Friday, October 24, 2014

The Gadfly Buzz Institute

(a draft proposal.  Please comment)
PREAMBLE
We The People, seek to form a more perfect union, by exposing to the light the gross illegal manipulations of markets including the money supply, the complete breakdown of the democratic process, the pervasive violation of civil rights, the ongoing campaign of misinformation leading us into war to benefit profit mongers, the shielding of those guilty of treason for crimes against humanity and the propagation of policies that have destroyed the free market resulting in the most egregious inequalities in the industrialized world.  We believe that the American spirit is alive and will come to bear when truth replaces lies and misinformation.  To that end we will establish a network of education centers that will systematically expose those lies and put forth a coherent framework for overturning our now corrupt system and restoring our democracy.
This will be a determined revolution, relying on knowledge of American history, accurate information about the here and now, the prompt discrediting of lies against our assertions and an energetic grass roots decentralized approach of reaching out to a large target population.  Non-violent?  Yes.  Peaceful?  Not so much.  We will be disturbing the peace; upsetting the status quo, identifying criminals, digging into the public record, exposing fraud by and for the Federal Reserve Bank, seeking relief in the courts for unconstitutional surveillance, boycotting those corporations that are guilty of unbridled greed and voting out politicians who willfully obstruct the will of the people.
We will not allow the Oligarchy that is presently in charge to divide us into left and right.  We are the center.  We are the 99%.  We will not be sidetracked by divisive social issues that mean nothing to MiLords, the powers that be.  They only seek to divide us into factions.  Our goal is simple.  We want to restore the American Dream;  free speech, free markets, freedom to benefit appropriately from our productivity, freedom to enjoy privacy, freedom from paying for wars designed to impoverish us and freedom to vote for decent people to represent us.
Our first strategic initiative will be the formation of an education network designed to cover every county in this once great nation.  We will start with the 5% who already know and grow it into 10%.  We will grow from there into the 12% and slowly but surely we will reach a critical mass of educated people capable of critical thinking and able to withstand the folly of false propaganda.  From this base we will bring about the downfall of MiLords, a.ka. the Corporatists, a.k.a. the Military Industrial Complex, a.k.a. the Oligarchy, a.k.a. the Koch Brothers.
We will be provisioned internally, expanding Crowdfunding into Crowd Resourcing.  We will not be beholden to any party, any corporation, any church or any organization.  We The People will prevail.  We will raise up a swarm of Gadflies to question power and thwart hierarchies.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
It is easy to get caught up in the controversy of day to day politics, to defend our positions against “the other side.”  What often gets lost in this emotionally charged battle is the story of how we got to be where we are.  Sometimes we need to go back 8 years to look at Fed policy instead of parsing the words of this month’s briefing.  Sometimes we need to go back 13 years to look again at the planned demolition of the Trade Towers and dismantle the lies used to describe the events of that infamous day.  Or we need to go back to uncover the 1970’s roots of the greatest looting of the middle class in our history.  We need to dig deep into the formation of a private bank in 1913 that has been given complete sway over our vital money supply.  We could benefit greatly by studying again the debates over the chartering of the also private First Bank of the United States and how war played a necessary role in the chartering of the Second Bank of the United States a hundred years ago.
To understand the dynamics of multi-national corporations we could go back to the chartering of the Dutch East India Company with its power to imprison, execute its enemies, wage war against nations, tax populations in other lands and practice piracy in the defense of its fiefdoms.  Or go back even further to the role of the Holy Roman Empire in the formation of debt backed currency leading to our fiat fractional reserve currencies of today.  We need to understand the difference between sovereign law and contract law, the latter being so much easier to establish across national boundaries.  We can then take a look at the erosion of the Commons and how patent law has been abused to destroy the Commons to the benefit of large corporations.
Without historical context we are lost in a sea of lies and propaganda. We must understand that we are not operating in a free market system and that democracy is a hollow slogan.  Well meaning people who want to do the right thing are frustrated by the lack of options.  Voting is not enough when both major parties are under the sway of MiLords.  Bill Clinton signed away the last vestige of control of the Wall Street.  George W. started two wars at the behest of the Military Industrial Complex, so well represented by the then Vice President of the United States.  Barack Obama hired on the banksters from his predecessor and his Attorney General takes $13 billion bribes to keep criminal bankers out of jail.  Bribes that are tax deductible.  
We must educate ourselves to be able to sort through the mess we are in.  History, economics, politics, social policy, labor law, money and banking, patent rights, tax policy, anti-trust legislation… the list is long and arduous.  But without a better understanding of these and other topics, we are tilting at windmills and playing into the hands of Milords, who must smile when they hear us rant against them in futility.
THE IRON LAW OF OLIGARCHY
Our hope lies in Anarchy.  We cannot succumb to the temptation to start a movement, organize a third party, organize a protest or some other embodiment of enthusiasm.  Robert Michels’  Iron Law of Oligarchy basically predicts that all forms of organization tend toward hierarchy and oppression.  "It is organization which gives birth to the dominion of the elected over the electors, of the mandataries over the mandators, of the delegates over the delegators. Who says organization, says oligarchy."
By Anarchy, I do not mean chaos and violence.  I am not talking about smashing shop windows or marching in the streets.  I am using Noah Comsky’s vision of an Anarchist: 
“Well, anarchism is, in my view, basically a kind of tendency in human thought which shows up in different forms in different circumstances, and has some leading characteristics.  Primarily it is a tendency that is suspicious and skeptical of domination, authority, and hierarchy.  It seeks structures of hierarchy and domination in human life over the whole range, extending from, say, patriarchal families to, say, imperial systems, and it asks whether those systems are justified.  It assumes that the burden of proof for anyone in a position of power and authority lies on them.  Their authority is not self-justifying.  They have to give a reason for it, a justification.  And if they can’t justify that authority and power and control, which is the usual case, then the authority ought to be dismantled and replaced by something more free and just.  And, as I understand it, anarchy is just that tendency.  It takes different forms at different times.”
Let us not get hung up on terms.  Use the above paragraph to describe a state of mind, an approach, a way of looking at power and how it is exercised in the world throughout history.  Call it Critical Thinking, Activism, Anarchy, Liberalism, Conservatism, Libertarianism… I don’t care what you call it.  Just practice it in earnest.  Be willing to challenge long held assumptions.  Be willing to confront the powers that be.
Our challenge then is to recognize and support points of light in every county in this great land, without founding a cumbersome organization.  Our focus is education not structure, information not ideology, attitude not opinion.  Yes we have a goal.  It is quite simply to take back what has been lost in various ways starting with the debate over the formation of the First United States Bank; the loss of freedom to determine our own destiny.  It is not enough to regain the horrific losses to the middle class since the 1970’s although that is a worthy goal.  Raising the minimum wage might be a rallying cry but it does not fully address the profound inequalities that have emerged in our system.
Suffice it to say that the strategy implied here is far away from synoptic planning and perhaps dangerously close to disjointed incrementalism.  We take this risk to avoid the folly of creating a hierarchy to defeat hierarchies.
CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT APPROACH
Our Curriculum Development Approach needs to be established in context.  Our context is characterized by any number of factors but we choose to address five here.  The first is the persistent presence of propaganda that permeates all aspects of our society.  Our school curricula, places of worship, the media, the arts… the list is endless.  You can argue all day whether or not there is a sinister plot to propagate a message, but the outcome is clear.  There is a story being told that is not supported by the facts.
The second contextual condition is an ingrained habit of thinking that mitigates against Critical Thinking.  It is this habit which will thwart our efforts more than any other factor.  Good, honest well meaning people find it hard to first identify and then shake this habit.  The recognition of the problem is of course 75% of the cure.  Getting people to the place of being willing to take a history class will represent a huge step toward fostering Critical Thinking.
