Even the holier than thou-vegan persons entities that have been alive.

Ooh, the horror, the horror.

So in the end, it's all just part of life.

Question: If you can't tell where the "art work" ends and the "vandalism" begins, then how much creative value does the work have? — Bitter Crank

Opinion: That indeed looks like modern art, actually.

There's no F* You's, no "Killroy was here", no universal signs for cunt, or the typical graffiti. In fact where there seems to be something written is in the lower left corner where artists typically would put their name.

Far more telling is the graffiti that US soldiers leaved into ancient Babylon Iraq, fitting to the invasion they carried out in the start of this Milennium.

Col. John Coleman, former chief of staff for the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force in Iraq, told the BBC that if the head of the Iraqi antiquities board wanted an apology, and “if it makes him feel good, we can certainly give him one.”

But he also asked: “If it wasn’t for our presence, what would the state of those archaeological ruins be?”

The Marines spent five months in 2003 based at Babylon, 50 miles south of Baghdad.

Last year, the British Museum said that U.S.-led troops using Babylon as a base had damaged and contaminated artifacts dating back thousands of years.

The German Archaeological Institute said U.S. and Polish troops based at Babylon had caused “massive damage” to the site in 2003 and 2004.

Occupying armies are, well, occupying armies. Perhaps it's fitting that they leave their marks on ancient heritage sites.

Pure contextomy. — NOS4A2

Oh the words don't mean what they mean?

Try to wiggle out of it, troll, try!

As long as the US and the Saudi Royal mafia remain best buds, I guess. — Baden

Yeah.

Well, that relationship of yours has successfully passed through 9/11, so I guess it will last a long time...

Even if the US isn't so dependent on Saudi oil as before, I guess it will remain.

After all, even Trump was on loyal friend of the Saudi regime.

Print money>>buy oil>>magic energy tree! But how to make sure the plebs don't get their fair share? = American politics in a nutshell. — Baden

Indeed. The real question is how long it will last.

Trump benefitted from the fact that America has the best system money can buy, and he did so from both sides of that corrupt reality. He bought politicians, and publicly bragged about it on national television in front of some of those who he had previously bought, in their presence no less. That happened during the public debate during the primary season of the election

The fact that were no objections to that was astonishing to me at the time. — creativesoul

In a Trump-thread, good that you brought this up from the election between Hillary Clinton and Trump.

Trump was a great demagogue and a showman that knew what to say to certain crowd that felt disenfranchised. The vast majority of Americans really don't like the corrupt system that is made now legal and that gives power to the rich and corporations through lobbyists and the "revolving-door". Trump just told what they knew already: the whole thing is rigged for the rich. Americans both in the left and in the right simply hate this, but naturally the bi-partisan effort from the two ruling parties is to make Americans hate each other, hate the citizens supporting the other political side. That's the way I guess how to get people to vote for a system they don't like.

We no longer have a government that places the best interests of the overwhelming majority of Americans at the top of the priority list when making policy decisions. We legalized government bribery in the seventies by changing how it is described, in the guise of characterizing unlimited campaign contributions by very rich individuals as an exercise in an individual's first amendment rights to "free speech". Now there are all sorts of counterarguments that outright reject that argument and do so convincingly, but this is not he place or time. I digress, the SCOTUS set the precedent for legalized bribery to manifest with that decision. Then, president Nixon placed the attorney who argued that case on the court itself. A few years later the court then expanded the ability to bribe elected officials to include a corporation's ability, because corporations are people too. Then, of course, Citizen's United not that long ago...

The current American government is tremendously corrupt, and that is well known and out in the open. — creativesoul

This is why I think you are headed for the American equivalent of "the Time of Troubles".

If 2022 goes without any major things happening, you might sigh in relief, becayse if you think that you have already seen how ugly it will get, you will be in for a surprise...

You are a troll now.

Even the link you give has it in written form:

He could also order, within the swing states, if he wanted to, he could take military capabilities and he could place them in those states and basically rerun an election in each of those states.

Here is the goddam newsmax piece where Flynn refers to the military. Those quotes come from that. But your link offers a longer take of that exchange. The End.



Yeah, you need the military to rerun the elections. :roll:

Enough of Flynn, the lock-her-up Q-anon many-times fired general.

He is a symptom. — creativesoul

I agree.

One huge example of the kind of "I'll see you in court"-type of American.

And this is the difference between Trump and the kind of leaders that do a (successful) self coup and snatch the power with force: Trump assumed he could use lawyers to do this, just as he has wiggled away from personal bankruptcies. Or basically, the people around him sold him the fairy tale that without evidence election results could be changed. The most telling example of Trump is the famous phone call where he pressures (or begs, basically) a state official "to find" 11000+ votes. That's the Trumpian version of a self coup.

I think the positive outcome of this debacle is that Americans have been now subjected to the possibility of a self coup or simply a leader rejecting election outcomes. This means that they won't be taken off guard like a "deer in the headlights" anymore if it happens again.

No, Michael Flynn insisted Trump should appoint a special counsel to investigate the voting machines and exactly what happened in swing states. — NOS4A2

Wrong, NOS, he specifically said to use the military.

You simply cannot deny that he asked for the military to be used do this, to confiscate the voting machines. Oh but you desperately think this is an counterargument:

Martial law has been instituted 64 times, Greg. So I'm not calling for that. We have a constitutional process."

