Marcus Aurelius: Joe Scarborough Tries to Scare on Debt

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Marcus Aurelius

Below is an excellent example of scare-mongering and ideologically-rooted media froth.

The morning after

Joe Scarborough

WASHINGTON, D.C.— Aug. 3, 2011

It was a financial storm that even an economics professor could see coming. The debt crisis that had gripped Washington for a month came to a sudden, horrifying climax that left America’s economy looking like a nuclear wasteland. Credit markets suffered life-threatening seizures as the stock market dropped a staggering 25 percent. U.S. Treasuries plummeted as Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s downgraded the United States’ credit rating — instantly adding trillions of dollars in interest costs to the national debt. Only gold was on the rise, and its price exploded past $2,000 an ounce.

Read rest of article….

 Phi Beta Iota:  The only people who benefit from raising the debt ceiling are the banks that destroyed the economy in the first place, and the industrial complexes from medical to military that have grown the profligate entitlement and earmark society.  Nationalizing the banks and closing down the Federal Reserve are both viable alternative strategies.  The fact of the matter is that the truth is not on the table.  To WHOM does the US Government owe money in violation of the Constitutional mandate that it be the steward of the full faith and credit of the Republic?  Triage among sovereign powers, banks, and individual investors should reveal a wealth of alternatives.  This is, as one TV commentator called it, a “food fight.”  Intelligence and integrity are lacking within Washington–neither the Republicans nor the Democrats, the Congress nor the Executive, are demonstrating the needed character during this time of tribulation.

John Robb: Concentration of Wealth = Central Planning = Fall of US Empire from Misappropriation

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John Robb

JOURNAL: Central Planning and The Fall of the US Empire

Here's some thinking that draws on decision making theory.  It's very much in line with how the late John Boyd (America's best strategist) would approach it.

___________

One of the most interesting underlying reasons for the decline of the Soviet Union, and soon the US, is misallocation of resources due to central planning.

Misallocation in this context means that year after year, decade after decade, the wealth of a nation is spent on the wrong things.  The wrong projects are funded.  The wrong things are built.  The wrong things were bought and so on.  Eventually, the accumulation of bad investment made them so fragile that even the smallest shock could topple them.  The reason for this the Soviet's reliance on central planning.  A system of economic governance where small group of people — in the Soviet Unions case bureaucrats — had all the decision making power.  They decided what was spent and where.  They decided badly.

Why did they decide badly?  The massive economy of a modern superstate is too complex for a small group of people to manage.  Too much data.  Too many uncertainties.  Too many moving parts.

The only way to manage an economy as complex as this is to allow massively parallel decision making.  A huge number of people making small decisions, that in aggregate, are able to process more data, get better data (by being closer to the problem), and apply more brainpower to weighing alternatives than any centralized decision making group.

Of course, the misallocation due to centralized decision making wasn't supposed to be a vulnerability of the West.  To allocate resources in our economy, we had a more efficient mechanism: markets.  Markets are supposed to be a mechanism that allows massively parallel decision making.

Those assumptions are proving false. The succession of market bubbles and finally, the global financial collpse of 2008 is prima facie that gross misallocation is occurring.  The wealth of the West, particularly the US, is being spent on the wrong things year after year, decade after decade.   We are now as fragile as the Soviet Union in the late 80's.

Continue reading “John Robb: Concentration of Wealth = Central Planning = Fall of US Empire from Misappropriation”

DefDog: Completely False Story from Coalition on Taliban

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DefDog Recommends....

This story is completely false.  NightWatch's compilation of data reveals that “March saw the highest level of fighting up to March 2011 and May was higher still. July looks down, but much more focused and lethal against senior officials.”

Just more of the aversion of truth that permeates Washington…..it also goes against all the previous reporting of having the Taliban on the ropes…..

Coalition holds line on Taliban attacks, data show

By Jim Michaels

USA TODAY, 28 July 2011

For the first time in five years insurgent-initiated attacks in Afghanistan have not increased with the start of a new fighting season, suggesting that a surge of U.S. forces has blunted Taliban momentum, according to the coalition forces.

Read full story…

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Robert Young Pelton: USA Road to Debt Decisions

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Robert Young Pelton

Useful survey on when the recent as well as the further back decisions on going into debt were made.  From April, but so very relevant today.

Running in the red: How the U.S., on the road to surplus, detoured to massive debt

By

The Washington Post, April 30, 2011

The nation’s unnerving descent into debt began a decade ago with a choice, not a crisis.

. . . . . . .

