vs.
Hello Fellow Economic Reformers:
Welcome to the new recipients of this newsletter! Some of you signed up for a followup at the recent Earth Days and Left Forum events and I will have a more personal outreach for you next month. Meanwhile, old and new readers of this irregular newsletter - now numbering 904 recipients - I hope you will find this addition useful and helpful. As always, let me know if you wish to be removed from the list.
We
had a productive, albeit business-like, meeting of Georgist reform
group Common Ground-NYC a few weeks ago, covering the recent elections,
activities, finances, future plans, etc. I'm happy to
announce that the current administration has
been re-elected for another year by 19 out of 21
votes, with 2 abstaining; that's me
as president and Rita Rowan as Treasurer.
Most of the recipients of this newsletter are interested in larger economic issues, however, so I'll move on. Those who are interested in more details about our local NYC group can join the Economic Reform group and read Common Ground-NYC Docs here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EconomicReform/files/.
Lurching Towards a One World Government?
I'm still waiting to see if the pen is mightier than the sword, but here's the rest of the article on Op Ed News:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Instant-solution-to-th-by-Scott-Baker-120601-202.html
and here on Huffington Post:
The Instant Solution to the New Depression: Debt-free Money
click here
Now, I am no Victoria Grant, but from the Shameless plug Department:
I am also getting on alternate media - public access TV in this case :
http://www.decentlife.com/TalkShow.html or here: http://www.facebook.com/DecentLife4All
where I spent half an hour talking to host Lou Puliafito about Georgism/Geoism, Greenbacking, and State Banking. It's hard to fit all that into 25 minutes, but I tried! I hope to be invited back, maybe next month.
Also worthy of note, Bill Still's speech to the Public Banking Institute April 27-28 was posted by PBI. Pay particular attention to the mention of Cliff Johnson's lawsuit against the Treasury (which I am advising upon). Still spends a couple of minutes on this at the 20-minute mark because it will be a game-changer if it succeeds:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f68sOuMkhsU&feature=relmfu
Thanks for the shout-out, Bill!
(My new article about the Public Banking Institute's first annual conference is here:
The Johnson vs. Geithner lawsuit that would expose the lie that Federal Reserve Notes are equivalent to United States Notes and coins, continues to move forward, haltingly, while the government tries to dismiss it on technical grounds of lack of standing and other boilerplate rejoinders - anything to avoid answering the complaint itself. The next court hearing will be on June 21.
A similar, if less specifically focused Sovereign Money lawsuit, has been brought in Canada:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ar_WRqoa4kM
Speaking of alternate money, a new LETS alternate money system is spreading in Euro-deprived Greece (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17686384). Perhaps government is so hopelessly addicted to private money creation that we will all have to initiate our own money systems! LETS are proof that more money is needed in the real economy, where people will work for it and spend it. We do not have a shortage of jobs. We do not have a shortage of workers. We have a shortage of money. There is something wrong with this equation: # of jobs + # of workers + Amt. of money = Economic Health. And yet, the TBTF banks just keep getting more and more money. Is it doing any good, or....
The latest Bank Derivatives Activities Report on the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency site has some interesting info. From the 4th qtr. Bank Derivatives Activities rpt: "The notional amount of derivatives contracts held by insured U.S. commercial banks in the fourth quarter fell by $17.2 trillion (6.9%) to $230.8 trillion from the third quarter." JP Morgan now has "only" $70 Trillion in derivatives - table 1 - higher than any other bank, but only $1.8 trillion in total assets (table 3) *IF* it's a good day and someone is buying. No one but the Fed was buying in the last meltdown, but that was for far less assets.
OK, so the total is headed down, but in a chart later on (pg. 17), JP has some 250% exposure as a "Percentage of Total Credit Exposure to Risk Based Capital." Only Goldman has a higher risk ( 800% ) profile.*
"The European Stabilization Mechanism,
Brown goes on to quote from a recent youtube video, first out in German, that lists the articles of the "treaty" (treaty with who?) that would give the ESM complete power and immunity from everything. The coup will be complete if this thing passes in July, 2012, which is expected to happen. On this side of the pond, the story is almost completely ignored in the MSM. Perhaps they'll ignore it when it happens here too; by then it may be too late anyway.
