- Who Really Rules The United States?
Submitted by Matthew Continetti via FreeBeacon.com,
How bureaucrats are fighting the voters for control of our country
Donald Trump was elected president last November by winning 306 electoral votes. He pledged to "drain the swamp" in Washington, D.C., to overturn the system of politics that had left the nation's capital and major financial and tech centers flourishing but large swaths of the country mired in stagnation and decay. "What truly matters," he said in his Inaugural Address, "is not which party controls our government, but whether our government is controlled by the people."
Is it? By any historical and constitutional standard, "the people" elected Donald Trump and endorsed his program of nation-state populist reform. Yet over the last few weeks America has been in the throes of an unprecedented revolt. Not of the people against the government—that happened last year—but of the government against the people. What this says about the state of American democracy, and what it portends for the future, is incredibly disturbing.
There is, of course, the case of Michael Flynn. He made a lot of enemies inside the government during his career, suffice it to say. And when he exposed himself as vulnerable those enemies pounced. But consider the means: anonymous and possibly illegal leaks of private conversations. Yes, the conversation in question was with a foreign national. And no one doubts we spy on ambassadors. But we aren't supposed to spy on Americans without probable cause. And we most certainly are not supposed to disclose the results of our spying in the pages of the Washington Post because it suits a partisan or personal agenda.
Here was a case of current and former national security officials using their position, their sources, and their methods to crush a political enemy. And no one but supporters of the president seems to be disturbed. Why? Because we are meant to believe that the mysterious, elusive, nefarious, and to date unproven connection between Donald Trump and the Kremlin is more important than the norms of intelligence and the decisions of the voters.
But why should we believe that? And who elected these officials to make this judgment for us?
Nor is Flynn the only example of nameless bureaucrats working to undermine and ultimately overturn the results of last year's election. According to the New York Times, civil servants at the EPA are lobbying Congress to reject Donald Trump's nominee to run the agency. Is it because Scott Pruitt lacks qualifications? No. Is it because he is ethically compromised? Sorry. The reason for the opposition is that Pruitt is a critic of the way the EPA was run during the presidency of Barack Obama. He has a policy difference with the men and women who are soon to be his employees. Up until, oh, this month, the normal course of action was for civil servants to follow the direction of the political appointees who serve as proxies for the elected president.
How quaint. These days an architect of the overreaching and antidemocratic Waters of the U.S. regulation worries that her work will be overturned so she undertakes extraordinary means to defeat her potential boss. But a change in policy is a risk of democratic politics. Nowhere does it say in the Constitution that the decisions of government employees are to be unquestioned and preserved forever. Yet that is precisely the implication of this unprecedented protest. "I can't think of any other time when people in the bureaucracy have done this," a professor of government tells the paper. That sentence does not leave me feeling reassured.
Opposition to this president takes many forms. Senate Democrats have slowed confirmations to the most sluggish pace since George Washington. Much of the New York and Beltway media does really function as a sort of opposition party, to the degree that reporters celebrated the sacking of Flynn as a partisan victory for journalism. Discontent manifests itself in direct actions such as the Women's March.
But here's the difference. Legislative roadblocks, adversarial journalists, and public marches are typical of a constitutional democracy. They are spelled out in our founding documents: the Senate and its rules, and the rights to speech, a free press, and assembly. Where in those documents is it written that regulators have the right not to be questioned, opposed, overturned, or indeed fired, that intelligence analysts can just call up David Ignatius and spill the beans whenever they feel like it?
The last few weeks have confirmed that there are two systems of government in the United States.
The first is the system of government outlined in the U.S. Constitution—its checks, its balances, its dispersion of power, its protection of individual rights. Donald Trump was elected to serve four years as the chief executive of this system. Whether you like it or not.
The second system is comprised of those elements not expressly addressed by the Founders. This is the permanent government, the so-called administrative state of bureaucracies, agencies, quasi-public organizations, and regulatory bodies and commissions, of rule-writers and the byzantine network of administrative law courts. This is the government of unelected judges with lifetime appointments who, far from comprising the "least dangerous branch," now presume to think they know more about America's national security interests than the man elected as commander in chief.
For some time, especially during Democratic presidencies, the second system of government was able to live with the first one. But that time has ended. The two systems are now in competition. And the contest is all the more vicious and frightening because more than offices are at stake. This fight is not about policy. It is about wealth, status, the privileges of an exclusive class.
"In our time, as in [Andrew] Jackson's, the ruling classes claim a monopoly not just on the economy and society but also on the legitimate authority to regulate and restrain it, and even on the language in which such matters are discussed," writes Christopher Caldwell in a brilliant essay in the Winter 2016/17 Claremont Review of Books.
