AMTV News: State Sponsored Terror, New NSA Bogeymen & Disappearing Cities

Topher Morrison

PurpleSerf.com

This is AMTV News, I’m your host Topher Morrison.  Today is Thursday July 12^th 2012. Our final production video can be found at the bottom of the page. The links to the various articles can be found immediately below.

If it bleeds it leads…

Washington Unleashes MEK on Iran

Global Research

Mujahadeen el-Kahlq, state department terrorist group #27, is the beneficiary of millions of dollars worth of lobbyists, public relation agents, ex office holders and training in the deserts of Nevada.  Forget their atrocities against the Iranian people, soldiers, politicians and scientists – the real enemy is Amadinenijad and those crazy mullahs.  After all one man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter – right?

Next…

NSA Counterpunch

Raw Story

According to NSA Geek-in-Chief, Gen. Keith Alexander you can blame hackers for “the greatest transfer of wealth in history.”  He’s not joking and has obviously not been reading FOMC minutes, history of dollar devaluation or headlines.  The NSA would like nothing more than have invasive legislation like CISPA pass, until then meet your new boogey man – hackers.

Shh, Don’t tell Chicken Little…

Tree Rings Prove Global Cooling

DailyMail

Looks like no ocean front property in Arizona and you can blame it all on that pesky light bulb in the sky.  According to scientists rings in fossilized pine trees show we’ve been cooling for 2000 years due to increased distances between Earth and Sun and solar phases.  Looks like the IPCC underestimated things.  Yes, CO2 warms our planet, but there are evidently other – larger – factors to consider in climate change.

Sit down for this one…

Meet a New Reporter: Al Gorithm

AFP

Two parts engineering one part journalism and vuala – robo journalist coming to a daily near you!  No coffee breaks, no compensation and no fuss.  Algorithms will crunch all that raw data and spit out your story.  The company responsible – Narritive Science – sound a bit Orwellian?  Don’t worry it looks like they only cover sports and financials – for now.

Next…

No More Pat Downs?

Natural News

They won’t have to.  The gentle souls over at the Department of Homeland security want frisk and radiate you with yet another device and log every chemical in your body.  The “Picosecond Programmable Laser” will read people at the molecular level everything from semtex to THC.  That’s right it can penetrate everything and everyone from 50 meters.  God Bless America.

Next…

CA Cities Dropping Like Flies

StratRisks

San Bernardino’s bankruptcy falls on the heels of Stockton and Mammoth Lakes.  First it was your homes and now your cities, some California cities may “cease to exist.” The city is facing an immediate cash flow issue one it apparently didn’t care to face after spending millions of tax dollars on transit projects and other none essential services.

Drum roll please…

Depopulation Nation

Activist Post

Bill and Melinda Gates are purveying their latest agenda in the name of women’s rights.  They argue it’s more cost effective and easier to reduce the birthing poor – just take this pill – than it is elevating people from poverty through increasing education, reducing corruption and freeing man and market.  It’s fundamentally a clash of philosophies – of prosperity versus central planning.

Catch my latest choice headlines on AMTV News Monday – Friday at AMTV Media and catch our in depth commentary and analysis of stories like these at GreeneWave.com part of the AMTV network.

What We Can Learn From Greece…2500 Years Ago

Topher Morrison

PurpleSerf.com

Greece Lightning at the Parthenon

The recent Greek elections for better or worse signaled that Greece would remain a part of the European Union.  The retired class of Greece, fearful of losing their benefits, came out en masse and voted for the “center-right” New Democratic party, the socialist Pasok party and their pro bailout platforms.  The loss came at the expense of the “left” Syriza party, lead by charismatic Alexis “Sexy Lexis” Tsipras, and shook the cradle of Western Civilization out of its secessionist frenzy.

“I am relieved,” New Democracy leader Antonis Samaras told Reuters. “I am relieved for Greece and Europe…The Greek people voted today to stay on the European course and remain in the euro zone,” Samaras said in a victory speech. “There will be no more adventures, Greece’s place in Europe will not be put in doubt.”

Since the crisis began the world has been focused on the causes, but most feverishly on the countermeasures.  Fans of free market have lambasted austerity alarmists like Paul Krugman for claiming “Austerity Is So Wrong” and that it’s killing the great economies of Europe.  Indeed, the free marketers claim “austerity” in Greece and throughout Europe have been anything, but austere and in fact Greek leadership has made only minor cuts while raising taxes grinding the Greek economy to a halt.

“…Critics of cutting government spending in a weak economy ignore academic research showing that significant spending cuts, structural reforms to entitlements, and loosening labor regulations are proven ways to reduce debt loads and get countries moving again” writes Nick Gillespie and Jim Epstein of Reason Magazine.