The third state is the paralysis of resignation which is rooted in a profound understanding of the truth but is not allowed to flourish into honest inquiry, lest it promote a feeling of hopelessness that is in the end debilitating.  The real danger here is that the threshold of inaction will be raised higher and higher as more and more people sink into a survival mode that precludes the ability to pause to reflect.  Meeting basic needs will always trump the motivation to seek justice in a non-violent way.  This dynamic contributes to the ironic fact that the vast majority doesn’t overwhelm the Oligarchy at the polls but allows itself to be manipulated into not voting or supporting single issue initiatives that don’t threaten the economic status quo.
The fourth reality is that many lies are told and believed.  A case can be made to say that this is part and parcel of the propaganda machine.  I would posit however that there is a difference between flagrant lies and the persistent propagation of myths.  An example of a flagrant lie is the statement that the Twin Towers were brought down by an airplane flying into them causing a fire so hot that is weakened the structure a hundred stories down and precipitated a sudden collapse.  This lie is so preposterous that it will go down in history as a testimony to the gullibility of our general population.  You could not more clearly demonstrate a planned demolition with planted charges than to look at available footage of the collapse of the towers and Building 7 hours later.
The last contextual reality is the undeniable presence of the Deep State, characterized by a war machine in the form of the military industrial complex, the financial establishment as evidenced by private banks led by the Federal Reserve itself, corporatism that controls our food chain, our pharmaceuticals, and our environment, the media which is complicit and finally the government itself which appears to be competitive but only fights about issues about which the Oligarchy cares little.  Obama is accused of being Socialist, but he has not jailed a single known banking criminal responsible for so much suffering.  His economic team came from the Bush Administration.  
Woven through all five of these realities is the propensity to fund the Deep State by propagating war.  Gaming the system to create personal wealth is reprehensible.  Manipulating a society to go into false wars that kill and maim and feed profiteers is treason, pure and simple.
Avoiding The Paralysis of Analysis
One of the most effective tools employed by the Oligarchy for preventing its overthrow is to sow seeds of dissension into every conversation.  This is accomplished by blurring the lines so that liberals, populists, conservationists, libertarians, anarchists, social conservatives, fiscal conservatives, etc. are never quite clear what they stand for.  Clearly any effort to pull together even 10% of the people to foment change, must avoid labels.  The minute we succumb to being labelled, we set ourselves up for failure.  
Our task then is to establish clearly defined goals that transcend a particular political agenda.  This is limiting on the one hand and freeing on the other.  Limiting in that a very significant coming together can’t be used to bring about a much needed change such as preserving the environment.  Freeing in that we can put together a sizable coalition of informed citizens that can withstand the torrential downpour of propaganda and engage the system from a more knowledgable platform.  
Put another way, clear guidelines should never be divisive within the community that is committed to gaining knowledge to promote Critical Thinking.  There is room for conversation about the accuracy of certain facts, but there should be no room for arguing about political agenda in this forum.  While it may be true that the platform of the Democratic Party is more closely aligned with the goals empowering more voters or disempowering the Koch Brothers, we cannot allow party politics to infect this effort to educate.  For in fact the Democratic Party is quite obviously participating in the Deep State.  To align with it is not only folly, but also counter to the goal of creating a broad coalition of informed citizens.
We will return then over and over again to the simple statement, “the system is not working as an extension of We The People, and these are the facts.”
Selecting Content
Or most critical and formidable task is to select content for development.  Our approach to this will be integrated.  That is, each topic will be addressed from a variety of perspectives: social, legal, financial, political, ideological, organizational, economic, technological, constitutional, and environmental.  Obviously the topic of money and banking will be heavy on the financial aspect, but the other nine perspectives will play into the story.  For example the formation of the Federal Reserve arose out of a social phenomenon of people buying life insurance in droves.  Reformers immediately began challenging the monopolistic implications of a private central bank by passing anti-trust laws.  Opinions from all across the political spectrum, especially the right wing, came out against it.  It evokes historical conversations that date back to Hamilton and Jefferson.  And so it goes.
This still begs the question of how topics will be selected.  I will borrow a dated term from economic development parlance from the 70’s, “felt needs.”  We will start with the pain of the present and dig backwards.  Constructing a complete US history or worse trying to build a comprehensive world history is not the goal.  Rather the question is, what do we need to know from the past to better equip us for making choices in our present and future?  It is a moving target that cannot by definition be rigid and fixed.  Finally it should be noted that an effort will be made to blend cogent analysis with the study of primary documents.
Some Ideas for “Felt Needs”
Our purpose here is not to outline the entire Gadfly Buzz Curriculum.  But we can point in a direction by suggesting some appropriate “Felt Needs.” The good news is that there is a plethora of good stuff out there.  The bad news is that there is a plethora of good stuff out there.  It needs to be selected, layered, massaged and ultimately placed into an overall structure that makes some sort of sense.  A daunting task but there is nothing to do but begin.  Here is a preliminary (subject to change for sure) list of topics from which courses can hang and syllabi be prepared:
The Creation and Control of Money
The War Machine
Systemic Inequality
The Deep State
Control of the Food Chain by Corporations
Control of Healthcare by Pharma Industry
Control of Education Method and Content
Understanding Energy Alternatives 
Climate Change and the Environment
Deterioration of the Commons and Innovation
Taxation
The Labor Movement
The History of Populism
The Organization of Markets
PRODUCT DISTRIBUTION
The target audience for the course materials includes: community action groups, the Transition Network movement, environmental groups, alternative energy initiatives, Occupy movements, history projects, high schools, universities, foundations and civic organizations. Content, including videos, course materials, reading lists and study guides will be made available over the internet for a small fee per course for individuals and a license fee per course for local entities.
The local entities administering the courses will be responsible for setting up their own credits leading to a certification if they so choose.  Similarly educational institutions can offer credits or incorporate the content into relevant courses taken for credit.
The goal will be to maximize exposure to the content with revenue generation serving as a means for cost covering. 
Symposiums will be offered to allow instructors to come together to share ideas on presentation, recruitment of students, follow up activities, content accuracy, etc.  These will be cost covering and will not appear in the budget.  An annual Buzz Conference will be scheduled, if demand allows, to bring together instructors, students, stakeholders and the press.ORGANIZATION OF GADFLY BUZZ
Founders
High profile individuals who can provide credibility, contacts, informational resources, and direction to the project.  
Target: 12
Governing Board
The legal entity responsible for establishing goals, policy and implementation.  To be selected by founders initially from nominations received from Stakeholders.  Meeting quarterly. 
Target: 9
Editorial Board
Group responsible for overseeing Curriculum Development process.  To be recruited from pool of historians, activists, educators and scholars from nominations from Founders, Governors, and Stakeholders.
Administration
Administration will be carried out by a combination of volunteers and paid staff responsible for financial accountability, contract negotiations for curriculum development, video production, etc.,Board of Governors meeting coordination, Editorial Board meeting coordination, etc.
A virtual office will be established with no resources going into rent, furnishings or bricks and mortar.  Computer hardware will be purchased if needed.
Stakeholders
Investors in Gadfly Buzz will be accorded licensing credits toward the purchase of videos and course materials for use by physical or virtual communities they designate.  Investor categories are: individuals, foundations, community action groups and corporations.  While there will be no limit imposed on the size of investments, there will be no control ceded to larger investors over direction, curriculum content, board membership or administration.  In other words it will not be possible for any entity to buy out the organization to distract it from its mission.  A large contribution is equivalent to a large purchase of finished product.
Investors will be credited for all contributed resources including time, content, editing services, equipment, cash, etc.BUDGET
Capital Phase I Phase II
Organization $  5,000
Travel                                          45,000
Website Development                      50,000
Curriculum Development @10k          40,000                       60,000
Video Production 4@15k                   60,000                       90,000
Promotion                                     50,000                      50,000
Admin Startup                                25,000                      25,000
Total $  275,000 $ 225,000

