Noam Chomsky: "On Saturday December 27, the latest US-Israeli attack on helpless Palestinians was launched. The attack had been meticulously planned, for over 6 months according to the Israeli press. The planning had two components: military and propaganda. It was based on the lessons of Israel's 2006 invasion of Lebanon, which was considered to be poorly planned and badly advertised. We may, therefore, be fairly confident that most of what has been done and said was pre-planned and intended.
That surely includes the timing of the assault: shortly before noon, when children were returning from school and crowds were milling in the streets of densely populated Gaza City. It took only a few minutes to kill over 225 people and wound 700, an auspicious opening to the mass slaughter of defenceless civilians trapped in a tiny cage with nowhere to flee."
Why are we not able to watch, on the telly, Kettering and their Palestinian charity shirt sponsors against Egyptian-owned Fulham in the FA Cup next weekend?
Noam Chomsky: "The meticulous planning also presumably included the termination of the assault, carefully timed to be just before the inauguration, so as to minimize the (remote) threat that Obama might have to say some words critical of these vicious US-supported crimes."
Why are FIFA taking action against Frédéric Kanouté for displaying the slogan "Palestina" in a recent Copa Del Rey match?
Noam Chomsky: "Two weeks after the Sabbath opening of the assault, with much of Gaza already pounded to rubble and the death toll approaching 1000, the UN Agency UNRWA, on which most Gazans depend for survival, announced that the Israeli military refused to allow aid shipments to Gaza, saying that the crossings were closed for the Sabbath. To honour the holy day, Palestinians at the edge of survival must be denied food and medicine, while hundreds can be slaughtered by US jet bombers and helicopters."
Why on earth would Kaká have left Milan for Abu Dhabi United?
Noam Chomsky: "The rigorous observance of the Sabbath in this dual fashion attracted little if any notice. That makes sense. In the annals of US-Israeli criminality, such cruelty and cynicism scarcely merit more than a footnote. They are too familiar. To cite one relevant parallel, in June 1982 the US-backed Israeli invasion of Lebanon opened with the bombing of the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, later to become famous as the site of terrible massacres supervised by the IDF (Israeli "Defence" Forces). The bombing hit the local hospital - the Gaza hospital -- and killed over 200 people, according to the eyewitness account of an American Middle East academic specialist. The massacre was the opening act in an invasion that slaughtered some 15-20,000 people and destroyed much of southern Lebanon and Beirut, proceeding with crucial US military and diplomatic support. That included vetoes of Security Council resolutions seeking to halt the criminal aggression that was undertaken, as scarcely concealed, to defend Israel from the threat of peaceful political settlement, contrary to many convenient fabrications about Israelis suffering under intense rocketing, a fantasy of apologists."
Why did the roof collapse, killing nine people, at Kaká's church, the Reborn in Christ Church, during his negotiations with Abu Dhabi United? Was it a Sign?
Noam Chomsky: "All of this is normal, and quite openly discussed by high Israeli officials. Thirty years ago Chief of Staff Mordechai Gur observed that since 1948, "we have been fighting against a population that lives in villages and cities." As Israel's most prominent military analyst, Zeev Schiff, summarized his remarks, "the Israeli Army has always struck civilian populations, purposely and consciously...the Army, he said, has never distinguished civilian [from military] targets...[but] purposely attacked civilian targets." The reasons were explained by the distinguished statesman Abba Eban: "there was a rational prospect, ultimately fulfilled, that affected populations would exert pressure for the cessation of hostilities." The effect, as Eban well understood, would be to allow Israel to implement, undisturbed, its programs of illegal expansion and harsh repression. Eban was commenting on a review of Labour government attacks against civilians by Prime Minister Begin, presenting a picture, Eban said, "of an Israel wantonly inflicting every possible measure of death and anguish on civilian populations in a mood reminiscent of regimes which neither Mr.Begin nor I would dare to mention by name." Eban did not contest the facts that Begin reviewed, but criticized him for stating them publicly. Nor did it concern Eban, or his admirers, that his advocacy of massive state terror is also reminiscent of regimes he would not dare to mention by name."
Why are the mainstream media pretending that we have a January Transfer Market when, in Reality, we have an Abu Dhabi United Transfer Window?
Noam Chomsky: "Eban's justification for state terror is regarded as persuasive by respected authorities. As the current US-Israel assault raged, Times columnist Thomas Friedman explained that Israel's tactics both in the current attack and in its invasion of Lebanon in 2006 are based on the sound principle of "trying to 'educate' Hamas, by inflicting a heavy death toll on Hamas militants and heavy pain on the Gaza population." That makes sense on pragmatic grounds, as it did in Lebanon, where "the only long-term source of deterrence was to exact enough pain on the civilians -- the families and employers of the militants -- to restrain Hezbollah in the future." And by similar logic, bin Laden's effort to "educate" Americans on 9/11 was highly praiseworthy, as were the Nazi attacks on Lidice and Oradour, Putin's destruction of Grozny, and other notable attempts at 'education'."
Why is Rafa so "disturbed" and full of "venom" over his historical revisionism?
Noam Chomsky: "Like others familiar with the region, Middle East specialist Fawwaz Gerges observes that "What Israeli officials and their American allies do not appreciate is that Hamas is not merely an armed militia but a social movement with a large popular base that is deeply entrenched in society." Hence when they carry out their plans to destroy Hamas's "social wing," they are aiming to destroy Palestinian society."
Why, even Fernando Torres does not agree with his manager...
Noam Chomsky: "Hamas is regularly described as "Iranian-backed Hamas, which is dedicated to the destruction of Israel." One will be hard put to find something like "democratically elected Hamas, which has long been calling for a two-state settlement in accord with the international consensus" -- blocked for over 30 years by the US and Israel, which flatly and explicitly reject the right of Palestinians to self-determination. All true, but not a useful contribution to the Party Line, hence dispensable."
Why is Rafa cracking up?