Spending after all is how the Greek economy got into debt 160% of their GDP in the first place is it not?  Digging a deeper hole to China seems a little counterintuitive, unless you’re a Keynesian or Paul Krugman.  If more spending is the answer you’re merely empowering the same people, finance oligarchs and unscrupulous politicians, who signed Greece onto fraudulent debt not merely the monies actually spent on addictive entitlements and economic relief.  But what is the real cause for Europes woes, socialism or some virulent form of capitalism?  Perhaps Sexy Lexis and his anti-bailout crew are right.  It may be that Greece is too big.

How Peisistratos’ “Small” Banking Experiment Created Western Civilization

In Leopold Kohr’s discussion on the Breakdown of Nations notes that classicist Kathleen Freeman “has shown in a study of Greek city states that nearly all Western culture is a product of the disunited small states of ancient Greece.”  This makes perfect sense if you understand the Renaissance occurred amidst the divided city-states of Italy and the neck breaking expansion of the early United States when territories, states and frontier townships formed a robust tapestry.

Peisistratos a popular tyrant who ruled Athens when it was a relatively inconsequential city-state during the 6^th century BC is a testament to Freeman’s thesis.  Rather than oppress the Athenian population through violence, as we understand modern tyrants to do, Peisistratos, according to Aristotle and Herodotus, governed idyllically, and dutifully preserved the proto-democratic reforms of the Athnian statesman and lawmaker, Solon.  He didn’t attempt to rout the rule of law and in fact Aristotle wrote that “his administration was temperate…and more like constitutional government than a tyranny.”

This is not necessarily a result of being a city-state as there were belligerent polities like the Spartans who cared little for innovation and comfort outside of military barracks and weaponry.  It is Peisistratos’ archaic Athens, then small, which confined and focused his activities, that aided in producing an unprecedented economic expansion and provided the impetus which forged Athens the seat of power in the region it kept for thousands of years.

Today Greek politicians clamor for more money from the European Central Bank, for the Federal Reserve and its enforcers on Wall Street to streamline the effort and bless each and every step.  For what?  Does this put money into the hands of the people who need it or merely those who have the influence to direct where it ultimately goes?  Does mere “stability” for the sake of stability produce growth?  No and no.

Peisistratos created one of the world’s first micro-loan programs for those in need expanding on Solon’s accomplishments in emancipating the poor from state dependency by planting olive trees.  Rather than a grain subsidy, outright entitlement or relief measure in poor harvests Peisistratos established a fund that provided easy and low interest loans for the neady – invariably the Hyperakrioi who lived in the hills.

These loans helped farmers invest in capital-intensive projects, namely olive trees and their prized oil.  It also helped them purchase the tools and equipment necessary.  Unlike today’s Greece Peisistratos reduced taxes while providing these low interest (free at times) loans.  Duties paid at Athenian harbors and extracted from silver mines in Mount Pangaeum funded this financial operation, not printing money or borrowing from other states.

The intimacy that was commonplace in Athens over two millennia ago is not something we can find easily today under the rule of the One-Worlders those who wish to unite evermore nations under one government.  Peisistratos for instance, in a famous story: “saw a farmer digging in a field of stones and asked what his income was. When the farmer replied, ‘Just so many aches and pains; and of these aches and pains Peisistratos ought to take his 10 percent,’ the tyrant remitted all taxes to the frank farmer.”  Peisistratos had the benefit of living within the same community as his people, while modern rulers are ensconced in their ivory towers in Washington, Brussels and Beijing.

Athens, as a result of Peisistratos travelling courts, low taxes, inventive financing, real investment in tangible goods and the resulting wealth, produced more for Athens than just prized olive oil and agrarian revolution it laid the foundation for economic expansion.  His calm and even rule enabled public projects providing evermore jobs and an economic boom, which emancipated individuals to pursue science, philosophy, literature, drama, art and architecture – the crucible of Western civilization.  To be sure, Aristotle recorded the tyranny of Peisistratos as the age of Cronus, the golden age.

How will historians record our time?

E.U.’s Baltic Tiger, Small is Beautiful

Topher Morrison

PurpleSerf.com

After a quick survey of the world’s economies it is easy to become pessimistic.  The BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) are all slowing in growth, they account for much of the world’s raw production and nearly 1/3 of its economy.  The first world or OECD hasn’t changed much since the 2008 crisis slugging along at a 2-3% growth depending where you look, anywhere from 8-15% unemployment and together their debt is even more abhorrent, a cumulative 106% of GDP.