Phase III
Phase III activities will commence as budget allows based on the successful implementation of the history training program.  Activities will be drawn from the following list:
Corporate Awareness Which corporations are driving the Oligarchy?
Legal Recourse                         Challenging in the courts our rights to privacy
Exposing Criminals Listing by name the bankers too rich to jail
Counter Propaganda Exposing lies 
School Curriculum Development Promotion of truth in education
Accountability Holding feet to the fire

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
One dictionary gadfly definition reads: “a person who persistently annoys or provokes others with criticism, schemes, ideas, demands, requests, etc.”  Yes, we intend to be annoying as we take on the most powerful Oligarchy in the history of our world.  Provocative might be a more appealing word but the truth is we strive to be annoying on steroids from the point of view of MiLords. The Gadfly tradition supports the notions outlined by Noah Chomsky in his description of Anarchists.  That is to say we should be “suspicious and skeptical of domination, authority, and hierarchy.”
We start with a simple premise.  Our shared history is subject to a barrage of propaganda in our schools, our churches, the media, our memes, and our political discourse.  We cannot begin to shed the shackles of Oligarchy without first making a more meaningful history accessible to a larger portion our population.  To do this we need to move beyond having the 5% read books, articles and blogs that speak truth but fail to attract the attention of the 10%.
It is important that we do not let a laundry list of issues get us sidetracked.  MiLords love it when we squabble over social issues that to them are meaningless in their obsession with cornering wealth and power.  Our job is to shed light on the origins of our oligarchical system and then expose the lies that prevent us from overturning it.  People from all political persuasions have a stake in this goal.
We need then to distill content from the myriad sources out there and make it available to the thousands of organizations that are arising to promote our well being, clean up our food supply, counter lies, and take back our country.  Curriculum development alone will do little.  But if reliable history can be presented in a systematic way in a format that is appealing, we can provide a tool to the army of citizens that are already awake.
We will do this with a minimum of physical structure and overhead.  We cannot fight the ravages of hierarchy by creating our own.  We will leverage existing resources to the hilt and trust that ten thousand points of light will burn a little brighter for having understood more clearly the intricacies of our subversion into debt slavery.
Our support, in time, volunteer effort, letter writing, ideas, community action on the ground, dollars and footwork will come from the many.  The concept of Crowd Resourcing will be extended beyond the raising of money to the utilization of resources from all quarters.

Phase I will seek to raise $275,000 in cash or in kind on an all or nothing basis.  All resources beyond this level will be utilized to develop as much curriculum as is feasible.

Monday, September 1, 2014

On Becoming An Anarchist: Part II

I repeat a portion of my quote from Noam Chomsky to reinforce the notion that Anarchy does not support the absence of order.  Anarchy…. "is a tendency that is suspicious and skeptical of domination, authority, and hierarchy.  It seeks structures of hierarchy and domination in human life over the whole range, extending from, say, patriarchal families to, say, imperial systems, and it asks whether those systems are justified.  It assumes that the burden of proof for anyone in a position of power and authority lies on them.  Their authority is not self-justifying.  They have to give a reason for it, a justification.  And if they can’t justify that authority and power and control, which is the usual case, then the authority ought to be dismantled and replaced by something more free and just."

To be clear, the Libertarian movement in the USA has been hijacked by those who wield Private Power for the sake of maintaining the status quo, by shoving legitimate governmental checks aside.  So my quest for finding a vehicle to oppose MiLords (the .1% or a mil) has led me to become an Anarchist.  In Part I, I promised to define the historical backdrop that has led to the subjugation of our democratic system and the perversion of capitalism.  We begin with the establishment of the First Bank of the United States in February of 1791.

Establishing a private central bank was so controversial that it gave rise to the two party system, pitting the agrarian States Rights interests (Thomas Jefferson) against the Federalists interests of bankers (Hamilton).  Unfortunately over time States Rights became synonymous with the defense of slavery and the Civil War sealed the victory of the bankers over the farmers.  But the battle lines were clear even in 1791 and remained clear for more than a century.  Not until the rise of the insurance industry in the late 19th century did banking succeed once and for all to define money as debt and put it under the control of Private Power.

The charter of the first central bank expired in 20 years and was allowed to lapse.  The only compelling reason powerful enough to overcome the natural resistance to financial domination by bankers is war.  Wars have to be paid for.  And so the bankers of England and the US managed to drag us into the war of 1812 and the establishment of the Second Bank of the United States followed with the issuance of debt instruments to pay for that war.  Sure enough the Second Bank fueled land speculation in the West and when it collapsed the bankers owned a lot of foreclosed property.  (sound familiar?)  Andrew Jackson dissolved that second bank and paid off the war debt in the 1830’s.  That marked the last time a war was fought and paid for.  We have been enslaved by debt ever since.

