Every move to take down the protections put into place by President Franklin Roosevelt after the banking collapse of the early 1930s, was done in the name of reform. The repeal of interstate banking prohibitions, the deregulation of the savings and loan sector, and the repeal of Glass-Steagall, along with a host of other measures, were all done in the name of reform.
Today, we are up to our chins in calls for reform. Some of them are genuine attempts to restore sanity to our regulatory process, others are well-intentioned but misguided efforts that would fail to have any meaningful impact, and still others are malicious measures that would advance the plans for a global financial dictatorship. It is imperative, therefore, that we have a standard for sorting the wheat from the crap and the Trojan Horses.
Fortunately, such a standard exists.
The Whole Enchilada
Nothing less than the full plan will work. Write off of the giant mountain of speculative debt currently choking the global economy, reorganize banking according to the Glass-Steagall standard, and replace the Anglo-Venetian imperial monetary system—including the scam known as globalization—with sovereign national credit systems, complete with a return to fixed exchange rates among national currencies, providing stability for long-term international cooperation.
With those measures in place, supported by the combined power of the U.S., Russia, China and India, joined by other nations, to keep the monetary casino empire from weaseling back into dominating position, we, humanity, can begin serious work on rebuilding the physical-economic productivity of the world, through large-scale investment in infrastructure—led by building state-of-the-art nuclear power plants, a global network of high-speed, magnetically levitated trains, and water management systems to provide the water for people, agriculture, and industry. We will move beyond making "things" to making history again.
It is not sufficient to merely repair existing facilities, or to build new facilities at existing technological levels. What we must do is to replace them with higher levels of technology, raising the productive power of human labor to new levels. This requires the adoption of a mission which will motivate and encourage us to make the scientific and technological breakthroughs necessary to push forward into this new Renaissance; we give ourselves problems to solve, we imbue humanity with a sense of optimism, and engage human creativity.
The perfect mission in this regard is the mission to put a manned base on Mars. To get to Mars requires not only returning to the Moon, but developing the capability on the Moon to build the spacecrafts necessary to make the trip to Mars. It also means developing the propulsion systems necessary to maintain a constant acceleration, and then a deceleration, of one Earth gravity, and solving an incredible range of other problems.
This is not a collection of programs, from which to pick and choose. It is a coherent program which must be adopted in its entirety if mankind is to avoid, at this late date, a collapse of civilization as we have known it.
To understand why the Whole Enchilada is required, we must understand the full extent of the problems we face. We are not facing merely a financial crisis, though we certainly have one. Neither are we facing merely a political crisis, which can be fixed by replacing one party in power with another. What we are facing is the very fabric of society itself, crumbling away.
Look around you, at the rate at which our brothers and sisters are losing their jobs, their homes, their ability to survive. Look at the rate at which governments at all levels are going broke, unable to perform their proper functions. Look at the way that all attempts to solve these problems are failing.
Nothing works anymore. Our ability to fix things has broken down, because we have become so caught up in entertainment and money, that we have forgotten how to drive our economy, and have allowed our political system to be taken over by the financier interests that are the agents of our destruction [ultimately theirs as well--they can't eat their paper... or shall we labor to feed them?]. We have allowed our schools to devolve into intellectual deserts where children are taught what to think, not how to think. We have allowed giant insurance and pharmaceutical companies to turn the study and practice of medicine into a looting ground, and allowed giant corporate cartels to increasingly dominate all essential needs of our lives.
Far too many among us allow ourselves to be distracted by the latest celebrity gossip, the local sports teams, the business news, partisan politics, and a host of other trivia. We have allowed ourselves to become stupid, and thus, easily manipulated.
This is what we must correct, and the Whole Enchilada offers the way to do it.
Real Reform
The propagandists of the monetarist empire have gone to grrrreat lengths to try to convince us that our future depends upon restoring their predatory financial system. We are induced to focus on such real, but relatively minor issues as bankers' bonuses and accounting issues, while the financial predators continue to rape and plunder and kill. They make us think that we need them, even as they lead us into a worsening nightmare life on Earth. WE DON'T NEED THEM!
Real reform means reorganizing, as through bankruptcy, their fetid system, with its control over the issuance and price of money, and replacing it with sovereign credit systems. It means an end to the power of the private central banks, beginning with the Federal Reserve, and a return to the principles laid out in the U.S. Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution.
Anything that reeks of globalization, we toss. Beginning with the idea any global tax to support global financial tyranny. Same goes with cap and trade, and all the other greenie taxes. No public funding of imperial schemes!
Derivatives regulation is easy. We outlaw derivatives. All derivatives contracts currently outstanding are declared null and void, and all new contracts prohibited. Problem solved.
The mountain of speculative debt gets written off through the bankruptcy reorganization, and the banking system that emerges from that process will operate under the Glass-Steagall standard. We will have banks, not casinos—and we'll make sure they behave. Banking serves the society and economy, not the other way around!
We'll set up a new Bank of the United States, to act as the intermediary between the government and the private banking system. We'll audit the Fed, after we shut it down.
Lesser measures, such as the moves in Congress to reinstate Glass-Steagall, are useful and should be encouraged—as long as everyone understands that they are steps along the way to a larger solution, and not solutions in and of themselves. We must not fall into the trap of confusing winning a battle or two with winning the war. Truly, whole civilizations have been lost to such errors.
Finally, we need to change, so that we citizens can understand what can and must be done, and make it happen.
---------
This is an edited version of an editorial written by John Hoefle. His original is here:
http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2009/3649lar_only_reform.html
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Christmas Carols and Songs, 2009
.
Just reading the lyrics comes nowhere close to doing these justice. Listen. Act.
ObamaCare
MP3 Audio
You better not cough,
You better not sneeze,
You better not get a fatal disease,
Obama's keeping healthcare costs down,
He's making a list,
And checking with NICE,
If keeping you breathing is worth the price,
Obama's keeping healthcare costs down,
Obamacare is thrifty,
'Cuz they don't give a damn,
If you are under fifty and you need a mammogram,
So you better be young,
With plenty of cash,
Or help shave off his Hitler mustache,
Obama's keeping healthcare costs down,
Obama's health advisers,
Are genocidal jerks,
Just like the Nazi doctors that were hanged at Nuremberg,
Obama's healthcare,
It mustn't be passed,
So light a fire on your congressman's ass.
Obama's keeping healthcare costs down.
----------------------------------------
Obama's lost it all
MP3 Audio
What kind of president is this,
Emitting noble gasses,
A Nobel Prize winning piece of work,
Who's trying to kill the masses,
Obama has lost it all,
For a little queen who's not so tall,
Obama is plunging fast,
Don't let your country go with him,
Somewhere between East Anglia,
And the Chicago Board of Trade,
A green financial bubble grows,
As'the City of London gets paid,
Obama has lost it all,
For a little queen who's not so tall,
Obama is plunging fast,
Don't let your country go with him,
A global holocaust is here,
But citizens do not dismay,
If Mars we reach in'a fusion fleet,
Then safely we'll be out of harm's way,
Obama has lost it all,
For a little queen who's not so tall,
Obama is plunging fast,
Don't let your country go with him.
----------------------------------------
Outside of a shelter
MP3 Audio
Outside of a shelter you wait for a bed,
thrown out before Christmas all thanks to Fed,
Foreclosures are soaring and credit has froze,
But where's Barney Bailout nobody knows,
Away in London they scheme for your life,
Obama bends over to prince Philips' wife,
In DC he gave all you had to the banks,
On London's orders he'll bring out the tanks,
We warned Barney Frank but he said things were fine,
Guess what? He's a liar and you're on the line,
The system is crashing but it's not your fate,
Now pass the LaRouche Plan before it's too late,
Tell congress move over we're taking your job,
Vote Rachel for Congress she'll clean out the slobs,
The future is calling for you to embrace,
Put Rachel in congress and mankind in space.
----------------------------------------
The unemployment line
MP3 Audio
Who should be sent to the unemployment line?
Obama's little mustache,
Who should be sent to the unemployment line?
Bailout Barney Frank,
And Obama's little mustache,
Who should be sent to the unemployment line?
Nancy Pelosi,
Bailout Barney Frank,
And Obama's little mustache,
Who should be sent to the unemployment line?
London's little queen,
Nancy Pelosi,
Bailout Barney Frank,
And Obama's little mustache,
Who should be sent to the unemployment line?
They're worse than Bush,
London's little queen,
Nancy Pelosi,
Bailout Barney Frank,
And Obama's little mustache,
Who should be sent to the unemployment line?
Evil Peter Orzag,
Timothy Geithner,
Ben Bernanke,
They're worse than Bush,
London's little queen,
Nancy Pelosi,
Bailout Barney Frank,
And Obama's little mustache,
Who should be sent to the unemployment line?
Scary Larry Summers,
Dr. EZ-Kill,
And his brother Rahm,
Evil Peter Orzag,
Timothy Geithner,
Idiot Bernanke,
They'll kill us all,
London's little queen,
Nancy Pelosi,
Bailout Barney Frank,
And Obama's little mustache,
Who should be sent to the unemployment line?
Nazi John Holdren,
Scary Larry Summers,
Dr. EZ-Kill,
And his brother Rahm,
Evil Peter Orzag,
Timothy Geithner,
Idiot Bernanke,
Don't forget Al Gore!
London's little queen,
Nancy Pelosi,
Bailout Barney Frank,
And Obama's little mustache.
-----------------------------
A gift from the Boston LaRouche Youth Movement, and the Lyndon LaRouche PAC.
http://www.larouchepac.com/node/12877
Just reading the lyrics comes nowhere close to doing these justice. Listen. Act.
ObamaCare
MP3 Audio
You better not cough,
You better not sneeze,
You better not get a fatal disease,
Obama's keeping healthcare costs down,
He's making a list,
And checking with NICE,
If keeping you breathing is worth the price,
Obama's keeping healthcare costs down,
Obamacare is thrifty,
'Cuz they don't give a damn,
If you are under fifty and you need a mammogram,
So you better be young,
With plenty of cash,
Or help shave off his Hitler mustache,
Obama's keeping healthcare costs down,
Obama's health advisers,
Are genocidal jerks,
Just like the Nazi doctors that were hanged at Nuremberg,
Obama's healthcare,
It mustn't be passed,
So light a fire on your congressman's ass.
Obama's keeping healthcare costs down.
----------------------------------------
Obama's lost it all
MP3 Audio
What kind of president is this,
Emitting noble gasses,
A Nobel Prize winning piece of work,
Who's trying to kill the masses,
Obama has lost it all,
For a little queen who's not so tall,
Obama is plunging fast,
Don't let your country go with him,
Somewhere between East Anglia,
And the Chicago Board of Trade,
A green financial bubble grows,
As'the City of London gets paid,
Obama has lost it all,
For a little queen who's not so tall,
Obama is plunging fast,
Don't let your country go with him,
A global holocaust is here,
But citizens do not dismay,
If Mars we reach in'a fusion fleet,
Then safely we'll be out of harm's way,
Obama has lost it all,
For a little queen who's not so tall,
Obama is plunging fast,
Don't let your country go with him.
----------------------------------------
Outside of a shelter
MP3 Audio
Outside of a shelter you wait for a bed,
thrown out before Christmas all thanks to Fed,
Foreclosures are soaring and credit has froze,
But where's Barney Bailout nobody knows,
Away in London they scheme for your life,
Obama bends over to prince Philips' wife,
In DC he gave all you had to the banks,
On London's orders he'll bring out the tanks,
We warned Barney Frank but he said things were fine,
Guess what? He's a liar and you're on the line,
The system is crashing but it's not your fate,
Now pass the LaRouche Plan before it's too late,
Tell congress move over we're taking your job,
Vote Rachel for Congress she'll clean out the slobs,
The future is calling for you to embrace,
Put Rachel in congress and mankind in space.
----------------------------------------
The unemployment line
MP3 Audio
Who should be sent to the unemployment line?
Obama's little mustache,
Who should be sent to the unemployment line?
Bailout Barney Frank,
And Obama's little mustache,
Who should be sent to the unemployment line?
Nancy Pelosi,
Bailout Barney Frank,
And Obama's little mustache,
Who should be sent to the unemployment line?
London's little queen,
Nancy Pelosi,
Bailout Barney Frank,
And Obama's little mustache,
Who should be sent to the unemployment line?
They're worse than Bush,
London's little queen,
Nancy Pelosi,
Bailout Barney Frank,
And Obama's little mustache,
Who should be sent to the unemployment line?
Evil Peter Orzag,
Timothy Geithner,
Ben Bernanke,
They're worse than Bush,
London's little queen,
Nancy Pelosi,
Bailout Barney Frank,
And Obama's little mustache,
Who should be sent to the unemployment line?
Scary Larry Summers,
Dr. EZ-Kill,
And his brother Rahm,
Evil Peter Orzag,
Timothy Geithner,
Idiot Bernanke,
They'll kill us all,
London's little queen,
Nancy Pelosi,
Bailout Barney Frank,
And Obama's little mustache,
Who should be sent to the unemployment line?
Nazi John Holdren,
Scary Larry Summers,
Dr. EZ-Kill,
And his brother Rahm,
Evil Peter Orzag,
Timothy Geithner,
Idiot Bernanke,
Don't forget Al Gore!
London's little queen,
Nancy Pelosi,
Bailout Barney Frank,
And Obama's little mustache.
-----------------------------
A gift from the Boston LaRouche Youth Movement, and the Lyndon LaRouche PAC.
http://www.larouchepac.com/node/12877
Saturday, December 19, 2009
China Youth Daily Covers LaRouche Youth At Copenhagen Summit
December 19, 2009 (LPAC)—"Global warming? I don't believe it!" This was how China Youth Daily began an article today on growing "global warming skepticism" after speaking to Sebastian Perimony, a LaRouche Youth organizer outside the Copenhagen global warming summit. "Every day outside the Copenhagen climate conference stand a group of European protesters. They are passing out leaflets, shouting 'Global warming is a lie!,' making known to the people around them their firm skepticism over the notion of global warming.... They are members of a non-governmental organization supporting the so-called LaRouche Plan, and on the issue of 'climate change' they're going against the mainstream of public opinion.
"Standing in the midst of Copenhagen's Raadhustorg, one young Frenchman passing out leaflets, named Perimony, pointed to the pictures on his placard and asked the China Youth Daily Reporter, 'Who do you think is the biggest liar when it comes to global warming?' On his poster he had the pictures of some of the British supporters of global warming, global warming economist, Nicholas Stern, Prince Charles, who established an international environmental protection foundation, California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is supporting climate change measures in his state, and wants California to be in the vanguard climate change movement, as well as some world leaders."
"We are not interested in the establishment of a world unitary executive," China Youth Daily quotes Perimony as saying.
The article then goes on to explain how the global-warming skepticism is greater in the U.S. than in Europe, proceeding to cite Dale Robertson, the organizer of the Tea Party organization, and Richard Sandersen, a global-warming skeptic from MIT. China Youth Daily then gives some of the poll numbers indicating this growing skepticism, with an ABC poll showing that the number of people who believe that global warming is actually occurring has fallen from 80% to 72%, and a Pew Institute poll showing that only 57% of the population believe that there is evidence of global warming (down from 71% last year), and that only 36% believe that it is caused by human activity (down from 47% in 2008).
The article ends by quoting a Chinese energy expert, Yang Fuqiang, who says that the growing skepticism about global warming may result in new studies being conducted, "stricter and more rational," that might provide a competent basis for drawing conclusions in the matter.
.
"Standing in the midst of Copenhagen's Raadhustorg, one young Frenchman passing out leaflets, named Perimony, pointed to the pictures on his placard and asked the China Youth Daily Reporter, 'Who do you think is the biggest liar when it comes to global warming?' On his poster he had the pictures of some of the British supporters of global warming, global warming economist, Nicholas Stern, Prince Charles, who established an international environmental protection foundation, California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is supporting climate change measures in his state, and wants California to be in the vanguard climate change movement, as well as some world leaders."
"We are not interested in the establishment of a world unitary executive," China Youth Daily quotes Perimony as saying.
The article then goes on to explain how the global-warming skepticism is greater in the U.S. than in Europe, proceeding to cite Dale Robertson, the organizer of the Tea Party organization, and Richard Sandersen, a global-warming skeptic from MIT. China Youth Daily then gives some of the poll numbers indicating this growing skepticism, with an ABC poll showing that the number of people who believe that global warming is actually occurring has fallen from 80% to 72%, and a Pew Institute poll showing that only 57% of the population believe that there is evidence of global warming (down from 71% last year), and that only 36% believe that it is caused by human activity (down from 47% in 2008).
The article ends by quoting a Chinese energy expert, Yang Fuqiang, who says that the growing skepticism about global warming may result in new studies being conducted, "stricter and more rational," that might provide a competent basis for drawing conclusions in the matter.
.
Friday, December 18, 2009
We Have To Bring Forward the Positive.
We have to bring forward the positive. The appeal of scandal doesn't get to the point. The negative is necessary to show what the enemy is doing; in that sense, it is relevant. But it merely goes to the symptoms of the horrors oozing around and toward us, not to the alternative.
The whole system is coming down. There are a number of measures on the table, contrary to Larry Summers. And our job is to recruit around the positive.