Elites have full-spectrum dominance of a whole semiotic system. What has just happened in American politics is outside the system of meanings elites usually rely upon. Mike Pence's neighbors on Tennyson street not only cannot accept their election loss; they cannot fathom it. They are reaching for their old prerogatives in much the way that recent amputees are said to feel an urge to scratch itches on limbs that are no longer there. Their instincts tell them to disbelieve what they rationally know. Their arguments have focused not on the new administration's policies or its competence but on its very legitimacy.
Donald Trump did not cause the divergence between government of, by, and for the people and government, of, by, and for the residents of Cleveland Park and Arlington and Montgomery and Fairfax counties. But he did exacerbate it. He forced the winners of the global economy and the members of the D.C. establishment to reckon with the fact that they are resented, envied, opposed, and despised by about half the country. But this recognition did not humble the entrenched incumbents of the administrative state. It radicalized them to the point where they are readily accepting, even cheering on, the existence of a "deep state" beyond the control of the people and elected officials.
Who rules the United States? The simple and terrible answer is we do not know. But we are about to find out.
- Visualizing Gold's Value And Rarity
Since Ancient times, Visual Capitalist's Jeff Desjardins explains, gold has served a very unique function in society.
Gold is extremely rare, impossible to create out of “thin air”, easily identifiable, malleable, and it does not tarnish. By nature of these properties, gold has been highly valued throughout history for every tiny ounce of weight. That’s why it’s been used by people for centuries as a monetary metal, a symbol of wealth, and a store of value.
Visualizing Gold’s Value and Rarity
With all that value coming from such a small package, sometimes it is hard to put gold’s immense worth into context.
The following 11 images help to capture this about gold, putting things into better perspective.
1. The U.S. median income, as a gold cube, easily fits in the palm of your hand.
2. A gold cube worth $1 million, has sides that are 2/3 the length of a typical banknote.
3. All gold used for electrical connections in the Columbia Space Shuttle would be worth $1.6 million today.
4. Trump’s entire fortune of $3.7 billion as a gold cube would be shorter than Trump himself.
5. As a gold cube, the entire value of the Bitcoin market would fit in a hallway.
6. The fortune of the richest man on Earth, Bill Gates, would take up a single traffic lane.
7. The world’s entire annual production of gold is just a 5.5m sided (18 ft) cube.
8. Take the 147.3 million oz of gold out of Fort Knox, and it’s only slightly bigger.
9. All gold held by the Central Banks pales in comparison to the Brandenburg Gate.
10. All gold mined in human history is dwarfed by the Statue of Liberty.
11. To pay off $63 trillion of global sovereign debt, you’d need a gold cube the size of a building.
Liked our visualizations of gold cubes? Check out this motion graphic video that shows how much money has been created by humans.
The Money Project is an ongoing collaboration between Visual Capitalist and Texas Precious Metals that seeks to use intuitive visualizations to explore the origins, nature, and use of money.
- The Great Wailing
Authored by Bonner & Partners' Bill Bonner, annotated by Acting-Man's Pater Tenebrarum,
Regret and Suffering
BALTIMORE – Victoribus spolia…
So far, the most satisfying thing about the Trump win has been the howls and whines coming from the establishment. Each appointment – some good, some bad from our perspective – has brought forth such heavy lamentations.
Oh no! Alaric the Visigoth is here! Hide the women and children! And don’t forget the vestal virgins, if you can find any…
You’d think Washington had been invaded by Goths, now raping the vestal virgins (if there are any within the Beltway) on the White House lawns while the Capitol burns to the ground.
Trump is happening, of course. And the very people who made it happen are now in various stages of regret… suffering… or hysteria. What a delight it is to see them in such pain!
All along I-95 – from the Holland Tunnel to Route 295 into the heart of D.C., at a distance of a football field between one and another – you see their fabled leaders, lieutenants, and water carriers crucified, with a small crowd gathered around each, weeping.
There is Hillary, of course. And Senator Elizabeth Warren (secretly happy to see HRC brought to grief). Then there’s Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman. If there is another 9/11 crisis with Trump in charge, he warns: “America as we know it will soon be gone.”
There are the Republican traitors, too – Colin Powell, Henry Paulson, Michael Chertoff – now hanging from their crosses. And there are the neo-con turncoats, too – Max Boot, Robert Kagan… Crucifixion is probably too good for them.
They are not only traitors to the Republican cause, whatever that may be, but warmongers, too, ready to switch allegiances just to keep the money flowing to their crony friends in the security industry. Now they all keen away – but what did they expect?
A random collection of establishment figures, shills, chicken hawks & frauds from the entire officially approved political spectrum. Whatever one thinks of Trump, the fact that he makes this seemingly diverse collection of welfare-warfare etatistes squirm in agony is deeply satisfying…
Had they not been lustily ripping off the working stiffs for decades? With their fake money and fake wars, they had transferred trillions of dollars from the Main Street economy into their own pockets. And then, after the grandest larceny in all of history, didn’t they lecture the poor victims on global warming, racism, and cisgender issues?
