Tag: corpocracy

Globalists caused US decline

Pat Buchanan rightly condemns the globalists for their foolish abuse of American power that has led to a decline of that power:

“Isolationists must not prevail in this new debate over foreign policy,” warns Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations. “The consequences of a lasting American retreat from the world would be dire.”

To make his case against the “Isolationist Temptation,” Haass creates a caricature, a cartoon, of America First patriots, then thunders that we cannot become “a giant gated community.”

Understandably, Haass is upset. For the CFR has lost the country.

Why? It colluded in the blunders that have bled and near bankrupted America and that cost this country its unrivaled global preeminence at the end of the Cold War.

No, it was not “isolationists” who failed America. None came near to power. The guilty parties are the CFR crowd and their neocon collaborators, and liberal interventionists who set off to play empire after the Cold War and create a New World Order with themselves as Masters of the Universe.

The USA will retreat from the world whether Americans want to or not, whether the globalists want them to or not, because America has been invaded, parasited, and financially raped, and its military has been methodically misused, since 1965.

The US government is no longer by, of, or for the American people. And that is why it can no longer harness American power. The globalists broke the nation, and in doing so, broke its power.

“The gravest risk since communism”

The Economist sees nationalism as a great evil that is to be defeated rather than the only way to save Western Civilization:

AS POLITICAL theatre, America’s party conventions have no parallel. Activists from right and left converge to choose their nominees and celebrate conservatism (Republicans) and progressivism (Democrats). But this year was different, and not just because Hillary Clinton became the first woman to be nominated for president by a major party. The conventions highlighted a new political faultline: not between left and right, but between open and closed (see article). Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, summed up one side of this divide with his usual pithiness. “Americanism, not globalism, will be our credo,” he declared. His anti-trade tirades were echoed by the Bernie Sanders wing of the Democratic Party.

America is not alone. Across Europe, the politicians with momentum are those who argue that the world is a nasty, threatening place, and that wise nations should build walls to keep it out. Such arguments have helped elect an ultranationalist government in Hungary and a Polish one that offers a Trumpian mix of xenophobia and disregard for constitutional norms. Populist, authoritarian European parties of the right or left now enjoy nearly twice as much support as they did in 2000, and are in government or in a ruling coalition in nine countries. So far, Britain’s decision to leave the European Union has been the anti-globalists’ biggest prize: the vote in June to abandon the world’s most successful free-trade club was won by cynically pandering to voters’ insular instincts, splitting mainstream parties down the middle.

News that strengthens the anti-globalisers’ appeal comes almost daily. On July 26th two men claiming allegiance to Islamic State slit the throat of an 85-year-old Catholic priest in a church near Rouen. It was the latest in a string of terrorist atrocities in France and Germany. The danger is that a rising sense of insecurity will lead to more electoral victories for closed-world types. This is the gravest risk to the free world since communism. Nothing matters more than countering it.

Considering that their counter will consist of “stronger rhetoric, bolder policies and smarter tactics”, they’re not off to a good start. They are at a disadvantage, of course, because the most effective rhetoric is utilized in the service of the truth, and they are attempting to sell blatant and obvious lies.

But if “nothing matters more than countering” nationalism, that means that nationalism is the only political objective that matters for the opponents of globalism. We need to continue to expose their lies about NATO benefitting America, about the EU benefitting Europe, about free trade and immigration enriching societies, and how cooperation is necessary for fighting terrorism.

If you’re still foolish enough to swallow the false assertion that free trade is beneficial to America, perhaps you should consider if you believe any of the other lies you are being told by the same people.

The cost of SJW convergence

ESPN is paying it, having lost 4 million subscribers and $350 million in the last year:

In the past five years ESPN has lost 11,346,000 subscribers according to Nielsen data.

If you combine that with ESPN2 and ESPNU subscriber losses this means that ESPN has lost over a billion dollars in cable and satellite revenue just in the past five years, an average of $200 million each year. That total of a billion dollars hits ESPN in the pocketbook not just on a yearly basis, but for every year going forward.

It’s gone forever.

That’s not just bad, this is downright cataclysmic.