The whole system is coming down. There are a number of measures on the table, contrary to Larry Summers. And our job is to recruit around the positive.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Blaming human beings for the worlds ailments instead of uplifting them to solve these problems must cease
Summer Shields, Congressional Candidate from California's 8th Congressional district [Nancy Pelosi's] and LPAC activist statement on Copenhagen Summit:
"The concluding days of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen should be cancelled at once for scientific negligence. With what is at stake in this present world economic breakdown, it is more necessary than ever to expose the fraud of anthropogenic climate change and the intentional plans already concocted to cut the productivity of the world down to levels that would cause the death, and prevention of life, to billions of people. This is an expanded version of Henry Kissinger's 1974 NSSM 200 memorandum calling for population reduction.
"The recent walkout by the G77 nations at the Copenhagen conference, while good, should now proceed to expose this genocidal policy for what it is: British Imperialism. The deranged Prince Philip's infamous comments about returning as a "deadly virus" to control the world's population, his role in the creation of the World Wildlife Fund, and the recent address to the conference by Prince Charles and Tony Blair should help in making this clear.
"I believe that the developing sector countries should immediately support the 'Four Powers' solution of Lyndon LaRouche. Russia, China, India and the United States have the clout and the need to join forces to put an end to globalization by reorganizing the world economic and financial system into bankruptcy.
"John Holdren, Obama's science adviser should step down suddenly for collaborating with a known anti-humanist, Paul Ehrlich of 'Population Bomb' notoriety, and for supporting a policy of population reduction. When did 'killing people' replace 'saving people' when it comes to scientific method? Blaming human beings for the worlds ailments instead of uplifting them to solve these problems must cease."
December 16, 2009 (LPAC)
.
"The concluding days of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen should be cancelled at once for scientific negligence. With what is at stake in this present world economic breakdown, it is more necessary than ever to expose the fraud of anthropogenic climate change and the intentional plans already concocted to cut the productivity of the world down to levels that would cause the death, and prevention of life, to billions of people. This is an expanded version of Henry Kissinger's 1974 NSSM 200 memorandum calling for population reduction.
"The recent walkout by the G77 nations at the Copenhagen conference, while good, should now proceed to expose this genocidal policy for what it is: British Imperialism. The deranged Prince Philip's infamous comments about returning as a "deadly virus" to control the world's population, his role in the creation of the World Wildlife Fund, and the recent address to the conference by Prince Charles and Tony Blair should help in making this clear.
"I believe that the developing sector countries should immediately support the 'Four Powers' solution of Lyndon LaRouche. Russia, China, India and the United States have the clout and the need to join forces to put an end to globalization by reorganizing the world economic and financial system into bankruptcy.
"John Holdren, Obama's science adviser should step down suddenly for collaborating with a known anti-humanist, Paul Ehrlich of 'Population Bomb' notoriety, and for supporting a policy of population reduction. When did 'killing people' replace 'saving people' when it comes to scientific method? Blaming human beings for the worlds ailments instead of uplifting them to solve these problems must cease."
December 16, 2009 (LPAC)
.
How a Book Saved the Nation
Rediscovering Mathew Carey;
`The Olive Branch':
How a Book Saved the Nation
by Roger Maduro
with Excerpts from `The Olive Branch'
PDF
`The Olive Branch':
How a Book Saved the Nation
by Roger Maduro
with Excerpts from `The Olive Branch'
Friday, December 11, 2009
The Climate May Be Changing
In no particular order...
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/dutch-gore-wrong-on-snows-of-kilimanjaro/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/03/gore-cancels-on-copenhagen-lecture-leaves-ticketholders-in-a-lurch/
http://www.copenhagenscandal.org/
http://www.climate-sense.com/
http://climateaudit.org/
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/dutch-gore-wrong-on-snows-of-kilimanjaro/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/03/gore-cancels-on-copenhagen-lecture-leaves-ticketholders-in-a-lurch/
http://www.copenhagenscandal.org/
http://www.climate-sense.com/
http://climateaudit.org/
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Smoke & Mirrors: Bank of America Repays TARP Funds
Please excuse us, but we're laughing so hard it is difficult to produce this report. Our amusement comes from the announcement by Bank of America yesterday that it had repaid the U.S. Treasury the $45 billion in bailout funds it had been given under the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).
"We owe taxpayers our thanks for making these funds available to the nation's financial system and to our company during a difficult time," said the bank's CEO, Kenneth Lewis, in a press release.
No kidding, Ken. We'll politely overlook the fact that we taxpayers—as reflected by the huge public protests at the time—vehemently objected to the bailout, which was shoved down our throats, against our will, by a near-treasonous government, under the orders of the international financiers of Wall Street and the City of London. We objected then, and we still do, and no amount of revisionist spin will change that.
What we won't overlook, however, is the continuing duplicity, corruption, and fraud which this so-called payback represents, and the way in which the bailout policy as a whole continues to destroy the nation, and has put us on the verge of a complete breakdown.
We aren't buying your claims that Bank of America has returned to health, Ken. Your bank is even more bankrupt now than it was when it was bailed out, and you yourself are being shown the door. According to your own press release, the bank went another $19 billion in debt to help raise the funds to repay the government. By our calculations, giving the government $45 billion and borrowing $19 billion puts you $64 billion deeper in the hole, which doesn't exactly seem like progress. We realize, of course, that by repaying the government you make it easier for the bank to hire your replacement, as it removes you from the pay restrictions, but isn't $64 billion a bit much to pay for the privilege of overpaying some new guy to finish the job of running the bank completely into the ground?
We'll concede that Bank of America is now the biggest financial institution in the country, with a whopping $2.3 trillion in reported assets, although we must add that we don't believe that those assets are worth anywhere near what you claim, and we can't help but think of puffer fish when we look at your balance sheet. We're also impressed by your $75 trillion in off-balance-sheet derivatives. It looks to us like you've dug yourself a world-class smoking hole in the ground. Even the guys at J.P. Morgan Chase are starting to feel a little envious, from what we hear, though their smoking hole is still bigger.
The only problem, and we hate to bring it up, is that you're killing us. The TARP is just a tiny part of the overall bailout scheme, which has destroyed the real economy in its zeal to save the parasites. We're losing our jobs and our houses at an accelerating rate, our state and local governments are going broke faster than they can cut their budgets, and President [Obama] seems determined to slash and burn the social safety net upon which an increasing number of our citizens depend. As happy as we are that you are doing so well—or, at least, as happy as we'd be if we actually believed a damn thing you say; we know you're broke—we'd be even happier if the nation and the world weren't collapsing around us, destroying the lives and hopes of this and future generations. But at least as we descend into Hell, we have the comfort of knowing that Bank of America can tell lies with the best of them. That's gotta be worth something, right Ken?
johnhoefle@larouchepub.com
Reposted by gm here. From:
http://www.larouchepac.com/node/12734
December 10, 2009
"We owe taxpayers our thanks for making these funds available to the nation's financial system and to our company during a difficult time," said the bank's CEO, Kenneth Lewis, in a press release.
No kidding, Ken. We'll politely overlook the fact that we taxpayers—as reflected by the huge public protests at the time—vehemently objected to the bailout, which was shoved down our throats, against our will, by a near-treasonous government, under the orders of the international financiers of Wall Street and the City of London. We objected then, and we still do, and no amount of revisionist spin will change that.
What we won't overlook, however, is the continuing duplicity, corruption, and fraud which this so-called payback represents, and the way in which the bailout policy as a whole continues to destroy the nation, and has put us on the verge of a complete breakdown.
We aren't buying your claims that Bank of America has returned to health, Ken. Your bank is even more bankrupt now than it was when it was bailed out, and you yourself are being shown the door. According to your own press release, the bank went another $19 billion in debt to help raise the funds to repay the government. By our calculations, giving the government $45 billion and borrowing $19 billion puts you $64 billion deeper in the hole, which doesn't exactly seem like progress. We realize, of course, that by repaying the government you make it easier for the bank to hire your replacement, as it removes you from the pay restrictions, but isn't $64 billion a bit much to pay for the privilege of overpaying some new guy to finish the job of running the bank completely into the ground?
We'll concede that Bank of America is now the biggest financial institution in the country, with a whopping $2.3 trillion in reported assets, although we must add that we don't believe that those assets are worth anywhere near what you claim, and we can't help but think of puffer fish when we look at your balance sheet. We're also impressed by your $75 trillion in off-balance-sheet derivatives. It looks to us like you've dug yourself a world-class smoking hole in the ground. Even the guys at J.P. Morgan Chase are starting to feel a little envious, from what we hear, though their smoking hole is still bigger.
The only problem, and we hate to bring it up, is that you're killing us. The TARP is just a tiny part of the overall bailout scheme, which has destroyed the real economy in its zeal to save the parasites. We're losing our jobs and our houses at an accelerating rate, our state and local governments are going broke faster than they can cut their budgets, and President [Obama] seems determined to slash and burn the social safety net upon which an increasing number of our citizens depend. As happy as we are that you are doing so well—or, at least, as happy as we'd be if we actually believed a damn thing you say; we know you're broke—we'd be even happier if the nation and the world weren't collapsing around us, destroying the lives and hopes of this and future generations. But at least as we descend into Hell, we have the comfort of knowing that Bank of America can tell lies with the best of them. That's gotta be worth something, right Ken?
johnhoefle@larouchepub.com
Reposted by gm here. From:
http://www.larouchepac.com/node/12734
December 10, 2009
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Copenhagen: Empire Launches Full Court Press In Defense of Genocide
Determined to ensure that the UN Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen comes out the way the Queen wants, her imperial toadies today launched a full court press on behalf of killing people.
Most telling was the piece of fascist filth drafted by the Guardian which was published Dec. 7 as an joint editorial by 56 dailies in 45 countries, including France's Le Monde, Italy's La Reppublica, Germany's Sueddeutsche Zeitung, El Universal of Mexico, Clarin of Argentina, Canada's Toronto Star, the Miami Herald, among others.
The message? There had better be action now, to avoid global catastrophe. There are "fourteen days to seal history's judgment on this generation," it warns. "The science is complex but the facts are clear. Half of all species could become extinct, untold millions of people would be displaced, whole nations drowned by the sea." And although it is likely that no ironclad, legally binding agreement will come out of Copenhagen at this point, next June's UN climate meeting in Bonn should be the absolute deadline for reaching a rigorous treaty.
The Economist, The Times, Financial Times, Prince Philip's World Wildlife Fund (WWF), and Gordon Brown himself, were all fully mobilized to get out the Queen's royal emissions, and especially cheering on Obama, for deciding to attend the summit at the end, rather than the beginning. Changing the date of Obama's attendance supposedly means there's some "emerging consensus" on an agreement, Bloomberg News panted. WWF President Carter Roberts was beside himself, squealing that Obama's new attendance date "is a game changer. It's huge!"
In a separate article published in the Guardian, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown went through a chest-thumping exercise, Tarzan-style, proclaiming that he will "take on with evidence, argument and moral passion all the anti-science and anti-change environmental Luddites who seek to stand in the way of progress." As for Obama, "I am delighted that President Obama is not only going to Copenhagen to help conclude the deal, but leading the way on this, he has committed his country to paying its fair share."
December 8, 2009 (LPAC) I changed the heading/title (only) slightly.
Most telling was the piece of fascist filth drafted by the Guardian which was published Dec. 7 as an joint editorial by 56 dailies in 45 countries, including France's Le Monde, Italy's La Reppublica, Germany's Sueddeutsche Zeitung, El Universal of Mexico, Clarin of Argentina, Canada's Toronto Star, the Miami Herald, among others.
The message? There had better be action now, to avoid global catastrophe. There are "fourteen days to seal history's judgment on this generation," it warns. "The science is complex but the facts are clear. Half of all species could become extinct, untold millions of people would be displaced, whole nations drowned by the sea." And although it is likely that no ironclad, legally binding agreement will come out of Copenhagen at this point, next June's UN climate meeting in Bonn should be the absolute deadline for reaching a rigorous treaty.
The Economist, The Times, Financial Times, Prince Philip's World Wildlife Fund (WWF), and Gordon Brown himself, were all fully mobilized to get out the Queen's royal emissions, and especially cheering on Obama, for deciding to attend the summit at the end, rather than the beginning. Changing the date of Obama's attendance supposedly means there's some "emerging consensus" on an agreement, Bloomberg News panted. WWF President Carter Roberts was beside himself, squealing that Obama's new attendance date "is a game changer. It's huge!"
In a separate article published in the Guardian, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown went through a chest-thumping exercise, Tarzan-style, proclaiming that he will "take on with evidence, argument and moral passion all the anti-science and anti-change environmental Luddites who seek to stand in the way of progress." As for Obama, "I am delighted that President Obama is not only going to Copenhagen to help conclude the deal, but leading the way on this, he has committed his country to paying its fair share."
December 8, 2009 (LPAC) I changed the heading/title (only) slightly.
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Sanders and Senator Bunning To Put Hold on Bernanke Nomination
(Emphases, links and notes in square brackets are added to the below reports.)
December 4, (LPAC)—Reflecting growing opposition to the Wall Street bailout policy of the Obama administration and the surge of opposition to the Federal Reserve and its monetarist policies, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders (I) said on Tuesday that he was placing a hold on Bernanke's nomination for a second term as Federal Reserve chairman. If the hold is not withdrawn, Senate leaders will not be able to bring up the nomination for a vote by unanimous consent. Instead, they may need to garner 60 votes in order to consider the nomination.
In justifying his move, Sanders said:
The American people overwhelmingly voted last year for a change in our national priorities, to put the interests of ordinary people ahead of the greed of Wall Street and the wealthy few. What the American people did not bargain for was another four years for one of the key architects of the Bush economy.
As head of the central bank since 2006, Bernanke could have demanded that Wall Street provide adequate credit to small and medium-sized businesses to create decent-paying jobs in a productive economy, but he did not.
He could have insisted that large bailed-out banks end the usurious practice of charging interest rates of 30 percent or more on credit cards, but he did not.
He could have broken up too-big-to-fail financial institutions that took Federal Reserve assistance, but he did not.
He could have revealed which banks took more than $2 trillion in taxpayer-backed secret loans, but he did not."
"Mr. Bernanke has failed at all four core responsibilities of the Federal Reserve," Sanders concluded. "It's time for him to go."
[full press release snipped out of this space for brevity]
Republican Senator Bunning Joins Sanders in Call for Hold on Bernanke
Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY), who is retiring in 2010, announced that he would try to block the nomination of Ben Bernanke to a second term at the Federal Reserve.
In a prepared statement during the Senate Banking Committee hearings, Bunning said to Bernanke, "You are the definition of a moral hazard." Bunning, who is the only Senator to have voted against Bernanke in 2006, stated: "I opposed you because I knew you would continue the legacy of Alan Greenspan, and I was right."
Excerpts from his statement follow:
* "It took you two years to finally regulate subprime mortgages after Chairman Greenspan did nothing for 12 years.
* Alan Greenspan refused to look for bubbles or try to do anything other than create them. Likewise, ... you failed to spot the housing bubble despite many warnings.
* Instead of close supervision of the biggest and most dangerous banks, Greenspan ignored the growing balance sheets and increasing risk. You did no better. In fact, under your watch everyone of the major banks failed or would have failed if you did not bail them out. [They should have been put under bankruptcy reorganization and Glass Steagall applied.]
* The Greenspan policy on transparency was talk a lot, use plenty of numbers, but say nothing. ... You still refuse to provide details on the Fed's bailouts last year and on all the toxic waste you bought.
* Under your watch, the Bernanke Put became a bailout of all large financial institutions, including many foreign banks.
* You have created zombie banks that are only enriching their traders and executives.
* Even if all that were not true, the AIG bailout alone is reason enough to send you back to Princeton.
* Your time as Fed Chairman has been a failure. You stated time and again during the housing bubble that there was no bubble. After the bubble burst, you repeatedly claimed the fallout would be small. And you clearly did not spot the systemic risks that you claim the Fed was supposed to be looking out for. Where I come from we punish failure, not reward it. Judging by the current Treasury Secretary, some may think Washington does reward failure, but that should not be the case. I will do everything I can to stop your nomination and drag out the process as long as possible. We must put an end to your and the Fed's failures, and there is no better time than now.
In this video, Sen. Jim Bunning tells Mike Stark of Stark Reports that he will indeed place a hold on the nomination of Ben Bernanke to a second term for the Federal Reserve, as expected after his blasting of Bernanke above. The transcript of that interview:
MIKE STARK: Will you be placing a hold on the .. ah… (they are walking in a hallway)
BUNNING: I think that's pretty obvious.
STARK: ...that you will be
BUNNING: ...that I will be.
STARK: Do you know if any other Senators aside from Bernie Sanders will be joining you?
BUNNING: It's been discussed. There will be more than one hold than mine.
STARK: I know you make two. Right. Any others from the Republican side?
BUNNING: There are others that are going to hold.
According to Rep. Ron Paul, who was interviewed on Fox News, Jim DeMint has also put a hold on Bernanke's nomination.
