Stock And Precious Metals Charts - Risk On - Wall Street Says Not To Worry About Anything

“Dogma gave every man importance only in so far as the tribe was important and he was a member of the tribe.  If the good had been twice as good and the bad only half as bad, I still ought to have seen it.  But I didn't want to see it, because I would have then had to think about the consequences of seeing it, what followed from seeing it, what I must do to be decent.”

Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free


"The wealth of another region excites their greed; and if it is weak, their lust for power as well.  Nothing from the rising to the setting of the sun is enough for them. Among all others only they are compelled to attack the poor as well as the rich.  Plunder, rape, and slaughter they falsely call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace."

Tacitus


"If we can save the Banks, we can save the world."

Greta Thunberg

Not one thing has changed.

Except that greed and gullibility are enhancing the conscious mispricing of risk, again.

Roll out the smoke and mirrors, get everyone all excited about nonsense, rewind the narratives and slogans, and let's do it all over again.

All is well in the United States of Amnesia. 

Have a pleasant evening.

Mark Blyth On Brexit, the Euro, Austerity, and the Rise of the Technocrats and Oligarchs

"Europe will be forged in crises, and will be the sum of the solutions adopted for those crises.”

Jean Monnet, Memoirs


"I’m very pro-European, but I’m against the euro, so if I still lived in the UK I would have an interesting choice.  Now if you look at Larry Elliott in The Guardian, he thinks he should vote for exit because this might be the existential crisis that blows up the euro. Now why would you want to blow up the Euro, because 'that would be terrible etc. et cetera'.  Because the long-term effect of the euro is going to be to drive Western European wages down to Eastern European levels in global competition for export share with the Chinese.

That’s one interpretation as to where this all goes.  And that’s going to be fine for the Eastern Europeans coming up.  It’s going to be great for very efficient exporters in the North.  It’s going to be a disaster for France and parts of Italy, if not all, and certainly for Greece.

Now if you have a system in which one side runs a surplus and the other side cannot run a deficit because of the rules, the only thing the other side can do is permanently contract their economies to allow someone else to make money selling BMWs.  I don’t see this ending well so perhaps it’s better to nip it in the bud when you’ve got the chance."

Mark Blyth

While in some ways this analysis by Mark Blyth (and similarly by Thomas Frank) can be construed as an over-simplification.  But on the other hand it represents an insight into a fundamental reality that is driving much of what we are witnessing today, a reality that seems inexplicable to the political class of both left and right.

The liberals blame the irresistible imperatives of globalization and technology, and the conservatives blame immigration and everyone who isn't them or completely like them in outlook and customs.

Each has their own extreme prescriptions for the problems, many of which they have a part in causing, from free money gifted within the status quo structure,  to debt serfdom for most except the few.

And both are tragically misplaced in their judgements, because they are caught in a credibility trap of their respective ideologies that have displaced fundamental morality, fairness, and goodness.

It is hard to tell which side is more reluctant to see the systemic forces which are at play, and where they are leading. Both are willfully blind at their core, taking refuge in contempt for others (cf. Hillary and Romney) and elaborately conceived condescension towards any form of dissent, even the mildest.

At the best of times the powerful will not listen, and at times like these most have joined them on either side to escape the pain of thinking.   The decline and fall of a privileged class that is out of touch with the people, and the extremes committed by their enablers, are so common as to be a cliché of history.

So why bother even bringing it up at all?   For the same reasons perhaps that groups like the White Rose and the early church wrote their pamphlets, in their respective times of general madness— to keep a light burning in the dark, for those who follow.

Hopefully our own situation will resolve well before we reach such an extreme disassociation of reason and power and justice.

"Caesar was swimming in blood. Rome and the whole pagan world was mad.   But those who had had enough of transgression and madness, those who were trampled upon, those whose lives were misery and oppression, all the weighed down, all the sad, all the unfortunate, came to hear the wonderful tidings of God, who out of love for men had given Himself to be crucified and redeem their sins.

When they found a God whom they could love, they had found that which the society of the time could not give any one—  happiness and love."

