JAPAN'S DIFFICULTIES VERSUS COLLAPSE OF THE USA:
Let me quote from Paul Krugman blog, as part of this interesting biofeedback we are engaged in. Krugman extensively quotes Adam Posen, "who really really knows what went down during Japan’s lost decade:
"What the Obama team is proposing is disconcertingly similar to the actions of Japanese Prime Ministers Hashimoti, Obuchi, and Mori in 1995 and 1998: Rather than ask the legislature for straightforward recapitalization money, you have the political leadership preferring to risk overpaying current owners of toxic assets rather than forcing sales. For all of Japan’s supposed intervention in markets, its government still lacked the stomach for taking over banks, let alone closing them."
And Krugman to add: "To be fair: the Obama team really does face huge political obstacles in doing the right thing. Maybe it really can’t be done; as Rahm Emanuel said about me, “[unprintable].”"
Krugman concludes: "But we shouldn’t kid ourselves. Japan is us."
OK, let me add now my grain of salt. President Obama himself has evoked Japan's "Lost Decade", to justify nothing drastic, like firing the influence peddlers and financial scam artists in tight orbit around him. As I pointed out before, though, and as Krugman reminds us, it is politically dangerous for Obama to do the right thing before he has done the wrong thing, and shown the average US citizen that he got it all wrong, in nearly all ways.
In Japan real GDP per person went up during the "lost decade". In the USA, real GDP per person has been going down for a full decade prior to the economy tipping out of control in the last six months. That why I call this slump made in the USA, a depression, not a recession.
So "Japan is us" is too rosy a scenario. Japan has a distinct oligarchy, but it did not fall into outright plutocracy since W.W.II. Financial rewards at the top have been kept reasonable, all along. Japan remembered that its oligarchy led it to disaster by attacking China, South East Asia, and then the USA, during W.W.II. Ever since, it has kept tight reins on it.
The French oligarchie (14 century) comes from the Greek oligarkhia "government by the few", from oligoi "few, small, little" and arkhein "to rule". Plutocracy means that it is the wealthy, and the underground, that rules. This is the case in Banana Republics, and, now, in the USA.
Sending trillions of dollars to the corrupt hedge funds-bank holding companies complex, "without keeping track" while millions of US citizens are threatened with foreclosure, and the Obama administration stresses out about a few dozen billions for the car industry, is par for the course.
How does one get rid of a plutocracy when it's firmly in control of the state? Well, revolution. Or then one elects someone one could hope was out of the system: Obama. So, as the Economist wrote it in its latest lead editorial: "lead, damn it".
Instead the young chief of staff, "Three seconds away from the president", got 16 millions in two years from a bank. Among ethical people, we call that a bribe from the bank holding companies, so that, when the guy is chief of staff, trillions can be sent to bank holding companies, while claiming disingenuously that the USA is the only country that ever was, which does not know how to temporarily nationalize banks. As long as this sort of enormity is not fixed, the economy of the USA will not be fixed.
Geithner on ABC news this weekend claimed that he "always worked in public service". Either he deliberately lied, or he has lost track of reality. Many of those guys have such a wrapped notion of reality that, when they work for a "consultancy" such as "Kissinger and Associates", as Geithner did, for years, they envision themselves as in public service.
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Friday, March 27, 2009
REACHING FOR THE HEIGHTS.
In Chinese philosophy blossomed an explicit appeal to the splendor of the mountains and the discipline of the climbs. Nietzsche used to be a habitual solo climber. Although they were no climbers that we know of, Socrates, Xenophon, Archimedes, Marcus Aurelius, Julianus, Boetius, Descartes, and several French philosophers killed by the Nazis, were men of the sword. Other major philosophers, such as Abelard, Giordano Bruno, or Galileo Galilei, lived a life of combat. There are more: a bit before Bruno, a French philosopher was burned on top of his books.
Why the connection between the fight, the climb, and the philosophers? Why the climbing, why the fighting? Is that wise?
As the ground falls away, the climber enters an ever higher, grander world... What bouldering, and simple common life, does not have as much of, is a massive world falling away, ever smaller and disturbingly insignificant. No need to go into orbit, going up a rock, fighting a good war is plenty enough.
Endurance and persistence are not just human qualities, they are those that any mind needs as it rises to the highest occasions...
And thus, since ever, the Lords of the Heights of Thought have looked favorably up the mountains and down the valleys...
It is to us to give a sense to the cosmos, and it may as well be grand.
Patrice Ayme
(P/S: This no endorsement of the so far somewhat harebrained US war in Afghanistan/Pakistan; as I said many times, a good trick to divide the Taliban and the tribes would be to make licit some of the poppy cultivation; to deal with Pakistan a serious effort of nuclear disarmament is urgent, lest we want to risk a massive nuclear war.)
Why the connection between the fight, the climb, and the philosophers? Why the climbing, why the fighting? Is that wise?
As the ground falls away, the climber enters an ever higher, grander world... What bouldering, and simple common life, does not have as much of, is a massive world falling away, ever smaller and disturbingly insignificant. No need to go into orbit, going up a rock, fighting a good war is plenty enough.
Endurance and persistence are not just human qualities, they are those that any mind needs as it rises to the highest occasions...
And thus, since ever, the Lords of the Heights of Thought have looked favorably up the mountains and down the valleys...
It is to us to give a sense to the cosmos, and it may as well be grand.
Patrice Ayme
(P/S: This no endorsement of the so far somewhat harebrained US war in Afghanistan/Pakistan; as I said many times, a good trick to divide the Taliban and the tribes would be to make licit some of the poppy cultivation; to deal with Pakistan a serious effort of nuclear disarmament is urgent, lest we want to risk a massive nuclear war.)
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
WHY HEDGE FUNDS SHOULD BE CUT DOWN TO SIZE.
ERRONEOUSLY FUNDED ECONOMIC THEORY HAS ALLOWED VULTURES TO GROW BIGGER THAN CARRION.
***
Hedge funds and traders of exotic financial products could be under stricter governmental supervision, U.S. officials say. And to give a list of obvious measures, such as registering with the SEC, etc.
Besides the obvious propositions of the Obama administration, the following should be done:
The mathematics of the entire derivative market should be changed so that it can attenuate perturbations to the system, instead of augmenting them as it does nowadays.
In particular non commercial operators should see their leverage severely restricted.
Trading limits should be put on anything that is traded, to provide a speed limit similar to the speed of light in physics. This way information could reach all market participants equally and not just the first responders and professional manipulators. [Modern technology would allow to do this is in a fair and efficient manner.]
Another way to limit speculation would be a tiny tax on any transaction.
The rights of CEOs to sit on each other's boards should be limited. Not doing this creates a CEO class, a subset of the plutocracy. [Maybe union representatives should be sitting on the board, as in Germany]
Countries should be required to pay their way. In particular the USA, should raise taxes on consumption of good and energy to become self sufficient financially, instead of having dubious feudal arrangements with non democracies to pay tribute (an allusion to China). This is no good for all parties involved, and condemns democracy, for all parties involved.
Legend has it that hedge funds and private equity using tremendous leverage provide "liquidity". Whatever that is. what we see in this crisis is that they provide inextinguishable debt.
In general the argument could be made in serious economics that, ultimately money represents energy. If this is true (and it is), money should be finite in amount. The fundamental error that caused the present crisis is not to have believed that this was so.
Thus, as the highly leveraged hedge funds and private equity grow, they take energy OUT OF the rest of the economy. Hence their leverage should be seriously constrained, and made to vary according to the public utility of what they invest in (For example, more leverage for green energy investments).
More details and justifications are found in: "Reforming World Finance", November 28, 2008, http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2008/11/
Patrice Ayme
patriceayme.wordpress.com
***
Hedge funds and traders of exotic financial products could be under stricter governmental supervision, U.S. officials say. And to give a list of obvious measures, such as registering with the SEC, etc.
Besides the obvious propositions of the Obama administration, the following should be done:
The mathematics of the entire derivative market should be changed so that it can attenuate perturbations to the system, instead of augmenting them as it does nowadays.
In particular non commercial operators should see their leverage severely restricted.
Trading limits should be put on anything that is traded, to provide a speed limit similar to the speed of light in physics. This way information could reach all market participants equally and not just the first responders and professional manipulators. [Modern technology would allow to do this is in a fair and efficient manner.]
Another way to limit speculation would be a tiny tax on any transaction.
