Steve LeVine — Special Report: A new — unknown — world

The global elite has come to realize that the 70-year old power structure has collapsed.

Axios
Special Report: A new — unknown — world
Steve LeVine

See also

The main flaw with capitalism, critics here and elsewhere argue, is that nowhere is it practiced as it is meant to be: capitalism is supposed to be hellishly competitive; and, in addition to featuring an invisible hand, it's supposed to have a heart.Instead, say increasing numbers of critics, market power is concentrated across industries. In the U.S., four airlines control more than 65% of the market; in cellphone service, the top four have 80%; and in drug stores it's about 70%, according to "The Myth of Capitalism," a new book by Jonathan Tepper. This is not to mention the market power exerted by Big Tech.

As to empathy, the problem goes back to Adam Smith, the father of capitalism. Mainstream economists tend to ignore Smith's appeal to the better nature of the human race — for "following our conscience [and] ... promoting the happiness of mankind," according to the Adam Smith Institute.
The neglect of this dimension is a culprit in the grievances of the world's down-on-their-luck rust belts, coal towns, and factory centers.

"The way [capitalism] has been practiced has been corrosive to some of the conditions that made it an attractive system," Christopher Eisgruber, president of Princeton University, tells Axios. "The practice has undermined some of the cultural supports that made it successful."

The bottom line: "Large segments of society are excluded from the fruits of economic growth," said Adam Tooze, an economic historian at Columbia University. "And the corporate world is deeply worried about legitimacy."

Lose legitimacy and you are done, as President Macron is learning in the streets.

The elites running the capitalist system are at risk of losing control

Eric Zuesse — Vladimir Putin’s Basic Disagreement with The West

In summary, Putin advocates national sovereignty and opposes liberal internationalism and liberal interventionism based on as another form of imperialism. The West, the reverse.

More broadly, Russia is traditional while the West is liberal.

This basis of the broader conflict between the East and West, Global North and Global South. 

This conflict is dialectical.

The economic basis is capitalism versus socialism.

Both capitalism and socialism are internationalist.

This indicates that the historical dialectic at this point is about the determining the type of globalization in terms of ideological framework and political control.

Will the future be dominated by global capital or something else more along traditional lines.

The present from of capitalism is neoliberalism, which implies neo-imperialism and neocolonialism.

If this is not to become the dominant framework, what is?

I don't see Putin or anyone else very being clear on this. As a Russian Orthodox traditionalist and Westphalian nationalist, he seems to be looking backward rather than forward. 

The Chinese leadership has the most articulated and nuance alternative that combines elements of traditionalism, nationalism, globalism, socialism, and capitalism.

We probably won't know much about this until the fog of war clears and the dust begins to settle.

The Vineyard of the Saker
Vladimir Putin’s Basic Disagreement with The West
Eric Zuesse

See also

As US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin prepare to meet in Helsinki, all eyes are on what generally are regarded as the “usual” political issues that divide the world’s two foremost military powers: Ukraine, Syria, sanctions, claims of election interference, and so forth. This reflects the near-universal but erroneous view that this current, second Cold War is not ideological, as opposed to the first Cold War that pitted atheistic Soviet communism against America’s “in God we trust” capitalism. (Leave aside whether “capitalism,” an anarcho-socialist term popularized by Marxists, is the proper description of contemporary neoliberal corporatism.)…

Such a view totally dismisses the fact that following the demise of communism as a global power bloc there has been an eerie spiritual role reversal between East and West. While it’s true that during original Cold War the nonreligious ruling cliques in Washington and Moscow held basically compatible progressive values, ordinary Christian Americans (mainly Protestants, with a large number of Roman Catholics) perceived communism as a murderous, godless machine of oppression (think of the Knights of Columbus’ campaign to insert “under God” into the Pledge of Allegiance). Conversely, today it is western elites who rely upon an ideological imperative of “democracy” and “human rights” promotion to justify a materialist global empire and endless wars, much like the old Soviet nomenklatura depended on Marxism-Leninism both as a working methodology and as a justification for their prerogatives and privileges,. In that regard, promotion of nihilist, post-Christian morality – especially in sexual matters – has become a major item in the West’s toolkit.…

This has a special importance with regard to Russia, where under Putin the Orthodox Church has largely resumed its pre-1917 role as the moral anchor of society. This elicits not only political opposition but a genuine and heartfelt hatred from the postmodern elites of an increasingly post-Christian West, not only for Putin personally and Russia generally but against the Russian Orthodox Church – and by extension against Orthodox Christianity itself....

