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Paul Merrell

Would You Buy a Used Macroeconomic Policy From This Man? | Popehat - 0 views

www.popehat.com/...oeconomic-policy-from-this-man

macroeconomics krugman internet

shared by Paul Merrell on 29 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • Paul Merrell on 29 Dec 13
     
    Clark at Popehat dusts off an oldie but goodie: Macroeconomics pundit Paul Krugman's prediction in 1998, courtesy of the Wayback Machine: "The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in 'Metcalfe's law'--which states that the number of potential connections in a network is proportional to the square of the number of participants--becomes apparent: most people have nothing to say to each other! By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet's impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine's." But wait; it gets even better on the Wayback machine itself, http://tinyurl.com/bw3kguh "As the rate of technological change in computing slows, the number of jobs for IT specialists will decelerate, then actually turn down; ten years from now, the phrase information economy will sound silly." Oops. Someone forgot to send that memo to the NSA and others; or maybe the fax machine ate it ... 
Gary Edwards

The Daily Bell - What TARP Boss Neil Barofsky Told Me Yesterday Should Shock You - 1 views

www.thedailybell.com/...-Me-Yesterday-Should-Shock-You

TARP Neil-Barofsky Banksters Federal-Reserve-Bankster-Cartel

shared by Gary Edwards on 18 May 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 18 May 13
     
    " The Daily Bell Newswire Editorial FRIDAY, MAY 17, 2013 What TARP Boss Neil Barofsky Told Me Yesterday Should Shock You By Bill Bonner 8 Bill Bonner The financial news is getting boring. The Dow goes only one way - up. But gold fell below $1,400 per ounce yesterday. Rather than trying to figure it out, yesterday evening we drove down to Zombietown. A friend in Washington had promised to introduce us to Neil Barofsky, inspector general of the TARP program. You remember TARP? It was the feds' $700 billion program to rescue the US economy from a correction. Neil Barofsky was in charge of it. So we decided to go down and ask him how it turned out... Meanwhile, in yesterday's International Herald Tribune was a small note: "Economists agree that spending cuts and tax increases have slowed the US recovery." Readers will recognize this as the usual claptrap. Government spending does not bring a genuine "recovery." C'mon... how many times do we have to explain? You take $5 worth of resources and give them to an armed 19-year-old in Afghanistan. He shoots a round or two into a mountainside... poof... the $5 is gone. Or you have an ATF official. He's idling his motor as he stakes out a house believed to be used by a cigarette smuggler. In a few minutes, or even seconds, the $5 has vanished. Or give the money to a disabled person; he buys a MoonPie and a Coke. Economists may record the spending as part of GDP... But how are you better off? You're $5 poorer, not $5 richer. But GDP growth is something economists feel they can control. So they go to work on it like a sex maniac strangling a prostitute. Nothing good comes of it. But at least they get results. And here comes Paul Krugman with more garroting wire! The New York Times Magazine: Keynesian economics rests fundamentally on the proposition that macroeconomics isn't a morality play - that depressions are essentially a technical malfunction. As the Great Depression deepened, Keynes famously declared
Paul Merrell

Report: Post 9/11 Wars Have Cost Taxpayers Nearly $5 Trillion And Counting - 0 views