The rights of CEOs to sit on each other's boards should be limited. Not doing this creates a CEO class, a subset of the plutocracy. [Maybe union representatives should be sitting on the board, as in Germany]
Countries should be required to pay their way. In particular the USA, should raise taxes on consumption of good and energy to become self sufficient financially, instead of having dubious feudal arrangements with non democracies to pay tribute (an allusion to China). This is no good for all parties involved, and condemns democracy, for all parties involved.
Legend has it that hedge funds and private equity using tremendous leverage provide "liquidity". Whatever that is. what we see in this crisis is that they provide inextinguishable debt.
In general the argument could be made in serious economics that, ultimately money represents energy. If this is true (and it is), money should be finite in amount. The fundamental error that caused the present crisis is not to have believed that this was so.
Thus, as the highly leveraged hedge funds and private equity grow, they take energy OUT OF the rest of the economy. Hence their leverage should be seriously constrained, and made to vary according to the public utility of what they invest in (For example, more leverage for green energy investments).
More details and justifications are found in: "Reforming World Finance", November 28, 2008, http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2008/11/
Patrice Ayme
patriceayme.wordpress.com
Monday, March 23, 2009
ONLY IN THE USA
CHANGE THEY CAN CASH IN:
***
Part of the comment below is critical of the Geithner plan, and of Summers. It was censored by the New York Times. The next day, unsullied by this sort of nastiness, the market rallied 7%. I am happy that the market rallied, but the fact remains that the plan is both incredibly unfair, and, even worse, cannot work, in the long run: one pail of water will not this fire extinguish.
***
Bush was financially bad. Bush poured gasoline on the financial crisis. For example he allowed (in 2004) banks to go to a leverage of 40. In July 2007, Bush removed the no selling short on a down tick rule (after that the hedge funds were free to bear raid the entire market).
But Bush did not start the fire. The guy who started the fire is the guy who refused to regulate the Credit Default Swaps in 1998, screaming after the lady heading the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission to prevent her to regulate, as she wanted. This is exactly why AIG had no provisions to cover its extravagant betting with the Credit Default Swaps. In 1999 that same incompetent character abrogated the Banking Act of 1933 (that maintained a distinction between banks and investing on Wall Street, among other things). That guy who started the fire was Summers, his assistant was Geithner.
Summers and Geithner should not be giving orders to society and advice to the president. They should be prosecuted under RICO. They are the origin of the fire, and Obama should learn to distinguish between arsonists and firemen.
Instead, the administration finally came up with its plan to restart the banking system. It consists into lending one trillion dollars of taxpayer money to the class of people who caused the problem to start with.
***
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
***
Addendum (Not sent to NYT): In exchange for a trillion dollars of public money, the private investors are supposed to contribute thirty billion dollars of private money to the party. Thus the government of the USA will create, with public money, the largest hedge fund ever, with a leverage of 33. That privately managed hedge fund will entice the banks to surrender their “toxic assets”. Between friends, many tender things may happen. "Toxic assets" could be massively overvalued, for example, since they are paid with public money, using tremendous leverage.
After, and if, the private investors have grabbed the “toxic assets”, they will enjoy the income stream coming from them (since many of these “toxic assets” are made of mortgages glued up and all mixed together they bring the cash flow of these mortgages). If they unload and walk away after enjoying that income flow, it’s no problem, no problem for them, because the trillion dollars loan is “non recourse”, which means that the borrower can call it quits whenever so desired, without any consequences whatsoever.
Will one trillion do the trick? No. The bank holding companies' losses are at least 5trillions (say Goldman and PIMCO), and maybe as much as twenty trillions (say others). So what is the solution? Nationalizations (there are many ways to do them). Hedge funds do not like those. But they like trillions of public money to call their own. Is there trick to try before nationalizations? Yes, I have one, and it goes through the G20.
***
Part of the comment below is critical of the Geithner plan, and of Summers. It was censored by the New York Times. The next day, unsullied by this sort of nastiness, the market rallied 7%. I am happy that the market rallied, but the fact remains that the plan is both incredibly unfair, and, even worse, cannot work, in the long run: one pail of water will not this fire extinguish.
***
Bush was financially bad. Bush poured gasoline on the financial crisis. For example he allowed (in 2004) banks to go to a leverage of 40. In July 2007, Bush removed the no selling short on a down tick rule (after that the hedge funds were free to bear raid the entire market).
But Bush did not start the fire. The guy who started the fire is the guy who refused to regulate the Credit Default Swaps in 1998, screaming after the lady heading the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission to prevent her to regulate, as she wanted. This is exactly why AIG had no provisions to cover its extravagant betting with the Credit Default Swaps. In 1999 that same incompetent character abrogated the Banking Act of 1933 (that maintained a distinction between banks and investing on Wall Street, among other things). That guy who started the fire was Summers, his assistant was Geithner.
Summers and Geithner should not be giving orders to society and advice to the president. They should be prosecuted under RICO. They are the origin of the fire, and Obama should learn to distinguish between arsonists and firemen.
Instead, the administration finally came up with its plan to restart the banking system. It consists into lending one trillion dollars of taxpayer money to the class of people who caused the problem to start with.
***
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
***
Addendum (Not sent to NYT): In exchange for a trillion dollars of public money, the private investors are supposed to contribute thirty billion dollars of private money to the party. Thus the government of the USA will create, with public money, the largest hedge fund ever, with a leverage of 33. That privately managed hedge fund will entice the banks to surrender their “toxic assets”. Between friends, many tender things may happen. "Toxic assets" could be massively overvalued, for example, since they are paid with public money, using tremendous leverage.
After, and if, the private investors have grabbed the “toxic assets”, they will enjoy the income stream coming from them (since many of these “toxic assets” are made of mortgages glued up and all mixed together they bring the cash flow of these mortgages). If they unload and walk away after enjoying that income flow, it’s no problem, no problem for them, because the trillion dollars loan is “non recourse”, which means that the borrower can call it quits whenever so desired, without any consequences whatsoever.
Will one trillion do the trick? No. The bank holding companies' losses are at least 5trillions (say Goldman and PIMCO), and maybe as much as twenty trillions (say others). So what is the solution? Nationalizations (there are many ways to do them). Hedge funds do not like those. But they like trillions of public money to call their own. Is there trick to try before nationalizations? Yes, I have one, and it goes through the G20.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
WHEN PROGRESSIVISM KILLS THE FREE MARKET.
THE SAD STORY OF THE PERSECUTED LORDS OF FINANCE.
Why is everybody complaining about the American financial system? Is it because it is not enough of a free market anymore? In the past American financiers could buy and sell people. That was really free and easy going. George Washington, an astute investor, owned three hundred people when he died. He obstinately refused to free them, in spite of his friend Lafayette's entreaties. That was American character at its best. It's not because you have a French friend, and four-fifths of your army was French, and 90% of your ammunition was French, and all your navy was French, that you should make your civilizational practices French too. That would be like, well, slavery. Now Washington is dead, but his spirit lives in the capital named after him. To the extent pesky French progressivism has allowed it to. But it has been a rough ride.
OK, slavery was rough, too. Now, though, there is a huge improvement, it's more like serfdom. American people work hard, and then send all their money to their American Lords of Finance. So why are people complaining so much? The Lords of Finance are the best and the brightest, remember?
Let good Americans look up to Warren Buffet, an owner of one of these two or three (American) credit rating agencies that rule the world. These agencies allowed other plutocrats to build the worldwide pyramid, that Ponzi scheme of stealing the savers' money, and giving it all to the wealthiest of the rich, the hedge funds and private equity. The credit rating agencies gave them the respectability necessary to do so, just as Mr. Buffet, with his grandfatherly looks, personally gives respectability to the lure of the plutocrat. So does the crocodile look like an old tree trunk, and drifts reassuringly down the lazy river. Interview the plutocrat, or the oligarch, and he will gush respectably about sports and the home team, showing that this is all what this simple man cares about. it's not about ripping you off, and drinking all your money, or your blood, heavens forbid. Just if you can't pay for health care, why should you get it? Is it not a free market? Pay as you go? Don't pay, well, just don't go and die. Mr. Buffet, the friend of Obama (they both said), has made a fortune in health care. If slavery was around, no doubt Mr. Buffet would make a fortune in slavery. But, sadly, slavery is no more. Thank God for hedge funds, though: they make slavery without chains possible at last...