Had they not been so rapacious and sanctimonious, they might have their own egregious gal in the White House now! Instead, the country is run by a man they consider an outrageous jackass. Sniff… sniff… We feel so sorry for them.
“Great Disruptor”
But where does that leave us? It leaves us with the hero of 2016, too – the man who routed all those hopeless whiners. And it leaves us with the same swamp… the same swamp critters pulling strings and hatching plans and the same fake wars – on the real economy, on terror, on poverty, and on drugs.
So far, the losers are crying – all the way to the bank. Donald Trump is a “great disruptor,” says the press. What exactly will he disrupt? If Mr. Trump is to “make America great again,” he must do more than make the insiders mad. He must make them pay.
We saw what destroyed the Soviet Union’s empire: win-lose deals. The nomenklatura, the insiders, the Communist Party hacks all made out well – for a time. Meanwhile, the average person suffered. His income fell in line with his liberty. Naturally, a lot of people didn’t like it.
Stalin had to use drastic measures to keep the losers in check. Between 1936 and 1937, his secret police, the NKVD, arrested 1.5 million people. They shot 600,000 – a rate of about 1,000 a day.
Unfortunately only this one grainy photograph (and variants thereof) of the event depicted above exists, but it captured a historic moment. It was taken in Moscow in 1934, at the 17th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Steelworkers from Tula had given Stalin a Mosin-Nagant rifle as a gift. He immediately began aiming it at assorted party colleagues attending the Congress, to much laughter, hooting and applause. If only they had known – he wasn’t joking, he was simply giving them a none too subtle hint as to what was coming next. Of the 1225 voting delegates at the Congress, less than half were still alive five years later – and as a rule, they didn’t die of old age. Of the 139 comrades voted into the party’s Central Committee on the day this picture was taken, less than one quarter died of natural causes. At least 98 of them were killed on Stalin’s direct orders. In short, 1934 was an exceptionally bad year for Communist apparatchiks in the Soviet Union to advance in their political career…
Photo via pikabu.ru
By 1953, there were 5 million people in Gulags, or “internal exile,” in Siberia. Whole groups were exterminated, including poets, writers, scientists, and 85% of the Russian Orthodox clergy.
Meanwhile, win-win deals – voluntary exchanges – were practically outlawed. And without them, the system became so pathetic and unproductive, even the elite gave up trying to get anything out of it.
Moneymen and Gunmen
Now we know why America’s middle class suffers, too – not on the same scale, but for the same basic reason. Too many win-lose deals were imposed on them by the Parasitocrats, the insiders – the same people who now loathe the president they so richly deserve.
Household income in the U.S. is now lower than it was at the end of the last century. In the year 2000, the typical household had an income of $58,574. Today, it is only $57,827.
So now we know what Mr. Trump must do: reduce the number of win-lose deals to make room for more win-win deals. It is that simple. But doing so isn’t simple. The swamp critters – the insiders and Parasitocrats who control and profit from government regulations and legislation – are behind the win-lose deals. They’ll fight to protect them.
Is swamp drainage achievable and will the man with the plan be up to it? It is usually best to keep one’s expectations modest – as long as the Donald keeps delivering in the entertainment department and doesn’t start any useless wars, we will be by and large content…
Photo credit: David Becker / Reuters
We’ve seen, too, that the deals fit into three main categories: entitlements, the military-industrial-security complex, and Wall Street. As for the first, the Republicans have promised to overhaul Obamacare. But the president has sent mixed messages.
He also pledged to not cut entitlements. And when asked how he would pay for them, he answered that he knows “where to get the money from” and “nobody else knows.”
More than likely, the new president will be unable or unwilling to make any substantial dent in spending on pensions, pills, or schools. There are simply too many crony swamp critters and zombie voters on the receiving end. Besides, they are not completely lose-lose programs. Overpriced and inefficient they may be. Still, ordinary people do get some real benefits from them.
That leaves the two biggies: the military-industrial-security complex and Wall Street. Thus do the clouds lift and the picture clarifies. Trump and his team must try to rein in the gunmen and the moneymen, or they are nothing but conmen.
- Norway Central Banker Warns Of Massive 50% Drop In Wealth Fund Assets To Cover Budget Deficits
Back in August, we noted that, for the first time since it’s creation in 1996, the Norwegian government had started raiding its sovereign wealth fund in 2016 to cover government deficits. Then in October the Nordic country revealed plans to massively increase withdrawals by over 25% in 2017, to $15 billion, to cover a budget hole that was expected to be roughly 8% of GDP.