Noam Chomsky: "Such details as those mentioned earlier, though minor, nevertheless teach us something about ourselves and our clients. So do others. To mention another one, as the latest US-Israeli assault on Gaza began, a small boat, the Dignity, was on its way from Cyprus to Gaza. The doctors and human rights activists aboard intended to violate Israel's criminal blockade and to bring medical supplies to the trapped population. The ship was intercepted in international waters by Israeli naval vessels, which rammed it severely, almost sinking it, though it managed to limp to Lebanon. Israel issued the routine lies, refuted by the journalists and passengers aboard, including CNN correspondent Karl Penhaul and former US representative and Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney. That is a serious crime -- much worse, for example, than hijacking boats off the coast of Somalia. It passed with little notice. The tacit acceptance of such crimes reflects the understanding that Gaza is occupied territory, and that Israel is entitled to maintain its siege, even authorized by the guardians of international order to carry out crimes on the high seas to implement its programs of punishing the civilian population for disobedience to its commands - under pretexts to which we return, almost universally accepted but clearly untenable."
Why the satanic beard, Rafa?
Noam Chomsky: "Who cares, for example, if the editors of Lebanon's Daily Star, generally pro-Western, write that "Some 1.5 million people in Gaza are being subjected to the murderous ministrations of one of the world's most technologically advanced but morally regressive military machines. It is often suggested that the Palestinians have become to the Arab world what the Jews were to pre-World War II Europe, and there is some truth to this interpretation. How sickeningly appropriate, then, that just as Europeans and North Americans looked the other way when the Nazis were perpetrating the Holocaust, the Arabs are finding a way to do nothing as the Israelis slaughter Palestinian children." Perhaps the most shameful of the Arab regimes is the brutal Egyptian dictatorship, the beneficiary of most US military aid, apart from Israel."
Why does PGMOB official Stuart Attwell always cover his mouth when talking to senior referees?
Noam Chomsky: "The new crimes that the US and Israel have been committing in Gaza in the past weeks do not fit easily into any standard category - except for the category of familiarity; I've just given several examples, and will return to others. Literally, the crimes fall under the official US government definition of "terrorism," but that designation does not capture their enormity. They cannot be called "aggression," because they are being conducted in occupied territory, as the US tacitly concedes. In their comprehensive scholarly history of Israeli settlement in the occupied territories, Lords of the Land, Idit Zertal and Akiva Eldar point out that after Israel withdrew its forces from Gaza in August 2005, the ruined territory was not released "for even a single day from Israel's military grip or from the price of the occupation that the inhabitants pay every day... Israel left behind scorched earth, devastated services, and people with neither a present nor a future. The settlements were destroyed in an ungenerous move by an unenlightened occupier, which in fact continues to control the territory and kill and harass its inhabitants by means of its formidable military might" - exercised with extreme savagery, thanks to firm US support and participation."
Why has Steve Bennett officiated at five out of the last 28 Premiership matches?
Noam Chomsky: "The US-Israeli assault on Gaza escalated in January 2006, a few months after the formal withdrawal, when Palestinians committed a truly heinous crime: they voted "the wrong way" in a free election. Like others, Palestinians learned that one does not disobey with impunity the commands of the Master, who continues to prate of his "yearning for democracy," without eliciting ridicule from the educated classes, another impressive achievement."
Why were there three changes of referee in the Premiership last weekend when most leading European leagues see one such instance every five years or so?
Noam Chomsky: "Since the terms "aggression" and "terrorism" are inadequate, some new term is needed for the sadistic and cowardly torture of people caged with no possibility of escape, while they are being pounded to dust by the most sophisticated products of US military technology - used in violation of international and even US law, but for self-declared outlaw states that is just another minor technicality. Also a minor technicality is the fact that on December 31, while terrorized Gazans were desperately seeking shelter from the ruthless assault, Washington hired a German merchant ship to transport from Greece to Israel a huge shipment, 3000 tons, of unidentified "ammunition." The new shipment "follows the hiring of a commercial ship to carry a much larger consignment of ordnance in December from the United States to Israel ahead of air strikes in the Gaza Strip," Reuters reported. All of this is separate from the more than $21 billion in U.S. military aid provided by the Bush administration to Israel, almost all grants. "Israel's intervention in the Gaza Strip has been fueled largely by U.S. supplied weapons paid for with U.S. tax dollars," said a briefing by the New America Foundation, which monitors the arms trade. The new shipment was hampered by the decision of the Greek government to bar the use of any port in Greece "for the supplying of the Israeli army."
Greece's response to US-backed Israeli crimes is rather different from the craven performance of the leaders of most of Europe. The distinction reveals that Washington may have been quite realistic in regarding Greece as part of the Near East, not Europe, until the overthrow of its US-backed fascist dictatorship in 1974. Perhaps Greece is just too civilized to be part of Europe."
Why does Howard Webb get every major match and isn't this just a little too much power in one policeman's hands?
Noam Chomsky: "There are good reasons why the voting record is consistently unreported and dispatched deep into the memory hole by the media and conformist intellectuals. It would not be wise to reveal to the public what the record implies about their elected representatives. In the present case it would plainly be unhelpful to let the public know that US-Israeli rejectionism, barring the peaceful settlement long advocated by the world, reaches such an extreme as to deny Palestinians even the abstract right to self-determination."
Why has Keith Harris finally admitted that there is no possibility of any club being sold in the current global financial climate that was absolutely not caused, in any way whatsoever, by free market capitalist ideologues?
Noam Chomsky: "The figures for killed and wounded are surely an underestimate. And it is unlikely that there will be any inquiry into these atrocities. Crimes of official enemies are subjected to rigorous investigation, but our own are systematically ignored. General practice, again, and understandable on the part of the masters.
The Security Council Resolution called for stopping the flow of arms into Gaza. The US and Israel (Rice-Livni) soon reached an agreement on measures to ensure this result, concentrating on Iranian arms. There is no need to stop smuggling of US arms into Israel, because there is no smuggling: the huge flow of arms is quite public, even when not reported, as in the case of the arms shipment announced as the slaughter in Gaza was proceeding."
Why is Richard Scudamore keeping very very quiet at the moment? It surely would have nothing to do with the new televisions deals, would it?