Henryk Sienkiewicz, Quo Vadis: In the Time of Nero

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Rough Seas Ahead Mateys - Political Continuum

The US markets were very sleepy today, with little serious conviction in any direction.

Gold and silver just drifted, held in their places after the excitement of the beginning of the week.

There was no delivery activity at The Bucket Shop yesterday, and just trickles of bullion out of the warehouses as shown below.

Let's see if next week brings us any surprised, most likely from overseas.

I do think that looking out six months that we will likely see a widening of the swings in volatility, as events drive real people to take certain decisions, and the Banks and their government associates seek to stabilize and maintain their status quo.

But why guess? Let us just take it as it comes. In particular we will be watching the volatility swings in stocks, and for the usual and important support and resistance levels on the charts.

In particular physical delivery of bullion is worth watching, especially since there is so much disinformation being spread around about it. What worries the financiers is always of interest to common people like us.

It looks like gold imports to India jumped 62.2% in July.

FOMC minutes next week.  I suppose we will have to endure the usual speculation and market antics associated with 'will they or won't they.'

The Fed will raise rates at least 25 bp off the zero bound in September or December at the latest unless the wheels are falling off the global economy.   It has little to do with any real recovery, but is just another manifestation of their bank-centric, one percent trickle-downism.

If you have a chance try to watch the full five part series about The Man Who Knew Too Much from The Real News.   I found the discussion to be fascinating.

Watching the conversations related to the political scene are a little more interesting now that the politicos are swarming the channels in anticipation of the big Election next year.   I have included an updated chart of the 'Political Continuum' below.

You can divert yourself on these hot lazy days by trying to place the various candidates on the charts, and perhaps even yourselves.    The toughest ones to place are likely to be opportunists, narcissists and sociopaths.

This is because they may have no inherent principles others than self-advancement or youthful experimentation.  I know that I moved all over the chart when I was younger, and spent quite a bit of time on right side of the circle, but as I grew and aged and raised a family I started settling in the center and then to slightly left of center in the 'progressives.'   There are tests online that will help to place you if you answer them honestly.

I am not surprised that with such a range of choices and so many candidates, that so many people feel alienated with no clear cut choice.  I would find myself very hard-pressed to vote for either of the two establishment candidates, Bush or Clinton.  And the rest of the broad range of the candidates seem to have been made from a cookie cutter, except for two.  And therein lies both opportunity and danger.  But it is still very early days and things may look very differently by Spring.

Reform is a lonely watch, because you are without a doubt running against the mainstream current of the powerful in a society.   One has to find some principle other than self-interest to sustain them.  It is a good time therefore for religious feelings, narcissist pre-occupation, banal greed, and political extremism.  People will always find something to worship, one way or the other.

Have a pleasant weekend.

Chris Hedges: Reform or Revolution

"In the task of that redemption the most effective agents will be men who have substituted some new illusions for the abandoned ones. The most important of these illusions is that the collective life of mankind can achieve perfect justice. It is a very valuable illusion for the moment; for justice cannot be approximated if the hope of its perfect realization does not generate a sublime madness in the soul.

Nothing but such madness will do battle with malignant power and 'spiritual wickedness in high places.' The illusion is dangerous because it encourages terrible fanaticisms. It must therefor e be brought under the control of reason. One can only hope that reason will not destroy it before its work is done."

Reinhold Niebuhr


"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."

John F. Kennedy

The illusions of extremists, of both the right and the left, are very dangerous things, for the very reason that they often incline themselves to sacrifice the individual, and even surprisingly large groups of individuals and segments of society, for the 'greater good' of their extremes and their illusions.

One only has to look to the excesses of the French Revolution, with the slaughter of the aristocracy and the burning and desecration of churches and monasteries, the wantonness of the Terror and the Reaction, and the eventual rise of Napoleon out of that chaos of the sacrifice of reason.

An seemingly endless parade of infamous tyrants, forgotten viceroys, and faceless bureaucrats always seem to have their roots in the extremity of illusion that rises out of some turmoil of excess, and the throwing off of the restraints of reason.

