Translation For J&J Sixpack: "No, Really. You're Better Off If You Let Us Rich Control Frauds Own Everything. Trust Us. YOU Don't Know How To Manage Your Country Anyway."

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)

I just received this brazen propaganda by email. It's so breathtakingly revealing that it's worth sharing, with in-line commentary. It's also nearly too cruel and mean to observe, without coming to tears. These people don't seem to think that J&J Sixpack are very intelligent. Where do we find obsessive, compulsive "advisors" like this? Under a crock?

Michael Likosky via cmail2.com
to rge 

I want to pass along a quick update and a piece that I just published in the NY Times (see below). 

A China-led Infrastructure Bank is being created to promote private investment by Europeans and others into the Asia region.
The type of thing that we've been doing globally for a couple decades.
Those private investments have produced pretty good results, lots of quality infrastructure and many countries now giving us a run for our money as a result. Investors have gotten good returns as a result of the successes of these competitors.

While a lot of exciting stuff is happening right now at home - I will send a note on that soon - we are still having trouble figuring out whether to let private investors get some of our infrastructure built. Is American infrastructure a good investment for our pension funds, or is the future of Asia a better bet.
I include here a piece that I just published in the New York Times, related.
(clipped in below my signature)
More soon on progress happening.
- Michael

[RGE: Smooth, sweet, soothing ... just like strychnine-laced saccharine. :(  Since we trusted them on tax policy, why not trust them on ownership of The Commons too? ps: Michael somehow forgot to include this old image.]  

 So of course:

Taxpayers Benefit If Investors Absorb Risks of Infrastructure Projects

[RGE: Come again? Wow! If anyone believes this, I've got some Medieval Futility in the Dark Ages to sell to them. What's that old quote about the bigger the lie, the easier it is to get the naive to swallow? This is a double-blind test, America. Just how naive ARE you? And please note that an invisible government doesn't require an outright conspiracy. An expanding lobby of avaricious fools can easily lead a trusting aggregate astray, purely by blind drift alone. Speaking of which .... ]

Michael Likosky is the co-head of infrastructure at 32 Advisors. 

Few would dispute that America faces an infrastructure crisis as cities, states and the nation remain cash-strapped. Just look at the pending transportation bill, which would vastly underfund our needs, to see how low a priority infrastructure is in Washington. 

[RGE: Ooh, he's good! Note the classic propaganda technique. Baldly mingle an obvious truth linked directly to the biggest lie, and all IN THE OPENING SENTENCE! Then the reader is half accomplice, and playing his own devils advocate, as the price for reading the rest of the bullshit. Once they continue past the 1st line, the rest is downhill for the reader. Who knew that "32 Advisors" was a euphemism for "30 pieces of silver?"]

But investors see opportunities to finance the difference between what we need and what we can afford to pay by, say, upgrading a port and being repaid by fees from shippers. 

This is distinct from traditionally financed projects in that the investor can only recoup costs, and profit, as long as the port performs well. And the investor would only pay contractors when the job is done to spec. The contractor would have to cover any cost overruns themselves, rather than going back to the government for pay to complete a project. Ultimately, the private investor, not taxpayers, would bear the risk of poor performance or unexpected delays.
America's infrastructure needs vary greatly from project to project. Different investors have grown up to finance distinct needs. Private investment can present a genuine opportunity for governments and communities as long as both sides are attuned to the needs and requirements of the other and the right match is made. 

Some want only mature infrastructure assets that they can fix up and sell. Some pursue high risk/high return projects in which they will get paid only if their projections are realized and, if not, the government gets a cost-free project. A pension fund, for instance, might be willing to build a project from scratch even if they don't realize their return for a number of years. Other investors may agree to invest in infrastructure unable to be supported from user fees such as structurally deficient bridges, in exchange for regular payments from government over a period of time. 

Solving our infrastructure crisis can be as much about politics as about money, though. Labor groups might be wary of privately financed projects that pay lower wages than the ones several generations of workers have fought to gain. Rural communities might want water, but not if investors demand a high rate of return. 

But is being locked in a fight with no winner worth being passed over for investment that supports our economic competitiveness, growth and basic health? We do not simply need more money in the system, but more targeted investment opportunities where the key stakeholders, including financiers, are also willing to think innovatively and work through challenges that often derail projects.



BIO
Michael Likosky is the co-Head of Infrastructure at 32 Advisors. He has over fifteen years of experience providing advice to many of our nation's leaders and acting as an expert in infrastructure and public and private partnerships. 