And it’s getting worse.

In the past year ESPN lost 4.159 million subscribers, that’s another $350 million in lost revenue across the ESPN family of networks.

Now, tell me again how all the cultural programming and SJWfication and ideological propaganda in the entertainment media and the advertising industry is just business. Tell me again how it’s not driven by ideological fanatics, but hard-nosed businessmen just ruthlessly chasing a buck the best way they know how.

And then I’ll explain to you, very slowly and in words of not more than five syllables, that those hard-nosed, buck-chasing “businessmen” are observably losing literal billions as they continue to tear away at the foundations of Western Civilization: Christianity, the family, the rule of law, and the white race in the name of Tolerance, Equality, Progress, Inclusiveness, and Diversity.

The pillaging of Russia

Why the globalists hate Vladimir Putin and why they are terrified that Donald Trump will win the US election:

The international interests that financially wrecked Russia in the ’90s are doing the same to the United States now. Putin stopped them in Russia and Trump is promising to stop them in America. They recognize Trump as the enemy and slander in the only style they know—the paranoid style.

“The international interests that financially wrecked Russia in the ’90s are doing the same to the United States now.”

Trump was once blamed for praising Putin’s performance. But he was right. Pensions, salaries, GDP, and the value of gold reserves in Russia have risen greatly since 1999—in some cases tenfold or more. This was while both inflation and the debt-to-GDP ratio declined by orders of magnitude. The rise in living standard under Putin is reflected in longer life expectancy: It had dropped to a third-world level during the 1990s, to around 55–57, and has now risen back up to 70 by most measures. Birthrates have normalized and recently overtaken the United States. Visit Moscow and you will see infrastructure, buildings, and development that are more impressive than those found in any American city—though the same could be said, of course, for many other countries now.

By contrast, Russians remember the liberal and globalist experiment of the ’90s as a time of great suffering. The early death of literally millions of people from economic deprivation, the utter ruin of many of Russia’s formerly world-class industries: This is the legacy of economic liberalization in Russia. How did it happen?

In short, “entrepreneurs” would run fraudulently acquired businesses into the ground, fire-sale the assets internationally, and move abroad with the profits. This is globalism in its purest form, without the slogans and boosterism. American economists, academics, and businessmen played an important part in all of this. Marc Rich—a fugitive later pardoned by Bill Clinton—was, for example, “the largest trader of Russia’s oil and aluminum on a spot basis,” according to Steve Sailer, who has documented the “rape of Russia” in some detail. George Soros was a large investor in these ventures, which provided the international market with financial backing, and cover for the oligarchs’ robbery of their own people. This was done especially under Boris Jordan’s CS First Boston bank and later Renaissance Capital, Moscow “investment banks” staffed by Soros associates.

Even more important was a group of Harvard and MIT economists who advised and assisted the Russian government in the reforms. These are men still involved in public life in the United States: current vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Stanley Fischer, Jeffrey Sachs, Jonathan Hay, Andrei Shleifer, and Larry Summers, who was later Secretary of the Treasury under Bill Clinton. As late as 1998, months before Russia defaulted, Fischer claimed that the Yeltsin regime had to be praised for following the advice of this group. Using the rhetoric of liberalization and globalism, American academics and financiers played a key role in the pillaging of Russia.

The fact that those who financially raped Russia are opposed to Donald Trump is, in itself, reason to support the man’s campaign for the Presidency. And for those who are inclined to cry “anti-semitism” due to the (((heritage))) of more than a few of the individuals named, is this sort of behavior really the sort of thing you want to go on the public record defending?

The Economist was right about one thing. The battle is no longer about Left and Right factions of a nation, but rather, between Globalism and Nationalism. It’s the battle between vampires and humans. And if you support Globalism, you’re on the wrong side, no matter who you are or why you support it.

Chinese buy Opera

This should shake things up in the browser world, to say the least:

After a $1.2 billion deal fell through, Opera has sold most of itself to a Chinese consortium for $600 million. The buyers, led by search and security firm Qihoo 360, are purchasing Opera’s browser business, its privacy and performance apps, its tech licensing and, most importantly, its name. The Norwegian company will keep its consumer division, including Opera Apps & Games and Opera TV. The consumer arm has 560 workers, but the company hasn’t said what will happen to its other 1,109 employees.

