Monday, January 11, 2021

Subject To Predation

​Awaiting Foreclosure,​

​Michael Hudson interview and transcript. Thanks Charles!​
​  ​The financial sector essentially is of the 1% or the 10% that holds the rest of the economy in debt. The financial sector makes its money by getting the rest of the economy indebted to itself and making money off asset price gains. In the past, the financial sector made its money by getting interest. But now, with almost zero interest what it’s after is capital gains because capital gains basically are either untaxed or taxed at very, very low rates.
​  ​So, the financial sector essentially makes its money not by being part of the production and consumption economy but by siphoning off as much money from the production and consumption economy as it can for real estate, for insurance and for debt service and banking services. The insurance, of course, would include the health insurance.
​  ​The result is that Americans have to spend so much of their money now on housing. Up to 40% to 43% of their income goes for housing as opposed to 25% back in the 1940s,’50s and ‘60s . They have to pay huge amounts for medical insurance.
​  ​And the taxes have been shifted off real estate, off of finance onto labor and industry. So you have America really being unable to revive its industry today. Because how can you create an export industry or even compete with foreigners when you have to pay such high housing costs, such high medical insurance and healthcare costs instead of the government taking over, such high debt service. If you got all of your clothing and food and basic needs for nothing you still couldn’t compete with foreigners because of all of these FIRE sector – finance, insurance and real estate – costs.
​  ​Now the job of the government under industrial capitalism was all spelled out in the late 19th century in the United States. For instance, by Simon Patten, who was the first Professor of Economics at the first business school, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. And Patten said that public infrastructure was a fourth factor of production. And the role of the government was to provide basic needs like healthcare, education, transportation and other basic services at very low price so that you lower the cost of doing business. You lower the cost of living so that the private sector will be able to compete with foreign countries.
​  ​Now, most countries now provide free healthcare. Because if they didn’t, then the employers and the laborers would have to pay healthcare. Their cost of production would be much higher. And America has not done that. America has the highest cost of production in the world. Not because it’s technologically inefficient. The technology is all available and there.
​  ​The reason is all of these extra costs that are paid by labor and by employers that are borne by governments in other countries. So as long as essentially America’s dismantling the government, what you’re dismantling is the basic means of subsidizing industrial production and manufacturing. And that’s what’s left America in a high cost position and driven American industry abroad without any idea of how to create a national economy that makes it profitable to invest in industry here.
​  ​So most of the American cost structure has nothing to do with the cost of production and therefore nothing to do with industry or industrial capitalism. It’s a fall back into a kind of post-medieval rentier economy.​..
  ​When you have a trust, a monopoly, you can get monopoly rent over and above the normal rate of profit. Banks said: well, look, we can work with companies to let a few companies like, Carnegie takeover the steel industry. You had agriculture, agribusiness in this country, really turned into a trust with two firms sort of monopolizing all of the distribution of agricultural products. It goes all the way up. You’ve had essentially, Amazon becoming a monopoly. You have the information technology sector turning into a monopoly.
​  ​And the function of these monopolies… the reason their stock prices are going up so much is because they’re setting the price without any anti-monopoly legislation such as you had under the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 and then Teddy Roosevelt as a trust Buster. Essentially, since the 1980s you have not had any anti-monopoly prosecutions at all.​..
​  So it’s like a financial death star has hit America. And the death star isn’t COVID itself. COVID is all over the world. Other countries have been able to cope. It’s the financial death star that’s really killing people in the United States.
https://theanalysis.news/interviews/polarization-then-a-crash-michael-hudson-on-the-rentier-economy/