The battle between States Rights agrarians and Federalist Bankers raged on until the river of life insurance cash gave rise to the Federal Reserve, the ultimate debt based Ponzi Scheme that cemented Private Power in the form of private banking in place, once and for all.  The secret meetings of insurance tycoons set the course almost a decade before the now famous secret meetings of bankers on Jekyll Island.  The resulting system rolled up real estate speculation, debt enslavement in the form of mortgages and life insurance in the form of mortgage insurance to protect bankers on the downside into one big tidy package.  The 30 year work span was nested into the 30 mortgage in a seamless tapestry of debt enslavement.

However, the resistance did not end.  The Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914 was an attempt to curb the power of MiLords and the punch and counterpunch carried on until the last fig leaf of regulation was stripped away when President Clinton signed away the separation of banking, insurance and financial institutions.  Reforms were always watered down at the eleventh hour and key provisions eroded away over time.  Glass-Steagall was all but dead when Clinton allowed for its formal demise in 1999. 

Clinton campaigned in 1992 on limiting corporations from deducting excessive CEO compensation from taxable profits.  But instead there followed an interpretation that compensation could be deducted as long as it was supported by productivity.  So instead of halting the practice, it unleashed a furious stampede to the top.  MiLords set the bit in their mouth and ran with it until we have multiples of CEO pay to average employee pay in excess of 400.  In my youth the multiples were 12.  The forces of reform and regulation are in complete disarray.

We have then a system which is neither democratic, nor free.  Markets are ruthlessly manipulated in an effort to support a failing dollar.  Free market capitalism has been replaced by Socialism for the rich, a winner take all strategy.  The once thriving middle class (50's 60's and 70"s) has been floundering with real wages stagnant, since the late 70’s.  In an attempt to keep up we resorted to first sending out women into the work force to make up the difference, then working two jobs and finally resorting to debt (using inflated property values) to support a lifestyle that is becoming only a memory.  Propaganda (see Part I) is used to perpetuate the myth that we are the greatest democracy in the world.  Massive wealth is used to fund elections.

And so we have what some are calling the Deep State; a combination of the Military Industrial Complex, the National Security Apparatus, a private central bank, a compliant legislature and a puppet President.  I am more than a little skeptical of this domination by MiLords.

I AM THEN AN ANARCHIST.  I CANNOT BE SILENT.

Friday, July 25, 2014

On Becoming An Anarchist: Part I

I am taking a deep breath as I say this.  I think I am an Anarchist.  There I said it.  Let’s back up and survey the landscape, at least from my perspective.

Much of what passes for political/economic commentary these days is tainted by propaganda, the intentional promotion of ideas which are designed to perpetuate a belief, often a widely held belief.  Ideas which are essentially bogus.  An example of this is putting forth the view that Capitalism represents freedom, freedom to innovate, freedom to invent, and freedom to work hard for personal gain.  In a nutshell freedom to prosper.  Capitalism then is deemed a superior economic system.

Such propaganda relies heavily on vilifying opposing systems, in this case Socialism.  It says Socialism is bad.  It is the antithesis of hard work and innovation.  It is the culmination of big government trying to control our lives in a misguided attempt to create a more just society.  It rewards freeloaders at the expense of hard working millionaires.

We are now ready to connect the dots in our propaganda campaign.  Since big government is bad and big government is trying to control our lives, then it goes without saying that regulation is bad.  Food stamps are bad.  Welfare is bad, etc.  Let the open market reign supreme.  Give us Freedom.  The fallacy in this line of reasoning goes unnoticed by many.

The fallacy is the failure to recognize Private Power as the dominant underlying force in our political/economic system.  Private Power trumps government power and operates at an unseen level, far away from the tempering influence of the ballot box.  You can identify this Private Power in a number of ways.  Some call it an Oligarchy.  Others call it Corporatism.  I have given those who hold power the name MiLords, to correspond to the .1% who wield a disproportionate share of the wealth.  MiLords control us.  We are not Free.

Then there those that purport that Private Power and Government Power are all mixed up.  They call this the Deep State.  More than a half century ago, President Eisenhower warned us of the coming military industrial complex.   It is this complex that makes a mockery of the notion that we are a free, democratic, capitalist society.  Private Power takes us into war after war for the mundane purpose of making a buck.

So what does all this have to do with being an Anarchist?  I turn to the ideas of Noam Chomsky for inspiration. “Well, anarchism is, in my view, basically a kind of tendency in human thought which shows up in different forms in different circumstances, and has some leading characteristics.  Primarily it is a tendency that is suspicious and skeptical of domination, authority, and hierarchy.  It seeks structures of hierarchy and domination in human life over the whole range, extending from, say, patriarchal families to, say, imperial systems, and it asks whether those systems are justified.  It assumes that the burden of proof for anyone in a position of power and authority lies on them.  Their authority is not self-justifying.  They have to give a reason for it, a justification.  And if they can’t justify that authority and power and control, which is the usual case, then the authority ought to be dismantled and replaced by something more free and just.  And, as I understand it, anarchy is just that tendency.  It takes different forms at different times.”

In essence the debate pitting Capitalism against Socialism is a clever distraction.  It is without meaning.  For one thing we are not living under free market conditions and we are not therefore practicing Capitalism.  For another thing it is simply not true that if government establishes a means to make health care more available, or raises the minimum wage or tries to regulate the bundling of bad mortgages, that means it is a Socialist Government.  It is a hollow debate because the reality is MiLords are in control.

Confusing matters further is the wildly disparate group of people who identify themselves as Libertarians.  Too often the Libertarian framework is twisted to defend Private Power in the name of giving private individuals more freedom.  This according to Chomsky.  In some realms Libertarians and Anarchists have a lot in common.  Not in America where the Private Power just uses the sentiment to preserve wealth and privilege.

And so it goes.  Freedom is the Holy Grail that is used time and time again to undergird devious propaganda.  Practicing Capitalism makes us a free society until we besmirch it with Socialism.  If only we as individuals could be left alone to do our business, all would be well.  Meanwhile MiLords chuckle to themselves about the nameless masses who do not even know they are being led like sheep.

I am an Anarchist because I choose to engage in Critical Thinking* by being suspicious of domination, authority, and hierarchy.  I refuse to be distracted by the meaningless chatter we call party politics.  I challenge Libertarians to withdraw their protection for Private Power.  I reject out of hand the notion that market capitalism is being practiced anywhere.  I choose to look more deeply into the systemic issues that are propelling us toward the abyss.
 