And no people, no organization of people, and no nation is immune or exceptional to this extremity, not by a long shot. The human being is remarkably clever and wonderfully self-deluding in choosing the things that they know are wrong, that they hide both from the world and themselves at first. That they excuse, wrap in exceptionalism, drape in personal exemption and necessity.

Evil is a choice, or more properly a long, gradual succession of choices. And it never sleeps, is always open for business.

It Is a Brave New World In Britain

“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power.

For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable – what then?

Power is not a means; it is an end.”

George Orwell, 1984

The base assumption of all statists, of both the Left and the Right, is that the individual exists and acts at the tolerance of the State, and only so far as the discretion of the State permits.

The happiness of the individual is as nothing compared to the objectives of the State. The fate of the individual is as nothing compared to the power of the State. The will of the individual is as nothing compared to the will of the State.

Power, real power, is the ability to define:  to define what is wealth, what is value,  what is to be read, what is to be said, and at the last, what is acceptably human.   

 

The will to power is not bound by the past or by the law, because it is the past, and it is the law. 

 

It is beyond all moral contingencies.  And so for the State that truly understands its power, there can be no higher moral principle, and therefore no god but the State.

 

Power is the realization of pure discretion to shape reality as we wish.  And all participants in the State's reality act and eventually exist at the State's discretion.

 

The Will To Power in the Exceptional

"Christianity is called the religion of pity. Pity stands opposed to the powerful emotions which heighten our vitality; it has a depressing effect. We are deprived of strength when we feel pity...

What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power in a man, the will to power, power itself. What is bad? All that is born of weakness. What is happiness? The feeling that power is growing, that resistance is overcome."

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist

 

 'What is truth?' asked the cynical bureaucrat Pilate, and then turned and washed his hands of it.

 

 

 

"Cultures that do not recognize that human life and the natural world have a sacred dimension, an intrinsic value beyond monetary value, cannibalize themselves until they die. They ruthlessly exploit the natural world and the members of their society in the name of progress until exhaustion or collapse, blind to the fury of their own self-destruction...

The corporations, and those who run them, consume, pollute, oppress and kill. The little Eichmanns who manage them reside in a parallel universe of staggering wealth, luxury and splendid isolation that rivals that of the closed court of Versailles. The elite, sheltered and enriched, continue to prosper even as the rest of us and the natural world start to die. They are numb. They will drain the last drop of profit from us until there is nothing left. And our business schools and elite universities churn out tens of thousands of these deaf, dumb and blind systems managers who are endowed with sophisticated skills of management and the incapacity for common sense, compassion or remorse. These technocrats mistake the art of manipulation with knowledge."

Chris Hedges

 

“All life has inestimable value even the weakest and most vulnerable, the sick, the old, the unborn and the poor, are masterpieces of God’s creation, made in his own image, destined to live forever, and deserving of the utmost reverence and respect...

All too often, as we know from experience, people do not choose life, they do not accept the Gospel of Life but let themselves be led by ideologies and ways of thinking that block life, that do not respect life, because they are dictated by selfishness, self-interest, profit, power and pleasure, and not by love, by concern for the good of others...

As a result, the living God is replaced by fleeting human idols which offer the intoxication of a flash of freedom, but in the end bring new forms of slavery and death...

Francis I

 

I have long felt that the basis of our economic and political discussions are a distraction, and by design.   They force us to operate from some fundamental policy assumptions that prevent a discussion of our current state of affairs in a necessarily frank and fundamental manner.

El Greco, Fábula of Boy Lighting Candle With a Fool and an Ape

With regard to economics and political systems, a 'practical person' may decide on whichever form of government serves their own private interests best.  

 

The amoral person chooses what is expedient, and in this they are little different from the worst, because they will go along with whatever serves their own power and self-interest above all.  They will rationalize themselves into a hell on earth, or hereafter.

 

A 'moral being' must choose what is just, as defined by some higher principle of justice for all.  And that choice must be made because it is inherent in being human.

 

Just as love is the touchstone in religion, justice is the touchstone in public policy. 

