Tag Archive | "xrb"

Risk of Global Financial Freeze-up Rising

Tags: , , ,


If you thought it couldn’t happen again, get ready: A new global finan­cial freeze-up could be straight ahead.

It’s too bad that eco­nomics, trade, finance, etc., are such boring topics to most people. Well, they actu­ally are boring because they are hard to under­stand, fraught with erro­neous data, and dif­fi­cult to relate to per­sonal circumstances.

By neces­sity, most Amer­i­cans are con­cerned with their own crit­ical prob­lems, like paying the mort­gage, keeping their job and holding their fam­i­lies together. That’s under­stand­able. In spite of the rosy spin on eco­nomic data, the middle class con­tinues to get squashed.

In Jan­uary 2013, 23,087,866 house­holds received food stamps. That’s 889,154 more house­holds than Jan­uary 2012. Given that there are some 115,310,000 house­holds in the U.S., it means that a full 20 per­cent of America cannot ade­quately feed itself.

lfpr

The above chart shows the Labor Force Par­tic­i­pa­tion Rate (LFPR) since 2000, when the baby-boomer demo­graphic dynamic kicked in. The red line is simply the demo­graphic ele­ment, while the blue line is the actual par­tic­i­pa­tion rate. Since 2000, the actual rate has declined from 67.3 per­cent to 63.3 and since the reces­sion, has sig­nif­i­cantly plunged below the “norm.” The LFTR has fallen back to a level not seen since 1980.

What­ever the reason might be for someone who leaves the work­force (retire­ment, gave up looking, dis­ability) the fact is that since the reces­sion, there has been no real employ­ment recovery, and things con­tinue to get worse, not better.

Not unex­pect­edly, the increase in food stamp recip­i­ents just about matches employ­ment dropouts. If this is the case, then there are a mul­ti­tude of other sta­tis­tics that would follow along: Med­ical pay­ments, unem­ploy­ment, wel­fare pay­ments, etc.

What­ever fragile uptick in eco­nomic activity that might have occurred in the last 24 months, it hasn’t been been enough to reverse the dete­ri­o­ra­tion of the middle class and the swelling of those on poverty roles.

America is not iso­lated in this expe­ri­ence. Europe, China, Aus­tralia, India, Brazil, Japan, etc., are gen­er­ally worse off than we are. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard writes in The Tele­graph (UK):

The closely-watched ISM index of US fac­to­ries tum­bled through the “boom-bust line” of 50 to 49, far below expec­ta­tions. It is the lowest since the depths of the crisis in mid-2009 and a clear sign that US budget cuts are starting to squeeze the economy. New orders plunged 3.5 to 48.8 on weak for­eign demand and reduced fed­eral contracts.

The news came hours after HSBC said its index for China also fell below 50, a major inflexion point for the world’s indus­trial workshop.

“This is not a good moment for the world economy,” said David Bloom, cur­rency chief at HSBC. “The man­u­fac­turing indices came in weaker than expected in China, Korea, India and Russia, and then we got America’s ISM.

“We thought we had a clear pic­ture that the US was recov­ering, Japan was printing money and were we’re back to happy days, and now sud­denly a huge spanner [wrench] has been thrown in the works.”

On June 2, Bloomberg reported that “Global Inter­bank Lending Falls to Record Low, BIS Reports.” The fra­ternal global banking com­mu­nity is har­boring a mutual dis­trust as they wonder who will implode and leave them with huge losses. It’s get­ting pro­gres­sively worse as cur­rency and interest rate wars heat up. The liq­uidity crisis of 2007 – 2008 was caused by the same type of dis­trust, when banks refused to lend to each other.

Liq­uidity in the global finan­cial system is like oil to a car engine: If it drains out, the engine will freeze up and burn. With eco­nomic malaise infecting the entire global economy, the entire engine of the global economy is at risk of seizing up, which could push the entire system into deep reces­sion or even depression.

Adding to the strain is the sharp rise in interest rates on a global basis, and espe­cially in the U.S. The Fed’s policy of lower interest rates is being tor­pe­doed by market forces, putting it at risk for huge port­folio losses. Why? because all of its Quan­ti­ta­tive Easing pro­gram involves pur­chasing and holding Trea­sury bonds, bills, notes and mortgage-backed secu­ri­ties, in return for which the Trea­sury received cash. When rates go up, the value of bonds declines. As of June 5, 2013, the Fed’s com­bined bal­ance sheet was valued at $3.43 trillion.

Here’s the dilemma: The Fed is trapped. If it were to stop pur­chasing addi­tional Trea­sury oblig­a­tions, then QE would be offi­cially over and the mar­kets would crash. If it con­tinues its pur­chasing pro­gram and swells its bal­ance sheet, it is guar­an­teeing itself even more future losses. If it were to sell any por­tion of its port­folio, it would suck liq­uidity (cash) out of the banking system and cause the mar­kets to crash even harder.

The global banks are in a sim­ilar dilemma since they are also hold huge amounts of gov­ern­ment debt that will decline in value as rates rise. Banks have ignored this risk since the last finan­cial crisis of 2007 – 2008, but it will bite them hard this time around. If major banks start dumping their bonds into the open market, it will risk causing a panic sell-off with other bond owners.

Those policy-makers who think that we will “grow our way out” of this will soon come face to face with the hard data of reces­sion – there isn’t going to be any growth! To the con­trary, the global economy is con­tracting. Any fur­ther decrease in liq­uidity, for what­ever reason, may well cause another “Lehman Brothers moment” where the whole finan­cial system simply freezes up.

— —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  — –
Note: Addi­tional con­tent on this page is avail­able only to Pre­mium sub­scribers of Find­ings & Fore­casts.
To sub­scribe, please click here.

VN:R_U [1.9.22_1171]
Rating: 0.0/5 (0 votes cast)

Trilateral Commission Continues to Dominate Obama

Tags: , , ,


Find­ings & Fore­casts 06/05/2013

The posi­tion of National Secu­rity Adviser acts like a gate keeper to the Pres­i­dent. This fact has never been lost on the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion, where Zbig­niew Brzezinski was National Secu­rity Adviser to Pres­i­dent Jimmy Carter in 1976. Brzezinski chore­o­graphed Carter‘s every move, even brag­ging about it years later.

When it comes to national secu­rity issues (over­seas and domestic), nothing reaches the President’s eyes or ears without being fil­tered and screened by his Adviser. You can imagine pos­si­bility for manip­u­la­tion if the NSA has a secret agenda to use the Pres­i­dent in order to pro­mote goals favor­able to the mem­ber­ship of a pri­vate organization.

When Obama first took office, he appointed 12 per­cent of the U.S. Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion mem­ber­ship to top posts. Three of these posts related to national security:

  • National Secu­rity Adviser, Gen. James L. Jones
  • Deputy National Secu­rity Adviser, Thomas Donilon
  • Director of National Intel­li­gence, Admiral Dennis C. Blair

When Jones stepped down in October 2010, Tri­lat­eral Thomas Donilon was pro­moted to National Secu­rity Adviser, where he has served until he announced his res­ig­na­tion today.

Alas, that is not the end of Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion hege­mony over Obama. His new appointee? None other than Susan Rice, also a member of the Tri­lat­eral Commission.

Rice has been a key policy adviser to Obama since before he even took office. As Ambas­sador to the United Nations, Rice infa­mously presided over the pro­pa­ganda sur­rounding the Beng­hazi ter­rorist attack, which caused her to with­draw from con­sid­er­a­tion for appoint­ment to Sec­re­tary of State to replace Hillary Clinton (Bill Clinton was a member). Rice knew that her Senate con­fir­ma­tion hear­ings would not only be unsuc­cessful, but would force her to answer ques­tions, under oath, regarding her role in Benghazi.

As National Secu­rity Adviser, Senate con­fir­ma­tion for Rice is not required – she will simply take over the posi­tion without fur­ther fan­fare in early July.

The old guard Tri­lat­erals such as Zbig­niew Brzezinski, David Rock­e­feller and Henry Kissinger, are cer­tainly gloating over the unre­strained igno­rance of the Amer­ican public. After all, Tri­lat­erals  have dom­i­nated and con­trolled every pres­i­dent since Jimmy Carter in 1976. Walter Mon­dale, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Al Gore and Dick Cheney were all mem­bers, and loaded their respec­tive high-level posi­tions with other Trilaterals.

What is wrong with this pic­ture? When Lin­coln closed his famous Get­tys­burg Address with the words, the “gov­ern­ment of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth”, he had never met the likes of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion. This pri­vate and elite group of glob­al­ists would more likely say to them­selves, “gov­ern­ment of the Com­mis­sion, by the Com­mis­sion and for the Commission.

Var­ious sto­ries have recently appeared recently that feign out­rage over paid access to the Pres­i­dent. That is, given a cer­tain level of cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions, a person can actu­ally secure a few min­utes with the Pres­i­dent one-on-one.  Talk about straining over a gnat while swal­lowing a camel: The Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion has mul­tiple points of 24×7 access to the Pres­i­dent and has had it for decades. Express con­cern over this and you will be handed a tin­foil hat while being made to sit in the corner.

There is another aspect to Rice’s appoint­ment to National Secu­rity Adviser – she will imme­di­ately fall under Obama’s “exec­u­tive priv­i­lege” defense to gain immu­nity that will let her skip tes­ti­fying before Con­gress on the Beng­hazi affair. Every­thing she touches from here on will be shrouded under the cloak of national security.

Tech­noc­racy Update

The fifth require­ment nec­es­sary for the imple­men­ta­tion of Tech­noc­racy was recorded in the Tech­noc­racy Study Course in 1932: “Pro­vide spe­cific reg­is­tra­tion of the con­sump­tion of each indi­vidual, plus a record and descrip­tion of the individual.”

His­toric Tech­noc­racy was the direct inspi­ra­tion for Huxley’s Brave New World and Orwell’s Nine­teen Eighty Four.  If you have never read these books, you should do so imme­di­ately. This is where we are headed and at break­neck speed. There is no turning back.

It has now been revealed that the Obama Admin­is­tra­tion has ordered, via secret court order, at least one major cell phone car­rier, Ver­izon, to turn over all phone call infor­ma­tion to the National Secu­rity Agency (NSA). This sur­veil­lance is specif­i­cally tar­geting Amer­ican citizens.