www.mintpressnews.com/...220380

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy cost-of-war statistics

shared by Paul Merrell on 14 Sep 16 - No Cached
  • The U.S. military interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost taxpayers nearly $5 trillion and counting, according to a new report released to coincide with the 15th anniversary of the attacks. Dr. Neta Crawford, professor of political science at Brown University, released the figures in an independent analysis (pdf) of U.S. Departments of Defense, State, Homeland Security, and Veteran Affairs spending, as well as their base and projected future spending. Crawford is also a director at Brown’s Costs of War Project, which works to draw attention to the human, economic, and political toll of the military response to 9/11. In total, the wars already boast a price tag of $4.79 trillion, she found. And the cost is still climbing. Crawford’s estimate includes budget requests for the 2017 operations in Afghanistan—which are poised to continue despite President Barack Obama’s vow to withdraw troops from the country by then—as well as in Iraq and Syria. The Pentagon requested $66 billion for those fights just for that year. However, even if the U.S. stopped spending on war at the end of this fiscal year, the interest costs, such as debt for borrowed funds, would continue to rise. Post-9/11 military spending was financed almost entirely by borrowing, which in turn has driven debt and interest rates, the project has previously noted.
  • Separate reporting late last month by the U.K.-based watchdog Action on Armed Violence (AOAV) found that the Pentagon could only account for 48 percent of small arms shipped to Iraq and Afghanistan since 9/11—meaning more than half of the approximately 700,000 guns it sent overseas in the past 15 years are missing. What’s more, a recent Inspector General audit report found a “jaw-dropping” $6.5 trillion could not be accounted for in Defense spending. The results of Crawford’s report, released last week, follow previous estimates by prominent economists like Nobel Prize-winning Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard professor Linda Bilmes, whose 2008 book The Three Trillion Dollar War made similar claims. Crawford’s report continues: “Interest costs for overseas contingency operations spending alone are projected to add more than $1 trillion dollars to the national debt by 2023. By 2053, interest costs will be at least $7.9 trillion unless the U.S. changes the way it pays for the war.” And, Crawford notes, that’s a conservative estimate. “No set of numbers can convey the human toll of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, or how they have spilled into the neighboring states of Syria and Pakistan, and come home to the U.S. and its allies in the form of wounded veterans and contractors,” the report states. “Yet, the expenditures noted on government ledgers are necessary to apprehend, even as they are so large as to be almost incomprehensible.”
Gary Edwards

Liberty Defined: The Ten Principles of a Free Society by Ron Paul - 0 views

www.lewrockwell.com/...paul732.html

Ron-Paul Libertarian Liberty-Tryanny Constitutional-Republic

shared by Gary Edwards on 18 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 18 Jan 12
     
    excerpt: This is the Appendix to Ron Paul's new book, Liberty Defined. Rights belong to individuals, not groups; they derive from our nature and can neither be granted nor taken away by government. All peaceful, voluntary economic and social associations are permitted; consent is the basis of the social and economic order. Justly acquired property is privately owned by individuals and voluntary groups, and this ownership cannot be arbitrarily voided by governments. Government may not redistribute private wealth or grant special privileges to any individual or group. Individuals are responsible for their own actions; government cannot and should not protect us from ourselves. Government may not claim the monopoly over a people's money and governments must never engage in official counterfeiting, even in the name of macroeconomic stability. Aggressive wars, even when called preventative, and even when they pertain only to trade relations, are forbidden. Jury nullification, that is, the right of jurors to judge the law as well as the facts, is a right of the people and the courtroom norm. All forms of involuntary servitude are prohibited, not only slavery but also conscription, forced association, and forced welfare distribution. Government must obey the law that it expects other people to obey and thereby must never use force to mold behavior, manipulate social outcomes, manage the economy, or tell other countries how to behave.
Paul Merrell