That said, Norway’s ultimate GDP potential, and therefore budget deficits, are heavily dependent on oil prices so any further weakening of crude could result in even more withdrawals. Moreover, given the substantial YoY increase, it’s important to recall that there are fiscal limits imposed on fund withdrawals equal to 4% of assets, or roughly $36 billion, which could come into play at some point in the future if oil prices remain “lower for longer.”
Of course the withdrawals accelerated just as the heavily oil-dependent economy of Norway started to absorb the impact of lower oil prices.
And what do you do when you depend on portfolio returns to fund everyday living expenses but are faced with extremely low returns courtesy of artificially depressed international bond yields? Well, you just buy more equities, of course. Which, as we noted back in December, was exactly the motivation behind a decision to increase the fund’s equity allocation from 60%, to a staggering 75%, all while funneling another $130 billion to the global equity bubble.
The central bank’s board, which oversees the fund, on Thursday recommended an increase in the equity share to 75 percent from 60 percent. That will raise the expected average annual real return to 2.5 percent over 10 years and to 3.5 percent over 30 years, compared with 2.1 percent and 2.6 percent, respectively, under the current setup.
The world’s largest sovereign wealth fund said that it expects an annual return of only 0.25 percent on bonds over the next decade and that the expected “equity risk premium,” or return on stocks over government bonds, will be just 3 percentage points in a cautious estimate.
“In our analyses, this is clearly evident in global data: internationally, growth in firms’ cash flows and equity returns are correlated with growth in the global economy,” Deputy Governor Egil Matsen said in a speech Thursday in Oslo. “Global economic growth in the coming years is expected to be below its historical level. This ‘pessimism’ is partly related to the driving forces behind the low level of the real interest rate.”
But despite their best efforts to protect the principle balance of Norway’s sovereign wealth fund through statutory spending caps and buying more and more equities, Norway’s central bank governor Oystein Olsen warned earlier today that increasing reliance on the fund to cover budget deficits could result in a “sharp reduction” in the fund’s capital over the next 10 years. Per Bloomberg:
Governor Oystein Olsen said that the continued rise in oil cash spending, which now accounts for about 20 percent of the budget and 8 percent of gross domestic product, must now be halted to protect the $900 billion fund, the world’s largest sovereign pool of cash.
“With a high level of oil revenue spending, there’s a risk of a sharp reduction in the fund’s capital,” Olsen said in the traditional Annual Address in Oslo Thursday. “This could, for example, happen if a global recession triggers both a decline in oil revenue and low or negative returns on the fund’s capital.”
In fact, in some of the more dire scenarios, Olsen warned that 50% of the fund’s $900 billion in assets could be wiped out over the next 10 years in the event of a global recession that kept oil prices low while also driving equity valuations down.
While the fund, which is overseen by the central bank, so far has said it’s more than able to handle outflows without selling assets, Olsen’s speech did lift the lid to reveal some of the worst case scenarios being calculated by the investor.
For example, it sees a 1 percent chance of a 50 percent decline over 10 years if spending is kept at the current level of about 3 percent of the fund. If spending is raised to 4 percent that probability rises to about 5 percent. If the fund’s allocation to stocks is boosted to 75 percent from 60 percent, which is currently being discussed, the probabilities rise even further to about 2 percent and 6 percent, respectively.
“This shows what you may risk if you increase oil spending from today’s level,” Olsen said in a separate interview. “This helps us to strengthen the message.”
“It must be recognized, however, that the longer-term challenges facing the the Norwegian economy can’t be resolved by spending more oil revenue and keeping interest rates low,” he said in the speech, arguing the Norwegian economy needs more legs to stand on.
That said, we wouldn’t be too worried because equity prices never go down, right? Silly Central Banker…
- The Washington Post Actually Takes Russian Government Money (Unlike The Websites It Helped Slander)
Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,
Earlier this week, Tucker Carlson interviewed the Washington Post’s Erik Wemple and brought up the fact that the paper regularly receives money from the Russian government to publish propaganda known as “native advertising” within the contents of the newspaper. This was news to me.
Here’s the clip.
As you heard, the paid Russian propaganda sections are known as “Russia: Beyond the Headlines.” The earliest article I found about it was published in Slate back in 2007 in the piece, Hail to the Return of Motherland-Protecting Propaganda!
Here are a few excerpts:
Soviet propaganda hit the skids during the Gorbachev era, and as the empire broke up, its propaganda essentially vanished. But the heavy-handed purveyors of party-line orthodoxy and nationalist cant have returned with the rise of President Vladimir Putin, and a demonstration of this lost art’s resurgence can be found in a 10-page advertising supplement to today’s (Aug. 30) Washington Post, titled “Russia: Beyond the Headlines.” (It can also be viewed on the newspaper’s Web site.)
