An economics, investment, trading and policy blog with a focus on Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). We seek the truth, avoid the mainstream and are virulently anti-neoliberalism.
I've been busy recently trying to get Windows 10 to work on my PC. It's been hell for two weeks now, but I will be back on form soon.
Yep, an article that I could have written, or Paul Craig Roberts. Washington is indeed a criminal outfit run by bandits and pirates stealing the world's resources disregarding their their propaganda about capitalism and competition because they would sooner steal another country's resources using their armies and mercenaries rather than compete in the markets.
Do you know, when we feared Hilary might get elected, it seemed to me that the US was saying to the world we will blow the whole planet up unless they, Russia and China, surrender. How crazy is that? The nuclear winter would have killed everyone on the planet. Then they would have introduced 'capitalism', and 'free markets', which would have been smokescreen for mass looting, and like vultures, there wouldn't have been anything left.
This was good, by Peter Koenig:
The venom and evil of our western society never stops to amaze me. How did we get here? The beginning may date back some 5000 years. But that’s a different story. We are living now, and have to eradicate this egocentric, blood-thirsty pathological greed society, greed economy, NOW – meaning now to spare as many lives as possible.
The Trump administration, or any of his predecessors, couldn’t give a hoot about democracy and human rights in any of the countries they want to dominate. Quite to the contrary, what they want is installing chaos to be able to exploit the country’s natural resources; and that is what they consistently do. In the case of Venezuela – the world’s richest nation in hydrocarbon reserves – the objective is to retake the riches and put them back to where they were before President Chavez took over in 1998, namely under firm control of US petrol giants.
What, like Washington-backed Saudi Arabia, Washington-backed Kuwait, Washington-backed UAE, Washington-backed Qatar etc? All of which, incidentally, are absolute monarchical dictatorships that export jihadi terrorism. And with Saudi Arabia as the key swing producer, with or without the other Washington-backed dictatorships following the Saudi lead, the price of oil is set by Washington's most important client state. Simply, the price is where Washington wants it to be.
The money gets recycled through Wall Street and the huge Washington-linked nexus of "defence" companies, the dictatorships stay in place and spread their demented jihad. All the key players are happy, which is terribly gratifying. Like Washington's support for jihadi terror groups and jihadi terror states, this is just about the world's worst secret. Everyone knows it and everyone knows how the mechanism works, and for good reason - the Washington admits it. Declassified documents explain it all quite well.
It doesn't matter that some of the OPEC countries aren't particularly overwhelmed by what OPEC as a cartel does, since the key producer will essentially set the price and everyone else will pretty much have to fall in line. Anyway, what kind of independent bogeyman cartel is this exactly, when Saudi Arabia can undermine all the combined members if and when it chooses? The more independent-minded OPEC members have slowly been taken apart by Washington: Iraq has been militarily destroyed, while Iran and Venezuela have had their economies destroyed by Saudi Arabia. Even when the Saudi jihadi terror state incinerated three thousand New Yorkers, Washington can be counted on to side with the moneyed jihadis. Meanwhile Trump thinks he's some sort of economic genius by signing gigantic arms deals with the Saudis. I don't suppose even three million incinerated New Yorkers would move Washington to rethink its policy. Certainly not Trump, who is, as he never tires of telling us, all about the money.
Not on the world market it's not. It may be marginal in the US at best, and that's only with extremely favourable "market" conditions. Shale may well have a great future, but that's only if Washington gets behind it, rather than the jihadi petrostates it keeps in power . In any case, by the time shale and other similar energy sources become more viable, many major US cities and quite a bit of the world will be under water.
Matt: "Venezuela foreign reserves are below $15b now so these sanctions are to prevent somebody from doing something stupid/corrupt..."
By that logic, when the jihadi terror states rake up staggering foreign reserves it's because they're NOT "stupid/corrupt". Stupidity is a judgement call depending on what the subjects aims are. Corruption is pretty clear cut, and the jihadi terror petrostates are as corrupt and depraved as they come, which is how Washington likes its client states. Washington's deadly sanctions are placed on democratic Venezuela, not the jihadi exporting petrostates. So the argument that the saints in Washington do what they do in order to minimise corruption is a fantasy.
If you are running the oil scam the ONE thing you have to do before you rob out all of the munnie is to make sure the material competent people who are the ones making sure the flow continues are getting paid VERY well or they will leave and then you don't have shit ....
The Saudis understand this the Venezuela leftists are too stupid/corrupt to figure this one out...
The oil in SA is controlled by the royals that effectively own it. The US arms the royals to ensure that they stay in control. There is an insurgency going on in SA right now.