Trump Prepares to Takeover Fed - 0 views

www.counterpunch.org/...trump-prepares-to-takeover-fed

banksters Fed Trump-administration

shared by Paul Merrell on 20 Nov 16 - No Cached
  • In Donald Trump’s first four years as president, he will not only choose three judges for the Supreme Court, he’ll also pick five of the seven members on the Fed Board of Governors. It would be impossible to overstate the effect this is going to have on the nation’s economic future. With both houses of Congress firmly in the GOP’s grip, we could see the most powerful central bank in the world transformed into a purely political institution that follows the diktats of one man. Critics may think that is a vast improvement over the present situation in which the Fed conceals its allegiance to the giant Wall Street investment banks behind a public relations cloud of “independence”, but the idea of one man controlling the price of the world’s reserve currency and, thus, the price of financial assets and commodities across the globe, is equally disturbing. Already we have seen how the Fed’s determination to enrich its constituents has resulted in one titanic asset-price bubble after the other. Imagine if that power was entrusted to just one individual who could be tempted to use that authority to shape economic events in a way that enhanced and perpetuated his own political power. Even so, after seven years of a policy-induced Depression that has increased inequality to levels not seen since the Gilded Age, we think it is high-time that the president use his power to choose the members who will bring the bank back under government control.
  • So, how will Trump’s populism shape his views on who should or should not be a member of the Fed? We don’t know, but we do know that monetary policy is going to change dramatically from the last eight years of unproductive experimentation because Trump has surrounded himself with industry leaders who ascribe to an entirely different philosophy than the one currently in practice. Check this out from monetary analyst Tommy Behnke: “Some of today’s most reasonable mainstream economic voices are included in (Trump’s) inner circle. These names include David Malpass of Encima Global, who co-signed a letter with Jim Grant opposing the Fed’s “inflationary” and “distortive” quantitative easing program; John Paulson of Paulson & Co., who made billions from shorting the housing market before the Great Recession; Andy Beal, a self-described “libertarian kind of guy” who blames the Fed for the credit crisis; and the Heritage Foundation’s Stephen Moore, who told CSIN in 2012 that he is a “very severe critic” of the Fed’s “incredibly easy-money policies of the past decade.” While none of Trump’s economic advisers are by any means Austrians, they are far more hawkish than most of Presidents Bush and Obama’s past economic advisers.” (Why President Trump Will Fumigate the Fed, Mises Institute)
  • Trump, who is no fan of the Fed’s bond buying program called QE, has admitted he thinks stocks are in a bubble suggesting that he will probably take a more conservative approach to monetary policy. Even so, that doesn’t change the fact he’s going to have to opportunity to personally select the FOMC’s ruling majority, which means that he’ll be in a position to demand their loyalty as a condition of their hiring. Does anyone seriously doubt that Trump would rather control the Fed himself than keep it in the clutches of the cutthroat Wall Street banks? There’s no doubt that the distributional effects of the Fed’s policies helped catapult Trump into the White House. Millions of working class Americans who are sick of the monetary “trickle down” policies and the job-eviscerating trade agreements found a way to express their frustration in the candidacy of Donald Trump. Their collective rage suddenly exploded at the ballotbox on November 8 pushing the real estate tycoon to a victory over opponent Clinton in what many are calling the political upset of the century. Trump tapped into that wellspring of anger and frustration by denouncing the “failed and corrupt political establishment” in which both Hillary Clinton and the Fed feature prominently. Now he’s going to take it to the next level by launching a surprise attack on the Fed which will leave Wall Street stripped of its power-agency and left to fend for itself. This is a blurb from the New York Times: “A core view of many Trump advisers is that the extended period of emergency policy settings has promoted a bubble in the stock market, depressed the incomes of savers, scared the public and encouraged capital misallocation,” said Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics. “Right now, these are minority views on the F.O.M.C., but Trump appointees are likely to shift the needle.” (With Trump in Power, the Fed Gets Ready for a Reckoning, New York Times)
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • They’re going to “shift the needle” alright, then they’re going to drive it through the serpent’s heart. The Fed has had every opportunity to show where its loyalties lie and it has sided with Wall Street every single time. There’s a reason why 95 percent of all income gains in the last eight years have gone to the one percent, while working people have struggled just to put food on the table. Just like there’s a reason why stocks have tripled in value in the last eight years while wages and incomes have stagnated and the economy has slowed to a crawl. It’s the policy, stupid. The Fed has created the conditions for a permanent Depression so it can provide infinite cheap money to its crooked reprobate friends on Wall Street. Now their little party is coming to an end. Boo fucking hoo.
Paul Merrell