Constitutional process where the military is involved in the election process...HAHAHA!!! :lol:

It’s not like medicine or anything else has advanced in a century. — NOS4A2

Still, nearly a million dead Americans, even if the vast majority were old, shows that we haven't put aside the threat of pandemics yet.

The irresponsible fear of President Trump using the military to "steal the election" was regnant in the press leading up to Jan. 6th — NOS4A2

Yeah, just an ex-National Security Advisor (and former US general) of Trump insisting that Trump should use the military to confiscate the voting machines.

Trump "could immediately, on his order, seize every single one of these voting machines," Flynn told Newsmax host Greg Kelly Thursday night. "He could order the, within the swing states, if he wanted to, he could take military capabilities, and he could place those in states and basically rerun an election in each of those states."

Using the U.S. military to force states to redo an election is "not unprecedented," Flynn added.

Yeah. Didn't happen.

But really, an irresponsible fear?

One might argue that it was an exaggerated fear as Trump fucks up everything he touches. Trump was just watching events happen staring the television with his children urging to stop the mess, so the plan wasn't something like we've seen in many other places. Even Janajev's putch to save the Soviet Union was more astute in 1991 than this clueless and leaderless attempt (as Trump doesn't have leadership skills, but is a very fine talent in demagoguery and showmanship). Still, nobody cannot deny what he tried to do (as we already knew this from what Trump was saying in the last elections, which to his amazement he won).

Had it been the other way around, the other party in charge and someone urging similar actions, you would have a totally different view of it. And that's why your argument is rather meaningless.

But hey, I look forward after a decade or two the movie that is made of this flawed President and Jan 6th. The style that would be most pertinent depicting the historical reality would be political satire, a black comedy, a farce. Like the style of the Death of Stalin:



(which is banned in Russia, I guess)

Yes, it’s a state-managed collectivist economy through-and-through, and the current seizure is only evidence of how far it is willing to go. But forcing businesses to limit capacity, to enforce mandates, to close early, to adopt shifting policies, to collect subsidies, to outlaw dancing, gathering, walking to the bathroom without a mask etc. is unprecedented, especially in countries that haven’t quite swallowed the socialist pill yet. — NOS4A2

What lengths countries like the US go because of less than a million deaths in couple of years because of such a puny pandemic. A mere two thousand deaths per a million! Or even less. The Spanish Flu had killed tens times more by now.

Oooh, the horrible, horrible collectivism.

(I wonder how the US recovered from the evil socialism and the trampling of the rights of the individual during the Spanish Flu)

Surely some church or religion will attempt this. Still I think that the vast majority of organized religions will hold on to their old "sacred" things and view digital space as a new form of media, as a tool to connect with people.

(The Pope blesses sport cars, so I guess digital spaces can get blessings too, but that they would be really sacred? Hmm...)

Unfortunately, these aren’t market forces at work here, but legislation that favors those who can afford to adapt to capricious government policy, those who who can afford to work from home, those who work on the internet, and so on. — NOS4A2

You don't have free markets anywhere. Didn't have much even before the pandemic. Especially what isn't tolerated at all is that the market would correct it's excesses, which has created the current economic situation we live in.

As this has been such a huge forced experiment, there has been also negative effects that everybody has seen. For example, the schooling from home has been a terrible disaster and it's something that (at least here) is the last thing the government wants to do.

Yes, I completely agree, though I suspect you and I have very different ideas about how that economy functions.

I'm sorry, I mean... I suspect I have some misinformation about how that economy functions... — Isaac

Oh no worries, economists themselves have very different ideas about how the economy functions. As the saying goes, when two economists meet three alternative and opposing views of how the economy works are presented.

Does that sound like an out of control monster? — Isaac

If the inflation persists and the economy tanks (stagflation), it might result in an out of control monster. We have to understand that the actions taken against the pandemic have been taken in the economic realm.

We cannot just think of the pandemic as a health or medical issue and then assume that other things, like the economy or economic policy, are totally separate from it.

You seemed to be assuming the world's money supply is fixed so that if billionaires get richer, it must have been a transfer of wealth from poor people. Did you not assume that? — frank

Yes, to a degree. — Isaac

Isaac. You assumed if billionaires get richer, the money must have transferred from poor people, and thus made the astonishing assertion that the COVID response was the single largest shift in wealth from poor to rich in history. You'll have to back that up with facts. — frank

I agree with @frank here.

First, money supply isn't fixed. Second, money isn't transferred from the poor, because, uh, they don't have money in the first place! If I'm a rich guy and can go to the bank and get a million dollar loan to invest in something with a return-on-investment of 5% and pay a 1% interest rate and a poor investor could get a loan of 5000$ and pay 4% interest rate to invest in the same investment, the money that I'm making surely doesn't come from him! Me and the poor investor get both the money from the bank, which creates it basically from thin air. I'm just getting richer than the poor guy. One has to understand the difference between what is relative and what is absolute as the World isn't a place where the amount of wealth is fixed and anyone who gets more wealth would be taken it from others. This is simply not how the World works as wealth is created.

You see, the poor guy is only relatively getting more poor, but he isn't in absolute terms getting poor, in fact he is getting a little bit richer as the debt leverage is working for him too, but only in a smaller scale. Hence it's simply wrong to say that this means I'm getting more wealthy from the money of the poor people.