Produced by Rossiyskaya Gazeta, the official Russian government newspaper, the section mimics the look and feel of a hometown paper, with news, an op-edsection, a sports feature (Maria Sharapova), two business pages, an entertainment page, and even a recipe for “Salad Oliver.” But beneath the shattered syntax of these laughable pieces beats the bloody red heart of the tone-deaf Soviet propagandist.
On the opinion page, we learn in “Dog-Walking – a Gateway to Wisdom” that Vladimir Putin likes Labradors and takes Connie, his Lab, with him to televised events. “Russia’s citizens like Putin, and that’s probably why there are a fair number of Labradors on my neighborhood streets,” the writer states. All glory to Labrador-loving Comrade Putin and his patriotic walking-dog, Connie!
Now check out the following excerpts from a 2015 article on the topic from The Daily Caller titled, China, Russia Pay Washington Post To Publish Their Propaganda:
Chinese and Russian propaganda supplements are regularly included in The Washington Post, but the widely read newspaper won’t say how much money it gets on the deals.
China Watch – a China Daily publication – and Russia Beyond The Headlines – a Rossiyskaya Gazeta publication – have both appeared in the Post for years as paid advertising supplements. Both foreign periodicals are owned and operated by their respective governments.
The Russia Beyond The Headlines material has appeared in other major news papers, including The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.
I find all of this extremely interesting, as well as disturbingly dishonest and hypocritical, considering that The Washington Post itself played a major role in falsely claiming that 200 websites (including this one), were somehow doing the bidding of Vladimir Putin.
As I discussed in last year’s post, Liberty Blitzkrieg Included on Washington Post Highlighted Hit List of “Russian Propaganda” Websites:
What’s particularly interesting about this list, isn’t the fact that a bunch of anonymous whiners decided to demonize successful critics of insane, inhumane and ethically indefensible U.S. government policy, but rather the fact that the Washington Post decided to craft an entire article around such a laughably ridiculous list. This just further proves a point that is rapidly becoming common knowledge amongst U.S. citizens with more than a couple of brain cells to rub together. The mainstream media is the real “fake news.”
Let’s take Liberty Blitzkrieg for example. Despite the fact that my site is mentioned on “the list,” nobody from PropOrNot bothered to contact me while doing their “research.” They could’ve asked very simple questions about how the site is run, who owns it, and who makes decisions about editorial content. Furthermore, I doubt they did any such research with regard to any of the mentioned sites before slandering them.
Since they failed to do any real work, let me answer several of these questions. I, Michael Krieger, am the 100% owner of Liberty Blitzkrieg. I am the only person who makes decisions on what to publish and when. I have absolutely no connections, financial or otherwise, to the Russian government, Russian interests, or the interests of any other government or government related group. Moreover, there is simply nobody on planet earth who has any influence on what I write or what I publish. I left a very successful and financially lucrative job to do what I do now because my passions and ethical grounding pushed me in this direction. If I was interested in making enormous sums of money, I could’ve easily stayed on Wall Street.
Moreover, I rarely write about Russia, with the exception of trying to prevent insane neocons and neoliberals in our government from actively seeking a military confrontation, because I — like most normal human beings — would prefer not to contribute to the manifestation of World War 3. Likewise, I try to prevent war breaking out in all circumstances where I think it can and should be avoided. I intentionally almost never use RT as a source, and I’ve never quoted anything from Sputnik. Unlike The Washington Post, I try to be extremely diligent about not publishing fake news, but I am a very strong critic of U.S. government policy, because much of U.S. government policy is certifiably insane and unethical. You can disagree with my opinion on that all you’d like, but I challenge anyone to find anything that could reasonably be considered pro-Russia propaganda on my website. If Liberty Blitzkrieg really is a Russian propaganda site, this should be easy to do since I’ve published thousands of articles over the years.
The fact that The Washington Post would give credibility to a obviously ridiculous organization with an entirely invented list of “Russian propaganda websites,” knowing all the while that they themselves were the ones taking Russian government money is the height of hypocrisy, dishonesty and deceitful journalism. Once again proving the obvious point: The mainstream media is the real fake news.
Finally, if you want to help us in the struggle between real, independent media and fake, billionaire-owned mainstream propaganda press, consider visiting our Support Page.
- Kyrgyzstan's Central Bank Urges Citizens To Own Gold
"Gold can be stored for a long time and, despite the price fluctuations on international markets, it doesn’t lose its value for the population as a means of savings," Kyrgyzstan’s Central Bank Governor Tolkunbek Abdygulov said, "I’ll try to turn the dream into reality faster."