 

Exceptionalism is no virtue, no mark of the chosen, but merely the sin of pride, wearing the silks of rationalization and self-delusion.  And this is at the root of every fallen angel, every lost soul, and every failing nation.

 

I am not here making an appeal to the careless few based on either faith or reason.  Alas, I fear they are now beyond both morality and common sense, until a reckoning comes.

 

Rather, in this solemn season I am reminding the faithful and the many of a message they have probably heard, and forgotten, so often.  A man cannot serve two masters.  He will love the one, and hate the other.

 

The ultimate question is, 'whom do you serve?'  Choose as you will, but you will live with your choice, forever.  We do not choose all at once, but every day, and in all our actions, whether we are consciously aware of our choice or not.

Your carelessness and self-approval, your reputation and connections, your associations and positions, will be of no comfort and value to you then.  When exposed by the light your life of self-absorption and exceptional selfishness will be an ever stinging rebuke of burning regret and torment.  Not that you have betrayed and traded away so much that is good, but that you have done it for so little.

“A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death - the huge solace of thinking that for our betrayals, greed, cowardice, and murders that we are not going to be judged.”

Czesław Miłosz

 

A Further Response on the Weakness in Modern Monetary Theory and Modern Economics

“A concept is a brick. It can be used to build a courthouse of reason. Or it can be thrown through the window.”

Gilles Deleuze

A reader 'Joyce' sent an email to me today, and rather than just provide a complete answer to her I thought I would take the opportunity to expand on this to further explain what I said about Modern Monetary Theory yesterday.  

 

There were more responses from those from the fiscally conservative economic right, who support MMT as a rationale for eliminating the income tax.   The progressive voices speaking out for MMT as a cure for austerity ought to think long and hard about this. 

 

They would propose using MMT printing rather than progressive direct taxation.  This is a more regressive taxation of currency depreciation, or monetary inflation, that would adversely impact those without resort to holding inflation senstive assets as a store of wealth.   I might write something more about this later, 

 

Joyce's observations are in italics, with my reactions to them just below.

"I am just learning about MMT myself but I see that you are conflating the value of the currency with the use of the currency (no matter what its valuation is). MMT just describes the way money works in a sovereign country with its own currency. MMT makes no claims for the goodness of the politicians that are elected to the government that spends money into the economy."

The method of how a currency is created and used is intimately involved with its valuation.  As a medium of exchange and a store of value, the method in which money is created, distributed, and valued impacts every transaction that occurs within an economy, and in trans-economic (international if you will) commerce.

To say that assuming that printing money at will by the government without limit can have no effect on value flies in the face of historical experience.   MMT seems to be based on this assumption and a few others that do not hold up well to practical examination.

"The government has to spend money into the economy in order for the public and private sectors to "save" or use that money. The people accept the currency that is spent into the economy because they use it to pay their debts, such as income tax, to

government. I suppose the valuation can change but it remains true that the sovereign government can afford to pay for anything that it needs or wants to as long as it is in their own currency and is available."

The government manages the currency.  It provides it to the economy under certain sets of economic rules.  'Government spending' is one of them.   There are others.  These are not particularly germane to my major objection to MMT, but they do serve to divert the discussion from it so I will let that go for now.

But it is not true that 'the sovereign can afford to pay for anything that it needs or wants as long as it is in their own currency and is available.'   There must be an agreement on value for an exchange to occur between entities.  This is easier to see if you assume that one of the parties is another sovereign government.

What troubles me about some of the unspoken assumptions in MMT is that individuals within an economy are not 'sovereign' or free actors.   What comes out in discussions with MMT believers is that government rules by force, that individuals are compelled to accept the currency, presumably at some valuation well above worthlessness. 

This is why I say that there is nothing particularly 'modern' about Modern Monetary Theory.  It is the same old canard where the state sets the values, and dictates them to the people by force, whether it be official exchange rates, currency controls, or other draconian measure THAT  hold whether the governing authority is abusive or not.  If politicians were angels, it would not be such a worry that their power is largely unchecked by market forces in the MMT theory.