Interest rates on credit of the order of 30%, high enough to justify execution of the lenders in some jurisdictions in the Middle Ages, are a reality of contemporary American life. So just let all good Americans look at the positive side, watch sports on TV, get totally critical and knowledgeable about their silly sport teams, and manage their anger like good little sheep. Let the French get all worked up about human rights, and demonstrate in their stead. The French are obviously antibusiness: when the French proclaimed the Universal Rights of Man, and outlawed slavery worldwide, they interfered with American business. 75 years later the free market in human beings was abrogated in the USA, causing huge losses for American business (the economy of the American South had been growing tremendously, thanks to the fast growing use of slaves in industry; the civil war, and the abrogation of slavery destroyed that). One trembles to imagine what new antibusiness measures Europe intends to torture the American Lords of Finance with.
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
Why is everybody complaining about the American financial system? Is it because it is not enough of a free market anymore? In the past American financiers could buy and sell people. That was really free and easy going. George Washington, an astute investor, owned three hundred people when he died. He obstinately refused to free them, in spite of his friend Lafayette's entreaties. That was American character at its best. It's not because you have a French friend, and four-fifths of your army was French, and 90% of your ammunition was French, and all your navy was French, that you should make your civilizational practices French too. That would be like, well, slavery. Now Washington is dead, but his spirit lives in the capital named after him. To the extent pesky French progressivism has allowed it to. But it has been a rough ride.
OK, slavery was rough, too. Now, though, there is a huge improvement, it's more like serfdom. American people work hard, and then send all their money to their American Lords of Finance. So why are people complaining so much? The Lords of Finance are the best and the brightest, remember?
Let good Americans look up to Warren Buffet, an owner of one of these two or three (American) credit rating agencies that rule the world. These agencies allowed other plutocrats to build the worldwide pyramid, that Ponzi scheme of stealing the savers' money, and giving it all to the wealthiest of the rich, the hedge funds and private equity. The credit rating agencies gave them the respectability necessary to do so, just as Mr. Buffet, with his grandfatherly looks, personally gives respectability to the lure of the plutocrat. So does the crocodile look like an old tree trunk, and drifts reassuringly down the lazy river. Interview the plutocrat, or the oligarch, and he will gush respectably about sports and the home team, showing that this is all what this simple man cares about. it's not about ripping you off, and drinking all your money, or your blood, heavens forbid. Just if you can't pay for health care, why should you get it? Is it not a free market? Pay as you go? Don't pay, well, just don't go and die. Mr. Buffet, the friend of Obama (they both said), has made a fortune in health care. If slavery was around, no doubt Mr. Buffet would make a fortune in slavery. But, sadly, slavery is no more. Thank God for hedge funds, though: they make slavery without chains possible at last...
Interest rates on credit of the order of 30%, high enough to justify execution of the lenders in some jurisdictions in the Middle Ages, are a reality of contemporary American life. So just let all good Americans look at the positive side, watch sports on TV, get totally critical and knowledgeable about their silly sport teams, and manage their anger like good little sheep. Let the French get all worked up about human rights, and demonstrate in their stead. The French are obviously antibusiness: when the French proclaimed the Universal Rights of Man, and outlawed slavery worldwide, they interfered with American business. 75 years later the free market in human beings was abrogated in the USA, causing huge losses for American business (the economy of the American South had been growing tremendously, thanks to the fast growing use of slaves in industry; the civil war, and the abrogation of slavery destroyed that). One trembles to imagine what new antibusiness measures Europe intends to torture the American Lords of Finance with.
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
BLAME THE VICTIMS, IT FEELS GOOD.
US NOBEL LAUREATE KRUGMAN SUGGESTS TO DISSOLVE THE EUROPEAN UNION AND THE EURO TO SOLVE THE AMERICAN CRISIS.
***
Paul Krugman in its main New York Times editorial, insinuated that: "Does all this mean that Europe was wrong to let itself become so tightly integrated? Does it mean, in particular, that the creation of the Euro was a mistake?" That was after suggesting the EU did not answer the crisis appropriately because it, well, did not have enough of a political union. This below was my rebuke, and the New York Times posted it right away (thanks!)
***
It is a contradiction to bemoan, as Krugman does, that Europe is both not "unitary" enough, and then to claim that national interest rates in each European country should be freed to jump all around to serve the natives. When the later used to happen, dear professor Krugman, national unemployment rates and currencies also used to jump around, with wild speculative bubbles and busts. With a few wars thrown in. Why don't we do the same in the USA, and the Dollar, and dissolve them too? Last time this was tried, the Civil War made more than one million casualties (~ 3% of the population).
The mishandling of the present crisis, if any, simply shows that Europe has to be integrated more. Europe, and the Euro, were built for more fundamental reasons than satisfying local potentates (because when local elites can play with interest rates and currencies, that augments their local potentia (the Latin word for power, from which "potentate" derives).
That Spain and others will have somewhat difficult years ahead, sure. But Spain, Greece and Portugal are doing better now than they did under the fascist regimes, inspired by the USA, that the European Union kicked out (democracy is a precondition for entry in the EU). Spain had an enormous boom for decades, and now, well, a readjustment is called for. No big deal. Hopefully it will correspond to an economic switch out of tourism and construction. The Spanish government is keen to clean up the coast from too much concrete. So there is some deconstruction to do...
As I will argue more thoroughly on "patriceayme.wordpress.com", the French stimulus is not less than the Obama true stimulus, and kicked in early (2008). True the German government has been slow and self contradictory, but it's a coalition government and several elections are coming within months. Elements of that government are running against each other!
Now Germany mostly agree with France on everything, which is all what truly matters to find European solutions to European crises.
Both Germany and France want to regulate financial markets heavily. The USA wants to talk about something else, like Europe having a bad hair day. Why? Because New York and London profited enormously from their giant Ponzi scheme, and both cities, and the elites of the countries they have enriched with it, would like to refurbish it. Well, it will not happen.
The crisis in Europe should not be overestimated: some banks failed spectacularly, but many giant French banks had multi billion dollars profits in 2008, and real estate in Lyon is still peaking. Although governments are heavily in debt, the French deficit this year is expected to be 5.5%. The one in the USA is expected to be 12%. But the overall debt of individuals in Europe is much lower than in the USA. And ultimately, that is the most important factor: Europe does not depend upon savings from other countries (as the USA does).
The greatest danger to Europe would be an attack against the European construction. It will not happen, but countries in Eastern Europe will have to learn that their boss is not in Washington. I would not call that a crisis. I would call that a solution. And getting to know the truth of history. It is not France and Britain that gave Eastern Europe to Stalin. It is Washington.
Tyranosopher
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
patriceayme.com
P/S: A more detailled comment along the same veins will be posted on "patriceaymewordpress". It will explain why Europe did MORE, not less, than the USA, and why Amreican screaming against Europe is just self serving propaganda orchestrated by the greedy elite that feasts on the entire world population.
***
Paul Krugman in its main New York Times editorial, insinuated that: "Does all this mean that Europe was wrong to let itself become so tightly integrated? Does it mean, in particular, that the creation of the Euro was a mistake?" That was after suggesting the EU did not answer the crisis appropriately because it, well, did not have enough of a political union. This below was my rebuke, and the New York Times posted it right away (thanks!)
***
It is a contradiction to bemoan, as Krugman does, that Europe is both not "unitary" enough, and then to claim that national interest rates in each European country should be freed to jump all around to serve the natives. When the later used to happen, dear professor Krugman, national unemployment rates and currencies also used to jump around, with wild speculative bubbles and busts. With a few wars thrown in. Why don't we do the same in the USA, and the Dollar, and dissolve them too? Last time this was tried, the Civil War made more than one million casualties (~ 3% of the population).
The mishandling of the present crisis, if any, simply shows that Europe has to be integrated more. Europe, and the Euro, were built for more fundamental reasons than satisfying local potentates (because when local elites can play with interest rates and currencies, that augments their local potentia (the Latin word for power, from which "potentate" derives).
That Spain and others will have somewhat difficult years ahead, sure. But Spain, Greece and Portugal are doing better now than they did under the fascist regimes, inspired by the USA, that the European Union kicked out (democracy is a precondition for entry in the EU). Spain had an enormous boom for decades, and now, well, a readjustment is called for. No big deal. Hopefully it will correspond to an economic switch out of tourism and construction. The Spanish government is keen to clean up the coast from too much concrete. So there is some deconstruction to do...