Spanish bankers sent to jail in landmark ruling - The Local - 0 views

www.thelocal.es/...ent-to-jail-in-landmark-ruling

banksters Spain criminal-prosecution

shared by Paul Merrell on 27 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • A Spanish court has jailed five former executives who got millions in severance pay from a struggling bank that later had to be nationalised, a first in a country still reeling from banking bailouts. "These are people who managed a savings bank that had to be rescued by the state," Spain's top-level National Court said in a ruling seen by AFP on Tuesday, adding it had taken the decision to avoid allowing former bankers to enjoying "impunity". The ruling could act as a precedent for the other, more high-profile trial of former economy minister and ex-IMF chief Rodrigo Rato over alleged embezzlement when he was president of Bankia, another bank that was rescued during the financial crisis.
  • The five men, currently aged 59 to 85, had already been found guilty of embezzlement in 2015 and were then given a two-year jail sentence, which their defence asked to be suspended. In Spain, it is usual for first offences for non-violent crimes carrying a sentence of two years or less to be suspended.     But the National Court said that in this case, "the gravity of the offence given its macroeconomic impact means it is necessary that the five go to prison, in the interest of avoiding impunity." They added that the former executives had not paid a fine owed, and ruled against suspending the sentence.
Gary Edwards

Revealed - the capitalist network that runs the world - physics-math - 19 October 2011 ... - 0 views

www.newscientist.com/...twork-that-runs-the-world.html

Banksters Federal-Reserve-Bankster-Cartel Complex-systems

shared by Gary Edwards on 20 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 20 Oct 11
     
    The secret 1% revealed at last. Using advanced "complex systems heuristics", a group of mathematicians and scientist studying the stability of complex systems has applied their techniques to study the interlocking relationships driving the global economy. They claim to have identified the inner architecture of global economic power, and hope to make it more stable. Incredible stuff! A list of the top 50 of the 147 superconnected companies cross references nicely with the question, "Who Owns the Federal Reserve Bankster Cartel?" The focus is on global "Transnational Corporations" (TNCs) and how the interlocking ownership/cross-director-relationships has affected the global economy. The study discovers a "super-entity" comprised of a core 147 companies that control over 40% of the world's wealth and productivity capacity. Most of these are global banking and financial operations. Yes, Wall Street Banksters! "In effect, less than 1 per cent of the companies were able to control 40 per cent of the entire network," says James Glattfelder, head of the Zurich research team. Most were financial institutions. The top 20 included Barclays Bank, JPMorgan Chase & Co, and The Goldman Sachs Group. Collectively this 1% control a further 60% of global revenues. excerpt: AS OWS PROTESTS against financial power sweep the world this week, science may have confirmed the protesters' worst fears. An analysis of the relationships between 43,000 transnational corporations has identified a relatively small group of companies, mainly banks, with disproportionate power over the global economy.

    The study's assumptions have attracted some criticism, but complex systems analysts contacted by New Scientist say it is a unique effort to untangle control in the global economy. Pushing the analysis further, they say, could help to identify ways of making global capitalism more stable.

    The idea that a few bankers control a large chunk of the global econo
  • Paul Merrell on 12 Aug 12
     
    Important work but perhaps too immature to base decisions on with confidence. I was struck by this statement: "Glattfelder says we may need global anti-trust rules, which now exist only at national level, to limit over-connection among TNCs. Sugihara says the analysis suggests one possible solution: firms should be taxed for excess interconnectivity to discourage this risk." My relevant question is, who would be the recipients of the postulated tax? Anytime you create a revenue stream, the recipients acquire a vested interest in maintaining and expanding that revenue stream and the folks who pay the revenue acquire a vested interest in minimizing or eliminating the expense. While the payers incentives are consistent with the article's statement, the identities of the recipients and their incentives to tweak the tax to produce more revenue needs more thought and discussion with a strong focus on: [i] who makes that decision; [ii] who has the the power to decide whether that authority is abused; and [iii] who has standing to initiate actions to correct abuse. On the latter, the U.S. Constitution would seem to require that those who pay the taxes are entitled to Due Process. But at the same time, the individual consumer can also be injured by abuse. However, a hallmark trait of most trade agreements is that only government and regulated corporations are granted standing to challenge regulatory decisions, which has skewed their interpretation heavily to the corporate side. Universal standing is the cure.
Gary Edwards