The Baltic Tiger Amidst the Bleating Sheep

Macroeconomics aside, there are a few diamonds in the rough, which is to say, low debt, high growth and low or lowering unemployment diamonds.  Estonia, for example, sixteen months after joining the languishing EU bloc enjoys a budget surplus, national debt is at 6% and its economy grew at a neck breaking 7.6% last year, five times the euro-zone average.

We have discussed this Baltic Tiger and its disheartening and tumultuous history before, apparently it was those hard years, which forged a resilient nation.  So resilient in fact that it bounced back from a nearly 18% contraction, an economic hay maker straight to the chin, as a result of 2008 world financial crisis.  How did they do it? “I can answer in one word: austerity. Austerity, austerity, austerity,” says Peeter Koppel, investment strategist at the SEB Bank.

PurpleSerf.com also examined the structural cause last year:

“Estonia features a constitutionally mandated balanced budget, the highest levels of internet freedom, one of the world’s first flat tax systems (the government has just approved to cut income tax from 21% to 20% by 2015), an open banking system allowing for generous foreign investment, and unlike the United States (sitting on unparalleled and untouched oil reserves) Estonia is self sustaining supplying 90% of their energy from local oil shale…

Bam!  Tell me where you can find that anywhere in the EU.

As far as their ethos is concerned, however, it may be that nearly 700 years from agrarian serfs to Soviet comrades has thickened their skin.  While the rest of the EU: France, Greece, Ireland, etc. bemoan trimming government largesse and entitlements, in many cases literally setting their cities aflame in protest, Estonians have stoically borne the harshest of austerity measures.  When it was time to tighten their belt in 2008 many in Estonian society may have already had bored the extra holes.  From Global Post:

“For older Estonians, memories of the grim days of Soviet occupation make it easier to accept sacrifices today. Among the young, there is a widespread awareness that in a nation of just 1.3 million people, the freedom and opportunities their generation enjoy depends on unity in times of crisis.

‘Western Europe has not really experienced a decrease in living standards since the Second World War,’ says Koppel. ‘Historically, austerity is inevitable, but it’s not part of the culture of Western Europe right now. This is what really differentiates us, that we were able to understand that.'"

Small is Beautiful: More Governments, Less Governance

Perhaps, it isn’t just historical frugality, which produces this type of serenity in the face of the vicissitudes of life.  Perhaps it’s the “1.3 million,” the size of the polity, we should be taking a look at.

As we mentioned before there are diamonds in the rough and as such they are small amidst the economic weeds of this world.  Nonetheless the are brilliant and just as valuable to our overall health, hence “Govern Locally, Not Globally.” These are just some of the world’s smaller more successful states.  You can tell partly because they’re rarely in the news.

Country	Size (sq mi) / Population	Emp. / Debt (GDP) / Growth
Hong Kong	426 / 7 mil	3.4% / NA / 7.2%
Andorra	180 / 84,000	2.9% / NA / -1.9%
Estonia	17,413 / 1.3 mil	11.3% / 6% / 7.8%
Azerbaijan	33,436 / 9.1 mil	1% / 4.7% / 0.2%
Lithuania	25,174 / 3.1 mil	15.6% / 37.7% / 5.8%
Latvia	24,938 / 2.2 mil	13% / 44.8% / 4%
Singapore	274 / 5.1 (3.2 citizens) mil	2% / 118% / 4.9%
Iceland	39,770 / 320,060	6% / 130% / 2.4%
Costa Rica	19,653 / 4.3 mil	6.5% / 44.5% / 4%
Switzerland	15,940 / 7.9 mil	3.1% / 52.4% / 2.1%
Qatar	4,416 / 1.8 mil	0.4% / 8.9% / 18.7%
Seychelles	174 / 84,000	2% / 46.2% / 5%
United Arab Emirates	32,278 / 8.2 mil	2.4% / 43.9% / 3.3%
San Marino	24 / 31,887	5.5% / NA / 1%

It is clear when you contrast these numbers with the major economies above, albeit some outliers exist, small and beautiful is also more manageable and agile.  While not even small countries are perfect the trajectory is what is most important.  In every one of the aforementioned countries there are bright spots to point to, if not, the countries are lean and prosperous.

Aside from the numbers let us ask ourselves “What Small Countries Can Teach the World.”  The study by Jeffery A. Frankel of Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and its conclusions is heretical to macrostate hegemony, a world that consists merely of 189 some odd countries.  The small advanced countries of this planet have so much to teach us if we would just listen: New Zealand’s Inflation Targeting, Estonia’s flat tax, Switzerland’s debt brake, Ireland’s FDI policy, Canada’s banking structure, Sweden’s Nordic model, and the Netherlands’ labor market reforms offer so much to our large and lumbering economies.