As I will argue more thoroughly on "patriceayme.wordpress.com", the French stimulus is not less than the Obama true stimulus, and kicked in early (2008). True the German government has been slow and self contradictory, but it's a coalition government and several elections are coming within months. Elements of that government are running against each other!
Now Germany mostly agree with France on everything, which is all what truly matters to find European solutions to European crises.
Both Germany and France want to regulate financial markets heavily. The USA wants to talk about something else, like Europe having a bad hair day. Why? Because New York and London profited enormously from their giant Ponzi scheme, and both cities, and the elites of the countries they have enriched with it, would like to refurbish it. Well, it will not happen.
The crisis in Europe should not be overestimated: some banks failed spectacularly, but many giant French banks had multi billion dollars profits in 2008, and real estate in Lyon is still peaking. Although governments are heavily in debt, the French deficit this year is expected to be 5.5%. The one in the USA is expected to be 12%. But the overall debt of individuals in Europe is much lower than in the USA. And ultimately, that is the most important factor: Europe does not depend upon savings from other countries (as the USA does).
The greatest danger to Europe would be an attack against the European construction. It will not happen, but countries in Eastern Europe will have to learn that their boss is not in Washington. I would not call that a crisis. I would call that a solution. And getting to know the truth of history. It is not France and Britain that gave Eastern Europe to Stalin. It is Washington.
Tyranosopher
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
patriceayme.com
P/S: A more detailled comment along the same veins will be posted on "patriceaymewordpress". It will explain why Europe did MORE, not less, than the USA, and why Amreican screaming against Europe is just self serving propaganda orchestrated by the greedy elite that feasts on the entire world population.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
PLUTOCRATIC PROPAGANDA EXHIBITED
KNEEL AT THE FEET OF PRIVATE EQUITY AND HEDGE FUNDS, YOU LITTLE PEOPLE!
To enforce its perverse and self serving way of thinking, the plutocracy of the USA uses opinion makers who teach TRUE THINK. Thomas Friedman is one of these notorious servants of the wealthy. He pushed for the invasion of Iraq as much as he could, but he is not done yet. According to these supporters of wealth, most of the population of the USA is good if it serves the wealthiest of the Rich. By law, the present day USA is organized according to this credo: the richest pay a maximum of 15% tax when they invest in "hedge funds" and "private equity" structured investment vehicles reserved to them (by law again: in the USA law is by the Rich, for the Rich). The laws passed during the Great Depression against money making ever more money were repealed by the happy crew of Rubin-Summers-Geithner-Greenspan (with various "republicans" helping).
Some, of course, will say that I exaggerate, that I am biased, hard to take seriously. So here is Mr. Friedman, March 10, 2009, in the New York Times, faithfully mouthing the line of the Bush-Obama administration. Please read him:
"As for President Obama, I like his coolness under fire, yet sometimes it feels as if he is deliberately keeping his distance from the banking crisis ... This will likely require some degree of government subsidy to PRIVATE EQUITY GROUPS and HEDGE FUNDS to get them to make the first bids for these toxic assets by GUARANTEEING THEY WILL NOT LOSE. This could make great policy sense, but be a nightmare to sell politically. It will strike many as another unfair giveaway to Wall Street.
Unfortunately, the president may have to look the American people in the eye and explain that “FAIRNESS IS NOT ON THE MENU ANYMORE.” All that’s on the menu now is whether or not we avoid a system meltdown — and this will require rewarding some new investors."
To this obscenity, I replied with the following (published as a comment to Friedman by the NYT, the same day):
Hedge funds and private equity are not the solution, they are the problem. The world economy is presently been destroyed because Summers and Geithner want to save those. No, they will not tell you this, and they will not look you in the eye.
Nationalizing the giant insolvent banks ought to mean that they would be separated from their bank holding companies, the hedge funds, the private equity, the CDS, the SIVs, etc. All deposits should be insured, whatever the amount (as in France). The nationalized banks would then be very profitable businesses, and plenty of buyers would show up (if nothing else, giant profitable banks from overseas). Then the USA as a State could sell them (at one time, or progressively). There are thousands of profitable banks in the USA with competent managements that would be delighted to take over pieces of Citigroup, B of A, JP Morgan... The four largest insolvent banks control now two-third of USA banking.
What to do with the craziest derivatives that presently sinking the banks? Just declare them null and void, because they were not lawful to start with. If this can be done on worldwide basis in London in April at the G20 summit. Problem solved. Who is in the way? Those who created the problem to start with, Geithner, Summers and company, 11 years ago.
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
To enforce its perverse and self serving way of thinking, the plutocracy of the USA uses opinion makers who teach TRUE THINK. Thomas Friedman is one of these notorious servants of the wealthy. He pushed for the invasion of Iraq as much as he could, but he is not done yet. According to these supporters of wealth, most of the population of the USA is good if it serves the wealthiest of the Rich. By law, the present day USA is organized according to this credo: the richest pay a maximum of 15% tax when they invest in "hedge funds" and "private equity" structured investment vehicles reserved to them (by law again: in the USA law is by the Rich, for the Rich). The laws passed during the Great Depression against money making ever more money were repealed by the happy crew of Rubin-Summers-Geithner-Greenspan (with various "republicans" helping).
Some, of course, will say that I exaggerate, that I am biased, hard to take seriously. So here is Mr. Friedman, March 10, 2009, in the New York Times, faithfully mouthing the line of the Bush-Obama administration. Please read him:
"As for President Obama, I like his coolness under fire, yet sometimes it feels as if he is deliberately keeping his distance from the banking crisis ... This will likely require some degree of government subsidy to PRIVATE EQUITY GROUPS and HEDGE FUNDS to get them to make the first bids for these toxic assets by GUARANTEEING THEY WILL NOT LOSE. This could make great policy sense, but be a nightmare to sell politically. It will strike many as another unfair giveaway to Wall Street.
Unfortunately, the president may have to look the American people in the eye and explain that “FAIRNESS IS NOT ON THE MENU ANYMORE.” All that’s on the menu now is whether or not we avoid a system meltdown — and this will require rewarding some new investors."
To this obscenity, I replied with the following (published as a comment to Friedman by the NYT, the same day):
Hedge funds and private equity are not the solution, they are the problem. The world economy is presently been destroyed because Summers and Geithner want to save those. No, they will not tell you this, and they will not look you in the eye.
Nationalizing the giant insolvent banks ought to mean that they would be separated from their bank holding companies, the hedge funds, the private equity, the CDS, the SIVs, etc. All deposits should be insured, whatever the amount (as in France). The nationalized banks would then be very profitable businesses, and plenty of buyers would show up (if nothing else, giant profitable banks from overseas). Then the USA as a State could sell them (at one time, or progressively). There are thousands of profitable banks in the USA with competent managements that would be delighted to take over pieces of Citigroup, B of A, JP Morgan... The four largest insolvent banks control now two-third of USA banking.
What to do with the craziest derivatives that presently sinking the banks? Just declare them null and void, because they were not lawful to start with. If this can be done on worldwide basis in London in April at the G20 summit. Problem solved. Who is in the way? Those who created the problem to start with, Geithner, Summers and company, 11 years ago.
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
Monday, March 9, 2009
CATASTROPHICALLY CRUISING TO OBLIVION.
On March 09, 2009, Paul Krugman wrote an editorial in the New York Times, "Behind The Curve". I agree wholeheartedly with what he wrote, and complemented it with the following comment that the New York Times was kind enough to publish:
***
The fierce recession of 1982 was the consequence of extremely high interest rates deliberately inflicted by Fed Chief Paul Volcker to break the back of inflation. The short term interest rates were brought as high as 23%. The recession of 1982 was an act of will.
This recession is different. It is structural, the result of an erroneous philosophy of civilization. Its causes are much deeper than those of the depression of the 1930s (which was just a big bust after a big boom, politically mismanaged, spiked with a trade war for good measure).
The present recession follows from decades of misallocations of economic efforts, the decision by Clinton-Rubin-Summers-Geithner-Greenspan to found the economy on hedge funds and private equity, and the total disdain for an energy efficient economy in the same direction as Europe. The median salary has been going down for 11 years, which means that this depression has seen already 11 summers.
