HOME BLOG CONTACT US ABOUT US CONTENTS REVIEWS/ BLURBS/ COMMENTS READ AN EXCERPT LINKS TEN HUMANIST COMMANDMENTS THE CODE IN AUSTRALIA CONFERENCES / SIGNINGS READ THE CODE for GLOBAL ETHICS Welcome to: BIG PICTURE WORLD   BLOG by Economist Rodrigue TREMBLAY, Ph.D. ***** To order The Code for Global Ethics by Rodrigue Tremblay click:  Amazon USA  Amazon Canada  Amazon UK or, in Australia Click to read these articles: A Long Economic Winter Ahead The Bush-Cheney Gulf Coast Oil Spill of 2010 For a More Ethical Civilization On Iran, the U.S. is Painting Itself into a Political and Moral Corner Economic Bubbles and Financial Crises, Past and Present Friday, July 9, 2010 A Long Economic Winter Ahead by Rodrigue Tremblay "A State divided into a small number of rich and a large number of poor will always develop a government manipulated by the rich to protect the amenities represented by their property.": Harold Laski (1893-1950), British political theorist, 1930 “Money becomes evil not when it is used to buy goods but when it is used to buy power... economic inequalities become evil when they are translated into political inequalities.” Samuel Huntington (1927-2008), political scientist “… if financial markets are skittish and don't have confidence in a country's fiscal soundness, that is also going to undermine our recovery." President Barack Obama, June 25, 2010 “Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius, and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.” Albert Einstein (1879-1955) Physicist and Professor, Nobel Prize 1921 The bond market is telling us that there could be hard economic times ahead and that deflation, for the time being, is more of a threat than inflation. -Leading indicators are also pointing to possible economic weakness ahead. -The Euro zone is being pulled apart by the economic asymmetry of its members, the less productive among them (Greece, Spain, Ireland, Portugal and Italy) being unable to keep pace with the very productive German economy. -The U.S. money supply M3 is contracting. -The Chinese bubble is dangerously approaching the bursting point. -And, the deflation of debt all over the place threatens to plunge the world economy into a deflationary tailspin. —In this context, there is a good chance of a double-dip recession next year, in 2011. Readers of this blog know where I stand on this issue. One year ago, on July 10, 2009, when everybody and his uncle was declaring the recession over and the return of business as usual, I wrote a piece announcing that my analysis was pointing out to ten years of economic hardship entitled “We are in the Midst of the Great Baby-Boomers Economic Stagnation of 2007-2017”. I wrote then that “many observers think that 'prosperity is around the corner' and that this recession, like others since World War II, will end as soon as the stock market, as a leading indicator, recovers and people start spending again. This is a myopic view of the current economic big picture.” Let us keep in mind that in May of 1930, President Herbert Hoover was also proclaiming that “the danger ... is safely behind us.” This was ten years too early for such a declaration. Just as in the 1930s, the U.S. economy and many part of the world economy suffer from a debt overhang that usually takes at least ten years to correct. When overall debt is four times larger than the economy, as it is the case today and as it was close to being the case in the 1930s, a debt deflation becomes unavoidable. Economic booms built on a mountain of debt, some of which is fraudulent and speculative debt, tend to end badly. The higher the debt mountain relative to the real economy, the more serious is the following economic meltdown. This is because an unsustainable debt level means that some of the investments and projects thus financed make no economic sense and no sufficient income can be forthcoming to service and repay the debts. The first consequence is excess capacity and falling asset prices. The second consequence is an unavoidable liquidation of debts and a debt deflation. The third consequence is economic stagnation. The danger that accompanies a protracted period of debt-liquidation and debt deflation after a binge of over-indebtedness is well known in economics. In 1933, Yale economist Irving Fisher published his debt-deflation theory of economic depressions. The core of the theory is that over-indebtedness leads to deflation, which in turn leads to an economic contraction. Fisher summarizes the links between debt liquidation and economic contraction in nine interacting steps: 1- Debt liquidation leads to distress selling. 2- Contraction of deposit currency, as bank loans are paid off, and to a slowing down of the velocity of circulation of money. 3- A fall in the level of prices. 4- If the fall of prices is not interfered with by reflation or otherwise, this is followed by greater fall in the net worth of business, precipitating bankruptcies. 5- This leads to a like fall in profits. 6- A reduction in construction, output, trade and in employment of labor results. 7- Losses, bankruptcies and unemployment lead to pessimism and loss of confidence. 8- The result is hoarding and a contraction in bank credits, which contribute in slowing down even more the velocity of circulation of money. 9- The overall deflation causes a fall in the nominal or money interest rates accompanied by a rise in the real or commodity rates of interest as prices fall. A similar self-reinforcing spiral-down of debt-deflation and economic contraction can be feared in the coming years as the level of debt to the economy goes from about four times the economy to a more manageable two times the economy. In other words, it should not take more than $1.50 or $2 of new debt and credit to generate one dollar of new output. When it takes more debt than that to generate new production, this is an indication that the economy is becoming over-leveraged with debt. Judging by the pronouncements made by leaders at the recent G8 and G20 meetings in June, and their collective commitment to cut governments’ deficits in half by 2013, I don't think that politicians fully understand the danger presently facing the world economy. In fact, any new shock hitting the world economy, economic or political, risks accelerating the collapse of the debt house of cards, with dire consequences for production and employment. Austerity fiscal measures may raise government efficiency, but they are not what will cushion the real effects of the debt deflation. Both reflationary monetary policies and overall stabilization policies are needed, especially in the banking sector, in order to make sure that producers and employers are not frozen out of new bank credit. _____________________________________ Rodrigue Tremblay is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Montreal and can be reached at rodrigue.tremblay@yahoo.com. The book “The Code for Global Ethics, Ten Humanist Principles”, by Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay, prefaced by Dr. Paul Kurtz, has just been released by Prometheus Books. See it on  Amazon USA See it on  Amazon Canada See it on  Amazon UK or, in  Australia Please ask your favorite bookstore and your local library to order the book: The Code for Global Ethics, Ten Humanist Principles, by Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay, prefaced by Dr. Paul Kurtz, Prometheus Books, 2010, 300 p. ISBN: 978-1616141721. *****The French version of the book is also now available. See: www.lecodepouruneethiqueglobale.com/ or on Amazon Canada _____________________________________ Posted, Friday, July 9, 2010, at 5:30 am Email to a friend: http://www.TheNewAmericanEmpire.com/tremblay=1127 Click HERE to read COMMENTS Top of page Article #1126 Monday, June 21, 2010 The Bush-Cheney Gulf Coast Oil Spill of 2010 by Rodrigue Tremblay “If ever a time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will be in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin." Samuel Adams (1722-1803), statesman, political philosopher, and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, 1776 “America is addicted to oil.” President George W. Bush, State of the Union address, 2006 “Let me be clear: BP is responsible for this leak; BP will be paying the bill.” President Barack Obama, May 2, 2010 More often than not, the consequences of public policies, good or bad, are felt many years after they have been taken. The 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is a good example. This disaster is, to a large extent, a consequence of the Bush-Cheney energy policy of 2001 and later.  After being ushered into power by a one-vote-majority Supreme Court decision, one of the first decisions made by the new Republican administration was to establish an Energy Task Force (the National Energy Policy Development Group) under the authority of oil-man Dick Cheney, former CEO of Halliburton (1995-2000). As some have asserted, chief deregulator Dick Cheney was not only a vice president but a genuine co-president in the split Bush-Cheney administration. After some 106 days of mainly secret consultations and deliberations with the executives and interest groups representing the U.S. electricity, coal, natural gas and nuclear industries, with a pledge to keep secret the names of participating individuals, the Task Force's 163-page final report was sent to President George W. Bush on May 16, 2001. The report focused on how to open up new domestic petroleum sources and on the need to expand and control the all-important Middle East oil production. A parallel report to the official Cheney report (Strategic Energy Policy Challenges for the 21st Century) even stated that “Iraq has become a key 'swing' producer, posing a difficult situation for the U.S. government”, ... a harbinger of things to come. This is all well documented in my book “The New American Empire”. Soon after the secretive Cheney's Task Force report came out, things began rolling for the U.S. petroleum industry. The regulatory rulebooks for energy development on public property were rewritten with the idea of making the world environment safe for oil business companies. It was going to be “Drill, baby, drill”, including for deep-ocean drilling with minimal precautions, and damn the consequences! Regulations and clean energy budgets began to fall. On April 9 2002, President George W. Bush announced deep cuts in public clean energy research and development. In 2001-02, the Bush-Cheney administration's energy policy goals were incorporated into an energy bill (H.R. 4) titled the Securing America's Future Energy Act (SAFE) that included $33.5 billion in tax breaks and other incentives for oil companies and that lifted the oil drilling ban on the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. In May 2002 the Democrat-controlled Senate narrowly rejected the bill. On August 8, 2005, however, President George W. Bush signed into law the new approach and enacted a new sweeping pro-oil bill, the “Energy Policy Act of 2005”. The bill followed closely in the footsteps of Vice President Cheney’s 2001 energy report and provided $27 billion to coal, oil and gas, and nuclear industries, and $6.4 billion for renewable energy. Then, also in 2005, the Bush-Cheney administration allowed the U.S. oil and gas industry to regulate itself. The federal agency responsible for managing oil and gas resources and for collecting royalties from companies, the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service (MMS), decided, on August 30, 2005, that oil companies, rather than the government, were in the best position for determining their operations’ environmental impacts. In effect, MMS decided on that date to de facto merge its services with those of the oil companies, even to the point of letting the oil industry fill out MMS's inspection reports. MMS officials also had other cozy relations with the companies they were supposed to regulate. Then again, on July 14, 2008, just months before leaving office, President George W. Bush signed an executive order to lift the moratorium on offshore drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico and off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. Such a moratorium had been put in place in 1990 by President George H.W. Bush. There is also some confusion concerning the scope of responsibility that oil companies have in the event of an environment catastrophe. Since 1986, there already was on federal books an Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund (OSLTF) that set a cap on losses that a business could suffer from an oil spill. That liability cap was set at $75 million by the George H. Bush administration, as part of the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, after the Alaska Exxon Valdez spill of March 1989. Only proven negligence can render that liability cap inoperative. Since the puny $75 m. cap has not been increased in twenty years, that may explain why some analysts still recommend to their clients to buy the BP stock. BP is a worldwide oil company that makes in excess of $25 b. a year. Covered from losses by the liability cap, oil companies persuaded the Bush-Cheney administration that expensive security measures were not required, even for drilling in deep oceanic waters. For example, Minerals Management Service (MMS), decided not to require oil companies to install a remote-control oil blowout preventer on their deep-sea oil drilling rigs, i.e. an acoustic blow off valve that immediately chokes off the flow of oil in an emergency. Even though they are expensive, (they cost $500,000 each), most offshore oil rigs in other countries—in Norway and in Brazil for example, but not in the U.S. or the U.K— have such a switch installed for cutting off the flow of oil in an emergency by closing a valve located on the ocean floor. No such emergency switch was available on April 20, 2010, when BP's 18,000-foot-drilling-deep floating oil rig blew up, a catastrophe that killed eleven workers, injured many others, and which has spewed, so far, as much as 100 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico (some 2,400,000 barrels, or nearly ten oil tankers the size of the Exxon Valdez). The British-American BP company, seemingly, had cut corners in order to take advantage of the lax regulatory environment. However, contrary to the damage done by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, a natural event, the 2010 Gulf oil spill is a man-made disaster (just as, by the way, the 2003 Iraq war and the 2007-08 financial crisis were also man-made disasters). It could have been prevented if the Bush-Cheney administration had not removed the regulations mandating basic safety procedures in oil drilling, especially for offshore drilling. Of course, BP and its subcontractors (Transocean, Halliburton, etc.) are the ones who are directly responsible for the disaster. But the Bush-Cheney administration must share a large part of the blame and responsibility in preparing the regulatory background for the disaster. President Barack Obama also doesn't escape all responsibility, because he was the one who insisted on keeping so many Bush-Cheney appointees in their high positions after he was elected. Moreover, on March 31, 2010, only weeks before the BP Gulf Oil Spill, his administration also proposed to open vast expanses of American coastlines to oil and natural gas drilling. Americans have reasons to be confused and appalled. _____________________________________ Rodrigue Tremblay is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Montreal and can be reached at rodrigue.tremblay@yahoo.com. The book “The Code for Global Ethics, Ten Humanist Principles”, by Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay, prefaced by Dr. Paul Kurtz, has just been released by Prometheus Books. See it on Amazon USA See it on Amazon Canada See it on Amazon UK or, in Australia Please ask your favorite bookstore and your local library to order the book: The Code for Global Ethics, Ten Humanist Principles, by Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay, prefaced by Dr. Paul Kurtz, Prometheus Books, 2010, 300 p. ISBN: 978-1616141721. *****The French version of the book is also now available. See: www.lecodepouruneethiqueglobale.com/ or on Amazon Canada _____________________________________ Posted, Monday, June 21, 2010, at 5:30 am Email to a friend: http://www.TheNewAmericanEmpire.com/tremblay=1126 Click HERE to read COMMENTS Top of page                                                Article #1125 Monday, June 7, 2010 For a More Ethical Civilization by Rodrigue Tremblay "When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves, in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it." Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850), French economist "The world today is as furiously religious as it ever was. ... Experiments with secularized religions have generally failed; religious movements with beliefs and practices dripping with reactionary supernaturalism have widely succeeded." Peter Berger, Desecularization of the World, 1999  “I think that on balance the moral influence of religion has been awful. With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil—that takes religion.” Steven Weinberg, 1979 Nobel Laureate in Physics There has never been more talk about ethics than today, not only in private lives, but also in government circles, in business boardrooms and in the media. That is because most people realize we are living a very corrupt period. In 2009, the United States ranked 19th in a worldwide corruption index, way below New Zealand (1st) or Denmark (2nd). Indeed, more than three quarters of Americans believe that we are living at a time of declining moral values. A recent Gallup poll found that 76 percent of Americans think moral values in their country are getting worse, while only 14 percent believe they’re getting better. This would seem to be paradoxical, since other indicators show that the United States is getting more religious and pious. More religion and less morality? For instance, it has been observed that teen birth rates are the highest in the most religious states. That may be because poor people tend to be more religious compared to the rich and tend to be less educated and less well informed. Consider also that it has been observed that religious people are more racist than average. Morality is a complex issue, but that is no reason to sweep it under the rug of indifference. In a new book, I attempt to tackle the issue of ethics and its sources. I have arrived at the conclusion that humanity needs a new worldview—a new moral code— a new objective standard of right and wrong, because our prevailing sources of morality are at best inadequate, and at worse, perverse. This is because many of our problems today are not only technical in nature, but they also have a moral underpinning, and are thus much more difficult to solve. It may also be because our scientific and technological progress seems to be advancing much faster than our moral progress, with the consequence that problems arise faster than our moral ability to face them and to solve them can cope. Indeed, our problems are more and more global in nature, while our moral worldview is still essentially parochial. We thought that wars of aggression (or pre-emptive wars) had been abolished with the adoption of the United Nations Charter on June 26, 1945 and the issuance of the Nuremberg Charter on August 8, 1945. But wars of aggression persist. —We also thought that financial crises and the severe economic recessions and sometimes depressions they provoked were a thing of the past, thanks to a protecting net of financial regulations designed to control greed and prevent a repeat of the past. Well, twenty years of wholesale deregulation has brought us back to an era of anything goes and financial collapse. We also thought that the problem of poverty in the world could be alleviated, but abject poverty persists in many parts of the world. There seems to be a pattern here, and it is that humanity seems unable to break out of a cycle of wars, economic crises and endemic poverty. And, these throwbacks to an unpalatable past seem to coincide with other developments, such as the spread of nuclear weaponry, the persistence of ignorance, growing social and economic inequalities, disregard for basic democratic principles, the rise in global pollution, and an increasing religion-based willingness to kill and terrorize. With the current globalization of our problems, we need to extend our circle of empathy and view humanity as a worldwide extended human family. As long as we refrain from facing that challenge, divisiveness and unsolvable conflicts will persist. The contradiction between modern problems, new scientific knowledge and the inadequacy of our prevalent source of morality or of ethics, led me to ask what kind of values would be required to face the new challenges. What would our civilization look like if we were to adopt them? In such a such a civilization, • All human beings would be equal in dignity and in human rights. • Life on this planet would not be devalued and seen as only a preparation for a better life after death, somewhere beyond the clouds. • The virtues of tolerance and of human liberty would be proclaimed and applied, subject only to the requirements of public order. • Human solidarity and sharing would be better accepted as a protection against poverty and deprivation. • The manipulation and domination of others through lies, propaganda, and exploitation schemes of all kinds would be less prevalent. • There would be less reliance on superstition and religion to understand the Universe and to solve life's problems and more on reason, logic and science. • Better care of the Earth's natural environment—land, soil, water, air and space—would be taken in order to bequeath a brighter heritage to future generations. • We would have ended the primitive practice of resorting to violence or to wars to resolve differences and conflicts. • There would be more genuine democracy in the organization of public affairs, according to individual freedom and responsibility. • Governments would see that their first and most important task is to help develop children's intelligence and talents through education. Yes we can, if we try.                                            * Drawn from notes for a conference by Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay at the American Humanist Association's Annual Meeting, San Jose, California, Friday, June 4, 2010. For the complete texte of the conference, please click HERE. _____________________________________                             Rodrigue Tremblay is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Montreal and can be reached at rodrigue.tremblay@yahoo.com. The book “The Code for Global Ethics, Ten Humanist Principles”, by Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay, prefaced by Dr. Paul Kurtz, has just been released by Prometheus Books. See it on Amazon USA See it on Amazon Canada See it on Amazon UK or, in Australia Please ask your favorite bookstore and your local library to order the book: The Code for Global Ethics, Ten Humanist Principles, by Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay, prefaced by Dr. Paul Kurtz, Prometheus Books, 2010, 300 p. ISBN: 978-1616141721. *****The French version of the book is also now available. See: www.lecodepouruneethiqueglobale.com/ or on Amazon Canada _____________________________________ Posted, Monday, June 7, 2010, at 5:30 am Email to a friend: http://www.TheNewAmericanEmpire.com/tremblay=1125 Click HERE to read COMMENTS Top of page Article #1124 Wednesday, May 5, 2010 On Iran, the U.S. is Painting Itself into a Political and Moral Corner by Rodrigue Tremblay “This confrontation [between the forces of the Apocalypse and Israel] is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins”. U.S. President George W. Bush (in a 2003 conversation with French President Jacques Chirac)  “Preventive war was an invention of [Adolf] Hitler. Frankly, I would not even listen to anyone seriously that came and talked about such a thing.” – Dwight D. Eisenhower  “We don’t desire any nuclear proliferation in our region, and our policy is well known regardless of which country has such programs. For us it doesn’t matter whether it is Israel or Iran. I will call on the international community, which is so sensitive toward Iran, to pay attention to Israel, too.” Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's Prime Minister “Nothing in this Treaty shall be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination.” The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) By now, most everybody knows that the (2003-) Bush-Cheney Iraq War was based on fiction and on deception. There was no such thing as “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq, the rationale for an illegal attack against that country. And Bush II and his accomplices knew that. But incredibly, just as the Bush-Cheney administration did in order to launch a war against Iraq in 2003 by (falsely) alleging that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, the Obama-Biden administration, in 2010, is arguing for unilateral sanctions against Iran and even beating the drums of war against Iran, alleging that its program to enrich uranium and operate nuclear power plants is posing an existential threat to Israel, to Europe and to the United States. Besides being a blatant exaggeration, this is nevertheless most dangerous. Indeed, such an eventual military attack—which, by the way, would be illegal under international law—would also have dire economic consequences, because it would almost certainly result in the closing of the narrow Strait of Hormuz. Should we be reminded that it is through this strait that roughly 40 percent of all world traded oil transits out of the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea. Its closing would push the international oil price to unheard of levels. Therefore, if the pro-Israel lobby and the pro-war neocon press were to succeed in 2010-11 in triggering a hot war against Iran, as they did in 2002-03 against Iraq, this could easily turn the current festering financial crisis into a full-fledged worldwide economic depression. Believe me, the last thing the world economy needs now is an oil-shock that would derail the present feeble economic recovery. But the most disconcerting of all is no doubt the implicit threat  recently made by President Barack Obama, on Tuesday, April 6, 2010, to launch a nuclear attack against Iran and North Korea if these countries refuse to toe Washington's line. That sort of loose language is most dangerous because it may serve to trivialize the military use of nuclear weapons, a disaster that the world must avoid. The round of pronouncements demonizing Iran and the incessant calls for sanctions against a sovereign country by other U.S. politicians is also most unproductive, even though that may make for good domestic politics. This is of course in addition to the use of unmanned drones to drop bombs on civilians in Pakistan and other American death squad activities in Afghanistan that the Obama administration has intensified since gaining power. There seems to be a pattern here: No law or moral decency seem to be taken into consideration when such decisions, most likely illegal, are taken, no matter who is in power in Washington D.C. It is true that Iran's domestic politics is not without reproach. This is a country that is run by a mixture of democratic and theocratic rules. However, compared to fundamentalist Islamic Saudi Arabia, Iran is somewhat more democratic and less oppressive of women, even though it does not satisfy all the Western criteria to be a true democratic state. But we don't declare war on a country because we don't like its domestic politics. That's not what the U.N. Charter or the Nuremberg Charter, says. Logic would have it that all the nuclear countries in that part of the world (Israel, Pakistan, India,) sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT),  just as Iran has done, because an accidental, or worse, an intentional or provoked, use of nuclear weapons is the greatest threat to the region and to the world. In the long-run, however, the world needs a new and expanded nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) to prevent nuclear war but, at the same time, to make sure that no country is denied access to nuclear energy that can enhance its economic development. Every country in the world has a right to enrich uranium and operate nuclear power plants. _____________________________________ Rodrigue Tremblay is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Montreal and can be reached at rodrigue.tremblay@yahoo.com.   The book “The Code for Global Ethics, Ten Humanist Principles”, by Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay, prefaced by Dr. Paul Kurtz, has just been released by Prometheus Books. See it on Amazon USA See it on Amazon Canada See it on Amazon UK or, in Australia Please ask your favorite bookstore and your local library to order the book: The Code for Global Ethics, Ten Humanist Principles, by Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay, prefaced by Dr. Paul Kurtz, Prometheus Books, 2010, 300 p. ISBN: 978-1616141721. *****The French version of the book is also now available. See: http://www.lecodepouruneethiqueglobale.com/ or on Amazon Canada _____________________________________ Posted, Monday, March 22, 2010, at 5:30 am Email to a friend: www.TheNewAmericanEmpire.com/tremblay=1124 Send contact, comments or commercial reproduction requests (in English or in French) to: bigpictureworld@yahoo.com N.B. Messages may be published in our weblog, unless you request otherwise. _____________________________________ Please register to receive free alerts on postings of new articles. Send an email with the word "subscribe" to: bigpictureworld@yahoo.com To unregister, send an email with the word "unsubscribe" to: bigpictureworld@yahoo.com The above is for educational purposes only. _____________________________________ © 2010 by Big Picture World Syndicate, Inc. Click HERE to read COMMENTS Top of page Article #1123 Monday, March 22, 2010 Economic Bubbles and Financial Crises, Past and Present By Rodrigue Tremblay "It is well enough that people ... do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning." Henry Ford, American industrialist "It seems to me that Europe, especially with the addition of more countries, is becoming ever-more susceptible to any asymmetric shock. Sooner or later, when the global economy hits a real bump, Europe's internal contradictions will tear it apart." Milton Friedman, American economist "The normal functioning of our economy leads to financial trauma and crises, inflation, currency depreciations, unemployment and poverty in the middle of what could be virtually universal affluence-in short ... financially complex capitalism is inherently flawed." Hyman Minsky, American economist I have spent some fifty years studying economic cycles and teaching international finance, but I had never seen the likes of what we witnessed and experienced over the last three years. That's because such financial crises seem to happen 60 to 75 years apart. —It is a fact that the outbreak of this severe worldwide financial crisis two years ago was a surprise to many people. For instance, it was widely thought that financial crises, and the severe economic recessions and sometimes depressions they provoked, were really a thing of the past thanks to the protective net of financial regulations that was designed in the 1930s to prevent a repeat of such financial collapses. —But here we are again, mired in the most severe economic crisis since the 1930s. We may ask why? The main reason is that the U.S economy, but also most of the world economy, has been subjected to a financial experiment, over the last some 10 years, which has turned sour. In fact, it has turned into a financial fiasco. Indeed, it must be understood that a completely new type of banking finance was invented; but all the risks involved had not been properly assessed. For a while, the debt pyramid was allowed to grow, but it collapsed when its shaky and unsound foundation underneath it, disintegrated. —Of course, there have been similar financial collapses in the past, (notably in 1873, in 1907 and in 1931) and the overall cause is always the same: the financial sector takes too much risk and becomes overextended, creating in the process a debt load for the economy that is unsustainable. Let's consider a striking fact of today financial situation: The debt load imposed on the economy is even higher today than it was in the 1930s when total total debt reached the level of some 300% of the annual production or GDP. Well, today, the ratio of total debt to the U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is close to 400 percent. Keep in mind that it took nearly 20 years to bring this ratio down to about 140, in 1952. What this means is that today it takes about $4.00 of debt to create one dollar of economic activity while it took only $1.40 of debt in the early 1950s to create one dollar of GDP activity. This shows how complex the financial system has become. The question that remains to be answered is whether it will take 20 years to lower the debt ratio from 400% to, say, 200%! This all shows how this can be devastating for the real economy when financial flows are disrupted and when credit becomes difficult to obtain. —Sadly, this is our situation today: Investors and producers have a lot of problems financing their new investment projects. This is a big monkey on the back of the economy and it is an important cause of current, and possibly future, economic stagnation. But before looking into the future, let's review quickly the main reasons why financial crises arise. Why, in other words, the financial tail is sometime allowed to wag the economic dog. 1. First, the question of deregulation. Too much optimism, overconfidence or simple naiveté sometimes allow the development of some form of risky Ponzi-scheme finance. And, this is pretty much what we have seen over the last 10 years. —Under the old traditional financial rules, a bank or a credit union would collect deposits or borrow in the open market, lend this money to investors, keep reserves for contingencies, and would hold onto the loans until maturity. For big banks, at least, this is no longer the model. With the merging of investment banking and commercial banking after 1999, traditional financial rules were pushed aside and they were replaced with the rules of asset securitization through which large banks ceased being banks to become brokers, that is they ceased being lenders to become sellers of sophisticated new securities. More about that later. Under these new rules, a bank still accepts deposits or borrows in the open market, but it does not hold on to the loans it makes. Rather, it takes a bunch of heterogeneous loans made by itself or by others, repackages and slices them up, and sells them as investment vehicles to third parties. That's what is called the “securitization” process; it is a sort of sausage machine that takes one type of securities at one end and transforms it into another type of securities, a more risky one, at the other end. —Large Banks have become large financial sausage makers! In other words, the financial chain has been made longer, much longer; but, as with all chains, its overall strength is not better than the strength of its weakest link. And the new financial products turned out to be the weakest links. They were toxic financial products. 2. Why were such new banking rules adopted? Why were they so risky and dangerous? And how did they lead to the near complete collapse of the credit system in the fall of 2008? These are fundamental questions. And, as for most questions, there are short answers and there are long answers. I have four short answers:   -First, they were very profitable to the mega-banks for a while because the banks raked in large fees on the new financial products. -Second, the politicians were persuaded to let them “innovate” with the new leverage finance by removing most regulation that would have prevented the banks from doing what they were doing. -Third, it led to irresponsible lending because the lenders were no longer risking their own money but the money of far away investors. -And, fourth, the moral dimension cannot be neglected. Indeed, it took a lot of corruption and a lot of greed to create such a mammoth crisis. —[Greed was even glorified in the 1987 movie “Wall St.” in which Michael Douglas—playing the character of financier Gordon Gekko—says: “Greed is good, Greed is right. Greed Works.” This was the prevailing ideology at the time.] (This is an issue that I explain more fully in my new book The Code for Global Ethics.) For a financial crisis of this magnitude to occur, it takes two kinds of corruption or fraud. —(I don't delve here into the kind of intellectual corruption that supported the ideology that markets can do no wrong or that they are always “efficient”. In fact, markets are very imperfect; they are often under the control of monopolies or cartels, and sometimes, they do not function at all.) In the first place, politicians have either to make mistakes or worse, to be in the banks' pockets and do what people with money (who want more money) tell them what to do. For instance, as far back as 1977, the Carter administration and the U.S. Congress prepared the ground for the future crisis: It passed the Community Reinvestment Act, by which the Federal Housing Administration loosened down-payment standards for marginal borrowers. —Twenty-five years later, in 2003, President George W. Bush also signed “The American Dream Downpayment Act” into law. This reinforced the pressure on large banks to provide subprime mortgages to needy borrowers incapable of making down payments. The public financial deregulation stampede that took place between 1999 and 2007 was therefore an extension of this philosophy that special lending rules could and should apply to housing finance. The string of specific financial deregulation steps taken by the politicians that have paved the way for the current era of irresponsible Ponzi-scheme finance and casino-like leverage banking practices is very long, and I don't want to burden you with too many details. As a reminder, however, here are the most important ones: 1. In 1999, the Clinton administration and the Republican-dominated U. S. Congress passed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) that, in effect, abolished most of the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act. — In the past, that law had prevented the unregulated investment banking from merging with the regulated and government-insured commercial banking sector. 2. Then, in 2000, the U. S. reintroduced legalized gambling into the financial sector, a prohibition that had been in place since after the 1907 financial crisis, when President Theodore Roosevelt (1858 –1919) was in office. It adopted the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, which specifically exempted financial gambling from state gaming laws. This move paved the way for inventing new risky financial instruments. 3. In 2004, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) removed the ceiling on the level of risk that the largest American investment banks (Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Bear Stearns) could take on so-called securitized loans and  their hedge fund operations.   