So many conservatives and libertarians browbeat economic competition when they would just as easily win over their communist, socialist, green, etc. enemies by merely championing “Let a 1000 Nations Bloom!”  After all it’s the “Most Progressive Movement on the Planet,” but unlike big government solutions and the few experiments they leave us to compare their policies against, this new ethos values competitive governance.  Stop fighting our government and have them fight over us for once.  If we can’t create new governments on land there are even ideas of making them available at sea.

Fresh air anyone?

Once upon a time in America we had 47 of what Justice Brandeis once called the “laboratories of democracy”, each one imbued with all the powers necessary for effective governance.  The people of America had 47 different options of where to live and under what system to thrive.  Since we dismantled the Senate, instituted a private financial dictatorship and forced all wage earners to pay the government before they paid themselves in 1913 those hedges against government intervention and corporate escapade were lost in the fog of reform and "progress."

As the New York Times points out of Leopold Kohr’s book, the Breakdown of Nations, it might be prudent to return to our Kohr Principles:

“In 1943 Kohr secured a professorship at Rutgers, where he taught for 12 years, during which time he finished his central work, “The Breakdown of Nations.” Published first in Britain, in 1957, the book develops his theory of the optimal size of polities: “There seems to be only one cause behind all forms of social misery: bigness.” Size was the root of all evil: “Whenever something is wrong, it is too big.”

Unsurprisingly, Kohr’s guiding principle was anarchism, “the noblest of philosophies.” But its inherent nobility, he recognized, also made it utopian: a truly anarchist society could do away with governments and states only if all individuals were ethical enough to respect one another’s boundaries. Kohr cleverly turned this utopianism upside down, from weakness to strength: any party, any leader, any ideology promising utopia is automatically wrong, or lying. Acceptance of utopia’s unattainability, in other words, is the best insurance against totalitarianism.

But if the ideal state cannot be attained, at least it can be approached, Kohr thought, by reducing the scale of government. Which sounds a lot like the famous quote from Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience”: “That government is best which governs least.” But in Kohr’s vision, smaller government should mean, first and foremost, a smaller area to govern. In such smallness, greatness resides. Counterintuitive as that may sound, didn’t Greece and Italy have their Golden Ages when they were divided into countless city-states? Not a coincidence, according to Kohr: smaller states produce more culture, wealth and happiness.”

Instead of 17 hulking EU states, which are quickly coalescing into one Euro Super State (a possible 4^th Reich, according to George Soros) or heading for a cataclysmic breakup, imagine a setting similar to what the U.S. enjoyed for the first part of its life.

Unfortunately history nor ethnic considerations
come into play on this map, but you get the idea.
In the near future there may be nothing left
of Europe’s borders.

Needless to say this inaugural part of American history, prior to 1913 and the firs World War, made possible the realization of what has been referred to as the “5000 year leap.”

Occupy Wall St. is 3 Years Late

Topher Morrison
PurpleSerf.com


Is Occupy Wall Street a new Tea Party?  The simple answer, no.

"Eat the Greed!"
Two things are certain, neither the rich or the greedy will ever go away so what do we do from here?

          If anything else, Occupy Wall Street is unfashionably late to the protest party.  It seems frustratingly clear that this part of the occupation is merely transient.  While I don't want to gloss over the libertarian streak clearly evident in signs protesting America's wars, police abuses and bailouts, many in the Occupy Wall Street crowd have been protesting the age old vice "greed" as if it has just reared its ugly head.  In this case their protest is about as productive as protesting lust.


          To ignore that big government (a frequent target in Tea Party demonstrations) and Wall Street (the target of this protest) collude to our detriment is to sacrifice an opportunity to point a public finger in the right direction.  This is not a failure of capitalism, but of brazen corporatism!  Washington and Wall Street created this mess by appropriating and creating nearly $13 trillion of our money in order to buttress teetering financial institutions.


          Ben Bernanke, one of the architects of the 2008 bailouts, has now admitted the recovery is "close to faultering."  Evidently their plan has failed leaving us with a debased currency, stratospheric debt and intolerable unemployment.  Much of the Occupy Wall Street is a reaction to this failure, not to the cause.  The occupiers are seeking ends not a return to restraint.  They see Wall Street getting theirs and they want in.  They are concerned about unemployment, lack of benefits and Wall Street's exorbitant bonus structure not the close relationship between elected officials and CEOs.  The opprobrium being foisted on Wall Street, is justified, but many are not seeing the forrest for the trees.