By unit of GDP, the USA emits more than three times as much CO2 than France: as Rubin and Summers and Geithner were building giant monopolistic banks full of themselves and their friends, the real infrastructure was left to die. Meanwhile the countries of the EU forced energy prices way high inside Europe to force their economies to become ever more energy efficient. When the world economic boom brought energy prices too high, weakened by years of useless, Orwellian war, the completely inefficient USA broke down.
Obama is facing an utter catastrophe. But, in a NYT interview on March 6, he informs us that he uses television to watch basketball. I guess it's more lively than the utter destruction out there.
Then Obama goes to see Summers, who orchestrated the Credit Default Swaps in 1998. Summers has got to be happy: everyday that goes by, more taxpayer money is sent to the counterparts of the few giant institutions who lent all the money to the hedge funds, private equity, etc. So the wealthy people Summers love are getting relatively richer everyday (while, and because most of the People become poorer). Tomorrow the world will be theirs even more than it was yesterday: the dream goes on.
These are not ranting charges; Obama did not reinstate various short sale rules put in to stop the Great Depression of the 1930s, so his friends in the hedge funds make a killing destroying the stock market investments that constitute most of the retirements dozen of millions of US citizens have. The same friendly hedge fund managers enjoy their maximum 15% tax rate. Indeed, as Obama insists, he is "not socialist". is there an adjective for "hedge-fundist"?
Obama is facing catastrophe, but he does not look at the right indicators, or he cannot read them: the unemployment rate is a NON LINEAR curve. One can just look at it, and sees this: it's clearly a quadratic curve, or an exponential.
Obama does not understand what this means: he knows basketball and law. The exponential function has not been taught to him. He has proably never met a differential equation in his life. This non linear graph, which is totally obvious, means that the catastrophe is feeding on itself, its rate of increase is proportional to how big it already is. The real unemployment rate is already 17% (and even though. most people in the USA need some sort of employment to get health care, so people will accept whatever job in the USA, differently from, say, France, where they get health care, no matter what).
At the present rate of augmentation, by September, the unemployment rate should be above 13% (it's 8.1% now, higher than France). The speed, and self feeding of the disaster is such that, by September, Obama maybe facing 25% real unemployment, or more (the USA jumped in a month from 14% to 17% in real unemployment, and from 7% to 8.1% in the short term unemployment measure, U-3).
Interestingly the real stimulus in the USA is arguably of the same relative size as the French stimulus (although France just entered recession, and although France has mandated, very strong automatic economic stabilizers that kick in when the economy goes down, because of huge spending on social services).
There are many things that Obama could have put in a real trillion dollars stimulus: rail is an example. Light and high speed: there is a huge need for both in their electric version(very efficient; rail could save the car companies). Another huge need is to go to a closed nuclear cycle (like France, and now Japan, the UK, Germany). It's not a question of liking nuclear or not; the open nuclear cycle now used in the USA is an ecological monstrosity, and an enormous waste.
Soon Obama will have sent all the money to his hedge funds friends, and there will be no more money, and then what?
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
(I just wrote on my site an essay on a new method to better avoid catastrophes, that rolls over Descartes' "Cartesian method". Obama would be well inspired to follow it!)
— Patrice Ayme, Hautes Alpes
RecommendedRecommended by 66 Readers
***
The fierce recession of 1982 was the consequence of extremely high interest rates deliberately inflicted by Fed Chief Paul Volcker to break the back of inflation. The short term interest rates were brought as high as 23%. The recession of 1982 was an act of will.
This recession is different. It is structural, the result of an erroneous philosophy of civilization. Its causes are much deeper than those of the depression of the 1930s (which was just a big bust after a big boom, politically mismanaged, spiked with a trade war for good measure).
The present recession follows from decades of misallocations of economic efforts, the decision by Clinton-Rubin-Summers-Geithner-Greenspan to found the economy on hedge funds and private equity, and the total disdain for an energy efficient economy in the same direction as Europe. The median salary has been going down for 11 years, which means that this depression has seen already 11 summers.
By unit of GDP, the USA emits more than three times as much CO2 than France: as Rubin and Summers and Geithner were building giant monopolistic banks full of themselves and their friends, the real infrastructure was left to die. Meanwhile the countries of the EU forced energy prices way high inside Europe to force their economies to become ever more energy efficient. When the world economic boom brought energy prices too high, weakened by years of useless, Orwellian war, the completely inefficient USA broke down.
Obama is facing an utter catastrophe. But, in a NYT interview on March 6, he informs us that he uses television to watch basketball. I guess it's more lively than the utter destruction out there.
Then Obama goes to see Summers, who orchestrated the Credit Default Swaps in 1998. Summers has got to be happy: everyday that goes by, more taxpayer money is sent to the counterparts of the few giant institutions who lent all the money to the hedge funds, private equity, etc. So the wealthy people Summers love are getting relatively richer everyday (while, and because most of the People become poorer). Tomorrow the world will be theirs even more than it was yesterday: the dream goes on.
These are not ranting charges; Obama did not reinstate various short sale rules put in to stop the Great Depression of the 1930s, so his friends in the hedge funds make a killing destroying the stock market investments that constitute most of the retirements dozen of millions of US citizens have. The same friendly hedge fund managers enjoy their maximum 15% tax rate. Indeed, as Obama insists, he is "not socialist". is there an adjective for "hedge-fundist"?
Obama is facing catastrophe, but he does not look at the right indicators, or he cannot read them: the unemployment rate is a NON LINEAR curve. One can just look at it, and sees this: it's clearly a quadratic curve, or an exponential.
Obama does not understand what this means: he knows basketball and law. The exponential function has not been taught to him. He has proably never met a differential equation in his life. This non linear graph, which is totally obvious, means that the catastrophe is feeding on itself, its rate of increase is proportional to how big it already is. The real unemployment rate is already 17% (and even though. most people in the USA need some sort of employment to get health care, so people will accept whatever job in the USA, differently from, say, France, where they get health care, no matter what).
At the present rate of augmentation, by September, the unemployment rate should be above 13% (it's 8.1% now, higher than France). The speed, and self feeding of the disaster is such that, by September, Obama maybe facing 25% real unemployment, or more (the USA jumped in a month from 14% to 17% in real unemployment, and from 7% to 8.1% in the short term unemployment measure, U-3).
Interestingly the real stimulus in the USA is arguably of the same relative size as the French stimulus (although France just entered recession, and although France has mandated, very strong automatic economic stabilizers that kick in when the economy goes down, because of huge spending on social services).
There are many things that Obama could have put in a real trillion dollars stimulus: rail is an example. Light and high speed: there is a huge need for both in their electric version(very efficient; rail could save the car companies). Another huge need is to go to a closed nuclear cycle (like France, and now Japan, the UK, Germany). It's not a question of liking nuclear or not; the open nuclear cycle now used in the USA is an ecological monstrosity, and an enormous waste.
Soon Obama will have sent all the money to his hedge funds friends, and there will be no more money, and then what?
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
(I just wrote on my site an essay on a new method to better avoid catastrophes, that rolls over Descartes' "Cartesian method". Obama would be well inspired to follow it!)
— Patrice Ayme, Hautes Alpes
RecommendedRecommended by 66 Readers
Friday, March 6, 2009
WHY THE BIG DITHER.
WHEN FRIENDSHIP TRUMPS WORLD PEACE.
The following was posted in New York Times, March 6, 2009. It is my comment on Krugman's "The Big Dither", his editorial in the NYT the same day. To understand my post, it is important to quote Krugman extensively: "When it comes to dealing with banks, the Obama administration is dithering. And the result could be an economy that sputters along for a very long time... Last month, in his big speech to Congress, President Obama argued for bold steps to fix America’s dysfunctional banks. “While the cost of action will be great,” he declared, “I can assure you that the cost of inaction will be far greater, for it could result in an economy that sputters along for not months or years, but perhaps a decade.”
Many analysts agree. But among people I talk to there’s a growing sense of frustration, even panic, over Mr. Obama’s failure to match his words with deeds. The reality is that when it comes to dealing with the banks, the Obama administration is dithering. Policy is stuck in a holding pattern.
Here’s how the pattern works: first, administration officials, usually speaking off the record, float a plan for rescuing the banks in the press. This trial balloon is quickly shot down by informed commentators.
Then, a few weeks later, the administration floats a new plan. This plan is, however, just a thinly disguised version of the previous plan, a fact quickly realized by all concerned. And the cycle starts again." Krugman then hits the nail: "Why do officials keep offering plans that nobody else finds credible?" Well, here is my answer. It's highly unpleasant, but sometimes, so is reality.