Another example of the difference between relative and absolute: If Elon Musk and Bill Gates would move into my neighborhood, my neighborhood would see income inequality rise dramatically and I would be relatively far poorer in my neighborhood than before the two moved in. Of course my absolute wealth didn't change and I'm as wealthy (or poor) as before, but by any relative statistic I would be "worse off" than before. In fact, income inequality decreases when there is an economic depression. Yet in an economic depression it's the poor that suffer the most, because they can drop into absolute poverty.

Of course one might ask the reason why women are getting children older. But I guess the reasons for that don't matter.

Prosperity is possibe without either capitalism or materialism. — Isaac

So give an example as we are talking about poor societies and rich societies.

I hope the forum adds the posts download feature soon. — TheMadFool

I'm for this too! :up:

Address something I've written, — Isaac

OK,

Fertility rates in developing countries are controlled mainly by age of marriage, length of breastfeeding and mortality (or morbidity) prior to 50. — Isaac

With modern medicine and health care morbidity has fallen throughout the World, even if there are difference between the poorest countries and the rest. Yet things like child morbidity has steadily declined all over the world since the last century. And these other issues you mention are simply minor compared to the society becoming more prosperous. In fact, changes in things like age of marriage seem to happen when societies develop and come more prosperous. Families don't get their daughters married at young age, but put them to school. Things like that.

What has materialism got to do with it? — Isaac

Well, put there the term "capitalism" or anything, but NOTICE this is just what I said to be narrative going off to something else that basically is a distraction. So as I said this is the wrong way to go, this isn't an objection to my response as my basic line is that more prosperous society makes people to have less children and hence we should try to make all people in a society, not just a tiny section, be more prosperous.

What does this mean? — tim wood

Hmm... a new member that came to this forum 14 days ago who's first post basically without anything else than a long quote.

Yeah, talking about "military adventurism by the Ukrainian authorities" tells what this is about.

Spam. Moderators should note it.

In any case, if the EU-US pressure on Russia continues, Russia will have no other choice than ally itself with China. They are already cooperating on space and military technology. If they come to some mutual defense agreement, this will vastly increase China’s position in the world to the detriment of the West. — Apollodorus

Russia and China have already held military exercises together, China has been a large arms customer for Russia and the vast majority of both Russians and Chinese have favorable views of the others.

The conflict in Ukraine could pick up dramatically it's intensity as Putin has made tough statements against NATO.

But here's the issue. I notice that you are a firm believer of this idea foreign policy serves (and is dictated) by private companies. In the US this is a popular belief especially with the military-industrial establishment. And things like Dick Cheney being the CEO of Halliburton makes this argument quite credible.

But seems it hard for you to think that other people in other societies think differently. Russia is the case where national security and 19th Century power politics trumps economic issues and companies don't have much to say. Putin doesn't care of the stock market or individual companies, state security is paramount. He doesn't care about economic sanctions, he doesn't work for the oligarchs, the oligarchs take orders from the Kremlin or are in jail or exiled in their luxury condos in London or other places.

Fertility rates in developing countries are controlled mainly by age of marriage, length of breastfeeding and mortality (or morbidity) prior to 50. - All you've shown is a weak correlation* with an extremely vague measure. — Isaac

The link between wealth and fertility is quite well understood.

The decreasing relationship between the two variables demonstrates the connection between fertility choices and economic considerations. In general, poor countries tend to have higher levels of fertility than rich countries.

In particular, women tend to give birth to no fewer than three children in countries where GDP per capita is below $1,000 per year. In countries where GDP per capita is above $10,000 per year, women tend to give birth to no more than two children.

This decreasing relationship between fertility and income is well known to economists and demographers alike. In addition, it holds true over time: Rich countries, such as the U.S., have experienced a remarkable decline in their fertility rate as they became rich. Also, the relationship holds at the individual level, as rich families tend to have fewer children than poor families.

It's one of those things demographics has know for years:

A large literature examines the causes of fertility decline in the developing world over the past half-century. This literature is not easily summarized, but there is broad agreement that development is a key driver of changes in reproductive behavior, as hypothesized by classical demographic transition theory (Davis, 1945; Kirk, 1996; Notestein, 1945).

Now the demographic transition theory and it's four steps explain well what has happened. Especially it's third stage is what crucial here to understand:

Third Stage:

It is also characterised as a population stage because the population continues to grow at a fast rate. In this stage, birth rate as compared to the death rate declines more rapidly. As a result, population grows at a diminishing rate. This stage witnesses a fall in the birth rate while the death rate stays constant because it has already declined to the lowest minimum. Birth rate declines due to the impact of economic development, changed social attitudes and increased facilities for family planning. Population continues to grow fast because death rate stops falling whereas birth rate though declining but remains higher than death rate.

But what is needed is prosperity, for there to be universal education, for the situation of women to improve (and be taken into the workforce) and for all these issues like changing social attitudes to happen. If that economic take off doesn't happen (like in Mali, Somalia or the DR Congo), people truly seek shelter from economic distress by having children. In the wealthier economies hardly anybody thinks like this.

Family planning has always been something of an economic issue, you know.

This really isn't at all vague.

What solutions to this problem do you think would be the most effective, even if they might not be morally ‘good’? — Schrödinger's cat

This is actually easy, but people simply don't understand it.