          In short, much of Occupy Wall St. are 3 years late.  The real protest should have taken place in front of the Department of Treasury, the Federal Reserve, the White House and the FDIC.  If these elements of Occupy Wall Street are sated with more government spending in the form of free college tuition, universal health care and a living wage in the form of a Restoring the American Deal Act, watch the movement dissolve as quickly as it arose.


          There are highlights in the Occupy X movement, however.  Occupy Chicago has camped in front of the Federal Reserve for 11 days and there seems to be a mix of conservative and liberal elements.  Occupy Boston melodically chanted "fuck the Fed" to the beat of drums.

          It is possible, given these recent ancillary developments, there merely has been a strong effort by traditional organizations to re-inject themselves into relevancy before the elections.  It has been reported that labor unions have thrown their weight behind Occupy Wall Street.  Maybe it's the name Wall Street itself, which calls for the traditional left to come out and try to continue where they left off, but given the new direction and the new focus on the Federal Reserve these protests may turn out to be quite different.  Lets hope they are.

Want to know exactly who we're up against, who we should be protesting?  Click here.

But The Military Industrial Complex is an Entitlement Program

Topher Morrison
PurpleSerf.com

"Beware the Military Industrial Complex"
Dwight D. Eisenhower

“No nation can preserve its freedom in the midst of perpetual war.” 

– James Madison

Over the past few weeks Jamie Weinstein (Daily Caller), Bruce Fein (Constitutional lawyer), Robert Zarate and Jamie Fly of the Foreign Policy Institute (FPI) have been in a bit of a tiff over the particulars of Ron Paul’s foreign policy.  This all culminated yesterday in an op-ed featured at the FPI’s website.

According to Jamie Fly, Ron Paul believes "military spending is the primary driver of the federal deficit."  This isn't Dr. Paul's quote, it's Fly's, the Congressman never put it that way.  But hey, who can resist a straw man?  


Jamie Weinstein, on Sep. 15^th and in much the same vein, asserted this was Congressman Paul’s “#1 foreign policy error” in the FoxNews Google Debate:

“We’re in 130 countries.  We have 900 bases around the world.  We’re going broke.”  Paul urged.

To me these are three separate and accurate statements, however, Weinstein proceeded to pick flies out of shit and tacitly defended our foreign adventurism on the basis that, according to Robert Kagan of The Weekly Standard:

“…the scary projections of future deficits are not ‘caused by rising defense spending’, and even if one assumes that defense spending continues to increase with the rate of inflation, this is ‘not what is driving the future spending.’  The engine of our growing debt is entitlements.”

Defense expenditures may not be what is “driving the future spending”, but it is most definitely riding shotgun.  Defending our profligate military spending in a country, which spends almost double that of our closest “adversary” China, on the basis that it isn’t the “primary driver” of our fiscal crisis is obfuscating more than the obvious.  This is tantamount to the claim that the flooding of the last third of the Titanic’s bulkheads wasn’t the primary driver of it sinking to the floor of the Atlantic.

          Admiral Mike Mullen himself claims the U.S. debt crisis in our number one threat to national security!  Yet in an almost a self-fulfilling prophecy the Department of Defense asks for more money.  Bruce Fein, Ron Paul’s campaign advisor, proffered his own arithmetic of departmental requests:

The final tally accounts for “approximately one-third of the entire budget and almost 100 percent of the projected budget deficit” according to Fein.

Jamie Fly disagrees: “Mr. Fein is wrong on several counts” namely for “placing the blame for the federal deficit squarely on defense spending” yet he never expounded on his assertion besides parroting Leon Pannetta, secretary of defense (hardly an objective source, but lets not let that detract from his argument):

“If you’re serious about dealing with the deficit, don’t go back to the discretionary account [which includes defense spending].  Pay attention to the two-thirds of the federal budget that is in large measure responsible for the size of the debt that we’re dealing with.”

            Again, Mr. Fly never actually addressed Mr. Fein’s evidence, but did attempt to cast doubt over Ron Paul’s commitment to restoring fiscal sanity:

“…in truth, Congressman Paul isn’t all that serious about dealing with the deficit.  What he is serious about is pushing U.S. foreign policy towards a reckless isolationism.”

It’s a stunning red hearing!  How someone, with a straight face, can claim Ron Paul, known as Dr. No, the most ideologically consistent Congressman in the U.S., responsible for supplying the impetus behind the national conservative grass roots movement known as the Tea Party, a devout libertarian and reigning world champion of Austrian economics is anything but dead serious about reigning in spending is patently absurd. 