Sto­ries abound. The Atlantic Wire head­lines “Phone Sex, Banks & Google for Emails: The NSA Spying Is Bigger Than Ver­izon“:

“The National Secu­rity Agency’s war­rant for meta­data on every single Ver­izon call for three months is jaw-dropping in its scope. Except, well, the NSA’s sur­veil­lance of our com­mu­ni­ca­tions is most likely much, much bigger than that. Tech­nology has made it pos­sible for the Amer­ican gov­ern­ment to spy on cit­i­zens to an extent East Ger­many could only dream of. Basi­cally every­thing we say that can be traced dig­i­tally is being col­lected by the NSA. We’re sup­posed to trust that our gov­ern­ment will be much better behaved, but they’re not, and the White House almost admits it. That doesn’t mean they’re admit­ting everything.”

The NSA is not only col­lecting phone calls, but also bank trans­fers, finan­cial records, emails, travel records, social media com­mu­ni­ca­tions, health records and more. All of this will soon be housed in the NSA’s new mega-data-center in Utah, where a 5-zettabyte storage facility will be com­pleted this fall. All of the known dig­ital infor­ma­tion in the world is believed to be only about 2.7 zettabytes, so the NSA has big plans to spy on you. In fact, they will know more about you than you know about yourself.

The fol­lowing video by John White­head of the Ruther­ford Insti­tute expresses some of these concerns.

 

— —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  — –
Note: Addi­tional con­tent on this page is avail­able only to Pre­mium sub­scribers of Find­ings & Fore­casts.
To sub­scribe, please click here.

VN:R_U [1.9.22_1171]
Rating: 0.0/5 (0 votes cast)

Global Elite Fears: Currency Wars and Deflation

Tags: , , , , ,


Find­ings & Fore­casts 05/29/2013

Sys­temic eco­nomic decline begets credit con­trac­tion, leading to defla­tion, cur­rency wars and finally, phys­ical war.

In 2002, one noted econ­o­mist wrote “Ignore the ghost of defla­tion.” Another stated that “Defla­tion is an overblown worry.”

On November 21, 2002, then-Fed Gov­ernor Ben Bernanke spoke to the National Econ­o­mists Club in Wash­ington, D.C. about “Defla­tion: Making Sure ‘It’ Doesn’t Happen Here. He started with this premise: “With infla­tion rates now quite low in the United States, how­ever, some have expressed con­cern that we may soon face a new problem – the danger of defla­tion, or falling prices.”

Now, of all people, Bernanke knew full well that the mea­sure of defla­tion is not falling prices, but rather the con­trac­tion of overall credit which may or may not prompt falling prices. The rest of his speech argued against falling prices but did little to address credit contraction.

Nev­er­the­less, he gave two prin­cipal rea­sons on why the U.S. would not expe­ri­ence defla­tion in coming years:

  1. The first was the “resilience and struc­tural sta­bility” of the U.S. economy itself.
  2. The second was the Fed­eral Reserve System itself.

With an apparent atti­tude of over­con­fi­dence, Bernanke then stated,

“I am con­fi­dent that the Fed would take what­ever means nec­es­sary to pre­vent sig­nif­i­cant defla­tion in the United States and, more­over, that the U.S. cen­tral bank, in coop­er­a­tion with other parts of the gov­ern­ment as needed, has suf­fi­cient policy instru­ments to ensure that any defla­tion that might occur would be both mild and brief.

“…Thus, as I have stressed already, pre­ven­tion of defla­tion remains prefer­able to having to cure it. If we do fall into defla­tion, how­ever, we can take com­fort that the logic of the printing press example must assert itself, and suf­fi­cient injec­tions of money will ulti­mately always reverse a defla­tion.[emphasis added]

In 2013, we can look back over the last 11 years to see how accu­rate Bernanke’s analysis was. The Fed’s easy credit poli­cies cre­ated the biggest housing bubble and sub­se­quent bursting since the Great Depres­sion of the 1930′s. It pushed its internal interest rates to near-zero, pumped tril­lions of dol­lars of liq­uidity into the banking system. Even though some eco­nomic improve­ment has been seen in the last three years (in cer­tain sec­tors, at least), our overall economy has sta­tis­ti­cally made very little progress.

Where has all of the Fed’s new money gone?

cash balances vs reserves

In the above chart, Zero Hedge shows the dis­tri­b­u­tion of QE money landing in small banks (blue), large U.S. banks (red) and for­eign banks (yellow). (The chart can be enlarged for better viewing) The cor­re­la­tion here is 100 per­cent! For all those who are shaking their fist at domestic banks like JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Cit­i­group, etc., they would be shocked to see that con­sid­er­able more didn’t ben­efit U.S. banks at all!

So, let me ask the ques­tion: Has Bernanke’s clan­des­tine bailout of (pri­marily) Euro­pean banks saved Europe? The answer, of course, is “No.” Europe is offi­cially in reces­sion again, with sev­eral coun­tries still on the verge of eco­nomic col­lapse and depression.

Thus, the tools that Bernanke thought the Fed had, were illu­sory. For all the bluster, jaw­boning and arm-twisting, the Fed has proven impo­tent on all levels of oper­a­tion. The defla­tion scare orig­i­nally pro­duced because of Japan during the 1990′s con­tinues unabated, and the global eco­nomic system is mea­sur­ably weaker and dys­func­tional today than in 2002.

Cur­rency Wars

Why would I bother to even bring this up? I believe these events are forcing the global elite to change tac­tics, if not strategy, to achieve their beloved “New World Order.” They are extremely wor­ried that market forces are stronger than their ability to manip­u­late, and that the end result could set them back by sev­eral decades.

What now con­cerns the elite the most is the expan­sion of cur­rency wars which have been enabled and exac­er­bated by dys­func­tional cap­ital flows as described above. His­tor­i­cally, cur­rency wars are the out­come of a shrinking economy where nation-states must com­pete for a dwin­dling share of the global economy. Fur­ther­more, cur­rency wars invari­ably pre­cede real wars, as was the case in both WWI and WWII. This is not lost on the global elite.

As the dollar has been ral­lying sharply higher in recent weeks, a host of arti­cles has appeared heralding the death of the dollar. One writer recently stated, “For years now, the col­lapse of the dollar has been in the cards.” He doesn’t say who owns the cards or who the dealer is. CNBC asks today, “Is the Dollar Dying? Why US Cur­rency is in Danger:” “The U.S dollar is shrinking as a per­centage of the world’s cur­rency supply, raising con­cerns that the green­back is about to see its long run as the world’s pre­mier denom­i­na­tion come to an end.

Let me set the record straight. The dollar is not dying. How­ever, the reason it is rising in value has nothing to do with some inherent good­ness in the U.S. economy or the color green. Rather, it has to do with cur­rency wars where other nations are trying to devalue their own cur­ren­cies at the expense of the dollar. They go down, we go up. All of the Fed’s efforts to drive the dollar down (Yes, the Fed would be a cur­rency manip­u­lator too) have failed, pri­marily because the Fed is not greater than the com­bined dozens of nations who des­per­ately want to devalue.

Fred BergstenThis leads us to examine a recent lec­ture by C. Fred Berg­sten, senior fellow and director emer­itus of the Peterson Insti­tute for Inter­na­tional Eco­nomics. Berg­sten was an orig­inal founding member of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion, and one of the prin­cipal early archi­tects of the “New Inter­na­tional Eco­nomic Order” that it espoused. Bergsten’s major con­cern is revealed in his paper’s title – “Cur­rency Wars, The Economy of the United States And Reform Of The Inter­na­tional Mon­e­tary System.” He con­cludes his lengthy talk by stating,

“I would like to close with a his­tor­ical foot­note from over 40 years ago that bears some resem­blance to where we stand today. Four days after the Nixon shocks of August 1971, their archi­tect John Con­nally asked four out­siders (I had left the gov­ern­ment a few months ear­lier) to spend most of a day with him and his top team, led by Paul Vol­cker, at the Trea­sury. He began by saying “you know what we have done, please tell us what we should do next” – at which point I really began to worry! He then per­son­ally led us through six hours of intense dis­cus­sion, during which I stressed the oppor­tu­ni­ties they had cre­ated for sys­temic reform – espe­cially moving to flex­ible exchange rates. It became increas­ingly clear that Con­nally did not have sys­temic goals in mind, how­ever, and he finally brought the ses­sion to a close with the fol­lowing state­ment: “I appre­ciate the advice from you gen­tlemen and want to share my own phi­los­ophy with you before we break up: the for­eigners are out to screw us and our job is to screw them first. Thank you and goodbye.”

“Having spent most of the pre­vious three years as Henry Kissinger’s deputy for for­eign eco­nomic policy, I thought I was fairly sophis­ti­cated about the ways of both Wash­ington and the world – but even I was stunned by Connally’s xeno­phobia (which I imme­di­ately con­veyed to Kissinger, who had not been aware of it, but that is another story). The rel­e­vance to today is of course that some of the for­eigners have again been screwing the United States (and much of the world), to use Connally’s col­orful ter­mi­nology. The choice, now as then, is whether to respond nation­al­is­ti­cally and uni­lat­er­ally or sys­tem­i­cally and mul­ti­lat­er­ally – or, as is most likely, a com­bi­na­tion of the two, hope­fully with a clear strategic deci­sion to use national actions to achieve global reform. Our goal must be to start resolving these cru­cial prob­lems by reforming the global system deci­sively before the arrival of the next John Connally.

“Addressing another vital issue of US national interest in which China also plays a cen­tral role, cyber­se­cu­rity, Pres­i­dent Obama used these words in his State of the Union mes­sage in Feb­ruary: “We cannot look back years from now and wonder why we did nothing!” I would submit that we should adopt the same atti­tude toward wide­spread cur­rency manip­u­la­tion, which vio­lates the most basic pre­cepts of the inter­na­tional eco­nomic system while destroying growth and jobs in our own economy and in numerous other coun­tries. The time for action has clearly come. It is time to declare war on the cur­rency wars. [emphasis added] [Ed. Note: Kissinger and Vol­cker ware also mem­bers of the Tri­lat­eral Commission]

The inten­sity of Bergsten’s con­cern is easily detected throughout his paper, but the derailing of his glob­alist agenda is the major point. Bergsten’s orig­inal and naive design for “flex­ible exchange rates” is being scut­tled by greedy, selfish and self-centered for­eigners who have imple­mented cur­rency wars against each other and the United States.