How IT Costs More Jobs than It Creates - Technology Review - 0 views

www.technologyreview.com/...page2

shared by Gary Edwards on 26 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • Brynjolfsson and McAfee cite evidence that—in addition to other macroeconomic problems, and the 2008 financial crisis—the U.S. economy is undergoing a structural change wrought by technology. "It's not just the crash, it's something that is changing fundamentally in the way people use technology," Brynjolfsson says
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 26 Oct 11
       
      Maybe it's true that technological changes to "productivity" are coming so fast, and with such dramatic improvements, that people can't adapt and keep up; creating a human vs tech productivity gap.  Maybe though, productivity / employment is not the most accurate gauge for measuring income, prosperity and wealth.  Consumption and investment have to be factored in.  The Fair Tax is a better fit for this high tech  productivity world than the Progressive Income Tax. Societies that carry a huge militaristic and/or socialistic cost to citizenship and governance are certainly at a competitive disadvantage in a global economy.  The cost of productivity has to carry the weight of militaristic/socialist government.  In the US, near 50% of the population exist on government subsidized income/re-distribution.  If it wasn't for tech pumped productivity, where the return on investment jumps also as labor cost and the cost of product/services distribution falls, it would be impossible for the US private sector to carry the enormous weight of government. It seems to me though that consumption has it's own internal balancing mechanism, if only the government would get out of the way and let it work.  Citizens can't consume if they don't produce.  Regardless of the the tech productivity bump factor!   The other point is that much of this discussion rests on the gravitational law that digital information represents reality; and digital services make reality more efficient with global distribution possibilities (larger markets).  But you can't eat "digital representations of reality".  You can't physically fly from San Francisco to NYC using strictly digital representations, even though you can simulate communication and connectivity "digitally". At the end of the day, digital machines enable us to work reality in new and efficient ways.  But they are still machines.  And a reality of physical dimensions remains.
Paul Merrell