Population growth will end when the fertility rate is below 2.0+.

That fertility rate lower than 2.0+ that has universally happened when people have become more prosperous. Just look at where you have high fertility rates (rapid population growth): in the most poorest countries. Seriously:

Rank /Country/Fertility rate in 2019 (births/woman)
1 Niger 6.824
2 Somalia 5.978
3 DR Congo 5.819
4 Mali 5.785

Niger, Somalia, DR Congo and Mali are one of the most poorest countries in the World.

(Fertility rates have GONE DOWN. Dramatically. All over the World. Thanks to the increasing prosperity and the social change because of it.)


Making people more prosperous, to eradicate poverty is not morally bad at all. Have social security, pensions, the ability that a single person without a family can live well when he or she isn't able to work anymore and isn't forced to be a beggar. So there is a truly moral solution to this. It's not about condoms, it's about that you don't have to make children in order for them to look after you when you are old. Then people don't have to have huge families to survive.

Just stop with narrative of the end of the World is nigh because of this and we have to repent our hedonistic materialism and everything else in our society and have something totally else!!!

(Unfortunately, that I think is what people want to hear when debating this issue.)

Smith and Keynes never stated that inflation is always a result of changes in the money supply, which is what the claim was initially. — Xtrix

Indeed they weren't monetarists, but they did understand that just printing more money to cover expenses of the government will create inflation. Keynes of course did naturally see uses for things like debt financing, but the how not to run a central bank was obvious for a person that acted as a director of the Bank of England. Of course his theories for inflation ran into problems with stagflation, which only shows that there isn't one simple phenomenon or process for rising prices. After all, if prices rise because of larger demand or smaller production, that isn't inflation but ordinary way how markets should work.

Again, it's hard to see the connection, but one important thing behind it all is essentially greed, the desire for more and more money and power, and the adherence to the "vile maxim of the masters of mankind" (Adam Smith) of "all for ourselves and nothing for other people" -- or "gain wealth, forgetting all but self." — Xtrix

Greed and ignorance of one's own role. Like having the attitude that problems are for others to solve... like the government. The basic problem is that actors that don't understand that there actions have large consequences.

I think the worst case scenario is where you have a clueless elite that simply doesn't understand it's role in a society, that it's them, the ruling class, that ought to take the initiative to correct the problems. Or at least, give way for others to solve them. At worst this elite is just fearful of it's own commoners, hiding behind walls and sending all the money to outside safe havens without investing anything in their own society.

So what's your prediction? — Mongrel

Current ideologies and indeed promoted with similar ardor as with traditional religion, that is true.

You have evangelists that spread the true word.

You have a lithurgy.

You have to redeem yourself, become a true believer. It's a faith issue thinly disguised in reason.

All that in various political ideologies in use today. The fact is that when the society has become more secular, the trappings of a religion work very effectively. Some people just don't notice it.

Lol. Have to say that the Trump administration was the most transparent administration as various people paint the same exact picture you could see from just following the guy.

As I've stated again and again, just to watch through the Putin / Trump press conference and the abnormality of the Trump Presidence was all there to see.

But believe by all means the Republican mantra with religious fervor as you do.

Treasuries are issued by the treasury to make up the difference between revenue (mostly taxes) and spending. So the Fed buying treasuries is, in a sense, funding all kinds of government spending. — Xtrix

There you said it yourself.

They themselves are a part of the government, of course, but they're given this special privilege. — Xtrix

Technically they aren't. (That's the norm with central banks, actually) Remember it was the Wall Street banks who created the Fed, even if then the law was passed by Congress. Meeting at Jekyll Island in 1910 and all that.

But the original issue was about inflation. The Fed is in charge of monetary policy, which plays a role in inflation -- no doubt about it. But Friedman's thesis, that inflation is "everywhere and always a monetary phenomenon" just doesn't seem to apply everywhere and always. — Xtrix

When there a speculative bubble that has burst, the deflationary effects can easily overwhelm any actions central bank makes for the moment.

And I'll reiterate, this idea isn't something just from Friedman as the monetarist go to specific directions with their theories, but basically what already Adam Smith and Maynard Keynes noted. So this isn't a purely monetarist view here.

But remember not long ago there was a surplus, not a deficit. — Xtrix

When? During the Clinton era? More of a technical one as with changes to Social Security (and it's famous Trust Fund) you can get a surplus:

When it is claimed that Clinton paid down the national debt, that is patently false--as can be seen, the national debt went up every single year. What Clinton did do was pay down the public debt--notice that the claimed surplus is relatively close to the decrease in the public debt for those years. But he paid down the public debt by borrowing far more money in the form of intragovernmental holdings (mostly Social Security).

Interestingly, this most likely was not even a conscious decision by Clinton. The Social Security Administration is legally required to take all its surpluses and buy U.S. Government securities, and the U.S. Government readily sells those securities--which automatically and immediately becomes intragovernmental holdings. The economy was doing well due to the dot-com bubble and people were earning a lot of money and paying a lot into Social Security. Since Social Security had more money coming in than it had to pay in benefits to retired persons, all that extra money was immediately used to buy U.S. Government securities. The government was still running deficits, but since there was so much money coming from excess Social Security contributions there was no need to borrow more money directly from the public. As such, the public debt went down while intragovernmental holdings continued to skyrocket.