"Basically, the market is the people purchasing commodities or commercial dealings of companies and individuals; therefore, the market is the people."

The market is not only the people, but the set of rules under which they act.  The notion that there are no rules, spoken or unspoken, is romantic nonsense.   A 'society' is a group of people with a common set of rules and conventions.  The default condition of a failed society is that 'might makes right.'

MMT is a theory and can only be dangerous if it creates a dangerous environment. How can a theory create a dangerous environment? It is a belief system. MMT tries to describe how money works not how bad politicians and appointees use it for their own purposes."

If only this were true, if only these things were immutably decided for us.  Well they are, but that is another theory.   Theories and assumptions about values are the key to civilization if you think about it more deeply.  And they have a tendency to create a dangerous environment where there are not checks and balances on power because, quite frankly, people are not angels.

"There are, of course, limits on the use of money which rest on whether or not the resources are available and on whether or not there are arbitrary limitations such as the periodic caps placed on the deficit by politicians."

This I think is an oblique reason why some very smart people might find MMT to be attractive.  We are in a very contentious period of political history.  The current financial and political system is acting unevenly, unjustly if you will, and seeks to impose austerity on the unfortunate while subsidizing the wealthy and powerful with tax breaks and bailouts.

Well intentioned people see MMT as a wonderful methods of avoiding this conflict by asserting that money can flow without practical limit or consequence.   It reminds me of the common talk about the 'Trillion Dollar Platinum Coin' that was proposed by some Very Serious People as a response to the budget and debt ceiling impasse.

Like so many attractive expediencies, it had some very serious unintended consequences attached.  It would have signaled to the other sovereigns of the world, rightly or wrongly, that the US was willing to create money without regard to value in order to solve its own political difficulties.  It would have sent a chill through our trading partners (and creditors whom MMT desire to reduce to helpless subservience like our own citizens apparently) about the reliability of the full faith and confidence which is the basis of a modern fiat currency.  

It is a dangerous game, because once one loses that confidence, it can lead to collateral damage rather quickly, and provide a difficult situation that inflicts much damage and pain on many.

"MMT is not about justice and fairness. As far as I know, MMT does not have an 'efficient market hypothesis.'"

 All rules, particularly financial rules, are about justice and fairness.  Justice and fairness are not abstractions that sit on a shelf to be pulled out now and then.  Justice and fairness are a priori values encapsulated in the laws of the land,  and reasonably well stated in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.    Men and women have given their lives for justice and fairness, which are inherent qualities of liberty. 

We allow our choices to be limited by being members of a society.  But in return we demand certain services and considerations for it. 

A system that has not regard to justice and fairness is a tyranny, or quickly becomes one.

Now, I want to put a different meaning on what you said, that I think strikes a little closer to what you intended to say. 

I think you mean to say that MMT merely describes what is, some natural occurrence, like physics or any other pure science.   And this is one of the great fallacies that some promote about economics in general, that it is a pure science merely describing natural phenomena like the movement of the tides or the planets.

Economics is a social science.  It is all about interpreting realities and especially theoretical realities or systems through a prism of assumptions and values.   It is unavoidable for any macroeconomic system NOT to embody certain assumptions and values, whether they are spoken or just assumed.

And the whole point of my example about 'efficient market hypothesis' was that it 'worked' if one assumed certain qualities about people acting in groups that are not only incorrect, but radically so in the case of a persistent minority of the sociopathically inclined.

MMT does not have its own efficient market hypothesis.  It is like the efficient market hypothesis in that it assumes an otherworldly goodness in politicians and government bureaucrats in using the assumed to be unlimited power to create and spend money only wisely and for the greater good.  Try that idea out on any historian or political scientist and see how far it gets you.

And as a side note, politicians refused to regulate the shadow banking system that includes trillions of dollars of debt by banks and near banks, debts which can never be paid back should we have another recession.

I surmise that some of that QE money from the Fed was used by companies to create more wealth for themselves and I'm sure that some of it ended up in the shadow banking system where trillions of dollars of derivatives still thrive.  