| The Archived Columns of Conn M. Hallinan - 0 views

dispatchesfromtheedgeblog.wordpress.com

economies EU Greece anti-austerity oligarchs banksters privatization

shared by Paul Merrell on 02 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • Almost before the votes were counted in the recent Greek elections, battle lines were being drawn all over Europe. While Alexis Tsipras, the newly elected Prime Minister from Greece’s victorious Syriza Party, was telling voters, “Greece is leaving behind catastrophic austerity, fear and autocratic government,” Jens Weidmann, president of the German Bundesbank, was warning the new government not to “make promises it cannot keep and the country cannot afford.”   On Feb. 12 those two points of view will collide when European Union (EU) heads of state gather in Brussels. Whether the storm blowing out of Southern Europe proves an irresistible force, or the European Council an immovable object, is not clear, but whatever the outcome, the continent is not likely to be the same after that meeting.   The Jan 25 victory of Greece’s leftwing Syriza Party was, on one hand, a beacon for indebted countries like Spain, Portugal, Italy and Ireland. On the other, it is a gauntlet for Germany, the Netherlands, Finland, and the “troika”—the European Central bank, the European Commission, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF)—the designers and enforcers of loans and austerity policies that have inflicted a catastrophic economic and social crisis on tens of millions of Europeans.
  • The troika’s policies were billed as “bailouts” for countries mired in debt—one largely caused by the 2008 financial speculation bubble over which indebted countries had little control—and as a way to restart economic growth. In return for the loans, the EU and the troika demanded massive cutbacks in social services, huge layoffs, privatization of pubic resources, and higher taxes.   However, the “bailouts” did not go toward stimulating economies, but rather to repay creditors, mostly large European banks. Out of the $266 billion loaned to Greece, 89 percent went to investors. After five years under the troika formula, Greece was the most indebted country in Europe. Gross national product dropped 26 percent, unemployment topped 27 percent (and over 50 percent for young people), and one-third of the population lost their health care coverage.   Given a chance to finally vote on the austerity strategy, Greeks overwhelmingly rejected the parties that went along with the troika and elected Syriza.
  • Gerry Adams of Sinn Fein—now the third largest party in the Irish Republic—hailed the vote as opening “up the real prospect of democratic change, not just for the people of Greece, but for citizens right across the EU.” Unemployment in Ireland is 10.7 percent, and tens of thousands of jobless young people have been forced to emigrate.   The German Social Democrats are generally supportive of the troika, but the Green Party hailed the Syriza victory and Die Linke Party members marched with signs reading, “We start with Greece. We change Europe.”   Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi—who has his own issues with the EU’s rigid approach to debt—hailed the Greek elections, and top aide Sandro Gozi said that Rome was ready to work with Syriza. The jobless rate in Italy is 13.4 percent, but 40 percent among youth.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • In short, there are a number of currents in the EU and a growing recognition even among supporters of the troika that prevailing approach to debt is not sustainable.   One should have no illusions that Syriza will easily sweep the policies of austerity aside, but there is a palpable feeling on the continent that a tide is turning. It did not start with the Greek elections, but with last May’s European Parliament elections, where anti-austerity parties made solid gains. While some right-wing parties that opportunistically donned a populist mantle also increased their vote, they could not do so where they were challenged by left anti-austerity parties. For instance, the right did well in Denmark, France, and Britain, but largely because there were no anti-austerity voices on the left in those races. Elsewhere the left generally defeated their rightist opponents.   If Syriza is to survive, however, it must deliver, and that will be a tall order given the power of its opponents.