The net effect was that the national debt most definitely did not get paid down because we did not have a surplus. The government just covered its deficit by borrowing money from Social Security rather than the public.

Actually the above is a good example how the system works. But of course, the problem is that aging of the population doesn't mean good for the Social Security Trust Fund, even if the demographic situation of the US isn't as bleak as it is here.

The debt isn't even that big a problem, for many reasons. — Xtrix

Before the crisis, it isn't. Just like a "nobody" can see a speculative bubble until is bursts and all the excesses of the "strong new economy" are exposed. It's all based on faith and hence there isn't any real indicator when the faith bubble will burst.

The Republicans are itching to cut social security and medicare and turn them over to private hands -- no surprise there. The Democrats want to "tax the rich," which is on the right track, but then have no problem shelling out a grotesque $778 billion in defense spending. Meanwhile their "proposals" never come to fruition on taxes. — Xtrix

I agree. Let's forget the political rhetoric here. Basically the two parties just want to spend on different issues (or easy the tax burden of the super rich) and the Republicans have their sanctimonious lies about taking seriously the deficit issue. We should put the rhetoric aside and look how the two parties operate.

How they operate is that they simply will continue with the same old ways until we have a crisis. That's how things happen. I think Naomi Klein in her book "the Shock Doctrine" pictures this falsely thinking that government deliberately create crises to then push through their liberal agenda. They might resort to some ideological agendas too, but the clear fact is that they don't want the crisis to happen intentionally. I'm sure if there is a dollar crisis or whatever they call it, some will argue that it was done on purpose by "insert here the people who you think are bad".

. And it's capitalism that is crushing us and will, in all probability, be terminal for us. The Fed plays a large role in all of that, no doubt -- but it's not completely their fault. — Xtrix

Likely it isn't so terminal. Just look at us now in the midst of global pandemic where millions have died an the World has been locked down in spectacular ways. Things go on.

Same will be if (or when) this crisis really blows up. People will just loose a lot of money. There will be many more unemployed. Political turmoil. And some people will profit especially in the long run. But life, and also capitalism, will go on. (So no need to worry that people won't have that to bitch about in the future).

They didn’t need to fabricate conspiracy theories to do it. — NOS4A2

Don't you remember Whitewater and Kenneth Starr, who was initially appointed to investigate the suicide of deputy White House counsel Vince Foster and the Whitewater real estate investments of Bill Clinton? That Starr that afterwards joined Trump's legal team. :snicker:

Yes, the selectivity of your memory is telling. But I guess it's a norm with deeply tribal Americans. But the truth is the mudslinging with conspiracy theories has been the norm for American politics for a long time.

in both parties and in the media, who spent the majority of their time trying to stifle, discredit, and remove Trump from office — NOS4A2

Oh, just LIKE WITH THE BILL CLINTON ADMINISTRATION! :grin:

Talk about passive aggressiveness.

The new term is to escalate things by laying out de-escalation demands.

President Vladimir Putin used some of his most direct language to date on Tuesday in his escalating standoff with the U.S. and its European allies. The Russian leader warned that if the U.S. and NATO do not halt what Moscow considers aggressive actions along the country's border with Ukraine, Russia would respond in a "retaliatory military" manner.

"If the obviously aggressive line of our Western colleagues continues, we will take adequate, retaliatory military-technical measures [and] react toughly to unfriendly steps," Putin told senior military officials during a meeting in remarks carried by Russian state TV. "I want to emphasize that we have every right to do so."

Putin had previously spoken of his "red lines" on Ukraine — first and foremost his demand that the U.S. block Ukraine's bid to become a NATO member. He had accused the West of crossing his red lines already, but the stern warning in Tuesday's speech marked the first time he had personally warned of potential military action.

It would be hilarious, if it wouldn't be so bad. I assume as there's no Olympic Games going on, Russia will wait the US and NATO countries go off to the holidays when it declares that it's last red line has been walked over and has "absolutely no other solution than a military one".

Pre-emptive strike. That's what escalatory attack is called.

Wonder how the Biden administration will reply to this.

Vice President Kamala Harris reiterated the Biden administration's support for Ukraine and warned that the U.S. and its allies were prepared to respond to any Russian incursion with harsh sanctions. The Biden administration has not ruled anything out in the standoff, but has not thus far said explicitly what level of assistance Ukraine could expect from Washington if Putin does attack.

While it is hard to prove that China deliberately created the Cov-ID to create the havoc that it has, it isn't so hard to prove that they are trying to take advantage of situation caused by the mess that they made. — dclements

Well, I honestly believe that the lab-leak hypothesis is a real possibility. The Chinese officials surely did actively try to hide the pandemic and that they would try to manage the best outcome in this situation would be obvious.

I guess only Norway would be a country that would openly admit that they f**ed up and had a laboratory leak, and then willingly face the huge international outcry and pay compensation (and emptying their sovereign wealth fund from that).

Otherwise the strategy is to deny to the end. The more consistent you are in denials, the more logical and in the end truthful people think you are.