4. In 2005, bankruptcy laws were changed in the United States at the request of the banking industry. This made it more difficult for federal bankruptcy judges to restructure mortgages before resorting to foreclosures, under Chapter 7 of the U.S. bankruptcy code. [N.B.: According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the banking industry spent over $100 million in lobbying efforts to have bill S-256 passed]. 5. Finally, in July 2007, only weeks before the subprime financial crisis went into full gear the SEC removed  the “uptick” rule for short selling stocks in a panic. (The President of CITI Group, Mr. Vikram Pandit, testified before the Congressional Oversight Committee that short-sellers played a big role in bringing his bank, the largest in the world, close to bankruptcy.) 3. The second type of irresponsibility, and even of fraud, was the one that bankers themselves committed. -First, they embraced subprime lending, by selling adjustable-rate (ARMs), or interest-only or even negative-amortization subprime mortgages, with minimal or no down payments, to borrowers they knew could not pay them back if anything went wrong. Today, about eight million foreclosures have already taken place. And it is expected that in 2010-11, the number of foreclosure filings could rise to another 3.5 to 4 million. Why were banks irresponsible in their lending? Essentially, besides willing to please the politicians, it's because they thought they were not at risk for their own irresponsibility. Indeed, with the new practice of financial securitization, banks were not worried by the possible insolvency of borrowers, because they knew they could sell those risky subprime mortgages to other banks which ultimately sold them down-stream as some commercial-like paper to unaware investors. It was a form of “pass-the-buck” lending. In the end, many of the primary and secondary mortgage lenders such as Countrywide Financial, Washington Mutual, IndyMac, and ultimately Bear Stearns and even Wachovia, collapsed. And the two largest players in the U. S. mortgage market Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as insurers and secondary mortgage lenders, came very near to total collapse before the U.S government came to their rescue and invested $400 billion in them. 4. A few more words about the main culprit products in this fiasco, the famous or rather infamous so-called “credit derivatives”, that disintegrated in the fall of 2008. Those were the weak links in the financial chain. And that's where I will limit my comments. Credit derivatives come in acronyms like an alphabet soup, but the most basic ones are:  -The synthetic subprime collateralized debt obligations  (CDOs), (or slices or tranches of amalgamated pools of subprime loans based on mostly interest-only second-handed mortgages, but also on other types of debts, such as credit card debts). CDOs are basically illiquid financial products because they usually can be bought or sold only through the entity that created them. -And, the Credit Default Swaps. CDSs are insurance credit protection contracts offering protection against default on the interest or principal payments of a loan. More than one trillion and a half dollars ($1 500 000 000 000) of these asset-backed financial products were sold, not only in the U.S., but all over the world. The problem was those who sold this type of financial insurance—large investment banks and above all the largest insurance company in the world, American International Group (AIG) —were not regulated and kept very little reserves behind it. Creating CDOs (i.e. packaging different debts together) was very profitable for banks, for some insurance companies that insured them by issuing CDSs, while holding very little reserves, and for the credit agencies (Moody's, Standard & Poor's and Fitch) that rated them. But CDSs are very dangerous products. -First, although they are really insurance contracts, they are not typically written by insurance companies but by financial firms or subsidiaries. This means that they are not regulated under insurance laws, state or federal. -Second, one does not need to have an insurable interest to purchase CDS insurance. (For example, it is not allowed to buy life insurance on a person with whom the buyer is not closely related. The same for a fire insurance policy on a home; one must be an owner to qualify). But with CDSs, one may be an outsider, that is a speculator or a hedger, who has nothing to insure but is only interested in holding the CDS contract for financial gain. As a consequence, the total amount of CDS contracts issued can be much larger than the value of the insured security, four or five times larger. At that point, CDSs become casino chips whose ultimate value is backed only by the issuer.—And this has consequences. In fact, the invention of CDSs has made the debt default crisis much worse by artificially maintaining the value of debts at a high level, thus creating bankruptcies all around. It is as if a system of fire insurance had resulted in increasing the insidence of fire. This is an example of a very dangerous and bad financial innovation. Essentially, the CDS (credit default swap) market is an opaque and thinly traded over-the-counter market that is easily open to manipulation. At any moment in time, nobody really knows who owns or owes what to everybody else. Speculators buy those CDSs as if they were put options on the underlying bonds. When their prices go up, the price of the underlying bonds goes down, and a financial crisis ensues for the bond-issuing company or government. Together, CDOs and CDSs can make for a very toxic cocktail. —This is a clear case where the speculative financial tail moves everything else. Speculators are in control. In fact, let me say that this is what drove General Motors into bankruptcy. Speculators killed General Motors, not the recession and low car sales. GM could have survived the recession as it had in the past. But this time, there were the CDSs. —Why is this so? —Essentially because banks had transformed normal GM bonds into collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) by merging them with other debts, and because these bonds had been insured against default with CDSs issued mainly by the Financial Products unit of the large insurance company American International Group (AIG). Speculators bought these CDSs on the hope that the underlying CDOs that incorporated GM bonds would fall if GM were to fail. In essence, the speculators were betting that GM would fail and they were helping it to fail at the same time by selling short the very CDOs that incorporated GM debt while buying on leverage the CDSs on those CDOs. When GM ran into financial troubles due to the recession and a drop in car sales, the value of GM bonds should have declined, allowing GM to buy them back at a lowered discount and enabling it to reduce its debt load and survive. But this time, thanks to the new securitization finance, more appropriately called “Ponzi-scheme finance”, an imprudent and possibly criminal type of finance in my opinion, things did not work out that way. GM's debts had been placed in packaged CDOs that were impossible to untangled, just as individual housing mortgages had been merged and packaged in sausage-like mortgage CDOs that could not be untangled if something were to go wrong. CDS holders against CDO- GM bonds, both legitimate and gambling speculators, were insured against losses by AIG. And, as I will explain later, the Bush-Paulson administration guaranteed the value of all CDSs issued by AIG against CDO bonds, so the value of those bonds could not decline as they should have, and as they have in the past during an economic downturn. Besides, there are no open market for those CDOs, so nobody could know their real value.  —This is what forced General Motors to file for bankruptcy. This is the same cause that provoked eight million plus home foreclosures in the U.S. while there are much fewer foreclosures in Canada. [For example, in the first quarter of 2008, 1.6 per cent of mortgages issued by Canada's top three sub-prime lenders were behind by at least three months. The equivalent rate was about 16 per cent in the U.S. As a consequence, house prices in Canada have been stable or rising.] —In this light, the GM bankruptcy was less a normal bankruptcy than a financial assassination. —Please note that by salvaging General Motors, the U.S. government paid twice: It paid in full the banks and the speculators who held CDSs on CDO-GM bonds; and it later paid to keep GM operating. Mind you, the same thing that the new securitization finance did to U.S. homeowners and to GM is being done these days to Greece. Greece's government debt has been transformed into derivative products, insured with CDSs. Speculators are buying those Greek CDSs in the hope that the government of Greece will default on its debt.—This is the main reason behind the drop in the euro and of pound sterling in the last few weeks. There is a fear of a domino effect, with many European countries to default if speculators begin attacking one country after another. This could even bring down the euro monetary union. —This is a crazy and immoral system. The plot thickens even more with the rumor that AIG has been a major issuer of Greek CDSs. If this were true, this would mean that the U.S. taxpayers are paying for AIG's losses on Greek CDSs with U.S. bail-out funds, thus financing the possible collapse of the euro monetary zone! —This cannot be allowed to go on. There should be an international conference to stop that madness. -This the reason I wrote here on my international blog (www.TheNewAmericanEmpire.com/blog) that the international financial system has been transformed nowadays into a gigantic unregulated Casino that allows all types of Ponzi schemes to go on. 5. You all know that the U. S. government, following the ideology of  “too-big-to-fail” for the large banks or the large insurers, has rescued the biggest among them. It poured trillions of dollars into AIG, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the five or six largest Wall St. Banks, essentially by buying their toxic assets at full price and by underwriting their gambling losses. With this massive recapitalization of the large banks through government subsidy, the crisis has somewhat subdued, for the time being. In the meantime, however, the larger banks have become even larger, the bonuses received by their CEOs are still in the tens of millions, their huge pensions are intact, but bank loans to the economy have declined. The biggest winners of the financial crisis are precisely those who created it. —This is truly something that historians will have to explain to future generations. (Without a doubt, the single bank that profited the most from the overall public rescue program was Lloyd Blankfein's Goldman Sachs, a bank that Secretary Henry (Hank) Paulson led until he became Treasury Secretary in 2006. —It can also be said that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and his deputy, investment banker Neel Kashkari, were in a mammoth financial conflict of interest when they engineered the banking bailout program, especially as $180 billion was pumped into AIG in order to pay out in full the gambling bets made by Goldman Sachs, their previous employer, and other speculators. It was a bailout of Wall Street by Wall Street while in control of the U.S. government. ) Meanwhile, and because of this bailout money, the largest American banks are getting larger. For example, in 2006, the combined assets of the U.S. six biggest banks (Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, and JP Morgan) totaled 55 percent of U.S. GDP. In 2010, this ratio stands at 63 percent (it was only 17 percent of GDP in 1995). Consider also another measure: In 2007, the four largest U.S. banks — (Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo) — held 32 percent of all deposits in FDIC-insured institutions. As of June 30, 2009, it was 39 percent. Therefore, since the banking structural problems have not been solved but rather made worse, the crisis could flare up again anytime, either here, as a lot of commercial loans (office buildings, malls, hotels...etc) are on the brink of default and will likely default in the coming years, or elsewhere, with many European governments having their own subprime crisis and being attacked by CDS gamblers. I want to be clear here. —It would have been better if the problem had been avoided with more prudent government policies and banking practices. However, in the fall of 2008, the U.S. government had a responsibility, especially after the failure of Lehman Brothers on September 15, 2008, to stabilize the financial system and to avoid a deeper and wider financial crisis. After all, it was a series of government policies and deregulation steps that paved the way to the housing bubble and to the meltdown, to the emergence of risky financial products and to the resulting financial crisis. —It is how this was done that borders on the scandalous, if it was not outright fraud in some cases, not the goal itself of averting the financial crisis from spiraling out of control. —For example, there was no need to pay billions of dollars to banks and speculators at 100 cents on the dollar for toxic and illiquid securities that were worth much, much less. Presently, I think that we are in the eye of the hurricane regarding financial problems. I see five additional economic threats for the near and not so near future: •  A major sovereign debt crisis in many parts of the world, especially in southern Europe; •  A major commercial debt crisis and small bank crisis in the United States; •  The historical high level of income inequality in the United States and elsewhere; •  The aging of the population in the United States and elsewhere and a concomittent slowdown in private consumption. • The over-heating Chinese economy, its overvalued currency and a possible financial crisis in that country. These factors and the ongoing difficulty in obtaining credit for investment will exert a drag on the economy over the coming years. Indeed, history teaches us that a serious structural worldwide financial crisis sooner or later results in sovereign debt defaults by some countries. This has happened in 1833-37, 1870-90, 1932-1945, and it is to be expected that the number of countries that will renege on their foreign debt will increase in the coming years. A global debt bomb is hanging over Europe and other parts of the world. The euro zone itself may not survive the coming crisis. And, I would not exclude some U. S. states from this default scenario, not even the U. S. federal government, with its trillion + dollar deficits, fiscal deficits for as long as we can see, even though it has the power to print dollars which are still accepted around the world. That is the reason why I expect the other financial shoe to drop in 2011-13. —A major financial crisis, a major U.S dollar crisis (and the concommittent rise in the price of gold) and major bond and stock market crashes have a good chance to unfold in that time period. 6. Conclusions It seems to me that the U.S. financial system, and even the world financial system, have to be profoundly reformed, if they are to serve the real economy, rather than the contrary. If such a reform does not come about, however, I am afraid that we have entered a period of economic difficulties that may last many, many years. In fact, I think that the world economy stands today at the hedge of a large precipice. What type of reform? First and for all, the packaging of different debts in impossible to untangle CDOs should be outlawed. These products are financial time-bombs waiting to explode for the real economy, not only in the United States, but around the world. Second, CDS insurance products should be issued only against insurable securities and not issued as casino chips in values much larger than the value of the insured securities (i.e. no so-called naked CDSs). In order words, the entire innovation of securitization finance has to be reviewed and reigned in before it does further damage. These two reforms could be implemented immediately if politicians really understood the problems or if they were not in the banks' pockets. However, if the U.S. Congress feels that this is too big a problem to tackle on its own, for different reasons, my third recommendation would be for the Obama administration and the EU to call for an international finance conference, preferably a G-20 conference, to have coordinated actions and have legislation implemented to that effect. So far, the steps taken to study the problem and to reform the system have been slow in coming and very timid. For example, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi intends to create a congressional panel (rather than an outside commission of inquiry) to investigate the causes of the US 2007-09 financial crisis. This would seem to me to be an inadequate and insufficient response to a crisis of this magnitude and severity. Fourth, for the longer run, and regarding the toxic financial products that precipitated the crisis, one wonders why new medication pills or drugs have to be approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in order to make sure that they do not hurt the human body, while no similar requirements of the sort exist for new financial products to make sure that they are not going to be very harmful to the real economy. There seems to be two different standards applied here. I personally think that there is a  need for a Financial Products Administration (FPA) in order to make sure that toxic financial products are not made available to the public before having been fully tested for their absence of toxicity. It should be mandatory that risky financial products be tested and approved before being sold to the public. And fifth and last, as to deposit-taking banks and investment banks, I happen to believe that the Glass-Steagal law should be brought back in full. It was a wise and prudent law that stabilized financial markets for three quarters of a century. Its near complete elimination in 1999 opened the floodgates of irresponsible financial gambling that nearly brought down the demise of the entire U.S. economy. I do not think the contemplated “Volcker rule” to prevent banks from operating their own hedge funds goes far enough, considering the magnitude of the problem. —I was amazed when the Glass-Steagal act was de facto repealed in 1999, and I am still amazed that the very economist who was most instrumental in that repeal is currently President Obama's principal economic adviser (Larry Summers). —As a general principle, it should be reaffirmed that finance is there to serve the needs of the real economy, and not the reverse. —Finally, I would say that in economics, as in medicine, it is never too late to do the right thing. But if you don't, the disease may become progressively worse and it may become irreversible. I think that is where we stand today regarding the necessity to reform the financial system. _______________________                                  * Drawn from notes for a conference by Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay at the Renaissance Academy (Florida Gulf Coast University FGCU), Florida, Friday, March 19, 2010. For the full text of the conference, click HERE. _______________________                                     Rodrigue Tremblay is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Montreal and can be reached at rodrigue.tremblay@yahoo.com. He is the author of the book "The Code for Global Ethics" at: http://www.TheCodeForGlobalEthics.com/ You may reserve a copy of the book on Amazon *****The French version of the book is now available. See: LeCodePourUneEthiqueGlobal.com OR Amazon Canada Register to be alerted when the English version is available by sending the word “Code” to bigpictureworld@yahoo.com Please visit the book site at: http://www.TheCodeForGlobalEthics.com/ Posted, Friday, March 23, 2010, at 5:30am Email this article to a friend: http://www.TheNewAmericanEmpire.com/tremblay=1123 Send contact, comments or commercial reproduction requests (in English or in French) to: bigpictureworld@yahoo.com N.B.: Messages may be published in our weblog, unless you request otherwise. Please register to receive free alerts on new postings of articles. Send an email with the word "subscribe" to: bigpictureworld@yahoo.com To unregister, send an email with the word "unsubscribe" to: bigpictureworld@yahoo.com The above is presented for educational purposes only. © 2010 by Big Picture World Syndicate, Inc. Click HERE to read COMMENTS (11)   Top of page Article #1122 Monday, March 8, 2010 The Moral Dimension of Things By Rodrigue Tremblay "When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves, in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it." Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850), French economist "Certain hierarchs of the Catholic Church in Latin America used prayer as an anesthesia to put the people to sleep. When they cannot dominate us with law, then comes prayer, and when they can't humiliate or dominate us with prayer, then comes the gun." Evo Morales, President of Bolivia (July 13, 2009) "The single most important quality needed to resist evil is moral autonomy. Moral autonomy is possible only through reflection, self-determination and the courage not to cooperate." Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) German philosopher Why do political leaders seem to be lying most of the time? Why is uncontrolled greed so prevalent in corporate rooms? Why do wicked men wage wars of aggression and become indifferent to the killing of innocent people? Why does materialism seem to trump everything else? Why do we have the uneasy feeling that our society is going in the wrong direction? The very fact that we have to raise such questions may be a sign of the times. Indeed, when the stench of moral decay becomes overwhelming, bad things inevitably follow. Historically, it can be shown that when the moral environment in a society is deteriorating, problems tend to pile up. We are presently living in one of those times, characterized by deep and entrenched political corruption, by routine abuse of power and disregard for the rule of law in high places, and by unchecked greed, fraud and deception in the economic sphere. The results are all there to see: Severe and prolonged economic and financial crises, rising social inequalities and social injustice, increasing intolerance toward individual choices, the disregard for environmental decay, the rise of religious absolutism, a return to whimsical wars of aggression (or of pre-emptive wars), to blind terrorism and to the repugnant use of torture, and even to genocide and to blatant war crimes. These are all indicators that our civilization has lost its moral compass. With all these throwbacks to an unpalatable past, it is not surprising there is a resurgence of interest nowadays for questions of morality and of ethics. The contradiction between modern problems, new scientific knowledge and the inadequacy of our prevalent source of morality or of ethics, which are mainly religion-based, has led a humanist like me to write a book, “The Code for GLOBAL ETHICS, Ten Humanist Principles”, [ISBN: 978-1616141721] prefaced by Dr. Paul Kurtz and published this year by Prometheus Books. The book is a down-to-earth discussion of ten basic humanist principles for our new global context. Why such a renewed interest in the moral dimension of things? —First, partly because many of our problems and threats are not only severe but they have also become global in nature. —Second, the fact that we seem to be unable to solve our global problems might also be because our scientific and technological progress is advancing much faster than our moral progress, with the consequence that problems arise faster than our moral ability to face them and to solve them. —And third, this is also partly due to the fact that the old religion-based rules of morality are of little help in solving these new problems, basically because they belong to the past and because, unfortunately, they have not incorporated new scientific knowledge. Indeed, humans' vision of themselves in the Universe has been forever altered by three fundamental scientific breakthroughs: - Galileo's proof, in 1632, that the Earth and humans were not the center of the Universe, as supposedly holy books have proclaimed. - Darwin's discovery, in 1859, (“On the Origin of Species”) that humans are not some god-like creatures unique among all species, destined to live forever, but are rather the outcome of a very long natural biological evolution. - And, the Watson-Crick-Wilkins-Franklin's discovery, in 1953, of the structure of the double helix DNA molecule (Deoxyribo Nucleic Acid) in each of the 46 chromosomes in human cells, and the devastating knowledge that humans share more than 95 percent of the same genes with chimpanzees. I would add, also, that ongoing research about how the human brain functions has cast new light on how some phenomena, such as different thoughts, including religious thoughts, are generated in different zones of the brain. Therefore, nobody can claim anymore that the Earth is the center of the Universe; nobody can claim that humans are unique in the scale of things; and nobody can claim that the human body and the human mind are two unrelated entities. This knowledge has tremendous consequences for our moral stance. My best hope is that we will avoid falling back into an age of obscurantism and of decadence, and that we will be able to build a truly humanist civilization for the future. ______ ***N.B. : Conference by Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay “Economic Bubbles and Financial Crises” at the Renaissance Academy (Florida Gulf Coast University (FGCU)), Yacht Club, Marco Island, Florida, Friday, March 19, 2010 (239-434-4737). __________________________________ Rodrigue Tremblay is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Montreal and can be reached at rodrigue.tremblay@yahoo.com.  He is the author of the coming book "The Code for Global Ethics" at: www.TheCodeForGlobalEthics.com/ You can reserve a copy of the book on Amazon *****The French version of the book is now available. See: www.lecodepouruneethiqueglobale.com/ or on Amazon. Register to be alerted when the English version is available by sending the word “Code” to bigpictureworld@yahoo.com Please visit the book site at: www.TheCodeForGlobalEthics.com/ _____________________________________ Posted, Monday, March 8, 2010, at 5:30 am Email to a friend: http://www.TheNewAmericanEmpire.com/tremblay=1121 or, http://www.thecodeforglobalethics.com/pb/wp_26f7a0c1/wp_26f7a0c1.html Send contact, comments or commercial reproduction requests (in English or in French) to: bigpictureworld@yahoo.com N.B.: Messages may be published in our weblog, unless you request otherwise. Please register to receive free alerts on new postings of articles. Send an email with the word "subscribe" to: bigpictureworld@yahoo.com To unregister, send an email with the word "unsubscribe" to: bigpictureworld@yahoo.com The above is presented for educational purposes only.                             © 2010 by Big Picture World Syndicate, Inc. Please read Dr. Tremblay's coming book: The Code for Global Ethics, Ten Humanist Principles To pre-order: http://www.amazon.com/ Click HERE to read COMMENTS Article #1121 Friday, January 22, 2010 The United States of Corporate America: From Democracy to Plutocracy. "The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." Plato, ancient Greek philosopher ...“The 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: The growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.” Alex Carey, Australian social scientist “The most effective way to restrict democracy is to transfer decision-making from the public arena to unaccountable institutions: kings and princes, priestly castes, military juntas, party dictatorships, or modern corporations.” Noam Chomsky, M.I.T. emeritus Professor of Linguistics On Tuesday, January 19 (2010), the Obama administration got a kick in the pants from the Massachusetts voters when they filled former Senator Ted Kennedy's seat by electing a conservative Republican candidate. The essence of their message was: stop dithering and start governing; stop trying to satisfy the bankers and please the anonymous editors of Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal, and start caring for the ordinary people. Two days later, President Barack Obama seemed to have understood the people's message when he announced a “Volcker rule” that will forbid large banks from owning hedge funds that make money by placing large bets against their own clients, using information that these same clients gave them. It was time. Such a policy should have been announced months ago, if not years ago. On the same day, however, a nonelected body, the U.S. Supreme Court, threw a different challenge to the Obama administration. Indeed, on Thursday January 21 (2010), a Republican-appointed majority on the U.S. Supreme Court took it upon itself to profoundly change the U.S. Constitution and American democracy. Indeed, in what can be labeled a most reactionary decision, the Roberts U.S. Supreme Court, ruled that legal entities, such as corporations and labor unions, have the same purely personal rights to free speech as living individuals. Indeed, the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution says “Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech. The only problem with such a wide interpretation of the U.S. Bills of Rights (N.B.: The first ten amendments to the United States Constitution are known as the Bill of Rights) is that this runs contrary to its letter and its spirit, since it clearly states later on that "the enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people, and reserves all powers not granted to the federal government to the citizenry or States.” The words “people” and “citizenry” clearly refer here to living human beings, not to legal or artificial entities such as business corporations, labor unions, financial organizations or political lobbies. Such entities, for example, cannot vote in an election. Indeed, laws governing voting rights in the United States clearly establish that only “Adult citizens of the United States who are residents of one of the 50 states have the right to participate fully in the political system of the United States”. No mention is made of corporations or other legal entities. However, with its January 19 (2010) decision, the majority on the Roberts U.S. Supreme Court is saying in effect that even if artificial entities cannot vote in an election, they can spend as much money as they like to influence the outcome of an election. Money is speech for them, and the more a legal entity has of it, the more it has a right to become powerful politically and control the political agenda. In fact, what Chief Justice Roberts and his conservative Supreme Court majority have done is to overcome a century-old democratic tradition in the United States in granting a constitutional right to business corporations and to banks, (because they are really the ones with a lot of money), to use their enormous resources to not only participate in debates about public issues, but also, and above all, to de facto dictate the election of candidates of their choice to public office. That's plutocracy, not democracy! Plutocracy is defined as a political system characterized by “the rule by the wealthy, or power provided by wealth.” Democracy, on the other hand, is defined as a political system where political power belongs to the people. This means “a political government either carried out directly by the people (direct democracy) or by means of elected representatives of the people (representative democracy). The terms "the power to the people" are derived from the words "people" and "power" in Greek. This fundamental idea of democracy was well summarized by President Abraham Lincoln, in his 1863 Gettysburg Address, when he said that it is “a government of the people, by the people and for the people.” This is a definition that is based on the basic democratic principle of equality among human beings. But now, the Roberts Court's decision must have made President Lincoln turn in his grave, because that decision, in effect, transfers political power from the living “people” to artificial corporate entities, with tons of money to spend. If Congress does not act quickly to reverse this decision, legal entities will be able to spend freely in the media to support or oppose political candidates for president and Congress, and this, as far as the last moment of a political campaign. This is quite something! By a stroke of the pen, the Roberts Court has thus abolished the laws governing American electoral financing and removed limits to how much special money interests can spend to have the elected officials they want. The government they want will largely be “a government of the corporations, by the corporations, for the corporations.” Truly amazing! To reflect the new political philosophy of the five-member majority of the Roberts Court, the Preambule of the U.S. Constitution that says “We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union...” should, maybe, more appropriately be changed for “We, the business corporations of America...” It is that much more ironic that the word “corporation” appears nowhere in the U.S. Constitution or in the Bill of Rights. It is scarcely conceivable that the drafters of the Constitution had anything resembling corporate entities in mind when they drafted the Bill of Rights. But the Roberts Court majority does not seem to agree with Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, Mason...etc. Because of their decision, the five conservative members of the U. S. Supreme Court of today have become the new Fathers of the U. S. Constitution. For nearly a century, it has been assumed that the U.S. Bill of Rights protected persons, not corporations. Even if sometimes the courts have extended the rights of the 14th Amendment banning the deprivation of property without due process or equal protection of the law to the property of corporations, it was never thought that the purely personal rights of the first Amendment of the Bill of Rights applied to corporate entities as well as to human beings. This is understandable. Business corporations are created through legislation that gives them potentially perpetual life and limited liability to enhance their efficiency as economic entities. While such characteristics can be beneficial in the economic sphere, they represent special dangers in the political sphere. That is the rationale for not extending constitutional rights to purely legal entities. But now, the five-member majority of the Roberts Court have said that such legalized artificial entities have the same constitutionally protected rights to engage in political activities as living individuals. In conclusion, let us reiterate that in a democracy—and as it is clearly established also in the U.S. Bill of Rights and in all democratic constitutions—the citizens are the only legitimate source of law. It follows inexorably that corporations, not being citizens, cannot be legitimate political actors. Chief Justice Roberts and his conservative Supreme Court majority have thus badly erred in their anti-democratic judgment. Their judgment is clearly revolutionary or, more precisely, counter-revolutionary. _____________________________________ Rodrigue Tremblay is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Montreal and can be reached at rodrigue.tremblay@yahoo.com.  He is the author of the coming book "The Code for Global Ethics" at: www.TheCodeForGlobalEthics.com/ You can reserve a copy of the book on Amazon *****The French version of the book is now available. See: www.lecodepouruneethiqueglobale.com/ or on Amazon. Register to be alerted when the English version is available by sending the word “Code” to bigpictureworld@yahoo.com Please visit the book site at: www.TheCodeForGlobalEthics.com/ _____________________________________ Posted, Thursday, January 7, 2010, at 5:30 am Email to a friend: http://www.TheNewAmericanEmpire.com/tremblay=1121 or, http://www.thecodeforglobalethics.com/pb/wp_26f7a0c1/wp_26f7a0c1.html Send contact, comments or commercial reproduction requests (in English or in French) to: bigpictureworld@yahoo.com N.B.: Messages may be published in our weblog, unless you request otherwise. Please register to receive free alerts on new postings of articles. Send an email with the word "subscribe" to: bigpictureworld@yahoo.com To unregister, send an email with the word "unsubscribe" to: bigpictureworld@yahoo.com The above is presented for educational purposes only.                             © 2010 by Big Picture World Syndicate, Inc. Please read Dr. Tremblay's coming book: The Code for Global Ethics, Ten Humanist Principles To pre-order: http://www.amazon.com/ Comments (17) New A Constitutional Republic Posted, Sunday, January 31, 2010 2:03 pm I read your article, "The United States of Corporate America: From Democracy to Plutocracy" and am in agreement with what the title says. The principles upon which American was founded are being murdered and the deed is just about complete. What I do not like about your article and what way to many other people say is you/they keep referring to America as a "democracy". Why do you not called it what it is suppose to be? a "Constitutional Republic".There is a big difference between "rule by majority" and "rule by law" Mike                         Answer by R. T.: It is true that the U. S. is a democratic republic with checks and balances, and not a so-called popular democracy. But let us not play with words here. A republic is: 1, “ a government in which the head of state is usually a president”. And 2, “a country governed by the elected representatives of its people.”  