Noam Chomsky: "Israel abandoned Gaza in September 2005. Rational Israeli hardliners, like Ariel Sharon, the patron saint of the settlers movement, understood that it was senseless to subsidize a few thousand illegal Israeli settlers in the ruins of Gaza, protected by the IDF while they used much of the land and scarce resources. It made more sense to turn Gaza into the world's largest prison and to transfer settlers to the West Bank, much more valuable territory, where Israel is quite explicit about its intentions, in word and more importantly in deed. One goal is to annex the arable land, water supplies, and pleasant suburbs of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv that lie within the separation wall, irrelevantly declared illegal by the World Court. That includes a vastly expanded Jerusalem, in violation of Security Council orders that go back 40 years, also irrelevant. Israel has also been taking over the Jordan Valley, about one-third of the West Bank. What remains is therefore imprisoned, and, furthermore, broken into fragments by salients of Jewish settlement that trisect the territory: one to the east of Greater Jerusalem through the town of Ma'aleh Adumim, developed through the Clinton years to split the West Bank; and two to the north, through the towns of Ariel and Kedumim. What remains to Palestinians is segregated by hundreds of mostly arbitrary checkpoints."
Why will the Premiership title race go to the very last game again this season?
Noam Chomsky: "The checkpoints have no relation to security of Israel, and if some are intended to safeguard settlers, they are flatly illegal, as the World Court ruled. In reality, their major goal is harass the Palestinian population and to fortify what Israeli peace activist Jeff Halper calls the "matrix of control," designed to make life unbearable for the "two-legged beasts" who will be like "drugged roaches scurrying around in a bottle" if they seek to remain in their homes and land. All of that is fair enough, because they are "like grasshoppers compared to us" so that their heads can be "smashed against the boulders and walls." The terminology is from the highest Israeli political and military leaders, in this case the revered "princes." And the attitudes shape policies."
Why is the Premiership now a handicapped event?
Noam Chomsky: "The plans that Olmert sketched in 2006 have since been abandoned as not sufficiently extreme. But what replaces the convergence programme, and the actions that proceed daily to implement it, are approximately the same in general conception. They trace back to the earliest days of the occupation, when Defence Minister Moshe Dayan explained poetically that "the situation today resembles the complex relationship between a Bedouin man and the girl he kidnaps against her will...You Palestinians, as a nation, don't want us today, but we'll change your attitude by forcing our presence on you." You will "live like dogs, and whoever will leave, will leave," while we take what we want."
Why? Is it true that the Dalai Lama wishes an audience with Harry Redknapp?
Noam Chomsky: "As the crimes passed beyond what the carefully honed Israeli propaganda campaign was able to suppress, even confirmed Israeli hawks became concerned that the carnage is "Destroying [Israel's] soul and its image. Destroying it on world television screens, in the living rooms of the international community and most importantly, in Obama's America" (Ari Shavit). Shavit was particularly concerned about Israel's "shelling a United Nations facility...on the day when the UN secretary general is visiting Jerusalem," an act that is "beyond lunacy," he felt."
Why does Stevie G take such an interest in matters of the underworld variety?
Noam Chomsky: "Before, Israel had sensibly barred all journalists, even Israeli, while its crimes were proceeding in full fury. Israel's use of white phosphorus against Gaza civilians is "clear and undeniable," Amnesty International (AI) reported. Its repeated use in densely populated civilian areas "is a war crime," AI concluded. They found white phosphorus edges scattered around residential buildings, still burning, "further endangering the residents and their property," particularly children "drawn to the detritus of war and often unaware of the danger." Primary targets, they report, were the UNRWA compound, where the Israeli "white phosphorus landed next to some fuel trucks and caused a large fire which destroyed tons of humanitarian aid" after Israeli authorities "had given assurance that no further strikes would be launched on the compound." On the same day, "a white phosphorus shell landed in the al-Quds hospital in Gaza City also causing a fire which forced hospital staff to evacuate the patients... White phosphorus landing on skin can burn deep through muscle and into the bone, continuing to burn unless deprived of oxygen." Purposely intended or beyond depraved indifference, such crimes are inevitable when this weapon is used in attacks on civilians."
Why is Thaksin Shinawatra still allowed to own 25% of Abu Dhabi United when the latest Amnesty International report accuses his government of "systematic" genocide against Muslims in the south of the country?
Noam Chomsky: "Aggression always has a pretext: in this case, that Israel's patience had "run out" in the face of Hamas rocket attacks, as Barak put it. The mantra that is endlessly repeated is that Israel has the right to use force to defend itself. The thesis is partially defensible. The rocketing is criminal, and it is true that a state has the right to defend itself against criminal attacks. But it does not follow that it has a right to defend itself by force. That goes far beyond any principle that we would or should accept. Nazi Germany had no right to use force to defend itself against the terrorism of the partisans. Kristallnacht is not justified by Herschel Grynszpan's assassination of a German Embassy official in Paris. The British were not justified in using force to defend themselves against the (very real) terror of the American colonists seeking independence, or to terrorize Irish Catholics in response to IRA terror - and when they finally turned to the sensible policy of addressing legitimate grievances, the terror ended. It is not a matter of "proportionality," but of choice of action in the first place: Is there an alternative to violence?"
Why have Victor Chandler International decided to enter the spread betting sector at the onset of the Depression? Did they not learn when they last dipped their toes in the waters?
Noam Chomsky: "Israel has a straightforward means to defend itself: put an end to its criminal actions in occupied territories, and accept the long-standing international consensus on a two-state settlement that has been blocked by the US and Israel for over 30 years, since the US first vetoed a Security Council resolution calling for a political settlement in these terms in 1976. I will not once again run through the inglorious record, but it is important to be aware that US-Israeli rejectionism today is even more blatant than in the past. The Arab League has gone even beyond the consensus, calling for full normalization of relations with Israel. Hamas has repeatedly called for a two-state settlement in terms of the international consensus. Iran and Hezbollah have made it clear that they will abide by any agreement that Palestinians accept. That leaves the US-Israel in splendid isolation, not only in words."
Why are Victor Chandler International so concerned at the integrity of football?
Noam Chomsky: "After Israel broke the June 2008 ceasefire (such as it was) in November, the siege was tightened further, with even more disastrous consequences for the population. According to Sara Roy, the leading academic specialist on Gaza, "On Nov. 5, Israel sealed all crossing points into Gaza, vastly reducing and at times denying food supplies, medicines, fuel, cooking gas, and parts for water and sanitation systems..." During November, an average of 4.6 trucks of food per day entered Gaza from Israel compared with an average of 123 trucks per day in October. Spare parts for the repair and maintenance of water-related equipment have been denied entry for over a year. The World Health Organization just reported that half of Gaza's ambulances are now out of order" - and the rest soon became targets for Israeli attack. Gaza's only power station was forced to suspend operation for lack of fuel, and could not be started up again because they needed spare parts, which had been sitting in the Israeli port of Ashdod for 8 months. Shortage of electricity led to a 300% increase in burn cases at Shifaa' hospital in the Gaza Strip, resulting from efforts to light wood fires. Israel barred shipment of Chlorine, so that by mid-December in Gaza City and the north access to water was limited to six hours every three days. The human consequences are not counted among Palestinian victims of Israeli terror."