This was picked up even in our local newspapers here:

Barbara F. Walter, a political science professor at the University of California at San Diego, serves on a CIA advisory panel called the Political Instability Task Force that monitors countries around the world and predicts which of them are most at risk of deteriorating into violence. By law, the task force can’t assess what’s happening within the United States, but Walter, a longtime friend who has spent her career studying conflicts in Syria, Lebanon, Northern Ireland, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Rwanda, Angola, Nicaragua and elsewhere, applied the predictive techniques herself to this country.

Her bottom line: “We are closer to civil war than any of us would like to believe.” She lays out the argument in detail in her must-read book, “How Civil Wars Start,” out in January. “No one wants to believe that their beloved democracy is in decline, or headed toward war,” she writes. But, “if you were an analyst in a foreign country looking at events in America — the same way you’d look at events in Ukraine or the Ivory Coast or Venezuela — you would go down a checklist, assessing each of the conditions that make civil war likely. And what you would find is that the United States, a democracy founded more than two centuries ago, has entered very dangerous territory.”

The interesting thing is how we report these issues. When it's a poor Third World country, we openly talk of civil war or insurgencies. When it's the First World, we don't. An example: in hindsight the British Army has openly acknowledged that it faced and fought an insurgency in Northern Ireland. Yet the very smart British understood how important it was never to utter those words... or have the media to refer it as an insurgency. It was only "The Troubles". And if someone dared to say that the UK was fighting an insurgency in the British Isles in the late 20th Century, many would immediately come to correct the phrasing about the issue.

And likely so it will be if everything goes to hell in a handbasket in the US...

If not "insurrection," what do you call the events of January 6th? — ZzzoneiroCosm

At worst, a riot. — NOS4A2

A sloppy self-defeating chaotic riot that the inept former President hoped somehow would get him turn obvious election result somehow to something else. An extremely Trumpian attempt (meaning a poor, clueless attempt) on a self coup. An organized attempt? Hardly organized...

(Which btw would have could have worked if Trump had a ruthless drive and leadership qualities. There was the "strategic surprise" to do something so outrageous. Even the crowds to celebrate such attack on democracy.)

But again, I don't see the relevance. The Fed does buy treasury bonds, yes. But they always have. — Xtrix

OK, let's concentrate first at the most important issue. The obvious question is the following: when is a central bank doing the basic thing which it has been created for and when is a central bank issuing money to pay for government expenses, printing money like in Zimbabwe?

This is an important thing to get clear...as obviously NO central bank will admit that they are financing government debt with money printing. Just as no central bank will ever admit that if there's an economic problem, they will pump up the competitiveness of the export sector by devaluating the currency. These two things are never admitted, but I hope you do understand that these things do happen. When looking at central bank statements, they will never admit this. But central banks providing money for governments for wars and stuff is a historical fact, which one cannot disagree with (and I think you agree with me on this).

So, the federal reserve owning US treasuries isn't itself a problem the US dollar plays a dominant role in the currency system, the US economy as being so big isn't export oriented hence there simply isn't a reason for the Federal Reserve to have it's assets in large foreign currency holdings. The old Finnish central bank (now part of the ECB) didn't have it assets just in Finnish government treasuries for obvious reasons.

Yet here is the obvious difference: if the central bank would just focus on monetary issues, there would be no need to expand the balance sheet of the bank rapidly. Now if there is a financial crisis and the threat of run on the banks, then naturally the central bank can take of the bad loans from the bank and reorganize the banking system to be more healthy. The bad loans are in option given to a "bad bank" that will look to minimize the losses (this option wasn't done in the US, but for example in the Nordic countries it was done so as not back then to tarnish the balance sheet of the various small central banks).

So let's look at that balance sheet of the Federal Reserve:



The 2008 financial crisis and it's aftermath can be seen here clearly. Before the balance sheet was small, because why not? There was trust in the system. Few years ago the Fed was on the path to decrease it's balance sheet afterwards, but then COVID-19 happened. The stock market tanked, but the came again the Fed to say the rich people. And then with COVID-19 it wasn't only the rich.

What effects this has for the stockmarket can be seen smartly from these to graphs shown together:


And then let's look in side to see what has made the Fed balance sheet to explode. We find it's the buying of US treasuries.



Now you might argue that the Fed just happened to come and swoop up US treasuries from the open market from participants holding treasuries. Not so. If so, there would be a decrease in the holdings of other holders as you can see here:



From above, you can see the Fed is a the largest buyer of the new debt.

That's not true. The biggest owner of treasuries is social security. The Fed owns a great deal. — Xtrix

Yes, biggest buyer but not (yet) biggest owner, so I stand corrected here. Thanks for the correction.

Ok, we should then look what it means when social security owns US treasuries. First a question: If I write check to myself for a 1 million dollars (saying the SSU will pay me 1 million dollars), am I more wealthy? No. If I put earn somehow 1 million and then write a check saying SSU will pay me 1 million dollars, that's just a reminder for myself I have the money. With the Social Security Trust fund one has to remember that it is basically an accounting thing, but that doesn't mean it's fiction. But the role is different.

I think the following explains article explains this well:

Social Security was designed primarily as a “pay-as-you-go” system. Instead of prefunded accounts for individuals, such as individual retirement accounts (IRAs), contributions from current workers have always paid for most of the benefits. For the most part, money going into the system each year almost immediately goes out to pay for benefits.

When Social Security’s receipts from payroll taxes and other sources exceed program costs, as when the baby boom generation dominated the workforce and had not yet started retiring on Social Security, excess funds purchased interest-bearing special-issue US Treasury bonds. In effect, the Social Security trust fund lent money to the general fund.