The oil in Venezuela was owned by the elite and foreigners until Chavez nationalized it. Since then the elite and foreigners involved have been trying assiduously to reverse this to the point of conducting a coup against Chavez that subsequently failed.
It's true that the Chavez and Maduro governments have been economically incompetent but so are most all other governments in the world. But most government are not under attack by the US elite and the levers of power they control.
Laying all the blame on the Maduro government is myopic when a lot of other factors were involved.
I fail to see the analogy. The gonzo journalists, including Taibbi, were quite accurate in their reporting, at least from a point of view of the victims, like George Carlin. These people are popular because 1) a lot of people resonate with they they say, and 2) they are funny.
The real question, which very few people are willing to answer honestly, is, why Venezuela, and why not Saudi Arabia and the rest of the putrid jihadi exporting petrostates?
To imagine that the jihadi petrostates are economically competent is surreal. A few ruling families have stolen the vast wealth of these countries, although if they were willing to abandon the pricing of oil in dollars, stop the recycling through Wall Street and propping up the Washington-nexus of aerospace and armaments, it wouldn't take more than a nanosecond for them to get the treatment the empire has meted out to Venezuela, a country far superior in every regard to the jihadi petrostates Washington so admires.
Because SA is better aware of their own limitations... and adjusts their policy to compensate for this so the wells and refineries still function well even here at $45...
They make sure the key talent is well taken care of and doesn't leave...
Matt, all you mean is that the jihadi terror petrostates do what they're told by the bosses in Washington, and Venezuela, Iran and Russia don't.
The jihadi terror petrostates murder hundreds of thousands across the Muslim world, murder thousands in the US, hundreds in the UK etc while Venezuela, Iran and Russia have never hurt a hair on our heads, yet they're the ones who need to be brought into line.
Matt: "Because SA is better aware of their own limitations..."
That's because without the backing of the organised crime syndicate, otherwise known as Washington, they'd have been overthrown by their own people. What, you think the hundreds of billions of dollars of weapons sales authorised by Washington is to protect poor, little Saudi Arabia from an invasion by Kuwait, Jordan, UAE, Oman or Qatar? Perhaps Eritrea's non-existent navy will take Saudi Arabia by surprise?
You know full well what Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states are: they're jihadi terror petrostates run by Mafia-style families who are totally dependent and thus take orders from the boss in Washington. The question is, why does Washington prop up the most disgusting regimes in the world, especially after 9/11? The White House, Pentagon's and State Department's declassified documents spell it out clearly. Control of oil is a lever of control over the rest of the world. That isn't my opinion; it's THEIR opinion. Why would they say such a thing? Could it be that it's true?
And I have absolutely no idea why you seem to think oil is priced like the market for soap at your local store. There is no market involved: the price is whatever Washington decides Saudi Arabia and the other client petrostates should set it. If you have an issue with the price of oil, you should write to your congressman, who, if he or she knows anything at all about the sordid world of international energy, will say nothing, or will more likely instead mouth staggering stupidities like America is a shining city on a hill. Move along, nothing to see here...just don't forget to buy a flag lapel pin, the sign of a true patriot...
^This. And Matt, when I was in Saudi Arabia you couldn't find toilet paper in their public holes in the ground. Only in the lebanese staffed hotels and the western medical facilities and western residential confine/ compounds...
All you guys are saying is that it is a scam cartel... no shit!
I'm not the brain dead libertarian moron going all around saying "free market!" meanwhile a fing cartel is openly seeking to control the whole worlds most important transportation fuel supply.... f all of them ...
We're moving away from petroleum and towards regulated electric anyway so all of this should start to go away...
All of these petro states are circling the toilet bowl ...
when I was in Saudi Arabia you couldn't find toilet paper in their public holes in the ground. Only in the lebanese staffed hotels and the western medical facilities and western residential confine/ compounds...
SA is a Wahhabi state that follows the fundamentalist view of Islam. Use of toilet paper is haram — forbidden.
Matt: "All you guys are saying is that it is a scam cartel... no shit! I'm not the brain dead libertarian moron going all around saying "free market!" meanwhile a fing cartel is openly seeking to control the whole worlds most important transportation fuel supply.... f all of them ..."
While I agree with the sentiment, you're not addressing the real issue of how this cartel in fact operates. It's not a cartel in the traditional sense of protecting the interests of its members against everybody else, given that many of the members are reliant for their existence on an outside power. When the head of the cartel, Washington, isn't even a member but uses its client states to push the oil price where it wants, then that's a cartel of a different kind. The Warsaw Pact was a member organisation in name only. Everyone knew the Soviet Union called the shots. Similarly, with Nato. Who genuinely believes that the Nato members are in a position to do or say anything to challenge the US? It's no different with OPEC, although in OPEC's case the most important force, Washington, isn't even a member.