This is precisely my point   The political class has been corrupted by Big Money.  I write about this all the time.   The bailouts were a clear abuse of power, especially in their collateral damage to innocents.

I do not think that MMT is a solution to  the problem of 'debts that can never be paid back should we have another recession.'   But I do think that this is the motivation for some who know deep down that MMT is founded on rubbish, but is the lesser of two evils in finding a way out of a bad situation.

My God, with our political class as corrupt as it is, would one wish to give them the power to create and spend money at will, under the assumption that they can never do it too much?

I will not muddy the waters here by getting into other solutions, but to willingly accept a belief system not founded in practical reality as a mean of escaping a dilemma does not encourage the rational person who has not given themselves over to the belief as a means of economic salvation.  

Reform is the most viable solution longer term.  We did it before and we must do it again.  Reform is a continual struggle against the worst tendencies of people.  

As Lord Acton said, "The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern.  Every class is unfit to govern. The law of liberty tends to abolish the reign of race over race, of faith over faith, of class over class."

In other words, no one is above the law, and their power is to be constrained by the restraints of the liberty of others, and therefore required to act justly and openly, under a system of checks and balances on their power.

One of the recurring myths throughout history is that a group of 'better men' are naturally equipped to rule.   There is much in modern economics that assumes that very dangerous idea, of superior people of natural rationality and virtue being naturally able to rule wisely and benignly without corruption.  And they may do so with secrecy, and independent of checks and balances, the better to serve the dispensation of their gnostic knowledge that is conflated by other mere mortals who simply cannot understand it.

And this is one of the major drawbacks with the methods of the central banks and the in particular Federal Reserve today.  Economics is no science, but a branch social science that at best casts some light on public policy, but with absolutely no claim to pure scientific objectivity or the ability to dictate outcomes independent of choices based on higher values.

History is the story of the never ending struggle between tyranny and liberty, the individual and the state, right and might, anarchy and society, with most of the action occurring in the vast area between.  

 

No system can guarantee freedom of the individual, or the rule of law over lawlessness.  But some may provide the means and the methods of giving individual rights a more even footing with organized power, and organized society with the means to hold individual power in restraint.

I have come to believe that the most critical step for our sustainable recovery is not more laws, the gold standard, a new system of currency like modern monetary theory, or one political party or another.

The key to our return to a sound economy is to be found in meaningful reform. And so far we have merely struck uselessly at a few largely symbolic branches, and failed to address the problem with a serious commitment to our values. The heart of the problem is the power of the financial sector over the greater part of society, through the corrupting power of Big Money over the political process.

 

 

The Pursuit of Global Corporatism

The need for a third party in the US becomes more compelling every day.  Or a bipartisan effort to stem the corrosive, anti-democratic influence of Big Money.

 

But I do not see the forces for reform cohering yet.  The attraction and example of power politics and money is too embedded in the mindsets of those whose thinking flows from the status quo. 

Even the reformers can fall quickly into a model of force and compulsion, and heavy handed techniques in pursuing a 'freedom' which they seek to define and control, too often ignoring history and reason.

 

The sign of this is the attitude that there is an elite who, operating in secret and with autonomy, can best decide the meaning of value, and the course of economic events.  It is ironic to see 'reformers' eager to replace one form of oligarchic rule with another that they believe will be more friendly to their own policy decisions, but somehow more benign and resistant to corruption without firm checks and balances on power. 

Sustainable good does not flow from more effective rules but from a better choice of and commitment to a priori values.  Honesty, openness, toleration, justice and kindness are values.   Right over might is an enduring act of balance in human affairs. 

Watch what they do, and not what they say.   If a 'reform movement' is quick to engage in censorship and deception, intolerance and harshness, creating more and cleverer rules and complex theories to achieve their ends, it is most likely another face of the same underlying problem of injustice, no matter what self-delusions they may choose to promote. 

 

As historian Christopher Dawson noted, 'As soon as men decide that all means are permitted to fight an evil, then their good becomes indistinguishable from the evil that they set out to destroy.'