The Tyranny Nobody Talks Abou​t​,  Charles Hugh Smith
​  ​All the tricks to hide our unaffordable cost structure have reached marginal returns. Reality is about to intrude.
​  ​There is much talk of tyranny in the political realm, but little is said about the tyrannies in the economic realm, a primary one being the tyranny of high costs: high costs crush the economy from within and enslave those attempting to start enterprises or keep their businesses afloat.
​  ​Traditionally, costs are broken down into fixed costs such as rent and fees which don't change regardless of whether business is good or bad, and operating costs such as payrolls, fuel, etc. which rise and fall with revenues.
​  ​To some degree, this division no longer matters, because the entire cost structure of our economy is tyrannically high: if rent, insurance, taxes and general overhead don't eat you alive, then labor overhead (healthcare insurance, etc.) and other operating costs will.​..​
​  ​So why don't we look at the sources of the high costs that are eroding the economy? Because every high-cost structure is someone's gravy train: some politically sacrosanct and untouchable special interest or class of insiders depends on ever-higher costs to fund their ever-higher wages, benefits, profits, etc., and they will not be denied their gravy train.
​  ​Since healthcare, higher education, local government, etc. is unaffordable, let's print money and give it away as the "solution" to unaffordability. This faux "solution" merely transfers the rising risk of collapse to the entire economy.  
https://www.oftwominds.com/blogjan21/tyranny-of-cost1-21.html

​Friend and correspondent, Cat McGuire writes about her experience last Wednesday in Washington:
  Contrary to Big Media’s Big Fat Lies, the Save America rally on Wednesday, January 6, 2021, was in my opinion an exhilarating, momentous, peaceful protest.
  Spoiler alert: I did not make it inside the Capitol, but I was in the first 25% wave of people that arrived, and like 99.9% of those around me, I jubilantly participated in a peaceful “storming” of the Capitol...
  On arrival to the Ellipse where Trump would speak, I can say based on many Washington marches under my belt that the Save America rally’s turn-out was spectacular.  I heard reports of a million plus present.  We will likely never get an official crowd estimate from the National Park Service.
  I’ve been to marches large and small, but I don’t recall encountering such a polite, well-mannered crowd. Bill had been to a prior Trump rally and Jim had been to three (Johnstown, Trump’s hospital vigil, November 3).
  They said every rally is the same: uncommonly good, nice people. I figured their love of Trump colored their characterization of the President’s base.  But I discovered at the rally that it’s an actual thing: Trump supporters are by and large decent, down-to-earth, genuine people...

​  ​I have to say I was truly surprised how incredibly informed almost everyone I met was.  The conversations I had revealed big-picture thinkers as well as familiarity with granular details. Those I spoke with certainly defied the stereotypical depictions of dumb deplorables.
​  ​As expected, there were a lot of Christians in the crowd, some of whom I had great talks with. I’m not a Christian, but I respected their deep faith and the fact that Christians I’ve been meeting of late (not Zionist Christians) are intensely engaged with the pressing political issues of our age.​..
​  ​As we were walking down Constitution Avenue, it dawned on me that there were virtually no police anywhere. They were surely around, but on the thirty-minute walk to the Capitol, we didn’t see a single police officer. I did spy an undercover man with an ear wire and then a few police cars diagonally parked at intersections, but that’s it.
​ I was really taken aback by the conspicuous absence of a police presence. Every major march I’ve been to, the streets are fully lined with police, sometimes on horses.  I remember being terrified once at a New York City protest when a cop on an enormous steed charged into us demonstrators.
  Bill, Jim, and I got to the Capitol about 1:30pm before much of the crowd had arrived and saw protesters running up the steps. We were surprised to see so many going up the steps because we assumed there was a police barrier.
​  We smelled tear gas and heard flash-bang grenades going off in the distance, but very soon the disturbance fizzled and the unruffled crowd paid no more attention to the possibility of violence—especially since no reinforcements came at all until we left the event at 4:00pm. It was at that time—finally—that police cars began converging on the site as we were walking away.
​  ​For some, entering the Capitol was very easy.  I talked to a young Asian man who couldn’t believe how easy it was to enter the building.​..
​  There was a tremendous sense of excitement.  Dozens of people, even hundreds, could have easily “stormed” the Capitol, but chose not to. In fact, a relatively extremely small number entered the building. In my opinion, most did not go in because there was so much camaraderie and patriotic zeal taking place outside. Crowds were singing the Star Spangled Banner, and of course chanting “USA! USA!” The energy was electric, 100% positive, and we were determined to make sure our presence was known to the lawmakers inside who we assumed were deliberating on the certification.
​  ​For a crowd this size and in light of the crimes that had been done against our country, the heightened energy flowing amongst us could have been combustible.  But we protesters had about as much malevolence as an energized Superbowl crowd.
​  ​Because the vast majority of the crowd was not engaging in violence, I suggest that there was a Charlottesville-type situation in which Antifa types violently breached the Capitol despite filmed instances of Trump supporters trying to stop them.
​  ​Later when I was able to read the media’s reporting, I was dumbfounded to see something I had experienced as so peaceful, positive, and inspiring be described as violent, negative, and destructive. Black is white. War is peace. The stolen narrative of the Save America rally is my personal 1984 moment.​..
​  ​I spoke with so many people at the January 6th Washington D.C. rally and learned that these folks incontrovertibly understand what Deep State Establishment Power is about. They know there is overwhelming evidence that the 2020 election was stolen.  
https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2021/01/08/i-was-at-the-washington-d-c-save-america-rally/