In Part II of this post we will delve into the mechanisms employed by MiLords, drivers of the Deep State, to deprive us of our freedom.  This pursuit will take us back all the way back to the creation of The United States of America and the attempts to form a permanent Central Bank rooted in debt instead of wealth.  This will help us understand the issue of debt being used as a means to enslave us.  An effort opposed by none other than Thomas Jefferson.  We will set the stage for a series of posts that will trace the 200 year development of the subjugation of money (gold and silver) in favor of debt backed notes declared valuable by fiat.  (what you have in your wallet is not money, it is rather a debt instrument)

In the mean time I will try to get used to being an Anarchist.  Anarchy is not Nihilism.  It is not on the side of chaotic violence.  It is not fooled by propaganda put out by Private Power.  I have thought for some time that the line from left to right should really be shown as a circle.  Go far enough left and you end up sharing a lot of values with those on the true right.  Strip away all the propaganda and you are left with a search for freedom within the bounds of humanity.

Are you an Anarchist too?

*See earlier post: Are You A Critical Thinker?

Monday, June 23, 2014

MiLords Might Have A Plan


I have flirted with the idea that MiLords are stupid, that they have lost control of the game and are fighting a rear guard action while they consolidate enormous amounts of wealth and plan their getaway.  Today I would like to explore the notion of what it might mean to assume that they do hear the waterfall ahead and do have plans for them, and for us, and for the world.  What then might those plans look like?

   1.       Keep China and Russia in check for a little while longer.  Make it extremely painful for them to collapse the dollar.  Keep feeding them cheap silver and cheap gold by continuing to manipulate the futures markets.  Threaten, cajole, lie… do whatever it takes to keep them from pulling the plug.  The die is cast.  The end of dollar supremacy is at hand.  But delay is important to MiLords.

   2.       Structure the collapse to be as orderly as possible (lean toward Jubilee and away from Armageddon).  Restructure retirement funds to be entirely supported by “New Treasuries” (let’s call them Patriot Bonds) defined as domestic debt, not for resale in the international market (it is better to forbid their sale than it is to demonstrate that they are unsalable).  Convert all domestic investor held treasuries to Patriot Bonds, effectively devaluing them.  Allow the market to re-price existing international Treasuries to a value that can be serviced (let’s call it 25 cents on the dollar).  Legislate that municipalities and other government bodies can convert their debt into Patriot Bonds.  It is mathematically impossible for the accumulated debt to be serviced without such a reset.  It will happen.  It must happen.

   3.       Continue to protect banks at all cost even at the expense of the American people.  Package “bail-ins” to be patriotic necessities (a bail-in is a form of legislated thievery that shifts the cost of a bail-out to depositors).

   4.       Keep a lid on the American political process.  Continue to buy votes and tout patriotic themes that lull the population into thinking they are being loyal Americans to docilely accept the rape of the middle class.

   5.       Maintain law and order.  Strike that.  Maintain order.  The laws to do so are already in place.  Bullets have been bought up, prison camps built, military contingency plans filed for suppressing dissent, etc.

   6.       Vilify hoarders.  Brand people who buy gold and silver as traitors.  Not allowing all gold and silver to flow to China has hastened the day when the dollar falls.  Bankers who sold, hypothecated, re-hypothecated or leased all the gold in Fort Knox a hundred times over are heroes.  It is to their credit that we have enjoyed 50 years of unparalleled prosperity.  What they did was technically illegal but they acted at the behest of all our wonderful Presidents who know best.

   7.       Ration food as necessary.  Brand people who garden and sell produce as greedy selfish profiteers who do not know the meaning of sharing.
 
   8.       Raise the minimum wage in order to allow for necessary cuts in social programs like food Stamps.

   9.       Promote “Made in America” campaigns and make a big fuss about revitalizing the manufacturing sector that was sacrificed for short term profits.

   10.   Impose travel restrictions to keep spending abroad down.  Strike that.  The dollar will be worth almost nothing abroad.  Only the uber rich will consider international travel.

It is still possible that MiLords will lose control of the process.  They may have to retreat to their well appointed bunkers.  China might not cooperate.  Russia may get restless.  India may get hungry.  

More importantly America could wake up and stop believing the lies.  Truth about the difference between real money and debt based fiat paper could emerge.  The realization that we are not a country of law, but an Oligarchy under the control of MiLords could dawn.  Complacency could be replaced by alarm and indignation.  The radical right and the radical left could merge under the banner of true freedom (not the kind we fight and die for so that Haliburton can make big profits).

To that end I invite you to consider thinking of yourself as a human participant in AGREE.  Above Ground Resistance, Enlightenment and Empowerment.  No membership.  No dues.  No website.  No movement.  No secrecy.  No manifesto.  Think of it as oxygen that fuels a burning desire for freedom.  Think of it as a way of moving forward.   Identify with other individual molecules of oxygen by simply saying:

I AGREE.

Friday, May 30, 2014

Why I Pray That I Am Dead Wrong

I firmly believe that the Ponzi Scheme known as the Federal Reserve system is close to being exposed for what it is.  If true, this will bring down a system that has served MiLords* very well for just over a century, and the resulting chaos will impact the world economy in profoundly negative ways.  I want to go on record again that I hope I am wrong and more explicitly state why I hope I am wrong.

  1. I am drawing Social Security payments.  During a time of hyper-inflation these payments cannot possibly keep pace.  Printing more and more money will not solve a problem that money printing caused.  Even if the government had the will and means to adjust payments on the fly, economies that experience hyper-inflation do so daily and my check is monthly.
 
  2.   My network (family and extended family) is made up of what could be called the shrinking middle class.  That is to say that there is wealth in real estate, business investments, stock port folios and the like.  In a collapsed economy these props will diminish in value, perhaps by as much as 90%.  In a collapsed economy my long distance family network will be replaced by local farmers, friends who can make things, neighbors who can fix things, etc.  My garden is producing more each year but I am not self sufficient.  My safety net will pretty much evaporate.

  3. I enjoy the peace.  The stupid wars we wage, executed by the Deep State on behalf of MiLords, (Haliburton, Cargill, Goldman Sachs and the like) are far away now.  Violence fueled by food shortages, currency debasement, fear of the future, medicine shortages, etc. will be dangerously close and will upset my life.  I don’t want it to be that way.  I don’t want to be right.

  4. My opportunity to travel to places I love like Kenya, Botswana and Bangladesh will be curtailed.  Even if flights are available tickets will need to be paid for in some way.  Gold?  Silver coin?  And then money for buying food and lodging will be needed on the other end.  Carrying silver coin will not be safe.  And using up silver coin for pleasure travel will likely seem frivolous in light of the need to buy food for my family and friends.

  5. And last but not least I am afraid that the next system will not be transformative.  As I look around at the apathy that prevails, I am not optimistic about people rising up and saying, “Never Again!”  It is likely that a very large portion of the population will simply accept the new lies.  “It is because of gold hoarders that the currency failed.”  “We need to crack down on socialists who are trying to steal your wealth and give it to lazy tax dodgers.” “Privacy is not a priority when there are economic terrorists in our midst.”  “Fort Knox is empty because of patriots who used the gold to preserve our currency (banks?)and our standard of living.”  Are you ready for the really big lie?  “Those bankers who used our gold to preserve our way of life are heroes, not criminals guilty of treason.  They did not sell us down the river to China.  They fought a valiant rear guard action against insurmountable odds.”