Likosky holds a JD and DPhil (Oxford Law). He is an expert on infrastructure, oil and gas, mining, free zones, human rights, foreign investment, and high technology growth strategies. He has published five books in these areas including three with Cambridge University Press. His most recent book, Obama's Bank: Financing a Durable New Deal, looks at the Obama Administration's approach to public-private partnerships. His other books are: Law, Infrastructure and Human Rights; Privatizing Development; Transnational Legal Processes; and The Silicon Empire. 

Likosky is an Expert to the Clinton Global Initiative, the OECD, and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. He co-chaired California Governor Edmund Brown Jr's Task Force to Modernize the CA Infrastructure and Economic Development Bank, the country's oldest infrastructure bank with over thirty-two billion dollars lent out to-date. Likosky is a regular contributor to the World Investment Reports, Oxford Amnesty Lectures, and Trade and Development Report. 

Likosky's work has been supported by Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Arts and Humanities Research Board, Surdna Foundation, Markle Foundation, Chatham House, and others. 

He advises public officials, private investors, pension plans, and inter-governmental organizations. Likosky has advised US Treasury; US Senators John Kerry (then), Charles Schumer, Kirsten Gillibrand, Cory Booker and Bill Nelson; US Representative Rosa De Lauro; California Governor Edmund Brown Jr.; New York State Empire State Development Corporation; CA Business Transportation and Housing Agency; CA State Infrastructure and Economic Development Bank; the cities of Chicago and Newark; D. E. Shaw; Deutsche Bank; Credit Suisse, McKinsey; Goldman Sachs; Standard and Poor's; broadcasters (ABC, CBS, NBC, ESPN), International Development Law Organization; the capital stewardship programs of SEIU, AFT, UFCW, and LiUNA, and others. 

He has published opinion pieces and appeared in outlets such as New York Times, New York Times Deal Book, Wall Street Journal, CNN Money, Bloomberg, Associated Press, Reuters, Bond Buyer, American Banker, Institutional Investing in Infrastructure, Infrastructure Journal, PPP Bulletin, Engineering News-Record, Africa Investor, and elsewhere. 

Likosky has delivered keynote and featured talks to Project Finance International (Master Class), Bond Buyer's Annual Transportation P3 event, American Society of Civil Engineers, the US Chamber of Commerce; State Chief Financial Officers Roundtable, Oxford Law, Harvard Law School, Columbia Law School, Max Planck-Halle, and elsewhere. 

He founded and directed NYU's Center on Law and Public Finance and was a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Public Knowledge, was Professor of International Economic Law at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and has held fellowships and visiting posts at Oxford Law, NYU Law, Fordham Law, Wisconsin Law, and the University of Bonn. 

Since 2008, Likosky has convened the Reinvesting in America Series often in partnership with OECD, Partnership for NYC, Clinton Global Initiative, Citizens Budget Commission, Debevoise & Plimpton, Shearman Sterling, British Telecom, and Hogan Lovells. It features members of Congress; public officials from US Treasury, Defense, Transportation and Commerce; as well as state officials. The series includes small off-the-record discussions and large public events. It alternates between New York and Washington DC.

Damn! That's a very long-winded way of saying he's sold out to the best of the best of the worst ... if you follow my semantics. How many keynotes did Judas (or Quisling) make, before, during & after getting their 30 pieces of silver?

ps: He's also saying that China's Asian Development Bank is not competing with the remnants of England's East India Corp, or the G7's World Bank and IMF. No, he's saying that the 1% everywhere have teamed up, to own & hoard The Commons worldwide.

What's not to like?

What we've got here is failure to communicate .... honestly. (Blam!) You do have to admit that they have a relentless, killer-drone instinct.

For anyone who's ever taken biology-101, this is a mundane and boring replication of an age-old pattern, since the dawn of life on planet Earth. It goes like this. In any and all growing aggregates - even gas clouds pre biology - observers will notice that those components that CAN scavenge & hoard new surplus resources ... will. It's the straightforward statistics of of any recombination process, in any aggregate. Biology is just organized to find shortcuts, faster than thermodynamics alone. Either way, you eventually get some of every possible permutation of characteristics which support further recombination, in succeeding populations of components. That's what recombination produces ... whether molecular, sexual, behavioral or cultural recombination.

Yet hoarders never know what to do with said resources, any more than any other components. None of us is ever as smart as all of us working together, with all components adequately PROVISIONED! So the inevitable next step - among survivors, that is - after the inevitable blind hoarding reflex, is to re-distribute provisions in a way that enables the aggregate to invade new niches beyond the imagination of any of it's components. Hoarding is just a useless bit of noise in the ongoing recombination statistics. Discerning signal from noise always shows the path to progress. If we don't need hoarding, and can dispense with it, or repurpose it, then all the better.