​January 6, What Really Happened in DC?  Thanks Phil!
This has actual video from inside the march, and is about the same as Cat describes, but also the action at entrances. It's short, 05:31.
The comments are similar to hers.   "Some kind of false flag operation".  "Small number of provocateurs." "Grungy men, people we didn't see anywhere else at the rally." "Who benefits?"  Star Spangled Banner cloud rendition sounds nice.
https://larouchepac.com/20210108/january-6-what-really-happened-dc 

The Boot is Coming Down Hard and Fast, Caitlin Johnstone
  “Mr. Biden has said he plans to make a priority of passing a law against domestic terrorism, and he has been urged to create a White House post overseeing the fight against ideologically inspired violent extremists and increasing funding to combat them,” Wall Street Journal reports.
  Did you know that Biden has often boasted about being the original author of the US Patriot Act?
The first draft of the civil rights-eroding USA PATRIOT Act was magically introduced one week after the 9/11 attacks. Legislators later admitted that they hadn’t even had time to read through the hundreds of pages of the history-shaping bill before passing it the next month, yet somehow its authors were able to gather all the necessary information and write the whole entire thing in a week.
This was because most of the work had already been done. CNET reported the following back in 2008:
  “Months before the Oklahoma City bombing took place, [then-Senator Joe] Biden introduced another bill called the Omnibus Counterterrorism Act of 1995. It previewed the 2001 Patriot Act by allowing secret evidence to be used in prosecutions, expanding the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and wiretap laws, creating a new federal crime of ‘terrorism’ that could be invoked based on political beliefs, permitting the U.S. military to be used in civilian law enforcement, and allowing permanent detention of non-U.S. citizens without judicial review.
https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2021/01/09/the-boot-is-coming-down-hard-and-fast/

House Democrats introduce Articles of Impeachment against President Trump (Why? Really, why?)
The article, co-authored by Reps. David Cicilline (R-I.), Ted Lieu (Calif.) and Jamie Raskin (Md.), states that Trump engaged in high crimes and misdemeanors by “willfully inciting violence against the Government of the United States.”  
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/house-dems-reportedly-have-votes-impeach-president-trump

​  ​Despite the globe's attention focused on the Capitol protest chaos and Democrats readying a charge to impeach under Pelosi, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Saturday announced this absolute bombshell, namely that he's now lifting "self-imposed restrictions" on the relationship between the United States and Taiwan. He announced in an official statement:
​  ​Today I am announcing that I am lifting all of these self-imposed restrictions. Executive branch agencies should consider all "contact guidelines" regarding relations with Taiwan previously issued by the Department of State under authorities delegated to the Secretary of State to be null and void.
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/washington-one-china-policy-dead-pompeo-lifts-restrictions-us-taiwan-relations