Where does the money go? When the non–Social Security part of government is running deficits, any Social Security surplus funds other government activities, reducing the size of the unified fund deficit. When the trust funds themselves run deficits, however, they add to these other non–Social Security deficits to produce an even larger unified fund deficit. Because these special-issue bonds are essentially both sold and held by the government, aren’t publicly traded like other financial assets, and represent IOUs from the government, some people believe that the trust funds are nothing more than an accounting fiction.

Another factor confuses the issue. Because the trust funds represent an asset to one side of government (the Social Security Administration) and a liability to another side of government (the general fund), some accounting presentations based essentially on cash flows make the effect of the trust funds on the budget look “neutral.” In fact, future obligations are also liabilities to be paid but are not counted in that trust fund ledger.

So, are the trust funds real? Yes. They have legal consequences for the Treasury and are backed by the full faith and credit of the federal government, just like other Treasury bonds. When the Social Security Administration redeems the bonds, the government has a legal obligation to pay the money back with interest, with no additional appropriation by Congress required.

The trust funds are not a free lunch for taxpayers. Money from the general fund used to repay debts to the trust funds cannot be used for other purposes, like building roads or providing for national defense. And as an additional outlay for the government, those general fund payments increase the Treasury’s need to borrow from the public, increasing federal deficits and adding burdens on future taxpayers.

For all the heat about whether the trust funds are “real,” the debate misses a larger issue: the long-term fiscal challenges posed by Social Security and Medicare are not caused by inadequate trust funds, which will be depleted after only a few years of drawdown, but to decades-long imbalances between promised benefits and the revenues required to fund those benefits.

Which takes us back to the fundamental question: the US is uncapable of doing anything else than deficit spending and now it's own central bank has had to buy a huge share of that new debt. Furthermore: nothing, absolutely nothing will happen before there is a huge crisis. The Republicans spent as there's no tomorrow (let's remember that it was Dick Cheney who said "deficits don't matter") and so do the Democrats. The Republicans just bitch about the issue when they are in opposition, and hence leftist people think I'm a Republican if even talk about the same issue.

The whole fucking system is built on these cards. It can blow up some day. And then we all have some expedient narrative fed to our tribe that it was the fault of the people in the other side of the political spectrum.

How long are you going to believe in monetarism? — Xtrix

Uhh... I do believe in economic history. Been a believer for a long time.

And btw it's not just monetarism, it's classical economics going back to Adam Smith. And basically what also Keynes says:

Keynes had noted in ‘A Tract’ that in all the Western countries from 1914 to 1920 the money supply had increased considerably leading to inflation. The case in Germany was the worst because the price level in 1923 was higher by 7,650 times of the price level in 1913. He called this an inflation a tax imposed by governments on society to avoid being declared bankrupt, the notion proposed by Adam Smith earlier. It also redistributes wealth in a manner injurious to savers, but beneficial to borrowers.

So these ideas just to be "monetarist" is wrong.

It most certainly was. They went through several rounds of QE, which at that point hadn't been done before. No one even knew what it was. — Xtrix

Oh like nobody knew who the "little green men" were that occupied Crimea. QE is just a fancy way to avoid terms like money printing or debt monetization.

Whatever "alphabet soup" of programs you're talking about, there is a difference: last March the Fed started buying corporate debt as well. — Xtrix

Alphabet soup refers to TAF, CPFF, TSLF, PDCF, etc. which you can read from The Alphabet Soup Explained: An Analysis of the Special Lending Facilities at the Federal Reserve . It's basically how QE rounds were implemented. And I think they have for a long time bought corporate debt and were directly involved in helping other entities than banks.

About the financial crisis of 2008-2009:

As expected, the data showed that the Fed loaned trillions of dollars to banks and other financial companies during the crisis. (The Fed says it hasn't lost any money on the loans, and the emergency lending programs are winding down.)

But the data also showed smaller loans to some companies that aren't usually associated with the workings of the Fed; companies like McDonald's, Harley Davidson, Verizon and Toyota.

These companies used an emergency program the Fed set up to keep a key financial market going in the teeth of the crisis -- commercial paper.

The commercial paper market is basically like a credit card for giant companies in every major industry; it's something they use every day to borrow money that they plan to pay back very soon.

During the crisis, when people were afraid that Wall Street would collapse, the commercial paper market basically shut down.

So when you have a banking crisis, give money to McDonalds.

The Fed is still propping up banks and corporations to this day. They're hostage to the banks, and are a backstop for them. — Xtrix

I'm not at all contradicting this!!! The financial crisis of 2008-2009 never went away. This is extremely important to understand just why the situation could be a bit sinister.

And contrary to your implication, inflation was predicted back in 2009 -- and never came. — Xtrix

I think we agree on this, so I'm not contradicting you. The whole thing basically propped up the speculative bubble from not bursting...which actually would be the way free markets would correct the situation, if there would be free markets. The banks didn't lend, people saved, stock market went down, that is what people saw as the deflation era.

It's gasoline that people mainly care about. — Xtrix

Yeah, do you remember that not long ago we had negative oil futures prices in the US? Tells how great the markets casino is in predicting the future.