It is ironic that orig­inal mem­bers of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion had no problem pil­laging and plun­dering the world back in 1973, but when they get “screwed” (his word, not mine) by “some of the for­eigners” in 2013, it’s cause for national alarm. It is also ironic that while mem­bers of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion eschewed the Con­sti­tu­tion, the nation-state and national sov­er­eignty back then, they look to the same nation-state today for relief.

A large part of the global elite’s para­noia stems from their fear of global and uncon­trolled war. Along the lines of Schumpeter’s theory of Cre­ative Destruc­tion, regional and local con­flicts are con­trol­lable – and thus prof­itable – but unre­strained war ends up destroying the means of production.

Few, if any, Amer­i­cans would wish for war, but we should realize that if cur­rency wars are not con­tained, phys­ical con­flict will follow. While it may appear that we are lined with the global elite on cur­rency wars, our motives could not be fur­ther apart. We seek freedom and lib­erty: They seek global domination.

— —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  — –
Note: Addi­tional con­tent on this page is avail­able only to Pre­mium sub­scribers of Find­ings & Fore­casts.
To sub­scribe, please click here.

 

VN:R_U [1.9.22_1171]
Rating: 0.0/5 (0 votes cast)

Technocracy And The Making of China

Tags: , , , , , , , ,


Find­ings & Fore­casts 05/22/2013

It was no mis­take of his­tory that China trans­formed from a Com­mu­nist dic­ta­tor­ship into a neo-authoritarian Technocracy.

In this regard, the influ­ence of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion, its mem­bers and poli­cies on the world stage can hardly be quan­ti­fied. The Com­mis­sion, founded by David Rock­e­feller and Zbig­niew Brzezinski in 1973, drew mem­ber­ship from North America, Europe and Japan. Out of approx­i­mately 300 mem­bers, only 86 were orig­i­nally from the United States, and yet they cor­po­rately devised and pushed poli­cies that suited the entire mem­ber­ship, and did so under a vir­tual cloak of invis­i­bility that lasts even into 2013.

Today, we reap the “ben­e­fits” of Tri­lat­eral manip­u­la­tion. The Euro­pean economy is trashed, Japan’s economy is still smol­dering from the mid-1990′s and the U.S. is much worse off today than in the late 1960′s. But, the polit­ical sys­tems of these coun­tries are not much better off than their economies. The fruit of decay in the United States is painfully evi­dent with a frac­tured and con­tentious politic that defies rec­on­cil­i­a­tion on even the most minor issues.

My friends at Coali­tion for a Pros­perous America and Economy in Crisis, among others, are working hard to offset messed-up trade poli­cies that put Amer­ican industry in the toilet over the last 30 years. As long as we have some freedom of speech left, orga­ni­za­tions like these are a wel­come voice, even if they are shouted down by the global free-trade cartel.

How­ever, people need to know where and how this all started, and who was respon­sible for it. Only by under­standing the gen­esis of glob­al­iza­tion can modern eco­nomics, pol­i­tics and social trends be under­stood. Can anyone say, “Pin the tail on the donkey?”

Thirty-five years ago, in the November 1978 and April 1979 issues of Tri­lat­eral Observer, Antony C. Sutton and myself wrote the fol­lowing analysis on China. We warned of the dis­as­trous effects that would result if these poli­cies moved for­ward, and we thor­oughly exposed the mem­bers of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion who were almost solely respon­sible for China’s ascen­dent rise as a world power. That no one lis­tened at the time is self-evident, because nothing changed and no one resisted. (For clar­i­fi­ca­tion, names of Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion mem­bers are in bold type.)

Tri­lat­eral China Policy

DengXiaopingThe policy of “nor­mal­iza­tion” of rela­tions with Com­mu­nist China – in effect a pro­gram to build China tech­no­log­i­cally into a super power – was imple­mented by Zbig­niew Brzezinski.

A high ranking Admin­is­tra­tion source is reported as saying: “This was Zbig’s baby more than anyone else’s.:

From out­side the White House (from a top policy maker who gen­er­ally sides with Cyrus Vance):

“Zbig is really riding high now. He had the cen­tral role behind the scenes, and he was all alone in the press play. I’m told the Pres­i­dent thinks Zbig did 99 per­cent of the work on China.”

More likely, how­ever, the China policy was for­mu­lated and imple­mented by a Tri­lat­er­alist troika: Jimmy Carter, Cyrus Vance and Brzezinski. And this policy was only a con­tin­u­a­tion of a policy begun under a “Repub­lican” Admin­is­tra­tion, that of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, another Trilateralist.

The heady effect that these vast policy making exer­cises have on these men, almost an infan­tile reac­tion, is well reported in the Wash­ington Post on Feb­ruary 8, 1979 with the head­line, China Policy: A Born-Again Brzezinski, describing how Brzezinski excit­edly describes his meeting with Teng [aka Deng Xiaoping]:

FEBURARY 1979 — The eyes sparkle with excite­ment even days later. The arms erupt in sudden sweeping ges­tures when he talks about it. And that causes the photos — about a dozen of them — to fly out of Zbig­niew Brzezinski’s hands and scatter over the floor of his office as he is speaking.

 ”Here’s Cy… and here I am… and there is Teng right between us…. “

 Brzezinski is talking in that quick. clipped, excited style that is his way, and he is pointing at one photo that remains in his hand while he bends to scoop up the rest, talking all the while.

 ”It’s amazing, when you think of it. The leader of a bil­lion people — having dinner in my house just two hours after he arrived in this country!

 ”I mean, it really is rather amazing!”

brzezinski-deng

Zbig­niew Brzezinski (left) and Deng Xiaoping (right) – 1979

Tri­lat­er­al­ists And The China Trade

An example of the influ­ence of a mere handful of Tri­lat­er­al­ists in cre­ating self-serving poli­cies many thou­sands of miles from the United States, can be illus­trated by a recent con­fer­ence in Japan.

In early Feb­ruary 1979 a sym­po­sium on the China Trade was spon­sored by the Japanese news­paper Nihon Keizai. The few speakers were mainly Tri­lat­er­al­ists, and the Tri­lat­erals agreed with one anothers’ pro­posals thus cre­ating a power bloc. Reporting in the U.S., the Wash­ington Post (Feb­ruary 9, 1979) cited only Tri­lat­er­alist speakers.

The key Japanese speaker was Tri­lat­er­alist Kiichiro Kitaura, Chairman of Numuru Secu­ri­ties Com­pany, Ltd.

What were Kitaura’s pro­posals? They were:

  • Inter­na­tion­alize the yen
  • Con­sul­ta­tions and coop­er­a­tion between Japanese and Amer­ican busi­nessmen on ways to pen­e­trate the Chi­nese market
  • “Blending” Japanese and Amer­ican technology

Of course, Kitaura thor­oughly agreed with fellow Tri­lat­er­alist Philip Trezise (from Brook­ings Insti­tu­tion) that Japan’s large cur­rent account sur­plus should be invested abroad and not in Japan. Trezise was backed by another Amer­ican Tri­lat­er­alist, Peter G. Peterson, Chairman of Lehman Brothers, Kuhn Loeb, Inc., who, like Kitaura, urged more Japanese trade.

In brief, this impor­tant con­fer­ence was dom­i­nated by Tri­lat­er­alist thinking, and that was the only thinking reported, yet on the sur­face the Tri­lat­eral link is not apparent to the lay reader.

 Tri­lat­eral Buildup of Com­mu­nist China

Tri­lat­erals pro­pose to build up Com­mu­nist China. Tri­lat­er­alist policy is clear cut. The West must aid the con­struc­tion of Com­mu­nist China: this is expressed in An Overview of East-West Rela­tions (Tri­angle Paper No. 15, p. 57) as follows:

“To grant China favor­able con­di­tions in eco­nomic rela­tions is def­i­nitely in the polit­ical interest of the West” adding “…there seems to exist suf­fi­cient ways for aiding China in accept­able forms with advanced civilian technology.”

Tri­angle paper 15 also adds:

“The sit­u­a­tion is dif­ferent… where arms sup­plies or advanced mil­i­tary tech­nolo­gies are con­cerned, except for types of equip­ment that by their nature serve purely defen­sive pur­poses.” (p. 58)

In fact, as we shall see later, Tri­lat­eral firms have exported even advanced mil­i­tary tech­nology to Com­mu­nist China.

Fur­ther, as part of one world, Tri­lat­er­al­ists see an ulti­mate merging of free enter­prise Taiwan with the Com­mu­nist main­land. Even more remark­able, the paper envis­ages that Com­mu­nist China will return to an expan­sionist aggres­sive policy under two conditions:

  1. as Com­mu­nist China “gets stronger,”
  2. if rela­tions with the Soviets are “normalized.”

The paper adds, “already now, the activity of Com­mu­nist Guer­rillas in Thai­land and Malaysia, linked to each other and looking to China, per­sists and even seem to be on the increase.” (page 59)

So far as Com­mu­nist China is con­cerned, we may con­clude that Trilaterals:

  • Want to build Com­mu­nist China into a mil­i­tary superpower,
  • wish to do this with the full and clear under­standing that China will likely resume its expan­sionist course in the Far East, and
  • are willing to sub­si­dize guer­rilla activ­i­ties sin Thai­land and Malaysia (much of the “civilian tech­nology” cur­rently being trans­ferred has use­ful­ness for guer­rilla warfare.)

Tech­noc­racy Recognized

The transfer of tech­nology was a key aspect of early Tri­lat­eral policy. Admit­tedly, their stated goal of “fos­tering a New Inter­na­tional Eco­nomic Order” was not fully under­stood in 1978 – 79. How­ever, by June 2001, at least one writer for Time Mag­a­zine (con­nected with the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion, by the way) got it per­fectly in Made in China: The Revenge of the Nerds:  China had been con­verted into a Tech­noc­racy! According to the author, Kaiser Kuo:

The nerds are run­ning the show in today’s China. In the twenty years since Deng Xiaoping’s [Ed. Note: count back­ward to 1978 – 79] reforms kicked in, the com­po­si­tion of the Chi­nese lead­er­ship has shifted markedly in favor of tech­nocrats. …It’s no exag­ger­a­tion to describe the cur­rent regime as a tech­noc­racy.