Matt, you may well be right about the future of the petrostates. The future isn't looking too bright, but once there is an alternative energy to fossil fuels, Washington loses two of the three levers of control on everybody else. First, the price of energy can't be used against advanced competitors, namely China, Europe and Japan. Second, the dollar standard crumbles, and with it Washington's ability to enforce sanctions, close accounts and close markets. I get tired of saying it, and many Americans must surely know this, but Washington is not America. Washington's imperial rentier grip is not only on the rest of the world but America too, shattering countries abroad and whole cities and states at home. Destroying Washington's imperial power will be good for all.
Tom: "SA is a Wahhabi state that follows the fundamentalist view of Islam. Use of toilet paper is haram — forbidden."
Wahhabis are extraordinarily demented. What's the reasoning for making toilet paper "haram"? There is none, and that's why every Muslim other than the cuckoo Wahhabis is happy to use toilet paper. Anyway, there is a famous law in the Quran, the alleged holy book that no Muslim I've ever met has read, which states that it is forbidden/haram to forbid/haram what is explicitly not forbidden/haram, and that those who do will burn in hell. Moreover, that creating a priesthood is forbidden/haram, and that following priests is also forbidden/haram. Those who claim that there isn't a priesthood in Islam of any shade you care to name is living in a parallel universe.
I found the Quran to be unduly mystical, and so beyond my comprehension, not to mention the intentional mistranslations in order to push the wacky hadith literature (the alleged narratives of the prophet, but written centuries after his death),but otherwise diametrically opposed to the religion called Islam. But then, that's no different to my experience with the Christianity (Anglicanism) I grew up with. Try reconciling Anglicanism, or indeed any other Christian sect, with the gospels! It can't be done. More to the point, early Christianity is an altogether different religion to the ones we see today.
19 comments:
That was awesome, Tom.
I've been busy recently trying to get Windows 10 to work on my PC. It's been hell for two weeks now, but I will be back on form soon.
Yep, an article that I could have written, or Paul Craig Roberts. Washington is indeed a criminal outfit run by bandits and pirates stealing the world's resources disregarding their their propaganda about capitalism and competition because they would sooner steal another country's resources using their armies and mercenaries rather than compete in the markets.
Do you know, when we feared Hilary might get elected, it seemed to me that the US was saying to the world we will blow the whole planet up unless they, Russia and China, surrender. How crazy is that? The nuclear winter would have killed everyone on the planet. Then they would have introduced 'capitalism', and 'free markets', which would have been smokescreen for mass looting, and like vultures, there wouldn't have been anything left.
This was good, by Peter Koenig:
The venom and evil of our western society never stops to amaze me. How did we get here? The beginning may date back some 5000 years. But that’s a different story. We are living now, and have to eradicate this egocentric, blood-thirsty pathological greed society, greed economy, NOW – meaning now to spare as many lives as possible.
The Trump administration, or any of his predecessors, couldn’t give a hoot about democracy and human rights in any of the countries they want to dominate. Quite to the contrary, what they want is installing chaos to be able to exploit the country’s natural resources; and that is what they consistently do. In the case of Venezuela – the world’s richest nation in hydrocarbon reserves – the objective is to retake the riches and put them back to where they were before President Chavez took over in 1998, namely under firm control of US petrol giants.
Venezuela will never tolerate this
"Dear Mr. President Maduro,
You have the overwhelming support of the peoples of the world"
Maybe.... but he doesn't have toilet paper... these OPEC m-fers can eat shit for another 7 years...
Matt: "OPEC m-fers..."
What, like Washington-backed Saudi Arabia, Washington-backed Kuwait, Washington-backed UAE, Washington-backed Qatar etc? All of which, incidentally, are absolute monarchical dictatorships that export jihadi terrorism. And with Saudi Arabia as the key swing producer, with or without the other Washington-backed dictatorships following the Saudi lead, the price of oil is set by Washington's most important client state. Simply, the price is where Washington wants it to be.
The money gets recycled through Wall Street and the huge Washington-linked nexus of "defence" companies, the dictatorships stay in place and spread their demented jihad. All the key players are happy, which is terribly gratifying. Like Washington's support for jihadi terror groups and jihadi terror states, this is just about the world's worst secret. Everyone knows it and everyone knows how the mechanism works, and for good reason - the Washington admits it. Declassified documents explain it all quite well.