Ellen Brown gets even further ahead of the curve in a new article here:
Greece and the Euro: Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover in which she prescribes 5 ways (not 50) for Greece to end its self-destructive downward spiral. Greece has now seen its economy shrink by a depression-level 16%, with no end in sight. Brown's prescriptions include:
1. The Open Marriage: Return to the Drachma Without Abandoning the Euro
2. Separate Bank Accounts: Fire Up the Printing Presses at the Greek Central Bank
3. Divorce: Just Walk Away
4. Spousal Support: The Public Bank Option
5. The Dowry: Impose a Financial Transaction Tax
Brown proves you don't have to be 12 years old to come up with creative, great solutions, though it helps. A future edition of this newsletter will include an article featuring a recent 5-way conversation involving a precocious tri-lingual 12-year old I am happy to know, who got Georgism almost before it was fully explained, and has some great insights besides. Stay tuned.
Perhaps what we really need to so is to get back to First Principles and find out why...
Hello Fellow Economic Reformers:
Welcome to the new recipients of this newsletter! Some of you signed up for a followup at the recent Earth Days and Left Forum events and I will have a more personal outreach for you next month. Meanwhile, old and new readers of this irregular newsletter - now numbering 904 recipients - I hope you will find this addition useful and helpful. As always, let me know if you wish to be removed from the list.
Local News for the Local Chapter
Most of the recipients of this newsletter are interested in larger economic issues, however, so I'll move on. Those who are interested in more details about our local NYC group can join the Economic Reform group and read Common Ground-NYC Docs here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EconomicReform/files/.
Lurching Towards a One World Government?
How
does Fascism start? It certainly doesn't happen because people think
they could do a little better with some other less democratic system.
It happens because the confused and desperate masses are
looking for a solution to their socio-economic problems. Perhaps they
latch onto a charismatic leader like Hitler, but this may not be
necessary. It can grow out of Corporate Fascism: click here, which originally developed under Benito Mussolini. From Wiki:
Are the problems in Europe enough to tilt the sub-continent back towards a fascist one-region government? Consider a recent Reuters article (click here):
Italian Fascism
involved a corporatist political system in which economy was
collectively managed by employers, workers and state officials by formal
mechanisms at the national level. [ 33 ]
This non-elected form of state officializing of every interest into the
state was professed to reduce the marginalization of singular interests
(as would allegedly happen by the unilateral end condition inherent in
the democratic voting process). Corporatism would instead better
recognize or 'incorporate' every divergent interest into the state
organically, according to its supporters, thus being the inspiration for
their use of the term totalitarian, perceivable to them as not meaning a coercive system but described distinctly as without coercion in the 1932 Doctrine of Fascism as thus:
When brought within the orbit of the State, Fascism recognizes the real needs which gave rise to socialism and trade unionism, giving them due weight in the guild or corporative system in which divergent interests are coordinated and harmonized in the unity of the State. [ 34 ]
and
Fascism then, was at the time, full of optimism towards the future. Too few saw the dark clouds of the coming nightmare. Does this apply again today?[The state] is not simply a mechanism which limits the sphere of the supposed liberties of the individual... Neither has the Fascist conception of authority anything in common with that of a police ridden State... Far from crushing the individual, the Fascist State multiplies his energies, just as in a regiment a soldier is not diminished but multiplied by the number of his fellow soldiers. [ 34 ]
Are the problems in Europe enough to tilt the sub-continent back towards a fascist one-region government? Consider a recent Reuters article (click here):
After falling short with her "fiscal compact" on budget
discipline, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is pressing for much
more ambitious measures, including a central authority to manage
euro area finances, and major new powers for the European
Commission, European Parliament and European Court of Justice.
She is also seeking a coordinated European approach to
reforming labour markets, social security systems and tax
policies, German officials say.