-----------------
from
LPAC Breaking News (center column, lower page)
December 4, (LPAC)—Reflecting growing opposition to the Wall Street bailout policy of the Obama administration and the surge of opposition to the Federal Reserve and its monetarist policies, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders (I) said on Tuesday that he was placing a hold on Bernanke's nomination for a second term as Federal Reserve chairman. If the hold is not withdrawn, Senate leaders will not be able to bring up the nomination for a vote by unanimous consent. Instead, they may need to garner 60 votes in order to consider the nomination.
In justifying his move, Sanders said:
The American people overwhelmingly voted last year for a change in our national priorities, to put the interests of ordinary people ahead of the greed of Wall Street and the wealthy few. What the American people did not bargain for was another four years for one of the key architects of the Bush economy.
As head of the central bank since 2006, Bernanke could have demanded that Wall Street provide adequate credit to small and medium-sized businesses to create decent-paying jobs in a productive economy, but he did not.
He could have insisted that large bailed-out banks end the usurious practice of charging interest rates of 30 percent or more on credit cards, but he did not.
He could have broken up too-big-to-fail financial institutions that took Federal Reserve assistance, but he did not.
He could have revealed which banks took more than $2 trillion in taxpayer-backed secret loans, but he did not."
"Mr. Bernanke has failed at all four core responsibilities of the Federal Reserve," Sanders concluded. "It's time for him to go."
[full press release snipped out of this space for brevity]
Republican Senator Bunning Joins Sanders in Call for Hold on Bernanke
Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY), who is retiring in 2010, announced that he would try to block the nomination of Ben Bernanke to a second term at the Federal Reserve.
In a prepared statement during the Senate Banking Committee hearings, Bunning said to Bernanke, "You are the definition of a moral hazard." Bunning, who is the only Senator to have voted against Bernanke in 2006, stated: "I opposed you because I knew you would continue the legacy of Alan Greenspan, and I was right."
Excerpts from his statement follow:
* "It took you two years to finally regulate subprime mortgages after Chairman Greenspan did nothing for 12 years.
* Alan Greenspan refused to look for bubbles or try to do anything other than create them. Likewise, ... you failed to spot the housing bubble despite many warnings.
* Instead of close supervision of the biggest and most dangerous banks, Greenspan ignored the growing balance sheets and increasing risk. You did no better. In fact, under your watch everyone of the major banks failed or would have failed if you did not bail them out. [They should have been put under bankruptcy reorganization and Glass Steagall applied.]
* The Greenspan policy on transparency was talk a lot, use plenty of numbers, but say nothing. ... You still refuse to provide details on the Fed's bailouts last year and on all the toxic waste you bought.
* Under your watch, the Bernanke Put became a bailout of all large financial institutions, including many foreign banks.
* You have created zombie banks that are only enriching their traders and executives.
* Even if all that were not true, the AIG bailout alone is reason enough to send you back to Princeton.
* Your time as Fed Chairman has been a failure. You stated time and again during the housing bubble that there was no bubble. After the bubble burst, you repeatedly claimed the fallout would be small. And you clearly did not spot the systemic risks that you claim the Fed was supposed to be looking out for. Where I come from we punish failure, not reward it. Judging by the current Treasury Secretary, some may think Washington does reward failure, but that should not be the case. I will do everything I can to stop your nomination and drag out the process as long as possible. We must put an end to your and the Fed's failures, and there is no better time than now.
In this video, Sen. Jim Bunning tells Mike Stark of Stark Reports that he will indeed place a hold on the nomination of Ben Bernanke to a second term for the Federal Reserve, as expected after his blasting of Bernanke above. The transcript of that interview:
MIKE STARK: Will you be placing a hold on the .. ah… (they are walking in a hallway)
BUNNING: I think that's pretty obvious.
STARK: ...that you will be
BUNNING: ...that I will be.
STARK: Do you know if any other Senators aside from Bernie Sanders will be joining you?
BUNNING: It's been discussed. There will be more than one hold than mine.
STARK: I know you make two. Right. Any others from the Republican side?
BUNNING: There are others that are going to hold.
According to Rep. Ron Paul, who was interviewed on Fox News, Jim DeMint has also put a hold on Bernanke's nomination.
-----------------
from
LPAC Breaking News (center column, lower page)
Thursday, December 3, 2009
SCIENCE VS. GENOCIDE: WHAT THE 'CLIMATE-GATE' EMAILS DON'T SAY
The little secret of the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit emails is that there is no "global warming." A point of even greater significance lies outside them.
The 90 megabytes of email and data files provides evidence that leading figures at East Anglia were covering up or massaging data that disputed global warming, particularly land surface temperature records, and the evidence of a period of warming temperature well before the industrial era, known as the medieval warm period. What had them upset was that the slight upward spike in surface temperatures over approximately two decades preceding 1998 has disappeared from the land surface records, and for the past approximately 8 years there has been a cooling trend that has largely eliminated the previously alleged 0.6 degree centigrade increase in the "global averaged temperature" over the previous century.
Highly influential figures in Britain have denounced the affair, some in scathing terms. Lord Nigel Lawson of Blaby, Chancellor of the Exchequer for six years under the Thatcher government, called for an inquest, and announced the formation of a new climate advisory group. Lord Christopher Monckton, Britain's leading spokesman against the global warming fraud, called leading figures at East Anglia "criminals" and "arrogant fraudsters," and suggested they will soon be prosecuted for procurement of data destruction.
Yet, the far more serious crime is that "global warming" is a fraud whose real intent is to promote a genocide worse than Hitler’s. Since its first promotion in 1975, the claim has been that carbon dioxide emissions from industry will warm the planet, melt the ice caps and fry or drown us all—therefore human beings would have to do without. There never was scientific proof, and the argument went against all competent understanding of climate science that it is the Sun and the variations of the Earth-Sun orbital relationship which is the principal determinant of climate variability. The explicit intent in promoting this and other anti-science hoaxes has been to halt the development of scientific and technological progress in order to drastically reduce world population, perhaps to the level below 2 billion persons that the World Wildlife Fund's Prince Philip has proposed as desirable.
In fact, by the laws of human physical economy, no such planned reduction in global living standards is possible without unleashing a downward spiral of famine, pandemic disease, and social chaos of such a nature that its final outcome cannot be predicted by any human agency. Thus, the hoax of "global warming" is no mere question for academic debate, but rather a matter of the survival of the human species.
To prepare the citizen to combat this almost unthinkable evil, it is necessary that we go beyond mere refutation of the climate hoax, and understand more clearly the nature of the enemy. We concentrate here rather upon the essential points that are not widely understood. Most important is that the environmental movement is an arm of a global financial empire dedicated to reducing world population, eliminating scientific progress, and increasing the control of a financial oligarchy. It is not acting in the interest of any single nation, but rather against the sovereignty of all nations. The forces associated with the still undead British Empire, or Anglo-Dutch financial empire, continue to play the principal role. The partnership of Britain's Prince Philip with former Nazi Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands and sundry oligarchical forces of Europe in such promotions as the World Wildlife Fund, is exemplary. Credulous people, such as those bred to be servants or slaves of a ruling oligarchy, are told they must not entertain such ideas as may appear to be "conspiracy" theories. Yet who does not know that all historical movements, for good or ill, are the results of conspiracy?
The Environmentalist Record
To get an understanding of what is at play, begin with this simple historical fact: By the early 1960s, human society was poised for a breakout in the rate of physical economic progress. No technical obstacle stood in the way of combining already known agricultural and industrial technologies with the proven capability for generating high energy-flux density nuclear electricity and process heat, such that the entire world's population could be brought up to a modern standard of living within a generation or slightly longer. Further, the United States was poised to follow up its program for manned lunar exploration with a plan for manned exploration of Mars. Plans for the development of nuclear and thermonuclear powered rockets capable of achieving constant 1g acceleration to power human travelers to Mars, a Moon industrial base, and Earth orbital way stations were all in the works.
Suddenly all that changed. We can look briefly at what happened in the United States, recognizing that a similar pattern played out in all the industrialized nations of the West. By the late 1960s, students from the leading U.S. universities had been transformed from supporters of technological progress into enraged opponents of science, and anything to do with its application including blue collar workers and farmers. By 1969 an organized anti-science movement had emerged under the banner of "ecology," which found public expression in the March 1970 Earth Day celebrations. (Margaret Mead, the organizer of the first conference to promote the global warming fraud at Research Triangle, N.C. in 1975, gave her endorsement to the 1978 Earth Day with the statement "Earth Day is the first holy day which transcends all national borders." Ms. Mead never failed to appear in public without a forked witch's staff.)
Mass layoffs in the aerospace industry had already begun, as a result of measures taken under Presidents Johnson and Nixon to wind down the space program, a decision reached even before the first manned landing on the Moon.
By January 1971, DDT was under courtroom attack from the Environmental Defense Fund, and a year later Environmental Protection Agency administrator William Ruckelshaus who had first opposed a DDT ban, banned it, stating afterwards that the decision was made for political reasons. Months of scientific testimony had not proven any valid scientific argument against the widely used insecticide which had saved millions of lives. The ban has cost the lives of tens of millions of residents in tropical countries, mostly children. Because of the chemical's unique excito-repellent effect, indoor spraying of DDT remains the most effective means to prevent malaria-carrying mosquitoes from infecting humans.
Next came the attack on the chemical industry. Then the leveraging of an accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant, arguably a case of sabotage, into a movement that successfully prevented the breaking of ground on a single new nuclear power plant installation to this day in the United States. And there was more: CFCs, asbestos, PCBs, food preservatives—almost every invention of modern chemistry was declared to be dangerous to your health. If the atomic nucleus could have been banned from the human body it would have been. It is not out of the question that some court may yet try.
What Is Needed?
Today, about 5 billion of the 6.7 billion world population survive below an acceptable human living standard. The conditions for over one third the human race are perpetual misery, disease, and hunger. It is not yet too late to remedy that situation. The solution requires a mobilization of precisely those scientific resources the anti-science movement has targeted. The problem we face today, as compared to 40 years ago, is that a larger population must be supported with a depleted base of resources, both human scientific and material.
For example, it would take the construction of 6,000 new nuclear power plants by 2050 just to meet the electricity generation requirements of a properly fed, clothed, and housed world population. The power equivalent of another 6,000 one-gigawatt plants will be needed to supply process heat to industry and mining. Railroads, roads, water and sewage systems, hospitals, schools, factories, etc. are needed now throughout the world. The depletion of the most easily available mineral resources means that new sources must be discovered and developed. How will such needs be met?
The greatest limitation to achieving such aims is not any deficit in finite resources, but the lack of sufficient human creativity to solve the many challenges. The only remedy for such a situation is a rapid mobilization to increase our creative scientific capabilities. This is not a matter of merely opening up some schools. We have lost almost two generations to science, thanks to the environmentalist onslaught. When we look at the crucial areas of nuclear science and space, for example, we find that much of the genius, knowledge, and capabilities of an older generation has been lost without replacement. The biological sciences are increasingly mired in reductionist dogma, where they are not dominated outright by the green movement, and the Earth sciences increasingly taken over by the climate mafia.
The Science of Culturing Science
The proven method for achieving a rapid rate of scientific progress is the mobilization of the creative powers of youth around the tasks that challenge the imagination and invite breakthroughs in thinking. Today that challenge remains, as for a prior generation, the manned exploration of the solar system.
The leading practical problems of space exploration are: the achievement of a thermonuclear powered rocket to provide a constant 1g acceleration to manned vehicles, and mastery of the Vernadskyan domain governing the relationship of life to the cosmos. The pursuit of those aims will prove the fastest route to solving the problems facing human development on Earth.
For example, the nuclear fission reaction can produce 1 to 10 million times the energy flux density of chemical reactions, such as from burning of fossil fuels or hydrogen. Thermonuclear fusion can exceed that of fission by an order of magnitude or more, and also provide other advantages. The most likely candidate for powering manned vehicles for planetary exploration is the neutronless helium-3/deuterium fusion reaction, utilizing the abundant helium-3 resource found on the lunar surface. Mastering the means to directly convert the kinetic energy contained in the high-velocity proton produced by the reaction into electrical power, will prove a boon to power generation on Earth or any fixed station. Bypassing the need to first boil water in order to turn a turbine blade to rotate a generator will place power generation from thermonuclear sources on an entirely new footing. As Dr. Richard Post reported in respect to 1980s experiments on the axisymmetric tandem mirror device at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, efficiencies up to 80 percent were possible in direct conversion of the energy of alpha particles and ions shot out the ends of this linear type of fusion device, using the standard deuterium/deuterium reaction. (Research on that reactor along with all other approaches to fusion except the tokamak device were scuttled in the 1980s, under budgetary pressure shaped by the environmentalists’ Luddite onslaught.)
The million degree temperatures produced by a fusion reactor can provide the heat to process raw rock, even garbage, into its constituent elements, magnetically separating the ionized gases of each element by a device known as the plasma torch. Laser and plasma isotope separation, techniques demonstrated in the 1970s, permit a new level of control over the Periodic Table for the use of man.
Space exploration also challenges our understanding of life and its relationship to the cosmos. The great challenge, to keep man alive in the space environment, as he travels at high velocity in an inertial gravitational field, and lands on a completely new environment of changed gravitational and magnetic field strengths, will prompt new discovery. What is the relationship of cosmic radiation to life? Can life survive without a magnetic field; without the low-level radiation that is a constant companion on Earth? What is the significance of the electromagnetic spectrum in intercellular communication and development of an organism?
The details of the East Anglia emails are not the significant point. Defeating the genocidal intentions of the promoters of global warming is.
- by Laurence Hecht
Editor in Chief, 21st Century Science & Technology
December 2, 2009 (LPAC)— http://www.larouchepac.com/node/12623
The 90 megabytes of email and data files provides evidence that leading figures at East Anglia were covering up or massaging data that disputed global warming, particularly land surface temperature records, and the evidence of a period of warming temperature well before the industrial era, known as the medieval warm period. What had them upset was that the slight upward spike in surface temperatures over approximately two decades preceding 1998 has disappeared from the land surface records, and for the past approximately 8 years there has been a cooling trend that has largely eliminated the previously alleged 0.6 degree centigrade increase in the "global averaged temperature" over the previous century.
Highly influential figures in Britain have denounced the affair, some in scathing terms. Lord Nigel Lawson of Blaby, Chancellor of the Exchequer for six years under the Thatcher government, called for an inquest, and announced the formation of a new climate advisory group. Lord Christopher Monckton, Britain's leading spokesman against the global warming fraud, called leading figures at East Anglia "criminals" and "arrogant fraudsters," and suggested they will soon be prosecuted for procurement of data destruction.
Yet, the far more serious crime is that "global warming" is a fraud whose real intent is to promote a genocide worse than Hitler’s. Since its first promotion in 1975, the claim has been that carbon dioxide emissions from industry will warm the planet, melt the ice caps and fry or drown us all—therefore human beings would have to do without. There never was scientific proof, and the argument went against all competent understanding of climate science that it is the Sun and the variations of the Earth-Sun orbital relationship which is the principal determinant of climate variability. The explicit intent in promoting this and other anti-science hoaxes has been to halt the development of scientific and technological progress in order to drastically reduce world population, perhaps to the level below 2 billion persons that the World Wildlife Fund's Prince Philip has proposed as desirable.
In fact, by the laws of human physical economy, no such planned reduction in global living standards is possible without unleashing a downward spiral of famine, pandemic disease, and social chaos of such a nature that its final outcome cannot be predicted by any human agency. Thus, the hoax of "global warming" is no mere question for academic debate, but rather a matter of the survival of the human species.
To prepare the citizen to combat this almost unthinkable evil, it is necessary that we go beyond mere refutation of the climate hoax, and understand more clearly the nature of the enemy. We concentrate here rather upon the essential points that are not widely understood. Most important is that the environmental movement is an arm of a global financial empire dedicated to reducing world population, eliminating scientific progress, and increasing the control of a financial oligarchy. It is not acting in the interest of any single nation, but rather against the sovereignty of all nations. The forces associated with the still undead British Empire, or Anglo-Dutch financial empire, continue to play the principal role. The partnership of Britain's Prince Philip with former Nazi Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands and sundry oligarchical forces of Europe in such promotions as the World Wildlife Fund, is exemplary. Credulous people, such as those bred to be servants or slaves of a ruling oligarchy, are told they must not entertain such ideas as may appear to be "conspiracy" theories. Yet who does not know that all historical movements, for good or ill, are the results of conspiracy?
The Environmentalist Record
To get an understanding of what is at play, begin with this simple historical fact: By the early 1960s, human society was poised for a breakout in the rate of physical economic progress. No technical obstacle stood in the way of combining already known agricultural and industrial technologies with the proven capability for generating high energy-flux density nuclear electricity and process heat, such that the entire world's population could be brought up to a modern standard of living within a generation or slightly longer. Further, the United States was poised to follow up its program for manned lunar exploration with a plan for manned exploration of Mars. Plans for the development of nuclear and thermonuclear powered rockets capable of achieving constant 1g acceleration to power human travelers to Mars, a Moon industrial base, and Earth orbital way stations were all in the works.