After the Maoist mad­ness abated and Deng Xiaoping inau­gu­rated the opening and reforms that began in late 1978, sci­en­tific and tech­nical intel­lec­tuals were among the first to be reha­bil­i­tated. Real­izing that they were the key to the Four Mod­ern­iza­tions embraced by the reformers, con­certed efforts were made to bring the “experts” back into the fold.

During the 1980s, tech­noc­racy as a con­cept was much talked about, espe­cially in the con­text of so-called “Neo-Authoritarianism” — the prin­ciple at the heart of the “Asian Devel­op­mental Model” that South Korea, Sin­ga­pore, and Taiwan had pur­sued with apparent suc­cess. The basic beliefs and assump­tions of the tech­nocrats were laid out quite plainly: Social and eco­nomic prob­lems were akin to engi­neering prob­lems and could be under­stood, addressed, and even­tu­ally solved as such.

The open hos­tility to reli­gion that Bei­jing exhibits at times — most notably in its obses­sive drive to stamp out the “evil cult” of Falun Gong — has pre-Marxist roots. Sci­en­tism under­lies the post-Mao tech­noc­racy, and it is the ortho­doxy against which here­sies are mea­sured. [Emphasis added]

Thus, during the 1980′s Tech­noc­racy (and sci­en­tism) took deep root not only in China, but also in South Korea, Sin­ga­pore and Taiwan. Sim­ilar gains were seen in Europe during the 1990′s and in the United States since 1973.  The Tri­lat­eral Commission’s utopian “New Inter­na­tional Eco­nomic Order” is Tech­noc­racy, and China was the first modern exper­i­ment and trans­for­ma­tion. And, why not China? Dealing with a single Com­mu­nist dic­tator was a lot easier than dealing with a par­lia­ment, con­gress or senate in more demo­c­ratic nations.  The so-called “Neo-Authoriarianism” men­tioned above is ample evi­dence that the cham­pions of Tech­noc­racy knew full-well that it would be easier to trans­form an already author­i­tarian nation into neo-authoriarianism one; in fact, as far back as 1932, orig­inal mem­bers of Tech­noc­racy, Inc. in the U.S. called for a dic­ta­tor­ship in the U.S. in order to imple­ment Technocracy.

This is the rest of the story, of which I was a keen observer at the time. What I lacked in edu­ca­tion and aca­d­emic dis­ci­pline was amply shored up by the con­sum­mate researcher and scholar, Antony Sutton, who was a pro­fessor of eco­nomics and a research fellow at Stanford’s pres­ti­gious Hoover Insti­tu­tion for War Peace and Rev­o­lu­tion in Cal­i­fornia. Sutton is widely rec­og­nized as most detailed and pro­lific writer in the 20th cen­tury on the transfer of tech­nology from the West to the East.

— —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  — –
Note: Addi­tional con­tent on this page is avail­able only to Pre­mium sub­scribers of Find­ings & Fore­casts.
To sub­scribe, please click here.

 

VN:R_U [1.9.22_1171]
Rating: 0.0/5 (0 votes cast)

Findings & Forecasts 05/15/2013

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,


Economy

With three con­cur­rent and major gov­ern­ment scan­dals filling the media, very few people will pay atten­tion or care about the eco­nomic con­ta­gion spreading throughout Europe, but they should.

One cer­tain out­come of Obama’s chaotic Admin­is­tra­tion is grid­lock. With Con­gress on the warpath, every bureau­crat at every level will be in hiding so as to not draw atten­tion to them­selves. This means even less focus on the economy, spending, jobs, etc. Con­gress itself will be con­sumed with end­less hear­ings and inves­ti­ga­tions while cor­po­rate and glob­alist lob­by­ists (unac­count­able to public pres­sure) will push trade un-vetted leg­is­la­tion through right under our nose.

Obama’s former Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel wasn’t the first person to sug­gest “Never let a good crisis to go waste.”  Hillary and Bill Clinton both said it. Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sioners Henry Kissinger and Zbig­niew Brzezinski were prob­ably the first in modern his­tory to ver­balize it. The point is, it’s not a new idea. It is a cen­tral theme in the glob­alist play­book and his­tory bears it out: “Ordo ab Chao” – Order from Chaos.

Between Two Ages

Zbig­niew Brzezinski wrote,

“How­ever crudely and prim­i­tively, man has always sought to crys­tal­lize some orga­nizing prin­ciple that would, by cre­ating order out of chaos, relate him to the uni­verse and help define his place in it.” (Between Two Ages: America’s Role in the Tech­netronic Era, p. 31)

Indeed, chaos is viewed as oppor­tu­nity by the global elite and thus, America is ripe for wrenching change thanks to the chaos that is upon us.

So, it fig­ures that the 17th round of nego­ti­a­tions for the Trans Pacific Part­ner­ship (TPP) is set to start today (May 15) and run through May 24 – in Lima Peru. There are over 600 “stake­holders” who will meet with nego­tia­tors from the 12 nations on the Pacific Rim  (Aus­tralia, Brunei Darus­salam, Canada, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Sin­ga­pore, United States, and Vietnam). These so-called stake­holders include mem­bers of acad­emia, NGO’s, labor unions, and global corporations.

It has been esti­mated that about 20 per­cent of the TPP has to do with actual trade issues. The other 80 per­cent has to do with binding reg­u­la­tions that will super­sede the laws of indi­vidual nations. Remember the damage that NAFTA (nego­ti­ated by George W. Bush and signed into law by Bill Clinton) caused in the inter­vening years.

Will anyone cover this round of TPP nego­ti­a­tions? Not likely. No doubt that many will be smiling in the absence of media scrutiny.

Another key trade agree­ment moving for­ward is the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Invest­ment Part­ner­ship (TTIP). Although just get­ting underway, the TTIP is expected to be the largest Free Trade Agree­ment in the his­tory of our country. Again, the trade por­tion will be much smaller than the non-trade issues that deal with reg­u­la­tions, nor­mal­iza­tion, legal dis­putes, tax­a­tion, etc.

As scandal-mania moves for­ward, Democ­rats are racing to dis­tance them­selves from Obama, hoping to pre­serve some stature in the upcoming midterm elec­tions in 2014. The odds increase daily that both the House and the Senate will gather a GOP majority and push the Democ­rats back into the minority position.

While con­ser­v­a­tives are already sali­vating over this pos­si­bility, they should be careful what they wish for, because the cham­pions of Free Trade and dis­as­trous trade agree­ment have mostly come from the GOP, not Democ­rats. In fact, the greater majority of Democ­rats have con­sis­tently voted against Free Trade deals that have hurt Amer­ican jobs and industries.

Thus, without a healthy per­centage of Democ­rats in the Senate and House, all of the upcoming Free Trade Agree­ments are vir­tu­ally guar­an­teed to pass with what­ever sovereignty-robbing text that the “stake­holders” can stuff in.

But, back to Europe.

France has just slipped back into reces­sion as their economy shrunk by 0.2 per­cent in Q1 2013.

The reces­sion across the 17 member euro­zone has now entered its sixth quarter, the longest reces­sion since the union con­gealed in 1995. It is now obvious to all that Ger­many alone is unable to save any part of the euro­zone from GDP shrinkage. With their own growth rate stag­nating at 0.1 per­cent in the first quarter, they are per­ilously close to reces­sion themselves.

We can only hope that the depres­sion that is still raging in Greece does not become reality for the rest of Europe. It is now in its fifth year of eco­nomic decline, expecting a GDP con­trac­tion of 4.2 per­cent in 2013, while unem­ploy­ment con­tinues to soar. Overall unem­ploy­ment has risen to 27 per­cent but job­less youth has grown to an unbe­liev­able 64.2 per­cent! Yes, two out of three people between the ages of 15 and 24 are without work.

Mean­while, the Inter­na­tional Mon­e­tary Fund con­tinues to put the screws to Greece, demanding fur­ther tax reform and reduc­tion in public debt.

Italy is a country locked into polit­ical grid­lock, and it shows. Its economy will shrink around 1.8 per­cent in 2013 as unem­ploy­ment stays above 11.5 per­cent. Youth unem­ploy­ment rose to 36.3 per­cent in March.

GDP momentum in eurozone

The above chart sums up the rest of Europe by showing the momentum of GDP growth. Greece has lit­er­ally dropped off the chart. Por­tugal, Spain and Italy are grouped as the next worse per­formers. Fin­land and The Nether­lands com­prise a middle group. The top grouping con­sists of Ger­many, Aus­tria, Ire­land and Bel­gium. How­ever, note that except for Ger­many, the momentum on all these coun­tries is still down.

The largest country to the east, Russia, is tech­ni­cally in a reces­sion as its basic indus­tries have con­tracted for two quar­ters in a row. If Russia posts any growth this year, it will likely be under 1 percent.

British econ­o­mists are dis­puting among them­selves as to whether or not Eng­land had a double-dip reces­sion. They did, but after revi­sions to the 2012 num­bers were released, they didn’t. The Brits are famous for these kind of mean­ing­less debates. Unem­ploy­ment has risen to 7.9 per­cent while the rate of job­less youth stands at 20.7 percent.

The actual state of the euro­zone economy simply do not sup­port the polit­ical rhetoric and wishful thinking that we hear from the media. Europe is still a mess and there are no real signs of relief. Until coun­tries in Europe can shrink public and pri­vate debt, their down­ward spiral will continue.

The cor­re­sponding down­ward pull on the U.S. economy is still evi­dent and will also continue.

— —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  — –
Note: Addi­tional con­tent on this page is avail­able only to Pre­mium sub­scribers of Find­ings & Fore­casts.
To sub­scribe, please click here.

VN:R_U [1.9.22_1171]
Rating: 0.0/5 (0 votes cast)

Findings & Forecasts 05/08/2013

Tags: , , , , , ,


The Beng­hazi Bus

Benghazi-attackThe Beng­hazi scandal is unques­tion­ably the lowest point of Amer­ican for­eign policy in the last 50 years. It sends a mes­sage to all for­eign ser­vice workers that their gov­ern­ment will no longer rescue them when expe­ri­encing hos­tile sit­u­a­tions; this flies in the face of his­tor­ical mil­i­tary coda where all avail­able resources are brought to bear to rescue and pro­tect the wounded, trapped or endan­gered. Fur­ther­more, it brands our gov­ern­ment as unre­li­able and untruthful.