I do admit that thanks to the covid pandemic lockdowns have created supply chain problems, but those really, just as with toilet paper or masks, do get solved. They do get fixed and do go away. As we agree, the financial crisis never went away and the stock market was boosted by monetary policy. And this is why this is far more serious than just supply chain problems or a temporary bout of inflation.

First of all, let's look at the forecasts and then the reality:

Here's a forecast done in 2014 how the next six years will be. Notice the idea of the financial crisis being a one off event and then it's back to "smooth sailing with moderate deficits".


In 2020 and this year the deficits to GDP were well over 10% last year over 3 trillion, I think somewhere 13% or so, hence they don't fit in the above graph. Now comes the crucial question:

Do you think this spending is totally abnormal and can be lowered? Or the economy will hugely improve? On the contrary. If the pandemic worsened the situation, the overall situation was already bleek.

The Fed has nothing to do with the fiscal policy of last year or this year. Nothing. — Xtrix

Isn't the actor who is the biggest buyer of US government debt a major player here? I think so. The Federal Reserve is already the biggest owner of Treasury debt. Not China.

The U.S. Federal Reserve has significantly ramped up its holdings of Treasury securities as part of a broader effort to counteract the economic impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Currently, the Federal Reserve holds more Treasury notes and bonds than ever before.

As of July 14, 2021, the Federal Reserve has a portfolio totaling $8.3 trillion in assets, an increase of about $3.6 trillion since March 18, 2020. Longer-term Treasury notes and bonds (excluding inflation-indexed securities) comprise nearly two-thirds of that expansion, with holdings of those two types of securities doubling from $2.2 trillion on March 18, 2020, to $4.5 trillion on July 14, 2021.

China owns about 1,0 trillion dollars of US treasury debt. The Fed, now a quadruple amount from that.

Yes, the Federal Reserve is the biggest player buying the debt. And is monetizing the debt, which can be said to be an important part of fiscal policy.

Not if you’re leading a country and should be avoiding contact with others, as your own government recommends. — NOS4A2

Actually, the government then didn't recommend avoiding contacts. We had just "opened up" and for those a) that have two vaccination shots and b) aren't in the group who have medical issues or c) are not old, partying was accepted. The government is just now (today) implementing (again) tough new measures.

(Nope, the outcry was that the foreign minister who she had met got a corona-positive result, yet she didn't have her phone with her where she got the text message about it (allegedly). Oooh, the horror!!! At least the opposition didn't cry for her removal from office, just had a great time seeing the prime minister in a mess of her own making.

it should be noted that Japan during WWII was more or less trying to do the same thing but at the time medical technology was too primitive to allow them to target specific ethnic groups. — dclements

Yes. Japan used biological weapons against Chinese during the war with the infamous unit 731. And killed Japanese soldiers also, but that naturally happens when you do something as stupid as use biological weapons.

Estimates of those who were killed by Unit 731 and its related programs range up to half a million people.

From this we come to the reason just why in the first place Russia, US and China (and others) have had bioweapon-programs: first and foremost to anticipate what the possible enemy can do. It's a devilish way how to justify one's own research something that is as a weapon utterly crazy.

So with the Youtube-video I would be extremely cautious or sceptical. It argues that the Chinese trying to make "racial targetting" bioweapons. This guy is a China-commentator and even if he has made some nice videos about ordinary life in China, but here he is talking about things where he obviously is a layman. But if you find other credible sources saying similar, I can change my mind. The conspiracy theory of COVID being a bioweapon put out there by China is so bizarre that likely it's used to discredit any talk of the lab leak hypothesis, which is a genuine possibility.

I remember there were earlier allegations made that South Africa was developing such "race-targetting" bioweapons. Well, the Apartheid-era South African "Project Coast" is now over and quite much literature is there about it and what little I have glossed over doesn't tell of anything as crazy as this. Blacks were targeted or planned to be targeted, but with bioweapons that would harm whites too.

They were retired. — NOS4A2

Of course. Only retired officers open their mouth ...and for a reason. Basically it's the Commander of the Joint Chiefs of Staff that speaks on behalf of the armed forces in this kind of issues. And he has had to make points that usually one doesn't make. Like mentioning that the armed forces is there to defend the constitution and doesn't pledge allegiance to any person (like you do).

At least In Finland your leader gets to go clubbing. — NOS4A2

Hey, if you're a 36-year old mom and your 4-year old daughter is with the grandparents at another city for the weekend, you go with your husband to parrrty!!!

Well, the Canadian army doesn't have to publicly state that it acknowledges the election results when there is an election. And Canadian politicians aren't calling your generals to ask them what they think of other politicians and then leaking the tapes into public.

But the generals finally get to the meat of the matter when they suggest odious state and military tactics to silence dissent and mutiny. — NOS4A2

Yeah.

That's called doing their job.

Like starting from the oath they take:

I, _____, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.

So why not be ready for anything that might happen? They're ready for zombie apocalypse, so why not go for other scenarios as well? Doesn't mean they will happen...just like CONOP 8888 is surely hypothetical.

BLM and the Good 'Ol Boys should just agree on a time and place in some dark alley and have at it and leave the rest of us alone. — Harry Hindu

That's what people thought in Weimar Germany, actually. Have the NSAPD brownshirts fight the Rotfrontkämpferbund of the Communist party, so they will everybody else alone. Didn't go that way.