Suddenly all that changed. We can look briefly at what happened in the United States, recognizing that a similar pattern played out in all the industrialized nations of the West. By the late 1960s, students from the leading U.S. universities had been transformed from supporters of technological progress into enraged opponents of science, and anything to do with its application including blue collar workers and farmers. By 1969 an organized anti-science movement had emerged under the banner of "ecology," which found public expression in the March 1970 Earth Day celebrations. (Margaret Mead, the organizer of the first conference to promote the global warming fraud at Research Triangle, N.C. in 1975, gave her endorsement to the 1978 Earth Day with the statement "Earth Day is the first holy day which transcends all national borders." Ms. Mead never failed to appear in public without a forked witch's staff.)
Mass layoffs in the aerospace industry had already begun, as a result of measures taken under Presidents Johnson and Nixon to wind down the space program, a decision reached even before the first manned landing on the Moon.
By January 1971, DDT was under courtroom attack from the Environmental Defense Fund, and a year later Environmental Protection Agency administrator William Ruckelshaus who had first opposed a DDT ban, banned it, stating afterwards that the decision was made for political reasons. Months of scientific testimony had not proven any valid scientific argument against the widely used insecticide which had saved millions of lives. The ban has cost the lives of tens of millions of residents in tropical countries, mostly children. Because of the chemical's unique excito-repellent effect, indoor spraying of DDT remains the most effective means to prevent malaria-carrying mosquitoes from infecting humans.
Next came the attack on the chemical industry. Then the leveraging of an accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant, arguably a case of sabotage, into a movement that successfully prevented the breaking of ground on a single new nuclear power plant installation to this day in the United States. And there was more: CFCs, asbestos, PCBs, food preservatives—almost every invention of modern chemistry was declared to be dangerous to your health. If the atomic nucleus could have been banned from the human body it would have been. It is not out of the question that some court may yet try.
What Is Needed?
Today, about 5 billion of the 6.7 billion world population survive below an acceptable human living standard. The conditions for over one third the human race are perpetual misery, disease, and hunger. It is not yet too late to remedy that situation. The solution requires a mobilization of precisely those scientific resources the anti-science movement has targeted. The problem we face today, as compared to 40 years ago, is that a larger population must be supported with a depleted base of resources, both human scientific and material.
For example, it would take the construction of 6,000 new nuclear power plants by 2050 just to meet the electricity generation requirements of a properly fed, clothed, and housed world population. The power equivalent of another 6,000 one-gigawatt plants will be needed to supply process heat to industry and mining. Railroads, roads, water and sewage systems, hospitals, schools, factories, etc. are needed now throughout the world. The depletion of the most easily available mineral resources means that new sources must be discovered and developed. How will such needs be met?
The greatest limitation to achieving such aims is not any deficit in finite resources, but the lack of sufficient human creativity to solve the many challenges. The only remedy for such a situation is a rapid mobilization to increase our creative scientific capabilities. This is not a matter of merely opening up some schools. We have lost almost two generations to science, thanks to the environmentalist onslaught. When we look at the crucial areas of nuclear science and space, for example, we find that much of the genius, knowledge, and capabilities of an older generation has been lost without replacement. The biological sciences are increasingly mired in reductionist dogma, where they are not dominated outright by the green movement, and the Earth sciences increasingly taken over by the climate mafia.
The Science of Culturing Science
The proven method for achieving a rapid rate of scientific progress is the mobilization of the creative powers of youth around the tasks that challenge the imagination and invite breakthroughs in thinking. Today that challenge remains, as for a prior generation, the manned exploration of the solar system.
The leading practical problems of space exploration are: the achievement of a thermonuclear powered rocket to provide a constant 1g acceleration to manned vehicles, and mastery of the Vernadskyan domain governing the relationship of life to the cosmos. The pursuit of those aims will prove the fastest route to solving the problems facing human development on Earth.
For example, the nuclear fission reaction can produce 1 to 10 million times the energy flux density of chemical reactions, such as from burning of fossil fuels or hydrogen. Thermonuclear fusion can exceed that of fission by an order of magnitude or more, and also provide other advantages. The most likely candidate for powering manned vehicles for planetary exploration is the neutronless helium-3/deuterium fusion reaction, utilizing the abundant helium-3 resource found on the lunar surface. Mastering the means to directly convert the kinetic energy contained in the high-velocity proton produced by the reaction into electrical power, will prove a boon to power generation on Earth or any fixed station. Bypassing the need to first boil water in order to turn a turbine blade to rotate a generator will place power generation from thermonuclear sources on an entirely new footing. As Dr. Richard Post reported in respect to 1980s experiments on the axisymmetric tandem mirror device at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, efficiencies up to 80 percent were possible in direct conversion of the energy of alpha particles and ions shot out the ends of this linear type of fusion device, using the standard deuterium/deuterium reaction. (Research on that reactor along with all other approaches to fusion except the tokamak device were scuttled in the 1980s, under budgetary pressure shaped by the environmentalists’ Luddite onslaught.)
The million degree temperatures produced by a fusion reactor can provide the heat to process raw rock, even garbage, into its constituent elements, magnetically separating the ionized gases of each element by a device known as the plasma torch. Laser and plasma isotope separation, techniques demonstrated in the 1970s, permit a new level of control over the Periodic Table for the use of man.
Space exploration also challenges our understanding of life and its relationship to the cosmos. The great challenge, to keep man alive in the space environment, as he travels at high velocity in an inertial gravitational field, and lands on a completely new environment of changed gravitational and magnetic field strengths, will prompt new discovery. What is the relationship of cosmic radiation to life? Can life survive without a magnetic field; without the low-level radiation that is a constant companion on Earth? What is the significance of the electromagnetic spectrum in intercellular communication and development of an organism?
The details of the East Anglia emails are not the significant point. Defeating the genocidal intentions of the promoters of global warming is.
- by Laurence Hecht
Editor in Chief, 21st Century Science & Technology
December 2, 2009 (LPAC)— http://www.larouchepac.com/node/12623
Monday, November 30, 2009
Bernanke Declares War On Constitution, Asserts Primacy of Global Central Bankers
In a lengthy op-ed, published today in the Washington Post, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke warned Congress, in no uncertain terms, to butt out of his and the Federal Reserve's business, and leave the U.S. central bank independent and fully integrated into the global system of private central bank dictatorship. Bernanke tore into two pieces of so-called Congressional reregulation, that would reduce the power and independence of the Fed: Chris Dodd's bill to remove Fed oversight authority over the banking system (a desperate populist ploy by Dodd, who is widely expected to lose re-election next year); and the Ron Paul bill to force an annual audit of the Fed's books. Bernanke wrote that "These measures are very much out of step with the global consensus on the appropriate role of central banks, and they would seriously impair the prospects for economic and financial stability in the United States."
Put in stark terms, Bernanke asserted that the "global consensus" among central bankers trumps the U.S. Constitution, and Congress should back off from its Constitutional responsibilities. Senior U.S. intelligence sources have confirmed that, were the Fed to be subjected to transparent Congressional audit, top Fed officials and leading bankers from the "too big to fail" institutions would be frog-marched off to jail en masse, for the preferential bailout treatment they have gotten—and continue to get—from the Fed, as regional and community banks are allowed to go under at record rates.
Paradoxically, the same issue of the Washington Post that gave nearly a full page to Bernanke's self-promoting rant, featured a regular column by David Ignatius, in which he cited the official Fed notes from the Nov. 3-4 Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting, to show that the Fed policy has been a total failure with respect to the real economy and the conditions of life for the vast majority of Americans. The FOMC members assessed that there will be no reversal of the high unemployment rates for the next five years, and that there is no sign that bank lending to small businesses will resume anytime soon.
Ignatius' conclusion is that Obama and the Congressional Democrats are in deep trouble: "The politics of rage aren't pretty. But in this case, it's hard to argue that the anger isn't justified. The Fed's analysis shows what we see in the daily stock market summaries. People on the top are recovering their losses; people on the bottom are out of work and out of luck." Obama, he warns, "will need all the political genius he showed during the 2008 campaign—and which he has displayed too little lately—to handle what's coming at him next year."
November 30, 2009 (LPAC)—
http://www.larouchepac.com/node/12590
Put in stark terms, Bernanke asserted that the "global consensus" among central bankers trumps the U.S. Constitution, and Congress should back off from its Constitutional responsibilities. Senior U.S. intelligence sources have confirmed that, were the Fed to be subjected to transparent Congressional audit, top Fed officials and leading bankers from the "too big to fail" institutions would be frog-marched off to jail en masse, for the preferential bailout treatment they have gotten—and continue to get—from the Fed, as regional and community banks are allowed to go under at record rates.
Paradoxically, the same issue of the Washington Post that gave nearly a full page to Bernanke's self-promoting rant, featured a regular column by David Ignatius, in which he cited the official Fed notes from the Nov. 3-4 Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting, to show that the Fed policy has been a total failure with respect to the real economy and the conditions of life for the vast majority of Americans. The FOMC members assessed that there will be no reversal of the high unemployment rates for the next five years, and that there is no sign that bank lending to small businesses will resume anytime soon.
Ignatius' conclusion is that Obama and the Congressional Democrats are in deep trouble: "The politics of rage aren't pretty. But in this case, it's hard to argue that the anger isn't justified. The Fed's analysis shows what we see in the daily stock market summaries. People on the top are recovering their losses; people on the bottom are out of work and out of luck." Obama, he warns, "will need all the political genius he showed during the 2008 campaign—and which he has displayed too little lately—to handle what's coming at him next year."
November 30, 2009 (LPAC)—
http://www.larouchepac.com/node/12590
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Cancel the Copenhagen Climate Summit!
The Climate Summit in Copenhagen, which is to take place from Dec. 6 to 18, and in which 193 nations, approximately 65 heads of government, and up to 20,000 delegates are to participate, is based on a gigantic fraud, and must immediately be cancelled—and not only to save the substantial expenses for this neo-malthusian propaganda event, whose real aim consists in establishing a de facto world government.
After almost 1,000 scientists have recently distanced themselves from the thesis of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concerning allegedly anthropogenic global warming, now the scandalous manipulations that hackers have unearthed in the e-mail communications of "scientists" of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) of East Anglia University in Great Britain, are the final proof of the climate fraud—in case anyone still needed it.
In reality, the raw, unalterated data from long-term weather stations show little or no change during the last 150 years. Half of the stations show a slight cooling, and global cooling has been occurring for around ten years. So what is behind this enormously expensive campaign?
The answer is clear: Apart from all sorts of profiteers, who see the C02 emissions trade as a new opportunity for ripping off the population, it is essentially the policy of the British Empire, or, more precisely, of Prince Philip, who has repeatedly said publicly that he wants to be reincarnated as a virus, so as to more effectively contribute to population reduction. On Nov. 12, the CEO of Prince Philip's World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) told reporters: "We believe it fundamental for the President to go to Copenhagen, to look other leaders in the eye, convey our commitment as a country, and secure theirs." And promptly Obama announced, contrary to earlier statements, that he would be in Copenhagen on Dec. 9.
Moreover, it is monstrous that an official UN organization, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, and the Danish government, want to place the question of population reduction officially on the agenda.
According to the Danish newspaper Berlinske Tidende, Danish Development Minister Ulla Toerness has admitted the controversial character of this proposal, which in several nations is still considered a huge taboo. But since, she says, there's a connection between population growth and climate change, this proposal also has the complete support of the Danish Prime Minister.
The British organization Optimum Population Trust (OPT), which crusades for global population reduction, asserts in a study that one of the best opportunities for combatting so-called "global warming," consists in preventing births, because preventing the birth of new "polluters" would be a far cheaper means to prevent "climate catastrophe," than acquiring renewable energy sources. According to the study, by spending £200 trillion, we could prevent a half-billion births and thus the emission of 24 billion tons of CO2, over the next 40 years.
Also revealing, is the fact that according to Forbes magazine, the "14 richest men in the world" (who owe their wealth not least to the casino economy) met back on May 5 of this year at the home of the president of the private Rockefeller University. Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Michael Bloomberg, George Soros, Peter Petersen, David Rockefeller, Jr., and the other participants in this illustrious gathering agreed that the problem of population growth poses the worst environmental, social, and industrial threat.
Another in a whole series of conferences, which served to prepare for the Copenhagen summit, was the conference of the Policy Network think-tank on June 5 at the London School of Economics, at which Tony Blair, whose authorship of the Iraq War is right now under investigation in Great Britain, delivered the keynote speech, emphasizing that a "revolutionary change in behavior" is required. To this end, the United States alone would have to reduce its emissions to one-tenth of the current level! Blair left no doubt that he sees the greatest problem in the fact that China wants to implement "the greatest industrialization that the world has ever seen."
During a three-day conference in Essen on the theme "The Great Transformation," organized by the Mercator Foundation in collaboration with the Climate Institute in Potsdam and Wuppertal, a prospectus for its Working Group 4 stated: "Could open democratic societies keep up with the impact of serious changes in the global climate, or could authoritarian regimes be better suited to enforce the measures required?" One of the participants in this conference was the head of the Climate Institute in Potsam, Hans-Joachim Schellenhuber, a recent host of Prince Charles for an "Experts' Discussion on the Environment and Climate Themes" at the Postdam institute, and who has also been awarded the highest English order, the Order of the Garter.
One can only agree with Lord Christopher Monckton in his characterization of the climate fraud and the Copenhagen conference: It is the attempt to establish an unelected world government with enormous and unprecedented powers. A small, closely linked grouping of so-called scientists is now exposed as frauds and criminals. Another grouping under the leadership of former British Finance Minister Lord Nigel Lawson, along with a substantial group of other Lords, authors, and journalists, has just now established a new website, and a Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), which has dedicated itself to the fight against this fraud.
Unfortunately, there can be no doubt that there is a consensus in the pro-British part of the international establishment, to respond to the systemic crisis of the global financial system with a new fascism, in which the poor, the weak, and the sick are to be sacrificed for the benefit of speculative interests.
To aim for such a policy falls under the Nuremberg Laws after World War II. All who want to participate in the Copenhagen conference should remember that. After all that has come to light until now about the climate fraud, there is only one reasonable solution: Cancel the conference immediately.
-------------------------------
by Helga Zepp-LaRouche -- This statement was released by the Civil Rights Solidarity Movement (BüSo), a German political party, on Nov. 27, and has been translated from German.
After almost 1,000 scientists have recently distanced themselves from the thesis of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concerning allegedly anthropogenic global warming, now the scandalous manipulations that hackers have unearthed in the e-mail communications of "scientists" of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) of East Anglia University in Great Britain, are the final proof of the climate fraud—in case anyone still needed it.
In reality, the raw, unalterated data from long-term weather stations show little or no change during the last 150 years. Half of the stations show a slight cooling, and global cooling has been occurring for around ten years. So what is behind this enormously expensive campaign?
The answer is clear: Apart from all sorts of profiteers, who see the C02 emissions trade as a new opportunity for ripping off the population, it is essentially the policy of the British Empire, or, more precisely, of Prince Philip, who has repeatedly said publicly that he wants to be reincarnated as a virus, so as to more effectively contribute to population reduction. On Nov. 12, the CEO of Prince Philip's World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) told reporters: "We believe it fundamental for the President to go to Copenhagen, to look other leaders in the eye, convey our commitment as a country, and secure theirs." And promptly Obama announced, contrary to earlier statements, that he would be in Copenhagen on Dec. 9.
Moreover, it is monstrous that an official UN organization, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, and the Danish government, want to place the question of population reduction officially on the agenda.
According to the Danish newspaper Berlinske Tidende, Danish Development Minister Ulla Toerness has admitted the controversial character of this proposal, which in several nations is still considered a huge taboo. But since, she says, there's a connection between population growth and climate change, this proposal also has the complete support of the Danish Prime Minister.
The British organization Optimum Population Trust (OPT), which crusades for global population reduction, asserts in a study that one of the best opportunities for combatting so-called "global warming," consists in preventing births, because preventing the birth of new "polluters" would be a far cheaper means to prevent "climate catastrophe," than acquiring renewable energy sources. According to the study, by spending £200 trillion, we could prevent a half-billion births and thus the emission of 24 billion tons of CO2, over the next 40 years.
Also revealing, is the fact that according to Forbes magazine, the "14 richest men in the world" (who owe their wealth not least to the casino economy) met back on May 5 of this year at the home of the president of the private Rockefeller University. Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Michael Bloomberg, George Soros, Peter Petersen, David Rockefeller, Jr., and the other participants in this illustrious gathering agreed that the problem of population growth poses the worst environmental, social, and industrial threat.
Another in a whole series of conferences, which served to prepare for the Copenhagen summit, was the conference of the Policy Network think-tank on June 5 at the London School of Economics, at which Tony Blair, whose authorship of the Iraq War is right now under investigation in Great Britain, delivered the keynote speech, emphasizing that a "revolutionary change in behavior" is required. To this end, the United States alone would have to reduce its emissions to one-tenth of the current level! Blair left no doubt that he sees the greatest problem in the fact that China wants to implement "the greatest industrialization that the world has ever seen."
During a three-day conference in Essen on the theme "The Great Transformation," organized by the Mercator Foundation in collaboration with the Climate Institute in Potsdam and Wuppertal, a prospectus for its Working Group 4 stated: "Could open democratic societies keep up with the impact of serious changes in the global climate, or could authoritarian regimes be better suited to enforce the measures required?" One of the participants in this conference was the head of the Climate Institute in Potsam, Hans-Joachim Schellenhuber, a recent host of Prince Charles for an "Experts' Discussion on the Environment and Climate Themes" at the Postdam institute, and who has also been awarded the highest English order, the Order of the Garter.