Why did Alan Shearer rewrite Reality in his assessment of Mike Dean's comedic performance in allegedly refereeing the game between Sunderland and Aston Villa?
Noam Chomsky: "Israel's senior diplomatic correspondent Akiva Eldar reports that shortly before Israel launched its full-scale invasion on Saturday Dec. 27, "Hamas politburo chief Khaled Meshal announced on the Iz al-Din al-Qassam Web site that he was prepared not only for a 'cessation of aggression' - he proposed going back to the arrangement at the Rafah crossing as of 2005, before Hamas won the elections and later took over the region. That arrangement was for the crossing to be managed jointly by Egypt, the European Union, the Palestinian Authority presidency and Hamas," and as noted earlier, called for opening of the crossings to desperately needed supplies."
Why did Dave Whelan put all his ill-gotten gains into dodgy Icelandic banks?
Noam Chomsky: "Today, Israel could have security, normalization of relations, and integration into the region. But it very clearly prefers illegal expansion, conflict, and repeated exercise of violence, actions that are not only criminal, murderous and destructive but are also eroding its own long-term security. US military and Middle East specialist Andrew Cordesman writes that while Israel military force can surely crush defenseless Gaza, "neither Israel nor the US can gain from a war that produces [a bitter] reaction from one of the wisest and most moderate voices in the Arab world, Prince Turki al-Faisal of Saudi Arabia, who said on January 6 that `The Bush administration has left [Obama] a disgusting legacy and a reckless position towards the massacres and bloodshed of innocents in Gaza...Enough is enough, today we are all Palestinians and we seek martyrdom for God and for Palestine, following those who died in Gaza'.""
Why does Dave Whelan object to other's tilting markets for proprietary advantage when he employs such tactics himself?
Noam Chomsky: "One of the wisest voices in Israel, Uri Avnery, writes that after an Israeli military victory, "What will be seared into the consciousness of the world will be the image of Israel as a blood-stained monster, ready at any moment to commit war crimes and not prepared to abide by any moral restraints. This will have severe consequences for our long-term future, our standing in the world, our chance of achieving peace and quiet. In the end, this war is a crime against ourselves too, a crime against the State of Israel.""
Why is the collapse of the BSkyB linkage with pubs going to be so key to the next tv deal, to the Premier League's financial detriment?
Noam Chomsky: "There is good reason to believe that he is right. Israel is deliberately turning itself into perhaps the most hated country in the world, and is also losing the allegiance of the population of the West, including younger American Jews, who are unlikely to tolerate its persistent shocking crimes for long. Decades ago, I wrote that those who call themselves "supporters of Israel" are in reality supporters of its moral degeneration and probable ultimate destruction. Regrettably, that judgment looks more and more plausible."
Why was it so funny seeing psychopath Dick Cheney arriving for the inauguration of ObamaWorld - not "Renewing America" so much as "Rebranding America" - in his wheelchair? Why was this just so funny...?
Noam Chomsky: "Meanwhile we are quietly observing a rare event in history, what the late Israeli sociologist Baruch Kimmerling called "politicide," the murder of a nation -- at our hands."
We are all Palestinians...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Tuesday, 20 January 2009
Friday, 9 January 2009
Polychrysos - The Illusory Game Of Exchange
The Illusory Game of Exchange, the Giant Poker Table where our Realities are determined...
In the previous post in our seasonal triptych, by focusing on the gathering Depression from the perspective of hedge-funds, Dark Pools, Behaviouralism, Darwinism and climate change, we outlined some of the reasons why a Deep Depression is our future.
Only time and space prevented us from venturing further into this systemic murkiness, and in the week since the post, there have been numerous further disturbing pieces of news that, under normal circumstances, would be headline-grabbing.
For example, the Bank of England reducing interest rates (and thereby eliminating its monetary options) to 1.5% - the lowest rate since the central bank was established 315 years ago. This is a statement of extreme historical weakness.
Or, the US economy losing more jobs (2.6 million) in 2008 than in any year since the 2nd World War.
Or the relentless conveyor belt of major job losses and fraud exposures on a daily basis (Alcoa, Satyam etc).
To begin this article, we intend looking at some of the other areas of non-sustainability that will guarantee the Deep Depression.
The Hyperreality (continued)
* Price-earnings (p/e) ratios - Bottom feeders are claiming that longer term investors are able to find value in the current market climate by taking advantage of the low p/e ratios in the marketplace. As stock prices have plummeted, earnings have, until recently, not fallen so far, as companies employ various accounting shenanigans to hide the true carnage from the balance sheets.
But earnings are about to go through the floorboards as the feedback loops and economic contagion poison the entire global economy.
Prices will follow.
The whole efficacy of p/e ratios as a potential measure of value in the marketplace is based on historical analyses and data.
Economists always look to the past for solutions, yet no economic hyperreality is replicable, which renders such research as quite pointless.
In a Depression, p/e ratios become an outmoded yardstick - systemic and super-systemic risk sees to that.
For this reason, there is not one global asset that might be thought of as offering sustainable value - any rebound is nothing more than an example of a dead cat bouncing...
Spokesperson for the Bank of England: "The world economy appears to be undergoing an unusually sharp and synchronised downturn."
* Ratings Agencies - All investors rely on the ratings bodies for a measurement of the level of risk within an organisation or a sector. These ratings are always inflated as any journey through the companies who either went into liquidation or were saved by governmental handouts in 2008 would demonstrate.
This is a systemic enigma built into the fake structure.
As the Economist states: "Although ratings are relied on by investors and regulators as impartial measures, the Rating Agencies are paid by those they rate for their judgments."
Think advertising - no newspaper contains negative editorial against its advertisers.
Think ratings - no Ratings Agency will downgrade an entity that is, in effect, paying the wages.
Some of the AAA/Aaa nonsenses standing proud at Standard and Poors and Moody's today, will seem just a trifle optimistic in less than twelve months time.