  • The French Communist Party hailed the Greek elections as “Good news for the French people,” and Jean-Luc Melenchon of the Parti de Gauche called for a left-wing alliance similar to Syriza. French President Francois Hollande made a careful statement about “growth and stability,” but the Socialist leader is trying to quell a revolt by the left flank of his own party over austerity, and Paris is closer to Rome than it is to Berlin on the debt issue.   While the conservative government of Portugal was largely silent, Left Bloc Member of Parliament Marisa Matias told a rally, “A victory for Syriza is a victory for all of Europe.”
  • As convoluted as Greek politics are, the main obstacle for Syriza will come from other EU members and the Troika.   Finnish Prime Minister Alex Stubb made it clear “that we would say a resounding ‘no’ to forgive loans.” Merkel’s chief of staff, Peter Altmaier, says, “We have pursued a policy which works in many European countries, and we will stick to in the future.” IMF head Christine Lagarde chimed in that “there are rules that must be met in the euro zone,” and that “we cannot make special exceptions for specific countries.”   But Tsipras will, to paraphrase the poet Swinburne, not go entirely naked into Brussels, but “trailing clouds of glory.” Besides the solid support in Greece, a number of other countries and movements will be in the Belgian capital as well.   Syriza is closely aligned in Spain with Podemos, now polling ahead of the ruling conservative People’s Party. “2015 will be the year of change in Spain and Europe,” tweeted Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias in the aftermath of the election, “let’s go Alexis, let’s go!” Unemployment in Spain is 24 percent, and over 50 percent for young people.
  • At home, the Party will have to take on Greece’s wealthy tax-dodging oligarchs if it hopes to extend democracy and start refilling the coffers drained by the troika’s policies. It will also need to get a short-term cash infusion to meet its immediate obligations, but without giving in to yet more austerity demands by the troika.   For all the talk about Syriza being “extreme”—it stands for Coalition of the Radical Left— its program, as Greek journalist Kia Mistilis points, is “classic ‘70s social democracy”: an enhanced safety net, debt moratorium, minimum wage raise, and economic stimulus.   Syriza is pushing for a European conference modeled on the 1953 London Debt Agreement that pulled Germany out of debt after World War II and launched the “wirtschaftswunder,”or economic miracle that created modern Germany. The Agreement waved more than 50 percent of Germany’s debt, stretched out payments over 50 years, and made repayment of loans dependent on the country running a trade surplus.
  • The centerpiece of Syriza’s Thessaloniki program is its “four pillars of national reconstruction,” which include “confronting the humanitarian crisis,” “restarting the economy and promoting tax justice,” “regaining employment,” and “transforming the political system to deepen democracy.”   Each of the “pillars” is spelled out in detail, including costs, income and savings, and, while it is certainly a major break with the EU’s current model, it is hardly the October Revolution.   The troika’s austerity model has been quite efficient at smashing trade unions, selling off public resources at fire sale prices, lowering wages and starving social services. As a statement by the International Union of Food Workers argues, “Austerity is not the produce of a deficient grasp of macroeconomics or a failure of ‘social dialogue,’ it is a conscious blueprint for expanding corporate power.”
  • Under an austerity regime, the elites do quite well, and they are not likely to yield without a fight.   But Syriza is poised to give them one, and “the little party that could” is hardly alone. Plus a number of important elections are looming in Estonia, Finland, and Spain that will give anti-austerity forces more opportunities to challenge the policies of Merkel and the troika.   The spectre haunting Europe may not be the one that Karl Marx envisioned, but it is putting a scare into the halls of the rich and powerful.
  • Paul Merrell on 02 Feb 15
     