So it's true that the United States is a republic, but it is also a representative democracy. One does not exclude the other. In fact, the principles proclaimed in the U.S. Bill of Rights and the U.S. Constitution (the Bill of Rights is part of the constitution) are democratic principles that apply to all citizens. With the Civil War and the abolishment of slavery, plus the extension of the right to vote to non-property owners and to women, the United States has become even more democratic. That's why American leaders profess to go around the world waging war to establish “democracy”. New Corporations as Persons and Money as Speech Posted, Tuesday, January 26, 2010 3:12 pm If we roll back this U.S. Supreme Court decision, what do we do about media corporations who demonstrate their political bias on a daily basis? Why should one corporate entity (ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, FOX) have the ability to spend huge sums of money promoting their candidate through “friendly reporting” while another non-media corporation is banned from buying time to do the same for their chosen candidate? ...I support the Supreme Court ruling and believe that non-media corporations are disadvantaged against the predominately liberally biased media who have free reign to influence elections through unfair and biased reporting. I happen to believe that the Supreme Court made the right decision by determining that a corporation is a form of association of people. I work for a corporation. Nobody forces me to work there. ...Another reason I support the decision is the inherent unfairness that existed prior to the ruling. Other groups of individuals such as MoveOn.org and the Center for American Progress could spend as much money as they wished on advocacy or individual candidates, yet corporations, which are also groups of individuals (they both have boards of directors who decide how the money is spent) were banned from even doing advocacy advertising, much less financially supporting candidates. ...If we are going to allow 501c3 non-profits to support individual candidates, we must also allow business corporations to do the same since both corporations and 501c3's are non-person entities... The Supreme Court is making the argument that a corporation is to be viewed the same as an individual since it is a group of individuals. ...It should be all or nothing; all associations of individuals should be excluded from contributing funds to political campaigns, or none. ...Let the free flow of ideas occur and let the people decide. Ron (Montana)                         Answer by R. T.: Well, the answer to your first question is easy: Reinstate the “Fairness Doctrine” that Reagan abolished in 1986. President Obama should put on his pants and start governing. My answer to your second assertion is the following: There is a big difference between economic corporations whose business is to produce and distribute goods and services, and thus benefit from the privilege of limited liability, and voluntary political action committees whose main purpose is to engage in political debate. Such PACs are more similar to political parties than to business corporations or unions. This does not mean that the amount of money spent by PACs during a political campaign cannot or should not be capped. Banning such PACs, however, would deny the freedom of association guaranteed by the Constitution and would be an infringement of the First Amendment. The answer to your third point is this one: Incorporated businesses are not voluntary associations of persons. They are a legal entity with the privilege of limited liability in order to join capital and labor in the production of goods and services. They are not created under the constitutional right of association but by legislation as an efficient way to promote economic activity. That's why incorporated businesses cannot be treated as associations of individuals for political purposes. In fact, people who invest in them are rarely de facto consulted in regard to the direction of the company. Their real recourse, unless they are a majority shareholder, is to sell their shares if they disagree. Management has no right to speak for the individuals connected to the corporation. The same can be said about labor unions when leaders impose their political views on the membership and use union dues to favor one candidate or one political party, irrespective of a member's choice. That's undemocratic and abusive. That's why both business corporations and labor unions should be barred from spending a corporation's or a union's money in a political campaign. That's not the managers' money. They are only custodians of that money. Their use of it to intervene in the political process reduces the importance of each individual citizen's participation in the democratic process. To summarize, and as I explain in my coming book The Code for Global Ethics, (chap. 9), I say that corporations are not moral agents—only breathing individuals are—only they can adopt moral standards of conduct and be a source of law. Contrary to what you say, and what the Roberts Court majority seems to think, incorporated businesses are not associations of persons. They are a legal entity with the privilege of limited liability with the purpose of using capital and labor in the production of goods and services. They are not created under the constitutional right of association but by legislation as an efficient way to promote economic activity. Therefore, my conclusion is that the five-member majority on the U. S. Supreme Court rendered not only an antidemocratic judgment, but also an immoral one. I would add that what the Roberts Court majority has done is to devalue the importance of each American's vote and increase tremendously the political power of the money class and business corporations in the United States. They will be able to buy senators and representives, even presidents, at will. I thus predict that the U. S. which has the lowest voting turn-out of all democratic counries (a bit above 50 percent for presidential elections and a bit above 33 percent for mid-term elections) will see voter participation decline further in the coming years, if this revolutionary Supreme court judgment is not over-turned one way or another. Ordinary people, i.e. living persons, will arrive at the conclusion that their vote has no value, everything being decided in advance by the corporate full-time 35,000 lobbyists in Washington D.C. and by the billions of dollars used by them to buy influence and political access. I would bet that 10-15 years from now, the participation rate will drop to 33 percent for presidential elections and to 25 percent for mid-term elections. That would be a true mockery of democracy and the U.S. will be laughed at for pretending to “spread democracy around the world” when it does not practice it at home. Alexander Hamilton, who wanted an elected aristocracy, would have won over Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. New The Grand Conspiracy of Corporate Personhood Posted, Tuesday, January 26, 2010 11:12 am Perhaps you may want to read the history of the machinations by which corporations became persons. I have copied excerpts from Chapter 6 of Thom Hartmann's book Unequal Protection. They are most instructive and demonstate the long reach of corporate personhood. In The Rise of American Civilization (1927), Columbia history professor Charles Beard and woman’s suffrage movement activist Mary Beard suggested that the rise of corporations on the American landscape was the result of a grand conspiracy that reached from the boardrooms of the nation’s railroads all the way to the Supreme Court. Lynn                             Answer by R. T.: The latest manifestation of corporate power, of course, is the extremist Roberts Court's decision to extend the Bill of Rights to corporations and other legislatively created entities. That's why I say that this January 21 decision is really the equivalent of a political and constitutional “coup d'état”. It is truly a revolutionary and system-changing decision. This is reminiscent of Hitler burning The Reichstag (Assembly Chamber) in Germany in 1933. This is an event that marked the establishment of Nazi Germany.  If the January 21 (2010) Roberts court's decision is not overturned one way or another by the President and Congress, it will have devastating consequences for the future of U.S. democracy. New Strains on American Society Posted, Monday, January 25, 2010 4:05 pm That there are stresses and strains on American society is clear for anyone to see. These stresses and strains are the result of changes that include the country's demographic composition, but more importantly, fundamental changes in the way value has been created during the last decade and a half. As these changes are now making their impact felt, many thinking people struggle with the question of what will happen to American Capitalism. My own take on it is driven by a simple distinction that I find helpful in trying to understand what is going on. That distinction is between "Culture" and "Structure." For example, the American business culture has always been and continues to be informed by a spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship, and a willingness to take a chance. The structure of our present model of capitalism is another story. There is no doubt in my mind that a large part of today's societal frictions is the result of the fact that several important industries have morphed into what can be labeled as "Oligopolies". An oligopoly is a market system dominated by three or four major players and in which everyone else operates on the periphery. Today, we find this condition in such sectors as, financial services, automotive (the domestic portion, anyway), the health insurance industry and pharmaceuticals. One of the more salient characteristics of an oligopoly is that the leading participants try to avoid competing on price in as many ways possible. At the same time, you will find that large corporations, including those operating under conditions of oligopoly, are not exactly stellar creators of jobs. To the contrary, it is a well-established fact that job creation occurs mostly at the bottom of the pyramid, where the millions of smaller and medium-sized companies reside. Those players operate under conditions of "Free Enterprise", where many players compete vigorously on price and all other ingredients of the competitive landscape. Free enterprise of course, is merely a different shade of grey within the entire spectrum of capitalism's organizing principles. ... Tom New Taking the Judgment not Lying Down Posted, Monday, January 25, 2010 10:45 am Most Americans have taken that judgment not lying down, but standing up, which is the usual position for sleepwalking. Neocons, who control U.S. media and finance, are reactionary corporatists who purged from the GOP us bonafide conservatives who had built the party. Bush/41 and self-styled neoconservatives then hijacked it. I suggest to all true conservatives in the South that henceforth we call ourselves 'seventy-sixers' or 'grandkids' (re the Revolutionary 'Sons of Liberty'), as neocon anticonservatives have now dropped the 'neo', thereby making 'conservative' the 'new gay' -- a misappropriated word that in no way means what it had once meant. Liberal collectivists, having trashed their own 'brand' through unpopular policy positions and distasteful political tactics, have rebranded themselves as 'progressives'. Ironically, we conservatives had our brand trashed for us by reactionary collectivists who misnamed themselves neoconservatives in order to steal an impeccable brandname and displace us. Given the malicious and destructive domestic and foreign policies they have pursued, the neocons -- now led domestically by Benny Bernanke-panky (Time Magazine's 'Poison of the Year') -- would have more accurately called themselves the 'Merchants of Menace'. Had the banking racket been more developed in his day, perhaps Shakespeare might not have written [Henry VI] "kill all the lawyers". Johnny New Real Democracy in Australia! Posted, Sunday, January 24, 2010 6:22 pm Your books are in excellent company. I will read them with great interest. Because no realistic political remedy appears to exist that might rescue democratic government in the US, UK or Canada, I thought you might enjoy reading the product of a real live plot to achieve this in Australia. In the event we are successful this will provide a model for others to emulate. Although our membership structure prohibits accurate assessment of our numbers, it would appear that we are now the third largest political entity in the country; happily, a growth that has developed entirely below the media and party political radar. This discretion is important to us because the last entity to attempt a return to democracy was destroyed by the Murdoch-dominated media and by academia, and its members ridiculed and reviled and, finally, politically assassinated. The leader was imprisoned. Our second method favouring our survival is the adoption of a strategy by which instead of one single organisation, which would attract unwelcome attention and harassment, we function as nine separate entities. One of these, for example, promotes music and bands that tend to politicise working class youth, for these are the main sector that can be relied upon to get up and fight, should this be required. (University youth, seeing themselves as the future elite, are in favour of a more hierarchical and anti-egalitarian society). However, our spearhead groups pursue tariff restoration and opposition to ETS. A second advantage of multiple entities is that by exposing prospective members only to specific causes they approve, we alienate no one. So far, members have proved to be very comfortable with this. By comparison, political parties, carrying a platform of policies, are inevitably limited in their growth and support, to tolerance for all of their policies. This is why small parties rarely attract more than 8-10% of the electorate; generally settling at 7%. The first e-mail attachment elaborates on the points you made about democracy. I have researched this subject quite exhaustively, including spending many years within tribal communities in which consensus protocols guide pure democracy. You may be aware that most anthropological opinion would deny this interpretation, however, in Australia, I never encountered an Anthropologist who bothered to learn Aboriginal languages whereas I learned one quite thoroughly and several other languages to varying stages of fluency; flowing from an investment of 25 years. I consider monolingualism to be the absolute disqualification for any attempt at interpreting a disparate culture. The second attachment has been described by some notable readers as our manifesto, which I suppose it is to some extent. However, the intent is simply to acquaint pro-democracy entities with an overview of the real globalisation; as launched by the Rockefeller/Rothschild group. We are attempting to establish a globalisation resistance movement around the world in which members contribute their own special knowledge, thus educating us all. To a considerable extent, www.GlobalResearch.com performs this function admirably but we seek additional coordination of action. One can talk only for so long but eventually active strategies must be launched. We are quite expert at knowing what works and what are deliberate pitfalls ready to bog down naive campaigners, and we have proselytised techinques since 2006. Tony (Electing someone to do our thinking for us is foolish. Imposing the people's consensus on government is democracy.) New Corporate globalism Posted, Sunday, January 24, 2010 2:22 pm I just read an article by you on corporate globalism. I think that the word "globalism" should not be used without the word "corporate" in front of it. I am a singer-songwriter in Berkeley, CA who recently learned to make music videos. Vic New Labor Unions and Corporations Posted, Sunday, January 24, 2010 10:19 am Although you mentioned labor unions in the beginning of your article, you failed to include them in your revision of the constitution. They have been allowed this opportunity even prior to the court's recent decision. Why leave them out? Phyllis New Plutocracy vs Democracy Posted, Saturday, January 23, 2010 8:42 pm As per your article titled: "The United States of Corporate America: From Democracy to Plutocracy", nowhere in the US Constitution does it even mention the word Democracy, let alone this being its form of Government. The article you have so eloquently written is only partially true, the US is now and has been a Plutocracy since the  beginning of the War between the States in 1863. The Republic went thru it's final unseating in 1916 with the re-election of Woodrow Wilson. In future if you intend to write an article "Based on the facts" please include them. Douglas New Excellent Piece Posted, Saturday, January 23, 2010 10:43 am This is an excellent piece. What a travesty! Even John McCain has come out against the Roberts Court's decision. Diana New Heading toward a Revolution? Posted, Friday, January 22, 2010 12:25 am About the Supreme Court decision, your article is exactly to the point. I fully concur. Consequences of that Court decision will be dramatically bad, unfortunately. The paradox is in the fact that the Supreme Court acts against the Consitution, which it is supposed to guard. I'm afraid we are heading toward a revolution. Karol New Ordinary People! Posted, Saturday, January 23, 2010 2:05 pm The Constitution doesn’t begin with “We the Ordinary People”.  We all have our individual talents; that does not make us better than others. Thomas Jefferson had the decency to refer to the citizens as the people when he spoke. Drop the “ordinary” language from your vocabulary. I seem to recall a skirmish (war) fought in the late 1700’s to rid ourselves of corporate rule. The British East India Corporation with the backing of King George III sent in troops to quell the rabble and lost. I am still quite puzzled by this-when anytime in history before this event did the loser get to dictate the terms of the treaty. In essence they didn’t lose much at the time, however in the long run they lost a great deal. So you see the Founders were painfully aware of the evils of corporations and left it up to the states to make laws governing them. I am looking forward to reading your book. Harvey New Fine Article Posted, Saturday, January 23, 2010 10:25 am Many thanks for the vary fine article clearly reflecting America's slide into slavery. You are so right in that so many people are asleep and just don't give a damn, but maybe the upset in Mass. is a dim light into the future. Heep up the good work, Professor, the Americas need more of you. Walter New The Word “Equality” is Dangerous Posted, Friday, January 22, 2010 10:00 pm It is very good stuff, and fundamental, with the potential of affecting millions. I would like to raise a fundamental point: The word "equality" used in the article is a dangerous one at times, to wit: "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal." Which originated from what became the US. It was, and is, an absolute blatant, damnable, lie, that supported the American Revolution, that preceded the French Revolution, that preceded the Russian Revolution, and that has encouraged socialism and jealousy and dissatisfaction around the world ever since! No two people are equal. Even two identical twins of the same sex, are not equal! Finger printing and DNA prove it. I would prefer, for possible example:  ... the basic democratic principle that all citizens have equal voting rights. Jim                         Answer by R. T.: Of course, regarding the word equality, some definitions and precisions would be useful here. What is meant in the context I use it is that each human being belongs to the human race and is thus worthy of being treated with respect. Each individual, of course, has his or her own characteristics, personality and potential. No two individuals are identical in this sense. And, of course also, at another level, no two cultures are equal or of the same value regarding social or economic efficiency or any other goal. What is meant in the U. S. Declaration of Independence that you cite (“...that all men are created equal"), I think, is the idea that there is no superior race who have rights that other people don't have. At birth, every human being has the same human rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Thinking otherwise is racism and has been a source of much evil during human history. New Why are Supreme Court Judges Appointed for Lifetime? Posted, Friday, January 22, 2010 6:06 pm Admirable article. This was a long time coming and the Bushites merely ushered it in faster. I am in the camp where none of the Supreme Court appointees should be lifetime. They should be elected to term as well as term limits. Of course, I also believe the electoral college system should be abolished, electronic voting done away with, one vote for each voter and winner takes all. Politicians should all have term limits as well as corporations recognized for what they are: Businesses. Being a politician was never created to be a job and career. Officials who refuse to abide by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights should be removed from office as they have committed acts of treason. Ron (Miami)                         Answer by R. T.: I agree with you regarding term limits. In Canada, for example, Supreme Court justices have to retire when they are 75 years old. In the U. S., Supreme Court justices tend to wait to be near death before retiring, because they know the partisan appointments swing the Court from one extreme to the other for a long time. As to the five Republican judges on the US Supreme Court involved in the revolutionary decision of January 21, they seem to be part of a powerful oligarchy that controls things in the United States pretty much irrespective of the people's wishes. In 2000, let us remember, they elected George W. Bush who had received 500,000,000 fewer votes than Al Gore. —A decade of disasters followed. We should also keep in mind that when a country is under a system of plutocracy and of oligarchy, it can be said to be run by a plutarchy. New The Enemy is Here Posted, Friday, January 22, 2010 10:54 am The Supreme Court ruling has been described by several major pundits and bloggers as the end of Democracy. When I enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1966, I swore an oath to defend my country. I was sent to Vietnam, where someone else who was defending his country shot me. It is said, “Once a Marine, always a Mariine.”. Am I still under obligation of the oath I swore? If corporate entities are ending my Democracy, it means the enemy is here and now. What should I do? hgovernick New Responsibility Posted, Friday, January 22, 2010 12:57 pm If the congress allows this decision to stand, allowing them (corporate entities) the freedoms and responsibilities of a person or citizen, then perhaps they could be held responsible for the deaths of a half million Iraqi civilians during the embargo years. There is little doubt of corporate involvement. Charles Article #2120 Thursday, January 7, 2010 Economy 2010: From the Scandalous Known Past to the Uncertain Future By Rodrigue Tremblay “Homes rose markedly in value, especially in hot markets like Florida and New York City. Borrowers  believed that home purchases were no-risk ventures certain to escalade, and they went out on a limb to buy. Lenders who had once required large down payments now permitted home purchasers to combine two and three loans to buy a home. People took out what were called “buffet” loans, which were interest-only loans that buyers were told they should refinance in three years or five years. Lenders told home buyers not to worry; homes were rising so fast in value that it would always be easy to refinance into another loan. Developpers built larger houses. Why not? Borrowers wanted larger homes. They needed the space to hold all the things they were buying.” —U. S. Housing market in 1928-29, in Kristin Downey, The Woman Behind the New Deal (Frances Perkins), 2009, p. 106, from Gail Radford, Modern Housing for America: Policy Struggles in the New Deal, 1996, pp.10-22 "I place economy (saving) among the first and most important virtues, and debt as the greatest of dangers to be feared." Thomas Jefferson: 3rd US President (1801-09) "America is more communist than China is right now. You can see that this is welfare of the rich, it is socialism for the rich -- it's just bailing out financial institutions. This is madness; this is insanity; they have more than doubled the American national debt in one weekend for a bunch of crooks and incompetents." Jim Rogers, American investor After a decade plus of unchecked greed by money-changers, of the political dismantling of financial regulation, of large “too-big-to-fail” banks made larger, of artificial easy money by the central bank, of the risky securitization of all kinds of debt instruments and of leveraged buy-outs of scores of companies with their own debts by financial operators, it was no surprise that the financial house of cards came crashing down in 2007-2008. It was like a pre-programmed financial crisis. A perfect financial storm. What lessons can be drawn from the recent unhealthy and unpalatable past? And, what is in store for the near future, considering that hardly anything in the financial environment has changed? A crisis caused by a near total absence of financial regulation, by a too easy monetary policy and by too much debt, has been met with no additional financial regulation, by an even easier monetary policy and by even more debt. In fact, the U.S. ratio of total debt ($57 trillion) to the economy (GDP: $14.5 trillion in 2009) is even higher today at 3.9, then it was before the onset of the crisis in 2007-08, when it stood at 3.4. That is why we will argue here that the problems of U.S. financial dysfunction have not been solved. On the contrary, they have been swept under the large rug of even easier money and of even larger debts, which is only postponing the day of reckoning. For sure, the large Wall Street banks' bad debts have been transferred to the public sector (the Treasury and the Fed) and to the quasi public sector (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac), but the overall debt load of the U.S. economy has not been reduced; it has been increased. That is why the U.S. is condemned to continue its foreign borrowing binge for some time to come. In general, too much foreign borrowing is bad for an economy, especially if it is done to finance an excessive level of domestic consumption. When this happens, it is a sign that total domestic expenditures (government, corporations, consumers) exceed total incomes. The country lives beyond its means and the gap has to be filled with net foreign borrowings. The principal indicator of this situation is the current account (a broader measure than the external trade balance) of the country. When a country's current account turns negative, more money for imports and interest payments is flowing out of the country than is coming in through exports and investment income. Like any individual, of course, a country can borrow abroad if its credit rating is good. The question is how much and for how long. For countries that have fully convertible currencies or, better, for countries like the United States whose national currency also serves as an international key-currency, the situation can endure for a longer period, but there is always a day of reckoning. In general, for a normal economy, a negative current account that exceeds six (6) percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), especially if this is due to a negative trade balance, usually indicates a non sustainable situation of foreign borrowing and foreign indebtedness that can lead to a financial crisis. Countries like Mexico (1994-95) and Thailand (1997-98) experienced such a financial crisis in the 1990's. Such was the case also with Argentina at the turn of the century. Since 2000, and coinciding with the arrival of the George W. Bush Republican administration, the United States has also embarked upon a policy of excessive domestic spending, resulting in larger and larger and persistent current account deficits and huge foreign borrowings. Indeed, the adoption of an imperial foreign policy of permanent war throughout the world, financed on credit, and an ideological preference for large fiscal deficits, have translated into large American current account deficits. In 2006, the U.S. (external) current account deficit reached 6.5 percent of GDP. This was the apex of external debt sustainability and a harbinger of economic troubles to come for the U.S. economy. As a matter of fact, this induced me to write an article on October 16, 2006 entitled “Headwinds for the US Economy”, in which I warned that it was a "matter of months, not years", before the U.S. economy and the U.S. dollar begin to experience some downward pressures. I repeated the warning a few months later when I wrote on May 5, 2007, (A Slowdown or a Recession in the U.S. in 2008?), that we could expect "the collapse of one and possibly several major financial institutions under the pressures of bad loans and record foreclosures... The rate of foreclosure is bound to spike in the coming months, possibly culminating in the next two years into a financial hurricane." This was said many months before the onset of the 2008-09 recession and the September 15, 2008 failure of the large investment bank Lehman Brothers. In 2008, in the midst of the economic recession, the U.S. current account deficit was still estimated at –$706 billion (nearly all caused by a –$707.8 billion trade deficit) for a $14,441 U. S. GDP, that translated into a 4.9 percent current account deficit relative to the economy. With the 2008–09 economic crisis and recession, the US current account deficit has since been somewhat reduced due to a drop in incomes and in imports, and partly due to a sharp decline in oil prices, but it is expected to remain above four percent of GDP. In the coming years, this ratio is likely to increase again as the long-term U.S. fiscal deficit is expected to remain at 10 percent of GDP for years to come. The Fed's Role in Creating Asset Price Bubbles The causes of a financial crisis are complex and can vary from one country to the next. In general, however, they usually stem from the central bank becoming subservient to the government when the latter decides to embark upon a policy of large fiscal deficits. If the central government opts in favor of monetizing the public deficits and keeping interest rates low, an asset bubble is bound to emerge. Unfortunately, that's pretty much what the Greenspan Fed elected to do in maintaining an easy money policy for too long and in keeping interest rates too low, for too long, in the late 1990s and in the first part of the 2000 decade. Indeed, most economists agree that in 2003-04, the U.S. Fed should have raised short-term interest rates (pushed down to 1 percent in June 2003 from 6.5 percent in December 2000). But the then Greenspan Fed (current Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke has been a Fed Board member since 2002) was deeply embroiled in the Bush political agenda. Chairman Alan Greenspan publicly acknowledged this fact when he declared on September 17, 2007, in an interview with the Financial Times, that “raising interest rates sooner and faster (before the 2004 presidential election) would not have been acceptable to the political establishment given the very low (official) rate of inflation”. In financial matters, the American central bank (the Fed or the Federal Reserve System) is a curious animal. It is an institution that is entrusted to regulate banks and other financial institutions, but it is partly owned by the large money center banks. It is in a perpetual conflict of interests. In fact, it can be said that the Fed is the banks' own private government. In good times, large Wall Street banks, bank holding companies and other large integrated financial groups, such as AIG (American International Group), are pretty much left alone and allowed to build profitable but risky and shaky financial pyramids, with scant supervision. When things go bad, however, the Fed stands ready to bail them out with automatic discounting, zero-interest loans and other goodies, the overall cost being transferred to the general public through an inflation tax and a debased currency. We know since 2008 that the U.S. Treasury also stands ready with public money to bailout the large Wall Street banks when their gambles go sour. The $700 billion Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) is testimony to that effect. A central bank can always print new money. But this is hardly a magic recipe for prosperity. If it were so, many Third World countries could claim to have discovered this magic potion. The current Bernanke Fed is tragically wrong in its belief that it can reverse the current over-indebtedness situation in the economy and its mismanagement of the financial crisis by printing money. It is not true that the real economy always respond positively to heavy doses of monetary stimulus. In fact, the contrary is usually the case. If it were true, Zimbabwe, which is an African economic basket case with an uncontrolled bout of hyperinflation, would be prosperous. The U.S. economy is not exempt from fundamental economic laws. A few years down the road, people will see why. It is my feeling that the U.S. economy is presently in the eye of a powerful financial hurricane of debt liquidation. Such systemic crisis happens no more than twice in a century and it takes at least a decade to work itself out. In this environment, one should be wary of the stock market as a barometer of the real economy. There could be artificially created short-term “liquidity” rallies, when all the while the real economy remains in the doldrums. The 2009 liquidity-driven stock market rally has all the appearances of such a bear market rally destined to fail and trap many unwary investors. In fact, this rally looks like a mirror repeat of the 1930 stock market rally that saw stocks retrace some fifty percent of their initial 1929 losses. We know now that this was only a mirage, and that the worst was still to come. In my last July 10 blog, I stated that there is likely to be a prolonged 2007-2017 economic stagnation period in the U.S. —I reconfirm this assessment, which is reinforced by my conviction that the Bernanke Fed is making matters worse by its unlimited printing press so-called “solution” of discounting everything but the kitchen sink. It is my contention that this imprudent Fed is paving the way for the mother load of bubble and subsequent crash. This is because, as alluded to above, they seem to have forgotten that the credit cycle and the process of debt build-up, and the subsequent debt liquidation that follows, are the primary driving forces in the underlying economic cycle. This time the crash will be initiated in the huge bond market, will spread to the commercial loan market and ultimately to the stock market, and then will further crush the real economy in a way that few understand today but will learn the hard way in the coming years. Let us keep in mind that in the recent past, the Fed and the U.S. Treasury did not see the subprime and housing crises coming. They were completely taken off-guard. In 2005, according to then Fed member Ben Bernanke, “there was no housing bubble”, even though everybody and his uncle could see that the real estate bubble was about to burst. And now, let us look at the figures. At the end of 2009, reflecting a binge of printing new money by the Fed, the U.S. monetary base, i.e. money circulating through the public and banking reserves on deposit with the Federal Reserve, stood at more than $2,016,136,000,000, after having increased 146 percent in three years. This is unprecedented. —Even if one subtracts the inactive excess bank reserves at the Fed, worth more than $1 trillion (and earning interest!), the U.S.'s monetary base has grown 22 percent in three years, from a starting point of $818 billion in early 2006. Nevertheless, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said in 2009, that he does not fear inflation and that, in fact, inflation could even go down from then on. He could be right for the next few months, but how about the next few years? Those who listened to Chairman B. B. in 2005, and kept buying leveraged real estate, lost their shirt. I am of the feeling that those who believed Chairman B.B in 2009, and kept buying long-term U.S. Treasury bonds, are also going to lose their shirt. Because of the huge federal deficits and Fed policy to monetize a big chunk of them, U.S. long-term rates are bound to increase in the coming years, whether the real economy grows or not. That would be the next Fed-created bubble bursting, the bubble of artificially low interest rates, excessive money creation and artificially high asset prices for long-term Treasury bonds. In the past, the big losers of this policy were the millions of people who lost their homes through mortgage foreclosures, the millions of people who lost their jobs through bankruptcies and the millions of retirees who saw their retirement incomes plummet with near zero interest rates. In the future, the principal losers will still be middle class families who will continue being the victims of a massive spoliation and will still have trouble making ends meet, plus retirees whose retirement capital will be further eroded. Where is AARP when we need it? __________________________________ Rodrigue Tremblay is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Montreal and can be reached at rodrigue.tremblay@yahoo.com.  He is the author of the coming book "The Code for Global Ethics" at: www.TheCodeForGlobalEthics.com/ You can reserve a copy of the book on Amazon *****The French version of the book is now available. See: www.lecodepouruneethiqueglobale.com/ or on Amazon. Register to be alerted when the English version is available by sending the word “Code” to bigpictureworld@yahoo.com Please visit the book site at: www.TheCodeForGlobalEthics.com/ _____________________________________ Posted, Thursday, January 7, 2010, at 5:30 am Email to a friend: http://www.TheNewAmericanEmpire.com/tremblay=1120 or, http://www.thecodeforglobalethics.com/pb/wp_26f7a0c1/wp_26f7a0c1.html Send contact, comments or commercial reproduction requests (in English or in French) to: bigpictureworld@yahoo.com N.B.: Messages may be published in our weblog, unless you request otherwise. Please register to receive free alerts on new postings of articles. Send an email with the word "subscribe" to: bigpictureworld@yahoo.com To unregister, send an email with the word "unsubscribe" to: bigpictureworld@yahoo.com The above is presented for educational purposes only.                             © 2010 by Big Picture World Syndicate, Inc. Comments (10) Economy 2010: From the Scandalous Known Past to the Uncertain Future New A very well written article Posted, Thursday, January 7, 2010 10:00 pm This was a very well written article and it serves a most useful purpose. As you know I appreciate your writing. You are not writing for an academic audience, even though the scholarship is there.... Andrew New The Plight of Retirees Posted, Thursday, January 7, 2010 12:42 am As one of those retirees getting 0.1 % on my money, i am desperately awaiting that increase in interest rates.  i have been waiting and planning on it since the U.S.'s invasion of iraq.  It has not happened yet.  I know it, logically, must.  Yet I know that China continues to support the U.S. Treasury bond market. It could be 2012 or 2017 before we see those double digit treasury rates again. Joe Answer by R.T.: Interest income has vanished over the last few years. Long-term Treasury rates are at 4.65% now, and are expected to rise 1.0% this year and next. Non-taxable muni-bonds are giving a fair return, but one has to go 10 years+.  