It's called evolution. Get over it. It's happened. Countless times. And rest assured that it will happen again. One tombstone at a time. It's only a question of whether the next arrays of tombstones have to mark the graves of countless wasted human lives, or just mark the timely, graceful passing of their naive ideas about obsolete hoarding. As Wallace & Darwin implied, it's far more valuable to hoard and lust for Aggregate Adaptive Rate, rather than to be a dumb, King Midas member of the 1% - and be  merely statistical noise slowing down evolution.

In the history of planet Earth, subsequent aggregates always appear, slightly more able to hoard coordination methods on a new level, not just crude resources. That's how army ants evolved past snails, and how homo fiaticus will evolve past homo neoconinsis. It'll happen again, when we quit conning ourselves in neo ways.

Do we HAVE to subject another 7 generations of humans to yet another cycle of producing/hoarding/dying/evolving? Or can we just do it all virtually, right now, and just SAY we did it the hard way? Are we really fascinated with Grand Theft Culture, or can we just make an app for the 1%, and let them pretend to uselessly hoard real resources?

ps: Let's not hate Michael Likosky too much. Like Smedley Butler, he may yet realize that he's been a "high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers," and then seek more meaning in his life. If he's intelligent enough. It takes a culture to train a citizen. Likely, he's just had too little feedback to fully grasp the implications of what he's doing.

1% Pulling Cash From Denmark & Switzerland?

commentary by Roger Erickson

The only thing worse would be mathematicians pulling numerals from the Strategic Numeral Reserve. :)  Don't think we have one?  Ask the NSA & CIA which specific Fed accounts they pull their cash from.

BNY Mellon Helps Clients Pull Cash From Denmark, Switzerland

Surreal. We're trying to reduce ourselves to the madness of hoarding fiat while wasting coordination. That's far, far worse than mixing up pennies & dollars.  The onset of virtual psychosis can be even faster and just as bad as organic psychosis.

What's the opposite of a tax haven?  A tax ogre?   The impact of currency-tax ogres? Warren Mosler suggests that "they probably go to actual vault cash."

There are 3 sides visible in this process. One side involves those few bankers who are just trying to do their job - and are not yet crooks. Another side involves the 1% of people who mindlessly sequester fiat currency from their communities, and hoard it. The 3rd side involves all the rest of us citizens, letting such silliness persist.

Personally, it's staggering to think that there actually are a fair # of people who literally have more currency than they know what to do with. So they hire personal bank advisors, to avoid losing 0.02 % of what they'll never use anyway.

Yet which of these 3 sides is more stupid?  The situation is rather like that involving a deranged mathematician, who has to hire people to hoard his stash of numerals for him. That alone is a bit comical.  Yet something that stupid wouldn't matter if the rest of us weren't dumb enough to believe there aren't other sources of and pathways for expressing "fiat."  If you, yourself had to put 2 + 2 together, would YOU go complain to that mathematician, saying "Look here, sir.  It's fine for YOU to hoard, but out here, we're running out of numerals!"  At that point, just who is kidding whom?

How much longer can this madness go on?  If we let the 1% employ bankers & politicians the same way they do gardeners, maids & nannies ... are we all doomed?

Currency can't become more important than the real assets and the clever transactions which currency denominates, when used at will by smart people. The scale, alone of modern fiat currency, after all, increasingly makes it only virtual record keeping. How did we get to the surreal state where transaction records became more important than the real transactions being tracked, and the people making those transactions?  Why are we still stuck trying to yoke our necessarily dynamic currency supply to static assets, instead of yoking it to the dynamic value of our own level of coordination ... i.e., to our organizational state, and hence to our adaptive rate?

Fiat currency value has to float, and depreciate, if a populous with increasing capabilities is going to accelerate the rate of pursuing their growing options ... not just hoard the virtual unit of exchange. One analogy would be the day when carpenters quit building houses, and instead only hoard tape measures - or "inches" themselves.  At this rate, someday we'll have a war over the exchange rate between inches and centimeters!

If a nation viewing emerging options waits for someone to tell 'em who "owns" the virtual methods for exploring those options ... it'll be too late.  They won't even get the license # of the real truck that drives off with their former options.

What part of "quality [including tempo]" of distributed decision-making don't hoarders understand? You can't hoard group agility, or adaptive rate.

We can hoard coordination capabilities ... but precisely by hoarding it distributed throughout our communities, not under the micro-management of any arbitrary subgroup.