I thought the short piece below might help people better analyze and report on the defense spending budget that will be released on Monday, February 13. As you know, DOD has already released some numbers; however, they are quite incomplete. They do not even cover all Pentagon spending, let alone all defense-related spending. Using the Pentagon's press release on Monday will likely mean missing the more complete picture. I try to explain below, and I address where you can find a more complete display of the numbers–all of them.
Decoding the Pentagon's Budget Numbers
Winslow T. Wheeler
This Monday, February 13, the Pentagon will release the details of its fiscal year 2013 budget. The press, congressional staff and think tank-types go through an annual routine, scrambling to get out their take on the numbers and some selected issues. Some of these efforts are quite predictable; this year we will surely hear about
In this interview, Ellis Martin speaks with Jim Sinclair about the “positive employment outlook” reported by the government and the media and the exuberance associated with it. Where do these numbers come from? Mr. Sinclair also has compelling advice for the listener regarding how to protect oneself from the ultimate endgame related to Quantitative Easing and the decline of the dollar. What is China's direct influence or input in QE 3? Is it in their best interests to prop up the dollar and the US economy? How relevent is the Yuan? Listen to another unedited interview.
Note: These letters were to be included as appendices to illuminate how those in power refuse to consider, much less embrace, radical constructive ideas, however essential they might be to the 99%. All four of these leaders – a Pope, the Secretary General of the United Nations, a sitting President of the United States of America, and a multi-billionaire with a flair for innovation – have probably not even seen these letters because they inhabit a CLOSED world. They are surrounded by courtiers who are threatened by new ideas, and who reject all that they do not understand.
In an OPEN world, each of these individual would hear from a million voices, asking them to read the letter addressed to them, and to hold a summit for public discussion of the letter.
This post is the full text online version for ease of automated translation. Links to the actual versions on letterhead are below the line with their full-text version.
If you have any money and you want to understand the lies that “your” government tells you with statistics, subscribe to John Williams shadowstats.com.
John Williams is the best and utterly truthful statistician that we the people have.
The charts below come from John Williams Hyperinflation Report, January 25, 2012. The commentary is supplied by me.
Here is the chart of real average weekly earnings deflated by the US government’s own measure of inflation, which as I pointed out in my recent column, Economics Lesson 1, understates true inflation.
This chart (below) shows the behavior of inflation as measured by “our” government’s official measure, CPI-U (bottom line) and John Williams measure which uses the official methodology of when I was Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury. The gap between the top and bottom lines represents the amount of money that was due to Social Security recipients and others whose income was indexed to inflation that was diverted by the government to wars, police state, and bankers’ bailouts.
This next chart shows the gains that gold and the Swiss franc have made against the US dollar. The Swiss franc is the top line and gold is the bottom. When gold and the Swiss franc rise, the dollar is falling. Notice that during President Reagan’s first term, when I was in the Treasury, gold and the Swiss franc dropped, that is, the dollar rose in purchasing power. Obviously, the supply-side policy that Reagan implemented strengthened the US dollar. It was only with the advent of the Bush policy of endless trillion dollar wars, reaffirmed by Obama, that the US dollar and economy collapsed relative to gold and hard currencies.
The recent drop in the Swiss franc is due to the Swiss government announcing that the country’s exports could not tolerate any further run up in the franc’s value, and that the Swiss central bank would print new francs to accommodate future inflows of dollars and euros. In other words, Switzerland was forced to import US inflation in order to protect its exports.
Here is nonfarm payroll employment. As you can see, the US economy has been in recession for four years despite the easiest monetary policy and largest government deficits in US history.
Here is consumer confidence. Do you see a recovery despite all the recovery hype from politicians and the financial media?
Here is housing starts. Do you see a recovery?
Here is real GDP deflated according to the methodology used when I was in the US Treasury.
Here is real retail sales deflated by the traditional, as contrasted with the current, substitution-based, measure of inflation.
These graphs courtesy of John Williams make it completely clear that there is no economic recovery. In place of recovery, we have hype from politicians, Wall Street, and the presstitute media. The “recovery” is no more real than Iraqi “weapons of mass destruction” or Iranian “nukes” or the Obama regime’s phony story of assassinating last year an undefended Osama bin Laden, allegedly the mastermind of Islamic terrorism, left by al Qaeda to the mercy of a US Seal team, a man who was widely reported to have died from renal failure in December 2001, a man who denied any responsibility for 9/11.
A government and media that will deceive you about simple things such as inflation, unemployment, and GDP growth, will lie to you about everything.
Phi Beta Iota: Here is the paraphrase as reported previously, from Ellen Seidman, former member of the National Economic Council:
CIA reports only focus on foreign economic conditions. They don't do domestic economic conditions and so I cannot get a strategic analysis that compares and contrasts strengths and weaknesses of the industries I am responsible for. On the other hand, Treasury, Commerce, and the Fed are terrible at the business of intelligence — they don't know how to produce intelligence.[1]
When you add a lack of integrity across the board to basic incompetence on the part of both consumers and producers of intelligence, you end up with lies that neither patriotic nor helpful.
[1] Seidman was speaking to the Open Source Lunch Club on January 1, 1994. Her observations were subsequently reported in OSS Notices 94001 dated February 21, 1994
21st Century Network Governance – Beyond Participatory Budgeting
Participatory budgeting is a very important step in the right direction, but in the larger context of both obstacles presented by corrupt governance and what is possible enabled by the Internet, it can be taken–quickly–to a higher level.