Another alternative is some high-paying dividend stocks. To pre-order The Code for Global Ethics, by Rodrigue Tremblay, click: The Code for Global Ethics, Ten Humanist Principles New Looting the economy Posted, Thursday, January 7, 2010 2:05 am I enjoyed your last piece! Was Obama's little-publicized Christmas Eve executive-decree bankrolling of Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac to the tune of an additional $1,000,000,000,000.00 (one-trillion dollars) the biggest bailout yet--with no legislative input? Here's one analyst that would agree. He's very understated but stay with it and pay attention to what he's saying: http://www.forextv.com/Forex/Video.jsp?channel=276&movieie=61345 But wait, this is small potatoes compared to the latest bailout scheme being "stealthed" through Washington D.C. by Dem. Rep. Barney Frank and his merry band of financial pirates. Yes, that's $4,000,000,000,000.00 (four-trillion dollars). "Days of awe" indeed--for the "too big to fail" banks and other financial "Madoffs"! Tom New Another excellent article Posted, Thursday, January 7, 2010 9:31 pm I have found your recent articles very insightful. I am most interested about WWII and have written articles about it. This year will be 65 years since this most damaging war to Western civilization. It ought to be commemorated given the path of the U.S. military and NATO. Walter New Small Communities Posted, Wednesday, January 6, 2010 8:47 pm You say that “This time the crash will be initiated in the huge bond market, will spread to the commercial loan market and ultimately to the stock market, and then will further crush the real economy in a way that few understand today but will learn the hard way in the coming years.” I am interested in what you write. It seems that you can predict how the economy will unfold. Are you aware of any measures that small communities can take to make a difference to what will transpire? A reader Answer by R.T.: I am sorry if I gave you the wrong impression that I can predict the future. —I can't. What I can do is analyze the consequences that logically follow from certain choices and policies, according to economic laws. Small communities, and states for that matter, are presently seeing big drops in tax revenues, as property values decline and contract. Raising tax rates is not an option because taxpayers also have lowered incomes. Local governments have no choice but to economize and streamline their operations, i.e. raise productivity. To pre-order The Code for Global Ethics, by Rodrigue Tremblay, click: The Code for Global Ethics, Ten Humanist Principles New An informative article Posted, Wednesday, January 6, 2010 3:21 pm This was an informative article. What are needed now are more hard-hitting articles to wake people up. Ben Bernanke is misinformed and Tim Geithner is misplaced, to put it politely. Neither is self-directed. Rather they are pawns in a larger game that you can only touch from a distance because of your position. Ray New The Costs of Wars Posted, Wednesday, January 6, 2010 3:32 pm As an interested reader I was refreshed by your article and thank you for writing so lucidly on the subject matter – this is empowering for ordinary people like myself. I would be interested to know how you see the impact of the financial cost of the new wars ‘without end’ on the various trends which you discuss. Could it be that this, and the other factors, is rapidly leading us into a situation akin to recent times when science was forced to drastically re-calculate (and bring forward) critical timescales relating to anticipated trends in global warming? Is this view far too pessimistic? Rob Answer by R.T.: U.S.-led permanent wars cost the U.S. $110 billion plus a year in direct costs, plus of course a large chunk of the Pentagon's basic annual budget of $660 billion. These wars consume a lot of energy and are a subtantial contributor to pollution. I am no expert in climate warming, but this is bound to have an impact. To pre-order The Code for Global Ethics, by Rodrigue Tremblay, click: The Code for Global Ethics, Ten Humanist Principles New An understandable article Posted, Wednesday, January 6, 2010 11:59 am I read your new article today. I'm not one who normally believes in conspiracy theories, but I think this is a 100 plan going back to 1913 by the Fed to ultimately dismantle the U.S. as a super power and institute a One World Gov't. There are many articles & videos online about this as I'm sure you're aware. I also liked very much how understandable your article was to non financial experts like myself. Thank you again and keep the great articles Coming. Susan New Questions Posted, Wednesday, January 6, 2010 11:59 am I just read a great article you wrote. I have a question and/or new article suggestion. What does this mean to us? I'm extremly concerned about the coming financial storm and I'd like to know how to prepare my family to get through it. I just don't see any safe investments, currencies, properties, etc.. Maybe precious metals and gemstones physically in my possession but I have my concerns there too. There are a lot of folks who see this spending spree coming to a head but not many discussing what to do about it. What say you? Bill Answer by R.T.: It is not easy to navigate financially in those troubled waters. One has to be careful and not be too deep in debt. There are a few basic economic facts to keep in mind. Today's government deficits will be tomorrow's taxes and one must prepare for that. If there is inflation in the coming years, this means fixed income investments should not have a maturity much longer than 5-6 years. Some good dividend paying stocks can also be a protection against inflation. As for real estate, this year and next should be the bottom of the 18-year real estate cycle. In general, this should not be a time to sell, unless forced to, but a time to buy. To pre-order The Code for Global Ethics, by Rodrigue Tremblay, click: The Code for Global Ethics, Ten Humanist Principles New Wow! Super Article! Posted, Tuesday, January 5, 2010 9:13 am Je veux vous dire que vos articles sont particulièrement intéressants. Je partage entièrement vos points de vue sur l'imminente prochaine crise financière et de devises. Yves Article #1119 Posted Wednesday, December 23, 2009 The New Crusade: Imperial U.S. vs Political Islam By Rodrigue Tremblay "I am as intolerant of imperialistic designs on the part of other nations as I was of such designs on the part of Germany. The choice is between two ideals; on the one hand, the ideal of democracy, which represents the rights of free peoples everywhere to govern themselves, and, the ideal of imperialism which seeks to dominate by force and unjust power, an ideal which is by no means dead and which is earnestly [sought] in many quarters still." U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, July 1919 "Fight and kill the disbelievers wherever you find them, take them captive, harass them, lie in wait and ambush them using every stratagem of war." The Qur'an (9:5), Islam's holy book "We are fighting them (the terrorists) over there so that we won't have to fight them here at home." Former U.S. President George W. Bush's political slogan “I, like any head of state, reserve the right to act unilaterally if necessary to defend my nation.” U.S. President Barack Obama, December 10, 2009 “When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest...and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war.” Plato, ancient Greek philosopher (428/427-348/347 B.C.) In the political movie “Charlie Wilson's War” about the Soviet-Afghanistan war, the hero states “America does not fight religious wars.” Is this possibly wrong, dead wrong? In fact, is it not possible that since September 11, 2001, a new type of “holy war” may have begun? This time, the new crusade with strong religious overtones pits fundamentalist Christian America and its allies, against political Islam and the Islamist al Qaeda terrorist organization. On September 16, 2001, then President George W. Bush set the tone when he said: “This crusade, this war on terrorism, is gonna take awhile.” On December 1, 2009 Nobel “Peace” laureate Barack Obama, president of the United States since January 20, 2009, decided to follow in the footsteps of his predecessor, President George W. Bush. He announced a policy of stepping up the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan-Pashtunistan. He announced an escalation in the military occupation of Afghanistan by sending extra American troops in that Muslim country, putting the number of American soldiers in Afghanistan at more than 100,000. Not satisfied in using the same vocabulary as George W. Bush, Barack Obama pushed the symbolism by adopting Bush's practice of announcing policies surrounded by more than 4,000 students dressed as soldiers at the West Point Academy. This was all too reminiscent of President Lyndon B. Johnson's fatal decision in 1965 to acquiesce to the request from U.S. commanders to enlarge the Vietnam war by sending scores of additional U.S. soldiers to that Asiatic country. America seems to be in a constant need of a foreign enemy. First, it was the British. Then it was the Indians. Then it was the Mexicans. Then it was the Spanish. Then it was the Philippinos. Then it was the Japanese. Then it was the Germans. Then it was the Italians. Then it was the Koreans. Then it was the Cubans. Then it was the Vietnamese. Then it was the Soviets. Then it was the Iraqis. Then it was the Islamists. Then it was the Talibans. And, once the current conflict in Pashtunistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan is over, it will possibly be the Iranians, the Chinese, the Russians...etc.! The reason for such a permanent-war mentality is most likely related to the U.S. military-industrial complex, an enormous beast that must be fed regularly hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars, if not trillions of dollars, to sustain itself. In the months following the collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991, the high echelons at the Pentagon were busy designing a new post-cold-war strategy designed to keep the U.S. war machine humming. Paul Wolfowitz, then Undersecretary of Defense for Policy under Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney in the George H. Bush administration, wrote a memorandum titled “The Defense Policy Guidance 1992-1994”, which was dated February 18, 1992. The new so-called Wolfowitz Doctrine was a blueprint to "set the nation’s [military] direction for the next century." This new neocon military doctrine called for the replacement of the policy of "containment" with one of military "preemption" and international "unilateralism", in effect, discarding the United Nations Charter that forbids such international behavior. The Pentagon's overall goal was to establish, through military force, a “one-Superpower World”. The more immediate objectives of the new U.S. neocon doctrine was to "...preserve U.S. and Western access to the [Middle East and Southwest Asia] region's oil", and, as stated in an April 16, 1992 addendum, to contribute “to the security of Israel and to maintaining the qualitative edge that is critical to Israel's security”. Because of some opposition within the U.S. Government, the new policy did not become immediately effective. But the objective remained. For instance, in September 2000, under the auspices of “The Project for the New American Century”, a new strategic document was issued and was entitled "Rebuilding America's Defenses, Strategy: Forces and Resources For a New Century". The same goals expressed in the 1992 document were reiterated. The belief was expressed that the kind of military transformation the (neocon) planners were considering required "some catastrophic and catalyzing event — like a new Pearl Harbor”, to make it possible to sell the plan to the American public. They were either very prescient or very lucky, because exactly one year later, they were served with the "New Pearl Harbor" they had been openly hoping for. Indeed, the Islamist terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, turned out to have been a bonanza for the American military-industrial complex. The military planners' wish for a  "New Pearl Harbor", was fulfilled at the right time. It is important to remember that from 2001 to 2005, Paul Wolfowitz served as U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense in the George W. Bush administration, reporting to U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. In this capacity, he was well positioned to implement his own Wolfowitz doctrine that later morphed into the George W. Bush Doctrine. For the time being, this is the “doctrine” that newly-elected President Barack Obama continues to implement in the Pashtunistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan corridor. As a politician, Barack Obama may be new at the job, but the policy he is being asked to implement was crafted long before he even set foot in Washington D.C. Another possible reason why the United States is so often involved in foreign wars, besides its obvious aim of imposing a New American Empire on the world, may be due to the strong influence of religion in the United States. Just as for some aggressive Islamic countries, the U.S. is also the most religious of all first world countries. Researchers have found strong positive correlations between a nation's religious belief and high levels of domestic stress and anxiety, and other indicators of social dysfunction such as homicides, the proportion of people incarcerated, infant mortality, drug  abuse, sexually transmitted diseases, teenage births and abortions, corruption, large income inequalities, economic and social insecurity...etc. It is possible that wars serve as an emotional outlet that allows some Americans to forget about their nation's domestic problems. I suppose more research would be necessary on this issue. Indeed, is it possible that foreign wars, including wars of aggression, are a way for the American elites to deflect attention from domestic social problems and, as such, are a convenient pretext to direct tax money to defense expenditures rather than to social programs? The issue deserves at least to be raised. This could explain why U.S. foreign policy is so devoid of fundamental morality. U. S. politicians who become president understand this American proclivity for war. They know that the best way to popularity is to be seen as a “war president”. A president who does not start a war abroad or who does not enlarge one already in progress is open to criticism and is likely to suffer politically. He must be seen less as a president than as “commander-in-chief”, in effect, as an emperor. How could this be, when the framers of the U.S. Constitution attempted precisely to avoid that? Indeed, Article One (the War Powers Clause) of the U.S. Constitution gives Congress, and not the President, the authority to declare war. Since World War II, however, this central article of the U.S. Constitution has been circumvented by having Congress give the President a blanket authorization to deploy troops abroad for euphemistically called "police actions", without an explicit or formal congressional declaration of war. The term was first used by President Harry S. Truman to describe the Korean War. This artifice has done a lot to trivialize the act of war. It also contributed much in the transfer of the powers of war and peace from the legislative branch to the executive branch. In doing so, it has reinforced the role of the U.S. president as a commander-in-chief or as a de facto emperor. Only a formal constitutional amendment could restore, in practice, the framers' initial intent. All said, it is easy to understand why when political faces change in Washington D.C., policies do not necessarily change. This push toward empire on the part of the United States can also explain why there is resentment and an anti-Americanism movement abroad.                                     ______________________________ Rodrigue Tremblay is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Montreal and can be reached at rodrigue.tremblay@yahoo.com.  He is the author of the coming book "The Code for Global Ethics" at: www.TheCodeForGlobalEthics.com/ You can reserve a copy of the book on Amazon *****The French version of the book is now available. See: www.lecodepouruneethiqueglobale.com/ or on Amazon. Register to be alerted when the English version is available by sending the word “Code” to bigpictureworld@yahoo.com Please visit the book site at: www.TheCodeForGlobalEthics.com/ _____________________________________ Posted, Wednesday, December 23, 2009, at 5:30 am Email to a friend: http://www.TheNewAmericanEmpire.com/tremblay=1119 or, http://www.thecodeforglobalethics.com/pb/wp_26f7a0c1/wp_26f7a0c1.html Send contact, comments or commercial reproduction requests (in English or in French) to: bigpictureworld@yahoo.com N.B.: Messages may be published in our weblog, unless you request otherwise. Please register to receive free alerts on new postings of articles. Send an email with the word "subscribe" to: bigpictureworld@yahoo.com To unregister, send an email with the word "unsubscribe" to: bigpictureworld@yahoo.com The above is presented for educational purposes only.                             © 2009 by Big Picture World Syndicate, Inc. COMMENTS (20) New Identity vacuum Posted, Sunday, December 27, 2009 12:30 pm The article you posted is so fine; thank you. There may be another reason that the U.S. seems to need one war after another from it's beginning. I think de Toqueville touched on it. Identity vacuum. The City on the Hill seemed to promise the possibility of a country that would resemble no other country, a new race of citizens unlike any others on earth, in short, exceptionalism. One of the enculturating rules for new immigrants from as far back as I remember, never taught in any U.S. school or citizenship class, was to remove or change, deform out of recognition, the ''old'country, country of origin, identity. You can see an example of that in the millions of family names changed to fit the new homeland. I think that the baby of millions of people was thrown out with the bathwater, leaving a nation bereft of many things, not the least of which is integrety, cultural, moral, ethical, legal, institutional. One of the most memorable residues of WWI and WWII seems to have been the solidarity the veterans had for the men they fought with, for the rest of their lives. One might argue that war for the United States is a vital bonding mechanism they otherwise do not have and so, desperately need? Suzanne _______________________ Answer by R.T.: Indeed, exceptionalism and “Manifest Destiny” are not that far from “the chosen people” complex that some Jews have. I have written about that in my book “The New American Empire” and in some of my blogs. For example, see “The myth of Manifest Destiny, Take Two”, August 28, 2006. Of course, there are many other reasons why the United States has become a bellicose country since World War II. For example, I should have stressed the central role presently played by the Israel Lobby, [http://www.vdare.com/roberts/091228_israel.htm] in promoting the most recent American-led wars in the Middle East. That powerful lobby carries a tremendous influence not only in Congress, but also within the Obama's White House. Keep in mind that before World War II, the United States was not a militarist country. In fact, in 1940, the U.S. Army stood only eighteenth in the world regarding the size of its army, trailing not only Germany, France, Britain, Russia, Italy, Japan, and China, but also Belgium, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. [See “No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II” by Doris Kearns Goodwin, Oct 1, 1995].   New The Qur'an quote Posted, Sunday, November 27, 2009 09:57 am In your article, there is this quote: "Fight and kill the disbelievers wherever you find them, take them captive, harass them, lie in wait and ambush them using every stratagem of war." The Qur'an (9:5), Islam's holy book I was about to send your article to a long list of mine, but I couldn't find the quote above. You mentioned 5:9. I found a similar quote at Qur'an 9:5, instead of 5:9, but it continued immediately in the same 9:5 "But if they repent, and establish regular prayers And practise regular charity, Then open the way for them: For God is Oft-forgiving, Most Merciful." My point: this is such an important quote, and should be accurate as to where to find it, and would be better to be more complete. Sam __________ Answer by R.T.: Indeed, many readers have volonteered to complete the above quote. It seems that the correct quote is: "Fight and kill the disbelievers wherever you find them, take them captive, lie in wait and ambush them using every stratagem of war, but if they repent, establish regular prayers, and practice regular charity, then open the way for them, for God is oft-forgiving, Most Merciful." Qur'an (9:5) In my original article, the reference is at 9:5, not 5:9. This verse in the Qur'an is often called the “verse of the sword”. Even in its entirety, however, the quote is a terrible one, because it alludes to forced conversion under the threat of death. In other so-called religious books, such as the Jewish Torah or the Christian Bible, there are passages similar to those found in the Qur'an. I do not pretend to know all the subtleties of Islam, or of any religion for that matter. But I think that it is the responsibility of those who promote such religions to be clear in the messages they convey. Otherwise, some weak minds could be forgiven for being confused as to their real meaning. Expansionist ideologies, such as communism, fascism, colonialism, Christianism, Islamism and Zionism, are powerful seeds of war. The more so, it seems, when one relies on the exhortations of a so-called “holy” book. The first three ideologies nearly destroyed the Planet in the 20th century, while the last three threaten to do the same in the 21st century. I talk more about that in my coming book:  The Code for Global Ethics, Ten Humanist Principles Click to preorder on AMAZON New How about the Balkans! Posted, Sunday, December 27, 2009 09:52 am I read with interest your fine article America's New Crusade: Imperial U.S. vs Political Islam. However, it appears to me that you made a glaring omission. You show a lengthy list of US wars (feeding USA's explanding military-industrial complex) but omitted mention of the Balkans. That is where USA chose to appease Islam and, in tandem with that, USA now has a huge miltary base in Kosovo, Camp Bondsteel. Liz Answer by R.T.: Of course, mine was a short article. I did not include references to the Balkans or to Latin America and U.S. Gun Boat diplomacy for that matter. I hope, however, that the general message was clear. New This Article Should Go out to Every Newspaper in the Land Posted, Sunday, December 27, 2009 06:52 am Your message to America in your article “America's New Crusade: Imperial U.S. vs Political Islam”, should go out to every newspaper in the land. The implications are valid, the possibilities for good are enormous yet the refusal by the American public to take action is unfathomable. I offer no insight as to the reasons; I can only track the senseless progress to self-destruction. Indeed, the senseless destruction of other peoples in other lands. The only possibility for cessation or reversal of policy, in my opinion, is when the notice comes: America, your account has been closed because of "insufficient funds". Sadly, the unbelievable advertising and manipulative power of the military-industrial complex is so great that it over-powers all that stand in its way. I applaud your efforts to alert the country. Charles Answer by R. T.: Indeed, since World War II, there seems to exist a mentality in the U.S. that the rest of the world should adapt to U.S. interests and that the U.S. has an unlimited right to intervene in the affairs of other nations. This is a very dangerous mentality indeed, and it could lead to disaster. As you stated, such a policy is geared to drive the U.S. toward over-extension and bankruptcy. Western countries, and the U.S in particular, would do better to be more careful in their immigration policies and be less arrogant in their attempt to rule the world by force. I think this would be beneficial to all. New The Real Power Behind the Scenes Posted, Sunday, December 27, 2009 01:36 am Having read your article, it appears that you, like most of the U.S. populace, do not understand what goes on behind the scenes in the U.S. and probably globally which has its effects on the whole world, especially now that it is clear that the present "financial crisis" was cooked up by the cabal of finance, the U.S. Federal Reserve and their OWNERS in complete secrecy. Since the Fed is privately owned, and is only a quasi government associated entity, which is the real power behind the scenes, and is responsible for changing the nature of money into a completely fiat currency, unbacked by anything but counterfeit dollars as part of the Ponzi scheme which was intended to control the country, as the Rothchild banking cartel had learned to do a century previously, and which was instituted in 1913 under cover of night when all but the plotters of the Senate had gone home for Christmas. My Dad was a "runner" riding his bike to deliver the messages and packages of the big wigs on Wall Street at the time, so he was witness to the thickery. ... With the paid compliance of the major media, who are given "talking points" the media does the bidding of the powers behind the scenes, who supply the money to elect their chosen ones, having arranged to back both a Republican and a Democrat  through the primaries that will be in place to do the bidding of the "wise ones". The end result is that it really doesn't matter who we vote for by the time elections roll around; both parties and their nominees are beholden to the powers behind the scenes. (Those so-called "think tanks", such as the Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission, and of course the Bilderbergers, who represent the bankers, lawyers, and transnational corporations and industrial cartels such as the Chamber of Commerce, through their lobbyists plus the "elite" super rich of the world.). It is well recognized that the history of central banks boils down to the history of the world, from money changers of the Bible to Rothchild and the Bank of England to the Federal Reserve: He who controls the money and has the gold controls the world literally through the politics of each country. The problem we now have is that the bankers' history shows that they make money by financing wars. Thus we have a government that is controlled by the theoretically elected, but whose allegiance is determined by the "Modern Day Money changers" of the world, who are in  cahoots with the central bankers of the world.... The citizens of the United States have been so brainwashed for so long by our media and our so-called educational system, as instructed by their bosses, that the average citizen is too busy trying to make a living and live a decent life but has no time to really know what our politicians have done to us. There is nothing to this history of  the "US great super power" that is the beloved war cry of the politicos, but not of the people. ... There is effectively nothing left of our constitution, to which every elected representative and our president swear allegiance, but by which they stomp on the very document and its directives given us by our founders, on a daily basis, as they thumb their noses at the citizens of this country. Just watch them: they will at the behest of the bankers dredge up WWIII, in order to save the owners of the world's central banks' assets, and to take over the losers assets, yet again! Patricia _______________ Answer by R. T.: I agree with a lot of what you write. The U.S. Fed is a disgrace in the way it acts as a private government for big financial interests and as a creator of financial bubbles. And, I congratulate Rep. Ron Paul for asking for a public audit of the Fed's books. New The Distribution of Wealth Posted, Saturday, December 26, 2009 11:46 pm I read your piece "America's New Crusade: Imperial U.S. vs Political Islam", and it has added to my own research on how the distribution of wealth and the transfer of huge amounts of money to the banking cartels affects us all. Tom New Women's Rights Posted, Saturday, December 26, 2009 05:15 pm How do you see the women situation in all this Bazar? The world's events are and will stay in a repetitive situation unless women get really on the board. Women's studies at the universities are rediculous and wasting time and money. I am not talking of women tokenism such as Madame Rice or even Hillary. Victoria Answer by R. T.: Of course, my short piece did not raise this issue. In my coming book “The Code for Global Ethics”, however, the question of human rights and the equality of sexes feature proeminently. New Terrific Article Posted, Saturday, December 26, 2009 04:04 pm Your latest article is terrific. Meets with my full approval. Congratulations and thanks for speaking out. Charlie New World War II in Europe Posted, Saturday, December 26, 2009 03:54 pm Your article is excellent. It is very timely and describes the role of the U.S.A. as the world's aggressor. I have been interested in the subject of WWII in Europe from the time I was 11 years old and followed the progress of the war on a daily basis with my father. I would appreciate your comments about an article I prepared about WWII in Europe (enclosed). Walter New Stuff that Brings Down Madmen and Empires Posted, Saturday, December 26, 2009 02:40 pm This type of behavior is what brings about the down fall of many madmen and empires. As I see it, America will never be the same. American foreign policy has made the world a dangerous place to live in. As a muslim, I resent it when people continue to label some groups as extremist. In that case what would you label the C.I.A., the Mossad and other western intel agencies? What about the atrocities committed by the U.S. and it's allies against these muslim countries? They are causing the suffering and deaths of thousands of people. Mostly innocent people. I have read the N.S.P.D.51. The average American is clueless about these directives. One of the things that concerns me is these illegal immigrants invading the U.S. I see the tension between them and the American people. I think the U.S. is headed toward civil unrest. According to the international bill of human rights, every government is suppose to address the basic needs of their people; health, education and welfare. Mexico is not doing that. When I ask a Mexican why don't they stand up to that corrupt and racist government, they don't answer. Rashaad New The Causes of War Posted, Saturday, December 26, 2009 11:48 am Thank you for this excellent and useful article. To my mind, your most useful passages were those inquiring into the causes of war, since I would like the U.S. to stop its continual pattern of attacking other peoples' countries. There are of course many books, countless books on the causes of war. Wikipedia had, in the past, an entire section on the causes of war but it was moved into "War" and then renamed "motivations for war". The material includes your theories, and more. We need first of all, a definition of exactly what sorts of war we oppose. And if we do not, at the same time, understand very deeply in our own motivations, why we oppose such wars, we'll surely drop the inquiry and resume other, more enjoyable activities as almost every peace activist always has done in the past.   It's as if they are somehow drawn to the subject by some deep fear or cognitive dissonance, and without ever seizing control of the operation of the mind, allow it to mend itself by finding whatever rationalizations or theories put the mind to rest. Then, they disappear from the movement and resume the feeding of their appetites. Besides the problem that peace activists almost always fail to define what kind of wars they object to, and why, there is another problem: we don't understand the nature of causality. What is a "cause", for such vast thing as war, reaching so far beyond our immediate perception, so far into the past, and covering such large areas of the planet?... Todd Answer by R. T.: Judging from the large number of comments I have received, it seems this article has touched a nerve. Questions of war and peace are very complex. A few years ago, I wrote an article for the magazine “The Humanist” about the “Just War Theory”, and found that G.W. Bush's war in Iraq did not meet any of the five principal criteria for a just war. I agree with you that we should spell out exactly what sorts of war we oppose. In general, war is too serious an affair for having it trivialized as this seems to be the case presently in the U.S. New The Quote Again Posted, Saturday, December 26, 2009 01:39 pm It is disappointing that the desired effect of such a wonderful article should have been basically marginalized if not completely nullified by an incomplete quote from the Qur'an out of context, the purpose of which is to abrogate the merciful and loving verses of the Qur’an with an incomplete specific verse concerning battle. ... First, we shall provide the verse in its context: 9:5-6 “But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the Pagans wherever ye find them, an seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war); but if they repent, and establish regular prayers and practise regular charity, then open the way for them: for Allah is Oft-forgiving, Most Merciful. If one amongst the Pagans ask thee for asylum, grant it to him, so that he may hear the word of Allah. and then escort him to where he can be secure. That is because they are men without knowledge.”... Jay ______________ Answer by R. T: By essence, a quotation is always taken out of context. But even in its complete form, the quote from the Qur'an is a terrible one. And it may explain why some terrorists could rely on the Qur'an to find inspiration for their acts. New Data to Confirm? Posted, Saturday, December 26, 2009 1:35 pm Thank you for taking the time to write and share your views with the world. I have a data question, and a comment. Concerning your passage "Just as for some aggressive Islamic countries, the U.S. is also the most religious of all first world countries. Researchers have found strong positive correlations between a nation's religious belief and high levels of domestic stress and anxiety, and other indicators of social dysfunction such as homicides, the proportion of people incarcerated, infant mortality, drug abuse, sexually transmitted diseases, teenage births and abortions, corruption, large income inequalities, economic and social insecurity...etc " -I would like to know if you have data that confirms this? How "most religeous" is calculated, and how many countries were considered? Also, does this pattern also apply to 3rd world countries? If you have data table / graph of some kind, with source references, that would be most useful. My comment is regarding your referrence to the "source" of US military-ism, stating that it comes from the military industrial complex. However you correctly state that this started many decades before the military was industrialized, with the native Americans and the British, African people. Therefore the military industrial complex can not be the source of the problem, but rather a symptom which aids the perpetuation of past (initial) colonialism. Rather it is the context of a people's national-formation which sets the stage for further developments. If a nation is bred from war, and rewarded for conquest, it will add this meme to it's psychy (culture). This is how cultures evolve, for beter or for worse, and this is how the US one got to where it is today. Sebastian Answer by R. T.: Many studies have documented that religion is an outlet for social stress and poverty, and may be a factor in retarding social progess. Overall, the richer and the more socially stable a society is, the less religious it is. On the other hand, the poorer and the more socially dysfunctional a country is, the more religious it is. For example, in the U.S., the poorest state (Mississippi) is also the most religious. The poorest continent and the least well organized (Africa) is also the most religious of all. [http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2009-12-21-south-bible-belt_N.htm] By many measures, the U.S. can be considered a socially dysfunctional country in which the level of social stress is very high, even if the average GDP per capita is also high, according to primary indicators such as homicide, incarceration, juvenile mortality, lifespan, adolescent and all age gonorrhea and syphilis infections, adolescent abortion, adolescent births, youth and all age suicide, fertility, marriage, marriage duration, divorce, life satisfaction, alcohol consumption, corruption, income, income disparity, poverty, employment, work hours and resource exploitation base. (See Gregory Paul's paper "The Chronic Dependence of Popular Religiosity upon Dysfunctional Psychosociological Conditions" available online.http://www.epjournal.net/filestore/EP073984414.pdf) For example, there is no other country in the world, even compared to much more populous countries like China, that has so many inmates as does the U.S., (over 2 million). Religiosity is usually calculated as the proportion of people attending church regularly and who say that religion is important in their lives. For example, in the U.S., there are about some 52 percent of very religious people. A highly religious group (34% of adult Americans) is composed of those who attend church at least once a week and for whom religion is important in their daily lives. Another religious group (18%) is made of people attending church almost every week or once a month and saying religion is important. [http://www.gallup.com/poll/124649/Religious-Intensity-Remains-Powerful-Predictor-Politics.aspx?] This level of American religiosity is much higher than in Europe, Canada or Australia. New Oil as a Driving Force Behind U.S. Foreigh Policy Posted, Saturday, November 26, 2009 03:40 pm I agree with your analysis. The only thing I would add is that isn't it the case that oil access for the US and especially the EU is the driving force behind the maintainance of the MIC. Therefore in their minds it is a rational process to have permanent preemptive war. That's why one of the neo-cons made the comment 8 yrs. ago that future generations would thank us for their war initiative assumedly to procure M.E. oil access.  Most Americans  agree with this policy. Once you create an oil dependent car culture this is the outcome for foreign policy. Answer by R. T.: Oil access is certainly an important driving force of U.S. foreign policy. However, it is not certain that a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis would not reveal that this approach is net negative. The costs of permanent war are very high indeed, and long lasting, while the benefits are short and medium term in nature. Such a policy is geared to drive the U.S. toward bankruptcy. Moreover, the heavy dependence on oil as the main source of car energy should be over twenty years from now when hydrogen will take the place of oil and electricity. New Does Islam promote violence? Posted, Friday, December 25, 2009 06:26 pm You quoted the quranic verse (9:5) out of context. Please read through it. "Does Islam promote violence? A few selected verses from the Qur’an are often misquoted to perpetuate the myth that Islam promotes violence, and exhorts its followers to kill those outside the pale of Islam. 1. Verse from Surah Taubah The following verse from Surah Taubah is very often quoted by critics of Islam, to show that Islam promotes violence, bloodshed and brutality: "Kill the mushriqeen (pagans, polytheists, kuffar) where ever you find them." [Al-Qur’an 9:5] 2. Context of verse is during battlefield Critics of Islam actually quote this verse out of context. In order to understand the context, we need to read from verse 1 of this surah. It says that there was a peace treaty between the Muslims and the Mushriqs (pagans) of Makkah. This treaty was violated by the Mushriqs of Makkah. A period of four months was given to the Mushriqs of Makkah to make amends. Otherwise war would be declared against them. Verse 5 of Surah Taubah says: "But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the Pagans wherever ye find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war); but if they repent, and establish regular prayers and practise regular charity, then open the way for them: for Allah is oft-forgiving, Most merciful." [Al-Qur’an 9:5] This verse is quoted during a battle. 