One can only agree with Lord Christopher Monckton in his characterization of the climate fraud and the Copenhagen conference: It is the attempt to establish an unelected world government with enormous and unprecedented powers. A small, closely linked grouping of so-called scientists is now exposed as frauds and criminals. Another grouping under the leadership of former British Finance Minister Lord Nigel Lawson, along with a substantial group of other Lords, authors, and journalists, has just now established a new website, and a Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), which has dedicated itself to the fight against this fraud.
Unfortunately, there can be no doubt that there is a consensus in the pro-British part of the international establishment, to respond to the systemic crisis of the global financial system with a new fascism, in which the poor, the weak, and the sick are to be sacrificed for the benefit of speculative interests.
To aim for such a policy falls under the Nuremberg Laws after World War II. All who want to participate in the Copenhagen conference should remember that. After all that has come to light until now about the climate fraud, there is only one reasonable solution: Cancel the conference immediately.
-------------------------------
by Helga Zepp-LaRouche -- This statement was released by the Civil Rights Solidarity Movement (BüSo), a German political party, on Nov. 27, and has been translated from German.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
SHIFT TO THE PACIFIC: THE HISTORIC MISSION OF THE UNITED STATES
"Go West, Young Man" was a popular admonition in the United States of the post-Civil War period, when the Transcontinental Railroad, industrialization, and millions of enterprising settlers moved across the vast territory of the country toward the Pacific Ocean, thus fulfilling the historic vision of the founders of the American Republic to establish a continental republic on these shores. Today, that admonition must be extended further, through a determination of the U.S. government to establish new partnerships for economic development with the nations of the Asian-Pacific and Indian-Ocean Basin, specifically, the nations of Russia, China, and India. The establishment of the United States republic, from 1776 through 1865, provided a "beacon of hope" for rallying against the powers of Empire in the world, but that empire, now run through the supranational financial institutions of the world, still maintains a stranglehold over the planet, and threatens to bring it into an unspeakable devolution into a New Dark Age. Only the revival of the United States' anti-colonial mission, in concert with the nations of the Asian-Pacific-Indian Ocean Basin, can now break the power of that monetarist empire, and bring an era of prosperity to the planet.
Lyndon LaRouche has long campaigned for this reorientation of U.S. policy. Back in 1983, he produced a policy document entitled "A Fifty-year Development Policy for the Indian-Pacific Oceans Basin," which argued for the necessity of orienting a world economic development program toward the region of the world with the largest population, and the greatest ration of poverty to be overcome—the Pacific Basin. Here is where the potential, and necessity, for the greatest growth exists, he argued. He revived this perspective once again after the fall of the Soviet Union, in 1991, putting forward the perspective of the Eurasian Land-Bridge, which represents the mission of bringing economic development to the vast interior regions of Asia, which have been left as centers of impoverishment and desolution. In the 2003-2007 period, he further refined this concept from the standpoint of pulling together a strategic alliance of sovereign powers who collectively could crush the British financial empire—specifically proposing a Four Power agreement of Russia, China, India, and the United States as the core of a new world financial system, oriented toward economic development, and an alliance for stymying the perpetual warfare policy of the British Empire.
As of October of this year, with the signing of a series of ground-breaking economic agreements between Russia and China, the first concrete step toward such an arrangement was taken. This advance, occurring as it does in the midst of the most dramatic disintegration of the world financial system, especially in the United States and Western Europe, puts the question even more urgently to the United States, for joining in a Four Power alliance. Despite the apparently impossible situation of having a de facto British puppet as President, and a Congress so corrupt as to virtually kow-tow to this President, patriotic institutions around the institution of the Presidency, as well as leading patriotic citizens, have no choice but to rally around LaRouche's Four Power perspective, as the unique means of saving not only their own nation, but the planet as a whole.
To reach a Four Powers agreement, demands the U.S. orienting to the Pacific-Indian Oceans Basin. Here, in the nations of Russia, China, and India, you have proud sovereign states, who, despite the fact that they are operating within, and are crippled by, the global imperialist monetary system, maintain national identities, not to mention the sizeable populations, which impel them toward resisting the depredations of the British Empire. Note, for example, India and China's resistance to the genocide being sold as measures for "climate change." Contrast this with the European system, where the City of London-dominated European Community runs a financial dictatorship over the member nations, who have adopted an ideology, and reality, of Green depopulation and death; with Africa, which remains, to this day, a brutalized colony of the British Empire, a mere source of raw materials to be wrested from its land and its people; or with Ibero-America, which is still dominated by the crippling cultural heritage of being subjects of the imperial Habsburgs.
As LaRouche recently put it, "Europe is essentially dead. It's captive territory of the British Empire. South and Central America are captives of the drug rings." They are all British-dominated, and the only area where you can initiate the changes required to save the planet, is the Pacific-Indian Ocean Basin, of which the United States, still hereditarily the world's leading republic, is an integral part.
In taking up this mission, the United States will, in fact, be fulfilling the promise and commitment of its original Founding Fathers, those of the Italian Renaissance, and the Massachusetts Bay Colony. An understanding of that mission was the driving force behind those who built the United States into a continental power which extended from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, most crucially, John Quincy Adams. The idea was taken up and expanded by Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt—and must be renewed today. In the following pages, we present a summary of the case for the immediate adoption of this Pacific Orientation Policy, as a cornerstone of the strategy for survival from otherwise onrushing disaster.
- Start with the General Welfare -
"Our Manifest Destiny lies in Classical Greek civilization, its unique contribution to global civilization. It lies in the role of Christianity, especially the Apostles, like John and Paul, in taking this Greek Classical legacy, and using this as the tool of Christianity, to improve the condition of mankind, as the Renaissance did later.
"We need to develop the nation state, the idea that a national government has no moral authority, except as it is founded on an absolute commitment to promote and defend the General Welfare of all of its people, including their posterity."
This statement of the historic purpose of the United States was delivered in a major policy speech by Lyndon LaRouche in his 2000 Presidential campaign. In that speech, LaRouche identified the specific role played in developing the idea of a moral nation state, with Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, the pre-eminent scientist of the 15th Century. Nicholas of Cusa, in his writings on "Catholic Concordance," put forward the concept that all legitimate power of the state depends upon the consent of the governed, and that the purpose of that state, and its elected officials, or counselors, was to "provide for the general welfare" of the population. Those who govern "ought to constantly defend the good of the public which they represent," Cusa argued.
It became clear to the Cardinal, however, that it would not be possible to fulfill his vision of a moral sovereign nation state in oligarchy-dominated Europe. Rather, he conspired with friends to spread the idea of establishing colonies in the New World. Among those collaborators was Paolo Toscanelli, known as the author of a map of the spherical Earth, a map which included the ultimately-to-be-discovered American continent.
It was Toscanelli's map which found its way into the hands of one Italian-born sea captain, then operating in Portugal, named Christopher Columbus. Through Toscanelli's associate Fernao Martins, Columbus entered a correspondence with Toscanelli, and ultimately received the backing from the Spanish throne to be able to fulfill Cusa's goal of travelling to the New World.
Unfortunately, however, Cusa's vision of establishing sovereign nation states devoted to the general welfare of their populations, was unable to be realized in Hispanic America. Those who emigrated to Central and South America had not thrown off the cultural domination of the imperial system which ruled their culture in Europe, specifically that of the Habsburg dynasty. That dynasty treated its subjects like beasts, and inculcated that very servile, often racist mentality within them—the very antithesis of the republican idea that man is defined by his ability to reason, and to improve both his knowledge and his lot, and that of his fellow man.
Instead, the first solidly republican experiment, in the spirit of Nicholas of Cusa, which took root in the United States, occurred in the Massachusetts Bay colony, nearly 130 years after Columbus's voyage. Under a small group of Englishmen, whose leader John Winthrop was an eloquent spokesman, a group of 800 men, women, and children travelled to New England to establish what Winthrop called "a City upon a hill," which was devoted to the following mission: "The end is double, moral and natural, that man might enjoy the fruits of the earth and God might have his due glory from the creature. Why then should we stand here striving for places of habitation... and in the meantime suffer a whole Continent, as fruitful and convenient for the use of man, to lie waste without any improvement?"
Winthrop's settlement immediately set about improving the land and the conditions of his people. Within a few years, a university was established, and the first public system of compulsory elementary education put in place. A constitutional government was established, which acted to stimulate local manufacture and technological progress, including the creation of an iron works which almost immediately far outproduced that of the best works in England. The Massachusetts Bay government also minted its own currency, in order to provide credit for industry and commerce. It moved as well to provide for its own defense, with a militia and fortifications. In short, until the experiment was crushed by King Charles II, and then the takeover of England by William and Mary, Massachusetts represented a model for republican self-government, along the lines Cusa had laid out, which itself had an eye to expansion throughout the entire continent.
Given the leading role played by that child of Boston, Benjamin Franklin, in shaping the battle for, and ultimate establishment of, the republican government of the United States, it should not be properly surprising that the foundations of our government, from the Declaration of Independence to the Constitution, continue that Massachusetts Bay republican tradition. We are the only nation on the planet committed, by Constitutional law, to the pursuit of the General Welfare of our population and our posterity, as a principle of organizing our society.
- Becoming a Continental Republic -
The fledgling American republic, dedicated to principles directly counter to those of the European oligarchy, had the advantage of being separated by a large body of water from those who would destroy it. But the mere separation was not enough. The United States was weak and isolated in the wake of winning its independence, and lived in constant danger of being crushed by those empires who still operated in the Western Hemisphere, surrounding it on every side. To gain the strength necessary to defend itself, and its republican mode of government, leading American patriots adopted the strategy of moving West, with the ultimate aim of developing all the territory, up to the Pacific Ocean.
One of the clearest ways to grasp this policy is to see it through the eyes, and actions, of John Quincy Adams, a son of Massachusetts who had grown up steeped in both his colony's republican heritage, but also in close collaboration with the elder statesman-philosopher Benjamin Franklin. It's no exaggeration to say that John Quincy Adams personally negotiated nearly the entire shape of the continental United States, from its borders with Florida and Canada, to its expansion to the Pacific coast. He did so as first, a Senator, then Ambassador to Russia and England, and finally as President Monroe's Secretary of State from 1816 to 1824.
Adams' motivations were both defensive, and positive. He expressed the first view to his mother Abigail in 1811, on the eve of the war of 1812, in a letter attacking the treasonous Essex Junto of New England. He wrote:
"If that Party [Federalist] are not effectually put down in Massachusetts, as completely as they already are in New York, and Pennsylvania, and all the southern and western states, the Union is gone. Instead of a nation coextensive with the North American continent, destined by God and nature to be the most populous and most powerful people ever combined under one social compact, we shall have an endless multitude of little insignificant clans and tribes at eternal war with one another for a rock, or a fish pond, the sport and fable of European masters and oppressors."
At that time, those European "masters and oppressors" who had footholds on the North American continent, included Great Britain, Spain, France, and Russia. All but Russia, with whom John Quincy Adams had formed an extremely close relationship during a visit in his youth, as well as his ambassadorship there from 1809-14, were determined to cut off the United States from Western expansion, and/or otherwise cut it "down to size." For example, during the negotiations at Ghent, for a peace treaty at the conclusion of the War of 1812, the British were conniving to cut off large parts of New England, and to shut off the Western frontier, if possible by extending the Canadian border all the way down to the Ohio River. As part of the negotiating team there, John Quincy Adams played a crucial role in outmaneuvering the British strategy—helped immensely, of course, by the victories of the American Navy on Lake Champlain and the Great Lakes.
But Adams was inspired more profoundly by a deep understanding of the universal significance of the American revolution and its unique principles of government. Adams often referred to this principle as the "anticolonial" principle. In a speech celebrating the Fourth of July in 1821, he put it this way:
"In a conflict [of] seven years, the history of the war by which you maintained that Declaration, became the history of the civilized world.... It was the first solemn declaration by a nation of the only legitimate foundation of civil government. It was the cornerstone of a new fabric, destined to cover the surface of the globe. It demolished at a stroke, the lawfulness of all governments founded upon conquest. It swept away all the rubbish of accumulated centuries of servitude. From the day of this Declaration, the people of North America were no longer the fragment of a distant empire, imploring justice and mercy from an inexorable master in another hemisphere.... They were a nation, asserting as of right, and maintaining by war, its own existence. A nation was born in a day.... It stands, and must for ever stand, alone, a beacon on the summit of the mountain, to which all the inhabitants of the earth may turn their eyes for a genial and saving light ... a light of salvation and redemption to the oppressed."
Adams said that colonial establishments "are incompatible with the essential character of our institutions," and concluded, "that great colonial establishments are engines of wrong, and that in the progress of social improvement it will be the duty of the human family to abolish them, as they are now endeavoring to abolish the slave trade." The message was not missed by the Russian imperial minister, who reported it to have been "a virulent diatribe against England."
It was from this self-conception of the United States that Adams formulated his concept of relations with other nations. He, like Nicholas of Cusa before him, emphasized supporting other nations in their drive toward republican institutions and political and commercial independence from Europe. He advocated treaties of commerce and amity on the basis of the most-favored-nation status, or, if possible, a reciprocal equality of nations in each other's ports. The U.S. stood for "civil, political, commercial, and religious liberty," and intended that its relations with other nations would spread such principles. As he put it in discussing his aims for the outcome of relations with South American nations, "its foundations must be laid in principles of politics and of morals new and distasteful to the thrones and dominations of the elder world, but coextensive with the surface of the globe and lasting as the changes of time."
In other words—the basis for cooperation among nations was a joint commitment to resist the imperial powers of Europe!
It was from this standpoint, that Adams negotiated the crucial agreements of 1818, 1819, and 1824, which set the northern, southeastern, and western borders of the United States. The 1818 convention with Great Britain preserved the U.S. stake on the Oregon coast, and codified the 49th parallel northern border up to the Rocky Mountains. The 1819 Treaty of Onis, in which Spain ceded territory along the 42nd parallel, all the way to the Pacific coast, was considered by Adams the most important accomplishment of his life. The 1824 agreement with Russia, eliminated that Empire's claim to territory down to the Columbia River in the Northwest, thus leaving the way clear for the extension of the 49th parallel northern border, all the way to the Pacific Ocean.
- Across the Pacific -
Once secure in its borders, especially after the Civil War assault by the British Empire had failed, the United States looked both South to the Americas, and East across the Pacific, for partners in commerce and economic development. We were helped by the tremendous enthusiasm for the American industrial model which spread throughout the world, an enthusiasm which was explicitly promoted by the circles around Abraham Lincoln, such as Henry C. Carey, E. Peshine Smith, and many others of their circle. As a result of the work of these circles, we soon saw the takeoff of national industrial economies, complete with railroads, heavy industry, and other modernizations, in Germany, Russia, China, and Japan, among other nations.
The history of America's attempts to cooperate with, and develop, these nations is voluminous, and little known, but worth summarizing here. Take the cases of Russia and China, our two prospective partners today.
Even before the Civil War, the writings of the American System economists, who promoted the policies of republicanism and industrialization epitomized by John Quincy Adams, had spread widely in Russia, through the work of Abraham Lincoln's chief economic advisor, Henry C. Carey. After the Civil War was won, the Careyites greatly expanded their contacts with Russia, to the explict end of helping Russia develop its vast territory, especially with railroads. The purpose was strategic, as well as economic, of course: As U.S. General Joshua T. Owen put it, during an 1869 send-off dinner for the new American ambassador to Russia, through this collaboration in industrialization, Russia and the U.S. could "outflank the movement made by France and England, for predominance in the East through the Suez Canal; and America and Russia can dictate peace to the world."
This American-Russia collaboration only deepened over the last decades of the 19th century, with the convening of the American Centennial Exposition in 1876, and the deployment of U.S. industrialists to aid in the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway, which was seen as a means of providing more direct relations between the U.S. and Russia, including outflanking the British control of the seas.
During the period that Count Sergei Witte served as Finance Minister of Russia, collaboration between the U.S. and Russia on what was considered the Land-Bridge of the day, was extensive and intensive. Even more upsetting to the British Empire that the combination of these two land giants was the fact that they were working on bringing China into the rail network projects. Witte and the Americans conspired to build a spur of the rail through Chinese Manchuria, a route that would considerably shorten the travel distance to the Pacific. In 1898, the Russians had ordered a massive amount of equipment from the Americans in order to proceed with the Manchurian Railroad: 168 locomotives from the Baldwin works in Philadelphia; 1900 tons of bridge-girders from Carnegie Steel, 15,000 shovels from the Wyoming Shovel works—and on and on.
China, which had suffered the direct assault of the British to destroy their people in the Opium Wars, was a natural ally of the United States, the premier opponent of the British Empire.