Participatory budgeting is also somewhat ineffective in that the false assumption of the public and private sectors are accepted. True Cost Economics is the only possible foundation for a sustainable public sector and a sustainable private sector, and most participatory budgeting projects have no idea what the difference is between the false budget and the true budget. To discuss budget disposition without seeing, for example, that fracking creates earthquakes and that tar sands consume vast quantities of potable water, is an exercise in futility.
This session will present a very rapid 30 minute overview of the pioneering work done by Earth Intelligence Network, a 501c3 with 24 co-founders including Medard Gabel (co-creator with Buckminster Fuller of the analog World Game, designer of the current digital EarthGame). Three integral foundations for effective collective intelligence will be introduced:
Robert Steele
a. Strategic Analytic Model highlighting the ten high-level threats to humanity ignored by most governments and the twelve core policy areas from Agriculture to Water that are not harmonized by most governments
b. Six Bubbles consisting of an Autonomous Internet connecting an Earth Intelligence (Decision-Support) Network, EarthGame, EarthPolicy, and EarthBudget, all glued together with transpartisan memetics and transitional facilitation. Illustration
c. M4IS2, the new craft of intelligence, no longer secret, expensive or federal–Multinational, Multiagency, Multidisciplinary, Multidomain Information Sharing and Sense Making unites the eight tribes of intelligence (academia, civil society, commerce, government, law enforcement, media, military, non-government / non-profit) to harmonize decisions, policies, budgets, and behavior across all boundaries, by using shared information to achieve shared objectives.
Following the 30 minute illustrated presentation, two discussants will expand on the possibilities, one from a government perspective and the other from a civil society perspective.
The final 30 minutes will be devoted to interactive questions and answers.
It is our hope that the entire session can be video-taped and streamed online for permanent public access.
Robert David STEELE Vivas
Robert David STEELE Vivas, CEO of Earth Intelligence Network (501c3), has spent 30 years in the intelligence (decision-support) field, and the last twenty helping ninety governments get a grip on open sources of information to create Open Source Intelligence (OSINT). His second book, THE NEW CRAFT OF INTELLIGENCE: Personal, Public, & Political (2002, also free online) remains the primer for public intelligence in the public interest. He is also the originator of the concept of the Smart Nation, first published in Government Information Quarterly in 1995, and then in THE SMART NATION ACT: Public Intelligence in the Public Interest(EIN, 2006). He is a former spy, an honorary hacker associated with Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE), the Silicon Valley Hackers Conference (as started by Stewart Brand), and Hactic / Chaos Computer Club in Europe. He is also the #1 Amazon reviewer for non-fiction, reading in 98 categories, with all of his reviewed accessible online by category at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog. In October he presented his Electoral Reform proposal to Occupy NYC, the six minute video someone else posted went viral. He is one of three candidates for the Reform Party presidential nomination, and has created a web site, We the People Reform Coalition, that represents the next level in participatory governance, integrating Electoral Reform, a Coalition Cabinet and Balanced Budget that are crowd-sourced and presented in advance of election day, and a commitment to True Cost Economics. In June 2012 Random House / Evolver Editions is releasing his newest book, THE OPEN SOURCE EVERYTHING MANIFESTO: Transparency, Truth, & Trust.
Europe: Updates. In an interview with a French daily on 25 December, International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Christine Lagarde stressed that Europe's financial crisis is turning into “a crisis of confidence in public debt and the solidity of the financial system.
Greece: According to an IMF source involved in discussions with Greece, the situation in Athens is “deteriorating” and “a further 10-15 billion euros ($13.1-19.6 billion) still needs to be found.” Banks may be asked to agree to write off 65 % instead of 50% of Greece's debt.
France: The French National Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE) said on 26 December that there were 29,000 new job seekers “without any occupation” in November, up 1.1% over October. The year-on-year increase reached 5.2%. In total, 2,844,800 people did not have any occupation, the highest such figure since November 1999.
An economist at the French Observatory of Economic Conditions speculated that France's unemployment rate — which currently stands at 9.3% — will reach 10.7% by the end of 2012, and predicted that Paris will not succeed in bringing the deficit down to 3% of GDP by 2013.
Spain: At a news conference on 26 December, Spanish Economy Minister Luis De Guindos said that the Spanish economy had suffered a “relapse” and would record negative growth in the fourth quarter of 2011. De Guindos warned that “the next two months are not going to be easy, neither from a growth nor a jobs point of view.”
Comment: According to the Financial Times and multiple economists the fate of the euro depends on what happens in Italy. This week Italy intends to auction bonds worth Euros 20 billion. The market reaction to the auction will be an important indicator of whether the central bankers have found a way to stabilize the financial crisis, or have just made it worse.
All analysts of European economics predict a recession in 2012. They differ only about how severe it will be. In an integrated global economy, the ripple effects from Europe will drag the US and the Chinese economies, among all others.
Phi Beta Iota: Christine Lagarde, perhaps because she is a woman with a smaller ego and larger intuition than most men, appears to be the first Epoch A leader to “get” that we are all calling into question the very existence of the Western financial system that is rooted in fraud, waste, and abuse. When she begins to point to Iceland as an example, and to demand that Western countries arrest and try Goldman Sachs, Morgan, Citi-Bank, Bank of America, and other officials for high crimes against the public, the healing can begin. Until then, the West is avoiding the fundamentals.
I thought the short piece below might help people better analyze and report on the defense spending budget that will be released on Monday, February 13. As you know, DOD has already released some numbers; however, they are quite incomplete. They do not even cover all Pentagon spending, let alone all defense-related spending. Using the Pentagon's press release on Monday will likely mean missing the more complete picture. I try to explain below, and I address where you can find a more complete display of the numbers–all of them.