Jean Baudrillard: "... all current strategies boil down to this: passing around the debt, the credit, the unreal, the unnameable thing that you cannot get rid of."
* Private Equity - All the focus has been on the plight of the banks and the insurance companies, on the credit crunch and on the toxic assets, on targeting hedge-funds and on the state of the currency markets.
As attention has shifted to the 'real' economy (NB: it is our assessment that the ONLY Real economy is the informal one), the fake finance of private equity operations will come under increased scrutiny.
All firms under the yoke of private equity have been stripped of their assets and saddled with debt. With the current very real concerns about deflation this is very very bad news indeed.
When the Bank of England produced their Inflation Report on November 12th, the future spread of likely inflation rates projected negative values for the first time ever ie deflation.
Under a climate of deflation, indebted businesses (and households) will be more anxious to pay off loans and debts as soon as feasible.
How they are going to be able to achieve this is another problem entirely.
Jean Baudrillard: "The illusion of the economic sphere lies in its having aspired to ground the principle of reality and rationality on the forgetting of this ultimate reality of impossible exchange."
* Deflation - With the indebted desperately trying to pay off their financial millstones, a deflationary world is trouble as there will not be enough cash-rich entities to offset the activities of the indebted. This produces a deadly mix of falling prices and high leverage, leading to a debt deflation of the type first postulated by Irving Fisher in the 1930s.
And don't even get us started on the fine balance between deflation/stagflation tipping over into hyperinflation...
Jean Baudrillard: "Here and now, the whole edifice of value is exchangeable for Nothing."
* Moral Hazard - Moral hazard got us into this mess, and moral hazard is the template of choice to cement the Depression.
Excessive leverage, fake mathematics and accounting, all neatly wrapped in a regulatory-lite environment with no downside to the taking positions of excessive risk. Plus ça change...
Last week in the Financial Times, the war criminal called Blair admits to mistakes in his stewardship of the economy, but pleads for any reactive regulation to be as feeble as possible so that the innovation might be allowed to continue.
What innovation?
Credit default swaps? Derivatives generally? Ponzi schemes at hedge-funds? All very fucking innovative but of absolutely no value to anybody other than the psychos with their fingers in the till.
If such innovation had been put into Real research in medicine, science, rather than the myopic minutiae of available knowledges that are allowed to be marketed in this shareholder capitalist poker game, we would not be in this situation.
Still, its great to hear that the war criminal called Blair has earned £12 million from after-dinner speeches since he gave up his full-time post in applied genocide.
Friedrich Nietzsche: "One must push what is already collapsing."
* Emerging Economies - The new paradigmists, a particularly stupid breed of capitalist, reckoned that the emerging economies would rescue the US, the EU and Japan once the Recession began to bite. Yet all economies are declining in lock-step.
Furthermore, the shareholder capitalist model that has been foisted onto numerous gullible territories has been shown to be invalid.
So, for example, China needs to undertake some financial restructuring and recapitalisation. As the Economist states: "It would once have been easy to argue that a market-driven system served up by big western banks could do a better job of this than government. When virtually every such institution has been given state support to stay in business, that case is much harder to make."
George Soros: "If you need systemic change, you might as well go for something that is vastly superior."
* Credit Crisis - Although the record amounts of public money that has simply been handed over to the greed architects of this Depression has succeeded in freeing up some of lack of confidence in the financial system, the Real solidity so created is mainly an illusion. The Real economy will continue to suffer (British retailers experienced their worst xmas ever in 2008 and banks are refusing to pass on the interest rate cuts to businesses and customers) and banks will create a cycle of contagion whereby the businesses that they do support will be undermined by the complete collapse of the rest of the economy, with associated bad debts and further risk of toxicity. we should expect more hedge-funds and banks to go under this year.
Mark Twain: "Don’t part with your illusions. When they are gone, you may still exist, but you have ceased to live."
* Governmental, Regulatory and Central Bank Errors - It is now generally accepted that allowing Lehman Brothers to go bust was a mistake.
It is now generally accepted that the ban on the short-selling of financial stocks was a short-sighted mistake.
It is now generally accepted that solely targeting the toxicity in the financial system was a mistake.
It is now generally accepted that the excessive financial support provided to insurance giant AIG was a mistake.
It is now generally accepted that the highly leveraged private equity model was a mistake.
It is now generally accepted that the lack of regulation in the free market was a mistake.
It is now generally accepted that the targeting of hedge-funds was a mistake.
It is now generally accepted that giving the Bank of England control over the setting of interest rates was a mistake.
It is not yet regarded as a mistake that interest rates have been slashed to historical lows.
It is not yet regarded as a mistake that the financial industry is rushing to create secretive Dark Pools.
There are more mistakes to come from a financial elite (sic) who see the financial world solely through the prism of their own self-interest.
Satyajit Das: "Markets placed great faith in the volume of money available to support asset prices and assist in alleviating shortages of liquidity. The perceived abundance of liquidity was, in reality, merely an illusion created by high levels of debt and leverage as well as the structure of global capital flows. As the financial system deleverages, it is becoming clear, unsurprisingly, that available capital is more limited than previously estimated."
Trust, Psychology, Psychopathy, Freemasonry and Freebie Bets
* Trust is one key component in the current crisis - nobody trusts the banks any longer no matter what their government-sponsored advertising campaigns may claim.
All analysts must judge the security of their investments, savings and cash, and correctly apportion their monies accordingly.
Taking sports brokerage as an example, we set a limit on the degree of trust that we place in our routes to market. Once a threshold has been set, we maintain our cash levels with the said institution below these levels AND we build into our financial projections the probabilities of brokers reneging on our agreements.
We are now at the point where we place banks at the same level of risk as our second tier brokers ie below the level of trust that we have in our primary level Asian brokers.
This breakdown in trust will not be easily repaired.
We don't know them and we don't trust them.
And we don't trust their system either.
As the Depression begins to bite in earnest, many more individuals are going to be reaching this same conclusion.
As Sigmund Freud once observed: "Illusions commend themselves to us because they save us pain and allow us to enjoy pleasure instead. We must therefore accept it without complaint when they sometimes collide with a bit of reality against which they are dashed to pieces."