A landlocked nation perched between China and Kazakhstan is embarking on an experiment with little parallel worldwide: shifting savings from cattle to gold. As Bloomberg reports,
One of the first post-Soviet republics to adopt a new currency and let it trade freely, Kyrgyzstan’s central bank wants every citizen to diversify into gold. Governor Tolkunbek Abdygulov says his “dream” is for every one of the 6 million citizens to own at least 100 grams (3.5 ounces) of the precious metal, the Central Asian country’s biggest export.
In the two years that the central bank has offered bars directly to the population, about 140 kilograms of bullion have been sold, Abdygulov, 40, said by phone from the capital, Bishkek.
“We are hopeful that our country’s population will learn to diversify its savings into assets that are more liquid and — more importantly — capable of retaining their value,” he said. In rural areas, cattle is still the asset of choice for investors and savers, according to Abdygulov.
What makes Kyrgyzstan unique is the central bank’s effort to win converts by providing infrastructure for safe-keeping and investment. The central bank produces bars of different sizes, varying in weight from 1 to 100 grams.
The central bank governor believes his plan is realistic, even though it means the population would own about 600 tons of gold, equivalent to 30 times the nation’s current annual output. Abdygulov declined to specify the timeframe for when his goal of 100 grams per person can be met.
“For Kyrgyzstan, gold is an alternative instrument of investment,” Abdygulov said. “The National Bank has ensured liquidity for gold — we aren’t only selling, but also buying back gold bars that we produced and sold.”
These somewhat blasphemous words from a central banker echo the thoughts of no lesser elite than Alan Greenspan…
TETT: Do you think that gold is currently a good investment?
GREENSPAN: Yes… Remember what we're looking at. Gold is a currency. It is still, by all evidence, a premier currency. No fiat currency, including the dollar, can macth it.
GREENSPAN: …remember, we had that first tapering discussion, we got a very strong market response. And then we reassured everybody to have no — remember, tapering is still (audio gap) of an agreement that the central banks have made — European central banks, I believe — about allocating their gold sales which occurred when gold prices were falling down (audio gap) has been renewed this year with a statement that gold serves a very important place in monetary reserves.
And the question is, why do central banks put money into an asset which has no rate of return, but cost of storage and insurance and everything else like that, why are they doing that? If you look at the data with a very few exceptions, all of the developed countries have gold reserves. Why?
TETT: I imagine right now, it's because of a question mark hanging over the value of fiat currency, the credibility going forward.
GREENSPAN: Well, that's what I'm getting at. Every time you get some really serious questions, the 50 percent of the gold price determination begins to move.
TETT: Right.
GREENSPAN: And I think it is fascinating and — I don't know, is Benn Steil in the audience?
TETT: Yes.
GREENSPAN: There he is, OK. Before you read my book, go read Benn's book. The reason is, you'll find it fascinating on exactly this issue, because here you have the ultimate test at the Mount Washington Hotel in 1944 of the real intellectual debate between the — those who wanted to an international fiat currency which was embodied in John Maynard Keynes' construct of a banker, and he was there in 1944, holding forth with all of his prestige, but couldn't counter the fact that the United States dollar was convertible into gold and that was the major draw. Everyone wanted America's gold. And I think that Benn really described that in extraordinarily useful terms, as far as I can see. Anyway, thank you.
TETT: Right. Well, I'm sure with comments like that, that will be turning you into a rock star amongst the gold bug community.
* * *
Of course, as a reminder, here is Ben Bernanke putting people straight on Gold…
- Why President Trump Does Not Tweet About Automation
"Fully automated trucks could put half of America’s truckers out of a job within a decade…"
A widely circulated NPR graphic shows “truck driver” was the most common job in more than half of the U.S. states in 2014?—?in part because how the Bureau of Labor Statistics sorts common jobs, such as educators, into small groups. Indeed, truck driving is one of the last jobs standing that affords good pay (median salary for tractor-trailer drivers, $40,206) and does not require a college degree. According to the American Trucking Association, there are 3.5 million professional truck drivers in the U.S. Entire businesses (think restaurants and motels) and hundreds of small communities, supporting an additional 5.2 million people, have been built around serving truckers crisscrossing the nation. That’s 8.7 million trucking-related jobs. It also represents one of Trump’s most important voting blocs?—?working-class men.
But like many of the blue-collar jobs the President promised to save during his campaign, the future of these 3.5 million trucking jobs is less than certain. Fully automated trucks could put half of America’s truckers out of a job within a decade, The Los Angeles Times reported last year. This isn’t an imagined future. It’s already happening. Otto, an automated trucking company acquired by Uber, made a delivery of beer last year and has been approved to travel two routes in Ohio.
Last year, Noel Perry, an analyst at industry research firm FTR Transportation Intelligence, told The International Business Times: “Despite a shortage in high-quality drivers, pay hasn’t gone up in five years. Trucks are easier to drive.” So-called “soft-automation” features, like automatic braking and lane assist, mean the trucks can already be driven by less experienced operators commanding smaller salaries. Even ahead of automation, the profession is losing traction. Perry’s final remark to IBT strikes to the heart of the matter?—?“The free market produces jobs, the government doesn’t.”