 The article is longish and somewhat detailed, but it relates to the Zuesse article posted above. Many Americans would likely regard it as somewhat arcane and irrelevant in today's world as they experience it. Well, wait for what's coming in the political tussle over the Donald Trump's nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the US Supreme Court.

These issues are already hot-buttons in the US. In the argument over what "religious freedom" means in the text, context and historical intent of the US Constitution, The liberal side argues it means freedom from religion and the traditionalist (conservative) side argues it means freedom to practice one's religion without government interference. Stay tuned.

Strategic Culture Foundation
The two-pronged attack on Orthodoxy and Russia

James George Jatras | Analyst, former U.S. diplomat and foreign policy adviser to the Senate GOP leadership

See also

More traditionalism vs. liberalism.

The fact that the Catholic Church is strong in Poland makes a difference, because it gives us a mental and spiritual access to ideas and sensibilities that have evaporated in the secular West.…

Is liberalism on a collision course with Christianity as well as Islam?

Zero Hedge
Polish Politician Warns Of Europe's "Degenerate Liberalism"
Tunku Varadarajan, originally published op-ed at The Wall Street Journal

See also

Zero Hedge
The End Is Near? Pope Decries Governments Turning Earth Into Vast Pile Of "Rubble, Deserts, & Refuse"

Tyler Durden

He Yafei — New world order is the inevitable trend

After decades of turbulence, the world order led by the United States has begun to change, with the 2008 global financial crisis possibly being the turning point and this year signaling a new beginning....

The changing world order is not about the decline of the U.S. but about the rise of other countries, as Fareed Zakaria, a CNN journalist and author of The Post-American World, said. Nevertheless, global governance is set to change from West-led governance to co-governance by the West and East, as the democratization of international relations is a wish shared by all countries.

A multipolar world order and globalization will be the highlights of the new era. Countries across the world are willing to compete and cooperate on the basis of fairness and justice, yet the deadlock between emerging powers and the established ones will continue for some time....

China Daily
New world order is the inevitable trend

He Yafei, is former Chinese vice-foreign minister and co-chairman of the Center for China and Globalization

Stephan Richter — The liberal international order: Just who shredded it?

Smackdown.

To see where we are — the United States needs to take a look at it's recent past.…

The truth is that it wasn’t Putin — or even Trump now — as much as George W. Bush and his reckless foreign policy cowboys — remember Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, all names that should live in infamy — who did most of the shredding of that liberal international order.

They committed acts of war that were clearly criminal in nature. Their only saving grace was — and is — that they have a U.S. passport.

Otherwise, they would all find themselves in the dock at the ICC in The Hague, where indeed they belong.…

Still, Obama did not break with his predecessor’s Bush league approach. Deliberately obscure mandates in Iraq simply changed topic, gone were the torture memos, in where drone strike memos.

Put yourself into the shoes of a Russian or Chinese policymaker for a moment – and ask any one of these four questions:

Salon
The liberal international order: Just who shredded it?
Stephan Richter | the publisher and editor-in-chief of The Globalist

Richard N. Haass — World Order 2.0

Richard N. Haass is president of the Council on Foreign Relations, the public face of the "Masters of the Universe." What he says about is therefore significant as the public agenda of the plutocrats and technocrats.

He begins with describing the old world order as that following the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, which made national sovereignty the priority. Haas asserts that this order is no longer appropriate for a globalizing world and the new world order needs to be founded on internationalism.

Guess who wants to write the rules for international obligations of states?

Haas bemoans that this view is antithetical to Donald Trump's America First policy.

Battle brewing.

Project Syndicate
World Order 2.0

Richard N. Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations

Patrik K. Meyer — Why China Thinks It Can Build a Utopian World Order

Welcome to Tianxia, the new world order.