***
Where does the tremendous leverage of hedge funds come from? Very simple, from the bank holding companies. AIG also provided coverage for Summers' "Credit Default Swaps", with very insufficient provisions, in other words, tremendous leverage.
Now, at some point the total "value" of derivatives was above 600 trillion dollars (yes, 600,000 billion dollars). Is this what Bernanke, Summers and Geithner and company want to recover with taxpayer's money? Why? Because their friends would be sad otherwise? They could not buy islands (like Paulson) or jet planes? Summers and his cohort are destroying the economy of the USA, and that of the world, and risking a third world war because their friends are unwilling to relinquishing their dishonestly earned powers?
The fundamental civilizing mission of a bank is to save people money, and, using it, provide credit. Doing so it creates money (because it lends ten times more than its capital). All these activities that Bernanke, Summers and Geithner are trying to save have nothing to do with the civilizing, fiduciary mission of a bank.
All this for what, fundamentally constituted unregulated, across state lines betting with the public's money? And which is turning now, under our unbelieving eyes, as the greatest transfer of riches from the public to the wealthiest in the history of mankind? This is the greatest heist that ever was, and all Obama can say to justify it is that the USA has "different cultures and traditions". Yes, like what? Slavery and stealing all the land of the Native Americans, so we may as well keep on keeping on? Except now the mighty may as well enslave and plunder nearly everybody?
Obama is so little informed that he suggested, at some point that, in a "month or two" the "troubled assets" will have recovered. What he should have said was "in a decade or two". Well, civilization does not have a decade or two. As Benjamin Netanyahu just said, he became prime minister at 46, "young in age and young in experience", without having been in government before this (although he was US ambassador), and "I would not recommend this to anyone".
What we are facing is tremendous inexperience, and a hubristic inability to face reality. Reality is that the four largest banks in the USA have two-third of the market, and have to be yanked from the derivatives, their bad management, and the plutocracy, and then recapitalized (with the people money, but a few hundred billions of recapitalization would solve the problem completely and definitively). Reality is that the day after his election, Obama went to work at a hedge fund. OK, maybe just hanging out with old friends.
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
The following was posted in New York Times, March 6, 2009. It is my comment on Krugman's "The Big Dither", his editorial in the NYT the same day. To understand my post, it is important to quote Krugman extensively: "When it comes to dealing with banks, the Obama administration is dithering. And the result could be an economy that sputters along for a very long time... Last month, in his big speech to Congress, President Obama argued for bold steps to fix America’s dysfunctional banks. “While the cost of action will be great,” he declared, “I can assure you that the cost of inaction will be far greater, for it could result in an economy that sputters along for not months or years, but perhaps a decade.”
Many analysts agree. But among people I talk to there’s a growing sense of frustration, even panic, over Mr. Obama’s failure to match his words with deeds. The reality is that when it comes to dealing with the banks, the Obama administration is dithering. Policy is stuck in a holding pattern.
Here’s how the pattern works: first, administration officials, usually speaking off the record, float a plan for rescuing the banks in the press. This trial balloon is quickly shot down by informed commentators.
Then, a few weeks later, the administration floats a new plan. This plan is, however, just a thinly disguised version of the previous plan, a fact quickly realized by all concerned. And the cycle starts again." Krugman then hits the nail: "Why do officials keep offering plans that nobody else finds credible?" Well, here is my answer. It's highly unpleasant, but sometimes, so is reality.
***
Where does the tremendous leverage of hedge funds come from? Very simple, from the bank holding companies. AIG also provided coverage for Summers' "Credit Default Swaps", with very insufficient provisions, in other words, tremendous leverage.
Now, at some point the total "value" of derivatives was above 600 trillion dollars (yes, 600,000 billion dollars). Is this what Bernanke, Summers and Geithner and company want to recover with taxpayer's money? Why? Because their friends would be sad otherwise? They could not buy islands (like Paulson) or jet planes? Summers and his cohort are destroying the economy of the USA, and that of the world, and risking a third world war because their friends are unwilling to relinquishing their dishonestly earned powers?
The fundamental civilizing mission of a bank is to save people money, and, using it, provide credit. Doing so it creates money (because it lends ten times more than its capital). All these activities that Bernanke, Summers and Geithner are trying to save have nothing to do with the civilizing, fiduciary mission of a bank.
All this for what, fundamentally constituted unregulated, across state lines betting with the public's money? And which is turning now, under our unbelieving eyes, as the greatest transfer of riches from the public to the wealthiest in the history of mankind? This is the greatest heist that ever was, and all Obama can say to justify it is that the USA has "different cultures and traditions". Yes, like what? Slavery and stealing all the land of the Native Americans, so we may as well keep on keeping on? Except now the mighty may as well enslave and plunder nearly everybody?
Obama is so little informed that he suggested, at some point that, in a "month or two" the "troubled assets" will have recovered. What he should have said was "in a decade or two". Well, civilization does not have a decade or two. As Benjamin Netanyahu just said, he became prime minister at 46, "young in age and young in experience", without having been in government before this (although he was US ambassador), and "I would not recommend this to anyone".
What we are facing is tremendous inexperience, and a hubristic inability to face reality. Reality is that the four largest banks in the USA have two-third of the market, and have to be yanked from the derivatives, their bad management, and the plutocracy, and then recapitalized (with the people money, but a few hundred billions of recapitalization would solve the problem completely and definitively). Reality is that the day after his election, Obama went to work at a hedge fund. OK, maybe just hanging out with old friends.
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
Thursday, March 5, 2009
DESPERATELY FINDING FAULT WITH FRANCE
THE PLUTOCRACY OF THE USA MANIPULATES THE PEOPLE OF THE USA WITH LIES, BY BRANDISHING FRANCE AS AN OMINOUS FATE.
In an editorial in the New York Times, "One France Is Enough", Roger Cohen opines that: "President Obama, in his restorative counterrevolution, must be careful to steer clear of his French temptation." (March 5, 2009). Indeed he claims that: "Nobody in their right mind would give up the manifold sensual, aesthetic and gastronomic pleasures offered by French savoir-vivre for the unrelenting battlefield of American ambition were it not for one thing: possibility."
Cohen insists: "Americans, at least in their imaginations, have always lived at the new frontier; French frontiers have not shifted much in centuries."
This sort of thinking is rampant in the USA. It is part of a relentless droning by the opinion makers of the USA: France is continually brandished as if she were an ominous fate. (The following was published in the New York Times, electronic edition, March 4, 2009.)
***
To claim that Obama is in danger of turning the USA into France is in direct opposition with the observed facts.
If Obama wanted to do this he would have signed two executive orders on the day he became president:
1) Hedge Fund and Private Equity managers would have been taxed at the maximal tax bracket, instead of the outrageous 15% they enjoy now.
2) Citigroup and Bank of America would have been nationalized, their management fired, and they would have been yanked from their holding companies and the derivatives and hedged funds. They would have been recapitalized, and ordered to extend credit as usual.
Obama did not do any such thing. I hoped he would, but he did not. He did quite the opposite. Actually Obama is clinging to the notion of privacy to the point of ruining the world economy. Baker, Greenspan and Graham, all right wing statesmen, have begged him to nationalize the four giant banks that are blocking the world economy. But Obama clings to his hedge funds managers like a little one to mummy.
The credit system is still frozen, and the world economy is in free fall. Obama is advised by Larry Summers, the greatest advocate of Credit Default Swaps, Credit Default Swaps have destroyed the world financial system. Germans and French want to regulate them. Summers wanted the Credit Default Swaps free, so they were set free, and destroyed the world. Summers did that in 1998, when he was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury.
To claim that there is "possibility" in the USA and much less in France is disjoint from the facts. It cultivates anti-French bias. Perhaps companies get created and destroyed in the USA, but so it is in France. Because the USA is bigger, and because of less social legislation, a company such as Wall Mart can grow faster than its French competitor, Carrefour (which is nearly as big, but which allows union membership).
When looking at the history of inventions, art and ideas, France arguably did much more than the USA, even in recent times. Accusations that are too off base, smacks of racism, and the last thing the USA needs right now, is a bigger serving of hubris, while taxing Obama of being French.
Obama is so completely American, it's not even funny. Obama is affected by exaggerated claims of American unicity, a form of nationalism that has blinded the USA in recent decades.
