Blog entry review of a book entitiled: The Lost Worlds of Ancient America: Compelling Evidence of Ancient Immigrants, Lost Technologies and Places of Power.
The book identifies some archeological evidence linking the Americas with other ancient civilizations throughout the world. The review here at the blog is written by a Dr. Joseph Maresca.
No links included to on-line documentation of any of the archeological finds, but if true, these finds would as Dr. Maresca suggests pose interesting dilemmas to many historians and believers of the mainstream view of world history.
Dr. Maresca provides some conjecture about the potential for ancient Egyptian or Roman sponsored expeditions to the Americas and suggests:
Practically speaking, the trip from Egypt to the Americas could traverse Libya, Algeria and Mauritania to Guinea Bissau. Ships would be required to cross the Atlantic to Fortaleza, Brazil - a distance of 1900 miles as the crow flies. The expedition would travel through Brazil into the Amazon Basin, Columbia and Central America. The next part would cross Panama, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico into Texas and then northward. Various estimates have been up to three to four years for an expedition of this magnitude in the Ancient Egyptian or even the Roman time frame. The Egyptians and the Romans had the funding resources and the political clout for a project of this magnitude.This is interesting to read as the context of Dr. Maresca's words here in bold suggest an exogenous nature of "money" or as he writes here "funding". As though in ancient Rome it was "taxpayer on the hook!"; as though Rome could not commission such an expedition unless it was fortunate enough to have access to some sort of external "funding resources". I could be mis-interpreting but I don't think so.
My opinion is quickly becoming that you can't get much of history correct (even some parts of theology correct imo) unless you understand state currency systems or so-called "money" to use the current imprecise vernacular term.
I'm not trying to unfairly criticize Dr. Maresca here, I'm sure he is supremely intelligent; but simply trying to draw attention to how pervasive is the misunderstanding of the true nature of state currency systems. It is amazing to continuously come across writing from within the paradigm of an exclusive nature of exogenous "money".
MMT is up against an extremely pervasive falsity.... extremely pervasive. One sees it everywhere.
interesting on both the book's ideas and your comments.
ReplyDeleteIndeed if you don't understand how money works in this world, then you really don't understand one of the main drivers of what makes this world go round. The void this misinformation creates is truly astounding. I mean when you consider how many ideas and possibilities have been rejected or discontinued or not even considered b/c of a lack of "money" or "funding" we start to very clearly see that THIS misunderstanding is the REAL output gap we are living under. As one sticker on my university professor's door stated, Ignorance is not bliss; it is expensive.
See how much power one word and world-outlook make. Just removing the word "funding" and understanding why it should be removed, would make all the difference in the world.
ReplyDeleteGood stuff Mario... "it is expensive" think of the opportunity costs we have been made to bear... bad news...
ReplyDeleteI would re-emphasize I dont fault Maresca here as this area (monetary economics) does not look like it is his area of focus within the academe...
Looks like he is caught up in the popular mis-perception of "govt as household" or "taxpayer on the hook" as many (probably most) are.
But this is inexcusable from the likes of a B Bernanke.
Prof Wray justly points this out in his recent post here:
http://www.economonitor.com/lrwray/2012/04/19/does-chairman-bernanke-know-squat-about-money/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=does-chairman-bernanke-know-squat-about-money
"But Ben Bernanke happens to be the flipping Chair of the Federal Reserve! And he’s a well-respected academic economist. Yet his apparent (mis)understanding of monetary economics is stuck in the simplest 19th century expositions."
The balance of the academe is being greatly misled by the current falsehoods created, dispensed and continuously re-enforced by those in the orthodox academe of economics.... they should revolt.
Resp,
Crake,
ReplyDeleteRight good one it would be "had the resources etc..."
Get's the focus back on the real vice "money"...
Resp,
The "Santa Prophesies".
ReplyDeleteThe whole world is invested in a myth, and telling them is like telling a 6-year-old the truth.
The difference is 6-year-old brains are accessible.
Matt, the problem is even worse than you may think.
ReplyDeleteOnce you remove the rather 'superficial semantic misunderstanding' problem you will get at a big and deeper problem: the 1:1 representation of money-to-wealth problem.
A lot (I would say most!) people, don't grasp the reality that there is no such thing as a 1 on 1 equivalence between finance system and production-resources.
It shakes their mind that money and debt 'can be created out of nothing' (which is exactly right DESPITE collaterization, because collaterals are always valued at prices which depend on circumstances, expectations and uncertainties; in the end the whole price system is based of FAITH, and this can be clearly seen when bubbles collapse)., so they must find a link between finance and the real economy, the contrary means that they basically have been deceived their whole life (which is sad, but true!).
This whole crisis is interesting because people is starting to wake up on the fact that financial fiction is nor a representation of real wealth neither production relations, but is more of a simple transmission mechanism and a social construct which can be used with control and power in mind.
That's why people favours the notion that money is created by governments (Ralph Musgrave reports on the Edinburgh banking conference, but still disconnects this function with governance and policy options and agrees with the propaganda of 'independent central banks and monetary policy' (institutions which sole creation purpose was everything but 'independent': to preserve the status quo in every banking crisis).
By doing this convoluted unconscious thought process they can deny both the subjective and social construct nature of finance (no 1:1 representation of physical production-resources) and the notion that money is an instrument which can be abused to exhort exorbitant privileges and impose awful conditions to others.
I would go further and argue that reality is harder to perceive the most educated and 'favoured' someone is social scale (unless the top wealth population, which totally get how it works), because they are the sector of the population whose stack is bigger when it comes to 'not understanding it' (mostly to their mental health and egos, because working hard for money your whole life while knowing you have been fooled by some people all your life, that most of your financial "wealth" is based on belief-systems, has deep emotional implications).
great stuff Leverage. Completely agreed. I really like your point about collateral and how that really does "work" ex-nihlio fashion. Love it.
ReplyDeleteAnd by the way....I am 99.99999% positive that Bernake KNOWS he is lying through his teeth. He is what I call one of the "smiling vipers" that are appear to be slithering all through powerful offices in our society these days. Thankfully the Universe is never mocked....
@Mario - while I'm not about to say you're wrong, but I see Bernanke as just a product of the neo-liberal system. He's primarily an academic who finds himself at the FED. He's a very powerful man there who arrived THINKING he knew how it all works. I would expect that most if not all the people who should be in the know at the FED are in the same boat. While the little peons who run the works can see the reality, they don't get the time of day to "correct" anyone in their logic.
ReplyDeleteMaybe I'm being too generous.
Lev,
ReplyDeleteGreat stuff man.
This phenom we are able to see here has to be (if nothing else and outside of open warfare) THE most powerful destructive human macro phenom in all history imo.
Ironically when we (humanity) now have THE most available to us in real terms....
Resp,
@adam I hear what you're saying but I think you are being to too generous, simply b/c of the 60 minutes interview BB did not too long ago where he explained how it all worked...but to which no one understood or got.
ReplyDeletePlus there's the Fed paper he wrote about before he was chair which Warren sites regularly.
Based upon this evidence is where I make my claim that he KNOWS. I'd be more than happy to bring that before "the Judge" and see how the claim fell as I think it's a legitimate stance to take based on the evidence.
@Matt
totally man. One day the 100th monkey will arise!!!! One day soon!!!