The potential for this alliance, bound by railways of steel, between Russia, China, and the United States struck deadly fear in the heart of the British Empire, then the greatest military, and well as financial, power of the world. By geopolitical maneuvers, they were able to break it then, but the danger of its re-emergence persisted during the 20th century. Not only were the Americans in the Carey-Lincoln tradition the direct inspirers and collaborators of Sun Yat-Sen, the father of the Chinese republic, but the Americans kept providing support for the resistance to the British colonial domination in Russia and China. This reality was underscored during World War II, when Franklin Roosevelt forged close working bonds with the Soviet leader Stalin, as well as China's Chang Kai-Shek, not only as a means of defeating Nazi war aims, but explicitly in support of Russia and China's aspiration for industrialization, and uplifting their populations.
- The Four Powers Today -
Those Americans who upheld the principles of John Quincy Adams—such as Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in particular—found themselves continually countered by the machinations of de facto British agents, located not only in Wall Street, but often in leading institutions of the United States government. Even our own development of the Western lands was continually sabotaged, to the point that we have many regions of the Western United States which are pathetically underpopulated and underdeveloped, thus limiting our potential to provide the proper assistance to those billions of people to our West, who are even more in need of improved standards of life.
Thanks to the British, and their successful manipulation of puppets such as Harry Truman, our nation was brought into direct conflict with Japan, and steered into the so-called Cold War with Russia, which had its derivative, proxy conflicts throughout Asia, as well as other places. The post World War II period, which FDR had envisioned to be the opportunity for the end of colonialism once and for all, was turned instead into the occasion for the reimposition of a new form of imperialism, this time operated through a global monetarist system, which stripped sovereignty from all nations, including the United States.
We have now reached the time when this system, which has bankrupted itself to death, is threatening to bring the entire world into depopulation, and death. Even the United States, the only republic to have defied the British Empire and won, has been weakened to the point that it cannot defeat that financial empire on its own. Where do we look for allies, in order to prevent disaster for ourselves, and mankind?
The answer, which LaRouche also gave in the early 1980s, is: the Pacific. There, in China, India, and Russia, we find the most populous nations in the world, combined with large deposits of mineral wealth. Most of the population, of course, is very, very poor—and their life expectancy is insecure because of it. But, they are alive, and eager to work and improve their lives. Each country also has developed unique qualifications to contribute to joint rapid development of the region: the Russians, the scientific capability of developing the mineral resources of the Siberian-Arctic region; the Chinese, the mastery of high-speed rail technology; the Indians, the mastery of the thorium nuclear cycle and other associated technologies. But, as long as these nations fail to throw off the yoke of the British-style monetary system, literally replace that monetary system with an American System-style credit system, they can not do the job required. Both the current dollar system, and the collapse of the dollar system, will kill them.
The solution lies with the Four Power alliance proposed by Lyndon LaRouche, an agreement among these Pacific-based nation states to finally bury the British imperial system, and replace it with a new, fixed-exchange rate system, bolstered by the adoption of national banking systems in all nations, and united by the determination to realize a common mission: an era of scientific progress that looks ahead 50 years, to the colonization of space, and finally realizes mankind's aspirations to be truly human, in cooperation with his fellow man.
by Nancy Spannaus, November 23, 2009 (LPAC)—
Lyndon LaRouche has long campaigned for this reorientation of U.S. policy. Back in 1983, he produced a policy document entitled "A Fifty-year Development Policy for the Indian-Pacific Oceans Basin," which argued for the necessity of orienting a world economic development program toward the region of the world with the largest population, and the greatest ration of poverty to be overcome—the Pacific Basin. Here is where the potential, and necessity, for the greatest growth exists, he argued. He revived this perspective once again after the fall of the Soviet Union, in 1991, putting forward the perspective of the Eurasian Land-Bridge, which represents the mission of bringing economic development to the vast interior regions of Asia, which have been left as centers of impoverishment and desolution. In the 2003-2007 period, he further refined this concept from the standpoint of pulling together a strategic alliance of sovereign powers who collectively could crush the British financial empire—specifically proposing a Four Power agreement of Russia, China, India, and the United States as the core of a new world financial system, oriented toward economic development, and an alliance for stymying the perpetual warfare policy of the British Empire.
As of October of this year, with the signing of a series of ground-breaking economic agreements between Russia and China, the first concrete step toward such an arrangement was taken. This advance, occurring as it does in the midst of the most dramatic disintegration of the world financial system, especially in the United States and Western Europe, puts the question even more urgently to the United States, for joining in a Four Power alliance. Despite the apparently impossible situation of having a de facto British puppet as President, and a Congress so corrupt as to virtually kow-tow to this President, patriotic institutions around the institution of the Presidency, as well as leading patriotic citizens, have no choice but to rally around LaRouche's Four Power perspective, as the unique means of saving not only their own nation, but the planet as a whole.
To reach a Four Powers agreement, demands the U.S. orienting to the Pacific-Indian Oceans Basin. Here, in the nations of Russia, China, and India, you have proud sovereign states, who, despite the fact that they are operating within, and are crippled by, the global imperialist monetary system, maintain national identities, not to mention the sizeable populations, which impel them toward resisting the depredations of the British Empire. Note, for example, India and China's resistance to the genocide being sold as measures for "climate change." Contrast this with the European system, where the City of London-dominated European Community runs a financial dictatorship over the member nations, who have adopted an ideology, and reality, of Green depopulation and death; with Africa, which remains, to this day, a brutalized colony of the British Empire, a mere source of raw materials to be wrested from its land and its people; or with Ibero-America, which is still dominated by the crippling cultural heritage of being subjects of the imperial Habsburgs.
As LaRouche recently put it, "Europe is essentially dead. It's captive territory of the British Empire. South and Central America are captives of the drug rings." They are all British-dominated, and the only area where you can initiate the changes required to save the planet, is the Pacific-Indian Ocean Basin, of which the United States, still hereditarily the world's leading republic, is an integral part.
In taking up this mission, the United States will, in fact, be fulfilling the promise and commitment of its original Founding Fathers, those of the Italian Renaissance, and the Massachusetts Bay Colony. An understanding of that mission was the driving force behind those who built the United States into a continental power which extended from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, most crucially, John Quincy Adams. The idea was taken up and expanded by Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt—and must be renewed today. In the following pages, we present a summary of the case for the immediate adoption of this Pacific Orientation Policy, as a cornerstone of the strategy for survival from otherwise onrushing disaster.
- Start with the General Welfare -
"Our Manifest Destiny lies in Classical Greek civilization, its unique contribution to global civilization. It lies in the role of Christianity, especially the Apostles, like John and Paul, in taking this Greek Classical legacy, and using this as the tool of Christianity, to improve the condition of mankind, as the Renaissance did later.
"We need to develop the nation state, the idea that a national government has no moral authority, except as it is founded on an absolute commitment to promote and defend the General Welfare of all of its people, including their posterity."
This statement of the historic purpose of the United States was delivered in a major policy speech by Lyndon LaRouche in his 2000 Presidential campaign. In that speech, LaRouche identified the specific role played in developing the idea of a moral nation state, with Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, the pre-eminent scientist of the 15th Century. Nicholas of Cusa, in his writings on "Catholic Concordance," put forward the concept that all legitimate power of the state depends upon the consent of the governed, and that the purpose of that state, and its elected officials, or counselors, was to "provide for the general welfare" of the population. Those who govern "ought to constantly defend the good of the public which they represent," Cusa argued.
It became clear to the Cardinal, however, that it would not be possible to fulfill his vision of a moral sovereign nation state in oligarchy-dominated Europe. Rather, he conspired with friends to spread the idea of establishing colonies in the New World. Among those collaborators was Paolo Toscanelli, known as the author of a map of the spherical Earth, a map which included the ultimately-to-be-discovered American continent.
It was Toscanelli's map which found its way into the hands of one Italian-born sea captain, then operating in Portugal, named Christopher Columbus. Through Toscanelli's associate Fernao Martins, Columbus entered a correspondence with Toscanelli, and ultimately received the backing from the Spanish throne to be able to fulfill Cusa's goal of travelling to the New World.
Unfortunately, however, Cusa's vision of establishing sovereign nation states devoted to the general welfare of their populations, was unable to be realized in Hispanic America. Those who emigrated to Central and South America had not thrown off the cultural domination of the imperial system which ruled their culture in Europe, specifically that of the Habsburg dynasty. That dynasty treated its subjects like beasts, and inculcated that very servile, often racist mentality within them—the very antithesis of the republican idea that man is defined by his ability to reason, and to improve both his knowledge and his lot, and that of his fellow man.
Instead, the first solidly republican experiment, in the spirit of Nicholas of Cusa, which took root in the United States, occurred in the Massachusetts Bay colony, nearly 130 years after Columbus's voyage. Under a small group of Englishmen, whose leader John Winthrop was an eloquent spokesman, a group of 800 men, women, and children travelled to New England to establish what Winthrop called "a City upon a hill," which was devoted to the following mission: "The end is double, moral and natural, that man might enjoy the fruits of the earth and God might have his due glory from the creature. Why then should we stand here striving for places of habitation... and in the meantime suffer a whole Continent, as fruitful and convenient for the use of man, to lie waste without any improvement?"
Winthrop's settlement immediately set about improving the land and the conditions of his people. Within a few years, a university was established, and the first public system of compulsory elementary education put in place. A constitutional government was established, which acted to stimulate local manufacture and technological progress, including the creation of an iron works which almost immediately far outproduced that of the best works in England. The Massachusetts Bay government also minted its own currency, in order to provide credit for industry and commerce. It moved as well to provide for its own defense, with a militia and fortifications. In short, until the experiment was crushed by King Charles II, and then the takeover of England by William and Mary, Massachusetts represented a model for republican self-government, along the lines Cusa had laid out, which itself had an eye to expansion throughout the entire continent.
Given the leading role played by that child of Boston, Benjamin Franklin, in shaping the battle for, and ultimate establishment of, the republican government of the United States, it should not be properly surprising that the foundations of our government, from the Declaration of Independence to the Constitution, continue that Massachusetts Bay republican tradition. We are the only nation on the planet committed, by Constitutional law, to the pursuit of the General Welfare of our population and our posterity, as a principle of organizing our society.
- Becoming a Continental Republic -
The fledgling American republic, dedicated to principles directly counter to those of the European oligarchy, had the advantage of being separated by a large body of water from those who would destroy it. But the mere separation was not enough. The United States was weak and isolated in the wake of winning its independence, and lived in constant danger of being crushed by those empires who still operated in the Western Hemisphere, surrounding it on every side. To gain the strength necessary to defend itself, and its republican mode of government, leading American patriots adopted the strategy of moving West, with the ultimate aim of developing all the territory, up to the Pacific Ocean.
One of the clearest ways to grasp this policy is to see it through the eyes, and actions, of John Quincy Adams, a son of Massachusetts who had grown up steeped in both his colony's republican heritage, but also in close collaboration with the elder statesman-philosopher Benjamin Franklin. It's no exaggeration to say that John Quincy Adams personally negotiated nearly the entire shape of the continental United States, from its borders with Florida and Canada, to its expansion to the Pacific coast. He did so as first, a Senator, then Ambassador to Russia and England, and finally as President Monroe's Secretary of State from 1816 to 1824.
Adams' motivations were both defensive, and positive. He expressed the first view to his mother Abigail in 1811, on the eve of the war of 1812, in a letter attacking the treasonous Essex Junto of New England. He wrote:
"If that Party [Federalist] are not effectually put down in Massachusetts, as completely as they already are in New York, and Pennsylvania, and all the southern and western states, the Union is gone. Instead of a nation coextensive with the North American continent, destined by God and nature to be the most populous and most powerful people ever combined under one social compact, we shall have an endless multitude of little insignificant clans and tribes at eternal war with one another for a rock, or a fish pond, the sport and fable of European masters and oppressors."
At that time, those European "masters and oppressors" who had footholds on the North American continent, included Great Britain, Spain, France, and Russia. All but Russia, with whom John Quincy Adams had formed an extremely close relationship during a visit in his youth, as well as his ambassadorship there from 1809-14, were determined to cut off the United States from Western expansion, and/or otherwise cut it "down to size." For example, during the negotiations at Ghent, for a peace treaty at the conclusion of the War of 1812, the British were conniving to cut off large parts of New England, and to shut off the Western frontier, if possible by extending the Canadian border all the way down to the Ohio River. As part of the negotiating team there, John Quincy Adams played a crucial role in outmaneuvering the British strategy—helped immensely, of course, by the victories of the American Navy on Lake Champlain and the Great Lakes.
But Adams was inspired more profoundly by a deep understanding of the universal significance of the American revolution and its unique principles of government. Adams often referred to this principle as the "anticolonial" principle. In a speech celebrating the Fourth of July in 1821, he put it this way:
"In a conflict [of] seven years, the history of the war by which you maintained that Declaration, became the history of the civilized world.... It was the first solemn declaration by a nation of the only legitimate foundation of civil government. It was the cornerstone of a new fabric, destined to cover the surface of the globe. It demolished at a stroke, the lawfulness of all governments founded upon conquest. It swept away all the rubbish of accumulated centuries of servitude. From the day of this Declaration, the people of North America were no longer the fragment of a distant empire, imploring justice and mercy from an inexorable master in another hemisphere.... They were a nation, asserting as of right, and maintaining by war, its own existence. A nation was born in a day.... It stands, and must for ever stand, alone, a beacon on the summit of the mountain, to which all the inhabitants of the earth may turn their eyes for a genial and saving light ... a light of salvation and redemption to the oppressed."
Adams said that colonial establishments "are incompatible with the essential character of our institutions," and concluded, "that great colonial establishments are engines of wrong, and that in the progress of social improvement it will be the duty of the human family to abolish them, as they are now endeavoring to abolish the slave trade." The message was not missed by the Russian imperial minister, who reported it to have been "a virulent diatribe against England."
It was from this self-conception of the United States that Adams formulated his concept of relations with other nations. He, like Nicholas of Cusa before him, emphasized supporting other nations in their drive toward republican institutions and political and commercial independence from Europe. He advocated treaties of commerce and amity on the basis of the most-favored-nation status, or, if possible, a reciprocal equality of nations in each other's ports. The U.S. stood for "civil, political, commercial, and religious liberty," and intended that its relations with other nations would spread such principles. As he put it in discussing his aims for the outcome of relations with South American nations, "its foundations must be laid in principles of politics and of morals new and distasteful to the thrones and dominations of the elder world, but coextensive with the surface of the globe and lasting as the changes of time."
In other words—the basis for cooperation among nations was a joint commitment to resist the imperial powers of Europe!
It was from this standpoint, that Adams negotiated the crucial agreements of 1818, 1819, and 1824, which set the northern, southeastern, and western borders of the United States. The 1818 convention with Great Britain preserved the U.S. stake on the Oregon coast, and codified the 49th parallel northern border up to the Rocky Mountains. The 1819 Treaty of Onis, in which Spain ceded territory along the 42nd parallel, all the way to the Pacific coast, was considered by Adams the most important accomplishment of his life. The 1824 agreement with Russia, eliminated that Empire's claim to territory down to the Columbia River in the Northwest, thus leaving the way clear for the extension of the 49th parallel northern border, all the way to the Pacific Ocean.
- Across the Pacific -
Once secure in its borders, especially after the Civil War assault by the British Empire had failed, the United States looked both South to the Americas, and East across the Pacific, for partners in commerce and economic development. We were helped by the tremendous enthusiasm for the American industrial model which spread throughout the world, an enthusiasm which was explicitly promoted by the circles around Abraham Lincoln, such as Henry C. Carey, E. Peshine Smith, and many others of their circle. As a result of the work of these circles, we soon saw the takeoff of national industrial economies, complete with railroads, heavy industry, and other modernizations, in Germany, Russia, China, and Japan, among other nations.
The history of America's attempts to cooperate with, and develop, these nations is voluminous, and little known, but worth summarizing here. Take the cases of Russia and China, our two prospective partners today.
Even before the Civil War, the writings of the American System economists, who promoted the policies of republicanism and industrialization epitomized by John Quincy Adams, had spread widely in Russia, through the work of Abraham Lincoln's chief economic advisor, Henry C. Carey. After the Civil War was won, the Careyites greatly expanded their contacts with Russia, to the explict end of helping Russia develop its vast territory, especially with railroads. The purpose was strategic, as well as economic, of course: As U.S. General Joshua T. Owen put it, during an 1869 send-off dinner for the new American ambassador to Russia, through this collaboration in industrialization, Russia and the U.S. could "outflank the movement made by France and England, for predominance in the East through the Suez Canal; and America and Russia can dictate peace to the world."
This American-Russia collaboration only deepened over the last decades of the 19th century, with the convening of the American Centennial Exposition in 1876, and the deployment of U.S. industrialists to aid in the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway, which was seen as a means of providing more direct relations between the U.S. and Russia, including outflanking the British control of the seas.
During the period that Count Sergei Witte served as Finance Minister of Russia, collaboration between the U.S. and Russia on what was considered the Land-Bridge of the day, was extensive and intensive. Even more upsetting to the British Empire that the combination of these two land giants was the fact that they were working on bringing China into the rail network projects. Witte and the Americans conspired to build a spur of the rail through Chinese Manchuria, a route that would considerably shorten the travel distance to the Pacific. In 1898, the Russians had ordered a massive amount of equipment from the Americans in order to proceed with the Manchurian Railroad: 168 locomotives from the Baldwin works in Philadelphia; 1900 tons of bridge-girders from Carnegie Steel, 15,000 shovels from the Wyoming Shovel works—and on and on.