In point of fact, complexity and 'cleverness' are often the very models of a false premise as much as the repetitive simplicity of the Big Lie.  What is presented as new and modern is too often the same old thing wrapped differently.  The truth is often hidden in between, but actions speak loudly.

It will be interesting to see how this situation develops.

TPP Is Not a Free-Trade Agreement

Dean Baker

27 December 2014

People in places like rural Kansas and downtown Washington, DC often have a misplaced trust in authority and elected officials. They are inclined to take their comments at face value, not realizing that these people often have ulterior motives.

The Washington Post gave us an example of this confusion in a front page article on President Obama's effort to push the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which it repeatedly refers to as a "free-trade" pact. The piece follows the administration's line in telling readers that:

"the president threw his full support behind the pact as part of a broader effort to rebalance U.S. foreign policy to the fast-growing Asia-Pacific region."

This assertion makes little sense since the administration is simultaneously pursuing a similar trade pact, the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Pact, with Europe. What both deals have in common is that they are primarily about imposing a business-friendly structure of regulation on both our trading partners and the United States. The more plausible explanation is that President Obama is trying to get more business support for the Democratic Party...

Read the entire article here.

Henry Giroux On the Rise of Neoliberalism As a Political Ideology

"There is a lack of critical assessment of the past. But you have to understand that the current ruling elite is actually the old ruling elite. So they are incapable of a self-critical approach to the past."

Ryszard Kapuscinski

Mammon in the City of London, 1889

Are they incapable, or merely unwilling?  That is the credibility trap, the inability to address the key problems because the ruling elite must risk or even undermine their own undeserved power to do so.

I think this interview below highlights the false dichotomy between communism and free market capitalism that was created in the 1980's largely by Thatcher's and Reagan's handlers.   The dichotomy was more properly between communist government and democracy, of the primacy of the individual over the primacy of the organization and the state as embodied in fascism and the real world implementations of  communism in Russia and China.

But we never think of it that way any more, if at all.  It is one of the greatest public relation coups in history.  One form of organizational oppression by the Russian nomenklatura was replaced by the oppression by the oligarchs and their Corporations, in the name of freedom.

Free market capitalism, under the banner of the efficient markets hypothesis, has taken the place of democratic ideals as the primary good as embodied in the original framing of the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution. 

It is no accident that the individual and their concerns have become subordinated to the corporate welfare and the profits of the upper one percent.  We even see this in religion with the 'gospel of prosperity.'   In their delusion they make friends of the mammon of unrighteousness, so that after they may be received into their everlasting habitations.

The market as the highest good has stood on the shoulders of the 'greed is good' philosophy promulgated by the pied pipers of the me generation, and has turned the Western democracies on their heads, as a series of political leaders have capitulated to this false idol of money as the measure of all things, and all virtue. 

Policy is now crafted to maximize profits as an end to itself without regard to the overall impact on freedom and the public good.   It measures 'costs' in the most narrow and biased of terms, and allocated wealth based on the subversion of good sense to false economy theories.

Greed is a portion of the will to power.   And that madness serves none but itself.

This is a brief excerpt. You may read the entire interview here.

Henry Giroux on the Rise of Neoliberalism
19 October 2014
By Michael Nevradakis, Truthout

"...We're talking about an ideology marked by the selling off of public goods to private interests; the attack on social provisions; the rise of the corporate state organized around privatization, free trade, and deregulation; the celebration of self interests over social needs; the celebration of profit-making as the essence of democracy coupled with the utterly reductionist notion that consumption is the only applicable form of citizenship.

But even more than that, it upholds the notion that the market serves as a model for structuring all social relations: not just the economy, but the governing of all of social life...

That's a key issue. I mean, this is a particular political and economic and social project that not only consolidates class power in the hands of the one percent, but operates off the assumption that economics can divorce itself from social costs, that it doesn't have to deal with matters of ethical and social responsibility, that these things get in the way.

And I think the consequences of these policies across the globe have caused massive suffering, misery, and the spread of a massive inequalities in wealth, power, and income. Moreover, increasingly, we are witnessing a number of people who are committing suicide because they have lost their pensions, jobs and dignity.