Hence­forth, diplo­mats and sol­diers every­where should beware of the “Beng­hazi Bus“, which could run over them at any incon­ve­nient time. Get­ting Beng­hazied may even become a new verb in diplo­matic language.

Today’s live tes­ti­mony of the “Beng­hazi Whistle blowers” before the House Over­sight & Gov­ern­ment  Reform Com­mittee could pro­vide the tes­ti­mony that takes down the Obama Admin­is­tra­tion. Or not. The ques­tion is, will Con­gress have the guts to impeach the public offi­cials who were respon­sible for the dis­aster and the sub­se­quent coverup. This writer’s guess is that no one will be held account­able in the end.

This writer’s orig­inal analysis of the Sep­tember 11, 2012 Beng­hazi attack and coverup can be read in these two articles:

Those tes­ti­fying before the House Com­mittee are high-profile whistle blowers, including the former deputy chief of mis­sion in Libya, Greg Hicks. Hicks imme­di­ately became the chief of mis­sion when it was learned that his boss, Amb. Chris Stevens was killed during the attack. Eric Nord­strom was the former regional secu­rity officer in Libya, respon­sible for overall secu­rity of U.S. and diplo­matic per­sonnel. Mark Thompson is the deputy assis­tant Sec­re­tary of State for counterterrorism.

After lis­tening to the entire live tes­ti­mony on C-Span, and reading numerous reports on this and the other 8 Con­gres­sional hear­ings, it is evi­dent that there were two layers of oper­a­tion in Beng­hazi. First, there was a blackops group cen­tered in and oper­ating out of the CIA com­pound that was just down the road from the diplo­matic mis­sion: Exactly what they were doing in Libya will never be fully known.

Sec­ondly, there was the diplo­matic mis­sion that was in the chain of com­mand under the Depart­ment of State. By con­trast, we now know a lot about this.

According to eye-witness tes­ti­mony, the 9/11 (2012) attack was clearly planned and exe­cuted by a known ter­rorist group and everyone in Libya under­stood this to be the case. This infor­ma­tion was clearly passed up the ladder to direct lead­er­ship in Wash­ington, who chose to ignore it and instead cooked up an entirely dif­ferent story for the world press.

Hicks, Nord­strom and Thompson tes­ti­fied that a mil­i­tary stand-down order was indeed issued that pre­vented a team of Spe­cial Oper­a­tions troops from flying into Beng­hazi. They could not even get a simple fighter jet fly­over to take place, which would have quickly dis­persed the attackers. (The ter­ror­ists are deathly afraid of laser-guided arma­ments car­ried by U.S. air­planes because once they are “locked”, they are as good as dead.)

The only impor­tant ques­tions that remain con­cern who threw the Beng­hazi mis­sion under the bus in the first place, and then who orches­trated the coverup.

To answer the first ques­tion, focus should return to the President’s National Secu­rity Adviser, Tom Donilon. Nothing of a secu­rity nature gets to the President’s atten­tion except through the National Secu­rity Adviser. They meet daily for brief­ings, and are together during any devel­oping event that requires exec­u­tive atten­tion. [Note that Donilon is a member of the global elite group The Tri­lat­eral Commission.]

On October 12, 2012, Fox News aired a TV inter­view with Newt Gin­grich, where he stated very plainly,

“There is a rumor  —  I want to be clear, it’s a rumor  —  that at least two net­works have emails from the National Secu­rity Adviser’s office [Tom Donilon] telling a counter-terrorism group to stand down,” Gin­grich said. “But they were a group in real-time trying to mobi­lize marines and C-130s and the fighter air­craft, and they were told explic­itly by the White House stand down and do nothing. This is not a ter­rorist action. If that is true, and I’ve been told this by a fairly reli­able U.S. sen­ator, if that is true and comes out, I think it raises enor­mous ques­tions about the president’s role, and Tom Donilon, the National Secu­rity Adviser’s role, the Sec­re­tary of Defense Leon Panetta, who has taken it on his own shoul­ders, that he said don’t go.”

Until Donilon is called to tes­tify under oath, we may never know the truth, but all logic points to Donilon’s direct involve­ment and hence, in pos­sible com­plicity with Obama himself.

The coverup was pub­licly orches­trated pri­marily by U.N. Ambas­sador Susan Rice, also a member of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion. She was the front-person who appeared on sev­eral national TV broad­casts while blaming the Beng­hazi “protest-gone –bad” on a stupid Youtube video that sup­pos­edly mocked Mohammed. This idea did not come from any Beng­hazi staff or from Libyan allies, but rather from someone in Wash­ington, D.C.

There are only three pos­sible and plau­sible choices of origin: Tom Donilon, Susan Rice or Hilary Clinton. Take your pick. [Remember that Bill Clinton is a member of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion as well.]

Who­ever is respon­sible, an addi­tional charge of wrongful death must be laid at the feet of Rice and Clinton, who per­pet­u­ated the fraud­u­lent rumor that the Youtube video was to blame. This need­lessly inflamed the Muslim world, who orig­i­nally had no interest in the video, resulting in mul­tiple riots that left at least 75 addi­tional people dead.

Had the real facts been quickly known about the Beng­hazi attacks and how the Admin­is­tra­tion threw the Ambas­sador and others under the bus, the November 2012 elec­tions would have gone badly for the Democ­rats. This addi­tional pres­sure to cover up auto­mat­i­cally became cover-up-at-all-costs.

Will all the facts ever be revealed? Prob­ably not. Will any Con­gres­sional inves­ti­ga­tion or hearing result in charges or threats of impeach­ment? Not likely.

— —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  — –
Note: Addi­tional con­tent on this page is avail­able only to Pre­mium sub­scribers of Find­ings & Fore­casts.
To sub­scribe, please click here.

VN:R_U [1.9.22_1171]
Rating: 0.0/5 (0 votes cast)

Findings & Forecasts 05/01/2013

Tags: , , ,


Economy

Bad eco­nomic news around the world is set­ting the stage for a global reces­sion, with many coun­tries entering into out­right depression.

U.S. mar­kets still haven’t reached the point of recog­ni­tion regarding the real state of defla­tion and the economy… but they are get­ting closer!

In Asia, South Korean export growth in April eked out a mere 0.4 per­cent year-over-year gain, while econ­o­mists were looking for a gain of 2 per­cent. Since South Korea is a leading eco­nomic barom­eter in the region, this puts some ugly clouds on the horizon.

Like­wise, China is stag­nating. In spite of gov­ern­ment pro­pa­ganda, China’s economy is con­tracting. April’s PMI (Pur­chasing Manager’s Index) data, just released, shows sig­nif­i­cant shrinkage in new export orders, work back­logs, fin­ished goods inven­tory, imports, input prices and employ­ment. The overall PMI is hov­ering just above neu­tral at 50.5. An unre­al­ized risk remains with the housing bubble in China, which refuses to restrain itself even in the face of gov­ern­ment pressure.

In the U.S., public con­struc­tion dropped 4.1 per­cent in March, while pri­vate con­struc­tion lost 0.6 per­cent. Spring is sup­posed to be the boom period for all con­struc­tion, so these are very sig­nif­i­cant indi­ca­tors of what’s ahead. For those who are saying that the real estate boom is back, there is good reason to take a closer look. Yes, home prices have increased in some areas, but the quality of the pur­chases indi­cate that buying activity is mostly coming from investors who are paying cash for “good deals.” The prac­tice of “house flip­ping” is back as well: In the greater Phoenix area, for instance, pop­ular radio sta­tions are run­ning almost hourly ads for “how-to” sem­i­nars, books and advice on turning real estate.

ADP_report

The ADP jobs report just released is a bust (see chart above). Both Professional/Business Ser­vices and Man­u­fac­turing employ­ment con­tracted. Again, ana­lysts were expecting much higher cre­ation of new jobs.

The Chicago PMI fell to a 3 1/2 year low in April, sig­naling out­right con­trac­tion with a reading of 49.0. Any­thing under 50 means con­trac­tion, while over 50 means expan­sion. From March’s reading of 52.4, the drop of 3.4 points is very sig­nif­i­cant. The Mil­waukee ISM (Insti­tute for Supply Man­age­ment) like­wise fell from 51.0 in March to 48.4 in April, con­firming that Chicago is not an iso­lated phenomenon.

In Europe, the strongest economy has been Ger­many, and it too is con­tracting with these key num­bers under 50:

  • Com­posite Output Index at 48.8 (50.6 in March), 6-month low.
  • Ser­vices Activity Index at 49.2 (50.9 in March), 6-month low.
  • Man­u­fac­turing PMI at 47.9 (49.0 in March), 4-month low.
  • Man­u­fac­turing Output Index at 47.9 (50.0 in March), 4-month low

With all of southern Europe already in reces­sion, Ger­many needs only one more quarter of fig­ures like this to offi­cially join them. With Euro­zone unem­ploy­ment at a new record of 12.1 per­cent, there is no growth on the horizon.

Per­haps someone can find a silver lining in all of this, but I cannot. Eco­nomic con­trac­tion is simply part of the defla­tionary eco­nomic spiral that this writer has written so much about in recent years. Without growth, the spi­raling gov­ern­ment debts of nations are a cer­tain train wreck of default, which threatens to bring the whole global economy to its knees.

Bernanke and other cen­tral bank leaders must be sweating right now because they are demon­stra­tively out of tools to pump the economy.  Their “easing” poli­cies to stim­u­late the economy have failed in Europe, failed in the U.S., failed in China, failed in Japan, failed in South Korea, failed in Eng­land, failed in India, and so on. Addi­tional QE will do nothing and they know it. On the other hand, if they with­draw from their QE pro­grams, it will be like pulling the plug in the bathtub drain as far as defla­tion is concerned.

Chris­tian per­se­cu­tion ahead

In A.D. 64, just one gen­er­a­tion after the death of Jesus Christ, the insane Emperor of Rome, Nero, set the city on fire and burned three-quarters of it to the ground. Unable or unwilling to deal with his own guilt, he blamed Chris­tians for the heinous deed and thus began the most ghastly per­se­cu­tion of Chris­tians that the world has ever seen.

Now, as the nation-state of America fig­u­ra­tively burns at the hands of an unstable Marxist ruler, blame is being shifted away to Chris­tians again.