3. Example of war between America and Vietnam We know that America was once at war with Vietnam. Suppose the President of America or the General of the American Army told the American soldiers during the war: "Wherever you find the Vietnamese, kill them". Today if I say that the American President said, "Wherever you find Vietnamese, kill them" without giving the context, I will make him sound like a butcher. But if I quote him in context, that he said it during a war, it will sound very logical, as he was trying to boost the morale of the American soldiers during the war... Habib Answer by R. T.: Indeed, it has been pointed out to me that the complete quote is: "Fight and kill the disbelievers wherever you find them, take them captive, lie in wait and ambush them using every stratagem of war, but if they repent, establish regular prayers, and practice regular charity, then open the way for them, for God is oft-forgiving, Most Merciful."  The Qur'an (9:5) Even in its complete form, the quote in the Qur'an is a terrible one. This reference to forced conversion under the threat of death in the Qur'an is a negation of basic human freedom of conscience and is therefore unacceptable. By definition, any quote is out of context. But, if a verse cannot stand on its own, it should not be in the book. Your reference to the American war in Vietnam hardly applies, because no leader could have issued a blanket order to kill Vietnamese because they were Vietnamese, even in time of war. This would have been tantamount to genocide, a crime severely punishable by international law. If a religious book contains passages that can only apply in times of war, it should say so, in order for weak minds not to misinterpret them. Mind you, there are a lot of similar appeals to violence in other religious books such as in the Jewish Torah and in the Christian Bible. As long as these passages are not clearly explained or expurgated, they will continue to be misinterpreted. New Could not Agree More Posted, Tuesday, December 22, 2009 02:40 pm Could not agree with Dr. Tremblay more. My country is well on its way to being the worst racist shit disturber in history. It is forcing islam to be an enemy of it and it is succeeding.  it started with the creation of israel in muslim lands and continues with the support of the kosher nazis who rule israel and are now essentially controlling the US.  This gringo nazism and kosher nazism is going to kill several of our people, both in and out of uniform, in future generations Mazdi, New Subtleties of Islam Posted, Tuesday, December 22, 2009 01:58 pm The complete quote should be: "Fight and kill the disbelievers wherever you find them, take them captive, harass them, lie in wait and ambush them using every stratagem of war, but if they repent, establish regular prayers, and practice regular charity, then open the way for them, for God is oft-forgiving, Most Merciful." The Qur'an (9:5), Islam's holy book In this case, the reference to "if they repent" indicates clearly that this was a strong warning to prevent an existing or potential threat at the time, and certainly indicates that the purpose of the threat was to end the conflict peacefully and justly, and not to just wanting to kill indiscriminately. There is no mention in the Qur'an that indicates any kind of indiscriminate killing under any circumstances, or against any particular race or group.... Hatem Answer by R. T.: I do not pretend to know all the subtleties of Islam, or of any religion for that matter. It is the responsibility of those who promote such religions to be clear in the messages they convey. As to Islam, it is understandable that people can be confused as to its messages, especially when they witness suicide bombers killing innocents in many countries. The deeply religious terrorist Osama bin Laden may have also contributed to this confusion when, after the terrorist acts of September 11, 2001, he explained the Islamic rationale behind the killing of thousands of innocent people with these words: “It is allowed for Muslims to kill protected ones among unbelievers in the event of an attack against them in which it is not possible to differentiate the protected ones from the combatants or from the strongholds. It is permissible to kill them incidentally and unintentionally according to the saying of the Prophet.” That may be a fundamental problem with so-called “holy” books, when they can be interpreted according to one's immediate interests or intentions. What counts is the practice, not the pious theory. New “Useful Idiots” Posted, Tuesday, December 22, 2009 12:25 pm While fundamentalist Christian 'useful idiots' are largely antiIslamic, the big impetus comes from the industrial/financial/commercial oligarchs that reap the benefits of 'wars for fun (public catharsis) and profit'. John, Answer by R. T.: Religion has often been a tool for the rich and powerful to use the “useful idiots” as you say to advance their interests. This was true in the past and this is true today. This new American-led crusade is not different. New Question Posted, Tuesday, December 22, 2009 10:27 am Are you a Jesuit? Are you a Zionist? The obvious lack of Old Testaments quotes to a war like the God of Abraham defines all three religions in my mind. The Palestinian holocaust and genocide is proof that King Harrod is alive and well. The Christian crusades, inquisitions and murder of the Cathars address the politics of Empire. The Islamic crusades were fashioned by the other to brothers in this trio. So perhaps, we must be fair and balanced about the causes of evil in this world and look to the profiteers among the ruling elite. Lyn Answer By R. T.: I am neither. Usually, I only post three quotes at the beginning of my articles. This time, I had five. In my coming book, “The Code for Global Ethics”, besides outlining the basic humanist principles, I have numerous Jewish, Christian and Islamic quotes you may appreciate. Indeed, when I refered to a new crusade, I had the Papal crusades in mind, including the crusade against the Cathars in the south of France in the early 13th century. New Congratulation Posted, Tuesday, December 22, 2009 08:04 am Congratulation on excellent article !!! Right on -on all counts. Presidents come & go but the invisible /unelected government is the controller ( Israel security is also a priority). Eva Article #1118 Wednesday, November 25, 2009 A Real Revolution in the Making in the U.S. Health Care Industry by Rodrigue Tremblay “The conservative goal has been the "Third Worldization" of the United States: an increasingly underemployed, lower-wage work-force; a small but growing moneyed class that pays almost no taxes; the privatization or elimination of human services; the elimination of public education for low-income people; the easing of restrictions against child labor; the exporting of industries and jobs to low-wage, free-trade countries; the breaking of labor unions; and the elimination of occupational safety and environmental controls and regulations.” Michael Parenti, progressive author and lecturer “As to diseases, make a habit of two things - to help, or at least, to do no harm.” Hippocrates (460-277 BC), ancient Greek physician “In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of.” Confucius (551-479 BC), Chinese philosopher The U.S. Congress is presently debating a most important piece of legislation that would profoundly reform the U.S. healthcare system. This is without a doubt the most important domestic proposal advanced by the Obama administration. To understand what is at stake here, one should know that in the U.S., there are three industries that operate in a political and economic environment such that they can literally write their own ticket: the tentacular defense industry, the large financial and banking industry and the pivotal health industry. Together, these industries account for more than forty percent of the U.S. economy. Their common characteristic is that suppliers can more or less create their own demand and fix prices accordingly. The potential for gouging is enormous. Needless to say, these industries are among the most profitable ones... for those who can enter them. The health industry is particularly insulated from normal market competition and from critical assessment by the consumer. The products and services that the consumer requires are “prescribed” to him or to her. If sick or requiring treatment, the consumer is in no position to argue and to contest costs and prices. He is not even considered a consumer but a “patient”! In a medical establishment, he is admitted, then “discharged”! Economists call such a situation a price-inelastic demand. The supplier of the service is the one who calls the shots. He decides the quantities to be administered and the price to be charged. This is a cost-plus situation fraught with mostly unregulated monopoly pricing practices. This may partially explain why since 1970, American health costs have grown at an average annual rate of 9.6 percent per year. That is close to twice the pace of the increase of the overall economy. For example in 2010, health costs in the U.S. are expected to increase four times faster than the annual increase in the average hourly wage of American workers. This is clearly unsustainable, less it bankrupts the entire U.S. economy. Since medical treatment is in many cases not a choice but a necessity, people have very little leeway in economizing on such consumption within their normal budget constraints. If one requires urgent treatment, one must willy-nilly enter the medical system and pay to the hilt. An example observed recently would illustrate the fundamentals. A friend visiting Florida recently had a case of severe indigestion during the night. He was driven to the emergency room of a local hospital, where he spent two hours. The total cost was in excess of $3,000, half of it for simply crossing the door of the ER room and the rest for two simple blood and urine tests. Maybe Walmart should take over the administration of U.S. hospitals! To protect against unforeseen medical outlays that can seriously perturb their financial position, most people rely on one form or another of health insurance. This could be private insurance, group coverage insurance, cooperative insurance or collective or public insurance. For example, members of Congress are covered by a public health insurance plan. Military personnel and military veterans are insured through a public plan, either through the U.S. Department of Defense Military Health System or through the Veterans Health Administration (VHA). Americans who are over 65 years old are covered by a public single-payer health care system, called Medicare. Such a public American health program has been in existence since 1965. This is a large public health plan that presently covers more than 43 million Americans. It now provides comprehensive hospital, medical and drug coverage for those lucky enough to qualify because of age and residency. For the population at large, individuals or families can be privately insured, underinsured or less than fully insured for medical costs they might incur, or, for some fifteen percent of Americans, not insured at all (45.7 million people in 2007). Private health insurance companies routinely deny insurance coverage for people who have pre-existing health conditions. It has been estimated that the total number of people in the United States who die because of lack of medical care is about 100,000 per year. One can therefore understand why the issue of comprehensive health care insurance is so politically contentious in the United States. Those who are already covered by a generous public health care program—by such public programs such as Medicare, i.e. the insiders, possibly a third of the U.S. population—do not see an urgent need to change a situation that benefits them. Those who rake in tremendous profits in the private health industry are also fighting to maintain their privileged position. Being already covered, they are less persuaded that there is such a thing as a fundamental right to health care. The victims, the outsiders whose health insurance is tied to their job or who are not covered at all, do not have the same political clout nor the same access that the insiders have to the media or to members of Congress. Generally speaking, the Republican party and its allies in the far right media side with the insiders, and vigorously oppose most attempts for health care reform and an extension of their privileged position to others. Generally speaking again, the Democratic party and its progressive allies tend to side with the outsiders and have been pushing for reform for many years. Ethically speaking, it is generally accepted that those who benefit the most from random natural endowments or from the working of the social and economic system have a moral obligation and an inescapable responsibility to share their good fortune with the less lucky or the less fortunate among us. Naked egoism is the anti-thesis of modern humanist morality. As to the political tug-of-war being played in the U.S. around health care reform, it is too early to know the final result, but it surely will have major consequences. ____________________________                                Rodrigue Tremblay is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Montreal and can be reached at rodrigue.tremblay@yahoo.com.  He is the author of the coming book "The Code for Global Ethics" at: www.TheCodeForGlobalEthics.com/ You can reserve a copy of the book on Amazon *****The French version of the book is now available. See: www.lecodepouruneethiqueglobale.com/ or on Amazon. Register to be alerted when the English version is available by sending the word “Code” to bigpictureworld@yahoo.com Please visit the book site at: www.TheCodeForGlobalEthics.com/ _____________________________________ Posted, Wednesday, November 25, 2009, at 5:30 am Email to a friend: www.TheNewAmericanEmpire.com/tremblay=1118.htm or, http://www.thecodeforglobalethics.com/pb/wp_26f7a0c1/wp_26f7a0c1.html Send contact, comments or commercial reproduction requests (in English or in French) to: bigpictureworld@yahoo.com N.B.: Messages may be published in our weblog, unless you request otherwise. Please register to receive free alerts on new postings of articles. Send an email with the word "subscribe" to: bigpictureworld@yahoo.com To unregister, send an email with the word "unsubscribe" to: bigpictureworld@yahoo.com The above is presented for educational purposes only.                             © 2009 by Big Picture World Syndicate, Inc. A Real Revolution in the Making in the U.S. Health Care Industry   COMMENTS New Many Thanks Posted, Sunday, November 29, 2009 23:48 pm   Many thanks for this excellent piece. I have posted inks to it from my website. Diana   New Non-competitive Pricing Posted, Tuesday, November 24, 2009 10:06 am   A good read... While price-inelastic is a great technical term, non-competitive pricing better sums up the situation in my mind (Not to be pedantic). Consumers of health care, aside from those seeking cosmetic surgery, do not seek out medical care like they would any other service or consumable. They use it when they need it. They also rarely have a chance to "shop around" for the best deal. Nor can they choose to delay their purchase to a better time in many situations. All of the hallmarks of normal consumer free market involvement seem to be missing and yet so many wish to apply the rules of a market economy to a situation in which it simply does not fit. Wellscent   New The Canadian healthcare System  Posted, Monday, November 23, 2009 5:24 pm   I read with interest your article. I found it informative but not complete. I do not follow (or wish I did not follow – happenings in the US) in detail the US political state of affairs…. Meaning that I am not uniquely informed on these topics. I do however find myself – attention attracted by the actions of Rep. Ron Paul (I think because he appears honest – and motivated to reduce the power of people in the middle) and Rep. Dennis Kucinich (as his politics appear to be somewhat aligned with what I think). I notice that Rep. Kucinich did not vote for the healthcare bill. I notice that you did not mention – or did not go far enough in your article to explain reasoning that he might have used for not supporting the existing package/amendments. I find that your article was useful, informative but complete enough. It seems to me that a healthcare program such as Canada’s would be of most use to the Americans. Of course, there are issues as to how to get there – that is how to remove the healthcare industry from control, but I really do not see the value in the current Reid bill. I watched a video recently form California in which Rep. Nancy Pelosi avoided answering a question about enforcement policies for the healthcare bill. The question was generally along the lines of – if someone does not purchase healthcare will they be prosecuted. She heard the question – she understood and you could see in her body language that she was uncomfortable with it. She could have said, no of course not. She said nothing. From this perspective, it looks to like fascism. I do not like this term as it places the speaker (me) in the position of appearing extreme. But if people will be forced to purchase a corporate product then I think it is fascist. My point in writing is that I think your article is insightful… I think you could go further as I sense that you have deep understanding of the matters. Thank you for the article. John Answer by R.T. I keep my articles short because most people don't like to read long and technical articles. Thank you for raising Rep. Ron Paul's and Rep. Dennis Kucinich's positions on U.S. health care reform. As you know, these two congressmen are at the opposite ends of the political spectrum. Paul is a libertarian who is opposed to most government interventions. Kucinich is a progressive who considers the government an agent of change and of social progress. The reason why Rep. Kucinich voted against the House bill, is because he thought the bill did not go far enough to counteract the lobbying influence of the health insurance industry and did not have a true public option in it. The Canadian health system is not perfect. It relies more and more on rationing by queuing. This is because it has no deductible or coinsurance features in it, and because of a high inflow of immigrants. Sooner or later, with the arrival of aging baby-boomers, the Canadian health system will have to be reformed also.   Article #1117 Friday, October 30, 2009 President Barack H. Obama, One Year Later: 'C' for Effort By Rodrigue Tremblay "I don't want to just end the [Iraq] war, but I want to end the mind-set that got us into war in the first place." Presidential candidate Barack Obama, January 31, 2008 “Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people.” Theodore Roosevelt (1882-1945), 26th US president  “If we are strong, our character will speak for itself. If we are weak, words will be of no help.” John F. Kennedy (1917-1963), 35th US President “If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged.” Noam Chomsky, linguist and political expert Barack H. Obama was a good presidential candidate but, so far, in crucial areas, he has been a somewhat disappointing president. In November 2008, Democratic presidential candidate Barack H. Obama, and the first black American to have that chance, got to the U.S. presidency on the coattails of a despised Bush-Cheney administration. Indeed, it was a relief for a majority of Americans to have Senator Obama replace “facts-do-not-matter” George W. Bush as president of the was little more than a Bush-retread. It was therefore unavoidable that such an election would generate big expectations that things would change for the better. As a matter of fact, candidate Obama's electoral slogans were “Yes we can” and “change we can believe in”. Because President Obama is America’s first black President, he is symbolically the culmination of Martin Luther King's  Civil Rights movement.  Because of that, many have hesitated to criticize him or his administration. But his record, so far, speaks for itself. In two central areas, defense and the economy, his performance has been, at best, lackluster. In fact, Obama's performance in these areas has betrayed a lot of highly held expectations. He seems to have been ill prepared for such a big time job. It is true that the function of president of the United States, as the country becomes more and more a militaristic empire and less and less a democratic  republic,  is most demanding. Possibly, nobody can be qualified and prepared enough for such a challenge. In Obama's case, he was promoted from being a junior senator with a limited staff (one secretary and a few assistants), and no real administrative experience, to running the huge U.S. government with its three trillion dollar budget. And, moreover, he had not had the time or the wisdom to build around him a strong enough “brain-trust” to intellectually control the agenda. Rather the agenda seems to have been imposed upon him. It can be said that he asked for it when, after moving into office, his first move was to keep at their job key Bush appointees to implement the all-too-important defense and economic policies. As it is said in French “Plus ça change, plus c'est pareil” (The more things change, the more they remain the same!) In Obama's case, the disappointment is not only a question of poor performance due to a lack of depth, formation or experience. It is a question of promises not kept and of vision betrayed. The disappointment is palpable in polls. His job approval rating hovers around 50 percent (only 45 percent of adults), while only 43 percent of Americans say they would vote to reelect him, and 48 percent say they would vote for someone else. Obama's performance has reinforced the cynicism and disillusion felt by many voters and their uneasy feeling that most politicians are either corrupt, incompetent, deceitful or hypocrites, or all of the above. In such an environment, it appears to many that voting has become a waste of time. Voter turnout  in the U.S., already one of the lowest in the world, may take a turn for the worse if confidence is not restored soon. On that score, the 2010 turnout should be watched closely, especially among young disillusioned voters. As far as foreign wars are concerned, Obama's record is less than positive. Although there has been a timid beginning of troop withdrawals in Iraq—notwithstanding the promises—in Afghanistan, things have taken a turn for the worse. Indeed, President Obama has only made things worse  in that remote part of the world, by accelerating the killing and by illegally upgrading the killing in Pakistan with the Pentagon's drones. This is dangerous politics because this open-ended military adventure is all too reminiscent of the Vietnam  quagmire that destroyed President Johnson, mired the last days of President Nixon's term, and tarnished America's reputation in the world. Similarly in financial matters. Under Obama, the causes of the 2007-2009 financial crisis have not been clearly identified, let alone corrected or eradicated. Instead, they have been swept under the rug and covered with tax money bailouts and an orgy of newly created money. In fact, just as for defense, President Obama has delegated his economic and financial policies to the troika of Bernanke-Geithner-Summers, just as President Clinton had delegated the same responsibility to the troika of Greenspan-Rubin-Summers, and just as President G. W. Bush had done with the troika of Bernanke-Paulson-Geithner. We cannot help but detecting a pattern here. It must be recorded that the Bernanke-Geithner-Summers team was deeply involved in the financial deregulation that led to the securization banking crisis  and to the subprime mortgage crisis.  When one considers the trillions of dollars in public money that have been used to camouflage the large N. Y. banks' bad debts, it is obvious that the Obama administration has adopted the old political technique of pandering to the rich with the blind support of the poor. (N.B.: The top 23 Wall Street banks and financial firms are expected to hand out a record $140 billion in bonus compensation  during this year of 2009—$10 billion more than the previous record year of 2007. It has since been announced that the seven largest bailed out banks may see their bonus plans scaled down, and the Obama admistration should get the benefit of the doubt for this small and possibly symbolic step toward public morality.) Such practically unconditional bailouts of “too-big-to-fail” banks can be seen as some plush state socialism for the rich, coupled with harsh and unregulated market capitalism for the poor, saddled as they are with unlimited home foreclosures and personal bankruptcies. The epicenter of the unprecedented banking salvage operation has been the Federal Reserve System, sort of a parallel government with the power to impose hidden taxes. Even more than the Treasury's generous  Troubled Asset Relief Program  (TARP) of purchasing preferred equity in troubled banks, and other similar Treasury plans,  the bulk of the banking bailouts came from the Federal Reserve system. The list of the  Fed's bailout programs is very long and very complicated and remains mostly off screen, because it is mostly camouflaged within a super-easy monetary policy. The U.S. Fed is a sort of semi-private central bank that often caters to private banking interests at the expense of the public good. Many Americans realize that the Fed  is as much a creator of financial crises as it is an instrument to fight them. In fact, the Fed is presently busy preparing the next big financial crisis, i.e. the collapse of the bond market two or three years from now. —That could explain why the remote and mysterious semi-private Fed is the least popular of all American federal institutions, and why grass roots efforts to submit it to a public audit are gaining momentum. In fact, the U.S. Fed is an institution that has gone much further than the U.S. Treasury in socializing the large N.Y. banks' losses and in privatizing their huge profits in the hands of profiteers, at a time, especially after the Sept. 15 (2008) demise of Lehman Brothers, when many of them were technically insolvent. Thus, by buying large amounts of toxic and unmarketable assets from the large N.Y. banks and from large insurers, such as the huge American International Group (AIG), at close to zero cost to them, and by creating new deposits in exchange, and by paying interest on such bank deposits, the Fed has in effect transferred all or most of the seigniorage of money creation  from the public to the private sector. Everybody holding U.S. dollars has paid a huge hidden tax imposed by the Fed to salvage the large “too-big-to-fail” N.Y. banks. Sooner or later, somebody will have to calculate that hidden tax and make it public. Most likely, this could only be done if the Fed were to be thoroughly audited, which it has so far staunchly refused. All and all, and where it counts the most, in matters of wars and peace and in economic matters, things have hardly changed under the new Obama administration. It is likely that an even more pugnacious McCain administration would have been worse, considering Sen. McCain's public declarations and pronouncements. Nevertheless, this is poor consolation to those who had high expectations and who were led to believe that President Obama's election would really bring fundamental change. _________________________________ Rodrigue Tremblay is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Montreal and can be reached at rodrigue.tremblay@ yahoo.com. He is the author of the book 'The New American Empire'. *****The French version of The Code for Gloal Ethics is now available. See: www.lecodepouruneethiqueglobale.com/ or on Amazon Email this article to a friend: http://www.TheCodeForGloalEthics.com/ (click BLOG) Send contact, comments or commercial reproduction requests (in English or in French) to: bigpictureworld@yahoo.com N.B.: Messages may be published in our weblog, unless you request otherwise. Please register to receive free alerts on new postings of articles. Send an email with the word "subscribe" to: bigpictureworld@yahoo.com To unregister, send an email with the word "unsubscribe" to: bigpictureworld@yahoo.com The above is presented for educational purposes only. © 2009 by Big Picture World Syndicate, Inc. COMMENTS New Break Free from the Neo-Cons' Tentacles. Posted, Friday, October 30, 2009 01:49 am Obama has had plenty of time already. If he is given any more time, before he knows it, his 4 years tenure would be over. Obama's intentions might be good & noble, but he will not be able to achieve much unless he breaks free from the Neo-Cons' tentacles. If Obama manages to break shake of the Neo-Cons, he might help USA regain it's position the comity of nations which it has lost due to behaving like a mad rampaging bull-elephant enforcing the Law Of The Jungle around the world that "Might Is Right", with it's two cohorts Israel and India in tow... Maqsood New A symptom, not a Cause? Posted, Thursday, November 5, 2009 10:22 am I would want to say that there are some experts who think the subprime mortgage default was more of a symptom than a cause of the US-originated Global financial debacle. I would like to know what you think? Ebenezer Answer by R. T. Yes. It was the end-result of corrupt political financial deregulation and corrupt financial and banking practices. See my blog on the issue: http://www.thenewamericanempire.com/tremblay=1082 New Jefferson's Quote Posted, Friday, October 25, 2009 5:41 am I have just read and enjoyed your article, ‘The Great Fed-Financed Dollar Decline and Stock Market Rally of 2009’ at www.globalresearch.ca. I look forward to reading your book ”The Code for Global Ethics”. I have a question about the Jefferson quote you use:  ‘If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.’ Do you have a citation for that quote, Professor? A friend suggested it comes from one of Jefferson’s letters to Albert Salatin but I can’t find it among the collected correspondence at the Library of Online Liberty. Any help much appreciated. Nick. Answer by R. T.: I checked my bank of quotes and, indeed, here is what I found: Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin (1802). New Mother of all False Flags! Posted, Wednesday, October 28, 2009 18:33 pm Here is a summary of an article i wrote recently. It is of course a polemic with facts. Things are so hot that everything you write must be factual. Let me know what you think. Mother of all False Flags October 23, 2009 www.Newswithviews.com ...If most Americans were racists, Obama would not have been elected; and Federal and State governments would not be spending one dollar out of seven on means tested welfare for one third of the American population, most of whom reside in the inner cities.  Means tested welfare spending is $28,000 per household of four, for a total of 714 Billion dollars, 5% of GDP, which means that two thirds of American households are paying $6,720 a year to support the less productive one third. Social Security, Medicare, Police, and Education are additional costs not included in the preceding. Facts from Robert Rector, Special report #67, The Heritage Foundation. Brian Riedl  of  The Heritage Foundation just reported “that our Federal Government will spend $33,880 per household in 2009, the highest level in history adjusted for inflation which is $8,000 more per household than last year. $18,277 per household of the $33,880 will be in taxes and the remaining $15,630 will be debt”. This is impossible to sustain and will quickly result in recognized Bankruptcy and abject poverty for all Americans, except for the Traitors who did the looting. Worthless paper money will not pay for benefits. ...Your fascist government allowed corporations, with the eager support of unions, to employ low skilled foreign born workers for cheap wages to take our jobs. Taxpayers are forced to subsidize these exploited workers, most of whom are illegals, in the amount of about $900 for each American household, (based on Heritage Foundation figures) which are also included in the preceding Brian Riedl  figures. Each illegal head of household costs American taxpayers about $25,000 a year after deducting any taxes paid. ...The greatest political awakening in our lifetime was the Massive Protest March by both White and Black Patriots to the nation’s capital on September 12, 2009 which demonstrated to Patriots and Fascists alike that rule by Unconstitutional Corruption and Treason was going to end. ...You don’t need to be an economist and attorney, to know that government printing of money and looting on such a large scale, while destroying the private capitalistic job creating economy is unconstitutional; resulting in abject poverty and Fascist slavery for all of us. Most of our officials and judges at every level of government are corrupt.  Obama refuses to meet the constitutional requirements to be president, and not one single official or judge, had the courage to enforce the constitution, but that will change. The Patriots in this country, both Black and White, will stop the Fascist Treason of our elected officials and take back our country by throwing them out of office. Arm yourself with the truth by verifying what I have written and join us in our fight for survival. Andrew. http://www.newswithviews.com/Wallace/andrew121.htm New What Change? Corporate Oligarchy and the Need for a Reform Posted, Friday, October 27, 2009 2:42 pm Corporate oligarchs have increasingly gained power over government in the USA, so that no candidate for president can be nominated by either major political party who would not be a sock puppet on either the right or left hand of the same puppeteer. E.g., Obama reappointed as Fed Chairman the same Ben Bernanke who had been appointed by Bush/43 -- what "change"? Obama also appointed as Treasury Secretary the same Timothy Geithner who, as president of the New York Fed, had plotted the October 2008 Bush Treasury raids with past Secretary Hank 'Goldman' Paulson -- what change? Looking further back, the Conservative Republican Reagan (under duress) appointed Alan Greenspan as Fed Chairman, who was re-appointed by the Establishment Republican Bush/41, then re-appointed by the Democrat Clinton, then re-appointed by the Neocon Republican Bush. As sock puppets came and went, right or left handed, the corporate oligarchs who really run America kept their boy in place. Thus Obama, as was Reagan, is limited in the amount of real change the oligarchy will tolerate. He's not the master, but a dog, straining on the leash to try to go where he wants to go, with only occasional success. Having lived in the US, Canada, and other countries, the US is the least free place I've been in -- especially for the last five years. Moderate 'blue dog' Democrats are now the swing vote in Congress, courted by both Obama loyalists and mainline GOPs. There's little hope of anything beneficial coming from the Federal government, as it's run by Goldman-Sachs minions for the benefit of Wall Street. Banksters and shylocks are in ultimate control. I never expect to see things 'get back to normal' in the USA, because the Bush maladministration had pursued manifold policies that served to dispossess Americans economically or disenfranchise them politically. Thus, the malaise in which ordinary citizens now find themselves is not the result of incompetence or exogenous shocks, but the result of the successful implementation and execution of perverse fraticidal policies designed to subjugate America to its industrial barons and financial dukes -- the land of the free is now the home of the slaves. John Answer by R. T.: It is a fact that modern politicians are often puppets of masters behind the curtains. To get out of this political quagmire, proportional representation could be introduced, as in many European countries. This takes leadership and it is doubtful that the oligarchy, as you call it, would ever accept such a reform. Alternatively, a reform could be introduced that requires a systematic run-off between the two front-runners, when a winner receives less than fifty percent of the votes. This way, nobody could be elected with a majority of the people being against him or her. A less drastic reform would be to introduce some element of public financing of political parties according to the votes they receive. There is such a system in Canada and this has helped a few minority parties to get exposure and traction. Another reform, which is less costly and easier to implement, would be to reestablish the media Fairness Doctrine that Reagan abolished in 1987. TV and radio stations would have to provide minimum air time to all political parties free, as a compensation for using public airwaves and receiving public licenses. After Reagan abolished the Fairness Doctrine in 1987, Congress attempted to revive the Doctrine legislatively that same year, only to have President Reagan veto the attempt. Congress made another effort in 1991. Maybe today, with a large democratic majority, these attempts should be reinstated. A public debate on this issue would seem to be required. New A New Political Party? Posted, Tuesday, October 27, 2009 03:34 pm This is an interesting article, and I would like to respond to some things you say: "In such an environment, it appears to many that voting has become a waste of time. Voter turnout  in the U.S., already one of the lowest in the world, may take a turn for the worse if confidence is not restored soon. On that score, the 2010 turnout should be watched closely."  I believe everything you say is true - which brings us to the important question of "Whither American Democracy?" i.e. poetic for "Which Way will American Democracy go from here?"  In my view, since there is really only one political party - the Ploutocratic Party, with 2 heads (Demo. and Repo.) - unless the American PEOPLE/DEMOS invent a new and truly independent party themselves, they will no choice but to "choose" not to vote for the Ploutocratic candidates in the next elections. I hope that you will do what you can to promote the development of a truly independent new political party in America. Ross Perot tried to start an Independent political party in 1992 and was credibly threatened with assassination, until he dropped out of the contest for a couple of months. And, Barack Obama has also been credibly threatened with assassination - and this has compelled him to "wimp out" and abandon all of his "Democratic" plans and "Vision," in order to become yet one more lackey for the Ploutocratic Party (which wears two masks). My own opinion is that there are only 2 ways out of this: (1) Armed, violent Revolution, or (2) having a leader who is "From God" and who therefore cannot be assassinated, but rather will be protected and guided to do "God's Perfect Work" on earth.  And, until (1) or (2) happen, THE PLOUTOCRATIC PARTY WILL CONTINUE TO ENRAGE THE AMERICAN PEOPLE AND THE HUMAN RACE AS A WHOLE, BY VIRTUE OF ITS ARROGANCE AND IGNORANCE - UNTIL THE ENTIRE THING COLLAPSES.  Wait and see.  I would like to see a "Peaceful Revolution" based on Dialogue and Democratic votes at the ballot box.  But, if this is not allowed, then I predict Violent Revolution in the USA - and soon.  