Following in the steps of Chinese emperors, the Communist Party aspires to unite its peoples and the international community under the umbrella of a common world order. It envisions a united world governed by a global institution responsible for promoting a set of common values that are inclusive of all existing cultures and prevent any one of them from becoming dominant. This would result in “internal harmony within diversity,” where “individual interests are so interlocking and mutually constituted that anyone’s gain will always result in a gain for others.” Moreover, China argues that given the failure of Western approaches to global governance due to their cultural, religious and economically imperialistic tendencies, the Tianxia system offers the “best blueprint for world politics in the future.”

The National Interest.
Why China Thinks It Can Build a Utopian World Order
Patrik K. Meyer is a Visiting Professor at Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta and a New America Security Fellow

Sputnik — Beijing Blasts ‘American Aggression,’ Calls for Russia-China ‘New World Order’

As the United States and Europe embark on an increasingly hawkish policy towards China, Beijing has moved to welcome the formation of an alliance with Russia to counter NATO.

Speaking at the 95th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party last month, Xi Jinping delivered what Western analysts are calling an "incendiary speech" in which he called for a military union with Russia that would render NATO "powerless" and "put an end to the imperialist desires of the West."

The harsh statements come at a time when both Beijing and Moscow find themselves vulnerable to an increasingly hawkish US foreign policy that has resulted in a series of massive war games on both countries’ doorstep and the placement of missile shields in strategic quadrants to limit the ability of both Russia and China to defend themselves if conflict were ever to ensue.

"The world is on the verge of radical change," said the increasingly frustrated Chinese President. "We see how the European Union is gradually collapsing, as is the US economy – it is all over for the new world order."

Sputnik
Beijing Blasts ‘American Aggression,’ Calls for Russia-China ‘New World Order’

Pat Lang — My Will Be Done....

It's Obama.

Sic Semper Tyrannis
My Will Be Done....
Col. W. Patrick Lang, US Army (ret.), former military intelligence officer at the US Defense Intelligence Agency

Joschka Fischer — Welcome to the Twenty-First Century

Uncertainty on the brink of a shift in world order. This geopolitical shift will affect the global economy in ways that are as yet unclear.

Project Syndicate
Welcome to the Twenty-First Century

Joschka Fischer was German Foreign Minister and Vice Chancellor from 1998-2005

Dominique Moisi — Renovating the World Order

Professor Moisi is more optimistic than I am about the possibility of establishing a new world order. The problem is that presently there is no basis for a world order in agreed upon values and shared interests. Post WWI and especially post WWII, the West imposed its vision through superior power. This vision was not only narrow but also biased toward Western values and interests. That order is now breaking down, and there is no clear way forward. The result is widespread disunity and unrest, and even chaos in some places, the emergence of a new arms race and increasing danger of war.

Project Syndicate
Renovating the World Order

Dominique Moisi | Professor at L'Institut d’études politiques de Paris (Sciences Po), is Senior Adviser at the French Institute for International Affairs (IFRI) and a visiting professor at King’s College London

Moisi was a co-founder and is a senior advisor of the Paris-based Institut Français des Relations Internationales (IFRI), Pierre Keller Visiting Professor at Harvard University, and the chairholder for Geopolitics at the College of Europe, the oldest educational institution in European affairs, in Natolin.[2] He is also a Fellow at CEDEP, the European Centre for Executive Development. Moïsi regularly contributes op-ed articles and essays to the Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, the Project Syndicate as well as Die Welt and Der Standard. — Wikipedia

Akhilesh Pillalamarri — India Needs to Join Asia's Emerging 'Chinese Order'

A new Asian order is emerging and South Asia — including India — needs to be a part of it.

In the aftermath of the G20 and Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summits, it is becoming increasingly obvious that a new Asian order, complete with an economic architecture, has emerged. Whether this order is referred to as the “Pacific Age” or a New Silk Road or a pan-Eurasian system, all these terms refer to the same thing: a web of economic interdependence in Asia whose hub is the littoral around the East and South China seas, connecting China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia. This network of economic prosperity is increasingly being spread by Beijing westward to the rest of Eurasia in an initiative called the “New Silk Road.” Thus, it might not be inaccurate to write that the new Asian economic order can be described as described as the “Chinese Order” in which all roads lead to Zhongnanhai. This is because China’s economy and physical location constitute the hub that drives and connects the rest of Asia. 