The original deal, announced in February, reportedly failed to gain regulatory approval. While expressing disappointment that it was scrapped, Opera CEO Lars Boilesen says “we believe that the new deal is very good for Opera employees and Opera shareholders.” The acquisition was approved by Opera’s board, and the company now has 18 months to find a new name, according to Techcrunch.

That’s great news for Brendan Eich and Brave, which is already the best browser out there. I still use Pale Moon for a few things, but 85 percent of my work is now done on Brave.

Anyhow, I would not advise using Opera or OperaMail anymore. It’s bad enough to share things with the US government through Google and Microsoft, but this is a whole new can of worms.

Never trust a drama queen

I’m not at all surprised that Megyn Kelly is acting up at the expense of Fox News. No woman that self-centered is capable of restraining herself for the good of the network, even if it is in her own long-term interests. My guess is that she is upset at how Ailes and Fox News didn’t white-knight for her when she took on Donald Trump and lost.

Fox News boss Roger Ailes is negotiating his exit, Deadline has confirmed.

Blogger Matt Drudge put up a headline at the top of his popular aggregation website The Drudge Report this afternoon that Ailes will exit the company with a “$40+ million parachute.” There is no link to a story, but a source subsequently told Deadline that Ailes is in exit talks, saying terms of the settlement are being hammered out tonight.

“With internal allegations mounting, it was deemed time for him to go,” the well-placed source said. 21st Century Fox, however, said in a statement: “Roger is at work  The review is ongoing. And the only agreement that is in place is his existing employment agreement.”

Ailes’ ouster comes after Fox News host Gretchen Carlson filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against him on July 6 after her contract was not renewed.

Ailes, the architect of the Fox News as a ratings behemoth and political force, in of June 2015, signed a multi-year contract to continue running Fox News, Fox Business Network, and Fox Television Stations.

Earlier this morning, Drudge linked a headline to today’s New York Magazine story, alleging Fox News star Megyn Kelly had told 21st Century Fox’s investigators that she had been the recipient of unwanted sexual advances from Ailes about a decade ago when she was a correspondent in the Washington bureau.

I have no idea, nor do I care, whether Ailes hit on her or not. I suspect that Kelly assumes any man who looks at her for more than 5 seconds is hitting on her. But regardless, it’s prodigiously stupid to break up a situation that is that good for everyone involved.

Heads they win

Tails, you get three years in prison:

What happened then is the same thing that happened with the other two notorious “spoofers” who have gained prominence in the recent year, Nav Sarao and Igor Oystacher: they got too good. So good in fact the HFTs – mostly Citadel – were consistently losing money to them. As a result, Coscia et al had to be punished. He was accused of entering large orders into futures markets in 2011 that he never intended to execute. His goal, prosecutors said, was to spoof, or fool other traders to markets by creating an illusion of demand so that he could make money on smaller trades. Prosecutors said he illegally earned $1.4 million in fewer than three months in 2011 through spoofing.

As Reuters added, Coscia’s firm had fewer than 10 employees. However, he “entered more large orders than anyone else in the world” in nearly a dozen CME Group Inc markets ranging from corn and soybeans to gold after he began using two algorithmic trading programs in August 2011, prosecutors said during the trial. To be sure Coscia disagreed with the accusation: he testified that he didn’t do anything wrong and repeatedly said he intended to trade on every order he placed. He also said he traded a lot of large orders he placed. He was asked whether he fraudulently induced other market participants to react to the deceptive market information he created.

“I didn’t induce anyone,” Coscia said. “There’s no deceptive market information either.”

Technically, he is right – he did not induce anyone. He induced a whole of anythings, mostly countless HFT algos that reacted to his orders by pushing the market in the direction of his orderflow, only to be “spoofed.” At which point the case really boiled down to just one thing: not whether it is legal to spoof, which it is and yet massive, well-connected HFT firms get away with it every single day, but whether it is legal to take advantage of HFT algos programmed to do just one thing – frontrun orders, and activity which leads to massive losses for the algos and the Citadels behind them, when the spoofer realizes just how dumb his counterparty truly is.