    I'm struck again by the poltical brilliance of Russia's decision to drop the South Stream Pipeline in favor of a new pipeline through Turkey to the border with Greece. Russia has gained an ally in Greece in terms of fighting economic sanctions on Russia and reinstating trade between Russia and the EU. Greece has veto power in the EU on any new sanctions or renewal of existing sanctions, at least most of which have sunset provisions. Russia also made allies of two NATO members, Greece and Turkey. And Greece is positioned by its threat of refusal to repay debt to the troika banksters to break the absolute hold the banksters have on monetary policy in the Eurozone. Russia magnifies that threat by saying that it is open to a proposal to bail out the Greek government. Not yet known is whether a condition would be abandoning the Euro as Greece's own currency. Greece might conceivably reinstate the drachma with its value pegged to a basket of foreign currencies, including the ruble and yuan. In other words, Greece leaving the EU and NATO and joining BRICS is conceivable.
Paul Merrell

Does Our Military Know Something We Don't About Global Warming? - Forbes - 0 views

www.forbes.com/...g-we-dont-about-global-warming

climate-change preparations DoD

shared by Paul Merrell on 27 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • Every branch of the United States Military is worried about climate change. They have been since well before it became controversial. In the wake of an historic climate change agreement between President Obama and President Xi Jinping in China this week (Brookings), the military’s perspective is significant in how it views climate effects on emerging military conflicts.
  • At a time when Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bush 41, and even British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, called for binding international protocols to control greenhouse gas emissions, the U.S. Military was seriously studying global warming in order to determine what actions they could take to prepare for the change in threats that our military will face in the future. The Center for Naval Analysis has had its Military Advisory Board examining the national security implications of climate change for many years. Lead by Army General Paul Kern, the Military Advisory Board is a group of 16 retired flag-level officers from all branches of the Service. This is not a group normally considered to be liberal activists and fear-mongers.
  • This year, the Military Advisory Board came out with a new report, called National Security and the Accelerating Risks of Climate Change, that is a serious discussion about what the military sees as the threats and the actions to be taken to mitigate them. “The potential security ramifications of global climate change should be serving as catalysts for cooperation and change. Instead, climate change impacts are already accelerating instability in vulnerable areas of the world and are serving as catalysts for conflict.”
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Bill Pennell, former Director of the Atmospheric Sciences and Global Change Division at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, summed up the threat in recent discussions about climate and national security: “The environmental consequences of climate change are a significant threat multiplier, which by itself, can be a cause for future conflicts. Global warming will affect military operations as well as its theaters of operations. And it poses significant risks and costs to military and civilian infrastructure, especially those facilities located on the coastline.” “The countries and regions posing the greatest security threats to the United States are among those most susceptible to the adverse and destabilizing effects of climate change. Many of these countries are already unstable and have little economic or social capital for coping with additional disruptions.” “Whether in Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, or North Korea, we are already seeing how extreme weather events – such as droughts and flooding and the food shortages and population dislocations that accompany them – can destabilize governments and lead to conflict. For example, one trigger of the chaos in Syria has been the multi-year drought the country has experienced since 2006 and the Assad Regime’s ineptitude in dealing with it.”
  • So why is the country as a whole, and those who normally support our military, so loathe to prepare for possible threats from this direction? In 1990, Eugene Skolnikoff summarized the national policy issues surrounding global warming and why it has been so difficult to rationally develop policy to address it. “The central problem is that outside the security sector, policy processes confronting issues with substantial uncertainty do not normally yield policy that has high economic or political costs. This is especially true when the uncertainty extends not only to the issues themselves, but also to the measures to avert them or deal with their consequences.” “The climate change issue illustrates – in fact exaggerates – all the elements of this central problem. Indeed, no major action is likely to be taken until those uncertainties are substantially reduced, and probably not before evidence of warming and its effects are actually visible. Unfortunately, any increase in temperature will be irreversible by the time the danger becomes obvious enough to permit political action.” And this was in 1990!
  • As Arctic ice diminishes, the region will see new shipping routes, new energy zones, new fisheries, new tourism and new sources of conflict not covered by existing maritime treaties. Since the United States is not party to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) treaty, we will not have maximum operating flexibility in the Arctic. Even seemingly small administrative issues may become important in the new era, e.g., the Unified Command Plan presently splits Arctic responsibility between two Combatant Commands: U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM) and U.S. European Command (EUCOM). This type of things needs to be resolved with the coming global changes in mind. Source: Center for Naval Analysis
Paul Merrell

China's yuan gets support from Africa central banks to replace US dollar reserve - Quartz - 0 views

qz.com/...s-to-replace-us-dollar-reserve

war & peace economic-warfare de-dollarization China yuan Africa

shared by Paul Merrell on 03 Jun 18 - No Cached
  • African central bank leaders are currently discussing whether to hold the yuan as part of their foreign reserves, highlighting the Chinese money’s rise as one of the world’s major reserve currencies. Government officials from 14 African nations in eastern and southern Africa are meeting today (May 29) in the Zimbabwean capital Harare to discuss sovereign reserve management, according to a report from the official China press agency Xinhua. The forum is being held by the Macroeconomic and Financial Management Institute of Eastern and Southern Africa (MEFMI), a regional establishment with members including Angola, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, and Tanzania. Besides strategizing on how to improve the weakened external positions of member nations during the global economic downturn, policymakers will also debate how to keep pace with large shifts in the global economy, where China has risen as a dominant and disruptive player. “Most countries in the MEFMI region have loans or grants from China and it would only make economic sense to repay in renminbi (Chinese yuan),” MEFMI spokesperson Gladys Siwela-Jadagu said. “With China as the largest trading partner of over 130 countries, the main challenge for African countries is how to benefit from the new pattern of international commerce,” she added.
  • The move underscores China’s push to internationalize its currency in order to promote trade and investment, besides boosting its soft power. This is especially true in the era of Xi Jinping whose extended rule and assertive governance are set to reshape the country’s diplomatic, military, and economic place in coming years. The move is also indicative of China’s emergence as a greater power willing to fill in a financial gap, especially in the isolationist post-Brexit and “America first” era.
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