According to today’s Bre­it­bart head­line, the “Pen­tagon Con­firms May Court Mar­tial Sol­diers Who Share Chris­tian Faith” The report states,

“So Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s civilian appointees who lead the Pen­tagon are con­firming that the mil­i­tary will make it a crime – pos­sibly resulting in impris­on­ment – for those in uni­form to share their faith. This would include chap­lains — mil­i­tary offi­cers who are ordained cler­gymen of their faith (mostly Chris­tian pas­tors or priests, or Jewish rabbis) – whose duty since the founding of the U.S. mil­i­tary under George Wash­ington is to teach their faith and min­ister to the spir­i­tual needs of troops who come to them for counsel, instruc­tion, or comfort.”

There are iron teeth attached to the jaws of Marxist ide­ology like that held by our Pres­i­dent. It always plays out the same in his­tory, regard­less of where it has taken root: China, Soviet Russia, Cam­bodia, Rhodesia, Mozam­bique, etc. Marxism always roots out Chris­tianity and stomps it into the ground.

The leader of the orga­ni­za­tion cred­ited with feeding this new policy to the mil­i­tary reveals his hatred when he states on Fox news, “It is a ver­sion of being spir­i­tu­ally raped and you are being spir­i­tu­ally raped by fun­da­men­talist Chris­tian reli­gious preda­tors.” Can you feel the con­tempt in his voice?

This writer will unequiv­o­cally fore­cast that phys­ical per­se­cu­tion of Christian’s will begin in this country before Barack Hus­sein Obama leaves office.  From their per­spec­tive, their most vocal ene­mies are seen in the ranks of Tea Party groups, many mem­bers of whom are Chris­tian. They see the Con­sti­tu­tion as a pri­marily Chris­tian doc­u­ment that mobi­lizes the base of  the Tea Party move­ment. This is the new enemy — not Islamic ter­rorism — that must be bat­tled in order for them to stay in power.

Market – Free Week!

While the S&P hit a new high yes­terday, the DJIA did not. With today’s sharp decline, the non-confirmation is left with a poten­tial double-top for­ma­tion that is anathema to traders. Today’s decline was much more intense than the last few days of mixed rally. Watching the ratio of advancing versus decline stocks and volume will be key to assessing any addi­tional strength in the next few days.

Breaking the April 18 lows will con­firm that a major trend change is taking place:  Those levels are 14,444 in the DJIA, 1536.03 in the S&P 500 and 3154.90 in the NASDAQ.

If gold is becoming a leading indi­cator for stocks, then its sharp break today is sig­nalling an immi­nent decline in stocks. After falling $35 to $1,440, it bounced back $1,462 before lev­eling off. This should mark the end of the counter-trend bounce from gold’s April low, and the begin­ning of wave 5 down to under $1,300.  When this five-wave decline is over, from what­ever level, there should be a longer counter-trend rally lasting for per­haps weeks.

Silver is fol­lowing gold’s lead and also looks headed into wave 5 down, and I expect there will be sig­nif­i­cant sup­port at $20.

The dollar has extended its a-b-c cor­rec­tion but should be nearing the end of it, after which the rally will resume. While most doom­sayers are still pre­dicting the death of the dollar (and the mete­oric rise of gold), this writer stands quite alone in this fore­cast. Nev­er­the­less, Elliott Wave theory is what it is, and it has proven its value time after time.

Remember that in a defla­tionary sce­nario, “Cash is king” and “Debt is dumb.”

 

 

VN:R_U [1.9.22_1171]
Rating: 0.0/5 (0 votes cast)

Findings & Forecasts 04/24/2013: Technocracy

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,


Tech­noc­racy is Economics

Some people wonder why I write about Tech­noc­racy when the main focus of Find­ings & Fore­casts is the economy. Let me be clear about this: Tech­noc­racy is an eco­nomic system (with polit­ical and social over­tones) that is being increas­ingly imple­mented in the United States and around the world. It demands our atten­tion and scrutiny, espe­cially since there has been no public policy or eco­nomic debate what­so­ever. It cannot be debated if there is no iden­ti­fi­ca­tion or larger recognition.

Tech­noc­racy as an eco­nomic theory was for­mal­ized in the 1930′s by a group known as Tech­noc­racy, Inc. Founded by M. King Hub­bard (the Peak Oil Theory guy in the 1950′s) and Howard Scott (a pseudo-engineer and pro­moter), Tech­noc­racy was care­fully defined in a widely pub­lished work, Tech­noc­racy Study Course. Designed to be admin­is­trated by sci­en­tists, engi­neers and tech­ni­cians, Tech­noc­racy insisted that politi­cians were not capable of making good deci­sions about tech­nology they knew nothing about.

When Technocracy called for Roosevelt to be dictatorFranklin Delano Roo­sevelt was elected in 1933 on his “New Deal” plat­form, the only other likely plat­form would have been Tech­noc­racy. It was lucky for us that FDR rejected the utopian goals of Tech­noc­racy for a greatly watered down ver­sion in his so-called New Deal.

Henry Porter, author of Roo­sevelt and Tech­noc­racy in 1932, declared “Just as the Ref­or­ma­tion estab­lished Reli­gious Freedom, just as the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence brought about our Polit­ical Freedom, Tech­noc­racy promises Eco­nomic Freedom.” [Fore­ward, iii]  Among other things, Porter pro­posed to abolish the gold stan­dard, sus­pend the stock exchanges, and nation­alize public util­i­ties, after which he concluded,

“And then, a national awak­ening which, overnight, may well be expected to herald the news to every corner of the nation of the inau­gu­ra­tion of the ‘new deal’ by FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT – DICTATOR. Drastic as these changes from the present order of things may be, they will serve their pur­pose if only to pave the way for the Eco­nomic Rev­o­lu­tion – and TECHNOCRACY.” [caps in original]

In this writer’s con­sid­ered opinion, Porter’s envi­sioned “Eco­nomic Rev­o­lu­tion” fore­shad­owed the Tri­lat­eral Commission’s self-imposed man­date to create a “New Inter­na­tional Eco­nomic Order” in 1973.  Tri­lat­eral co-founder Brzezinski’s sem­inal work, Between Two Ages: America’s Role in the Tech­netronic Era, was little more than a para­phrased ver­sion of 1930′s Technocracy.

If Tech­noc­racy is indeed asserting itself on today’s eco­nomic affairs, then it should become the hottest and most debated topic of the day – but it is not! That’s why this writer con­tinues to present evi­dence that shows it is not only asserting itself, but it is rapidly coming to dom­i­nate the entire glob­al­ized eco­nomic system.

H.R. 624 – Cyber Intel­li­gence Sharing and Pro­tec­tion Act (CISPA)

CISPA passed in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives by a vote of 227 – 192 on April 17, and has now moved on to the Senate. The leg­is­la­tion was co-authored by Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) and “Dutch” Rup­pers­berger (D-MD), and osten­sibly came from almost iden­tical leg­is­la­tion that was rejected in April 2012. There were 37 co-sponsors.

The essence of CISPA is that it gives blanket per­mis­sion to pri­vate com­pa­nies to share cus­tomers’ pri­vate data with the gov­ern­ment. The pri­vate com­pany cannot be legally com­pelled by the gov­ern­ment to pro­vide data if it chooses to not to. The biggest obstacle now removed is “exemp­tion from lia­bility,” where a com­pany can be sued blind for revealing secret and pri­vate data to anyone, including the gov­ern­ment. On page 20, the bill states,

(3) EXEMPTION FROM LIABILITY

       “(A) EXEMPTION. – No civil or crim­inal cause of action shall lie or be main­tained in Fed­eral or State court against a pro­tected entity, self-protected entity, cyber­se­cu­rity provider, or an officer, employee, or agent of a pro­tected entity, self-protected entity, or cyber­se­cu­rity provider, acting in good faith…”

Given that cyber­se­cu­rity events are hap­pening on a 24×7 basis, once the gov­ern­ment is tapped into a pri­vate data pool, it could main­tain a con­tin­uous and real-time transfer of data to gov­ern­ment super-computers, such as the new NSA data center cur­rently nearing com­ple­tion in Utah. This new com­puter center is report­edly capable of storing 5 zettabytes of data, where one zettabyte is defined as 10 to the 21st power. As of 2012, no com­puter in the world had yet achieved even one zettabyte of storage.

How big is a zettabyte? A tech­nology reporter sug­gested that one zettabyte is the equiv­a­lent of 62 mil­lion stacked iPhone 5′s that would stretch past the moon. Inter­na­tional Data Cor­po­ra­tion esti­mates that all cur­rent global data grew to 2.7 zettabytes in 2012, so the NSA center will lit­er­ally be able to hold all existing dig­ital infor­ma­tion in the world, with years of room to grow.

If this leg­is­la­tion even­tu­ally passes in the Senate, the skids are greased to aggre­gate all data on every person in the United States. In spite of claims por­tending to fight ter­rorism or cyber­crime, CISPA is the largest data grab in the his­tory of the world.

How will data be col­lected? The feeder system is already in place.

Between 2003 – 2007, the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­rity, in coop­er­a­tion with the FBI and CIA, have already estab­lished a net­work of 53 pri­mary “fusion cen­ters” around the nation. According to the DHS website,

“Pri­mary fusion cen­ters serve as the focal points within the state and local envi­ron­ment for the receipt, analysis, gath­ering, and sharing of threat-related infor­ma­tion and have addi­tional respon­si­bil­i­ties related to the coor­di­na­tion of crit­ical oper­a­tional capa­bil­i­ties across the statewide fusion process with other rec­og­nized fusion cen­ters. Fur­ther­more, pri­mary cen­ters are the highest pri­ority for the allo­ca­tion of avail­able fed­eral resources, including the deploy­ment of per­sonnel and con­nec­tivity with fed­eral data sys­tems. [emphasis added]

These fusion cen­ters cul­ti­vate rela­tion­ships with pri­vate enter­prises in order to shovel infor­ma­tion to and between fed­eral, state and local law enforce­ment agen­cies. While some defend the exis­tence of these fusion cen­ters, the Senate Home­land Secu­rity and Gov­ern­mental Affairs per­ma­nent sub­com­mittee on inves­ti­ga­tions released a scathing 141 page report that stated, “In reality, the Sub­com­mittee inves­ti­ga­tion found that the fusion cen­ters often pro­duced irrel­e­vant, use­less or inap­pro­priate intel­li­gence reporting to DHS, and many pro­duced no intel­li­gence reporting whatsoever.”