This is a list of 5 reason why I hope I am wrong.  Change number 5 from expediency to revolution, from chaos to Jubilee, from a pathetic and apathetic response to one of affirmation of our humanity... then I would gladly suffer the costs of 1 through 4. If I thought that we would rise up and demand justice that repudiates the obscene wealth of MiLords and holds accountable the minions of the Deep State for their treachery, I would tighten my belt, share my garden and smile with deepest gratitude to be a part of something honorable. Allow the Deep State to redefine their control on their terms?  Never.

I have written before that I do not espouse a violent revolution.  But without a peaceful transformation from the Deep State orchestrated by MiLords to a reinstatement of a more humanizing Social Contract , I see no way to avoid bloodshed short of abject subjugation.

We can submit or we can resist.  But we cannot resist effectively without knowing.  Our ignorance of the “what is,” our present sorry condition, will be our undoing.

* MiLords are defined and mentioned in several Blog entries including MiLords Are Not United and Are MiLords Stupid? among others.


Thursday, May 15, 2014

The LENR Revolution

Let’s be clear.  Physicists are scrambling about in the dark trying to make sense of ever more data that is available to them.  What is dark matter and how do we know that it really exists?  What is a black hole other than a theory needed to explain things we don’t understand?  What is gravity really?  Is light a wave or a particle?  The list of things they don’t understand or cannot explain fully is long and complex.  For example in 1899, Max Planck came up with what came to be known as the Planck constant which for all practical purposes he considered a fudge factor.  It worked to describe energy levels at the atomic level but was not a very elegant theory.  Planck described the formulation as, "an act of despair ... I was ready to sacrifice any of my previous convictions about physics.”

Nevertheless, Planck's despair notwithstanding, The Planck Constant became the basis for Quantum Mechanics which together with Einstein’s advances on time and space constitutes the heart and soul of modern physics.  (Planck got the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1918.)  New particles and new elements and new data about star formation and developments in nuclear energy have all transpired over the last 100 years.  And yet there is so much more to be learned.   Unless, of course, you are a theoretical physicist who thinks like Max Planck’s first physics teacher.   The Munich physics professor Phillip von Jolly advised Planck against going into physics, saying, "in this field, almost everything is already discovered, and all that remains is to fill a few holes.”  This was uttered in 1874.  You don’t have to be a physicists or mathematician to think this statement is hilarious.

Yes folks, we have physicists today teaching in our universities who like professor Jolly, are totally oblivious to their ignorance.  And so when my colleague walked down the corridor of a local university looking for someone to discuss the results of our humble Low Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR)* experiments and encountered a professor who dismissed the entire field of “cold fusion” as bogus, I began to wonder about the whole field of scientific inquiry and more importantly the tendency of “learned” people to dismiss anything that does not conform to the body of knowledge that supports their own dissertation.
 
We smile when we read about the leading astronomers of the day dismissing the notion that the sun is at the center of our planetary system.  How quaint.  And yet that same attitude permeates the halls of our institutions of higher learning.  It has been 25 years since Fleischman and Pons demonstrated what was then called cold fusion.  Thousands of experiments have pointed to the fact that something we don’t understand fully is going on.  NASA, MIT, the Stanford Research Institute, the US Navy and many others are all plugging away at trying to understand the phenomenon.  Private companies are jumping ahead to harness this green source of almost free energy before physicists can even explain it.  So why does a physicist with a PhD scoff?

Well for one thing it flies in the face of Quantum Mechanics and that has been the foundation of atomic level physics for a hundred years.  So does that excuse our ignorant physics professor?  Not really.  For you see our system of scientific inquiry is supposed to be open to new data, new ideas, new postulations.  And when the system calcifies it subjects itself to the kind of hilarious laughter that we accord to 1874 professor Jolly.  But there is something else at work here.  Is it hubris? Perhaps.  But I am wondering if science is being subjected to the same forces that permeate everything else around us.

I would like to suggest that we are being dumbed down, even to the point that the brain of a physics professor can be anesthetized to accept only the mainstream point of view.  The main stream says raw milk is dangerous.  The main stream says schools are the way to educate our youth.  The main stream says that the Federal Reserve has done a heckuva job at rescuing us from a great depression.  The main stream says that capitalism is working and it is the best economic system in the world.  The main stream says that buying cheap goods from Wal-Mart made in China makes us happier.  The main stream says that even though we pay the most for mediocre health care results, it is still better than “socialized medicine.”  The mainstream says that we are living in a democracy and we are free.  The main stream says that LENR is a hoax.
   
So before we hold my real life ignorant physics professor up for scorn for wallowing in his century old quantum mechanics theory, maybe we should take a look at our own systems of belief.  The challenge here is to think critically** and be willing to slaughter a few sacred cows.  Until we are willing to challenge our firmly held beliefs in the validity of our education system, our government, our health care system, our food production system, our religiosity, our free enterprise system, etc., we are not really in a position to laugh at scientists who have stopped thinking.

Yes, we as a people have by and large stopped thinking.   But LENR will come to fruition.  The Oligarchy cannot protect their investment in petro fuels forever.  University professors will give way to upstart students. Free thinkers who dare to challenge Quantum Mechanics will find a way.  Companies will bring a million new products to market.  And here is my hope.  The LENR revolution will spawn a new age of critical thinking that will blow right past the crusty old Oligarchy.  

Let a thousand flowers bloom.

* See blog entries Low Energy Nuclear Reactions and Nickel Energy
** See blog entry Are You a Critical Thinker?

Tuesday, April 29, 2014

The Nuclear Option

I remember sitting at a railroad crossing in a school bus in 1962 wondering if the world was coming to an end over missiles in Cuba, as close to US borders as it gets.  And now we watch in horror as another crisis unfolds in Ukraine, as close to Russia’s border as it gets.  Somehow I do not think we are staring a nuclear holocaust in the face.  But I do think that a full scale economic war could erupt and the equivalent of economic nuclear war could waged against the dollar.

The dollar as we know it is on a 70 year run.  Bretton Woods established the US dollar as the Reserve Currency, backed by gold and by the most productive economy in the world untouched by the ravages of war.  For 70 years our friends and our enemies have needed to hold dollars for the purposes of trade.   This means that we could and did create new dollars out of thin air and have them soaked up by central banks everywhere and not have them come back to haunt us, effectively subsidizing our rapidly rising standard of living.  This system was reinforced by the creation of Petro-dollars.  The only way to buy oil was with dollars.  Another shot in the arm to our economy.  The party was on now, in full swing.