Until states agree to these steps and the unprecedented loss of sovereignty
they involve, the officials say Berlin will refuse to consider other
initiatives like joint euro zone bonds or a "banking union" with cross-border
deposit guarantees - steps Berlin says could only come in a second wave.
Note this is not just about "Monetary Union" anymore, whatever that
truly means. The "Final Solution" now includes a "European Parliament
and European Court of Justice" according to German(!) officials. Merkel
is seeking sweeping "reforms" (read: cuts for everyone but the German
banks). Ironically, but happily, German voters are starting to turn
against her in regional elections, not because they don't believe in
austerity, at least for their neighbors, anymore, but because they don't
believe in bailouts for them. This may prove her undoing,
and the undoing of the one world government
movement and back towards a decentralization of power and even regained
Monetary Sovereignty, and unraveling of the Euro. Convenient as a
single currency may be, with common fiscal and political powers, it
can't work. And with that, absent democratic control, there will be a
top-down dictatorship, led primarily by the Money Power, for which the
European Union was set up in the first place. Europe's people may have
sought union as a way to end a history of world wars, but what they're
getting is an oligarchy that will financially, and increasingly, legally ,
enslave them. It is no coincidence that the strongest players in this
come from Germany...again. Perhaps decentralization needs to get down
to another level. Perhaps people need... Alternate Money?
The world economy continues to
fall apart. The recent American job creation number - 69,000 - was so
abysmal, I was driven to write another article (OK, stop laughing now ): 
Today's payroll number -- 69,000
-- was one of the worst since the depths of the economic crisis in late
2008-early 2009. The official
unemployment rate ticked up to 8.2%, but the rate, as measured the way it was
before all the gimmicks of the 1990s and 2000s undercounted or excluded the
long-term un/underemployed, is at least
twice that. Nationally, the
inflation-adjusted wages of the bottom 80% of the country haven't seen a rise
in nearly 2 generations. Inflation
figures too, have been purposely rigged to undercount inflation. Says economist John Williams of
Shadowstats.com:
No. 438--PUBLIC COMMENT ON INFLATION
MEASUREMENT
May 15, 2012
Consumer Price Index Has Been
Reconfigured Since Early-1980s So As to Understate Inflation versus Common Experience
- CPI no longer measures the cost of maintaining a constant standard of
living.
- CPI no longer measures full inflation for out-of-pocket expenditure.
- With the misused cover of academic theory, politicians forced
significant underreporting of official inflation, so as to cut annual cost-of-living
adjustments to Social Security, etc.
- Use of the CPI to adjust retirement benefits, private income or to set
investment goals impairs the ability of retirees, income earners and investors
to stay ahead of inflation.
- Understated inflation used in estimating inflation-adjusted growth has
created the illusion of recovery in reported GDP.
Meanwhile, according to
Professor L. Randall Wray Professor of Economics and Research Director of the
Center for Full Employment and Price Stability, University of Missouri--Kansas
City, in widely published series of articles, including one
in the Huffington Post, the Fed has loaned, guaranteed or otherwise made available,
cumulatively, some $29 Trillion! Has this largesse towards the financial
sector made us better off? At
best, the Fed rescued the banks that were directly instrumental in causing the
crisis, and boosted stock prices - for now.
At best, the government stimulus stalled the economic slide into
oblivion - for now.
We are so used to hearing
"there are no easy solutions" that many people think there are no solutions at
all. This is Big Lie #1. Big Lie #2 is that we are broke and
There Is No Alternative (TINA -- thanks, Margaret Thatcher, for that false
belief) to Austerity. We can throw
Austerity as a cure for the economic crisis on the dust heap of failed
theories, says Paul
Krugman and, increasingly, other economists, mainstream and not. I have been lamb-basing the new
Austerians (a term I coined even before Krugman) for months. Greece will probably throw the
Austerians out of office later this month as well, German Chancellor Angela Merkel
is rapidly losing support, even in her homeland, as recent regional
elections have turned against her.
She is becoming increasingly isolated internationally, with her ally in
France, Sarkozy, now
booted out by socialist(!) Francois
Hollande who wants more stimulus (good), but has no idea how to pay for it
(bad).