Keep up the good work, sir! Gary ____________ Answer by R. T.: In a large country such as the United States, a new political party not only needs members. It needs media attention and/or tons of money to buy media time and space. This is a vicious cycle. Article #1116 Friday, September 25, 2009 The Great Fed-Financed Dollar Decline and Stock Market Rally of 2009 by Rodrigue Tremblay "The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to the point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism — ownership of government by an individual, by a group or any controlling private power." Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945), 32nd and longest-serving US president “This great and powerful force—the accumulated wealth of the United States—has taken over all the functions of Government, Congress, the issue of money, and banking and the army and navy in order to have a band of mercenaries to do their bidding and protect their stolen property.” Senator Richard Pettigrew, Triumphant Plutocracy, 1922 'I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.' Thomas Jefferson, (1743-1826), 3rd US President, 1802 The U.S. national debt clock is clicking and it is fast approaching the $12 trillion mark, all the while the Fed (less a central bank than the banks' Bank) is printing new money like crazy and lending it to its client banks at close to zero interest rates (i.e. at negative interest rates). What is wrong with this picture? It simply means that most Americans are losing big at this game, but a handful of mega-banks and their affiliates are raking in tremendous amounts of money in easily made profits. Indeed, the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet has more than doubled since August 2007, going from $870 billion to more than $2 trillion. It is expected to keep growing as banks avail themselves of the cheap funds the Fed made available to them. The Fed, indeed, has the unique ability to create new dollars (paper currency) for the accounts of assets (good or bad) that it buys from banks, the Treasury, or other entities. This increases the monetary base (the sum of currency plus total banking reserves), and banks through their lending can expand this  money supply even further. And the Fed has been extraordinarily generous to the banks, the largest of them are in fact owners of the twelve regional Fed banks. In fact, the Fed has broken practically every central banking rule in order to provide cheap funds to the banks. First, it has pushed the fed funds rate to close to zero so banks could have credit at close to zero cost to them. Second, it has expanded the range and quality of assets it stood ready to accept as collateral for its loans to the banks, so much so that it can be said that the U.S. Fed is presently creating new money backed by the shakiest of assets, some being called “toxic waste”. This is reminiscent of the eighteenth century (beginning in 1789) practice of the French revolutionary government of creating new money (the assignats) backed by the seized properties of the Catholic Church. Let's summarize quickly the numerous ways the Fed (and to a certain extent, the U.S. Treasury) have found to channel cheap funds to the banks and to brokers. In September 2008, some investment banks, such as Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan, officially became commercial banks in order to profit from the Fed's new generosity. • The Term Auction Facility (TAF); • The Primary Dealer Credit Facility (PDCF); • The Foreign Exchange Swap programs (the currency swap lines); • The Commercial Paper Funding Facility (CPFF); • The Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF); • The Agency debt, Agency mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and Treasury purchase programs; • The Treasury's $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP); • The payment of interest on the banks' excess reserves at the Fed. The last disposition is worthy of attention. Because of the easy and cheap lending to the banks, the latter piled up tremendous amounts of excess reserves at the Fed, reaching more than $700 billion. Normally, banks would quickly lend these non-interest paying excess reserves to the economy. But, in October 2008, the Fed got imaginative and obtained the authority to pay interest on the banks' reserves, including excess reserves, at a risk-free rate (the IOER rate). Since then, the banks have been earning interest on their excess reserve holdings, and therefore had little inclination to lend those reserves out to creditworthy but nevertheless risky borrowers in the rest of the economy. With this practice, the circle has been closed, and the Fed was able to provide needed funds to the banks, at close to zero cost, and enable them to rid themselves of their bad investments, without risking creating inflation. That's quite a banking salvage operation that will be studied by economists in detail in the future. Indeed, it was well understood after the onset of the financial crisis in August 2007, that public capital would be needed to refinance the American banking system. Private capital was too risk adverse to do that. What was less understood was the fact that the Bush administration, and now the Obama administration that continues this policy, intended to provide this capital at close to no cost to the banks and with very scant conditions. But who really paid and has continued to pay for this imaginative recapitalization of American banks, and who profits the most? First of all, of course, bank profits, especially those profits by big international banks, have exploded. Bank stocks have followed suit with tremendous gains. That's why I say the stock market rally since March 5 (2009) has been a liquidity-driven rally, engineered by the Fed. And it is easy to see why banks raked in so much money: They have been borrowing funds at close to zero cost to themselves and either were paid by the Fed to leave these funds unused or they have used them, with leverage through their hedge fund like activities, to buy interest-paying assets in the U.S. or abroad. In essence, the large “too big to fail” have been allowed to make various trading bets with the cheap public capital provided by the Fed. They gorged themselves with near free public money and used it to enrich themselves, and very little to finance the real economy. One profitable trade, among others, that large international banks and other operators are found to embrace is a form of arbitrage: They borrow and sell the currency of the country that has the lowest possible short-term funding costs and invest the proceeds in countries whose currency and asset markets yield the most. This has the consequence of depreciating further the currency with low interest rates and of appreciating the other currencies. During the 1990s, the Japanese economy was in the doldrums. Its short-term interest rates, just as in the U.S. today, were close to zero. International banks and hedge funds would then borrow yens in Japan, sell them for dollars or euros and invest the proceeds in high-yielding financial assets in the U.S. or in Europe. Provided the interest rate environment does not change suddenly, this sort of “carry trade” is an easy way to make money. The result, however, is a more depressed currency than necessary for the low interest rate country and more imported inflation as the price of imported goods (oil, food, commodities...) increases. The U.S. is presently in that predicament. The U.S. Fed and Treasury have abandoned the U.S. dollar and the large international banks have depressed it further at the same time they fill their coffers. That is why we can say that, besides the profitable carry currency trade that banks and other operators employ to dump the U.S. dollar on foreign exchange markets, this currency will remain under pressure for as long as the spread of short-term interest rates favors other currencies and as long as the spread of expected inflation rates and of expected economic growth remain stable. Paradoxically, longer-term interest rates have only increased marginally. This is because banks and other Fed borrowers, when they do not leave their low interest-paying excess reserves dormant at the Fed, can buy risk-free Treasury bonds. This has the consequence of depressing longer-term interest rates and of boosting stock market prices, even as inflation expectations are on the rise. What is to be understood is that the weak dollar is the direct consequence of the Fed's extraordinary cheap money policy. To summarize, the average American household is being hit from all sides with this policy. First, if it is a net creditor (as most retirees are), its savings are earning paltry returns (most likely negative after inflation and taxes). Second, the U.S. dollar keeps falling in value, raising the cost of traveling abroad and of everything that is imported. Third, real incomes fall with rising prices as the purchasing power of stable or declining money incomes contracts. Fourth, the exploding public debt will translate sooner or later into higher taxes, thus reducing private disposable incomes. All in all, the standard of living of most people falls. Don't get me wrong. I do not question the need to inject liquidity into the banking system after the onset of the financial crisis in August 2007. What I question is the way this was done and how the public interest was sacrificed in favor of narrow private interests. Indeed it was done in the worst possible social way, with private gains and social costs. They (the Bush and Obama administrations) recapitalized the banks to the benefit of a small class of bankers, while taxing the entire population in a multitude of ways to finance the public subsidy. There were other ways to attain the same end without taxing the many for the benefit of a few. The U.S. Treasury and the U.S. Fed, both under the Bush administration and the Obama administration discarded these solutions. That's where the scandal lies. But since it is likely that only a handful of senators and congressmen understand what has happened, I would not be too confident in expecting that there would ever be a public investigation of the scandal, beginning with Congress auditing the Federal Reserve's subsidized banking loans to large banks and its lack of needed regulatory activities. Kudos, however, to the Manhattan Chief U.S. District Court Judge who has ordered the Fed to make public its lending records. Similarly, at least, some timid steps are being taken in the U.S. and in Europe to impose some limits or restrictions on the discretionary and exorbitant bankers' bonuses. This comes a bit late, and we shall see if this is merely some political window-dressing to deflect criticism or if it is a structural step to curb oligopolistic and abusive banking practices. _________________________________ Rodrigue Tremblay is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Montreal and can be reached at rodrigue.tremblay@ yahoo.com. He is the author of the book 'The New American Empire'. *****The French version of The Code for Gloal Ethics is now available. See: www.lecodepouruneethiqueglobale.com/ or on Amazon Email this article to a friend: http://www.TheCodeForGloalEthics.com/ (click BLOG) Send contact, comments or commercial reproduction requests (in English or in French) to: bigpictureworld@yahoo.com N.B.: Messages may be published in our weblog, unless you request otherwise. Please register to receive free alerts on new postings of articles. Send an email with the word "subscribe" to: bigpictureworld@yahoo.com To unregister, send an email with the word "unsubscribe" to: bigpictureworld@yahoo.com The above is presented for educational purposes only. © 2009 by Big Picture World Syndicate, Inc. COMMENTS New An Alternative to Capitalism? Posted, Friday, September 25, 2009 10:54 pm "Home of the Brave?" ... The following problems have become inherent in our economy. What does that mean? It means they will be around for a while: Needless poverty, unemployment, inflation, the threat of depression, taxes, crimes related to profit (sale of illicit drugs, stolen IDs, muggings, bribery, con artists, etc.), conflict of interest, endless red tape, a staggering national debt plus a widening budget deficit, 48 out of 50 states in debt, cities in debt, counties in debt, skyrocketing personal debts, 50 percent of Americans unhappy at their work, saving for retirement and our children's education, health being a matter of wealth, competing in the "rat race", the need for insurance, being a nation of litigation, being subject to the tremors on Wall Street, fear of downsizing and automation, fear of more Enrons, outsourcing, bankruptcies, crippling strikes, materialism, corruption, welfare, social security, sacrificing quality and safety in our products for the sake of profit, the social problem of the "haves" vs. the "havenots" and the inevitable family quarrels over money. Have we become gluttons for punishment? My college professor once said, "You can get used to hanging if you live long enough!" ...Yes, there is something we can do. We can look into ourselves for an answer. We may find that we have the strength to carry out our internal economic affairs without the need to use money. Yes, we will still need to use money when dealing with other countries. There is no question that a way of life without money will alleviate if not completely eliminate all of the previously mentioned problems. Yet, we scoff at the idea. We are totally convinced that money is a necessity. We cannot imagine life without money. Perhaps the time has come to think otherwise. It is completely obvious our present economy no longer satisfies our present day needs. ...Cooperation will replace wasteful competition. We will all work together as a team. Work will become a way to help people, to meet people or to be part of something meaningful. It is a proven fact that people like to help one another. An esprit de corps will naturally build up and make work more enjoyable. Even the most menial task becomes easier when people work together. Yes, work will become more of a "togetherness" thing. ...Yes, we will still import and export goods with foreign countries as our needs dictate; but what money will be used in place of the almighty dollar? Would the dollar have any value if everything is free in the USA? Would that be a problem? We would, however, still be able to use the currency of the country we are doing business with. For example, if we export goods to Germany, we would accept marks or euros in payment. The euros would then be deposited in our national treasury for future use. The money could then be used to import goods or perhaps send Americans overseas on vacation. Yes, a way of life without money could be compared to the kibbutz which now exist in Israel. Can you picture the USA as one big kibbutz? However, ownership of property will remain the same as it is today. Our government will remain the same. Our free enterprise system will remain in place as it is today. There will be no need for money or any substitute for money since everything will be free. The advantages of a way of life without money stagger the imagination; but they are real and cannot be disputed. Perhaps it is time for us to grab the brass ring? "The Human Race has improved everything except the Human Race.“ Adlai Stevenson John  _____________ Answer by R. T.: I admire your idealism and romantism. May I remind you that the principle of “everything will be free according to need” was tried for three-quarters of a century in many countries, and it was called communism. It failed. New Money Creation without Inflation Posted, Thursday, September 24, 2009 9:56 am When the FED took over troubled assets on its balance sheet, it produced central bank money on the right side, but this newly created money is subtotaly sequestered / pledged, thats probably the clue. Now, that's the reason why the FED pays interests to the Banks as part of its Seignorage as long as it receives payments out of the toxic waste it holds on the left side. So - what I guess nobody is understanding - the monetary base was expanding, but the banks can't use the fresh money fully for credit creation (even if they wanted to), the money is inert. Stefan Answer by R. T.: Yes. The monetary base expanded but not the money supply, as long as the banks' deposits at the N.Y. Fed bank remain there. As to the money the Fed could make on the toxic assets it took as collateral, nobody will ever know because the Fed refuses to be audited. New Trouble Ahead? Posted, Wednesday, September 23, 2009 9:00 pm Your analysis is by far most accurate and complete on topics that relate to the current crisis. By this time I have already read numerous articles on different websites with authors views ranging from traditional economics (who do not know what to expect in future other than general "inflation thing" ) to conspiracy theorists who hype about tens of trillions of dollars in debt (that will be simply impossible to repay), international Money and Banking conspiracy, and the coming collapse of the dollar. Your view on that topic has actually stricken me, as being totally comprehensive in terms that you fully analyze actions, done by the Fed and the Treasury, what they meant to do and what they achieved by this, and somewhat prophetic (you predicted about B.Bernanke saying that "the recession is finally over" 3 months before that actually happened). Your analogies with the past is also a nice thing, Japanese recession and so on. For which we all must thank you. And this brings two questions: 1) Do you believe that the current pattern of crisis will remind that of the Great Depression (with stock market rebounding quickly before testing new lows)? 2) What is the best hedge against coming hyperstagflation. Are silver and gold stocks good enough to protect against troubles lying ahead? That information really would be very valuable to all of us who read your articles and appreciate them as much as I do. Once again, thank you very much! Andrei Answer by R. T.: Reality is complex and difficult to anticipate in advance. So many things can happen and it's difficult to protect oneself against every unforeseen event. For example, if Israel (or the U.S.) were to attack Iran and if Iran were to close the Strait of Hormuz, the price of oil would quickly rise to $150 US a barrel and the current recession could be turned into a worldwide economic depression. Inflation and interest rates would rise and the stock market would plunge further down than most people expect. For the time being, it's true that the Fed can generate sufficient liquidity to raise all boats... for a while. This does not guarantee that economic activity will necessary follow. From 1932 to 1937, the US stock market was rising at the same time as the real economy remained in depression. My feeling is that an important stock market correction is just around the corner. During the coming stagflation, the challenge is to protect one's real income or purchasing power. Prices will keep increasing while money incomes will stagnate. Gold and silver are good stores of value but they do not generate income. The IMF has just announced that it will sell for $15 billion of gold. The central banks want to prevent the gold price from going too much above $1,000 an ounce. Unless China's central bank scoops up this extra gold on the market, gold prices could stabilize for a while, but the secular trend is up. Essentials, i.e. food, energy and pharmaceuticals, could be the best place to be invested for the retiring baby-boomers. Nouveau Nouvelles règles comptables Posté, mercredi, le 23 september, 2009 6:54 am Vous dites: “But who really paid and has continued to pay for this imaginative recapitalization of American banks, and who profits the most? First of all, of course, bank profits, specially those profits by big international banks, have exploded. Bank stocks have followed suit with tremendous gains. That's why I say the stock market rally since March 5 (2009) has been a liquidity-driven rally, engineered by the Fed.'' Faut voir également ce que donnent les nouvelles pratiques comptables qui donnent l'opportunité de présenter des bilans avec la valeur des actifs, selon des valeurs hypothétiques; afin de savoir vraiment si les profits sont rééls ou fictifs. On pourrait être surpris.... Gilbert. New "Money" and "Currency" Posted, Tuesday, September 22, 2009 8:46 pm Just a brief suggestion: It might serve your purposes to resist using the terms "money" and "currency" as interchangeable, for money (gold) can be currency, but currency (paper certificates) cannot be money. Unless it is something of value, it cannot be money: http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article7235.html Edward _________________________ Answer by R. T.: Money, as a means of exchange, is anything that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts. The US dollar is such a means of exchange. It is fiat money. In economics, the term currency can refer either to a particular currency, for example the US dollar or the euro, or to the coins and banknotes of a particular currency. Historically, money in the form of currency, usually gold and/or silver, has been the norm. Nowadays, gold and silver are considered precious metals and a form of commodities. No fiat money, and that includes the Swiss franc, has a fixed value in precious metals. That does not mean that gold and/or silver are not stores of value and a protection against fiat money inflation. However, gold and silver are rarely used as means of exchange. New Basic Economics Posted, Tuesday, September 22, 2009 6:51 pm There is something that defies my logic and understanding of basic economics. The Treasury supplies the special paper on which to print money to the Fed. The Fed then prints the money on this donated paper. The Treasury issues t-bills to the Fed and gets printed paper (money) in return. Gov't then funnels these freshly minted dollars back into the banking system, getting toxic debt (no value) in return. Now the government has piles of toxic debt and the money it has given back to the Fed and banking system for bad debt is disbursed in a manner that goes unreported. The government i.e. the public then, presumably, has to pay the interest on this money. I have heard of traditional socialism where the gov't takes from the haves to give to the have nots. This sounds like the reverse or corporate socialism. In the meantime the bankers receiving these bailouts get huge bonuses while the tax payer who pays the interest on the loans is just trying to hang onto his job. But now the same taxpayer can go to the banks and borrow this free money from the banks and pay a higher interest for a second time. The bank is collecting twice from the same guy. In my mind this defies logic. What am I missing? If I had to make an analogy it would be like me going to a Mercedes Dealer. I select the nicest car on the lot. The dealer, then, gives me the car for free, and agrees to pay me interest on the value of the car. In your scenario the government is pumping enormous amounts of money into the banking system and they are not lending the money to the public, or corporations. To have a recovery someone has to be priming the pump ie stimulating the economy. The banks still seem to be in big trouble and won't lend, the government is not pushing money into the hands of the public and corporations to any degree, so who is left to stimulate the economy. Furthermore the gov't is proposing big new spending programs like socialized medicine and Cap and Trade that will burden the tax payer even more. Bernake then says the recession is over. Again, something does not compute. Seems like my understanding of economics is flawed. Rick _____________________ Answer by R. T.: When it is said that the Fed prints money, this is a figure of style. The Fed does not physically “print” money. It creates money. The printing of dollar bills is the responsibility of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. It produces about 16.65 million $1 bills per day; which means that the mean life of a $1 bill is about 21 months: How does the Fed create money?  When the Fed lends money to the banks or to brokers, it creates bank deposits in its books that represent new money. This is high-power money because the banks can lend their new cash to borrowers and this increases the money supply by a multiple. That's what can create inflation: too much money chasing too few goods. That's the reason why the Fed has decided to pay interest on the banks' deposits in its books as of October 2008. The Fed does not want the banks to create inflation. It primarily wants to make the banks more liquid and better capitalized. As to the Treasury, when it borrows, it issues bills or bonds with different maturities and paying a certain interest rate. Banks can buy these issues and profit from the spread they paid the Fed to borrow the funds (nearly nothing these days) and the interest paid by the Treasury. This is a risk-free operation by the banks that increases their profits (and bonuses). Since the government spends the proceeds, this could create inflation down the road. In fact, the banks prefer to lend to the government rather than to busines or consumers, because this is risk-free. The Fed can also lend directly to the government by buying new Treasury issues. This is less costly to the government (and to curent and future taxpayers) because the Fed's net profits are returned to the government at the end of the year. New Canadians as “hewers of wood and drawers of water”. Posted, Tuesday, September 22, 2009 6:19 pm Dr. Tremblay's articles are being widely circulated and appreciated here on Vancouver Island, B. C. (Canada). They are probably circulated through out the province. Most of us have our own list serves. What I would love to see is an analysis on the impact of this on Canadians as well as a critique of what actions the Canadian Government is taking to try and offset the damage cause by the Great Fed-Financed Dollar Decline. Perhaps they are not taking any action other than bailing out our own banks to the tune of $75 billion. There is a great deal of criticism being cast by the Opposition Leaders regarding cut backs but no good analysis being given by any of these yahoos. They no doubt believe we will not understand or that we will and will become angry. Here in B.C., another swindle called the HST is being imposed on the population. http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2009/09/22/HSTMyths/ "As thousands protest, BC's government wildly spins its Harmonized Sales Tax". By Bill Tieleman, Today, TheTyee.ca I am a retired senior living for the past few years on an extremely modest pension. Already I am having difficulty getting to the end of the month. The increases in the cost of food and energy are rarely discussed by our politicians. Of course they, themselves do not feel it like people similar to myself. There are many of us too. I feel that food has increased by at least 50% over the past three years. I suppose this is in part because of the decrease in the value of our dollar which has been going on for years now as well as increased transportation costs. A very sneaky way of stealing money from the population and lowering everyone's income. Perhaps I am wrong as I am not an economist. I just know that something is very very wrong for people like myself and even for many who are better off than I. I worked hard all of my life and paid my taxes. Now as a senior I am suffering. I am incredibly angry about this. It is a good thing I am old as otherwise I would be looking for a Che Guevara to take to the hills with. Thanks for reading this. I don't really expect you to do the article I am requesting. I would just like you to. Thank you for what you are doing. I appreciate it. Stephanie, _________________ Answer by R. T.: The demise of the US dollar will sooner or later translate into higher oil and gold prices and other commodities. This in turn will push the Canadian dollar (and the Aussie and New Zealand dollars) higher. The danger for Canada, if the government does not take countermeasures, is disindustrialization because of an over-valued Canadian dollar. This is called the “Dutch disease” that renders the industrial sector non-competitive. This has already begun in Canada, especially in Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia. If this were to last many years, Canadians would thus be pushed back to the status of “hewers of wood and drawers of water” for the Americans. New Long Overdue Posted, Tuesday, September 22, 2009 6:10 pm Simply one very pertinent article, long over due some might say. Of course this email will be forwarded to very many people, like all get out. As always, thanks for the heads up and do take care. JZ COMMENTS #1222 The Moral Dimension of Things New Science and Religion Posted, Monday, March 8, 2010 12:20 pm ...Your article on ethics and science is well-taken. I take your expression "religious absolutism" to mean something like what Thomas Erskine of Linlathen, one of the Marrow Men of the Scottish Reformation, meant when he said: "Those who make religion their god will not have God for their religion." Science, of course, assumes the existence of absolutes. It is impossible to think logically otherwise, for to actually deny absolutes one must do so absolutely. Your attack on "religion", though quite justified in general, was so general - a shotgun, not a rifle - that it might generate more heat than light when what it appears to me you wanted to do was increase light. Perhaps you should do an update on science-religion issues. A good place to start would be www.asa3.org. You seem to be operating from the historically discredited paradigm of science being at war with religion. Certainly one can find clear disagreements between various theological positions and authentic science (not philosophy in the name of science). Your three examples illustrate this. Galileo, who himself was a believer in the biblical worldview, was at odds with the schoolmen - the scholastics - who were essentially neoplatonists. They pulled the Pope into the conflict, though the source of it was not the Roman Church but the university professors. Galileo said “I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who endowed us with sense, reason and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.” As for the Darwinian controversy, even more theological speculation raised to an absolute has produced a range of positions, some of which ignore both what the creation and the Bible actually say. An example is young-earth creationism, which discounts well-established scientific development about the universe of the past. What many who are also anti-Bible do not realize is that YEC also reads into early Genesis what is not there. Genesis simply does not tell us how God created the heavens and the earth because it is not intended to be a scientific treatise; the scope of its concern is larger than what science can address. It even uses language that indicates process was involved ("Let the earth bring forth ..."). What most YECists have in common with the Medieval schoolmen is the same neoplatonist view of reality, that God simply pulls rabbits out of a hat to invoke his will in the Universe. Science shows clearly that God  operates by what for us are reliable laws which we can codify as scientific principles and rely upon. To the ancient Yahwist Israelites of the Bible, the most prominent characteristic of their God was reliability or faithfulness in behavior - a covenant-keeping God - as opposed to the pagan gods, who were unpredictable, fickle and capricious. No wonder science historically was developed by those, like Galileo, with a biblical worldview as an outlook for their investigation of the natural world. The mind-brain or mind-body problem is a favorite of mine. I refer you to www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/1999/PSCF9-99Feucht.html The Bible comes down on both sides of the determinism-free-will debate, sometimes in the same sentence. Clearly, something interesting is going on here. British physicist and brain researcher Donald MacKay, who  debated B.F. Skinner on Buckley's Firing Line, had, I think, a breakthrough in recognizing that the logic being used to discuss the issue was inadequate. My summary (and beyond) is in the above-cited article. Dennis                         Answer by R. T.: Yes. Maybe I should have written “fundamentalist” instead of “absolutist“. Of course, in a short piece like the one I wrote it's impossible to summarize everything that can be found in my coming book. The Code for Global Ethics, Ten Humanist Principles: http://www.amazon.com/Code-Global-Ethics-Humanist-Principles/dp/1616141727/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1257383472&sr=1-4 New The Law is an Ass Posted, Monday, March 8, 2010 11:03 am Right on; bravo! My only comment is that "disregard for the rule of law" here in the USA would be an improvement, as that principle was undermined, then directly and openly attacked, and (since 9/11) has begun to be supplanted by a parallel system of corporstist 'police state' autocracy. Indeed, my point is that a disregard for 'rule of law' here would be an improvement, as 'rule of law by due process' is being rooted out, destroyed, and crowded out by the parallel system of socalled emergency powers and edicts which are not even published. Absurd and vile as it may be, under the Military Commissions Act of 2006, emergency executive orders are secret. We have a parallel 'legal' system where the laws are secret! Yet, ignorance of the law is not a defense. Kafka could not be more kafkaesque than this. And the general public here has been so lobotomized, and willingly so, that no one but 'conspiracy theorist nutjobs' are concerned. Then there's the economic policy shell game of proposing 'prime the pump' economic stimuli while ignoring the structural problems that are largely responsible for our economic malaise. However this point is not even discussed, let alone addressed, as the structural problems were created deliberately or as byproducts of related policy decisions.  E.g., falling employment and real wages, and a continual shift in the distribution of income between K and L to the disadvantage of L is not a problem to everyone -- only to most Americans. Yet, most are too propagandized or cowed to object to the continual losses of wealth and liberty that the Korporist Reich imposes on them. John New Religion and Politics Posted, Monday, March 8, 2010 9:23 am I would like to share some reflections with you in reference to your most recent article I received last week in which you mentioned the Catholic Church in a quote by someone from South America who said the Church provides bullets. I know I am paraphrasing the reference you quoted. Was that a reference to "Liberation Theology?" I have been an observer in the U.S. during the last decade of what I characterize as an abomination particularly under Bush 2 of mixing religion and politics and war.  I believe it was a false religion used to propagate a world domination philosophy with Cheney, Rumsfield, Bush and many others behind 9-11, false accusations against Obama Bin Laden, the Iraq war genocide, and continuing involvement in the Middle East by the Trinity of Power of the U.S., England and Israel. I am horrified by how Bush was able to manipulate Christians, particularly the evangelical, protestant types to push for a holy war against islam. What amazed me is how Bush deceived people to believe he was a Christian so that he was more the Pope than the pope himself. Bush was almost deified by those "Christians" who wrote many books praising the dedication of "Saint Bush" to Jesus Christ! And millions of people believe we were in a holy war with Iraq.  All the more incongruous and amazing was how authentic Christianity in Iraq was nearly destroyed after surviving nearly 2,000 years. Was there remorse from them for the millions of Iraquis who were destroyed and maybe even the living were envying the dead? I want to recall that in 2003 before Bush lauched the holocaust against Iraq, it was Pope John Paul 2 who pleaded with Bush to not invade. There were also millions of other protestors around the world, including myself in San Francisco, at rallies protesting the proposed invasion. It was so obviously an unjust war. Maybe there is no such thing as even justice any more? If you look at the financial manipulators like Greenspan, Bernanke, Gaither, Goldman, Sachs, Paulson, etc. you know they are making the rules as they go. Are they Catholics? I see the situation, in part, during these days that there is good religion and bad religion but it is not easy to differentiate which is which.  I believe in good and evil.  I respect your view as an "agnostic" during these confusing times when good is bad and bad is good. All of the rules are changing.  Change becomes the rule. But look at the French Revolution and Communism and the Spanish Civil War and the Mexican persecutions against Catholics. To use "religion" to justify war is an abomination.  To me it exposed how Satan or the devil or evil had invaded the minds and hearts of millions to confuse them to believe that war is peace to commit genocide in Iraq.  Generals in the Pentagon used to have bible studies and prayer meetings.  Evangelical megachurches were excited to drop prayer leaflets along with the bombs into Iraq. But that is not the "voice of God" as I believe it. I can see why it is easy to be disillusioned with "religion" when such behavior occurs. They certainly gave a bad name a scandal to religion. All of that time there was relentless media attention about the priest child abuse scandals just in the Catholic Church being publicized. The United States history is one of control by the Protestant elites and degradation of the Catholic Church even though the Catholic Church has thrived and flourished in the U.S. Bush was the Protestant Elite personified ruling the world. That is not real religion put power and wealth, moreso the Kingdom of Satan, as I see it. I believe there is an "authentic religion" which is spoken about in the holy books and sacred scriptures.  The problem is with the followers, the disciples.  Remember the story of the encounter in the Garden of Gethsemane with Jesus and his disciples with the soldiers? Jesus had to rebuke Peter for striking a soldier with a sword! See how quickly we forget what we should be doing.  I believe God did come as Jesus Christ.  The problem is with us, the followers, the belilevers.  