We see the attack on the welfare state; we see the privatization of public services, the dismantling of the connection between private issues and public problems, the selling off of state functions, deregulations, an unchecked emphasis on self-interest, the refusal to tax the rich, and really the redistribution of wealth from the middle and working classes to the ruling class, the elite class, what the Occupy movement called the one percent. It really has created a very bleak emotional and economic landscape for the 99 percent of the population throughout the world."

 

Greenwald: Why Privacy Matters, and the Endowment of Individual Rights and the State

 

Privacy is the space that defines the will of the individual, which sets the area that says, 'this is mine, because this is me.'

 

Privacy is the 'outer skin' of the self.

I may wish to share my space to varying degrees with family, friends, and acquaintances. If I have the good sense I may even wish to open my heart and live in a continuing act of worship and companionship with my Creator.

 

But that choice to conform myself to His will and open my thoughts and heart to Him, is mine. This is a gift that is hard to comprehend, but which grants us the intimacy of His love, rather than objectification as a possession, or a thing to be owned.

It is His most supreme condescension that He grants us the power to resist, to say no, to be other and apart from Him if we so choose. He makes us the sovereigns of a portion of His being, and says, you are free. And in His caring for another grants us a soul of our own. This is the essence of our being, and the wellspring of our existence.

What kind of love is in thrall to the beloved, which has no choice, no self identity that it may give to another, freely? What are we to an all-powerful God, except that which He has granted to us, forever, as ours alone and ours to give?

A tyrannical State, which has no virtuous restraint, by its very definition wishes to insert itself into this private space, not as a gracious God who grants us the will to either open or close the most private recesses of our heart to Him, but rather to take by force that which marks our individuality. It would be as a god, but on its own perverse and darker terms. It seeks to possess, uncaring, which is the opposite of love.

 

Privacy and the primacy of the individual is no gift from the State, but a recognition of what has been defined as 'an inalienable right' precisely because it is not granted by the State, but something higher, superior to an earthly power.

Surveillance, on an indiscriminate and massive scale by an increasingly intrusive State, is not a benign act in the cause of homeland protection.  It is not an excess of zeal among well meaning bureaucrats.  It is the very definition of statism.

It is an act of the will to power of the State over the individual, to claim that last bastion of privacy that marks the least amount of space that a person may occupy as their own. And it is relentless in its jealousy, expediency and ownership.  It asserts the supremacy of power, and takes all power to itself.  

 

The violation of the individual is not incidental to the establishment of a tyranny.  It is essential. 

"If relativism signifies contempt for fixed categories and those who claim to be the bearers of objective and eternal truth, then there is nothing more relativistic than Fascist attitudes and activity.  

From the fact that all ideologies are of equal value, we Fascists conclude that we have the right to create our own ideology and to enforce it with all the energy of which we are capable. ”

Benito Mussolini, Diuturna

It is the State's way of asserting that all that we have, all that we are, all that we may do or think, belongs to them at their unquestioned discretion and expediency.

 It is the will to power, and the way of earthly death. And we who belong to the Lord can have no part of it, for He is ours and we are His. He calls us by name, and we hear His voice.

 

Statists of both the left and right seek to elevate the State to an unnatural priority over all things free and individual, since individual choice is inseparable from any notion of freedom. Therefore they must subordinate the individual to the expediency of the State not only in so called 'emergencies' but over time as a matter of their continuing policy.

 

One sees this theme of the primacy of state sanctioned organizations over people today. This is the basis of the 'corporatism' that seems so bizarre, but that we are already seeing creep into our legal judgements.

 

Therefore Corporations will have the rights of people and beyond.  They are relatively free of the most important civic obligations, and are granted privileges and perquisites beyond the individual.   Under a statism that claims the definition of all value as its prerogative, some are more equal than others, and justice is by definition at the discretion of the State.

Not to belabor the point, but as an aside this is why Alan Greenspan said that all Statists react to gold with an almost hysterical antagonism. Gold, having no counterparty risk, has been historically regarded as a natural and independent measure of economic value and store of wealth.