Drivers reportedly account for about one third of the cost in the trucking industry. Ostensibly, there isn’t much a president?—?even one as untraditional as Trump?—?can do to stop a company from making more money. Or is there? Which begs the question: How will automation, employment, productivity and Trump co-exist?
A few days after Trump “saved” 750 jobs at Carrier, Greg Hayes, CEO of Carrier’s parent firm, United Technologies, admitted that automation would eventually win out. During a CNBC interview with Jim Cramer, Hayes revealed: “We’re going to make a $16 million investment in the factory in Indianapolis to automate to drive down costs so that we can continue to be competitive. . .But what that ultimately means is there will be fewer jobs.
Thomas H. Davenport, professor in management and information technology at Babson College, opined recently for The Harvard Business Review:
“Trump knows virtually nothing about technology?—?other than a smartphone, he doesn’t use it much. And the industries he’s worked in?—?construction, real estate, hotels, and resorts?—?are among the least sophisticated in their use of information technology. So he’s not well equipped to understand the dynamics of automation-driven job loss.
“. . .The Art of the Deal’s author clearly has a penchant for sparring with opponents in highly visible negotiations. But automation-related job loss is difficult to negotiate about. It’s the silent killer of human labor, eliminating job after job over a period of time. Jobs often disappear through attrition. There are no visible plant closings to respond to, no press releases by foreign rivals to counter. It’s a complex subject that doesn’t lend itself to TV sound bites or tweets.
To be fair, it’s not just Trump who finds this a difficult enemy to battle; other politicians don’t engage with that much either. And there are several good reasons. . . One is that automation usually comes with corporate investment rather than cutbacks. Note that United Technologies announced a $16 million investment in the Indiana Carrier plant. Who wants to criticize that?”
As we have written, Trump’s number one priority is to get re-elected. To do so, he will have to keep the 8.7 million men and women in the trucking sector employed. At the same time, he has pledged to encourage foreign investment in the U.S. and to attract U.S. companies back to American soil, all with an eye to creating more jobs for Americans. To remain competitive, these companies will have to improve productivity, and the shortest path to increased productivity, is automation. But, even with vigorous training, the vast majority of America’s working middle-class, like the 3.5 million truckers who voted largely for Trump, cannot transition easily into the types of job created by automation?—?engineering, integration, IT.
Therein lies the dilemma facing America, and much of the developed and the developing world. The economy needs more productivity growth, not less. But it also needs to create jobs. Any politician who wants to appeal to the business community will be reluctant to provoke a war against automation. But, he cannot afford to see his key voter bloc displaced.
All of which begs the question: How can Trump insulate the status quo from the disruptive forces of automation and technology? Will he tweet to the perception or the underlying reality?
- Democrats Question Trump's Sanity, Blasted For "Weaponizing Mental Health"
The desperation is becoming grotesque as the left's inability to move through the stages of grief is ever more evident.
In the latest farcical attempt to create a narrative, as The Hill reports, a growing number of Democrats are openly questioning President Trump’s mental health.
Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) in a floor speech this week called for a review of the Constitution's procedures for removing a president. He warned the 25th Amendment of the Constitution falls short when it comes to mental or emotional fitness for office.
Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) during a weekend interview with CNN’s “State of the Union” said that “a few” Republican colleagues have expressed concern to him about Trump's mental health.
And Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) plans to introduce legislation that would require the presence of a psychiatrist or psychologist in the White House.
The Democrats justify their questions by pointing to Trump’s habit of making demonstrably false claims.
“It’s not normal behavior. I don’t know anybody in a position of responsibility that doesn’t know if they’re being rained on. And nobody I work with serially offers up verifiably false statements on an ongoing basis,”
So not hapy with dividing the nation by sex (all of them), race, wealth, and clothing manufacturer, The Democrats have decided to pray on mental health, which has invited criticism that they have gone too far…
“It’s divisive. The bottom line is, if Trump doesn’t succeed, we all fail. It’s time to give the guy a chance,” said Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-Tenn.).
Reps. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) and Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) both burst out laughing when told some Democratic colleagues were questioning Trump’s mental health.
“Are you serious?” Hunter asked. “Yeah, I don’t care what they say.”
“I think that’s a stretch,” Simpson said.
Furthermore, mental health professionals say the politicization comes at a cost. Political actors suggesting an opponent has psychological problems risks stigmatizing people with actual mental illnesses, they say.
“I think the politicization is troubling,” said Joshua Miller, a psychologist at the University of Georgia whose research focuses on pathological personality traits and personality disorders.