We always fall short. I believe there is an authentic Church for those called to it. I appreciate your insights you continue sharing in which you offer me much positive understanding about the world in which we are living. Joe                                         Answer by R. T.: No. I do not think that the Evo Morales' quote refers to Liberation Theology. On the contrary. The high clergy in Latin America is allied, just as in the United States and in most countries, with the establishment. Remember how the catholic high clergy contributed in having John Kerry defeated in 2004 by de facto excommunicating him!!! The lower clergy in LA is closer to the people and this may have a double-edged sword influence. In any case, the high clergy and the hierarchy trumps anytime the lower clergy. Of course, I would appreciate very much if you were to post your nice analysis of things on Amazon once my book is out in a few weeks. My approach is also nuanced. New Scientific Knowledge Posted, Sunday, March 7, 2010 11:59 pm In your article, you treat scientific knowledge as the remaining touchstone of truth in an age of mendacity. I would suggest that you think again. In the present age science has gained great moral authority because of its past success. This has made it the current substitute for religious dogmatism as a mechanism for the assertion of social control. Unfortunately, this means that scientific knowledge must become a dogma itself so that it may be used to justify and buttress political policies. The sciences are replete with dogmatic assertions, fraudulent claims, suppression of evidence, exclusion of dissenting voices and media lies as to the meaning of it all. The effort to replace Science with Scientism, a pseudo religious doctrine about the nature of material reality is well advanced and makes nonsense of any serious inquiry into the nature of physical reality. This Scientism can then be used to justify all manner of bogus political policies to a credulous public. It is a danger at least as great as the Catholic Church ever was. The sciences are a public danger in the hands of their current custodians. A quick trip around the internet will show you dissenting voices to mainstream orthodoxy across any number of separate fields. I will provide a URL to one article which pretty much speaks for the basic message of the rest and in a context appropriate to your article and this email. I suggest that you read it and then follow up on its basic claims. The sciences are as lost in the same moral decay as all the rest. I would say even more so. The greatest need for moral autonomy is in the sciences. A domain in which you appear to think resides the last bastion of integrity. Please think again. James                                     Answer by R. T.: Very nicely put. I do not consider science as a source of morals. Science is amoral and can be used in many ways, some very immoral. Knowledge, however, cannot be discarded and must help us find better ways to be more moral. That's all. New A Divine World Posted, Sunday, March 7, 2010 11:54 am "Therefore, nobody can claim anymore that the Earth is the center of the Universe; nobody can claim that humans are unique in the scale of things; and nobody can claim that the human body and the human mind are two unrelated entities. This knowledge has tremendous consequences for our moral stance. "My best hope is that we will avoid falling back into an age of_obscurantism and of decadence, and that we will be able to build a truly humanist civilization for the future." Rodrigue Tremblay Two questions: If humans are no longer "unique in the scale of things", why call your hope "humanist"?  Why not call it simply the living, moral universe, wherein all living things are seen as unique and sacred, not just the human? That would be a truly moral civilization, based upon love, awe and respect, rather than an immoral one based upon control, separation and fear.  The biggest mistake organized religion made was to take the divine out of this world and place it in a separate, abstract realm called heaven.  The biggest mistake organized science made was to refuse to recognize the divine within the material world it studies. Re-examine all that you have been told, dismiss that which insults your soul. Kurt                                         Answer by R. T.: You are undoubtedly aware of British geophysicist Lovelock's Gaia concept and theory about the world as a self-regulating system that supports life, especially human life. In my new book, I have a chapter (chap. 7) that deals with the environment and how its deterioration is threatening human survival. I recommend two of Lovelock's books: Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth by James Lovelock (Nov. 23, 2000); and, The Revenge of Gaia: Earth's Climate Crisis & The Fate of Humanity by James Lovelock (June 5, 2007). However, I do not subscribe to the sort of pantheism that turns everything in nature into a god. The Universe in amoral. Advanced forms of life, the mammals for example, must have moral codes, however primitive, to survive. Of course, humans are the most advanced species of mammals and their sheer number is testimony that they have succeeded in the survival game. The past is no guarantee of the future and there is no certainty that humans will not be the dinosaurs of the future. Mind you, the dinosaurs were the dominant form of life on earth for some 180 million years. Consider that the first humans appeared only two million years ago. This places things into perspective. New Moses' Ten Commandments vs The Ten Humanist Commandments Posted, Saturday, March 6, 2010 11:44 am Sounds kind of like you're recreating the "ten commandments". I'm curious if you disagree with any of the Ten Commandments, if so, which ones and why? If not, then are you rewriting them for all the people who don't like Christianity so they can have a non-Christian set to follow and thus not feel as though they've reverted to that archaic type of thought? Steve                                         Answer by R. T.: Regarding the Ten Christian/Jewish Commandments, it would seem that they are incomplete as it pertains to our times. The first four of Moses' commandments are not about human morality at all, but are the foundations for a monotheist cult or religion [no other gods but me; no idol; no use of the name of your God; observe the Sabbath.] Regarding human morality, there are three commandments that are found in all moral codes:[do not kill; do not steal; do not lie.] So, we are left with only three commandments that are somewhat original: [One about sex (adultery), one about envy and one about respect for your parents.] As you can see, there is not much there. Nothing about the equality and dignity of all human beings. Nothing about tolerance. Nothing about human empathy. Nothing really about sharing. Nothing about domination. Nothing about superstition. Nothing about respect for the environment. Nothing about wars. Nothing about democracy. Nothing about the proper education of children. Well, my coming book “The Code for GLOBAL ETHICS, Ten Humanist Principles”, [ISBN: 978-1616141721], published this year by Prometheus Books, is a humble attempt to modernize our moral guidelines. New The Planet’s Energy Imbalance Posted, Saturday, March 6, 2010 10:23 am Rodrigue yep. —Let’s just read one thing that means the end of the human race as we know it as a start. Widely overlooked, Hansen says, is that as the debate raged, two significant pieces of research were published that made the depth of the problem clearer than ever. -The first dealt with the planet’s energy imbalance. As a result of the greenhouse effect, more energy comes in from the sun than radiation leaves Earth. In his book, Hansen said the best evidence suggested the imbalance was half a watt per square metre – smaller than the three-quarters of a watt climate models had predicted. By the time the book was published in December, this was out of date. ”Papers have now been published based on measurements from Argo floats – a couple of thousand floats around the world’s oceans supplied by different governments,” Hansen says. ”Now, these floats have a yo-yo that goes down to a two-kilometre depth … For the first time, they really have got good measurements of the oceans’ temperature and how it’s changed since 2002. And it turns out the imbalance is about three-quarters of a watt. ”That is really important because that tells us where the planet is headed: the planet is going to continue to warm up until it gets back to energy balance.” (Hansen) Am still not sure most get it and what this means. War, millions then billions on the move to nowhere, more war, freedom maybe for only a few and on and on. The climate bill here in the States is a joke a bad joke. We must change the way we produce energy and now. It can be done and will take a lot of us on the same page. It can be done and very sure the powers that be will tell us it can’t next on there list of things to tell us. Right now here in the States they are fighting over health care the money with nonsense and each day they do that we get closer to a tipping point one human’s have never seen. Yes it’s to late for many changes and man it’s going to get tuff so what let’s try. Don New Morality as Reality Posted, Saturday, March 6, 2010 10:05 am Some people or a person had stated that morality is not reality. It had been invented, as i understand it, in order to deceive. For, to me, morality is reality. Morality consist of feelings which are as real as a rock. Nature is infinitely valued; we are part of that nature; thus also infinitely valued. Nature had endowned us, I think, with ability to greaten or lessen our iniquities that we perp against nature, self, and other people. Actually, it is a fact that nature had endowned us to build a better life for all citizens. Life in finland, norway, denmark, et al appears much better than the life in US; US citizens being by far more enserfed than most european citizens. Millennial miseducation by clergy and ancient and modern ‘nobility’ had been the main cause for most people’s abandoment of their basic human rights. Division of people into lesser-valued and more-valued had been the last nail in the coffin of an egalitarian society we must have had at one time. But once shamans and later priests come along, the idyllic society we had, had been utterly destroyed in all socalled civilized societies._Now the only thing that can prevent extirpation of biota and humans is getting back our inheritance. TNX New "Obscurantism" Posted, Friday, March 5, 2010 11:03 pm Good essay. You likely know the proper definition of "obscurantism". I didn't. Just in case there are others on this list not really familiar with it's meaning I attached the URL for the full definition of this term. The history /philosophy of this word is interesting and certainly applies to our corporate media, our Governments/corporations and every Canadian political Leader that I am aware of.  Sadly, it seems there are no longer any exceptions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obscurantism Obscurantism (French, obscurantisme, from the Latin obscurans, “darkening”) is the practice of deliberately preventing the facts or the full details of some matter from becoming known. There are two, common, historical and intellectual, denotations: (i) Restricting Knowledge — opposition to the spread of knowledge, a policy of withholding knowledge from the public; and (ii) Deliberate Obscurity — an abstruse style (as in literature and art) characterized by deliberate vagueness. S New Excellent and Timely Posted, Friday, March 5, 2010 09:43 am Dr. Tremblay's article is excellent and timely. Janet New Fool's Gold! Posted, Friday, March 5, 2010, 2:11  pm If only it were so--if only it was a matter of intelligent people sitting down and pledging to find a better way. But it is fool's gold that you are proposing because while the process might describe the "what"--it does not describe the "who". The "who" concerns a small highly organized "tribe" who claim to have God on the board. Their plans are long term in nature [Long Term Penetration]--they obviously control the planet [central banks/communism/media/psychology/education, etc.] and if you are not talking about this clan you are wasting your time and mine. In the human world [call it the matrix, if you will] it's all about "who"--the rest is just hyperbole. You yourself may be part of the tribe [therefore the most indoctrinated us of all]-- but even those who might be members--will have to separate to save humanity from the insanity of the Ashkenazi savant idiots [Freud,Einstein, Greenspan, Bernays,Oppenheimer,etc]. How about: "The Moral Degeneration of the Talmud" for your next book. Gary New Science is Just as Corrupt as Religion Posted, Friday, March 5, 2010 9:08 am Fantastic article. —I really agree with you on almost every point in your article The Moral Dimension Of Things. Morality and ethics are so rarely discussed.  And the corruption and materialism is especially rampant in entertainment and popular culture.  But you seem to be making a case for some clear division between Humanism and religion and science.  There really are no clear divisions between them, as there are no clear divisions between animals and humans and animals and plants. That said, it is also impossible to really know that humans aren't in some way special , or unique, as you say. I don't see why that even needs to be a part of your argument. Science has become just as corrupt as religion, and ethics of many scientific researchers appears to be nil. Our greatest threats come indeed from science- chemical pollution, advanced nuclear weapons, genetic manipulation of plants and animals.  In fact it is the total disregard of religion, and the heightened importance given to science that has created this nightmarish culture, to some extent. I would like to see a book called The Mistakes Of Science. How science is the history of being wrong.  Will they ever get it right?  Both science and religion and politics share idealistic motives and foundations. All have shown themselves equally corruptible. And there are some aspects of life that science has no ability for, like a fish out of water. Ethics may be one of them. Aesthetics another. And love a third. As religion won't help much with fixing my computer, for one. Bob                                     Answer by R. T.: Of course, science and technology are amoral. Their use can either be directed toward construction or destruction. What counts is the moral probity of those who develop them and of those who make use of them. New knowledge may help us understand our Universe, but this does not make us better moral persons. For this, we need ethical principles. But you are right. Morals and ethical values are rarely discussed, except in narrow issues. For example, former U. S Vice President Dick Cheney has boasted that a U.S. president can destroy the world on his own volition: “The [U.S.] president has 24/7 access to nuclear codes in the event of a nuclear attack against the United States ... He could launch the kind of devastating attack the world has never seen... He doesn't have to check with anybody, he doesn't have to call Congress, he doesn't have to check with the courts, he has that authority." (Dick Cheney, George W. Bush's Vice President, Sunday, December 21, 2008). This is quite something. Nobody asked him if this was moral! New We are all one species Posted, Friday, March 5, 2010 4:02 am There are nine compartments in the brain: "Cultivation of the Nine Houses" and about 35,000 years ago this practice was given to the human being species, by the ancient "Daoists" In each compartment there is a "gift" - intuition, psychic, total recall, kinetic, and on it goes with how the brain has synapses we never use and, the deal is -- on earth we are all one species, just different forms of the same energy changing spontaneously forever and ever in understanding itself. Thanks for your incredible writing. Roberta New The Moral Posted, Friday, March 5, 2010 8:07 am Excellent article right to the point-the progress of humanity & technology is way out of balance (inversly proportional). Looking forward to reading your coming book. The old book Moral compass does not apply any more-you are absolutely right that humanity is manipulated by the all wrong imputs by the controllers!!! Then add the Chemtrails, HAARP, psychological warfare, mind control, diluting nations with forced emigration etc. Can this be reversed???? Thank you for the courage to write what most would not !!!! Eva New Radical Pessimism Posted, Thursday, March 4, 2010 19:59 pm I think the very ideal of optimism got hijacked in North America a long time ago, that is, 18th Century Enlightenment values have been subordinated to the 19th Century New Thought movement. I've actually developed a fairly elaborate theory of radical pessimism, which would make me a modern heretic if anyone ever bothered to confirm "positive thinking" as the empire's established faith. I actually disagree profoundly with Professor Tremblay's message in this article, but certainly prefer it to the gooey stuff we're being fed these days by authoritative sources. John New A Thought Posted, Thursday, March 4, 2010 9:01 pm A thought. One will do. If you plan to do something that might effect someone else, ask yourself how you would feel if you were that person/those people. If you wouldn't like it done to you, don't do it to someone else. Simple. Dave                                             Answer by R. T.: You just hit it on the nail. What you spell out is precisely the concept of human empathy that I explain in chapter 3 of my new coming book. I call it the Super Golden Rule of humanist morality that can be framed this way: "Not only do to others as you would have them do to you, but also, do to others what you would wish to be done to you, if you were in their place." The corollary follows: “Don't do to others what you would not like to be done to you, if you were in their place.” You can contrast this rule with the one used by deeply religious George W. Bush: "Do unto others before they do unto you." (!) Back to top of page COMMENTS #1123 To read Dr. Tremblay's coming book The Code for Global Ethics, Ten Humanist Principles And to pre-order the book, click on: http://www.amazon.com/   Economic Bubbles and Financial Crises, Past and Present   Comments (11)   New Foreclosed Homes   Posted, Saturday, March 20, 2010 10:38 am   I agree with everything you wrote. As an appraiser, I have been following this financial disaster in terms of real estate, for many years. I gave up my certification to do bank appraisals three years ago because of the pressure of brokers to meet their over inflated requirements in order to justify their loans. In fact, I became so upset with what was happening, I worked, along with three other individuals, with the Secret Service, FBI, Postal Inspector and the Attorney General to bring about the attached indictment in December 2007. I would like to take you on a tour of foreclosed homes, and the ones involved in mortgage fraud, so you can see first hand what this ongoing problem is causing for property values. I'm sure you could write a book about it. Here is an article from Bloomberg about Bernanke's attempt to close the barn door after the horses escaped. Bob     New Very Instructive Posted, Monday, March 22, 2010 09:08 am   I have read Dr. Tremblay's article. It is very instructive. Mel New Steadily Increasing Price of Energy   Posted, Saturday, March 20, 2010 8:24 pm   I have recently read the 22 March 2010 article entitled Economic Bubbles and Financial Crisis, Past and Present, which I found well researched and most interesting. There is however one key element missing i.e. the linkage of the current economic/financial debacle with the steadily increasing price of energy and in particular of oil. You will recall that at the beginning of 2000 the average oil price stood at 20$ US/gal. In August 2008 it shot up to 147$/gal after having steadily risen since the beginning of the third millennial. In September 2008 the financial system crashed with the US government having to take back on its books the 5 trillion $US debt of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers could not be saved after the UK made some last minute difficulties with a deal that was being engineered with Barlcays, and then all the rest of the "great" banks had to be put on government life support systems...They still are... Since then the oil price, after having gone down to 40$ /barrel, has now gone back up to over 80$/barrel. That is four times the average price of energy in early 2000 and it is a huge drag on real economic growth. World economic growth is now hitting the energy wall... The world oil depletion rate is now over 6% per year and increasing. Meanwhile even if OECD countries hit by recession cut back on oil demand, all the slack production is being taken by China, India and the growing internal demand of OPEC counties... We have a real energy supply problem during the coming years and it is already causing havoc within the financial and non-financial economy. Jonatan   Nouveau La Réalité Économique   Affiché, samedi, le 20 mars, 2010 6:56 pm   Ce dernier article est très pertinent. Je ne comprends toujours pas pourquoi vos propos ne sont pas diffusés à plus grande échelle (média de masse, journaux, radio, tv...) de sorte à ce que plus de gens puisse se faire une vrai idée de la réalité économique, et ce en toute franchise pour notre bien futur et ne pas se fier aveuglément aux politiciens qui sont à la main des lobbys. A mon avis, il est clair que ce sont les plus grandes banques US qui ont provoqué cette crise, soit comme coupables, soit comme complices. Qui est assez puissant pour changer toutes les lois et règles de prudence financières qui on traversées le test du temps (le uptick rule, le Glass-Steagall act, le Commodity future act, les ratios de réserves des banques, etc.)? Goldman Sachs et la Fed sont tellement puissants et même immunisés de toute imputabilité, ce qui est scandaleux. Aujourd'hui les CDS, CDO et les dérivés sont d'une ampleur incommensurable. Si ceci explose un jour, je vais prier pour ceux qui ne détiendront pas un peu d'or à ce moment. Je m'attends à une dévaluation monétaire planétaire sans précédent dans l'histoire d'ici 5 à 10 ans. Même le Canada n'a pas de réserves d'or (3 tonnes) pour sa monnaie, advenant une crise de la devise de réserve US, notre devise serait vraiment malmenée. La Fed (Greenspan et Bernanke) continue de nier toute responsabilité face à la crise, eux qui manipulent les taux d'intérêts et créent l'excès de liquidités et de crédit qui mène au casino actuel. Je ne suis pas partisan de la conspiration, mais j'ai l'impression que même Obama ne peut rien pour faire plier le secteur financier qui est la source de tous les maux en occident. On dirait que Obama ne pourra pas trahir les gens qui l'ont mis en place sur le siège de président et que c'est la raison pour laquelle les gens qui ont créer la crise, qui se sont honteusement enrichis avant, pendant et après sont libres comme l'air et intouchables,  alors que certains devraient être en prison. Peut être qu'il est voulu d'avoir une crise monétaire internationale, de sorte que la population mondiale en vienne à accepter une banque centrale mondiale, ce que l'élite bancaire mondiale a toujours voulue mais impossible à réaliser contre les peuples libres. (re: Tragedy and Hope : C. Quicqley et E. Griffin : The Creature of the Jeckyll Island). Yves   Nouveau Vision Large   Affiché, samedi, le 20 mars, 2010 12:09 am   Merci pour cette vision large de ce qui se passe globalement et présentement en termes simples. Votre analyse est une excellente vulgarisation de la crise, de ses effets, de ses conséquences, des risques futurs et de son prolongement dans un langage clair et rendu enfin accessible à quiconque possédant des connaissances très minimales en matière économique. Gilbert   New General Motors   Posted, Saturday, March 20, 2010 1:10 pm   Your article is the clearest analysis of the present financial crisis that I have read. Thank you. I have one problem with: “In fact, let me say that this is what drove General Motors into bankruptcy. Speculators killed General Motors, not the recession and low car sales. GM could have survived the recession as it had in the past. But this time, there were the CDSs.” It is not clear to me why GM should expect their bonds to decline in value. This would imply that GM has the right in time of trouble to get a capital gain on their outstanding bonds, and could only survive with a guarantee of such capital gain. I thought that bonds are a senior liability and that bonds only get devalued after all stock equity has evaporated, that is after bankruptcy. Marie-Ange ______________________ Answer by R. T.: I am referring here to GMAC Financial Services' unsecured debentures. GM borrows a lot of money to finance car purchases, and this is the debt that usually is the riskier when car sales fall. Unsecured debentures lose value when they are downgraded during a recession. By having that kind of debt securitized, structured and insured, it could not lose value from a GM's point of view, and it could not reduce GM's debt load. There were no way out for GM but bankruptcy.   New Déja vu and Déja Prévu   Posted, Saturday, March 20, 2010 4:33 am   This article is a fine description of what has happened, what had to happen. When one contemplates the financial crash one cannot but feel not only déja vu, but déja prévu, that uneasy sensation that these events will occur again in the future, and endlessly. That is unless the entire contraption that unfailingly produces such outbreaks of elite kleptomania is done away with, forever,in its entirety. I simply find it dumbfounding to see all these fine plans designed to forestall such outbreaks of ruling class larceny, when what we should hope for is that this crisis deepens and deepens until the entire system collapses.For if we 'reform' market capitalism, which I doubt is possible, it will merely go on exploiting at a lower level of avaricious intensity, until enough time has passed for the public's recollection to have dimmed sufficiently,and enough of our corrupt political class is bought off, that a new era of elite hyper-parasitism will dawn. That is if, by dint of some currently unimaginable miracle, we survive the unfolding ecological collapse of the planet's life support systems caused by capitalism's innate nature as a neoplastic system predicated on unending growth. Capitalism is, in fact, irredeemable. Its basic operating principles eg the relentless, unending, accumulation of capital, infinite greed, avaricious, competitive, self-interest, the fetishism of converting everything in existence into commodities to be  bought and sold, thereby absolutely negating any value but that of profit, its essential impulse to create and endlessly exacerbate inequality, and its promotion of the worst type of human and the worst type of human behaviour, ie moral and ethical unscrupulousness,lack of empathy and compassion, indifference to the results of your actions on others etc, make it antithetical to continued human existence. We can see it plainly in the manner in which this crisis is playing out.Not only did the parasites of the financial elites lie, connive and mislead to rig the markets in their insatiable quest for more, but, when the pyramid collapsed, they induced their bought and sold political stooges to bankrupt their countries to bail them out. They kept on paying their psychotically greedy bonuses in the time-honoured larcenous and shameless manner, while workers in Ireland, Iceland, Greece and elsewhere,already having suffered years of stagnating real wages and growing inequality, are suddenly hit with demands for wage reductions of 30 or 40%. Shades of the IMF Structural Adjustment Plans of the last thirty years. If the kleptocrats, who adhere to a philosophy that sees them as a chosen elite, selected by a perverse pseudo-Darwinian process where greed and  hatred for others are the most powerful selective forces, get away with this new stage of immiserating the public to pay for their larceny, while having their corrupt political place-men obstruct any reform, then the future is one of a new world order of neo-feudalism, with 90% plus reduced to the status of serfs and flung into debt-peonage.Delusions that this system, based on the psychopathlogy of a fiercely misanthropic and arrogant parasite elite can be reformed, are truly misbegotten. Mulga   New Big Government and Big Business   Posted, Saturday, March 20, 2010 3:52 pm   This is an excellent piece. But there are two other significant points that I would like to have seen included: 1. The human beings that were behind the deregulation of financial services (for example those who "spent over $100 million in lobbying efforts to have bill S-256 passed") obviously knew what they were doing, knew there would be a huge payday for themselves before the balloon went up (by which time they would, of course, be long gone). Although these human beings should of course be held to account we all know that will never happen; however, what about regulating the bonuses of today's crop of financial 'experts' so that they are tied to the long term success of their institutions rather than the system of short term cah payments the last lot of 'experts' received? 2. The housing bubble that fueld the inflated mortgage industry was created on the assumption that rising property prices underwrote the money lent to pay for those properties; and so long as the incomes of home owners were increasing enough to pay back their mortgages the collapse of that industry might not have happened, and someone might have come along to restore some sanity into the system (well it's theoretically possible), and the whole collapse might never have occurred. But... at the same time as mortgage costs were skyrocketing workers' wages were collapsing, making it impossible for them to pay back their loans - a situation that was also engineered by central government, no doubt also at the behest of big business. John   New Excellent Article   Posted, Friday, March 19, 2010 5:43 am   This is an excellent article. Hanna   New Why the Friedman's Quote about Europe?   Posted, Thursday, March 18, 2010 12:55 pm   This is a good analysis, which in regard to Europe, puts the blame where it belongs: four square on the Wall St. manipulators and speculators and not on the European victims, although for that very reason, I fail to see the relevance of Milton Friedman's bit of wishful thinking. Michael   New Derivatives  Posted, Thursday, March 18, 2010 10:42 pm   Excellent article.  —Fundamental, I'd rather say. Only one thing: Can you please confirm the number of one and a half trillion dollars for what concerns to total amount of derivatives sold? Other sources report a much larger number...Is that a misprint? Andrea   ______________________ Answer by R.T.: Not to be confused: the total notional value of derivatives outstanding in the world ($600 trillion or $600,000,000,000,000) and the value of mortgage-backed CDOs sold before the crisis ($1.5 trillion or $1,500,000,000,000).  Back to top of page COMMENTS #1124 On Iran, the U.S. is Painting Itself into a Political and Moral Corner New Bush's Quote Posted, Saturday, May 5, 2010 1:53 pm I read your article with great interest. I was dumbfounded by the quote you attribute to George W. Bush when speaking to President Chirac. I always believed that he was a nutcase--a very dangerous nutcase--but I thought his religious face was just pandering to the religious voters.  Could you please identify the source of the quote? Bill                 Answer by R.T. Regarding the quote in question, it should not be such a surprise since many evangelists and born-agains in the U.S. think along Bush's lines. Televangelist Pat Robinson, for example, really believes that the end of the world is near and that a nuclear conflagration will set the forces of “evil” and the forces of the “ante-Christ” in a final contest!!! As to the Bush quote, it may sound at first as a joke. But, it has been reported in many places that GWB, in a top-secret phone call to French President Chirac, asked for French troops to join American soldiers in attacking Iraq, in March 2003, and presented the coming war as a mission from God. The complete quote, as revealed by Chirac to French journalists, is the following: Chirac recounts that the American leader appealed to their “common faith” (Christianity) and told him: “Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East…. The biblical prophecies are being fulfilled…. This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins.” It can be read here: There are many credible sources for the quote, but the one that I rely the most on is a long official interview that President Chirac gave to French journalist Jean-Claude Maurice, who reported the tale in his new book, “Si Vous le Répétez, Je Démentirai” (“If You Repeat it, I Will Deny”), released in March 2009 by publisher Plon (ISBN: 978-2259210218). To my knowledge, GWB has never denied the quote. You have to remember that President George W. Bush held weekly Saturday Bible sessions in the White House  and was often quoting the Bible. He had chosen a theologian, Michael Gerson, as his main speech writer (from 2001 until June 2006 ), probably to be able to quote the Bible in his official pronouncements. When I wrote my book “The New American Empire” (ISBN: 0741418878), in the fall of 2002, denouncing the upcoming war, which I was persuaded was coming, notwithstanding Bush's U.N. charade, this was before the Bush-Chirac conversation of March 2003 took place, because I would have reproduced it. It demonstrated vividly how improvised and how ill-advised the war against Iraq was (besides being illegal under the U.N. charter). Nevertheless, when all is said and done, I still must issue this disclaimer on any particular quote: All quotes mentioned above are believed in good faith to be accurately attributed, but no guarantees are made that some may not be incorrectly attributed. New What to do? Posted, Wednesday, May 5, 2010 8:33 am So - should the US/the West simply do nothing about Iran? And, what does 'do nothing' mean? Jon                 Answer by R.T.: As I wrote, Iran is not a paragon of democracy and human rights. It's not a country I would like to visit. In China, for example, I certainly do not agree with its centralized communist government. But, I don't think we should attack China for that. Similarly, Iran is a sovereign country and as long as it does not threaten other countries, it should be left alone. If they violate international law, its leaders should be prosecuted. New Great Article Posted, Wednesday, May 5, 2010 11:33 am Just read your article. Great article. Thanks. Thom New Nuclear Option Posted, Tuesday, March 4, 2010 6:03 pm Your article on Iran was a voice of sanity. I thought of some equally good reasons why Pres. Obama should use the "nuclear option" against Canada: 1. Canada has large reserves of fissionable material that could be used to make nuclear weapons; 2. Canada has large water reserves from which Deuterium, an isotope of hydrogen used in the manufacture of hydrogen fusion weapons can be obtained; 3. Canada has economic relations with China, a known trading partner of Iran and North Korea--two members of the "Axis of Evil"; 4. China could supply Canada with A-bomb technology as well as intermediate-range missiles capable of striking large areas of the United States, including Washington, D.C./ and New York City(!). Residents of these cities could well wake up looking at a maple-leaf-shaped mushroom cloud; 5. Canada has a small fleet of private submarines that could be used to deliver a deadly payload to the U.S.; and, 6. Canada has large strategic reserves of oil, gas, and minerals that could be used in a prolonged war against the U.S. and that can also aid other terrorist nations.   So you see, your goose is cooked, the jig is up! Tom New Nuclear Power Plants Posted, Tuesday, May 4, 2010 9:54 pm I disagree that countries have the right to exploit and develop nuclear power plants for energy. They cannot get rid of the radioactive waste. There are many alternatives for electric power generation, including my invention The Gyro-Generator. There are other alternatives in renewable or green energy, such as solar, wind, and battery power. The alternatives do not have pollution problems, or are hazardous. Nuclear has all the problems toward waste disposal. I think all countries should abandon nuclear weapons, and power facilities, including Iran and North Korea. Dominic                 Answer by R.T.: That's a good point. Things are not black and white and the prevalent alternatives such as coal and oil have their drawbacks also. I agree that solar, wind, and battery energy (and possibly hydrogen) is much cleaner and much preferable. However, presently 60% of energy needs come from oil and gas. We are still 25-30 years before other more environmentally friendly energy sources can replace oil and coal. New Right On Posted, Saturday, May 4, 2010 2:16 pm Great article. Your article  "hits the nail on the head" as the old  saying goes. All Americans should be aware of what you wrote. Will be buying your book. Will send along your article to friends. Walt New You Read My Mind Posted, Saturday, May 3, 2010 10:34 pm You've just read my mind in your recently published article. We have a shared point of view of the current world affairs. Hernan New Not the People of the USA Posted, Tuesday, May 4, 2010 12:27 pm Not the people of the USA, but the Zionist-controlled US Government has intentionally painted the US into that corner, as a matter of policy -- likudnik policy. John New Same Point of View Posted, Saturday, May 4, 2010 1:40 am I read your recent article at “Global Research”. I had a discussion with Finian Cunningham regarding this topic and in the course of the article sited below we endorse and follow the same point of view. A.Mallakin New Danger of an Anti-semitist Backlash Posted, Monday, May 3, 2010 10:38 am Thank you for the essay. The rise in oil prices will not be a "spike" until the Straits of Hormuz are re-opened. It will be long lasting, and maybe permanent because a) the oil loading platforms of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Iraq are relatively few, and all easily hit targets for Iranian missiles, and b) Iran's largest nuclear reactor sits right on the shore of the Persian Gulf at Bushehr, loaded with 80 tons of enriched uranium. When that and other reactors are bombed, maybe with nuclear bunker-buster bombs, then the Persian Gulf is going to be permanently contaminated with radioactive isotopes. I am surprised how little mention there is of the economic suicide that a new war would be. And for Israel, the new war will probably kill their golden goose (ie, USA). There is another danger that is not talked about. Because it is AIPAC that is pushing for this war, and because there are so many Jewish names among the neocons who like wars, not to mention the Jewish names among the NY bankers, that an economic collapse resulting from a new war, or even massive military losses, like the sinking of an aircraft carrier or two, that is likely to cause a violent anti-semitism to arise in the USA. I think Canada, Cuba, and Mexico should have contingency plans should hundred thousands of US Jews have to suddenly flee the USA. (I write this as a person with a Jewish surname, Jewish inlaws, and Jewish people among my best friends.) Looking for silver linings, note that contemporary US wars give freedom to former regions of US colonial control. The Iraq and Afghan wars have allowed Latin America to become independent for the first time in 200 years. Maybe a new war on Iran would finally break the USA, and free the world and US citizens of the dangers of its relentless militarism. I have sometimes thought that the whole world is finished with WWII, except the USA and Israel. They are still motivated by, and continue the militarism of, WWII. That is why WWII films are so important for Americans. They remember invading the beaches of Normandy over and over and over and over and over, relentlessly, over and over for decades. They had perfectly no remembrance of the Korean War. But Hitler and the Holocaust were so perfectly villainous, appeasement was so perfectly a failed policy, that the WWII invocations are so important for contemporary militarism. Every new target is led by a new Hitler, and not attacking this new Hitler is appeasement, that will lead to a new Holocaust unless we start a pre-emptive war. Floyd New A Need for Serious Thinking! Posted, Monday, May 3, 2010 11:35 am For what it is worth, I think those at the top of the pyramid want a complete collapse of the world's economies in order to implement their "one world government". I also think these same people would like to see the world's population cut by several hundreds of millions and this includes us. People not having gas to drive to work or use their cars at all will not disturb these people one bit. Transportation of food across our continent will not worry them either. It is my opinion that Canada has had Federal Governments and Provincial Governments that have taken steps to seriously dumb us all down through the underfunding of our public schools and allowing the Corporate media monopoly in Canada. Eliminating significant numbers of Canadians through lack of proper health care is  a passive genocide of the old & ill. Letting our homeless die on our streets is also a form of genocide that most Canadians are not noticing. Our Federal Government implemented Legislation or Regulations a couple of years ago to allow certain chemicals (re: fertilizers and food additives), that were previously banned to now be used in Canada... to bring us into line with U.S. standards.... which were far lower than ours is just another indicator as far as I am concerned. As to whether Iran has sufficient democracy....well who is living in a democracy now in most of the Western world ? Certainly not Canada or the U.S. Perhaps Iceland? Corporations now control our Governments. Isn't this fascism? ...At any rate I hope you send your essay to Harper and the Leaders of the Opposition. They all need to do some serious thinking... Stephanie New Concerns Posted, Sunday, May 2, 2010 9:41 pm Thanks so much for the informative article. You always write your articles where laymen and less educated persons like myself can understand. I always forward your articles (with credits) to all of my like minded and non like minded acquaintances. Many have come around to your (correct) point of view except for the Christian Zionists who's heads are thicker than the business end of an icebreaker. They will never be convinced. These loonies spend there time worrying about a non-existent next world instead of concentrating on the real one. I personally am convinced that since the Zionists have overwhelming power in your backyard and here in the States in addition to the backyard they control the side and front yards. I thought this "J" Street outfit that sprang up a year or so back would at least offer some opposition, but I firmly believe this is just another Mossad false flag operation to control criticism of Israel. The anti-Semite card doesn't have the effect it used to, thus "J" Street. I don't know how we are going to get out of this dilemma as the Zionist literally control almost everything in the way of the print and electronic media. We get the disinformation, editing to their advantage or just not covering anything that paints them in a negative way. The Christian evangelists have gone to bed with them, most of our congressmen and senators are all dined and wined in Israel after they become elected. When campaigning for election, they must profess their allegiance to Israel before they can even qualify to represent us. Check out what happened to a U S representative when he dared to oppose Israel. This so called rift between the Obama administration and Israel is all bullshit just like this populist Goldman Sachs grilling last week. It's all show and no go. The Demos took about 4 million$ from Goldman and the Republicans about 1 million$. Who are they shitting? Look who's running the country economically. The list of that bunch looks like Roll Call at the Knesset. What a joke. The foxes in charge of the chicken coop. Ever since the USS Liberty incident I have not trusted Israel nor do I believe anything they write. I was in the service at that time (Marines) and I could not imagine Pres. Johnson not retaliating. Even back then the Israel Lobby was powerful. Sorry I sound so negative but I really don't see much hope anymore. They won't be happy until they destroy another country and I think ours is next. They are targeting Iran and the Chosen will get their way.  