Thursday, May 4, 2017

May The Fourth Be With You

Droids They're Looking For,

Charles Hugh Smith: "Self-serving interests committed to protecting their power, wealth and income have destroyed our economic-political system's ability to self-correct."

Michael Hudson on Steve Keen's book. It's not a long book.
"It is simple enough to show that the mathematics of compound interest lead the volume of debt to exceed the rate of GDP growth, thereby diverting more and more income to the financial sector as debt service...  Such payments to creditors leave less available to spend on goods and services."
"The business cycle itself is a financial cycle – that is, a cycle of the buildup and collapse of debt."
"Keen proposes a “Modern Debt Jubilee” that is essentially a swap of equity for debt. The intellectual pedigree for this policy to keep debt within the ability to pay was laid two centuries ago by Saint-Simon in France. His solution was for banks to take an equity position in their clients, so that payments to backers could rise or fall in keeping with the fortunes of the enterprise. Keen urges that this become the basis for future banking." [Hey, I recognize that. It's Islamic Banking!]

So what can we call "Obamacare Lite"? Is it "Ryancare", "Trumpcare", "Republicare"?
It's as different from Obamacare as a Ford Pinto is from a Chevy Vega, but I'm not sure which is which. It hasn't passed the senate yet...

The Senate is going to do it's own rewrite of Obamacare, so maybe a Pinto with a Vega engine in it. (It's too much to expect a Vega with a Pinto engine.) Anyway, it will all have to be "reconciled" into something else (Yugo?).

In his final year in office Barack Obama's administration sought "unmasked" NSA dossiers on thousands of Americans. (Who can resist temptation in an election year?)

This is weird: Al Jazeera has filmed a false flag attack with chemical weapons on Syrian civilians, to be released this weekend, with social media coordination, and ordered by some film-enthusiast in Europe. I hope it's all spoiled now. (We presume this was done to a higher standard than the last sarin false-flag.)

Moon of Alabama has update on Syrian war. What a mess! It's hard to keep up with all the sides. The first part of divide-and-conquer is sure going swell. 
Russia keeps calling moderate-rebels Al-Qaeda, when the US and Turkey don't want to, because then you have to say it's ok to kill them. 
Only Turkey wants to kill Kurds. Everybody else likes Kurds, because the gun-ladies scare Al-Qaeda. 
Nobody talks out loud about this war being about whose pipeline takes natural gas to Europe. Funny, isn't it? 
Russia suggests negotiations.

Hey, it looks like boycotting Israel is working a little bit. More and more people feel like it's not ok to be like Hitler, just because Hitler was like Hitler. Thanks Eleni.

North Korea outs Israeli nuclear weapons program, which the US studiously ignores, ever since LBJ was king. 
Double-standard much? Thanks Eleni.

China is acting mad at North Korea, and North Korea is acting mad at China, and Trump is acting polite for a change. Russia is kind of quietly smiling and urging diplomacy. What's really happening? Is this theater? Weird. (Don't shoot!)

Marine LePen says France will have a French Franc in 2 years if she is elected, but people can still use Euros. Europe can have lots of currencies. 
She said some other stuff, too. (I hope that Al-Jazeera special doesn't upstage french elections this Sunday. Maybe it will get postponed.)

Emmanuel Macron files suit against Marine Le Pen for fake news she saw on the internet, and mentioned when she said she "hoped he was not discovered to have an offshore bank account". He's very hurt, of course...

The EU orders Austria, German, Denmark and Sweden to stop controlling their borders. (OK, so now what? What's the bad thing when they don't stop?)

Imperial Walker

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