It doesn't matter that some of the OPEC countries aren't particularly overwhelmed by what OPEC as a cartel does, since the key producer will essentially set the price and everyone else will pretty much have to fall in line. Anyway, what kind of independent bogeyman cartel is this exactly, when Saudi Arabia can undermine all the combined members if and when it chooses? The more independent-minded OPEC members have slowly been taken apart by Washington: Iraq has been militarily destroyed, while Iran and Venezuela have had their economies destroyed by Saudi Arabia. Even when the Saudi jihadi terror state incinerated three thousand New Yorkers, Washington can be counted on to side with the moneyed jihadis. Meanwhile Trump thinks he's some sort of economic genius by signing gigantic arms deals with the Saudis. I don't suppose even three million incinerated New Yorkers would move Washington to rethink its policy. Certainly not Trump, who is, as he never tires of telling us, all about the money.
Shale is the new "swing producer"...
Venezuela foreign reserves are below $15b now so these sanctions are to prevent somebody from doing something stupid/corrupt...
Matt: Shale is the new "swing producer"...
Not on the world market it's not. It may be marginal in the US at best, and that's only with extremely favourable "market" conditions. Shale may well have a great future, but that's only if Washington gets behind it, rather than the jihadi petrostates it keeps in power . In any case, by the time shale and other similar energy sources become more viable, many major US cities and quite a bit of the world will be under water.
Matt: "Venezuela foreign reserves are below $15b now so these sanctions are to prevent somebody from doing something stupid/corrupt..."
By that logic, when the jihadi terror states rake up staggering foreign reserves it's because they're NOT "stupid/corrupt". Stupidity is a judgement call depending on what the subjects aims are. Corruption is pretty clear cut, and the jihadi terror petrostates are as corrupt and depraved as they come, which is how Washington likes its client states. Washington's deadly sanctions are placed on democratic Venezuela, not the jihadi exporting petrostates. So the argument that the saints in Washington do what they do in order to minimise corruption is a fantasy.
Washington and its ruling elite are entirely evil and maybe possibly barking mad, like Caligula. The world has had to put up with this a long while.
John,
If you are running the oil scam the ONE thing you have to do before you rob out all of the munnie is to make sure the material competent people who are the ones making sure the flow continues are getting paid VERY well or they will leave and then you don't have shit ....
The Saudis understand this the Venezuela leftists are too stupid/corrupt to figure this one out...
The oil in SA is controlled by the royals that effectively own it. The US arms the royals to ensure that they stay in control. There is an insurgency going on in SA right now.
The oil in Venezuela was owned by the elite and foreigners until Chavez nationalized it. Since then the elite and foreigners involved have been trying assiduously to reverse this to the point of conducting a coup against Chavez that subsequently failed.
It's true that the Chavez and Maduro governments have been economically incompetent but so are most all other governments in the world. But most government are not under attack by the US elite and the levers of power they control.
Laying all the blame on the Maduro government is myopic when a lot of other factors were involved.
I fail to see the analogy. The gonzo journalists, including Taibbi, were quite accurate in their reporting, at least from a point of view of the victims, like George Carlin. These people are popular because 1) a lot of people resonate with they they say, and 2) they are funny.
Tom, well said.
The real question, which very few people are willing to answer honestly, is, why Venezuela, and why not Saudi Arabia and the rest of the putrid jihadi exporting petrostates?
To imagine that the jihadi petrostates are economically competent is surreal. A few ruling families have stolen the vast wealth of these countries, although if they were willing to abandon the pricing of oil in dollars, stop the recycling through Wall Street and propping up the Washington-nexus of aerospace and armaments, it wouldn't take more than a nanosecond for them to get the treatment the empire has meted out to Venezuela, a country far superior in every regard to the jihadi petrostates Washington so admires.
"why Venezuela, and why not Saudi Arabia"
Because SA is better aware of their own limitations... and adjusts their policy to compensate for this so the wells and refineries still function well even here at $45...
They make sure the key talent is well taken care of and doesn't leave...
And they don't renege like Venezuela and Russia...
Cost of oil production by country
Matt, all you mean is that the jihadi terror petrostates do what they're told by the bosses in Washington, and Venezuela, Iran and Russia don't.
The jihadi terror petrostates murder hundreds of thousands across the Muslim world, murder thousands in the US, hundreds in the UK etc while Venezuela, Iran and Russia have never hurt a hair on our heads, yet they're the ones who need to be brought into line.
Matt: "Because SA is better aware of their own limitations..."
That's because without the backing of the organised crime syndicate, otherwise known as Washington, they'd have been overthrown by their own people. What, you think the hundreds of billions of dollars of weapons sales authorised by Washington is to protect poor, little Saudi Arabia from an invasion by Kuwait, Jordan, UAE, Oman or Qatar? Perhaps Eritrea's non-existent navy will take Saudi Arabia by surprise?