Yet as China invests more than $40 billion in overland routes through Central Asia and Russia into Europe and maritime routes from Southeast Asia to the Middle East and Africa, there is one vital region in Asia that is at risk of missing out on joining this new Asian economic and infrastructure network. This region is South Asia, the region that perhaps needs to become part of this hub the most. This would better integrate South Asian countries with each other as well as with their neighbors in Southeast and East Asia. Economic integration within the region and with countries outside of the region is very low. This is despite the fact that China is both India and Pakistan’s largest trade partner (India and Pakistan hardly trade with each other). Most of this trade is one-sided and has not led to massive Chinese investment in infrastructure in either of these countries. South Asian integration into the Asian economic order would benefit all of the region’s countries and would especially help some of the poorest, like Nepal and Afghanistan.

Those who have been following my posts on geopolitics and geostrategy, especially about the world island the geographical pivot of history, will recognize that this is Zbigniew Brzezinski's worst nightmare coming true.

The Diplomat

India Needs to Join Asia's Emerging 'Chinese Order'
A new Asian order is emerging and South Asia — including India — needs to be a part of it.
Akhilesh Pillalamarri

Also

Can India Become the Next China?
Anthony Fensom

Based on OECD projections, the report predicts India outpacing rivals by growing at an average annual rate of 6.8 percent from 2018 to 2030 and 4.3 percent from 2031 to 2060, ahead of China’s 5.4 percent and 2.1 percent, respectively. 

“The demographics of India are more favorable than those of China as China’s labor force has already peaked. Conversely, India still has a young population and will grow at least through 2045 when the country is projected to be home to just under 1 billion workers…India will have 25 percent more workers than China by 2060 while China has 24 percent more today,” the report said. 

The report suggests the “demographic window” that has helped power economic development will close in China by 2020, remaining open in Indonesia until 2035, Malaysia until 2040 and not shutting in India until 2045. 

While China is expected to have a $30.6 trillion economy by 2030 compared to India’s $13.7 trillion, India’s growth is “poised to remain elevated for the foreseeable future, even as China’s economy slows.” Yet the report also cited challenges to the world’s most populous democracy, including its gridlocked lower house, compared to China’s “highly centralized and authoritarian government.”

Lee Jong-Wha — China’s New World Order

China – already the world’s largest exporter, manufacturer, and international-reserve-asset holder – is poised to overtake the United States as the world’s largest economy (measured according to purchasing power parity) this year. Now, it is using its growing clout to reshape global economic governance. Indeed, the country’s days of following Deng Xiaoping’s injunction to “hide brightness and cherish obscurity” are long gone.

Professor Lee brings up some obstacles China will face in bringing a new world order rebalanced to take account of the emerging world. What he omits is that the face of over whether neoliberalism will continue as the guiding force for globalization or some other ordering principle. Many emerging nations are losing faith in neoliberalism, especially after the GFC revealed the emperor to be less than fully clothed and the heavy-hand of US foreign policy has destabilized the Post WWII order.

Project Syndicate
China’s New World Order
Lee Jong-Wha | Professor of Economics and Director of the Asiatic Research Institute at Korea University, served as Chief Economist and Head of the Office of Regional Economic Integration at the Asian Development Bank and was a senior adviser for international economic affairs to former President Lee Myung-bak of South Korea

Danny Quah — Economics, Democracy, and the New World Order

It most likely isn't going to be neoliberalism.

Danny Quah — Making large things visible to the human eye
Economics, Democracy, and the New World OrderDanny Quah | Professor of Economics and International Development, and Kuwait Professor, LSE

Thomas H. Greco — Russia being squeezed by the New World Order

Even a casual observer of recent geopolitical history can see the pattern of encirclement, neutralization, and domination that has characterized western policies over the past several decades. It is clear that the consolidation of power and the imposition of the global fascist New World Order is all but complete and that all remaining obstacles must be removed, one way or another.

Beyond Money | Devoted to the liberation of money and credit, and the restoration of the commons

Russia being squeezed by the New World Order
Thomas H. Greco

Like I've been saying.

Zach Carter and Ryan Grim — Obama's EU Trade Deal Would Include New Political Powers For Corporations

The Obama administration is pursuing a free trade agreement with the European Union that would grant corporations new political power to challenge an array of regulations both at home and abroad, according to an administration official involved in the negotiations.