Obama goes around saying that "only in the USA is my story possible". That is literally true, but only in the sense that only in the USA there was so much racism based on skin color, that, a little while ago, he would have been a slave or a janitor, but he is president. But it is not because suddenly the USA is less racist, that the USA has invented antiracism. The Roman empire had Hispanic, Gallic, African, and Arab emperors. Great Britain and France long ago already had Jews leading their governments and/or states (Disraeli, Mac Mahon, Blum). The present French president is the son of a foreigner.
Obama claimed that "the USA invented the Internet" (physicists at CERN in Geneva have a different idea). Obama also claimed that "the USA invented the automobile". As someone who has long known him quipped: "that's why it has a French name". But that is the point entirely: Americans are trained not to think. It has a French name, therefore the USA invented it. This is neo-American logic: I don't think, therefore I am. Saddam killed his own people, as Bush loved to say, therefore I kill Iraqis too. Now Obama sends 17,000 soldiers to kill and get killed in Afghanistan, without a plan, he admits, but Bush wanted to send twice more, so it's "bipartisan": half and half. American logic in wonderland, very neo-American.
In truth the first automobile was by Cugnot, a Frenchman, in 1769, as recognized by everybody, including the British Automobile Association. These first automobiles were steam powered. The internal combustion engine was invented by a Swiss around 1800, and ran on hydrogen (!). A whole slew of European inventors perfected it during the nineteenth century. The first car manufacturers in the world were French: Panhard & Levassor (1889) and Peugeot (1891). But lying about technology make the USA feel good about itself, it creates a sense of national unity. Example of an oft told lie: "the USA invented the transistor (1948)". In truth Germans had invented the first transistors (using Germanium as semi conductor), 15 years earlier.
In general the most fundamental science and technology has been invented in Europe, not in the USA. The USA has not produced thinkers of the caliber of Lamarck, Hugo, Darwin, Nietzsche, Einstein, Poincare', Godel, De Broglie, Dirac, etc. Civilizational class thinking does not blossom in the USA. When one looks at the present USA financial crisis, the greatest heist in the world, and the incapacity of "We The People of the USA" to stop the non sense, while patriotically sending ever more money to those who stole all the money, one is ready to change the meaning of the USA acronym from United States of America into "United Stupid of America".
There again, Obama came up with that very American tendency of making fun at the expense of foreigners. Asked why he did not nationalize the banks, he replied: "Sweden had like five banks", and he laughed. First, of course, it's false, it's a lie meant to create a diversion, sugar coated with a joke: "five banks, ha ha ha". Foreigners living in the USA are often submitted to this sort of demeaning jokes. They happen when American racism is relaxing, and in need of a diversion. In truth, the USA presently has four bank holding companies that are in huge trouble and, together, make two-thirds of the USA market. Thus the USA has four banks, ha ha ha.
The immensely catastrophic socioeconomic system that is devouring the USA needs no encouragement. The usual trick of the US plutocracy is to claim that France is a disaster for creativity, riches, etc. And then to claim that any socioeconomic progress in the USA smacks of France, thus is unpatriotic. In truth, France is richer per capita, has better health care, better high technology in roughly all dimensions, has higher productivity per hour, and so on. What the USA has that France does not have, is the wealthiest class in power, having reduced the middle class to crumbs. To bash foreigners to justify the increasing backwardness of the USA is getting a bit old.
I will try to put more details on my site(s).
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
In an editorial in the New York Times, "One France Is Enough", Roger Cohen opines that: "President Obama, in his restorative counterrevolution, must be careful to steer clear of his French temptation." (March 5, 2009). Indeed he claims that: "Nobody in their right mind would give up the manifold sensual, aesthetic and gastronomic pleasures offered by French savoir-vivre for the unrelenting battlefield of American ambition were it not for one thing: possibility."
Cohen insists: "Americans, at least in their imaginations, have always lived at the new frontier; French frontiers have not shifted much in centuries."
This sort of thinking is rampant in the USA. It is part of a relentless droning by the opinion makers of the USA: France is continually brandished as if she were an ominous fate. (The following was published in the New York Times, electronic edition, March 4, 2009.)
***
To claim that Obama is in danger of turning the USA into France is in direct opposition with the observed facts.
If Obama wanted to do this he would have signed two executive orders on the day he became president:
1) Hedge Fund and Private Equity managers would have been taxed at the maximal tax bracket, instead of the outrageous 15% they enjoy now.
2) Citigroup and Bank of America would have been nationalized, their management fired, and they would have been yanked from their holding companies and the derivatives and hedged funds. They would have been recapitalized, and ordered to extend credit as usual.
Obama did not do any such thing. I hoped he would, but he did not. He did quite the opposite. Actually Obama is clinging to the notion of privacy to the point of ruining the world economy. Baker, Greenspan and Graham, all right wing statesmen, have begged him to nationalize the four giant banks that are blocking the world economy. But Obama clings to his hedge funds managers like a little one to mummy.
The credit system is still frozen, and the world economy is in free fall. Obama is advised by Larry Summers, the greatest advocate of Credit Default Swaps, Credit Default Swaps have destroyed the world financial system. Germans and French want to regulate them. Summers wanted the Credit Default Swaps free, so they were set free, and destroyed the world. Summers did that in 1998, when he was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury.
To claim that there is "possibility" in the USA and much less in France is disjoint from the facts. It cultivates anti-French bias. Perhaps companies get created and destroyed in the USA, but so it is in France. Because the USA is bigger, and because of less social legislation, a company such as Wall Mart can grow faster than its French competitor, Carrefour (which is nearly as big, but which allows union membership).
When looking at the history of inventions, art and ideas, France arguably did much more than the USA, even in recent times. Accusations that are too off base, smacks of racism, and the last thing the USA needs right now, is a bigger serving of hubris, while taxing Obama of being French.
Obama is so completely American, it's not even funny. Obama is affected by exaggerated claims of American unicity, a form of nationalism that has blinded the USA in recent decades.
Obama goes around saying that "only in the USA is my story possible". That is literally true, but only in the sense that only in the USA there was so much racism based on skin color, that, a little while ago, he would have been a slave or a janitor, but he is president. But it is not because suddenly the USA is less racist, that the USA has invented antiracism. The Roman empire had Hispanic, Gallic, African, and Arab emperors. Great Britain and France long ago already had Jews leading their governments and/or states (Disraeli, Mac Mahon, Blum). The present French president is the son of a foreigner.
Obama claimed that "the USA invented the Internet" (physicists at CERN in Geneva have a different idea). Obama also claimed that "the USA invented the automobile". As someone who has long known him quipped: "that's why it has a French name". But that is the point entirely: Americans are trained not to think. It has a French name, therefore the USA invented it. This is neo-American logic: I don't think, therefore I am. Saddam killed his own people, as Bush loved to say, therefore I kill Iraqis too. Now Obama sends 17,000 soldiers to kill and get killed in Afghanistan, without a plan, he admits, but Bush wanted to send twice more, so it's "bipartisan": half and half. American logic in wonderland, very neo-American.
In truth the first automobile was by Cugnot, a Frenchman, in 1769, as recognized by everybody, including the British Automobile Association. These first automobiles were steam powered. The internal combustion engine was invented by a Swiss around 1800, and ran on hydrogen (!). A whole slew of European inventors perfected it during the nineteenth century. The first car manufacturers in the world were French: Panhard & Levassor (1889) and Peugeot (1891). But lying about technology make the USA feel good about itself, it creates a sense of national unity. Example of an oft told lie: "the USA invented the transistor (1948)". In truth Germans had invented the first transistors (using Germanium as semi conductor), 15 years earlier.
In general the most fundamental science and technology has been invented in Europe, not in the USA. The USA has not produced thinkers of the caliber of Lamarck, Hugo, Darwin, Nietzsche, Einstein, Poincare', Godel, De Broglie, Dirac, etc. Civilizational class thinking does not blossom in the USA. When one looks at the present USA financial crisis, the greatest heist in the world, and the incapacity of "We The People of the USA" to stop the non sense, while patriotically sending ever more money to those who stole all the money, one is ready to change the meaning of the USA acronym from United States of America into "United Stupid of America".
There again, Obama came up with that very American tendency of making fun at the expense of foreigners. Asked why he did not nationalize the banks, he replied: "Sweden had like five banks", and he laughed. First, of course, it's false, it's a lie meant to create a diversion, sugar coated with a joke: "five banks, ha ha ha". Foreigners living in the USA are often submitted to this sort of demeaning jokes. They happen when American racism is relaxing, and in need of a diversion. In truth, the USA presently has four bank holding companies that are in huge trouble and, together, make two-thirds of the USA market. Thus the USA has four banks, ha ha ha.