Ron Paul is the only Congressman who has, three times, attempted to repeal the national income tax, the base of the big government beanstalk!  Dr. Paul may want to strengthen the promise of Social Security, to preserve it only for U.S. citizens whom have paid into it and he may want to abolish the taxes, passed under Clinton, on its benefits; he may even want to create personal retirement accounts instead of allowing government to raid the central fund every time they have an itch to spend!  But Ron Paul is one of the few to advocate, “allow[ing]…young people to just flat out get out of the [social security] system.”  My God man, pick up a sample of Ron Paul’s congressional record! 

Paul is beyond reproach when it comes to restraint; he applies this philosophy domestically and consistently in his foreign policy.  He is one of the few.  I whole-heartedly agree with Mr. Fly that Ron Paul:

“bristles at being called an isolationist, preferring the term ‘non-interventionist.’  But a more accurate term would be ‘neutralist.’” 

What is wrong with neutrality?  Switzerland, Sweden and Finland were in the thick of two world wars yet remained relatively unscathed, have we nothing to learn from them?  Are we to relegate them to the 13^th floor of history?  What about Costa Rica?  During the last few decades of ideological tumult in Central and South America, Costa Rica remained consistently productive and peaceful.   

Our Founders couldn’t warn us enough about remaining uninvolved in Europe’s “perpetual warfare.”  They were unbelievably prophetic on this point considering the hordes of metal and munitions that would tear the continent apart nearly 150 years later.  It is not therefore, a giant leap of faith to suggest that our Founders would have also blessed our neutrality with regard to the Middle East.  This was a principled prime directive not a transient notion as neoconservatives and Washington’s national defense cliques would have it.

The most sober analysis one could offer our current foreign policy stance while taking into consideration the statistics cited above and the massive constellation of ancillary private organizations, jointly referred to as the Military Industrial Complex (MIC) is that it is all an entitlement program!  You couldn’t, with any intellectual honsesty claim otherwise.  


In four ways it provides an entitlement: first to those presidents whom wield its power for political gain either through victory or diversion, second to those military and intelligence commanders whom direct massive swaths of tax payer dollars to influence world affairs, third to a high tech industry addicted to generous government injections and lastly to foreign entities whom “invite” our intervention and therefore defense subsidization in order to accomplish what they cannot on their own. 

Mr. Fly mentions the lessons in the "dangers of neutrality" the U.S. was taught in the 20^th century, obliquely referencing the sinking of the Lusitania and Pearl Harbor, two tragedies whose circumstances are quite dubious.  He omits, however, to his own chagrin the more profound lessons we have learned about intervention: WWI (the ramifications of which lead to WWII and the rise of Communism and of Middle East dictatorships), Korea, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, Israel, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and now North Africa and the current "non-genocide" in Libya.  These lessons have and will fill debates (at least mine) and libraries for years to come. 

            There is one poignant truth, however, according to Bruce Fein:

“America is engulfed in perpetual global warfare…There will be no surrender at Appomattox Courthouse or Tokyo Bay…terrorism cannot be killed like Osama Bin Laden, nor can it be confined within geographic limits.  And no political figure will take the risk of announcing the end to the war against international terrorism because the risk of another terrorist incident cannot be reduced to zero.”

In other words, for now, war is peace, has been for ten years and will continue to be in perpetuity or - insolvency, which ever comes first.  But Mssrs. Weinstein and Fly are correct it won't be the MIC's fault, it will be ours.

Nervous Breakdown? 21 Signs That Something Big Is About To Happen In The Financial World

The Economic Collapse
September 9th, 2011

Image Source: TheEconomicCollapse

          Will global financial markets reach a breaking point during the month of October?  Right now there are all kinds of signs that the financial world is about to experience a nervous breakdown.  Massive amounts of investor money is being pulled out of the stock market and mammoth bets are being made against the S&P 500 in October.  The European debt crisis continues to grow even worse and weird financial moves are being made all over the globe.  Does all of this unusual activity indicate that something big is about to happen?  Let's hope not.  But historically, the biggest stock market crashes have tended to happen in the fall.  So are we on the verge of a "Black October"?

The following are 21 signs that something big is about to happen in the financial world and that global financial markets are on the verge of a nervous breakdown....

#1 We are seeing an amazing number of bets against the S&P 500 right now.  According to CNN, the number of bets against the S&P 500 rose to the highest level in a year last month.  But that was nothing compared to what we are seeing for October.  The number of bets against the S&P 500 for the month of October is absolutely astounding.  Somebody is going to make a monstrous amount of money if there is a stock market crash next month.

#2 Investors are pulling a huge amount of money out of stocks right now.  Do they know something that we don't?  The following is from a report in the Financial Post....

Read the rest of The Economic Collapse Blog's story.

Why the "Great Depression" Annoys Me

Topher Morrison

PurpleSerf.com

Image Source: VintageVivant.com

It is like walking into a classroom where the professor is teaching a class about how the Soviet Union put the first man on the moon...  