Meanwhile, Europe's
up-and-coming basket case, Spain, has an unemployment rate of just under 25%
and a youth unemployment rate double that -- perfect "stimulus" for protests
on a daily
basis. How long until the
police -- the last line of the 1%'s defense, simply switch sides, as they did in
Egypt and much of the Middle East, and support those who they beat up
previously? This is how
revolutions succeed, a fact that has been overlooked by both the Right and the
Left, who just assume that mass protests will eventually get them what they
want. No, all successful
revolutions end with the police or military coming out in support of those who
want change -- though that does not
necessarily, or usually, mean success in the long run.
I'm still waiting to see if the pen is mightier than the sword, but here's the rest of the article on Op Ed News:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Instant-solution-to-th-by-Scott-Baker-120601-202.html
and here on Huffington Post:
The Instant Solution to the New Depression: Debt-free Money
click here
Victoria Grant is Getting it Done
12-year
old Victoria Grant's 7-minute viral video on Public Banking and Public
Money, re-filmed at the
Public Banking Institute Conference in April, has now hit a combined
total form all sources of over 2 million views. Way to go Victoria! If
you are among the decreasing number of people who have not seen it yet,
it is here on the PBI site: click here;
Now, some of you may be thinking, "Well, sure, it's easy for a photogenic 12-year old to get noticed" but in fact, just the opposite is true. How many 12-year olds do you listen to on matters of reforming the economy, or any other major societal change, for that matter? No, people are listening because Victoria's message was succinct, inspiring, and most importantly, correct. It is worth not just watching her delivery for its content, but also to learn how all of us may better deliver our message. Maybe we really don't need to "wow" people with our erudition. Maybe we don't need to cover every factoid in a world with a limited attention span, already bombarded by supposedly urgent messages. Most importantly, maybe we need to consider our audience better.
Now, some of you may be thinking, "Well, sure, it's easy for a photogenic 12-year old to get noticed" but in fact, just the opposite is true. How many 12-year olds do you listen to on matters of reforming the economy, or any other major societal change, for that matter? No, people are listening because Victoria's message was succinct, inspiring, and most importantly, correct. It is worth not just watching her delivery for its content, but also to learn how all of us may better deliver our message. Maybe we really don't need to "wow" people with our erudition. Maybe we don't need to cover every factoid in a world with a limited attention span, already bombarded by supposedly urgent messages. Most importantly, maybe we need to consider our audience better.
Now, I am no Victoria Grant, but from the Shameless plug Department:
I am also getting on alternate media - public access TV in this case :
http://www.decentlife.com/TalkShow.html or here: http://www.facebook.com/DecentLife4All
where I spent half an hour talking to host Lou Puliafito about Georgism/Geoism, Greenbacking, and State Banking. It's hard to fit all that into 25 minutes, but I tried! I hope to be invited back, maybe next month.
Also worthy of note, Bill Still's speech to the Public Banking Institute April 27-28 was posted by PBI. Pay particular attention to the mention of Cliff Johnson's lawsuit against the Treasury (which I am advising upon). Still spends a couple of minutes on this at the 20-minute mark because it will be a game-changer if it succeeds:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f68sOuMkhsU&feature=relmfu
Thanks for the shout-out, Bill!
(My new article about the Public Banking Institute's first annual conference is here:
The Johnson vs. Geithner lawsuit that would expose the lie that Federal Reserve Notes are equivalent to United States Notes and coins, continues to move forward, haltingly, while the government tries to dismiss it on technical grounds of lack of standing and other boilerplate rejoinders - anything to avoid answering the complaint itself. The next court hearing will be on June 21.
A similar, if less specifically focused Sovereign Money lawsuit, has been brought in Canada:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ar_WRqoa4kM
Speaking of alternate money, a new LETS alternate money system is spreading in Euro-deprived Greece (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17686384). Perhaps government is so hopelessly addicted to private money creation that we will all have to initiate our own money systems! LETS are proof that more money is needed in the real economy, where people will work for it and spend it. We do not have a shortage of jobs. We do not have a shortage of workers. We have a shortage of money. There is something wrong with this equation: # of jobs + # of workers + Amt. of money = Economic Health. And yet, the TBTF banks just keep getting more and more money. Is it doing any good, or....