You know full well what Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states are: they're jihadi terror petrostates run by Mafia-style families who are totally dependent and thus take orders from the boss in Washington. The question is, why does Washington prop up the most disgusting regimes in the world, especially after 9/11? The White House, Pentagon's and State Department's declassified documents spell it out clearly. Control of oil is a lever of control over the rest of the world. That isn't my opinion; it's THEIR opinion. Why would they say such a thing? Could it be that it's true?
And I have absolutely no idea why you seem to think oil is priced like the market for soap at your local store. There is no market involved: the price is whatever Washington decides Saudi Arabia and the other client petrostates should set it. If you have an issue with the price of oil, you should write to your congressman, who, if he or she knows anything at all about the sordid world of international energy, will say nothing, or will more likely instead mouth staggering stupidities like America is a shining city on a hill. Move along, nothing to see here...just don't forget to buy a flag lapel pin, the sign of a true patriot...
^This. And Matt, when I was in Saudi Arabia you couldn't find toilet paper in their public holes in the ground. Only in the lebanese staffed hotels and the western medical facilities and western residential confine/ compounds...
All you guys are saying is that it is a scam cartel... no shit!
I'm not the brain dead libertarian moron going all around saying "free market!" meanwhile a fing cartel is openly seeking to control the whole worlds most important transportation fuel supply.... f all of them ...
We're moving away from petroleum and towards regulated electric anyway so all of this should start to go away...
All of these petro states are circling the toilet bowl ...
when I was in Saudi Arabia you couldn't find toilet paper in their public holes in the ground. Only in the lebanese staffed hotels and the western medical facilities and western residential confine/ compounds...
SA is a Wahhabi state that follows the fundamentalist view of Islam. Use of toilet paper is haram — forbidden.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_toilet_etiquette
Use of toilet paper is both a cultural thing and a personal choice, cultural in some areas and let to personal choice in others.
Matt: "All you guys are saying is that it is a scam cartel... no shit! I'm not the brain dead libertarian moron going all around saying "free market!" meanwhile a fing cartel is openly seeking to control the whole worlds most important transportation fuel supply.... f all of them ..."
While I agree with the sentiment, you're not addressing the real issue of how this cartel in fact operates. It's not a cartel in the traditional sense of protecting the interests of its members against everybody else, given that many of the members are reliant for their existence on an outside power. When the head of the cartel, Washington, isn't even a member but uses its client states to push the oil price where it wants, then that's a cartel of a different kind. The Warsaw Pact was a member organisation in name only. Everyone knew the Soviet Union called the shots. Similarly, with Nato. Who genuinely believes that the Nato members are in a position to do or say anything to challenge the US? It's no different with OPEC, although in OPEC's case the most important force, Washington, isn't even a member.
Matt, you may well be right about the future of the petrostates. The future isn't looking too bright, but once there is an alternative energy to fossil fuels, Washington loses two of the three levers of control on everybody else. First, the price of energy can't be used against advanced competitors, namely China, Europe and Japan. Second, the dollar standard crumbles, and with it Washington's ability to enforce sanctions, close accounts and close markets. I get tired of saying it, and many Americans must surely know this, but Washington is not America. Washington's imperial rentier grip is not only on the rest of the world but America too, shattering countries abroad and whole cities and states at home. Destroying Washington's imperial power will be good for all.
Tom: "SA is a Wahhabi state that follows the fundamentalist view of Islam. Use of toilet paper is haram — forbidden."
Wahhabis are extraordinarily demented. What's the reasoning for making toilet paper "haram"? There is none, and that's why every Muslim other than the cuckoo Wahhabis is happy to use toilet paper. Anyway, there is a famous law in the Quran, the alleged holy book that no Muslim I've ever met has read, which states that it is forbidden/haram to forbid/haram what is explicitly not forbidden/haram, and that those who do will burn in hell. Moreover, that creating a priesthood is forbidden/haram, and that following priests is also forbidden/haram. Those who claim that there isn't a priesthood in Islam of any shade you care to name is living in a parallel universe.
I found the Quran to be unduly mystical, and so beyond my comprehension, not to mention the intentional mistranslations in order to push the wacky hadith literature (the alleged narratives of the prophet, but written centuries after his death),but otherwise diametrically opposed to the religion called Islam. But then, that's no different to my experience with the Christianity (Anglicanism) I grew up with. Try reconciling Anglicanism, or indeed any other Christian sect, with the gospels! It can't be done. More to the point, early Christianity is an altogether different religion to the ones we see today.
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