While the plan is still in its early stages, the effort alarms consumer and environmental advocates who worry it will lead to a rollback of important rules and put multinational companies on the same political plain as sovereign nations.

If states are unable to pass and enforce laws within their borders, it could change the nature of their community and government, nonprofit groups emphasize. Exactly how broad these corporate political powers will be is undetermined, but one aspect of the agreement, known as "investor-state dispute resolution," would allow a company to appeal a regulatory rule or law to an international court, most likely theWorld Bank. The international body would be given authority to impose economic sanctions against any country that violated its verdict, including the United States....

"The dirty little secret about [the negotiation] is that it is not mainly about trade, but rather would target for elimination the strongest consumer, health, safety, privacy, environmental and other public interest policies on either side of the Atlantic," said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch. "The starkest evidence ... is the plan for it to include the infamous investor-state system that empowers individual corporations and investors to skirt domestic courts and laws and drag signatory governments to foreign tribunals."

The Obama administration is also pursuing an aggressive investor-state resolution system under the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade deal with several Pacific nations.

The Huffington Post
Obama's EU Trade Deal Would Include New Political Powers For Corporations
Zach Carter and Ryan Grim

The New World Order conspiracy theory coming true with the US forfeiting sovereignty to transnational corporations and international orgs?

The real new world order emerging — from the global south

Reports on the premature death of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) have been greatly exaggerated. Western corporate media is flooded with such nonsense, perpetrated in this particular case by the head of Morgan Stanley Investment Management. 

Reality spells otherwise. The BRICS meet in Durban, South Africa, this Tuesday to, among other steps, create their own credit rating agency, sidelining the dictatorship - or at least "biased agendas", in New Delhi's diplomatic take - of the Moody's/Standard & Poor's variety. They will also further advance the idea of the BRICS Development Bank, with a seed capital of US$50 billion (only structural details need to be finalized), helping infrastructure and sustainable development projects.
Crucially, the US and the European Union won't have stakes in this Bank of the South - a concrete alternative, pushed especially by India and Brazil, to the Western-dominated World Bank and the Bretton Woods system....

The huge political and economic differences among BRICS members are self-evident. But as they evolve as a group, the point is not whether they should be protecting the global economy from the now non-stop crisis of advanced casino capitalism.

The point is that, beyond measures to facilitate mutual trade, their actions are indeed becoming increasingly political - as the BRICS not only deploy their economic clout but also take concrete steps leading towards a multipolar world. Brazil is particularly active in this regard.
Inevitably, the usual Atlanticist, Washington consensus fanatics - myopically - can see nothing else besides the BRICS "demanding more recognition from Western powers"....

According to the report, "for the first time in 150 years, the combined output of the developing world's three leading economies - Brazil, China and India - is about equal to the combined GDP of the long-standing industrial powers of the North".
The obvious conclusion is that, "the rise of the South is radically reshaping the world of the 21st century, with developing nations driving economic growth, lifting hundreds of millions of people from poverty, and propelling billions more into a new global middle class."

And bang in the middle of this process, we find an Eurasian epic; the development of the Russia-China strategic relationship....

When Putin stressed that he does not see the BRICS as a "geopolitical competitor" to the West, it was the clincher; the official denial that confirms it's true....

It goes without saying that Western elites - even mired in stagnation and bankruptcy - won't let any of their privileges go without a fierce fight.

Asia Times Online
BRICS go over the wall
Pepe Escobar

Benjamin Bidder — Cyprus Fallout: Moscow Accuses Euro Zone of Theft -- and Worse

The verdict of Russian state television on Europe's effort to save Cyprus was damning. The last week "will enter the history books of the EU as a destructive one," said Dmitry Kiselev, the presenter of the popular news program Vesti Nedili on the Rossiya channel.

Kiselev heaped criticism on the forced levy to be imposed on bank deposits in Cyprus. He said the last time a Western European government proceeded so recklessly was when Adolf Hitler expropriated the Jews.

Nazi propaganda at the time described the money held by Jewish people as "dirty," said Kiselev. That was precisely how Europe was talking about Russian assets deposited in Cyprus, he added.
"The new world order is being founded against Russia, at Russia's costs and on the rubble of Russia," said a Rossiya correspondent from the Mediterranean island nation.