          It seems as though every time someone refers to the Great Depression they subsequently thank Franklin Delano Roosevelt for literally digging us out of it.  If they don't they invariably annunciate the macroeconomic dogma (the belief that public institutions ought to influence the economy), that the Great Depression "shattered" the previous orthodoxy presumed by our Constitution, that free markets are self correcting.  

          While this may be true, that economic mores radically changed after the turn of the century, to not thoroughly explore why we abandoned over 125 years of tested theory, practices, which raised a feeble constellation of colonies into an unparalleled economic power by 1900 is blatant intellectual disinterest and frankly annoying. 

          The problem with using the Great Depression to bolster the macroeconomic strategies of monetary and fiscal stimulus, favored tools of the new economic vantage, is they were used just before, during, and after the decade long depression and therefore can be included among those suspected influences, which exacerbated what would arguably have otherwise been only a serious recession.  Banking panics prior to 1929 stretching back to the founding never persisted for more than a couple years let alone over a decade!

          Furthermore, the previous orthodoxy's policies, those promulgated by Adam Smith and lain down officially by the Founders, suffered damning blows in 1913 (see Federal Reserve, 16th and 17th Amendments) and were almost all effectively on the bench by 1933.  To blame laissez faire economics, an environment where interactions between private parties are free from government intervention, for the Great Depression and its abnormal longevity is not dissimilar to blaming a sidelined quarterback for his backup's interception and the subsequent touchdown. 

          To be sure, the prospect that public officers could wield control over our economic environment was (and still is) intoxicating and considering what we had achieved since our founding it was a pretty easy sell.  The very idea of control is incredibly self aggrandizing and antithetical to free markets as Adam Smith, the father of capitalism, according to Joyce Appleby: "described an economic universe that was not subject to the laws of the state, but on the contrary, subjected the state to its laws."  In other words, the government can't make the grass green.  We may be able to isolate and explain many parts of an economy because of these known laws, but to expect to steer the fluidity, dynamism, and titanic scope of modern economies with any sort of precision parallels only the naïveté and results of the Sorcerer's Apprentice. 

Image Source: Foroureconomy.org

         The motives for abandoning over a century of limited intervention was not to create an army of patriotic economic sentinels through the Federal Reserve, economic councils, or the alphabet soup of regulatory agencies.  The United States scuttled sound economics because of a newly landed elite's common desire to accomplish what European aristocracy had achieved, government sponsored capitalism also known as "crony capitalism."  It is imperative to understand this was not the necessary evolution of capitalism, quite the opposite, it was a return to feudalistic if not mercantilistic economics! According to W. Cleon Skousen:

“In Europe, certain confederations of wealthy families had gained control of their respective governments and were making a financial killing.  Some of the wealthy families in America coveted the rich government monopolies of their trans-Atlantic cousins.”

          Look no further than J.D. Rockefeller, "competition is a sin."  The "robber barons" of the new world sought to harness central government to wipe out competition, expand their interests, and bail them out in times of need; all on the backs of the American public.  This desire should not be used to deride capitalism and definitely should not be considered laissez faire.

          Capitalism, an economic and political system where trade and industry are controlled solely by private owners, is a novel idea to this world.  The relationship between the state and the economy, until the 1700s, had historically been an intimate one; the nostalgia, therefore, to recapture lost conventions was persuasive.  In the words of Mrs. Appleby:

“…the mores of a more traditional organization of society do not die out with the dominance of capitalism.  Rather they regroup to fight again with new leaders and new causes.  Any history of capitalism must contain the shadowy history of anticapitalism, sometimes carried out in the name of a new theory, but often as a reexpression of values that prevailed before the eighteenth century.”

          This is what was sold to the American working class and all over Europe, a repackaging of benighted policies, by an odd amalgam of interests including, but not limited to eager politicians, "...wealthy industrialists, heads of multi-national banking, leaders in the academic world, and some of the more innovative minds in media" according to Skousen.  While their goals were progressive, as their moniker insinuates, their methods for achieving those goals were in fact regressive.  American aristocracy required a powerful and gullible ally in its quest to fend off the waves of creative destruction inherent within capitalism, the working masses offered that alliance.  From Appleby:

“…critics saw industrialization [brought about by capitalism] as a rapacious transformation engineered by an upstart upper class eager to destroy both the aristocracy and the peasantry, which had once been protected from economic turbulence.” 

         No doubt!  Who wants either peasants or aristocrats in a modern economy?  The new socioeconomic organization of capitalist economies resembled more a tomato than a pyramid, however, the foundation of the New Deal was essentially integrated by the Great Depression even before the legislation by the same name was passed through Congress in 1933.  