After all, they are the "Light of All Nations". Paul New The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Posted, Sunday, May 2, 2010 11:28 pm Thanks. Brilliant. But, I thought Pakistan and India had signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, as well as Iran, while Israel has not. Not so? Jim                 Answer by R.T.: Unfortunately, these three states—India, Israel, and Pakistan—have declined to sign the NPT treaty, essentially because they developed their nuclear weapons in secret. New Should Meet President Obama Posted, Tuesday, April 27, 2010 6:23 pm I am about to read some of your writings, as I was intrigued with a blurb that I accidentally came upon on the web. You seem to have a handle on the misuses and corruption of the American defense budget. I was wondering if President Obama and you have met. I have sent an e-mail urging this. We need more people of reason, sanity, and intellect to interact with our leaders. I am not the only American to feel helpless about the way our government has unraveled in its principles and conduct. Just thought I would let you know my thoughts, and please keep up the good work. Rochelle                 Anwer by R.T.: No. I haven't met President Obama, even though I would advise him to change course in many ways. Possibly, some of his assistants may read my blog at www.TheNewAmericanEmpire.com/blog. Back to top of page COMMENTS #1125 To read about Dr. Tremblay's new book The Code for Global Ethics, Ten Humanist Principles and to order the book, click on: USA Canada To read about Dr. Tremblay's new book The Code for Global Ethics, Ten Humanist Principles and to order the book, click on: USA Canada Also, read: The New American Empire USA   For a More Ethical Civilization Comments (5) New Frederic Bastiat Posted, Tuesday, June 1, 2010 8:36 pm 200 years ago Bastiat, among the all-time great economists, had America dead-on. Thanks for that quote, and for keeping up the fight for ethical civic affairs. John New The Ruling Elite Posted, Saturday, June 1, 2010 9:58 pm I love the quotes and substance of what you are trying to convey. I am convinced that there is a ruling elite. In your part of the world it is represented by the likes of Desmarais and Bronfman. Matter of fact the principal players in the Bilderberg Group are meeting this week or next just outside of Barcelona Spain. This ruling elite consists of bankers, the military industrial complex and big oil. The name of the game is to create a control grid and eliminate 90% of us through soft kill weapons: GMO foods, High fructose corn syrup laced with mercury, tainted vaccines and poisons such as fluorides in the water systems. On top of this there will be wars and rationed medical care. The elite creates crises, such as false epidemics, home grown terror to frighten us into giving up personal rights and freedoms. The current administration in Washington's motto (Rahm Emanuel's) is "why let a good crisis go to waste". Some recent crises include: - swine flu - global warming - an ongoing economic crisis and all that entails -  a monster oil spill ( the ceo of BP is a Bilderberger) - create a climate of constant economic worries - a constant fear of war - terror alerts - massive immigration concerns    etc. If a government is corrupt then, society will slowly rot and decay from within. Without enforcement of laws a society is doomed. If the government is controlled by criminals we are screwed. What we are witnessing is intentional. By imposing "poitical correctness" on a society you can introduce immorality, such as homosexuality, which cannot be judged or condemned by society without judicial consequences. This is turn infringes on freedom of speech. In the US you have the ICLU which attacks the values of the Christian religion. They critize such issues as crosses used as grave markers in military cemetaries. The feminist movement was funded by large tax exempt foundations such as the Rockefeller Foundation or the Carnegie Mellon family. The feminist movement is an attempt to break up the family values and undermine the family unit. These large tax exempt foundations allow their benefactors to live virtually tax free. These foundations fund fraudulant reserach such as Global Warming so that they can use it to bring about a carbon tax scheme where people will pay carbon taxes to the big banks. You are witnessing how the masters of the universe are now using their vast resources to hijack the government. They print the money and own the debt so they have a vast war chest to buy politicans. They already own the press which has now become a vast propaganda machine. Through their foundations and the United Nations; remember the Rockefellers donated the land on which the UN headquarters sits, they control the educational system. This you probably know much more about than I do. As you know there are a host of inter-linked groups that work in conjunction to promote the agenda of the elite. Some of these are the CFA, RIIA (Royal Institute of International Affairs), Bilderberg, Club of Rome and others. The CFA, by the way, just recently met in Mtl. Some of what they discuss is public info but they are the most powerful men in the US and just as much is discussed in secret. In a recent Trilateral Commission Meeting in Dublin it was leaked that they did not expect the reaction they got from the crisis in Greece and Iceland and they are concerned about a mass awakening. Zbig Bzrezinski reiterated this concern at a recent CFR meeting (Youtube). Their solution is a war with Iran to distract attention from the looting and corruption at home and create a mass culling of the population. It is clear in my mind that they created this economic crisis. It began in earnest when George W told Americans to defeat the terrorist attempts to collapse the economy by going out and spending. The spending orgy was accompanied by fraudulant derivatives, the reversal of Glass Steagel with Clintons Financial Commodities Futures Act which sent the economy into overdrive. I don't have to tell you the rest. The corrupt banksters represented principally by GS, JPM, Citi, Wells Fargo, BofA and others commandeered the US financial system to their own end. Since they own the politicans they control the spending and the legislative and judical process. This is where corruption begins. The US economy will never recover as manufacturing jobs have left for good and America now only does deals and produces little. Imagine what a jobless future will do to people and families. The people in control are psychopaths, not the dummies like Clifford Olsen with the low IQ's that are pure and simple serial killers. These are men and women who have no conscience and therefore feel no emotions for their actions. Unlike you and I they do not want to leave people to live their lives as they see fit. They are obsessed with control and domination. They love to create crises and enjoy seeing people suffer just as they do in the US, Greece and Iceland right now. Look at the crises you have now; an economic crisis, a big oil spill, tension in Korea and Iran. People are confused and do not know how to react or respond. In order to bring about a one world government, they want to make people totally reliant on government. They want people to feel alienated and alone. This group of psychopaths wants you to feel like there is no where to turn. They encourage the breakup of the family, they incourage immoral, and illegal behavior. They themselves are a criminal cabal. They condone immoral behavior and in the manipulation of the press try to paint deviate behavior as normal and commonplace. They themselves meet every summer at Bohemian Grove in California where they worship idols and bring in male prostitutes. The more they make people feel disconnected and powerless in this system the more power the elite possesses. While people are confused and frightened with all that is happening around them, the elite are free to go in and loot the treasury. While the people sense the problem they remain confused and worried about the economy, their jobs, their future and the chaos in the world around them. Superimpose on this the fear of war and oil spills, and a congress that won't listen and passes legislation that is clearly not in the public interest. People are pressed to pay the bills and taxes keep rising. People are like trees in the forest and do not understand what is going on around them. The best analogy I have is to look again at the movie the Matrix. They try to step back but the tv confuses them even more, so they can never step back and see the big picture. When you talk about corruption and immorality, you can see that this is an important part of the elite's program. Create an immoral and decadent society, impose lots or crises, and instill a constant environment of fear so that the people feel helpless and beg the government to make them safe. They create the problems and the people go to these same folks looking for a solution. You have the fox tending to the hen house. This is the recipe that was used successfully in Argentina and I suspect that it will soon come to Canada. Housing is at an all time high and as unemployment begins to rise and credit tightens the dominoes will fall there as well. I know I have rambled on and by now you think I am way off the topic of corruption and immorality but I just wanted to say that there is a reason for this decadence and it is intentional. The ruling elite have a motto "out of chaos comes order". They are in the process of creating the chaos now and I expect the tempo will increase as Spain hits the skids next. I expect that the chaos will be punctuated with a war in Iran and it will happen soon. Unfortunately, I do not agree with Bzrezinski, and feel people are not waking up fast enough. Time has basically run out and I feel we are all doomed, unfortunately. The warning signs are there for all to see but people prefer to live in denial. In short I find the topic of corruption, ethics and religion fascinating and believe you will write a fascinating book. I will look forward to reading it when it is published. Rick New Confusion Between Law and Morality Posted, Sunday, June 5, 2010 2:09 am Thank you for an informative and thought provoking article. It is a shame that more people on this earth don’t think the same way – it would solve many of our current day problems and lead to a better life for many people around the world. After reading your submission I came across an article by Doug Pibel, “Real People v. Corporate ‘People’”, Information clearing house, article 25628 and the question came to mind that “ how can people in the U.S. ever hope to achieve the aims as you set out when Supreme Court Judges, who I would think are the pillars of society, can be so confused between law and morality”. This I believe has further ramifications in the way the American government is affected by these decisions and in the way they interact with foreign governments. Lars New The Venus Project Posted, Saturday, June 8, 2010 12:23 am I was wondering if you have heard or know anything about the Venus Project. [http://www.thevenusproject.com/ I ask because your June 4th article caught my attention and I look forward to reading your book “The Code for Global Ethics”. However if you have not heard of the Venus Project I believe you would find it very interesting to say the least. Your values changes are very close to exactly what we in the Project are trying to accomplish worldwide. I would like to hear your views on the subject and field any questions you may have. I am the TN coordinator for the project. Charles New The Way To Happiness Posted, Tuesday, June 8, 2010 3:02 am I read your last article with interest and I agree with you that the world needs a new moral code. It needs to be preach a morality that is going to make man more secure and successful. It needs to be acceptable to atheists and religious people alike. Common sense needs to be the common driver for the precepts involved. I believe The Way To Happiness is the best effort in this direction to date so I am attaching a copy for you. Steve Back to top of page COMMENTS #1126 To read about Dr. Tremblay's new book The Code for Global Ethics, Ten Humanist Principles and to order the book, click on: USA Canada To read about Dr. Tremblay's new book The Code for Global Ethics, Ten Humanist Principles and to order the book, click on: USA Canada Also, read: The New American Empire USA The Bush-Cheney Gulf Coast Oil Spill of 2010 Comments (5) Nouveau Felicitations pour vos livres et prise de pensée Affiché, le jeudi 17 juin, 2010 9:51 pm Félicitations pour vos livres et prise de pensée. Je vous écoutais sur une chaine alternative; nous parlions de la crise financière, de la bourse et des marchés financiers. Comme recherchiste dans ce domaine depuis quelques années, je peux vous confirmer que vous avez absolument raison; que ce soit dans le domaine financier, médico-pharmaceutique, militaire, etc. Il y a vraiment une stratégie mondiale pour rendre les pays et les populations sous une gouverne mondiale de l'élite; avec un peu de discernement, on le voit. Je pense que les contrôleurs auront du mal à tenir toutes ces choses cachées; l'éveil mondial devrait l'emporter; et un peu comme vous je fais ce que je peux pour informer la population à partir de mes activités. Jean-Claude New More Information Posted, Friday, June 18, 2010 12:13 pm I just read your article: “The 2010 Bush-Cheney Gulf Coast Oil Spill”. I have collected more information that is relevent, and will paste it here. More Dirty Details From My BP Mole: Fed up! Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal orders Guard to build barrier. Cerberus: Guarding the Gates of Hell - Dynecorp, Pegasus, BP, Goldman Sachs - Gulf Oil Disaster Planned? Redicecreaions Commutefaster The Liberty Forum Atomic News Review The ties that bind. Remember Rahm Emanuel's rent-free D.C. apartment? The owner: A BP adviser Americapsycho Telegraph Freedom destroyed Who's next? Brasschecktv THEY CAME FIRST for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. THEN THEY CAME for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. THEN THEY CAME for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. THEN THEY CAME for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up." Youtube Community Zerotolerenceforwar Dan New Negligence Posted, Friday, June 18, 2010 4:13 pm Thanks again for a very detailed and focused article on an aspect of the longrunning implementation of 'Le Defi Americain' (ou Anglo-Americain). I'd only suggest not using the term 'spill', as this was a corruption of the source orifice. Moreover, 'spill' implies an accidental occurrence, not a predictable result of intentional, cost-cutting negligence by public-be-damned corpocratic mandarins. I've asked some of my countrymen what they presume the official US-Govt and commercial Fox-News reactions would have been had this 'accident' been perpetrated by France's Total “sauf que les batards sont des anglais de BP”. The melodrama of the $20-billion escrow is at once absurd, written in sand, and pathetic. Not only is the present-value of cash costs to BP a small fraction of $20-billion, the actual damages -- still mounting -- may well exceed $20-trillion. Anything less than the immediate arrest and indictment of culpable BP execs and US officials AND the nationalization of all BP and affiliate assets in all jurisdictions under de jure or de facto US control would impugn the credibility any US effort to assert sovereignty over its coast or protect the pecuniary and nonpecuniary interests of its citizens. Actually, as the term 'gunboat diplomacy' originated with England's official protection of English opium dealers in Manchu China, the US should do what it much earlier failed to do under the oft-ignored Monroe Doctrine -- e.g., seize such offshore English colonies as Bermuda, Turks & Caicos, Caymans, Anguilla, Tortola-VirginGorda-Annegada-etc, and Montserrat. If that doesn't do it, we could move on to the socalled British Antarctic Territory -- and beyond. Of course the US would never deal so harshly with England, as it began to serve as England's powerful useful idiot sometime after the 3rd US Republic was established after conclusion in 1865 of the War For Federal Supremacy. This perverse, corporatist-inspired subservience escalated after such antipopulist disasters as the 1913 RATification of the 16th and 17th (Taft) Amendments to the US Constitution, 1913 enactment by Congress of the Federal Reserve Act, and 1917 entry into England's war with its (literal) German cousins -- reprised officially in 1941, but substantively a year earlier through an insidious, point-blank, fish-in-a-barrel attack 03 July 1940 by Churchill (Le Plus Grand Batard) on Free French Navy ships grouped off Algeria after the June 14 fall of Paris. When the USA, and England by extension, achieved nuclear supremacy, they gained the ability to pressure, extort, and abuse the rest of the world with near impunity. THIS FACT UNDERLIES CURRENT GEOPOLITICS. And MidEast oil is among the primary foci of the Anglo-American corpocracy. The English brought in the first Mideast oil well in 1908 in Iran, a country in which they and Russia had long competed for influence. The English invaded Iran in 1901 and bypassed the central government by buying a 20-year concession for $10,000 from the nonIranian warlord that controlled that region. When England gained control of Iraq after WW-I, English oil interests sought to drill there for oil. They were unsuccessful until they partnered with US oil interests in a venture that created 'Gulf Oil Corporation'. And now it is WE who are losing lives and other resources fighting in Iraq (and elsewhere) out of the 1930s English playbook on behalf of our oil barons and theirs, as well as for the successors to the violent Haganah/Irgun radicals which England, the US, and Big Oil retain -- at great PUBLIC expense -- to serve as their oil patch 'guard dogs'. Sauve qui peut! John Answer by R.T: My purpose with this article was to show that this was a programmed “accident” in the sense that Bush-Cheney literally gave the U.S. Dept. of Interior to the oil companies. BP is half owned by British investors and half by American investors and this is a company that was the main reason why Tony Blair was so anxious to follow GWB in Iraq, i.e. to share in the oil spoils of war. New Petition Posted, Monday, June 21, 2010 5:30 pm I enjoyed the article "The 2010 Bush-Cheney Gulf Coast Oil Spill." I have created a petition to try and put pressure on the government to remove BP from control of the Gulf Oil disaster. Here is the direct link: Petition2congress New Responsibility Posted, Wednesday, June 23, 2010 9:24 pm I am very upset at the lack of urgency demonstrated by the current administration in dealing with the cleanup. I do not deny that lack of oversight by this and previous administrations led to the horrible explosion, loss of life and environmental catastrophe being experienced in the Gulf. If we can't stop the oil until August, at least we could use every means available in the cleanup effort. It seems apparent that is not being done. That is what has angered and frustrated me and so many Americans. I agree with you that "public decisions have consequences that last a long time". I think that includes the despoiling of the Gulf of Mexico. ...However, to continue blaming the past administration for all that is wrong in our country and indeed our world is unwarranted. It is time for the Obama administration and its supporters to stop blaming the last administration and accept ownership of the many things that are currently wrong in our country. They ARE currently responsible for the lame attempts at cleaning up the mess created apparently due to BP's profit driven shortcuts and the CURRENT administrations lack of oversight of all oil drilling operations in our waters. The fact that several nations offered help in the cleanup effort but were refused due to the Jones Act which in effect says that any vessels used in such efforts must be made by American workers is an obvious political move that was designed to please the American labor movement at the expense of our environment! Sacrificing our beautiful Gulf coast for politics is reprehensible ! I appreciate your considered opinions on this and many other subjects but strongly disagree with you on this one. Bayrd Answer by R.T: Facts are facts and cannot be dismissed at will. My purpose with the blog is to show that public decisions have consequences that last a long time. The current administration has not shown much leadership, besides talk and photo-ups, in this terrible crisis that threatens to turn the Gulf of Mexico into an oil sewage. The Obama administration is certainly responsible for that lack of response. You mention the Jones Act. A lot of politicians stand behind that law. As you know, Section 27 of the Merchant Marine Act is what is known as the Jones Act. It was created in 1920. It deals with cabotage (i.e., coastal shipping) and requires that all goods transported by water between U.S. ports be carried in U.S.-flag ships, constructed in the United States, owned by U.S. citizens, and crewed by U.S. citizens and U.S. permanent residents. Therefore, this is a very old law. It only proves my point that decisions made in the past have consequences today. However, regarding the Jones Act, waivers of certain provisions of the act can be granted in cases of national emergencies or in cases of strategic interest. Why this has not been done in that case and in the case of the Hurricane Katrina disaster, I don't know. The general idea that polluting industries or financial industries can regulate themselves is ludicrous, if not completely stupid. Politicians who subscribe to that notion are either idiots or very corrupt. I hope that you don't disagree with me about that. Back to top  of page A Long Economic Winter Ahead Comments (6) New Blog Strong in Asia:  A Long Economic Winter Ahead Posted, Saturday, July 10, 2010 1:12 am It gives me pleasure to inform you that your article “A Long Economic Winter Ahead” has got more than 10,000 reads on my site. Raja (Pakistan) New Print Money Posted, Thursday, July 8, 2010 11:52 pm Why in the world should governments that have the lawful authority to print their own debt free money and spend it into existence for infrastructure borrow money from the private bankster cartel at interest instead? This question was asked by Gerald Graton McGeer of Graham Towers in 1933 when the corporation called CANADA went bankrupt. Many people are looking at creating their own debt free currencies to replace the joke that is our current monetary policy. People everywhere are learning that banks create the "money" they lend out by book keeping entry - it's not even money - it's just credit that is not even valid consideration (see Jerome Daly court case) for the loan. CANADA's debt is fraudulent and it's no wonder there is such an interest in abandoning the SIN and getting back to frreman staus under Common Law instead of being a debt slave to a corporation under Admiralty Law. You might be right about the coming hard times but there is no way to fix this sytem that guarantees perpetual debt and a certain percentage of default. Laureen __________________ Answer by R. T.: In economics, unfortunately, nothing is free. Governments do not produce much in the form of  usable goods and services. Therefore, when they do invest in roads or other infrastructures, they have to tax people's incomes or borrow their savings to finance these projects. Sometime they borrow abroad. If they don't and try to print fake savings, as some underdeveloped countries try to do sometimes, inflation and even hyperinflation ensue. One has only to look at the country called Zimbabwe, whose economy is presently in complete collapse. You imagine that if governments and their central banks could create real economic prosperity just by printing money, all countries of the world would be rich. This has been tried time and again and that led to economic disasters, economic dislocations and poverty. Banks do not create money. They create credits, i.e. short-term loans that are guaranteed by an on-going production of real goods and services which have to be repaid and erased when such goods and services are sold. Think about a farmer who borrows in June to finance his operations and who repays the bank in September when his crop is sold. Similarly, financial institutions advance longer-term loans and serve as intermediaries between savers (who do not spend all their incomes) and investors who borrow the savings and spend them in their place. There is no new money created then; only a transfer of savings between different entities. In such an economy, there is no inflation since the quantity of money is revolving all the time and does not exceed the value of what is being produced. However, a government can create inflation, i.e. decide to impose an implicit tax on the holders of money (legal national currency), when it borrows directly from its central bank with no intention to repay the loan. The rest of the economy (producers, workers, retirees, etc.) is then taxed with a loss of purchasing power in received money incomes. Governments do that in time of war. But to prevent inflation from going through the roof, they then impose price controls and rationing of goods. The inflation is suppressed for a while, but it reappears with a vengeance when prices are unfrozen. That happened after World War I and World War II and will also one day happen again. New SPP and Militarization Posted, Thursday, July 8, 2010 5:23 pm The Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) may have gone underground, but as the burial of a scheme that became superfluous when its true objectives were realized or secured via such other means as the re-institutionalization of the 'bushwhacked' economy, rollback of civil liberties and personal freedoms in the name of 'security', militarization and subordination of local police forces, and other Corporatist accomplishments of the Red and Blue sock-puppets of the BushBama Maladministration. John New Reality vs Fraud Posted, Thursday, July 8, 2010 4:29 pm I've just read "Debt Deflation: A Long Economic Winter Ahead" You note that: "The higher the debt mountain relative to the real economy, the more serious is the following economic meltdown," and "The first consequence is excess capacity and falling asset prices." Indeed. ...What does "falling asset prices" mean? Literally it means: the measured value of assets shrinking. OK? Price is the measured value of a thing. Price describes the value of a thing in terms of the unit of account. When prices fall this is because the unit of account has inflated. A unit of account which is seriously unstable - prone to inflation and deflation - is a very poor unit of account. Why is it that we have a serious problem with prices? Because we have a serious problem with the unit of account. Why do we have a serious problem with the unit of account? Because we have allowed the unit of account to possess the concrete dimension which it abstractly describes and measures. No bona fide unit of account possesses the concrete dimension which it abstractly describes and measures. A metre does not itself have length. You cannot store length in a metre bank. A hectare does not itself have area. You cannot store area in a hectare bank. A litre does not itself have volume. You cannot store volume in a litre bank. Likewise, a dollar does not itself have value. But we can store value in dollar banks. That's fraudulent! We seem to have become transgenerationally habituated to the fraudulent concept that wealth/value can be stored in a unit of account. The fraudulent concept is backed by the "dismal science" (sic) called "Economics" in its dogmatic premise that money is a store of wealth/value; and is enforced by legal tender laws. Now we are in a predicament where "the real economy" is dwarfed by a "mountain" of debt in the form of trillions or quadrillions of abstract units of account. Should we perhaps consider the possibility of according "the real economy" its true value; and likewise for the "mountain" of mostly fraudulent debt? That would require a systemic change to deal with a systemic problem. Alan _________ Answer by R. T.: I am afraid that you are confusing the absolute price level and relative prices. The value of a currency is related to the absolute price level and a rise in the absolute price level means that the currency should sooner or later depreciate vis-a-vis other currencies according to the purchasing power parity theorem of currencies. However, some goods or some assets may see a drop in their relative prices depending on the kind of imbalances that exist in demand vs supply. Too much supply and the relative price falls; too much demand and the relative price rises. With assets or investments financed with too much debt, debt liquidation means that such assets or investments are sold, thus increasing the supply, thus putting pressure on prices. That's what happened and is still happening with people foreclosing on their home investments. It's only when new buyers will overcome forced sellers that the housing market will stabilize. I think this will happen next year (2011). There is not much problem with the U.S. absolute price level and its rise, as inflation is only 2 %. The problem is with the imbalances in supply and demand, and relative prices in certain types of assets, including stocks. You are right about the U.S. dollar being a unit of account. But it is also an unstable store of value beside being a means of payment. When there is no inflation, that's OK, and the unit of account is stable and reliable. But with inflation, the unit is a depreciating store of value. Better for one then to hold T-bills or other short-term financial investments that earn interest as a compensation for such a depreciation, while still being relatively liquid, than to hold depreciating cash. Holding cash is a losing proposition in the long run. Better still to invest the saving in longer term investments. That's the art of financial intermediation; transforming one's savings (income not spent) into productive investments. By the way, economics does not say that “money is a (stable) store of wealth/value”. Only that some people may want to consider it a store of value for security or convenience. If one wants a non-interest bearing asset that is a better store of value, one should hold gold. Legal tender laws do not oblige people to hold dollars; but only that if one pays with legal dollars, a transaction is legally concluded. Nowadays, two parties may agree to finance a transaction using other currencies, since the U.S. dollar is convertible with most other national currencies. Over the last 30 years, the financial sector has become bloated and a lot of these debts cannot be repaid with the current level of income. That's where the danger of debt deflation enters the picture. The Bush-Obama administrations have spent a lot of public money in order to prevent the largest U.S. banks from failing. European governments have done the same thing. This has helped the managers and owners of these large banks, and it may have averted the complete collapse of the financial system. However, this has not helped the real economy much since taxes will have to increase in the future to pay for all the banking debt that the government has de facto nationalized and placed in its own books. That's why I think there is a long period of economic stagnation ahead. New Living on Capital and Rigged Markets Posted, Wednesday, July 7, 2010 1:05 pm Your article resonates with me and the issue keeps me awake many nights. It matters to me because I have no pension income but am retired and live on capital that I have accumulated over the decades. I have always bet on the inflation argument to carry the day since no government wants deflation, because they don't know how to climb out of the abyss. I believe they will do whatever it takes to inflate our way out the the problem. In my case I have placed heavy bets on inflation by accumulating gold for this very reason. I believed rightly or wrongly that the government will print money till the cows come home to get us out of this mess. I believe that they will destroy most if not all currencies in the process and the road will be paved with hyperinflation. Ultimately the G-20 will have the final say in how this finally plays out. In a market where certain well contected corporate trading desks did not have a losing day in the first quarter tells me that the markets are rigged. The bond markets are rigged as well as rates are held artificially low due to manipulation and misrepresentation of financial info and extensive use of derivatives as a way to control rates and markets. The remainder of my assets are in cash, not US cash. There seems to be nowhere to hide. Rick ______________ Answer by R. T.: I suppose that you have read my piece about the issue of deflation of a few months ago: http://www.thenewamericanempire.com/tremblay=1123 Please keep in mind that, even if we are not under a gold standard, the gold price can still go up during a protracted deflation. When the credit mechanism is broken, it does not matter if the central bank prints a lot of new money. That new money is hoarded, not lent nor spent, as demand for cash is high during a deflation. We call that a “liquidity trap”. A central bank can print all the money in the world it wants to, but if the banks cannot lend it because nobody can afford to borrow it, that only debases the currency without stopping the deflation. During the 1929-39 depression, the gold price was fixed at $35 an ounce. However, gold stocks and gold-related investments trended up, first, because gold was an economic refuge against depreciating fiat moneys and the lost of purchasing power, and second, because of the justified fear that after a deflationary period, it is usually followed by an inflationary period. Since it is possible to have depreciating currencies and deflation at the same time, i.e. some special case of stagflation, gold price can go up in such an environment. The bottom line here is that baby-boomer pensioners will be targeted to lose purchasing power over the next ten years or so as too many baby-boomers will retire as compare to the overall population. Interest rates and financial assets will have difficulty rising in such an environment. It can be expected that there will be a political tug-of-war between the retirees and the unemployed as to the correct public policies to be followed. New Marxism Posted, Tuesday, July 6, 2010 10:49 am As usual, this article is well said and informative. My own objective is to inform and motivate the people as to what is required to end this 100 year effort toward marxism. Do you accept the fact that marxism has never worked? If you do, join us to save our country before there is blood in the streets. If you don't understand the Marxist Chain of Command for Treason, most academics do not, let me know. Andrew ___________ Answer by R. T.: I agree with you that marxism has never worked as an economic system, although some religious orders have used it as a sharing mechanism during many centuries. Our economic problems are complex and vary from country to country. In the case of the United States, it is becoming more and more evident that waging hundreds-of-billion dollar wars that never end and which are financed with the credit card is part of the problem of the fiscal crisis. I include a link to my piece about the topic of financial crises of a few months ago: http://www.thenewamericanempire.com/tremblay=1123 Back to top  of page ©2007 Rodrigue Tremblay

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