost is zero and can be had for free. Large enterprises, such as mega-banks and auto manufacturers, that go bankrupt are not permitted to fail. Instead, public debt and money creation are used to cover private losses and keep corporations “too big to fail” afloat at the expense not of shareholders but of people who do not own the shares of the corporations. 

Profits are no longer a measure that social welfare is being served by capitalism’s efficient use of resources when profits are achieved by substituting cheaper foreign labor for domestic labor, with resultant decline in consumer purchasing power and rise in income and wealth inequality. In the 21st century, the era of jobs offshoring, the US has experienced an unprecedented explosion in income and wealth inequality. I have made reference to this hard evidence of the failure of capitalism to provide for the social welfare in the traditional economic sense in my book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism, and Thomas Piketty’s just published book, Capital in the 21st Century, has brought an alarming picture of reality to insouciant economists, such as Paul Krugman. As worrisome as Piketty’s picture is of inequality, I agree with Michael Hudson that the situation is worse than Piketty describes. (Piketty's Wealth gap Wake-up) 

Capitalism has been transformed by powerful private interests whose control over governments, courts, and regulatory agencies has turned capitalism into a looting mechanism. Wall Street no longer performs any positive function. Wall Street is a looting mechanism, a deadweight loss to society. Wall Street makes profits by front-running trades with fast computers, by selling fraudulent financial instruments that it is betting against as investment grade securities, by leveraging equity to unprecedented heights, making bets that cannot be covered, and by rigging all commodity markets.

The Federal Reserve and the US Treasury’s “Plunge Protection Team” aid the looting by supporting the stock market with purchases of stock futures, and protect the dollar from the extraordinary money-printing by selling naked shorts into the Comex gold futures market.

The US economy no longer is based on education, hard work, free market prices and the accountability that real free markets impose. Instead, the US economy is based on manipulation of prices, speculative control of commodities, support of the dollar by Washington’s puppet states, manipulated and falsified official statistics, propaganda from the financial media,* and inertia by countries, such as Russia and China, who are directly harmed, both economically and politically, by the dollar payments system.

* Specifically directed to the attention of those who persist in thinking that it is possible to devise a successful alternative to "public" money using their figures.  

As the governments in most of the rest of the world are incompetent, Washington’s incompetence doesn’t stand out, and this is Washington’s salvation.

But it is not a salvation for Americans who live under Washington’s rule. As all statistical evidence makes completely clear, the share of income and wealth going to the bulk of the US population is declining. This decline means the end of the consumer market that has been the mainstay of the US economy. Now that the mega-rich have even more disproportionate shares of the income and wealth, what happens to an economy based on selling imports and off-shored production of goods and services to a domestic consumer market? How do the vast majority of Americans purchase more when their incomes have not grown for years and have even declined and they are too impoverished to borrow more from banks that won’t lend?

The America in which I grew up was self-sufficient. Foreign trade was a small part of the economy. When I was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, the US still had a trade surplus except for oil. Offshoring of America’s jobs had not begun, and US earnings on its foreign investments exceeded foreign earnings on US investments. Therefore, America’s earnings abroad covered its energy deficit in its balance of trade.

The economic stability achieved during the Reagan administration was shattered by Wall Street greed. Wall Street threatened corporations with takeovers if the corporations did not produce higher profits by relocating their production of goods and services for American markets abroad. The lower labor costs boosted earnings and stock prices and satisfied Wall Street’s cravings for ever more earnings, but brought an end to the rise in US living standards except for the mega-rich. Financial deregulation loaded the economy with the risks of asset bubbles.

Americans are an amazingly insouciant people. By now any other people would have burnt Wall Street to the ground.

Washington has unique subjects. Americans will take endless abuse and blame some outside government for their predicament–Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, China, Russia. Such an insouciant and passive people are ideal targets for looting, and their economy, hollowed-out by looting, is a house of cards.

[10 May, 2014:  This article fits right in with the article you posted.
132 Nations Join To End Rothschild Banking Jig aka; NWO: The Secret He-man Mutual Appreciation Economy!
... also this one.
Russia Is Dominated By Global Banks, Too
"The birth of communist Russia, in particular, was directly funded by Western banks and supported with arms and military aid from the U.S. government itself. These sorts of startling facts are not taught in schools and universities exactly because the continued dominance of the money elite relies on continued misrepresentations of legitimate history."]

Monday, May 5, 2014

#0 Wall Street / Money Never Sleeps – Richard Grove on The Corbett Report

 
Wall Street / Money Never Sleeps – Richard Grove on The Corbett Report 

James Corbett and Richard Grove, certainly two of my favourite commentators, discuss Oliver Stone's movies and what they reveal about the system. Very often we seek out the words and work of people we recognize from our own experiences as knowledgeable about the system, especially if we're working in it. Most of us have had our mentors, especially if we had any serious business experience. Grove tells his story enough to give you a perspective on his experiences gaining knowledge of the system; he went in as a lamb and discovered the wolves. Many of us have had similar experiences, enough to know that the metaphors are more than accurate.

Before I continue, Grove mentions Buckminster Fuller, a man I actually met in person when he came to speak at my college. He was quite old. I understood right away that he was among the most original thinkers of his age. His work certainly deserves study, though Grove was correct in describing his blind spots. We all have them no doubt.

At one point Grove describes money as counterfeit value. That's the point where we decided this interview needed to be linked here. Of course Grove was referring to their money as so similarly described by E. C. Riegel; watered down through government spending over taxation resulting in inevitable price inflation; each quanta of money losing purchasing power.