China, which had suffered the direct assault of the British to destroy their people in the Opium Wars, was a natural ally of the United States, the premier opponent of the British Empire.
The potential for this alliance, bound by railways of steel, between Russia, China, and the United States struck deadly fear in the heart of the British Empire, then the greatest military, and well as financial, power of the world. By geopolitical maneuvers, they were able to break it then, but the danger of its re-emergence persisted during the 20th century. Not only were the Americans in the Carey-Lincoln tradition the direct inspirers and collaborators of Sun Yat-Sen, the father of the Chinese republic, but the Americans kept providing support for the resistance to the British colonial domination in Russia and China. This reality was underscored during World War II, when Franklin Roosevelt forged close working bonds with the Soviet leader Stalin, as well as China's Chang Kai-Shek, not only as a means of defeating Nazi war aims, but explicitly in support of Russia and China's aspiration for industrialization, and uplifting their populations.
- The Four Powers Today -
Those Americans who upheld the principles of John Quincy Adams—such as Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in particular—found themselves continually countered by the machinations of de facto British agents, located not only in Wall Street, but often in leading institutions of the United States government. Even our own development of the Western lands was continually sabotaged, to the point that we have many regions of the Western United States which are pathetically underpopulated and underdeveloped, thus limiting our potential to provide the proper assistance to those billions of people to our West, who are even more in need of improved standards of life.
Thanks to the British, and their successful manipulation of puppets such as Harry Truman, our nation was brought into direct conflict with Japan, and steered into the so-called Cold War with Russia, which had its derivative, proxy conflicts throughout Asia, as well as other places. The post World War II period, which FDR had envisioned to be the opportunity for the end of colonialism once and for all, was turned instead into the occasion for the reimposition of a new form of imperialism, this time operated through a global monetarist system, which stripped sovereignty from all nations, including the United States.
We have now reached the time when this system, which has bankrupted itself to death, is threatening to bring the entire world into depopulation, and death. Even the United States, the only republic to have defied the British Empire and won, has been weakened to the point that it cannot defeat that financial empire on its own. Where do we look for allies, in order to prevent disaster for ourselves, and mankind?
The answer, which LaRouche also gave in the early 1980s, is: the Pacific. There, in China, India, and Russia, we find the most populous nations in the world, combined with large deposits of mineral wealth. Most of the population, of course, is very, very poor—and their life expectancy is insecure because of it. But, they are alive, and eager to work and improve their lives. Each country also has developed unique qualifications to contribute to joint rapid development of the region: the Russians, the scientific capability of developing the mineral resources of the Siberian-Arctic region; the Chinese, the mastery of high-speed rail technology; the Indians, the mastery of the thorium nuclear cycle and other associated technologies. But, as long as these nations fail to throw off the yoke of the British-style monetary system, literally replace that monetary system with an American System-style credit system, they can not do the job required. Both the current dollar system, and the collapse of the dollar system, will kill them.
The solution lies with the Four Power alliance proposed by Lyndon LaRouche, an agreement among these Pacific-based nation states to finally bury the British imperial system, and replace it with a new, fixed-exchange rate system, bolstered by the adoption of national banking systems in all nations, and united by the determination to realize a common mission: an era of scientific progress that looks ahead 50 years, to the colonization of space, and finally realizes mankind's aspirations to be truly human, in cooperation with his fellow man.
by Nancy Spannaus, November 23, 2009 (LPAC)—
Monday, November 23, 2009
History--The Crash, November 22, 2009
With every passing week, it becomes more apparent that the Obama Administration has been a complete failure. Wipe away the grimy layers of hype and spin, and all you find is catastrophe, a galloping, accelerating disaster.
The touted success of the stimulus program is exemplary: Behind all the lying claims lie non-existent jobs, created in non-existent Congressional Districts, in a non-existent recovery. Washington keeps talking about its success, but the people who have to live with the results know better. People who are worried about where their next mortgage payment—or their next meal—will come from, are not impressed with press releases.
A raft of reports released recently show how the American standard of living is being rapidly destroyed, while certain Wall Street interests are being propped up. In medical terms, the Obama Administration's policies amount to letting the patient die, while keeping the tumor on life support.
- Home, Crashing Home -
One of the fundamental requirements for human progress is shelter. Every person, every family, needs a place to live. Civilization depends upon it, and one of the marks of a civilized society is that it never lets such an essential requirement become the playground of speculators. But that is exactly what we did, in allowing the financial markets to turn housing into "financial assets," driving home prices into the stratosphere.
Ultimately, the prices became unsustainable, the bubble popped, and housing prices began to fall. Rather than welcome this return toward "normalcy," the Bush and Obama administrations rushed to save the speculators. They did this by launching a slew of bailout schemes designed to arrest the decline of home values, in the hopes of salvaging the values of trillions of dollars of securities based upon mortgage debt, and of preventing a chain-reaction collapse of the entire global monetary system.
They did not move to save the families stuck with hugely overpriced mortgages. They moved to save the values of the financial assets leveraged on top of those mortgages. They moved to save the tumor!
The result of this betrayal, for the population, has been a disaster. More and more people are falling behind in their mortgage payments, foreclosures are soaring, and increasing numbers of Americans are homeless. Tent cities of the sort last seen in the Great Depression, are becoming commonplace.
A survey released this week by the Mortgage Bankers Association reported that, as of Sept. 30, nearly 1 in 10 households (9.6%) was a month or more behind in their mortgage payments, and that 1 in 11 households (8.9%) was either 90+ days past due, or in foreclosure. Overall, 4.5% of residential mortgages were in foreclosure, a 50% jump from September 2008.
Not surprisingly, the subprime loans fared the worst, with just over 1 in 4 (26%) homeowners being 30 days or more behind in their payments; but delinquencies on prime loans are also rising sharply: 1 in 14 (6.8%) of prime mortgages is 30 days or more behind, and 1 in 8 (12.4%) of all prime adjustable-rate mortgages is delinquent. All of these rates are rising sharply.
As this mortgage meltdown accelerates, the government agencies being used to subsidize the bailout are taking heavy losses. The Federal Housing Administration, which is used to turn private mortgages into government-guaranteed paper, is hemorrhaging money. One in seven of its loans is a month or more past due, and 3.3% are in foreclosure. The FHA's losses from this boondoggle are so large that it has wiped out its reserves, and will soon have to turn to the Treasury for cash.
Then there are Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two government-sponsored enterprises which were effectively nationalized last year. Since the current phase of the financial crisis began in July 2007, Fannie Mae has lost $120 billion, and Freddie Mac $68 billion. That combined $188 billion is equivalent to the 14th-largest bank in the United States losing all of its assets.
Taken together with Ginnie Mae (the Government National Mortgage Association), these mortgage subsidies are going to cost taxpayers mind-boggling amounts of money down the road, if sane heads don't reverse this stupidity.
We should also note the rather obvious point that the foreclosure rate tends to increase with the unemployment rate, and that both are quickly rising. With 1 million people facing the loss of unemployment benefits in January 2010, on top of the job losses, it's going to get even uglier.
- Commercial Real Estate, Too -
The banks may have been successful in transferring much of their mortgage losses onto the taxpayer through such schemes, but commercial real estate is proving more problematic. Fitch Ratings recently projected that U.S. banks could face defaults on $110 billion in commercial property loans they hold, but we find that figure highly optimistic, since $138 billion of such loans is already in default. With commercial real estate prices down by more than 40% in the past two years, more than half of the $1.4 trillion in commercial mortgages maturing in the next five years is underwater (meaning, the property is worth less than the amount of the mortgage). The delinquency rate is rising here, too, up fivefold, to 5%, in the last year.
Those who were foolish enough to buy properties at the peak of the market are really suffering. Exemplary is the case of Tishman Speyer and BlackRock, which paid $5.4 billion to buy Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village—Manhattan's largest apartment complex—in 2006, only to see the value of the property fall to $1.8 billion. The Tishman-BlackRock partnership had hoped to plug the hole by raising rents, only to be slapped down by New York State courts, which ruled that rent hikes on some 4,350 apartments violated the law. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac own $1.5 billion in commercial mortgage-backed securities backed by deeply troubled loans.
Tishman and BlackRock are hardly alone. Goldman Sachs recently unloaded 158 condos near Miami for about one-third of their land and construction costs; and Bank of America is suing Maguire Properties, the largest landlord in downtown Los Angeles, for skipping payments in August, September, and October. The properties in question were bought by Maguire for $2.9 billion in 2007. Deutsche Bank is taking a beating on the unfinished Cosmopolitan Resort †Casino in Las Vegas, which it seized in foreclosure next year. Commercial real estate exposure is also sinking many smaller banks, including most of the banks which have failed this year.
- Shut It Down! -
Delusions die hard. Just this week the Comptroller of the State of New York released a glowing report touting how the big four investment-banking operations on Wall Street had made $23 billion in profits so far this year, compared to $40 billion in losses last year. The top six bank holding companies did even better, with $51 billion in profits this year versus $62 billion in losses last year.
These "profits" are illusory, the product of Federal subsidies, accounting fraud, hidden losses, and unbridled criminality. The attempt to keep these big zombies alive, is a major factor in the disintegration of the rest of the economy. Far from helping the U.S. economy, the bailout is killing it. How many people must lose their jobs and their houses, to keep Wall Street going? Isn't it time we put a stop to this monstrosity?
We must return to what works, the American System. Put the monetary system through bankruptcy, write off the speculative debt, reorganize the banks, return to a credit system, with a Four-Power alliance. It's time for the LaRouche Plan.
This report originally here.
HAVE WE GOT AN (UNDERWATER) DEAL FOR YOU!
by John Hoefle
The touted success of the stimulus program is exemplary: Behind all the lying claims lie non-existent jobs, created in non-existent Congressional Districts, in a non-existent recovery. Washington keeps talking about its success, but the people who have to live with the results know better. People who are worried about where their next mortgage payment—or their next meal—will come from, are not impressed with press releases.
A raft of reports released recently show how the American standard of living is being rapidly destroyed, while certain Wall Street interests are being propped up. In medical terms, the Obama Administration's policies amount to letting the patient die, while keeping the tumor on life support.
- Home, Crashing Home -
One of the fundamental requirements for human progress is shelter. Every person, every family, needs a place to live. Civilization depends upon it, and one of the marks of a civilized society is that it never lets such an essential requirement become the playground of speculators. But that is exactly what we did, in allowing the financial markets to turn housing into "financial assets," driving home prices into the stratosphere.
Ultimately, the prices became unsustainable, the bubble popped, and housing prices began to fall. Rather than welcome this return toward "normalcy," the Bush and Obama administrations rushed to save the speculators. They did this by launching a slew of bailout schemes designed to arrest the decline of home values, in the hopes of salvaging the values of trillions of dollars of securities based upon mortgage debt, and of preventing a chain-reaction collapse of the entire global monetary system.
They did not move to save the families stuck with hugely overpriced mortgages. They moved to save the values of the financial assets leveraged on top of those mortgages. They moved to save the tumor!
The result of this betrayal, for the population, has been a disaster. More and more people are falling behind in their mortgage payments, foreclosures are soaring, and increasing numbers of Americans are homeless. Tent cities of the sort last seen in the Great Depression, are becoming commonplace.
A survey released this week by the Mortgage Bankers Association reported that, as of Sept. 30, nearly 1 in 10 households (9.6%) was a month or more behind in their mortgage payments, and that 1 in 11 households (8.9%) was either 90+ days past due, or in foreclosure. Overall, 4.5% of residential mortgages were in foreclosure, a 50% jump from September 2008.
Not surprisingly, the subprime loans fared the worst, with just over 1 in 4 (26%) homeowners being 30 days or more behind in their payments; but delinquencies on prime loans are also rising sharply: 1 in 14 (6.8%) of prime mortgages is 30 days or more behind, and 1 in 8 (12.4%) of all prime adjustable-rate mortgages is delinquent. All of these rates are rising sharply.
As this mortgage meltdown accelerates, the government agencies being used to subsidize the bailout are taking heavy losses. The Federal Housing Administration, which is used to turn private mortgages into government-guaranteed paper, is hemorrhaging money. One in seven of its loans is a month or more past due, and 3.3% are in foreclosure. The FHA's losses from this boondoggle are so large that it has wiped out its reserves, and will soon have to turn to the Treasury for cash.
Then there are Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two government-sponsored enterprises which were effectively nationalized last year. Since the current phase of the financial crisis began in July 2007, Fannie Mae has lost $120 billion, and Freddie Mac $68 billion. That combined $188 billion is equivalent to the 14th-largest bank in the United States losing all of its assets.
Taken together with Ginnie Mae (the Government National Mortgage Association), these mortgage subsidies are going to cost taxpayers mind-boggling amounts of money down the road, if sane heads don't reverse this stupidity.
We should also note the rather obvious point that the foreclosure rate tends to increase with the unemployment rate, and that both are quickly rising. With 1 million people facing the loss of unemployment benefits in January 2010, on top of the job losses, it's going to get even uglier.
- Commercial Real Estate, Too -
The banks may have been successful in transferring much of their mortgage losses onto the taxpayer through such schemes, but commercial real estate is proving more problematic. Fitch Ratings recently projected that U.S. banks could face defaults on $110 billion in commercial property loans they hold, but we find that figure highly optimistic, since $138 billion of such loans is already in default. With commercial real estate prices down by more than 40% in the past two years, more than half of the $1.4 trillion in commercial mortgages maturing in the next five years is underwater (meaning, the property is worth less than the amount of the mortgage). The delinquency rate is rising here, too, up fivefold, to 5%, in the last year.
Those who were foolish enough to buy properties at the peak of the market are really suffering. Exemplary is the case of Tishman Speyer and BlackRock, which paid $5.4 billion to buy Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village—Manhattan's largest apartment complex—in 2006, only to see the value of the property fall to $1.8 billion. The Tishman-BlackRock partnership had hoped to plug the hole by raising rents, only to be slapped down by New York State courts, which ruled that rent hikes on some 4,350 apartments violated the law. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac own $1.5 billion in commercial mortgage-backed securities backed by deeply troubled loans.
Tishman and BlackRock are hardly alone. Goldman Sachs recently unloaded 158 condos near Miami for about one-third of their land and construction costs; and Bank of America is suing Maguire Properties, the largest landlord in downtown Los Angeles, for skipping payments in August, September, and October. The properties in question were bought by Maguire for $2.9 billion in 2007. Deutsche Bank is taking a beating on the unfinished Cosmopolitan Resort †Casino in Las Vegas, which it seized in foreclosure next year. Commercial real estate exposure is also sinking many smaller banks, including most of the banks which have failed this year.
- Shut It Down! -
Delusions die hard. Just this week the Comptroller of the State of New York released a glowing report touting how the big four investment-banking operations on Wall Street had made $23 billion in profits so far this year, compared to $40 billion in losses last year. The top six bank holding companies did even better, with $51 billion in profits this year versus $62 billion in losses last year.
These "profits" are illusory, the product of Federal subsidies, accounting fraud, hidden losses, and unbridled criminality. The attempt to keep these big zombies alive, is a major factor in the disintegration of the rest of the economy. Far from helping the U.S. economy, the bailout is killing it. How many people must lose their jobs and their houses, to keep Wall Street going? Isn't it time we put a stop to this monstrosity?
We must return to what works, the American System. Put the monetary system through bankruptcy, write off the speculative debt, reorganize the banks, return to a credit system, with a Four-Power alliance. It's time for the LaRouche Plan.
This report originally here.
HAVE WE GOT AN (UNDERWATER) DEAL FOR YOU!
by John Hoefle
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
How To Survive Without Derivatives
by John Hoefle
[PDF version of this article is available here]
Nov. 6—The derivatives market is a lot like heroin. The people who use it become convinced that they can't live without it, despite all the evidence to the contrary. These poor, desperate creatures ignore nearly everything around them in their obsession with their next fix. Everyone who comes in contact with them can see that they are destroying themselves and hurting society, but the addicts are gripped by something they cannot control, something which, in truth, controls them.
No society can tolerate letting junkies write the drug laws—even boneheads in Congress understand that much—but when it comes to derivatives, their minds tend to turn to smack. When it comes to financial regulations, the inmates are running the holding company. We suspect it might have to do with the millions of dollars in campaign contributions and other perks the derivatives addicts pump into the political system each year. We're not saying Congress is a bunch of whores, but FBI drag queens contend they have evidence to support that contention.
Here we are, more than two years into the biggest financial crisis anyone alive has ever seen, a crisis which is widely understood to have been caused by derivatives, and yet these weapons of mass destruction continue to be not only tolerated, but actively supported by our Federal government. It is beyond insane.
If a doctor were to keep a patient on life support after he died, in the hope of reviving the tumor that killed him, we would expect that the doctor would quickly lose his license. That is essentially what is happening today, as the Feds and the Fed twist the whole nation out of shape trying to keep Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan Chase, and the other derivatives giants from suffering their well-deserved fate.
Since our future depends upon kicking this nasty habit and returning to more wholesome economic policies, we hereby offer an alternative to the terminal stupidity of a derivatives-driven doom.