Matt Tibbi has last Wednesday's other story, the continued imprisonment of Julian Assange, threat to imperial propaganda.
(He's a threat to the Clinton Crime Family, too. I think they want him sent to the US under Biden's rule.)
​  ​Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who seemed Monday to be the luckiest man alive when a judge denied an American request to extradite him, was now denied bail on the grounds that he might “fail to surrender to court to face” the inevitable U.S. appeal. He goes back to legal purgatory, possibly a worse outcome than extradition, which might be the idea.
​  ​We sell politics in American media as a soap opera, and the personalities make for lively copy, but properly following the bouncing ball means watching institutions, not characters. Where are armies, banks, central banks, intelligence services, the press? Whose money is talking on the floor of the House and the Senate? How concentrated is financial and political power? How do public and private institutions coordinate? When they coordinate, what are their collective aims? How transparent are they or aren’t they? How accountable?
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/wednesdays-other-story

​A South African Doctor gives a 42 minute talk, explaining the molecular biology of ivermectin treatment of COVID, including zinc, doxycycline and vitamin-D as compliments, as being used in India, to such good effect (but now illegal in South Africa. I hope he's ok).​ Thanks Jeremy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_MBCYPrgus&feature=youtu.be

In the UK, where vitamin-D deficiency was discovered to cause Rickets, "English Children's Disease", there is widespread government opposition to recommending it be used, despite all clinical data pointing to benefit against COVID. "Not enough evidence." 
Take 5000 units of vitamin-D per day, please.
​  ​Writing in the Lancet in August, he said: “It would seem uncontroversial to enthusiastically promote efforts to achieve reference nutrient intakes of vitamin D… There is nothing to lose from their implementation, and potentially much to gain.” Although extremely large sustained doses of vitamin D can cause toxicity, it is otherwise harmless.
​  ​Dr Aseem Malhotra, a cardiologist and writer, has been disappointed over an absence of leadership to ensure people of colour have sufficient levels of the nutrient. “Structural racism absolutely has an effect,” he says. “But it should not be at the forefront of the conversation. The message should have been: ‘Everyone take vitamin D and cut out the junk food.’ I think it’s a no-brainer, because there is no harm from vitamin D and it’s cheap. It’s pretty scandalous that this hasn’t been dealt with until now.”
​  ​Davis now believes there will be increasing government focus on immunological health. “Covid kills you if you’ve got a weak immune system,” he says. “That’s why vitamin D has a much more general purpose effect than, let’s say, vaccines. We’re going to win this battle in the long run. I just feel for those who have died unnecessarily.”

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/jan/10/does-vitamin-d-combat-covid

​D-Day​ 

8 comments:

  1. John, you seem to have gone over to the dark side. The item you posted from Cat McGuire is pure delusion. I have sisters who share her mental illness. They, too, are delusional about the nature of Donald Trump and the fact that he's a megalomaniacal narcissist. For some reason, they are mesmerized and I'm at my wits end to figure out how to get them to sort out their Fox News and OAN induced delusional thinking with a better grasp of reality. However, another Republican, Arnold Schwarzenegger is not a fool, not delusional and not in any way an enabler of Donald Trump's attempt to destroy our nation. I'm with Arnold 100% on this statement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_P-0I6sAck

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    1. Hi Ray, Cat is quite sane and well balanced. She's from New York, but she's visited us here a couple of times, visited the garden, shared meals, completely sane.
      I already saw Arnold's video and it's Black is White, and White is Black, completely Orwellian. What he says is essentially true, but he blames exactly the wrong faction. Most sinister.

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    2. I agree John. Arnold Schwarzenegger's video is completely Orwellian, and blames exactly the wrong faction.
      Thanks for expanding my sources of intelligent, rational and reasonable information and news. I'm really enjoying reading your blog!

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    3. Thanks Unknown. Ray thought otherwise.
      I wish him well.
      We corresponded a long time.

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  2. Read world class docs recommend 4000IU of Vit D to save lives:

    https://vitamindforall.org/letter.html

    Scroll down for the list of emminents.

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    1. Yep. I think I've posted some variant of this, and I also think it's a little low of a dose. I recommend for anybody over 100# (48 kg) 5000 units per day, and a loading dose of twice that for the first 2 months. The more adipose tissue you have, the slower you blood level will rise, because vitamin-D is distributed in the body fat.

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  3. Replies
    1. Thanks Amigo,

      After getting censored on some Ukraine war news right out of the gated in late February, I started up drjohnsblog@substack.com . It's the same, but hasa couple of postings that Google removed.

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