We'd really like to ask Richard Grove if he could honestly see a world without money, without a recognized vehicle of exchange, yes everything we think of when we use or abuse money? In every case we know of, societies that attempt to ban money soon become tyrannies. We'd entertain the possibility that something really as important and so directly related to private property, as we honestly believe money to be, and something as indispensable to business as money, should be something that can be designed to operate free of many of the problems associated with their money. By their money we include every fiat government money on the planet, whether issued as a loan at interest or not, and all gold and silver. That's all their money.

The money advocated by this blog is based on the ideas of the autodidact economist E. C. Riegel. His idea of a quanta of money would equate to a unit of purchasing power equal to some unit of money on some date. If you want to preserve purchasing power of your money, you design it to retain a particular piece of purchasing power that can only occur on a specific date. You relate everything else in prices based on this single unchangeable quanta of purchasing power. Riegel called it a Value Unit or Valun. Here is where you can read more about this blog's proposal. Here is where you can track the value of the proposed Value Unit. Here is where you can apply to be a delegate to the premiere conference of the International Valun Exchange Society.

Each of us going forward has our particular mission. We respect the contributions of other researchers who honestly seek the truth. We will continue to link them here as they relate to our very quiet and calm mission, to educate people concerning the liberty that their own money represents, not at all as the lying Austrians (usurers all) see it, nor as the so called Keynesians (he'd be rolling in his grave) see it. Riegel had a different set of ideas. He left us a pencil sketch. From this, it has been our long term intention, to erect a new monetary system that shall in most respects flip the present order on its head. 

But let's face it, we are living in times of great change and grave challenges. From our standpoint, much that is harmful could be eliminated if more people would ... retire from the present system ... walk out on it, let it die. Those who continue to work for the most hated corporations or organizations without conscience ... cannot indefinitely escape responsibility for their crimes. “Come out of her, my people.”
 

Saturday, May 3, 2014

#0 Intentions of the Globalists

Merger of the Century: Why Canada and America Should Become One Country 

http://www.amazon.com/Merger-Century-Canada-America-Country-ebook/dp/B00ENH6ZIC
I went to Amazon and supported all the reviewers arguing against this book.  I know enough Canadians to know that they would not like to merge with the United States.
That video was informative.  How many noted Francis' not so mild bluntness when she discussed developing Canada's natural resources, for export to China, etc. when much later she admits that within 2 generations nobody would be using "fossil fuels?"  So when she discusses Keystone and other adventures, whose very short term interests does she represent?  There is a long history of financing huge operations which benefits some very disproportionately regardless of whether the projects are even completed.  The original Republican Party (which has changed less than the Democrat Party over time), the "American Plan" devised by Henry Clay and adopted by Abraham Lincoln, a former railroad lawyer, were based on acquiring larger investment opportunities (involving saddling the governments and people with DEBT) for the exclusive benefit of a small privileged class of organized money. Anyone with eyes wide open can easily see this as an attempt to loot Canada and profit from doing it using any pretext to do so.
    
Should the US and Canada Become One Country?

The Press Release, of sorts.  So they intend on merging Canada with the United States.  Did you hear her say they intend on keeping the US Dollar?  We learned from Congressman McFadden that the Federal Reserve had foisted a "commodity" money system on the public.  We could have learned the same from lots of different sources as they all believe the same thing about money, that it must be a commodity.  That way they can speculate on lots of different things; make money on money.  And likewise they believe that the optimal quantity of money must somehow be "backed" by assets that are either in an economy or lie under the ground (Canada).  If they don't, foreign creditors begin to bid down the dollar, since after all, it is a commodity and they do this by selling US debt instruments.  

Are you seeing the connection?  They fully intend to keep the Federal Reserve and Wall Street going and absorb Canada into it, creating the largest political conglomeration on earth from which to plunder some more.  The merger saves their butts!  But for how long?  Will the people go for it?  What's the chief motivator?  MONEY!  Whose money does everyone use?  Is the answer even in question?  The opportunity the merger offers the globalists is to rewrite the US Constitution (get rid of that pesky 2nd Amendment, etc.) and use the absorption of Canada as the excuse.  Much of the "law" has already been slipped into place already.  Watch closely what happens in Quebec.  If they decide to split from Canada, it will make Canada that much riper for the picking.  Notice her references to "low hanging fruit," as in ready for picking, er stealing.  

Why Canada and the U.S. Should Become One Country: Diane Francis

A short.  Notice her focus on TRADE and who would benefit most and who would be hurt most by such a merger.  We actually believe that the real divides are between free enterprise and capitalism as metaphors for liberty vs. tyranny.  

Diane Francis: Ameri-Canada?

Canadian Press release.  Canadians should know that during the first US Constitutional convention, various articles were entertained for inclusion which would have offered statehood to Canadian provinces or the nation as a whole.  It was always there as a possibility entertained by American elites.  Now their bankers, with the US government (their best credit risk customer) and the people on the hook for TRILLIONS of dollars, with a sinking corporate economy that ultimately cannot work due to inefficiencies of size, etc. that is based on a "grow or die" economics all due to usury, seek to save themselves by sucking down Canada.  It cannot save them in any case.   Listen to what she says about sovereignty, about national sovereignty, about who benefits from the merger, listen to her discuss vague threats as if someone else off continent could somehow steal Canada's assets.  It's all there folks.  Oh yes, she lives part time in "gun free" New York City.  Just saying.  Oh and if Canadians want to get an idea of their own "sucked out" future, just look at Detroit.  Listen to her awful screed about slavery being ended by the civil rights legislation!  Oh yes, the purposes of nations ARE to "make money" from the standpoint of the bankers and elites who I remind everyone contribute absolutely nothing of value to anything and make out handily while millions go unemployed all due to structural inefficiencies brought about by the elites.  You think this is going to be any different?     
more self important people imagining that they are doing the world a favour