Production
There it is! Let's all say it together: "Production." Come on, you Wall Streeters in the back, speak up. We promise it won't hurt, and you may even get to like it after a while, as you dry out.
We know you like to promote yourselves as the engines of the economy, providing the capital that makes the world turn 'round. But, let's get real: All you really do is skim way more than your fair share of the money circulating through the economy. You don't produce anything for your cut; you don't add anything important. You are, to the economy, as fleas are to a dog, and we're just trying to give you the opportunity to correct your ways before the big flea dip.
We used to understand that a nation produced wealth by physical transformation and production. We would take iron ore, turn it into steel, use the steel to build the railroads that transformed our nation, the power plants that produced the electricity that powered our homes and factories, the pipes that delivered our drinking water and carried away our wastes, and much more. In our short history as a nation, we have gone from wood to coal to oil to nuclear power, with each step dramatically raising our standard of living.
What made these advances in productive potential possible was the creativity of the minds of our citizens, who made discovery after discovery. We went from the first manned flight, to putting a man on the moon in six decades, because we were committed to progress and the development of the potential represented by each and every one of our citizens. We weren't perfect. Sometimes, far from it, but we were, in general, on the right path.
We began to go off the rails in a big way in the late 1960s, though the decay actually began to set in after the death of President Franklin Roosevelt. The rise of the Baby Boomer culture, which turned its back on production, in favor of paper-pushing and financial gambling, marked a visible turning point. Each decade after that, the problem got worse, the parasite problem grew, and the real economy declined. Four decades later, when we should have already been on Mars, we've lost the capability to even go back to the Moon. We're going backwards.
You can't blame that on derivatives, per se, but you can certainly blame it on the post-industrial insanity which made derivatives possible. Stupidity breeds failure, not success.
If we are to pull out of this death spiral, we must return to science, to infrastructure, to manufacturing, and other things the Baby Boomers hate. Being a nation of gamblers hasn't worked, so let's go back to being producers.
Risk
Get a group of Wall Street types together and, after they finally quit whining about how hard it is to live on a mere million times the average unemployment compensation, the subject usually turns to risk. They'll talk about risk management, about appetite for risk, about the need for investors to begin taking risks again. They will tell you that the derivatives markets serve a valuable function, that they help establish the proper prices of various types of assets, and so on. It is all a bunch of crap.
By risk, they really mean speculation, and by speculation, they mean separating suckers from their money. When they call for investors to start taking risks again, think of the casino advertisements touting all the money you'll win if you'll just start feeding money into the slots. Or think of a sheep-shearing pen. Come on in, Mr. and Ms. Sheep, our tailors are waiting to serve you.
The price-setting part is a scam, too. The parasites—oops—financiers, tell us that these markets are needed for "price discovery." How can you possibly know how much a barrel of crude oil or a CDO is worth, without us?! What they really mean is: How far can we jack up the price?
For physical goods, the formula for determining price is fairly clear: Take the cost of production plus a reasonable profit, and that's your price. The only time you need a "market" to figure it out, is when you're selling something that is intrinsically over-priced—like the trillions of dollars of mortgage-backed securities that Wall Street sold over the last few years. They went for top dollar "market prices," but the securities turned out to be worthless. The buyers took the risk, the sellers took the cash, and, in the end, they all went bankrupt. Who wouldn't want a sweet deal like that?
One thing you have to admit, though. These idiots did take a lot of risk, and discover a lot of prices. All of it wrong, and it did blow up the world, but what the heck, nothing's perfect.
Enough Already!
The first step toward turning this global collapse around is to stop being so damned stupid. Most of us have no problem with that, but the junkies only care about that next fix. Not just the financial junkies, but the political junkies, and the media whores, too, who suck up to the big money because, they like the power, the fame, and the corruption that comes with it.
We all know what needs to be done. We are the People, the body which founded our government, and in which the responsibility lies to keep that government on the track expressed by the principles embodied in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. We, the Citizens of the greatest Republic in world history, have to begin thinking, and acting, according to those principles. If we do, the government will follow. The Brutish Empire and its stooges will howl, but that's a good sign. We didn't ask their permission the first time, and we don't have to now. Our job is to help lead the world out of this mess. Lyndon LaRouche has already got this bandwagon started, so grab your friends and climb on board. We can live without derivatives.
johnhoefle@larouchepub.com
-------------------------
[PDF version of this article is available here]
Nov. 6—The derivatives market is a lot like heroin. The people who use it become convinced that they can't live without it, despite all the evidence to the contrary. These poor, desperate creatures ignore nearly everything around them in their obsession with their next fix. Everyone who comes in contact with them can see that they are destroying themselves and hurting society, but the addicts are gripped by something they cannot control, something which, in truth, controls them.
No society can tolerate letting junkies write the drug laws—even boneheads in Congress understand that much—but when it comes to derivatives, their minds tend to turn to smack. When it comes to financial regulations, the inmates are running the holding company. We suspect it might have to do with the millions of dollars in campaign contributions and other perks the derivatives addicts pump into the political system each year. We're not saying Congress is a bunch of whores, but FBI drag queens contend they have evidence to support that contention.
Here we are, more than two years into the biggest financial crisis anyone alive has ever seen, a crisis which is widely understood to have been caused by derivatives, and yet these weapons of mass destruction continue to be not only tolerated, but actively supported by our Federal government. It is beyond insane.
If a doctor were to keep a patient on life support after he died, in the hope of reviving the tumor that killed him, we would expect that the doctor would quickly lose his license. That is essentially what is happening today, as the Feds and the Fed twist the whole nation out of shape trying to keep Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan Chase, and the other derivatives giants from suffering their well-deserved fate.
Since our future depends upon kicking this nasty habit and returning to more wholesome economic policies, we hereby offer an alternative to the terminal stupidity of a derivatives-driven doom.
Production
There it is! Let's all say it together: "Production." Come on, you Wall Streeters in the back, speak up. We promise it won't hurt, and you may even get to like it after a while, as you dry out.
We know you like to promote yourselves as the engines of the economy, providing the capital that makes the world turn 'round. But, let's get real: All you really do is skim way more than your fair share of the money circulating through the economy. You don't produce anything for your cut; you don't add anything important. You are, to the economy, as fleas are to a dog, and we're just trying to give you the opportunity to correct your ways before the big flea dip.
We used to understand that a nation produced wealth by physical transformation and production. We would take iron ore, turn it into steel, use the steel to build the railroads that transformed our nation, the power plants that produced the electricity that powered our homes and factories, the pipes that delivered our drinking water and carried away our wastes, and much more. In our short history as a nation, we have gone from wood to coal to oil to nuclear power, with each step dramatically raising our standard of living.
What made these advances in productive potential possible was the creativity of the minds of our citizens, who made discovery after discovery. We went from the first manned flight, to putting a man on the moon in six decades, because we were committed to progress and the development of the potential represented by each and every one of our citizens. We weren't perfect. Sometimes, far from it, but we were, in general, on the right path.
We began to go off the rails in a big way in the late 1960s, though the decay actually began to set in after the death of President Franklin Roosevelt. The rise of the Baby Boomer culture, which turned its back on production, in favor of paper-pushing and financial gambling, marked a visible turning point. Each decade after that, the problem got worse, the parasite problem grew, and the real economy declined. Four decades later, when we should have already been on Mars, we've lost the capability to even go back to the Moon. We're going backwards.
You can't blame that on derivatives, per se, but you can certainly blame it on the post-industrial insanity which made derivatives possible. Stupidity breeds failure, not success.
If we are to pull out of this death spiral, we must return to science, to infrastructure, to manufacturing, and other things the Baby Boomers hate. Being a nation of gamblers hasn't worked, so let's go back to being producers.
Risk
Get a group of Wall Street types together and, after they finally quit whining about how hard it is to live on a mere million times the average unemployment compensation, the subject usually turns to risk. They'll talk about risk management, about appetite for risk, about the need for investors to begin taking risks again. They will tell you that the derivatives markets serve a valuable function, that they help establish the proper prices of various types of assets, and so on. It is all a bunch of crap.
By risk, they really mean speculation, and by speculation, they mean separating suckers from their money. When they call for investors to start taking risks again, think of the casino advertisements touting all the money you'll win if you'll just start feeding money into the slots. Or think of a sheep-shearing pen. Come on in, Mr. and Ms. Sheep, our tailors are waiting to serve you.
The price-setting part is a scam, too. The parasites—oops—financiers, tell us that these markets are needed for "price discovery." How can you possibly know how much a barrel of crude oil or a CDO is worth, without us?! What they really mean is: How far can we jack up the price?
For physical goods, the formula for determining price is fairly clear: Take the cost of production plus a reasonable profit, and that's your price. The only time you need a "market" to figure it out, is when you're selling something that is intrinsically over-priced—like the trillions of dollars of mortgage-backed securities that Wall Street sold over the last few years. They went for top dollar "market prices," but the securities turned out to be worthless. The buyers took the risk, the sellers took the cash, and, in the end, they all went bankrupt. Who wouldn't want a sweet deal like that?
One thing you have to admit, though. These idiots did take a lot of risk, and discover a lot of prices. All of it wrong, and it did blow up the world, but what the heck, nothing's perfect.
Enough Already!
The first step toward turning this global collapse around is to stop being so damned stupid. Most of us have no problem with that, but the junkies only care about that next fix. Not just the financial junkies, but the political junkies, and the media whores, too, who suck up to the big money because, they like the power, the fame, and the corruption that comes with it.
We all know what needs to be done. We are the People, the body which founded our government, and in which the responsibility lies to keep that government on the track expressed by the principles embodied in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. We, the Citizens of the greatest Republic in world history, have to begin thinking, and acting, according to those principles. If we do, the government will follow. The Brutish Empire and its stooges will howl, but that's a good sign. We didn't ask their permission the first time, and we don't have to now. Our job is to help lead the world out of this mess. Lyndon LaRouche has already got this bandwagon started, so grab your friends and climb on board. We can live without derivatives.
johnhoefle@larouchepub.com
-------------------------
Friday, October 2, 2009
Enough!
On the surface it sounds insane, and it is: Wall Street is resorting to its old "financial engineering" tricks—the same ones that helped blow up the world. And as weird as it sounds, there is a strange, book-cooking consistency to this madness.
Though a lot of activities fit that description, we're talking specifically here about "re-remics," or the re-securitization of real estate mortgage investment conduits ("remics"), a process in which existing mortgage-related derivatives are broken up and repackaged into new securities. In a re-remic, the assets of a remic are sorted into "good" and "bad" piles, and new securities created out of each pile. The new securities are then given new ratings by the ratings agencies, such that the capital the financial institutions have to set aside to cover those assets is reduced, even though the assets are the same. If this sounds nuts to you, you're on the right track.
The re-remic scam is one aspect of "Let's Pretend We're Not Broke," the most popular game on Wall Street these days. The more loaded down the banks' books get with toxic waste, the more capital they have to have to cover their "potential" losses, and the lower their capital ratios. Since they've got mountains of toxic waste on their books, the banks are expending considerable effort to reduce the level of capital they are required to set aside, and the re-remic gimmick is one of the techniques being used. The banks are also holding as many government-guaranteed loans and securities as they can, for the same reason. The polite phrase for this is "regulatory capital arbitrage," but "accounting fraud" is more accurate. The end result is to produce a phony statistic that can be used to claim that the bank—or insurance company, etc.—is healthy, when it is not.
This sort of nonsense is what killed the financial system in the first place. The derivatives market itself was created to hide the bankruptcy of the banking system and transfer future losses on unpayable debts from the banks into the securities markets, where it could be sold to pension funds and other suckers. A big part of AIG's credit default swap (CDS) business was just this sort of regulatory capital game: banks bought CDSs from AIG as a way of reducing the capital they had to set aside as reserves, and when AIG exploded, it was bailed out in order to save those banks. It should never have been allowed.
The fact that Wall Street thinks it can get away with such criminality today shows both that the players on the Street have learned nothing from the blowout, and that the so-called regulators have done nothing to clean up the system. The whole thing reeks of corruption and collusion, and demands a new Pecora Commission investigation. Had the Federal government put the financial system into bankruptcy protection, as it should have done, this activity would not be possible. That such activity is occurring again, serves as an indictment of the President and his administration, the Congress and the Federal Reserve. It is time to end the corruption, and end the monetary system which is preying upon us all. Enough is enough!
---------------
Wall Street Insanity: Cooking The Books With "Re-remics"
October 2, 2009 (LPAC)—
Though a lot of activities fit that description, we're talking specifically here about "re-remics," or the re-securitization of real estate mortgage investment conduits ("remics"), a process in which existing mortgage-related derivatives are broken up and repackaged into new securities. In a re-remic, the assets of a remic are sorted into "good" and "bad" piles, and new securities created out of each pile. The new securities are then given new ratings by the ratings agencies, such that the capital the financial institutions have to set aside to cover those assets is reduced, even though the assets are the same. If this sounds nuts to you, you're on the right track.
The re-remic scam is one aspect of "Let's Pretend We're Not Broke," the most popular game on Wall Street these days. The more loaded down the banks' books get with toxic waste, the more capital they have to have to cover their "potential" losses, and the lower their capital ratios. Since they've got mountains of toxic waste on their books, the banks are expending considerable effort to reduce the level of capital they are required to set aside, and the re-remic gimmick is one of the techniques being used. The banks are also holding as many government-guaranteed loans and securities as they can, for the same reason. The polite phrase for this is "regulatory capital arbitrage," but "accounting fraud" is more accurate. The end result is to produce a phony statistic that can be used to claim that the bank—or insurance company, etc.—is healthy, when it is not.
This sort of nonsense is what killed the financial system in the first place. The derivatives market itself was created to hide the bankruptcy of the banking system and transfer future losses on unpayable debts from the banks into the securities markets, where it could be sold to pension funds and other suckers. A big part of AIG's credit default swap (CDS) business was just this sort of regulatory capital game: banks bought CDSs from AIG as a way of reducing the capital they had to set aside as reserves, and when AIG exploded, it was bailed out in order to save those banks. It should never have been allowed.
The fact that Wall Street thinks it can get away with such criminality today shows both that the players on the Street have learned nothing from the blowout, and that the so-called regulators have done nothing to clean up the system. The whole thing reeks of corruption and collusion, and demands a new Pecora Commission investigation. Had the Federal government put the financial system into bankruptcy protection, as it should have done, this activity would not be possible. That such activity is occurring again, serves as an indictment of the President and his administration, the Congress and the Federal Reserve. It is time to end the corruption, and end the monetary system which is preying upon us all. Enough is enough!
---------------
Wall Street Insanity: Cooking The Books With "Re-remics"
October 2, 2009 (LPAC)—
Sunday, September 6, 2009
We Shall Overcome
September 5, 2009 (LPAC)—Exactly 20 years ago, on Sept. 4, 1989, the first Leipzig Monday Rally took place, with several hundred citizens taking to the streets of the then East German city, demanding the freedom to travel and freedom of speech. Even arrests by the special police of the State Security Agency, the Stasi, who deployed massively, could not crush the protest rally, which was joined by a couple hundred more. The genie was out of the bottle. Only three weeks later, on Sept. 25, already 20,000 took to the streets of Leipzig, chanting "We Shall Overcome" among other songs. By the end of September, their numbers had increased to 40,000. Protest rallies also began to be held in more and more other cities.
Then, from October on, the number of protesters exploded: In Leipzig alone, a quarter-million people joined for a mass rally, and another quarter-million protested in other east German cities. Already during September, slogans changed, and the famous "Wir sind das Volk" ("We Are the People") began to prevail.
--------------
During a revolutionary wave sweeping across the Eastern Bloc, the East German government announced on November 9, 1989, after several weeks of civil unrest, that all GDR citizens could visit West Germany and West Berlin. Crowds of East Germans climbed onto and crossed the wall, joined by West Germans on the other side in a celebratory atmosphere. Over the next few weeks, parts of the wall were chipped away by a euphoric public and by souvenir hunters; industrial equipment was later used to remove almost all of the rest. The fall of the Berlin Wall paved the way for German reunification, which was formally concluded on October 3, 1990.
(paragraph just above from wikipedia, “Berlin Wall”)
Now you are ready for a most excellent 10-minute video: The Dynamics of Mass Strike
Then, from October on, the number of protesters exploded: In Leipzig alone, a quarter-million people joined for a mass rally, and another quarter-million protested in other east German cities. Already during September, slogans changed, and the famous "Wir sind das Volk" ("We Are the People") began to prevail.
--------------
During a revolutionary wave sweeping across the Eastern Bloc, the East German government announced on November 9, 1989, after several weeks of civil unrest, that all GDR citizens could visit West Germany and West Berlin. Crowds of East Germans climbed onto and crossed the wall, joined by West Germans on the other side in a celebratory atmosphere. Over the next few weeks, parts of the wall were chipped away by a euphoric public and by souvenir hunters; industrial equipment was later used to remove almost all of the rest. The fall of the Berlin Wall paved the way for German reunification, which was formally concluded on October 3, 1990.
(paragraph just above from wikipedia, “Berlin Wall”)
Now you are ready for a most excellent 10-minute video: The Dynamics of Mass Strike
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)