* The Trickledown Effect - One of the great fallacies of shareholder capitalism is the trickledown effect, an illusory piece of fake mathematics that is solely dependent on the imaginary hyperreality of purchasing power parity (PPP). There is no trickledown other than in misery and psychopathy.
In a Depression, this Real trickledown effect is a downward spiral in the fake pyramid selling scheme that is our system.
The greed, the psychopathy and the mistakes were made at the top.
Our representatives bailed them out with huge handouts.
Moral hazard determines that the same greed, the same psychopathy and the same mistakes will be made at the top.
Psychopaths are unemotional and irrational - these two factors must go together as research by Antonio Damasio, professor of neuroscience at the University of Southern California, has shown.
There is a sufficiency of psychopathy among financial folk.
Yevgeny Yevtushenko: "When the truth is replaced by silence, the silence is a lie."
* Freemasonry, the World Economic Forum, our Freebie Bets - We are in the middle of a Secular Bear Market which began in 1997 and which will last until around 2017, even ignoring the super-systemic risk of climate change. There are scenarios where the secular Bear Market becomes a Permanent Depression and, in that the same mistakes are repeatedly made until they cannot be made anymore, this scenario has a significant probability of coming to fruition.
Despite this Reality, we are about to experience another hyperreal inflating of asset bubbles. It should be remembered that two of the biggest bubbles of last century occurred in the years immediately following the 1929 slump.
At Davos this year, we should be expecting to hear numerous public statements as to the seeds of recovery and other such nonsenses. Jim O'Neill of Goldman Sachs has already started the ball rolling. The pyramid scheme is being talked up.
Furthermore, the few disaffected freemasons with whom I collaborate are informing me that there is an agenda for the deep state to buy back into the financial markets in the summer months, after the worst early year bankruptcies have been accommodated into the already illusory market prices.
In yesterday's post, we briefly discussed the lack of meritocracy in nepotism and cronyism, but this is nothing when compared to systemic control through secret societies.
Let's examine (again briefly) three of the inefficiencies brought to the financial system by the activities of the lodges. It is the remainder of society that pays for these inefficiencies.
For Freemasonry is a hyperreal heist.
Example 1 - When the Meadowhall Mall was being constructed in Sheffield, the tiling/ceramics contract was not a competitive tender. The contract was simply given to a masonic company in Rotherham. This is not meritocratic and it is not an example of a free market.
Example 2 - The biggest sixth form college in England required a new headmaster. A shortlist was drawn up. The chairman of governors objected that a catenian (catholic mason) who had applied was not on the shortlist and, even though he accepted that professionally this was the correct decision, he was duty bound to interview the man. The other candidate withdrew and the catenian was appointed. Two years later 90% of the board of governors at the school were composed of catenians from the same Knutsford lodge as that attended by the headmaster. The chair of governors retired and the new chair is the wife of a leading regional freemason. This is also not meritocratic.
Example 3 - Masons are given prior warning of changes in government regulation. So, when the government announced a change in the way that nursing homes could be operated in the Thatcherite free marketplace in the 80s, freemasons received the tip off of the market opportunity fully six months before the matter had even been discussed in parliament. Ah, democracy... This is neither meritocratic nor proof of the existence of free markets. It is more like Russia...
So, by the summer, the concerted efforts of the Davos brigade and the deep state apparatus will be driving market prices higher AGAINST the Real dynamic of the market which should, at best, be stagnant. Remember - markets are priced for a Recession, not a Depression, and most certainly not a Permanent Depression.
Selective buying into the markets is our Freebie bet for this year. For now, we restrict ourselves to suggesting a purchase of the systemic indices, but nearer the time we'll be more specific both with regard to the markets and the timing.
This is truly a contrarian Cynical Realist market position.
There is a risk in this position and the primary skill will be knowing when to close out - it is only in a fake hyperreality that one might make money out of opposing the true Reality. For, although an attempt will be made to drive a new collection of illusory bubbles, the state of the planet and the financial and economic systems may well determine that the bubbles will not be able to be inflated to any great extent.
Buttonwood in the Economist: "... low government-bond yields could lose their appeal and equities could rebound. Income-seeking investors seem unlikely to get much of a return from cash this year. An equity rally could occur even if the global economy is in for a prolonged period of weakness."
The other part of our Freebie Bet is for Dietrological Professional clients only and is ##################### to win the Premiership title.
* Conclusion - As the fallacious system runs on in its empty sameness, the illusion must be replaced by truth, otherwise there will not be eco-system in which to continue to peddle the propaganda and lies.
Satyajit Das: "In this current financial crisis, the quantum of available capital, the munificent resources of central banks and sovereign wealth funds, and the globalization of capital flows may be some of the accepted "facts" that are revealed to be grand illusions."
Michel Foucault: "There is a battle 'for truth'... It is necessary to think of the political problems of intellectuals not in terms of 'science' and 'ideology', but in terms of 'truth' and 'power'... 'Truth' is linked in a circular relation with systems of power which produce and sustain it, and to effects of power which it induces and which extend it. A 'regime' of truth... The problem is not changing people's consciousnesses - or what's in their heads - but the political, economic, institutional regime of the production of truth."
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
In the previous post in our seasonal triptych, by focusing on the gathering Depression from the perspective of hedge-funds, Dark Pools, Behaviouralism, Darwinism and climate change, we outlined some of the reasons why a Deep Depression is our future.
Only time and space prevented us from venturing further into this systemic murkiness, and in the week since the post, there have been numerous further disturbing pieces of news that, under normal circumstances, would be headline-grabbing.
For example, the Bank of England reducing interest rates (and thereby eliminating its monetary options) to 1.5% - the lowest rate since the central bank was established 315 years ago. This is a statement of extreme historical weakness.
Or, the US economy losing more jobs (2.6 million) in 2008 than in any year since the 2nd World War.
Or the relentless conveyor belt of major job losses and fraud exposures on a daily basis (Alcoa, Satyam etc).
To begin this article, we intend looking at some of the other areas of non-sustainability that will guarantee the Deep Depression.
The Hyperreality (continued)
* Price-earnings (p/e) ratios - Bottom feeders are claiming that longer term investors are able to find value in the current market climate by taking advantage of the low p/e ratios in the marketplace. As stock prices have plummeted, earnings have, until recently, not fallen so far, as companies employ various accounting shenanigans to hide the true carnage from the balance sheets.
But earnings are about to go through the floorboards as the feedback loops and economic contagion poison the entire global economy.
