ANON :
Economy and Ideology are often intertwined, even inseparable. This lead to many deliberate misrepresentations of the Wealth of Nations by certain ideologists in the economy departments. In my humble view on the matter, Smith proposed free markets, and I mean really, really free markets!
We do not have free markets. The notion of the past years of liberalizing the markets is the biggest smoke screen of all, because the state regulatory was exchanged for private control, and with markets in private or state control, a true democracy can’t exist.
The ultimate goal of production should be to get rid of slavery, to enable free people, producing commodities is the means, not the goal. What we face today however, is precisely the opposite. Institutions such as the EU government and the IMF extort wealth from the people of our Nations, and the FED continues to ruthlessly reflate the US by printing around the clock, and there is no end to them doing so.
It can’t be discussed in such a short and personal article here on David’s forum, but I would like to support Noam Chomsky’s view on this matter that Smith’s idea of free markets would inevitably cause equality.
The importance placed on views of economists in our rapidly changing society is somewhat marked by desperation. Politicians don’t know what to do, either they are not even politicians but rather career civil servants, or they are just plain dumb struck, or highly educated in elitist institutions that provided them with that stereotype blind-spot they will suffer from for the rest of their lives.
The state of affairs is desperate, and what was wrongly perceived as security and progress, has been uncovered as utter chaos, driven by post imperial extortionists.
Social cohesion is slowly dissolving, and Western governments are also updating their internal policing might, often under the cover of pretentious threat assessments as we saw recently in Germany. Security in Europe at large is of concern, and reports of think tanks advise governments on pre cautionary measures. The EU opened the doors to new methods when it comes to policing, as could be observed on the recent demonstrations against the transport of nuclear waste material, the castor transports in Germany, when demonstrators who were digging out stones from under railways to delay the transport. They were beaten up by riot police in full close combat gear, only, they were not German riot police, they were deliberately imported from France, as they would not have any local and family links that might become a conflict for them. European states can send Beat’ Em Up servants from France to Germany, vice versa. Civil liberties are increasingly under threat, watch that space, it will get worse.
Economists are looked at to solve the problem, but we have to admit that they were part of the problem as well.
Myron Scholes and Robert Merton shared the Nobel prize in economics in 1997. Their mathematics, although deeply flawed, was hailed as a breakthrough securing them the Nobel prize.
One year later, Long-Term Capital management L.P, where both Scholes and Myron were on the board of directors, wrote losses of 4,6 bln USD, in 1999 the FED bailed them out, the fund was closed in 2000.
Of course, LTCM was incorporated in Delaware, where else, those of you with some practical background in American business will probably smile, but was based in Connecticut and traded via LTC LP, surprise surprise, from the Cayman Island, conducted trough Bear Sterns and client relations management by Merrill Lynch.
They did business with everyone who had a name on Wall Street, hence their cataclysmic losses was a considerable earthquake for the street. The vultures already were circling in the skies, Goldman Sachs, AIF and Warren Buffet put on the pressure and offered them peanuts, the deal never came through. Then the FED stepped in and injected 3,5 billion by their creditor banks and in return the banks got a 90% share in the fund. The position were liquidated and a tiny profit went to the creditors. May be this opened the door to the religious bailout fatalism we are confronted with today?
This hedge fund story alone should bring up red flags left, right, and center.
Economists are mathematicians who are in the game of predicting future revenue streams, risk and more, based on somewhat complicated models.
The entire post WWII economics was based on the paradigm of growth and of course, that growth was based on a massive appetite on resources, here is where Oil comes into the game.
Mikael Höök, is secretary of ASPO International, a physics PhD student in Uppsala, Sweden.
While doing some reading, I stumbled across his dissertation from September 2010. His doctoral thesis deals with peak resources, and overpopulation. Coal and oil: The Dark Monarchs of Global energy. Understanding Supply and Extraction Patterns and their Importance for Future Production.
It is very encouraging and a small reason for hope to see students make this the subject of their dissertations. He is not alone. I forwarded it to Prof. ‘Al’ Bartlett in Colorado, I am certain he is pleased to his name four times in the references of this dissertation.
In the final notes of this paper, Mikael writes: However, the saddest aspect of life right now seems to be that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom to use the knowledge.
That nails it for me!
In the equations of the EU and others, the forecast for future medium and longterm growth don’t take resource scarcity into consideration, they use figures that are truly ridiculous and are designed, engineered by economists to support a certain agenda. In that respect FF forecasts and EU forecasts are little different, each follow their own political and ideological agenda and use Sucker-Upper-Economists to support it. This is really no secret, and it should not come as a surprise that the various excel-spread-sheet-artists are highly trained to engineer and support a certain view and let it appear as the inevitable truth.
Luckily, not all of them are Sucker-Uppers [I think I like this term-Grins], and some shine with a brilliant analytic ruthlessness. I consider Dr. Constantin Gurdgiev to be one of them. Of course, one needs to be warned here, they also have their own ideological views which will influence their output, but only if they allow this to happen. Analytics should stay clear of all ideological views, some form of purist economic discipline if you will.
A society that has created such a monstrosity of civil servants, inevitably has turned into a Sucker-Upper society. This is not only the case in Ireland of course, although it has reached extreme proportions here beyond doubts. In one of the recent publications, the article explained that a University warned their students on the consumption of WikiLeaks to be of possible consequences for them if wish to send their CV for a job in government at a later stage. Yes, this is the world we live in now.
They showed a picture of a student who adhered to this advise of his University in the USA, I am not showing the picture here, but believe me, if there is a certain type of Sucker-Upper, well, all I can say is that the photographer made a very good choice for his subject. I really had to laugh out loud when I looked at him, poor chap!
It would be a slapstick, if it would not be so serious. Fear is again used as a weapon in the toolbox of indoctrination, and it works well on certain people. A befriend Professor in Italy is very worried about Berlusconi’s proposed changes to Universities. It could constitute the end of Universities as we know them. In England last week, thousands of students marched in protest against the substantial fee increases.
The privatization of knowledge is a trend that can be observed in many societies, and it is plain wrong and devastating, but again, follows an ideological motivated agenda. The incident of censoring by fear that I described above is something that educators need to be aware about and fight against at the first signs.
Economists do not hold the key to the solutions of our problems, that much is certain. They can however contribute a great deal to the possible ways forward, because one thing is for certain, without a global paradigm shift that is embraced by all of us, we march straight and with open eyes into tragedies of immense proportions, some of them I am afraid no longer can be avoided.
The financial system is flawed from the ground up, and it is not fixable. Continuation, to keep it on life support, only extends the pain for many, the outrageous profits for a few and ultimately would contribute to a possible extinction event, of which we created a great many triggers in the past few decades.
Economy apologists will continue to hammer home the message that this can be fixed, was a temporary glitch, human error in an otherwise well worked out system. It is not!
Basel III, higher Tier1 capital requirements etc. such are the smoke screens they put up to avoid a discussions on the fundamental flaws and the changed realities that make this system unfixable.
All this is not only about Banks, regulatory systems, markets and market makers, it goes much deeper. Our resources are finite and the very term ‘sustainable growth’ is an oxymoron, especially in the light of our massive overpopulation problem.
Economy Rigging 2 