In 1971 the French and the Swiss said wait a minute, this is going too far and started redeeming dollars for gold.  We faced a choice.  Tighten our belts or renege.  We did not tighten our belts.  Nixon took us off the gold standard.  Now all we had backing the dollar was a nuclear shield.  The Soviets could not keep pace with our world subsidized economy and the end was in sight when they resorted to shipping gold to pay their bills (unlike dollars central banks were not required to take Rubles).  The Soviet Union fell apart within six months of their shipping gold with Czarist stampings on it.  They had reached the bottom of the barrel.

Speaking of the bottom of the barrel.  Last year Germany asked for 300 tons to be returned (20% of the total 1500 tons) of their gold being stored here (to be more secure in the cold war?).  We agreed to comply but said we needed 7 years to do it.  7 years?  We started with 5 tons that had to be recast in Switzerland.  That’s all we could muster in a year.  But in one month alone, January of 2014, we exported 80 tons of gold.  To where?  57 tons of it went to Hong Kong.  China must be saying, "you keep sending us gold and we will not pull the plug on the dollar."  And they also must be saying, “you keep driving the price of gold down so that we can keep stocking up and we will play this game a little longer.”  We are producing 20 tons of gold domestically per month.*  We last audited our stockpile in the 1950’s.  Do the math.

It is commonly accepted that gold, real gold that is, is flowing from the West to the East.  The dollar cannot withstand a large gold price rise.  And so we have 100 times as much paper gold in the form of contracts and derivatives as there is real gold in the world.  JP Morgan is the agent responsible for manipulating this paper gold market to keep the price suppressed, illegally dumping 400 tons of fake gold on the market in 15 minutes on April 15th, 2013, for example.   India and China are soaking up most of the real physical gold flow but there are many countries actively buying in the physical gold market.  How long can this be sustained?  There are reports of US gold fabricated in the 1950's turning up in the market.  A sure sign that we are running out of gold to keep the game going.  Six months after Czarist gold started appearing… oops, I already said that.

 So what does the economic version of the nuclear option look like?  Russia says, “You want to buy natural gas to heat Europe?  Pay in Rubles please.”  China says, “We have US Treasuries for sale, for 50 cents on the dollar.  If you have gold to sell, 25 cents on the dollar.”  Saudia Arabia says, “We will take Yuan or Rubles for oil.  The Petro-dollar system is over.”   Every country in the world rushes to liquidate the T-notes they hold in reserve.  Quantitative Easing (QE) becomes a joke.  The US is exposed.  We are printing money out of thin air and not even Belgium steps up to buy the paper.  Trade alliances abound.  Barter becomes the norm: iron ore for bananas, oil for computers, corn for garments…  Bretton Woods is dead.  The dollar falls like every fiat currency has in the history of the world.  The scam called the Fed, but really a private bank, designed in 1913 to replace pesky gold with fiat paper is revealed to be a Ponzi scheme.

So does that mean Russia and China win?  Not really.  Like with any “nuclear war” there are no true winners.  Everybody suffers from the fallout.  China has a debt bubble of its own to contend with.  Russia does not have the standing to have the Ruble be the new Reserve Currency.  But they will have more chips than the US does when the next version of Bretton Woods is negotiated.  And I predict it will not be held at the Mount Washington Hotel in New Hampshire.  Hong Kong maybe?

It will be a long hard cold nuclear winter.

*see 2 posts: Fort Knox Is Empty and Rehypothecation And The Shadow Banking System

Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Class Warfare It Ain't

"There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning." – Warren Buffet

Plutarch wrote of Rome, “The abuse of buying and selling votes crept in and money began to play an important part in determining elections.  Later on, this process of corruption spread in the law courts and to the army and finally, when even the sword became enslaved by the power of gold, the republic was subjected to the rule of emperors.”

Thomas Jefferson was very concerned about what he observed as “consolidation” of power in the Federal system at the expense of States Rights.  His concern accelerated in the 1820’s.  He openly discussed the need for revolution at some point to counter this trend toward despotism.

And as a recent headline in the Columbia Journalism Review put it: “The line between democracy and a darker social order is thinner than you think.”

So what do MiLords* scream when you confront them with rising inequality, unbalanced press coverage of obvious financial manipulations of commodities and currency, and the indisputable rape of the middle class in America?  CLASS WARFARE!  They trot out that phrase as though it condemns anyone with a brain to be cast into a pit with other rabid socialists. Like name calling, it totally misses the point and distracts us from the real issues.

Before we go any further, let’s distinguish between the merely rich and the MiLords running the Deep State** made up of 'Banksters,' 'Corporatists,' and political lackeys running Defense, Security and Regulatory Agencies.  (I am intentionally excluding Congress as they are no more than hired guns in this power scheme.  It is conceivable that most of them don’t even fully understand the game)  The merely rich are simply scrambling to reap the spoils of the war on the middle class, and like Congress often don’t really understand that they too are pawns in the game.

So it is the job of MiLords to break down the regulatory system, promote discord in the halls of government as a useful distraction, manipulate commodities markets, exploit the banking system by controlling the Federal Reserve, control the message by co-opting the media and buy enough politicians to keep messy laws from getting in the way.  And I almost forgot, to scream "Class Warfare" when anyone tries to expose what is really going on.

It is almost funny that MiLords accuse the current puppet in office (full disclosure, I voted for him twice), of being a Socialist when he has presided over the largest expansion ever of a 100 year old Ponzi Scheme and has allowed the Fed to ship gold to China at an artificially low price to keep the game going a few more years.  Except it is not funny.  It is tragic.  And there are too many ignorant people in this country who are duped by such distractions.

It is also interesting that the puppet in power in 2000, who signed away the last legal barrier to unbridled Fascism (yes, I voted for him twice as well) is still well regarded by many who decry the Republican conspiracy to dumb us down into abject slavery.  But you see Hillary, the heir apparent, is also a good friend of Goldman Sachs, and that my friend pretty much says it all. (Would she have divorced Bill and Goldman Sachs... well she didn't)

Now don’t misunderstand my point here.  I am not forgiving President Cheney (oops did I forget the vice?) for setting the demolition charges in Building 7 and the Twin Towers to set up some very tasty contracts for Halliburton and friends.  I am not suggesting that the Plutocrat Romney would have reined in the Fed had he been more successful at buying the office he sought.  I am saying that MiLords don’t really care all that much about who holds the nominal office of President.  They like turmoil and I really don’t think they will tolerate a Republican sweep in 2016.  A divided government will suit their purposes just fine thank you very much.

No, I suspect they will smile as they allow the first woman President in history to take office and struggle with the chaotic aftermath of the collapse of the US Dollar. (How motherly it will be to have a comforting voice in the White House to help the very bitter medicine to go down) After all, how can there be Class Warfare when there was a black Muslim President born in Kenya, followed by a woman wearing the mantle of that great Democrat who was the last President to balance the budget?