If fusion cen­ters do nothing useful to combat ter­rorism, then why are they allowed to con­tinue and what are they really doing? Simply put, they are the feeder points for the mas­sive data col­lec­tion effort being pushed by the Fed­eral government.

You may wonder, what does this have to do with Tech­noc­racy? Well, every­thing. Three of the core require­ments that are nec­es­sary to imple­ment Tech­noc­racy are found in that 1932 doc­u­ment, Tech­noc­racy Study Course:

  • “Pro­vide a con­tin­uous inven­tory of all pro­duc­tion and consumption
  • “Pro­vide a spe­cific reg­is­tra­tion of the type, kind, etc., of all goods and ser­vices, where pro­duced and where used
  • “Pro­vide spe­cific reg­is­tra­tion of the con­sump­tion of each indi­vidual, plus a record and descrip­tion of the indi­vidual.” [Scott, Howard et al, Tech­noc­racy Study Source, p. 232]

These require­ments are about to be met in full for the first time in his­tory: Full, unim­peded flow of all per­sonal data and com­mu­ni­ca­tions to a cen­tral pro­cessing authority.

This is Tech­noc­racy. It is not cap­i­talism, com­mu­nism or fas­cism even though it has some resem­blance to each. It is total­i­tarian. It is not run by elected politi­cians or rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the people of the nation, but rather by sci­en­tists, engi­neers and tech­ni­cians who have their own agenda for soci­etal engineering.

— —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  — –
Note: Addi­tional con­tent on this page is avail­able only to Pre­mium sub­scribers of Find­ings & Fore­casts.
To sub­scribe, please click here.

VN:R_U [1.9.22_1171]
Rating: 0.0/5 (0 votes cast)

Findings & Forecasts 04/17/2013

Tags: , , , , , , , ,


Economy and Deflation

In 2010, Credit Suisse took it upon them­selves to create an annual “Global Wealth Report.” The 2012 report is dis­cussed here.

According to the report, “Total global house­hold wealth fell by 5.2 per­cent to 223 tril­lion US dol­lars between mid-2011 and mid-2012, the first annual decline since the finan­cial crisis of 2007 – 2008.” It is noted that most of that loss was seen in Europe, where eco­nomic decline is being expe­ri­enced in every country. The U.S. is por­trayed as on the edge of decline, but was bol­stered by higher stock and com­modi­ties prices in terms of U.S. dollars.

By con­trast, the deriv­a­tives market played mostly by global banks, has a total notional value of at least $700 tril­lion, over three times larger than total wealth. For a graphic depic­tion of the mag­ni­tude of the deriv­a­tives market, click here.

According to The Economist’s Global Debt Clock, “offi­cial” world public debt approx­i­mates $50.5 tril­lion.  Dr. Lawrence Kot­likoff, writing for the St. Louis Fed­eral Reserve in 2006 doc­u­mented that real U.S. gov­ern­ment encum­brance was upwards of $211 tril­lion; if other gov­ern­ments “cook the books” like the U.S. does, then actual global public debt is prob­ably closer to $1,000 trillion.

And, none of this takes into account pri­vate or cor­po­rate debt.

Thus, $223 tril­lion of net worth looks rather puny and fragile: If even 20 per­cent of debt and deriv­a­tives were to default, resulting in losses, it would com­pletely wipe out equity.

I realize that this is a rather short and incom­plete analysis, but it is only to make the point that global finances are still at risk of total col­lapse, and even more so than in 2006 – 2008.

In Jan­uary 2013, Forbes Mag­a­zine wrote “Big Banks and Deriv­a­tives: Why Another Finan­cial Crisis Is Inevitable.” The author notes that bank reform has utterly failed, that banks are pro­moting more deriv­a­tive risk today than ever before, and that they are even less trans­parent than during the last finan­cial crisis. He concludes,

“Ignoring warning signs has inevitable con­se­quences. We ignored them before and we saw what hap­pened. We can say this with vir­tual cer­tainty: if we con­tinue as now and ignore them again, the great white shark of a global finan­cial melt­down will gobble up the meager eco­nomic recovery and make 2008 look like a hiccup.

“We can’t say when this will happen. We can’t say which bank or which par­tic­ular instru­ment will trigger the debacle. What we can say with vir­tual cer­tainty is that if we con­tinue as now is that it will happen. Because the scale of the trading is larger, and because the depleted gov­ern­ment trea­sures are not well placed for another huge bailout, the impact will be worse than 2008.”

There are two take-a-way items here: First, another brick wall is a vir­tual cer­tainty and second, gov­ern­ments do not have the resources for another bailout.

This is the ugly side of defla­tion. When com­pa­nies, indi­vid­uals or coun­tries go bank­rupt (or repu­diate their debt), two things happen. First, the aggre­gate level of debt is reduced. Second, the aggre­gate level of equity is reduced. Any level of credit defla­tion leads to a cor­re­sponding drop in equity. The inverse is not true how­ever: A credit infla­tion does not pro­duce an increase in equity unless there is a direct cor­re­sponding increase in eco­nomic activity. Thus, we can easily con­clude that credit defla­tion pre­cludes any increase in eco­nomic activity.

Around the world, we see that eco­nomic decline and credit defla­tion are two sides of the same coin. They feed on each other and create a defla­tionary spiral that cannot be sati­ated by any kind of mon­e­tary action by cen­tral banks or gov­ern­ments. This is pre­cisely why the U.S. Fed’s pro­grams of Quan­ti­ta­tive Easing have had no pos­i­tive impact on the economy.

In light of defla­tion, Gold’s his­toric plunge between last Friday and Monday is not dif­fi­cult to under­stand. Defla­tion ulti­mately drives down prices in all asset classes – across the board. Along with gold we saw declines in silver, oil and a raft of other “hard” commodities.

The epic error made by gold ana­lysts and pre­cious metals investors, many of whom are friends of mine, is that their dog­matic belief in infla­tion has blinded them to the reality of defla­tion. Most stock ana­lysts are caught in the same trap. The simple fact is that invest­ment strate­gies based on infla­tion are com­pletely dif­ferent than those based on defla­tion, and they are at odds with each other.

With infla­tion, cap­ital preser­va­tion (adjusted for infla­tion) demands invest­ment in some form of tan­gible asset that par­tic­i­pates with expan­sion of eco­nomic activity. Defla­tion, where “Cash is king”, is just the oppo­site. In a defla­tionary spiral, it’s increas­ingly dif­fi­cult to get your hands on cash: selling tan­gible assets, inability to borrow from a bank, more dif­fi­culty finding jobs, etc., all put pres­sure on the cash in people’s pockets. Declining eco­nomic activity simply cannot pro­duce infla­tionary returns.

Another crit­ical dynamic pushing eco­nomic decline is changing demo­graphics. Whereas many scare­mon­gers have pre­dicted that humanity would be wiped out because of over­pop­u­la­tion,  just the oppo­site has hap­pened. Birthrates have dropped around the world to levels asso­ci­ated with per­ma­nent pop­u­la­tion decline. This is not hidden infor­ma­tion, either.

Pew Research issued a major report last November titled, “U.S. Birth Rate Falls to a Record Low; Decline Is Greatest Among Immi­grants,” which starts out by saying “The U.S. birth rate dipped in 2011 to the lowest ever recorded.” The birth rate for immi­grant women (e.g. from Mexico) plunged even more. It is a his­tor­ical fact that no pop­u­la­tion group in his­tory has escaped even­tual extinc­tion when birthrates slip below 1.8. Italy’s fer­tility rate is 1.4. Japan is 1.4.

A declining pop­u­la­tion means declining eco­nomic activity at all levels. During hard eco­nomic times, fam­i­lies nat­u­rally resist having addi­tional chil­dren because of the expense, so birthrates are likely to fall even further.

In sum, declines in credit, equity and pop­u­la­tion all point to the same end: Defla­tion. Those who can wrap their head around this will be much better off than those who con­tinue to pro­mote their infla­tionary memes.

— —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  — –
Note: Addi­tional con­tent on this page is avail­able only to Pre­mium sub­scribers of Find­ings & Fore­casts.
To sub­scribe, please click here.

 

 

VN:R_U [1.9.22_1171]
Rating: 0.0/5 (0 votes cast)
Findings & Forecasts Comments (3)

Findings & Forecasts 04/10/2013

Posted on 10 April 2013

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,


Economy

In his classic book Nine­teen Eighty-Four, George Orwell invented and per­fected the psy­cho­log­ical notion of “dou­ble­think.” That is, simul­ta­ne­ously believing two con­tra­dic­tory ideas or opin­ions. Orwell’s Min­istry of Truth building dis­played slo­gans like “War is Peace,” “Freedom is Slavery,” and “Igno­rance is Strength.”

“The power of holding two con­tra­dic­tory beliefs in one’s mind simul­ta­ne­ously, and accepting both of them… To tell delib­erate lies while gen­uinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become incon­ve­nient, and then, when it becomes nec­es­sary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just as long as it is needed, to deny the exis­tence of objec­tive reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies – all this is indis­pens­ably nec­es­sary. Even in using the word dou­ble­think it is nec­es­sary to exer­cise dou­ble­think. For by using the word one admits that one is tam­pering with reality; by a fresh act of dou­ble­think one erases this knowl­edge; and so on indef­i­nitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth.” (Orwell, George 1949. Nine­teen Eighty-Four;  p 32)

In America today, dou­ble­think is prac­ticed with fine pre­ci­sion at the national level. People who give up and drop out of the work force  become “unper­sons” and are not heard of or from again; but according to the gov­ern­ment, “the economy is fine and unem­ploy­ment is falling.” Con­tinued global mil­i­tary action is con­ducted in the name of “peace.” The onslaught of never-ending cit­izen sur­veil­lance is for our “safety and secu­rity.” Thought police mon­itor inten­tions, resulting in the destruc­tion of rep­u­ta­tions and liveli­hoods. The “Min­istry of Pro­pa­ganda” is never wrong and cit­i­zens are never right.

