Forum Post: The Demand for Debt
Posted 8 years ago on July 20, 2016, 11:43 a.m. EST by agkaiser
(2552)
from Fredericksburg, TX
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
The US pushes for NATO build up. Troops and ships in the Baltic and elsewhere hope to provoke Russia to break its economy with a military build up. The Russians say a land army is a waste of money. They have no intention of invading the Baltic region. Instead they've allied with China and depend on nukes for defense. As we deploy to Poland and elsewhere in Eastern Europe, the response time of Russia to a perceived nuclear attack grows shorter. The probability of human survival is directly proportional to that response time. At what chronic margin must Putin decentralize the response command, in order to assure the launch? How many sub-commanders can be expected to maintain cool enough heads to avert a tragedy of errors?
So why are we trying to provoke Russia? It has to do with, among other things, arms sales to the NATO block. Our masters want to keep selling arms to us and our allies and anyone else with good enough credit to borrow the money from them to buy the hardware. That goes for everything else we and our government borrow from them to buy from them.
Conservative politician say they won't tax the rich masters and they'll end government debt too. Fat chance their masters will allow the latter. The rich like making money coming and going and the politicians of both parties, with rare and powerless progressive exceptions among the Democrats, will after all is said, do the bidding of those who own them and most of everything else.
Admittedly, you'll be much happier if you take all they say at face value. If you believe that Russia will invade Poland, encourage the deployment of first strike nukes there. Maybe they'll take out the Russian retaliatory capability before it can be launched. After all, they aren't unstable enough to launch the first first strike. Are they?
I wonder if the rich masters plan to take farmers and other worker/servants into their bunkers to make their utopia possible after Armageddon? Will the new feudal reality be the surviving lords and their perpetual dependents? Is that prospect really much different, except by more perfect decentralization (state's/individual master's rights to virtually enslave local citizens) and scale, than what we have today under the thumbs of Wall St. oligarchs?
''When systems crumble and their critics divide into the two camps, the reformists usually prevail before the system-changers have their opportunity. In the longer run, we know from history, both the slave and feudal systems (the slave-master and the lord-serf workplace relationships) .. were largely abolished. Is capitalism, the employer-employee relationship, now also crumbling?'' - from ...
''When Systems Crumble: Looking Beyond Global Capitalism'' .. by Prof. R.D.Wolff: http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/37157-when-systems-crumble-looking-beyond-global-capitalism & in #S17 Solidarity & also by Prof.RDW maybe try to consider this audio link:
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/37635-economic-update-worker-co-ops-vs-capitalism
omnia mutantur ...
''We are not in a recovery and we’re not really in a traditional recession. People think of a business cycle, which is a boom followed by a recession and then automatic stabilizers revive the economy. But this time we can’t revive. The reason is that every recovery since 1945 has begun with a higher, and higher level of debt. The debt is so high now, that since 2008 we’ve been in what I call, debt deflation. People have to pay so much money to the banks that they don’t have enough money to buy the goods and services they produce. So there’s not much new investment, there’s not new employment (except minimum-wage “service” jobs), markets are shrinking, and people are defaulting. So many companies can’t pay their banks.
''The banks’ product is debt. They try to tell customers that “debts are good for you,” but the customers can’t afford any more debt, so there’s no way the banks can continue their current business plan. In fact, there’s no way that banks can be paid everything that they’re owed. That’s what the IMF doesn’t follow through its analysis, by saying, “Look, the banks are broke because the financial system is broke; and the financial system is broke because the whole idea of trying to get rich by running into debt doesn’t work.”
''It was a false model. So really, we’re at the end of long cycle that began in 1945, loading the economy with debt. We’re not going to be able to get out of it until you write down the debts. But that’s what the IMF believes is unthinkable. It can’t say that, because it’s supposed to represent the interest of the banks. So all the IMF can say is to wring their hands over the fact that the banks won’t make money even if there is a recovery.
''But there really isn’t a recovery, and no signs of it on the horizon, because people have to pay the banks. It’s a vicious circle – or rather, a downward spiral. Basically, the IMF economists are just throwing up their hands and admitting that they don’t know what to do, given the limits of their tunnel vision.'' - from ...
fiat lux ...
''The Brewing Collapse of the Western Monetary System'', by Peter Koenig:
''It is high time for the freedom loving world to move out from under the boots of the empire; that we return to a multi-polar world of equals, that the international agencies we created to serve humanity are freed from the claws of their hijackers in Washington and those who command Washington, that the UN and its specialized agencies, as well as the International Criminal Court – even the Olympic Committee – may operate according to their peoples’ given mandates, that they may operate without the oppressive fist of Washington dictating them their terms. ‘Economics of Peace’ under a new egalitarian monetary system may lead humanity to freedom and prosperity for all.''
e tenebris, lux ...
''Debt and Austerity: Greece Continues to Be Sucked Dry'', by Peter Koenig:
And also consider:''Building a Progressive International''by Yanis Varoufakis:
radix omnium malorum est cupiditas ...