But what would happen if the burgeoning lower class and the declining middle class joined forces and declared war on the Deep State?  Not with the intent to send all rich people to the guillotine, but rather as a force behind a revolution shaped by Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela?  Not in the name of Communism or Socialism or even Populism, but simply as a way of saying we have had enough and we are not as stupid as you think?

Elizabeth Warren are you up for the task?  Or is it important that you get in line behind the Goldman Sachs puppet?

More importantly are We The People in any way shape or form ready to say enough is enough?

* MiLords are defined in previous posts: MiLords Are Not United and Are MiLords Stupid?
** Deep State is featured in the post The Big Reset, Jubilee or Armageddon?

Wednesday, March 26, 2014

The Big Reset: Jubilee or Armageddon?

Yes, there is too much debt and not enough collateral, clean collateral that is.  The common practice of rehypothecation * (some would call it stealing but let’s not get bogged down in semantics) has corrupted a very large portion of the debt that is sloshing around out there and in the final analysis the debt simply has no backing.  And it cannot be serviced at any reasonable interest rate above the current rate of zero.  This then implies that there will be a Reset, a catastrophic Reset that will shake the foundations of the global economy.
  
This is not a new phenomenon.  Throughout history wealth has piled up for the few while the many were saddled with debt.  Babylonian kings recognized this issue more than three thousand years ago and would on occasion decree all debts cancelled.  Talk about risk management.  How would a hedge fund manager behave if they knew the king could wipe them out on a whim?  The kings knew that if people get hopelessly in debt, no one really wins.  (The kings then were smarter than the MiLords of today)

The Hebrews codified this practice and established a timetable of once every seven sabbaticals.  A sabbatical is seven years.  A slave was deemed to be free after serving seven years, and today we “free” our professors for a year in every seven and we give them a sabbatical.  So after 49 years, Jubilee.  Property would be returned to its original family owners.  In an agrarian society, property was the equivalent of wealth.  Without it you were either a slave or a serf.

Over the centuries we lost track of this principle and relied upon a much rougher form of justice.  If things got too out of balance the peasants would rise up and chop off a head or two to get things in some sort of alignment.  For the most part wealth remained a thing measured best in land and precious metals.  At the macro level this translated into hundreds of wars being fought over land using gold to pay the workers, I mean soldiers.

And then things became quite a bit more complicated.  About a thousand years ago we developed paper wealth in the form of demand notes that stood for gold being held somewhere.  One person was holding a real piece of gold in a vault (in Jerusalem for example), another had a piece of paper representing that gold which was then given to a baker for a loaf of bread, who used the paper to buy flour and so on.  This eventually allowed for a conceptual framework to develop that evolved into what we call money. This allows a little bit of gold to support a lot of transactions.   (along the way more than one king decided they could game the system and create paper money by decree, by fiat if you will.  However,these fiat currencies with nothing behind them never stood the test of time.)

Then along came tall ships and bigger guns and a taste for spices and silver.  Explorers came back with tall tales and international trade blossomed, fostering more use of letters of credit. This led to ever more complex contracts to facilitate land and mineral exploitation, I mean trade.  The banking industry became the power center and international banking transcended business even to the point of eclipsing the emerging nation states.  Banks learned to deal in gold and take advantage of the need to pay soldiers over longer distances.  Gold speculation was profitable but the printing press was beguiling and thus began a centuries long battle to supplant gold backed currency with fiat money that they and only they could control.

Fiat currency took a real leap forward with the innovation of using debt to back the money sometimes used in tandem with gold backing.  Central Banks were born to manage debt based currency using a fractional reserve system.  The money supply could be expanded at will.  Now wealth could be accumulated and controlled on paper and laws could be drawn up to protect the system.  Reformers worked diligently to fight this insidious bastion of power but once the wealth concentration reached a certain point legislators were put firmly in pocket and the battle was essentially over.   The Federal Reserve Bank of the United States was firmly ensconced by the time Bretton Woods came along in 1944, establishing the dollar as the world’s reserve currency.  Gold, that nuisance, was still in the picture however.

Then in 1971 Nixon took the USA off the gold standard and the party began.  The binge lasted more than 40 years with most of the world’s nations subsidizing US consumption by buying US Treasuries to hold as reserves and to accomplish trade.  Petro-dollars came along and iced the deal.  To buy oil you needed dollars.  The party was a bit over the top but as time went by and greed became infectious it started to get obscene.  Before Nixon top CEO’s earned 12 times the average worker’s pay.  Today it is 450 times or more.  Billionaires abound who have done nothing more productive than shuffle some credit default swaps or manipulated the price of commodities or packaged toxic mortgage paper.

What do we have then to bring about a correction?  No Jubilee for these two thousand years or so.  We are too civilized to roll some heads, aren’t we?  The answer being discussed these days is a Reset.  A Reset is like Jubilee but without any rules for guidance.  It is a repudiation of debt and let the devil take the hindmost.  It is confiscation of bank deposits, sort of a bail in instead of a bail out (can anyone spell Cyprus?).   A Reset might require hyperinflation to bring things in line or the issuance of a new currency to replace the old.  A Reset tells all those nations holding Treasuries in reserve to go fly a kite.

What will happen after the Reset is put in place?  Nobody knows, least of all me.  I have no idea how it will be structured or how it will go down or who will be blamed (gold “hoarders” are in the running for sure for being scapegoats).  The more pressing question for some is when will this go down and what will be the trigger?  Think China.  Think Russia.  Think India.  Gold buyers all.  When?  Think Crimean Peninsula.  Think Ukrainian debts being called in.  Think of any of the dozens of black swans that are swimming in plain view.

I have been pondering the question as to whether the MiLords**(Deep State operators) that are running things have this crisis under control and will see it as no more than a bump in the road?  Will they (think Pilgrims Society) incorporate the Chinese*** elite into their program and keep on rolling the middle class soaking up all the wealth?  I am starting to think not.  I think they really did screw up this time and they really will hit a wall.  The Yuan will be the new World Reserve Currency and Russia and India will seal the deal.  Saudi Arabia will accept Petro-Yuan.  And it will come to light that Fort Knox**** is empty.  Gold nada.  The party will be over.  And to my question of an earlier post, Are MiLords Stupid? The answer is yes.  They really are.

China will sit at the head of the table for the next Bretton Woods type conference.  And when the dust settles we must be vigilant.  Just because MiLords have failed to keep the game going, doesn’t preclude them from passing the pain down the line.  That is why it is imperative to pass this message along.  People need to understand what the Reset is all about and how greed fueled it.  We cannot let chaos hide the facts about what went down.  We need to make sure that we celebrate Jubilee not suffer under Armageddon.

*  see Rehypothecation
**see MiLords Are Not United
*** Book in progress is entitled Will The Chinese Buy The Mayflower?  Or Sink It?, the Mayflower being a reference to the Pilgrims Society.
**** Fort Knox Is Empty