All told, Obama-era choices account for about $1.7 trillion in new debt, according to a separate Washington Post analysis of CBO data over the past decade. Bush-era policies, meanwhile, account for more than $7 trillion and are a major contributor to the trillion-dollar annual budget deficits that are dominating the political debate.

. . . . . .

William Hoagland, who was for years a top budget aide to Domenici and other GOP Senate leaders, said it is simplistic to think today’s fiscal problems began just 10 years ago. In 1976, as a young CBO analyst, Hoagland produced a long-term simulation that showed entitlement costs gradually overwhelming the rest of the federal budget.

“This situation really goes back to long before [the Bush administration], which is to say to old dead men that have long left the Congress,” he said.

Read full article (three screens)…

Michael Ostrolenk: Openness Groups Denounce House Republicans for Killing FOIA Legislation

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Michael Ostrolenk

Openness Groups Denounce House Republican Leadership Decision to Erase Progress on Bipartisan FOIA Legislation

Press Release Contact: Amy Bennett or Patrice McDermott, OpenTheGovernment.org, 202-332-6736

July 26, 2010 – Organizations that support openness and accountability were shocked and saddened to learn that House Republican leadership plans to wipe out bipartisan progress on Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) legislation in the interest of pushing its budget package.

“If House leadership wishes to make good on their pledge to improve transparency and accountability, they should not kill this good government bill with strong bipartisan support as a political maneuver,” said Angela Canterbury, Director of Public Policy at the Project On Government Oversight (POGO). “Instead, they should walk their talk by making the Faster FOIA Act law.”

This afternoon, at the direction of House leadership, the House Rules Committee is poised to approve a rule that allows Speaker Boehner to strip all language out of S. 627, the Faster FOIA Act, and replace it with his budget proposal.

Read rest of release…

John Steiner: Christopher Schaefer on Wealth

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John Steiner

Christopher Schaefer (PhD), gives us both a short essay below recommending two books, and at the link, a five-page essay, “Mind the Gap: Wealth Disparities, the Deficit, and our Economic Future.”

CREATING COMMON WEALTH

Christopher Schaefer

It is now clear that the present global economic crisis is also a political and moral crisis raising fundamental questions about the nature of market capitalism in the West, in particular in the United States and England. Old arguments from the Right and the Left about more government involvement in society or less are often deemed irrelevant as the system is perceived as being corrupt and manipulated by economic and political elites.  A recent Pew Research Poll found that over 92 percent of Americans viewed the economy as bad, over 70 percent say they have suffered job related or financial hardship as a result of the great recession, 25 percent say they have difficulty paying their mortgage and 24 percent in paying their medical bills. Meanwhile 65 percent see government in a negative light and large banks and large corporations as corrupt, ( 67 and 64 percent respectively ). Or as David Korten states in Agenda for a New Economy, (Berrett Koehler) “conservatives and liberals share a sense that the dominant culture and institutions of the contemporary world are morally and spiritually bankrupt, unresponsive to human needs and values , and destructive of the strong families and communities we crave and our children desperately need.(1)

Korten's book is an excellent beginning in rethinking how our economy should be organized and should function. He makes a strong case for a 12 point agenda in achieving independence from Wall Street and and in creating a more local and sustainable economic future. The 12 point Agenda includes:

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John Robb: When Governments Fail, Criminal Tribes Grow

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John Robb

Monday, 25 July 2011

JOURNAL: Knights Templar Norway/Mexico

Two recent attempts at revivals of the Knights Templar.

One:  Norway.  In this video posted by Anders (the Oslo bomber) before his attack.  He makes a plea for a revival of the Knights Templar at the end of the video (the first part is an attack on liberalism/multiculturalism and islamic immigration).  His bloody attack was an attempt to jump start a revival through what's called “a plausible promise.”

Two:  Mexico.  A splinter group from the Michoacan La Familia cartel (which is unravelling) has named themselves the Knights Templar.  They have published a code of conduct, eschew drug use, etc.  This group is active in the drug business, growing quickly (the simple rules of conduct required to join it are very viral), and killing every rival in their way (the Zetas, what's left of La Familia, and the Mexican government troops/police).

Why?  The Knights Templar is an historical model that is a ready made formula for manufacturing fictive kinship.  Fictive kinship is the “glue” or “cement” that holds together tribes.  Manufacturing fictive kinship enables the formation of a tribe/gang/cult that is able to defend itself and its interests.

In the case of religiously grounded historical examples like this, it allows the group and its members to believe they are special.  So special they can transcend the laws, customs, and morality of the outside world without remorse/pause.  The result is a group that will often kill in a far more aggressive way than what is seen with groups that are glued together only through economic ties (al Qaeda used this approach).

noble gold