Prices will follow.
The whole efficacy of p/e ratios as a potential measure of value in the marketplace is based on historical analyses and data.
Economists always look to the past for solutions, yet no economic hyperreality is replicable, which renders such research as quite pointless.
In a Depression, p/e ratios become an outmoded yardstick - systemic and super-systemic risk sees to that.
For this reason, there is not one global asset that might be thought of as offering sustainable value - any rebound is nothing more than an example of a dead cat bouncing...
Spokesperson for the Bank of England: "The world economy appears to be undergoing an unusually sharp and synchronised downturn."
* Ratings Agencies - All investors rely on the ratings bodies for a measurement of the level of risk within an organisation or a sector. These ratings are always inflated as any journey through the companies who either went into liquidation or were saved by governmental handouts in 2008 would demonstrate.
This is a systemic enigma built into the fake structure.
As the Economist states: "Although ratings are relied on by investors and regulators as impartial measures, the Rating Agencies are paid by those they rate for their judgments."
Think advertising - no newspaper contains negative editorial against its advertisers.
Think ratings - no Ratings Agency will downgrade an entity that is, in effect, paying the wages.
Some of the AAA/Aaa nonsenses standing proud at Standard and Poors and Moody's today, will seem just a trifle optimistic in less than twelve months time.
Jean Baudrillard: "... all current strategies boil down to this: passing around the debt, the credit, the unreal, the unnameable thing that you cannot get rid of."
* Private Equity - All the focus has been on the plight of the banks and the insurance companies, on the credit crunch and on the toxic assets, on targeting hedge-funds and on the state of the currency markets.
As attention has shifted to the 'real' economy (NB: it is our assessment that the ONLY Real economy is the informal one), the fake finance of private equity operations will come under increased scrutiny.
All firms under the yoke of private equity have been stripped of their assets and saddled with debt. With the current very real concerns about deflation this is very very bad news indeed.
When the Bank of England produced their Inflation Report on November 12th, the future spread of likely inflation rates projected negative values for the first time ever ie deflation.
Under a climate of deflation, indebted businesses (and households) will be more anxious to pay off loans and debts as soon as feasible.
How they are going to be able to achieve this is another problem entirely.
Jean Baudrillard: "The illusion of the economic sphere lies in its having aspired to ground the principle of reality and rationality on the forgetting of this ultimate reality of impossible exchange."
* Deflation - With the indebted desperately trying to pay off their financial millstones, a deflationary world is trouble as there will not be enough cash-rich entities to offset the activities of the indebted. This produces a deadly mix of falling prices and high leverage, leading to a debt deflation of the type first postulated by Irving Fisher in the 1930s.
And don't even get us started on the fine balance between deflation/stagflation tipping over into hyperinflation...
Jean Baudrillard: "Here and now, the whole edifice of value is exchangeable for Nothing."
* Moral Hazard - Moral hazard got us into this mess, and moral hazard is the template of choice to cement the Depression.
Excessive leverage, fake mathematics and accounting, all neatly wrapped in a regulatory-lite environment with no downside to the taking positions of excessive risk. Plus ça change...
Last week in the Financial Times, the war criminal called Blair admits to mistakes in his stewardship of the economy, but pleads for any reactive regulation to be as feeble as possible so that the innovation might be allowed to continue.
What innovation?
Credit default swaps? Derivatives generally? Ponzi schemes at hedge-funds? All very fucking innovative but of absolutely no value to anybody other than the psychos with their fingers in the till.
If such innovation had been put into Real research in medicine, science, rather than the myopic minutiae of available knowledges that are allowed to be marketed in this shareholder capitalist poker game, we would not be in this situation.
Still, its great to hear that the war criminal called Blair has earned £12 million from after-dinner speeches since he gave up his full-time post in applied genocide.
Friedrich Nietzsche: "One must push what is already collapsing."
* Emerging Economies - The new paradigmists, a particularly stupid breed of capitalist, reckoned that the emerging economies would rescue the US, the EU and Japan once the Recession began to bite. Yet all economies are declining in lock-step.
Furthermore, the shareholder capitalist model that has been foisted onto numerous gullible territories has been shown to be invalid.
So, for example, China needs to undertake some financial restructuring and recapitalisation. As the Economist states: "It would once have been easy to argue that a market-driven system served up by big western banks could do a better job of this than government. When virtually every such institution has been given state support to stay in business, that case is much harder to make."
George Soros: "If you need systemic change, you might as well go for something that is vastly superior."
* Credit Crisis - Although the record amounts of public money that has simply been handed over to the greed architects of this Depression has succeeded in freeing up some of lack of confidence in the financial system, the Real solidity so created is mainly an illusion. The Real economy will continue to suffer (British retailers experienced their worst xmas ever in 2008 and banks are refusing to pass on the interest rate cuts to businesses and customers) and banks will create a cycle of contagion whereby the businesses that they do support will be undermined by the complete collapse of the rest of the economy, with associated bad debts and further risk of toxicity. we should expect more hedge-funds and banks to go under this year.
Mark Twain: "Don’t part with your illusions. When they are gone, you may still exist, but you have ceased to live."
* Governmental, Regulatory and Central Bank Errors - It is now generally accepted that allowing Lehman Brothers to go bust was a mistake.
It is now generally accepted that the ban on the short-selling of financial stocks was a short-sighted mistake.
It is now generally accepted that solely targeting the toxicity in the financial system was a mistake.
It is now generally accepted that the excessive financial support provided to insurance giant AIG was a mistake.
It is now generally accepted that the highly leveraged private equity model was a mistake.
It is now generally accepted that the lack of regulation in the free market was a mistake.
It is now generally accepted that the targeting of hedge-funds was a mistake.
It is now generally accepted that giving the Bank of England control over the setting of interest rates was a mistake.
It is not yet regarded as a mistake that interest rates have been slashed to historical lows.
It is not yet regarded as a mistake that the financial industry is rushing to create secretive Dark Pools.
There are more mistakes to come from a financial elite (sic) who see the financial world solely through the prism of their own self-interest.
Satyajit Das: "Markets placed great faith in the volume of money available to support asset prices and assist in alleviating shortages of liquidity. The perceived abundance of liquidity was, in reality, merely an illusion created by high levels of debt and leverage as well as the structure of global capital flows. As the financial system deleverages, it is becoming clear, unsurprisingly, that available capital is more limited than previously estimated."