         The grand bargain was achieved.  In turn for 8 hour work days, minimum wage, elections for nearly all public officials, social insurance, etc. the elite received the keys to the castle: the Federal Reserve, a public cartel of private banks, introduced plans for a fiat currency and proclaimed their members immortalis corporatus, while an income tax fed their cause and pooled massive wealth under Washington's discretion.  

          By dismantling the Senate and its strict allegiance to the state legislatures a centralized and seemingly endless regulatory bureaucracy arose with the powers to legislate, adjudicate, and enforce most laws and without democratic deliberation beckoned legions of lobbyists.  And the grand prize, an emboldened executive, with what would become the most spectacular military in human history was proffered to carve up the world into spheres of influence under the guise of making the world safe for democracy.

          Here we are over 90 years later still wrangling over similar issues: pensions, benefits, workers rights, depression/recession, and blaming it all on capitalism again while our currency is debased, we prosecute multiple foreign wars and occupy foreign lands, our benefits teeter on the brink of insolvency, while we bail out the aggressive multinational and foreign banks which wrought this travesty upon just us as they did in 1929!

          All of this old baggage rehashed only to fight amongst ourselves over how to pay for it all in some apocalyptical pincer move on what is left of a middle class first created almost a century ago by ideals almost forgotten.

This is the position of a mere serf and why talking about the Great Depression annoys me.

Estonia Set to Overtake US Economy

Topher Morrison
PurpleSerf.com

Estonia might not be large, but it serves as a big lesson
to its neighbors and to the world.
Image Source: Prescottenews.com

This prediction may be more than premature, but this Baltic Tiger has much to teach Europe and the United States about how to grow an economy.  Virtually entirely self sustaining and enjoying robust growth, almost zero debt, and plunging unemployment rates this tiny country is a state apart from a European Union in fiscal tumult and a languishing US. 


          Estonia has had anything, but an easy history.  For roughly 700 years a once independent Estonia served successive conquerors as agrarian serfs until the 1920s when the Estonian government paid off their German landlords and restored home rule.  Estonia decentralized and modernized its economy only to breathe one fresh breath of freedom until the Soviet Union and their former Nazi overlords returned with ghoulish force.  


          After allied victory in World War II the USSR illegally annexed and plundered Estonia, deported tens of thousands, centralized its economy, and sequestered civilians under iron hard tyranny.  A ravaged country, Estonia was finally able to achieve independence in 1991 after the Singing Revolution, which initially featured spontaneous mass choirs singing illegal songs of patriotism and culminated years later in over 2 million people linked hand-in-hand over Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. 


          During the 1990s Estonia embarked on the path of privatization handing over state owned industries to the Estonian people.  In 1995, one year after the last Russian troops left Estonia, the revitalized economy began to grow at 4.6% and skyrocketed in 2007 to 10.4%.  After sustaining a brief contraction of 0.7% in 1999, Estonia from 2000 to 2007 averaged supercharged growth upwards of 8.3%!  


          If you were to dissect this engine of true capitalism (to be contrasted with crony capitalism found in China and the US) you would find that very little of any one part of the economy is favored.  Estonia features a constitutionally mandated balanced budget, the highest levels of internet freedom, one of the world's first flat tax systems (the government has just approved to cut income tax from 21% to 20% by 2015), an open banking system allowing for generous foreign investment, and unlike the United States (sitting on unparalleled and untouched oil reserves) Estonia is self sustaining supplying 90% of their energy from local oil shale.  Aside from the obvious structural and political advantages Estonia benefits from frugal politicians more interested in seeing their country grow than growing their government.  


          The most important characteristic of this economy, however, is its resilience.  Because it is no longer burdened by a centralized economy and slowed down by immense bureaucracy Estonia has shown an uncanny ability to bounce back.  In 2009 the economy plummeted by an abysmal 14%, due to easy lending and over speculation, but as of the first quarter of 2011 the Estonian economy exhibited traditionally strong growth at 8.5% (highest in the EU) and sent its unemployment rate from 18.8% to 13.8%.  While the unemployment remains high, national debt is at a remarkable 6.6% of GDP (lowest in the EU) recently earning Fitch's, a rating agency, A+ rating.  


          Today, the United States Congress just increased its ability to take on more debt by the largest margin in US history.  The fact that US leadership isn't at least taking clues from the mess in Spain, Greece, and Italy who's debts are 60%, 120%, and 142% respectively and are clamoring for bailouts to stave off open revolt is astonishing.  Take a peak at someone else's playbook for once - its not cheating in the real world, its smart.