Spiegel Online International
Cyprus Fallout: Moscow Accuses Euro Zone of Theft -- and Worse
Benjamin Bidder
(h/t Kevin Fathi via email)

Harsh. That's aimed as a shot across the bow of Germany, Russia's traditional foe. Ominous geopolitical sign. There will be payback.

David Becker — Trans Pacific Partnership: A new Constitution

Neoliberalism on steroids. This is what your president has planned for you and your children, those that survive the drones anyway. Creepy stuff being thought up and implemented by creeps.

I have excerpted the most salient points.

What struck me in Public Citizens review was that the system being setup as the arbiter of the trade agreement is following the US' fascination with "extra judicial" proceedings as a viable means of following the ideals of our Constitution. It's those same thought processes that gave us rendition, enhanced interrogation, military tribunals, unitary executive. You can't help but see our past 35 years of leadership in the realm of pioneering new concepts in equality, fairness, justice, and processes to achieve such.

Concepts of "free market", "invisible hand", and process of deregulation, economies of scale, etc. How else do you explain the use of rotating corporate tied lawyers as judges? Where is the separation of the judge and the plaintiff? This is right out of the current US play book on how to better your nation with the social institution known as "revolving door"?

You can see in this document the culmination of work performed over the last 40 years (yes Carter started the deregulation) by the conservative (internationally known as neoliberal) ideology merged with Milton Friedman's economics and Ayn Rand's objectivism. Dare I say, the TPP is to capitalism what our Constitution was to democracy?....

This document is the constitution of a new world order. It is an order that has been the dream of many for ages upon ages that until this time in humanity was not possible do to the limits of the technology of the time. This is the document of what I coined a few years ago as The United Corporations of Global. It is this aspect of the document that the people of the world should be most fearful of. It is not a trade agreement as I believe the common man (as in the court concept of the "common man") would think of the phrase "trade agreement". This is a constitution that is coming prepackaged with the rules and regulations already written. Only, there is no need for ratification to be a part of the creative process. This document comes pre-ratified in that all a nation has to do is say "I'm in"....

The documents greatest power is what I alluded to when I mentioned rendition, unitary executive, enhanced interrogation, military tribunals. Rationalization. This document codifies the use of rationalization as a viable thought process for achieving the advancement of humanity. It reinstates the fallibility of human thinking, turning on it's head the enlightenment age because this document believes it is of enlightened thought. It rationalizes as enlightenment the freeing of people to trade to the greatest level of monetary efficiency. Such a thought is putting a human creation ahead of humanity....

This is a document written by people who envision the world structured far differently than how we are taught to view our social organization based on the US Constitution and it's meaning to the world.... 

This document is not just about how nations will relate to each other, it also gives the same rights and privileges to individual investor entities as representative of a nation. Thus, keep in mind that anything you read here also means a rich person or a business entity is treated as if they are the nation. However, citizens are not at anytime mentioned as being a "party" of any type other than when it comes to citizens potentially creating a loss for a "party" or it's investor representative. In other words, "citizens" are at all times considered to have lesser status such that citizens have no claim to inalienable rights and the resultant rule of law. It is less than slavery for in this document, the only recognized covered entities are "party" which means a nation of signature and it's participants in the sector of said parties social interaction referred to as "investment".... 

...what we have here is an agreement that the investing entity is protected via insurance in the form of the host nation's taxing ability that becomes a mechanism for "encouraging" shall we say, a host nation to take measures to assure it's citizens remain compliant. This is the new social order.

This is the corporate model of relationships...

The further we go with implementing these types of agreements the further removed we are from the enlightenment concepts that resulted in a group of people writing prose such as our Constitution. You can forget about the ideal bound in our Declaration of Independence. And, the further we are moved toward the model of business organization as the dominate model for structuring a society. It is too accepted that the purpose of business is to make money. There is no longer any talk of "social responsibility" within today's business model. Business no longer is a means for creating wealth that society then puts to work in reducing life's risks. Business is simply about making money...stop. The declaration for the TTP would simply read: We hold this truth to be self-evident, the purpose of business is to make money.

Angry Bear
Trans Pacific Partnership: A new Constitution
Daniel Becker