“We certainly wouldn’t want individuals to use mental illness as a weapon to harm others.”
Still when all you have an identity-politics hammer, every feeling-hurting problem is a nail.
Perhaps the Democrats should remember that, as Judge Jeanine notes, "the American people voted for Trump because he made sense to them…"
.@JudgeJeanine: "The American people voted for [@realdonaldTrump] because he makes sense to them." pic.twitter.com/dCV4HqCyBn
— FOX Business (@FoxBusiness) February 17, 2017
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- California City Erects 'Prison Camp' To Deal With Homeless
There are two major problems that come to mind, explains SHTFPlan.com's Mac Slavo; first, the level of homelessness, poverty and idle populations in California and across the country, and second, the divided world between the 1% and the struggling 99% is coming to a head.
Economically, things are very close to the brink, and there are far too many people who’ve given up at the individual level. This crisis has given the impetus for cities like Santa Ana to take drastic action.
The other side of the coin, is that if they can do this to homeless vagrants, and out of work families, they can do it to anyone. If civil unrest comes, perhaps in combination with mass unemployment, a crashed stock market and monetary system and great misery, those keeping society in check will feel compelled to come down with a heavy hand. People will be rounded up, some of them unfairly. Entire communities can be disrupted, or forced under an emergency to evacuate and take shelter in FEMA centers while the cities become off limits. There are a lot of things that can happen – including to hard working, employment, head-above-water American families.
When this thing starts to unravel, making do in the current atmosphere won’t cut it; in the aftermath of what is coming, many people will be desperate. Tent cities and migrating Americans looking for temporary work will return; millions more will flock to government welfare programs, and be dragged into the dregs of collectivist measure to ride out bad times. They are moving to sweep up the disarray of a society that is crumbling, and a financial landscape that is no longer survivable for a wide sector of the general population.
City Erects Prison Camp To Deal With Homeless – Cutting Off Food And Water
Authored by The Free Thought Project's Matt Agorist,
The City of Santa Ana has come up with an innovative and despotic way of keeping their homeless population in check — imprison them. The city is now party to a federal lawsuit over unreasonable seizure, false imprisonment, and due process violations.
Heading up the lawsuit on behalf of Michael Diehl, who has lived at the encampment for three years, is the ACLU of Southern California. The lawsuit demands the immediate removal of the 6-foot-tall chain-link fences penning in 75-100 people and their belongings.
“Defendants’ actions have not only illegally restricted the liberty of the homeless people living in the encampment, but it has also cut them off from access to food, water, and medical care thus threatening their health and well-being,” the lawsuit states.
According to Courthouse News:
Diehl was shot in the head at a Tustin convenience store in 2009. He lost his right eye and doctors were unable to remove the bullet from his head. He takes medication every day to control seizures that have become more frequent with the increased presence of authorities at the encampment, he says in the complaint.
When a woman suffered a seizure at the encampment after the fence was erected, Diehl says, paramedics had difficulty reaching her because the barriers have blocked parts of the sidewalks at Chapman Avenue and Orangewood Avenue where people used to come and go.
If people living at the encampment cut holes in the fences with bolt cutters, Orange County Public Works employees repair it. For the elderly and disabled it is neither safe nor realistic to scale the fence or navigate the river to get to a steep, rocky embankment on the river’s west side, Diehl says.
“Children, people with severe disabilities, the elderly and others are deprived of food, water and access to restrooms,” said ACLU homelessness policy analyst Eve Garrow. “The county should take action to rectify this egregious violation of basic human rights.”
Naturally, the county is claiming that they are not doing anything wrong and that the fence, put in place after the homeless community began growing there, is for ‘flood control.’
“The county is aware that there are homeless encampments in the project area. Flood control channels are not a safe place to live. Sign postings and in-person notifications about the project have been provided to those encamped along the county maintenance road,” the county said in a statement.
However, according to Diehl and the others who are imprisoned in the camp, police told them that they should move there to avoid citations for sleeping in public in the other parts of town.
What this case in Santa Ana illustrates is the state’s continued war on the right of people to exist. Every time a group homeless community finds a safe spot, located out of the way, they are targeted for removal, or, in this barbaric case — imprisonment.
Earlier this month, the Free Thought Project reported on another war being waged against the homeless population in California. Known as ‘The Promised Land,’ a group of homeless people in Oakland sought to improve their situation by creating a camp that would foster sobriety and help people to get jobs. It was located out of the way, under a series of overpasses. They had running water, were growing their own food, and did not allow drug or alcohol use within the camp.
As cops and officials allowed the other heroin riddled encampments to continue, they targeted The Promised Land for destruction.
Diehl now seeks an injunction ordering the county to provide him with “reasonable means of leaving the riverbed and being able to retrieve his property.”
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