The immensely catastrophic socioeconomic system that is devouring the USA needs no encouragement. The usual trick of the US plutocracy is to claim that France is a disaster for creativity, riches, etc. And then to claim that any socioeconomic progress in the USA smacks of France, thus is unpatriotic. In truth, France is richer per capita, has better health care, better high technology in roughly all dimensions, has higher productivity per hour, and so on. What the USA has that France does not have, is the wealthiest class in power, having reduced the middle class to crumbs. To bash foreigners to justify the increasing backwardness of the USA is getting a bit old.
I will try to put more details on my site(s).
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
Monday, March 2, 2009
GLOBAL WARMING VERSUS GLOBAL HEATING.
"Global warming", "climate change" nice subtleties, too subtle by several orders of magnitude. Nice does not make right. I propose GLOBAL HEATING instead.
I am not confusing warming and heating. Verily, warming is something innocent that happens by the fire, as the gentle flames caress the glowing logs, and one feels cuddly below the nice greenhouse blanket. So far planetary warmth has gone up by less than one degree over the 3,000 year baseline. So it's all very nice. It seems indeed possible that, as some have suggested, anthropogenic Neolithic methane production prevented a fall into a glaciation.
But it is going to change. It's going to be 4 degrees Celsius by 2099. Some models have that by 2050. I personally believe that we are one big methane belching away, from a multi-degree HEATING that could occur within a few years. It will not be nice. Most of the planet would be devastated (See New Scientist of early March 2009).
Semantics matter. Warming is a change, heating a death threat. It's the later we are facing.
Now, of course, as I explained a few years ago, the Equipartition of Energy Theorem says that heating will be roughly only one-third of the problem. Great tragic and dramatic changes will engulf the planet, such as changed currents, droughts, desertification, great storms, sea level rise... Pretty soon only the polar areas will be inhabitable.
Patrice Ayme
I am not confusing warming and heating. Verily, warming is something innocent that happens by the fire, as the gentle flames caress the glowing logs, and one feels cuddly below the nice greenhouse blanket. So far planetary warmth has gone up by less than one degree over the 3,000 year baseline. So it's all very nice. It seems indeed possible that, as some have suggested, anthropogenic Neolithic methane production prevented a fall into a glaciation.
But it is going to change. It's going to be 4 degrees Celsius by 2099. Some models have that by 2050. I personally believe that we are one big methane belching away, from a multi-degree HEATING that could occur within a few years. It will not be nice. Most of the planet would be devastated (See New Scientist of early March 2009).
Semantics matter. Warming is a change, heating a death threat. It's the later we are facing.
Now, of course, as I explained a few years ago, the Equipartition of Energy Theorem says that heating will be roughly only one-third of the problem. Great tragic and dramatic changes will engulf the planet, such as changed currents, droughts, desertification, great storms, sea level rise... Pretty soon only the polar areas will be inhabitable.
Patrice Ayme
CREDIT DEFAULT SUMMERS
(A version of the following was kindly posted by the New York Times Marc 1, 2009, as one of F. Rich's editorial comments. I appreciate the change with a few years ago, when only the bellicose plutocratic propaganda was allowed to make itself known.)
***
PLUTOCRACY UNCHAINED, AN ONGOING NIGHTMARE:
Larry Summers is Obama's main economic adviser. Larry Summers, as assistant Treasury Secretary under Clinton, came out in 1998 against regulating Credit Default Swaps (CDS). He opposed regulation with extreme violence. Credit Default Swaps are insurance promises against the default of some bond insurer themselves issued in a non regulated way by financial entities. They are traded as if they represented something of value. In truth they have no value whatsoever, because there is no guarantee that those who claim that they would make good on the insurance could do so, since it's all unregulated and they have no provisions (thanks to Jabba the Hut, who did not want them regulated; please excuse the poetry). At some point the total market of CDS was 64 trillions (64,000 billions). As the housing market collapsed, so did the CDS. The banks have got to own trillions of them.
So now we are all chickens in the house, guarded by the fox, Summers and his assistant, Geithner, and the assistant of Geithner, from Goldman-Sachs. The foxes are in charge, and the world economy is exploding, just as a hen house explodes in a frenzy of blood and feathers when the foxes come inside. This is a terrible change, and the collapse of the world economy is unparalleled in its speed and ferocity (even relative to the 1930s). Something has to be done. What has to be done is very simple: the bank basic functions have to be disconnected from the bank holding companies and all the "bad assets", namely mostly those Credit Default Summers. Then the basic banks left by this purification by nationalization could extent enormous credit, and be sold again (simple computation shows that, for less than the money injected in AIG, one could flood the economy with at least four trillion dollars of credit, by purifying Citi and B of A). But they will not do it.
Why do Summers, Rubin and their Geithner want taxpayers to pay for CDS? Well, why not? If they can get away with it, is it not their definition of good?
Meanwhile, armed with the suspension of the short sale rule and 15% tax rates, the friends of the worthy trio above, and their class invested in hedge funds keep on selling short and making huge profits from the drop of the markets and the 401ks. Hedge funds are a form of investment exclusively for the richest, by law, the law of the land, the law of the rich, of course.
No detailed description was made on who profited from what exactly as hundreds of billions of taxpayers dollars was distributed to the world's richest people. Obama seems to have little understanding of the entire subject. He repeats Summers' talking points (example: 'Sweden is a small country, hahaha"). To save the world economy there is no time, and RICO, The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act should be evoked. It is made for this sort of situation (bankruptcy, fraud, obstruction of justice, etc.) and looks for "patterns of behavior", not specific acts.
Those who let the world economic system crash will end with blood on their hands. Tragic the culpability they will bear.
***
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
***
PLUTOCRACY UNCHAINED, AN ONGOING NIGHTMARE:
Larry Summers is Obama's main economic adviser. Larry Summers, as assistant Treasury Secretary under Clinton, came out in 1998 against regulating Credit Default Swaps (CDS). He opposed regulation with extreme violence. Credit Default Swaps are insurance promises against the default of some bond insurer themselves issued in a non regulated way by financial entities. They are traded as if they represented something of value. In truth they have no value whatsoever, because there is no guarantee that those who claim that they would make good on the insurance could do so, since it's all unregulated and they have no provisions (thanks to Jabba the Hut, who did not want them regulated; please excuse the poetry). At some point the total market of CDS was 64 trillions (64,000 billions). As the housing market collapsed, so did the CDS. The banks have got to own trillions of them.
So now we are all chickens in the house, guarded by the fox, Summers and his assistant, Geithner, and the assistant of Geithner, from Goldman-Sachs. The foxes are in charge, and the world economy is exploding, just as a hen house explodes in a frenzy of blood and feathers when the foxes come inside. This is a terrible change, and the collapse of the world economy is unparalleled in its speed and ferocity (even relative to the 1930s). Something has to be done. What has to be done is very simple: the bank basic functions have to be disconnected from the bank holding companies and all the "bad assets", namely mostly those Credit Default Summers. Then the basic banks left by this purification by nationalization could extent enormous credit, and be sold again (simple computation shows that, for less than the money injected in AIG, one could flood the economy with at least four trillion dollars of credit, by purifying Citi and B of A). But they will not do it.
Why do Summers, Rubin and their Geithner want taxpayers to pay for CDS? Well, why not? If they can get away with it, is it not their definition of good?
Meanwhile, armed with the suspension of the short sale rule and 15% tax rates, the friends of the worthy trio above, and their class invested in hedge funds keep on selling short and making huge profits from the drop of the markets and the 401ks. Hedge funds are a form of investment exclusively for the richest, by law, the law of the land, the law of the rich, of course.
No detailed description was made on who profited from what exactly as hundreds of billions of taxpayers dollars was distributed to the world's richest people. Obama seems to have little understanding of the entire subject. He repeats Summers' talking points (example: 'Sweden is a small country, hahaha"). To save the world economy there is no time, and RICO, The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act should be evoked. It is made for this sort of situation (bankruptcy, fraud, obstruction of justice, etc.) and looks for "patterns of behavior", not specific acts.
Those who let the world economic system crash will end with blood on their hands. Tragic the culpability they will bear.
***
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
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