Trust, Psychology, Psychopathy, Freemasonry and Freebie Bets
* Trust is one key component in the current crisis - nobody trusts the banks any longer no matter what their government-sponsored advertising campaigns may claim.
All analysts must judge the security of their investments, savings and cash, and correctly apportion their monies accordingly.
Taking sports brokerage as an example, we set a limit on the degree of trust that we place in our routes to market. Once a threshold has been set, we maintain our cash levels with the said institution below these levels AND we build into our financial projections the probabilities of brokers reneging on our agreements.
We are now at the point where we place banks at the same level of risk as our second tier brokers ie below the level of trust that we have in our primary level Asian brokers.
This breakdown in trust will not be easily repaired.
We don't know them and we don't trust them.
And we don't trust their system either.
As the Depression begins to bite in earnest, many more individuals are going to be reaching this same conclusion.
As Sigmund Freud once observed: "Illusions commend themselves to us because they save us pain and allow us to enjoy pleasure instead. We must therefore accept it without complaint when they sometimes collide with a bit of reality against which they are dashed to pieces."
* The Trickledown Effect - One of the great fallacies of shareholder capitalism is the trickledown effect, an illusory piece of fake mathematics that is solely dependent on the imaginary hyperreality of purchasing power parity (PPP). There is no trickledown other than in misery and psychopathy.
In a Depression, this Real trickledown effect is a downward spiral in the fake pyramid selling scheme that is our system.
The greed, the psychopathy and the mistakes were made at the top.
Our representatives bailed them out with huge handouts.
Moral hazard determines that the same greed, the same psychopathy and the same mistakes will be made at the top.
Psychopaths are unemotional and irrational - these two factors must go together as research by Antonio Damasio, professor of neuroscience at the University of Southern California, has shown.
There is a sufficiency of psychopathy among financial folk.
Yevgeny Yevtushenko: "When the truth is replaced by silence, the silence is a lie."
* Freemasonry, the World Economic Forum, our Freebie Bets - We are in the middle of a Secular Bear Market which began in 1997 and which will last until around 2017, even ignoring the super-systemic risk of climate change. There are scenarios where the secular Bear Market becomes a Permanent Depression and, in that the same mistakes are repeatedly made until they cannot be made anymore, this scenario has a significant probability of coming to fruition.
Despite this Reality, we are about to experience another hyperreal inflating of asset bubbles. It should be remembered that two of the biggest bubbles of last century occurred in the years immediately following the 1929 slump.
At Davos this year, we should be expecting to hear numerous public statements as to the seeds of recovery and other such nonsenses. Jim O'Neill of Goldman Sachs has already started the ball rolling. The pyramid scheme is being talked up.
Furthermore, the few disaffected freemasons with whom I collaborate are informing me that there is an agenda for the deep state to buy back into the financial markets in the summer months, after the worst early year bankruptcies have been accommodated into the already illusory market prices.
In yesterday's post, we briefly discussed the lack of meritocracy in nepotism and cronyism, but this is nothing when compared to systemic control through secret societies.
Let's examine (again briefly) three of the inefficiencies brought to the financial system by the activities of the lodges. It is the remainder of society that pays for these inefficiencies.
For Freemasonry is a hyperreal heist.
Example 1 - When the Meadowhall Mall was being constructed in Sheffield, the tiling/ceramics contract was not a competitive tender. The contract was simply given to a masonic company in Rotherham. This is not meritocratic and it is not an example of a free market.
Example 2 - The biggest sixth form college in England required a new headmaster. A shortlist was drawn up. The chairman of governors objected that a catenian (catholic mason) who had applied was not on the shortlist and, even though he accepted that professionally this was the correct decision, he was duty bound to interview the man. The other candidate withdrew and the catenian was appointed. Two years later 90% of the board of governors at the school were composed of catenians from the same Knutsford lodge as that attended by the headmaster. The chair of governors retired and the new chair is the wife of a leading regional freemason. This is also not meritocratic.
Example 3 - Masons are given prior warning of changes in government regulation. So, when the government announced a change in the way that nursing homes could be operated in the Thatcherite free marketplace in the 80s, freemasons received the tip off of the market opportunity fully six months before the matter had even been discussed in parliament. Ah, democracy... This is neither meritocratic nor proof of the existence of free markets. It is more like Russia...
So, by the summer, the concerted efforts of the Davos brigade and the deep state apparatus will be driving market prices higher AGAINST the Real dynamic of the market which should, at best, be stagnant. Remember - markets are priced for a Recession, not a Depression, and most certainly not a Permanent Depression.
Selective buying into the markets is our Freebie bet for this year. For now, we restrict ourselves to suggesting a purchase of the systemic indices, but nearer the time we'll be more specific both with regard to the markets and the timing.
This is truly a contrarian Cynical Realist market position.
There is a risk in this position and the primary skill will be knowing when to close out - it is only in a fake hyperreality that one might make money out of opposing the true Reality. For, although an attempt will be made to drive a new collection of illusory bubbles, the state of the planet and the financial and economic systems may well determine that the bubbles will not be able to be inflated to any great extent.
Buttonwood in the Economist: "... low government-bond yields could lose their appeal and equities could rebound. Income-seeking investors seem unlikely to get much of a return from cash this year. An equity rally could occur even if the global economy is in for a prolonged period of weakness."
The other part of our Freebie Bet is for Dietrological Professional clients only and is ##################### to win the Premiership title.
* Conclusion - As the fallacious system runs on in its empty sameness, the illusion must be replaced by truth, otherwise there will not be eco-system in which to continue to peddle the propaganda and lies.
Satyajit Das: "In this current financial crisis, the quantum of available capital, the munificent resources of central banks and sovereign wealth funds, and the globalization of capital flows may be some of the accepted "facts" that are revealed to be grand illusions."
Michel Foucault: "There is a battle 'for truth'... It is necessary to think of the political problems of intellectuals not in terms of 'science' and 'ideology', but in terms of 'truth' and 'power'... 'Truth' is linked in a circular relation with systems of power which produce and sustain it, and to effects of power which it induces and which extend it. A 'regime' of truth... The problem is not changing people's consciousnesses - or what's in their heads - but the political, economic, institutional regime of the production of truth."
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
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