Orwell, H.G. Wells (Things to Come) and Aldous Huxley (Brave New World) all penned their respec­tive future­casts while looking straight into the face of the Amer­ican Tech­noc­racy move­ment. The move­ment as a move­ment failed soon after it started, but only because the tech­nology did not exist yet that could enforce and sus­tain their utopian dreams. Those dreamers – and their dreams – con­tinue to live on from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion, encour­aged by gar­gan­tuan advances in technology.

When the curve of tech­no­cratic desire inter­sects with critical-mass tech­nology, Tech­noc­racy will sprint to rule the world with a brutal total­i­tar­i­anism not yet seen in the his­tory of man.

As I wrote in Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion Influ­ence in the Euro­pean Union in 2011, Com­mis­sion co-founder David Rock­e­feller readily boasted of their influ­ence in estab­lishing the EU:

“Back in the early Sev­en­ties, the hope for a more united EUROPE was already full-blown  –  thanks in many ways to the indi­vidual ener­gies pre­vi­ously spent by so many of the Tri­lat­eral Commission’s ear­liest mem­bers.” [Cap­i­tals in orig­inal] (Rock­e­feller, David; In the Begin­ning; The Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion at 25, 1998, p.11)

 This was in accor­dance with the ideas of Com­mis­sion co-founder Zbig­niew Brzezinski who wrote Between Two Ages: America’s Role in the Tech­netronic Era:

“The nation-­state as a fun­da­mental unit of man’s orga­nized life has ceased to be the prin­cipal cre­ative force: Inter­na­tional banks and multi­na­tional cor­po­ra­tions are acting and plan­ning in terms that are far in advance of the polit­ical con­cepts of the nation-state.” [emphasis added]

Banks and multi­na­tional cor­po­ra­tions are oper­ated according to prin­ci­ples of Tech­noc­racy: Science-driven effi­ciency is always the utmost goal. When applied to “man’s orga­nized life” you have the reality of science-driven social con­trol, which is exactly what we are expe­ri­encing today.

Should the world be run like busi­ness is run at IBM, Gen­eral Elec­tric, Mon­santo, Goldman Sachs, etc.? Most would say “No” but this is exactly what is hap­pening all over the world.

In 2001 Time Mag­a­zine cor­rectly called China a Tech­noc­racy, noting a new form of “Neo-Authoritarianism” that was easily mis­taken for Com­mu­nism, but was not Com­mu­nism. How did China get “con­verted” and by whom? Again, Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion mem­bers played the lead role as they opened up China for trade in the early 1970′s. The impact of China’s new author­i­tarian Renais­sance is seen in the fol­lowing chart:

tradewithchina

Between 1974 – 1984, Chi­nese infra­struc­ture was built up to create a new man­u­fac­turing empire con­trolled by a Western-led con­sor­tium of com­pa­nies like Bechtel Engi­neering, Gen­eral Elec­tric, IBM, etc., all of which had direct ties to the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion. Starting in 1984, their strategy began to bear fruit. Between 1984 and 2012, the U.S. trade deficit with China grew from a minis­cule amount to over $450 bil­lion per year. America per­ma­nently lost mil­lions of jobs as com­pa­nies and indus­tries aban­doned Amer­ican shores for the Chi­nese nir­vana of cheap labor. In the process, America was lit­er­ally plun­dered by these global corporations.

America is rapidly becoming a Tech­noc­racy as gov­ern­ment func­tions are turned over to unelected and unac­count­able experts, engi­neers, sci­en­tists and tech­ni­cians. When Obama recently called for a $100 mil­lion ini­tia­tive to map the human brain, he even gave him­self the new title of “Scientist-in-chief.” So, we have an evolving nation­wide smart grid elec­trical system, mas­sive data­bases on cit­i­zens that are being updated in real-time, com­put­er­ized eaves­drop­ping on all phone calls and emails, a never-ending “war on terror” that has mys­te­ri­ously refo­cused itself on Constitution-loving Amer­ican cit­i­zens instead of Islamic enemy combatants.

In the midst of this global and stealthy tech­no­cratic takeover, let’s recon­sider the for­merly sov­er­eign nation of Cyprus. After its com­mu­nist and socialist gov­ern­ment leaders ran their fiscal system into the ground, they finally ran out of cash and had to beg the EU for a bailout. The EU lead­er­ship instead forced them to do a “bail-in” before they would get any “bail-out” funds. Thus far, the bail-in resulted in the con­fis­cating up to 60 per­cent of all bank deposits in excess of 100,000 euros.

The con­fis­cated deposits are being plowed back into equity shares of the nation’s banks prior to being absorbed by global banks for pen­nies on the dollar.

Cit­i­zens 0 – Tech­nocrats 1.

To add insult to injury, Cypriot leaders announced today that they are being forced (by the EU tech­no­cratic lead­er­ship) to dump $530 mil­lion of their national gold reserves as an addi­tional part of the “bail-in.” This rep­re­sents approx­i­mately 70 per­cent of the entire Cypriot gold hoard. If this isn’t a pic­ture of national plun­dering, then I don’t know what is.

Who will buy this gold from Cyprus? Not cen­tral banks! Rather it will be the global bul­lion banks, con­sisting pri­marily of Bar­clays, Deutsche Bank AG, HSBC, Goldman Sachs, Citi Group, JP Morgan Chase and UBS. Freeing up a 10 ton block of gold is a huge win for the global elite who have been accu­mu­lating gold over the years.

Cit­i­zens 0 – Tech­nocrats 2: Game over

I sug­gested in a 2008 report Tri­lat­eral Plan to Corner World Gold Market that the “hidden” gold reserves of many coun­tries would be even­tu­ally attacked and absorbed by these bul­lion banks, all of which have some mem­ber­ship con­nec­tion to the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion. My con­clu­sions at the time were:

Five years later, my analysis looks better now than it did then.

If the Tri­lat­eral elite intend to create a global tech­noc­racy, then they are cer­tainly doing a good job of it. The plun­dering of Cyprus sends a strong mes­sage to the global com­mu­nity: “Don’t mess with us or we will crush you.” Are Italy, Spain, France and Greece lis­tening? It won’t take long to find out. One way or another, expect addi­tional sales of national stores of gold to take place in the future.

My last obser­va­tion is that global Tech­noc­racy will ulti­mately con­trol people by the issuance of energy credits instead of money. The tech­no­crat elites, how­ever, will mea­sure their wealth in terms of the gold they own — and that’s why they want it today!

— —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  — –
Note: Addi­tional con­tent on this page is avail­able only to Pre­mium sub­scribers of Find­ings & Fore­casts.
To sub­scribe, please click here.

VN:R_U [1.9.22_1171]
Rating: 0.0/5 (0 votes cast)
Findings & Forecasts Comments (4)

Premium Subscriber Access

Email:
Password:
Remember   

Forgot Password

News & Analysis

Premium Subscriber Area

People want to know…

faq

What is Globalization?

It is the col­lective effect of pur­poseful and amoral manip­u­la­tion that seeks to cen­tralize eco­nomic, polit­ical, tech­no­log­ical and soci­etal forces in order to accrue max­imum profit and polit­ical power to global banks, global cor­po­ra­tions and the elit­ists who run them. It is rapidly moving toward an full and final imple­men­ta­tion of Technocracy.

VN:R_U [1.9.22_1171]
Rating: 0.0/5 (0 votes cast)

What is the Tri­lat­eral Commission?

Founded in 1973 by David Rock­e­feller and Zbig­niew Brzezinski, the Com­mis­sion set out to create a “New Inter­na­tional Eco­nomic Order”, namely, Tech­noc­racy. The orig­inal mem­ber­ship con­sisted of elit­ists (bankers, politi­cians, aca­d­e­mics, indus­tri­al­ists) from Japan, North America and Europe. Col­lec­tively, they have dom­i­nated and con­trolled trade and eco­nomic policy in their respec­tive coun­tries since at least 1974.

VN:R_U [1.9.22_1171]
Rating: 0.0/5 (0 votes cast)

What is Technocracy?

Tech­noc­racy is a move­ment started in the 1930′s by engi­neers, sci­en­tists and tech­ni­cians that pro­posed the replace­ment of cap­i­talism with an energy-based economy. Orig­i­nally envi­sioned for North America only, it is now being applied on a global basis. Authors Aldous Huxley and George Orwell believed that Tech­noc­racy would result in a Sci­en­tific Dic­ta­tor­ship, as reflected in their books, “Brave New World” and “1984“.

VN:R_U [1.9.22_1171]
Rating: 0.0/5 (0 votes cast)

What is Smart Grid?

Smart Grid is the national and global imple­men­ta­tion of dig­ital and Wi-fi enabled power meters that enable com­mu­ni­ca­tion between the appli­ances in your home or busi­ness, with the power provider. This pro­vides con­trol over your appli­ances and your usage of elec­tricity, gas and water.

VN:R_U [1.9.22_1171]
Rating: 0.0/5 (0 votes cast)

Who is M. King Hubbert?

Hub­bert was a geo-physicist who co-founded Tech­noc­racy, Inc. in 1932 and authored its Tech­noc­racy Study Course. In 1954, he became the cre­ator of the “Peak Oil Theory”, or “Hubbert’s Peak” which the­o­rized that the world was rapidly run­ning out of carbon-based fuels. Hub­bert is widely con­sid­ered as a “founding father” of the global warming and green movements.

VN:R_U [1.9.22_1171]
Rating: 0.0/5 (0 votes cast)

Who is R. Buck­min­ster Fuller?

A pio­neer in global eco­log­ical theory, Fuller (1895  –  1984) was the first to sug­gest the devel­op­ment of a Global Energy Grid that is today known as the Global Smart Grid. Fuller is widely con­sid­ered to be a “founding father” of the global green move­ment, including global warming, Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment, Agenda 21, etc.

VN:R_U [1.9.22_1171]
Rating: 0.0/5 (0 votes cast)

Is the Venus Project like Technocracy?

The Venus Project, founded by Jacque Fresco, is a utopian, modern-day iter­a­tion of Tech­noc­racy. Like Tech­noc­racy, it scraps cap­i­talism and pro­poses that “a resource-based economy all of the world’s resources are held as the common her­itage of all of Earth’s people, thus even­tu­ally out­growing the need for the arti­fi­cial bound­aries that sep­a­rate people.” The appli­ca­tion of tech­nology is the answer to all of the world’s prob­lems, including war, famine and poverty.

VN:R_U [1.9.22_1171]
Rating: 0.0/5 (0 votes cast)