The latest Bank Derivatives Activities Report on the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency site has some interesting info. From the 4th qtr. Bank Derivatives Activities rpt: "The notional amount of derivatives contracts held by insured U.S. commercial banks in the fourth quarter fell by $17.2 trillion (6.9%) to $230.8 trillion from the third quarter." JP Morgan now has "only" $70 Trillion in derivatives - table 1 - higher than any other bank, but only $1.8 trillion in total assets (table 3) *IF* it's a good day and someone is buying. No one but the Fed was buying in the last meltdown, but that was for far less assets.
OK, so the total is headed down, but in a chart later on (pg. 17), JP has some 250% exposure as a "Percentage of Total Credit Exposure to Risk Based Capital." Only Goldman has a higher risk ( 800% ) profile.*
"The European Stabilization Mechanism,
Or How the Goldman Vampire Squid Just Captured Europe
Ellen Brown
April 13, 2012
The Goldman Sachs coup
that failed in America has nearly succeeded in Europe--a permanent, irrevocable,
unchallengeable bailout for the banks underwritten by the taxpayers.
In 2008, Henry Paulson managed to extort a $700 billion bank
bailout from Congress. But the
former CEO of Goldman Sachs had to fall on his knees and threaten martial law
and the collapse of the entire global financial system to pull it off, and the
bailout was a one-time affair. Paulson's
plea for a permanent
bailout fund--the Troubled Asset Relief Program or TARP--was opposed by
Congress and ultimately rejected.
By December 2011, European Central Bank president Mario
Draghi, former vice president of Goldman Sachs Europe, was able to approve a 500
billion Euro bailout for European banks without asking anyone's permission.
And in January 2012, a permanent rescue funding program called the European
Stability Mechanism (ESM) was passed
in the dead of night with barely even a mention in the press. The ESM imposes
an open-ended debt on EU member governments, putting taxpayers on the hook for
whatever the ESM's Eurocrat overseers demand.
The bankers' coup has triumphed in Europe seemingly
without a fight. The ESM is cheered by Eurozone governments, their creditors,
and "the market" alike, because it means investors will keep buying sovereign
debt. All is sacrificed to the demands of the creditors, because where else can
the money be had to float the crippling debts of the Eurozone governments?"
Brown goes on to quote from a recent youtube video, first out in German, that lists the articles of the "treaty" (treaty with who?) that would give the ESM complete power and immunity from everything. The coup will be complete if this thing passes in July, 2012, which is expected to happen. On this side of the pond, the story is almost completely ignored in the MSM. Perhaps they'll ignore it when it happens here too; by then it may be too late anyway.
Ellen Brown gets even further ahead of the curve in a new article here:
Greece and the Euro: Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover in which she prescribes 5 ways (not 50) for Greece to end its self-destructive downward spiral. Greece has now seen its economy shrink by a depression-level 16%, with no end in sight. Brown's prescriptions include:
1. The Open Marriage: Return to the Drachma Without Abandoning the Euro
2. Separate Bank Accounts: Fire Up the Printing Presses at the Greek Central Bank
3. Divorce: Just Walk Away
4. Spousal Support: The Public Bank Option
5. The Dowry: Impose a Financial Transaction Tax
Brown proves you don't have to be 12 years old to come up with creative, great solutions, though it helps. A future edition of this newsletter will include an article featuring a recent 5-way conversation involving a precocious tri-lingual 12-year old I am happy to know, who got Georgism almost before it was fully explained, and has some great insights besides. Stay tuned.
Perhaps what we really need to so is to get back to First Principles and find out why...
Economies Blow Up
Max Keiser Interviews Fred Harrison
for some answers. Harrison predicted the crash, years before it happened, and the reasons for it, speculation in Land . (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
3
3
2