The verdict was clear: nobody is allowed to outspoof the spoofers. And this was the punchline from the lobby of very group of people who take advantage of broken markets every given day:

    “Investors are better off when spoofers who prey on high-frequency traders are brought to justice,” said Bill Harts, chief of the Modern Markets Initiative, a group representing high-frequency and algorithmic traders.
Funnier words had rarely been spoken by the person whose “Modern Markets” Initiative has made real modern markets a farcial disaster.

And so the gauntlet has been thrown: anyone who dares to make money by “abusing” the dumb logic of Citadel algos will go to jail.

To make it simple, the big banks have computerized trading programs that prey upon conventional traders. But their behavior is predictable, so a sufficiently clever trader can take advantage of them in much the same way they take advantage of normal investors.

But only the big banks are allowed to cheat. So, do not pass go, do not collect your winnings, go directly to jail.

The stock market isn’t even a casino. Casinos are considerably less rigged.

Free trade: bad idea or bait-and-switch

Gary North believes it is the latter:

What was the bait and switch? This. Lure intellectuals and then politicians into a lobster trap of one-world government by means of the promise of greater wealth through free trade. Create free trade alliances that are in fact not free trade but rather trade managed by international bureaucrats. This is a combination of low tariffs and detailed regulations of production and distribution. Economic regulation favors large multinational firms that can afford lots of expensive lawyers. This regulatory system creates economic barriers against newer, more innovative, but under-capitalized competitors. In short, use the bait of greater national wealth to persuade national leaders into agreeing to a treaty-based international government that requires member nations to surrender much of national sovereignty. The final stage is the creation on centralized regional governments that absorb national governments into an immense international bureaucratic system that regulates most areas of life.

The arguments favoring free trade go back to David Hume in 1752, and later to his friend Adam Smith, whose Wealth of Nations (1776) presented a comprehensive case. Liberty is more productive than statist bureaucracy.

Free trade simply means that two people can legally agree to an exchange if they choose to. Simple. The idea of voluntary exchange is hated by those producers who cannot compete effectively, but the case is both logical and moral.

The reason why the Rockefeller Foundation paid F. A. Hayek, Wilhelm Röpke, and Ludwig von Mises to write books on international trade was to provide the economic bait.

Raymond Fosdick went on John D. Rockefeller, Sr.’s payroll no later than 1913. He went on Junior’s payroll no later than 1916. He had met Fosdick in 1910. Fosdick was one of Woodrow Wilson’s protégés at Princeton. A brief summary of his career is here. It does not cover his time at the Versailles Peace Conference, where he and Jean Monnet worked together in 1919 to create the League of Nations. It does not mention Monnet. It also does not cover his time as Junior’s personal lawyer and advisor, 1920-1936. His brother Harry was on the board of the Foundation from 1917 on.

Another Wilson protégé was John Foster Dulles. He was the grandson of John Foster, Secretary of State under Harrison, known as “the fixer.” He was also the nephew of Robert Lansing, Wilson’s Secretary of State, who helped take the government into World War I. He was Secretary of State under Eisenhower. He was the defense attorney for Harry Emerson Fosdick in Fosdick’s 1924 trial for heresy in the northern Presbyterian Church. He had been one of America’s richest lawyers in the 1930’s. He was a committed globalist. He was a deal-maker between American firms and the Hitler government until a revolt in his own firm got him to stop. He was an early promoter of the World Council of Churches, founded in 1948. He also presented a program in the 1930’s for creating an international government funded by a low tax on international trade that would be created for the sake of huge firms — his clients. They would be exempted from national tariffs.

These men were globalists. They proclaimed the doctrine of free trade, but always with this proviso: free trade was the bait for creating an international government with managed trade.

My belief is Gary North is gradually stumbling his way towards the truth, which is that there is no bait-and-switch, the globalists genuinely believe in free trade because free trade destroys nations and national sovereignty. After all, no less a personage than Karl Marx supported it for precisely that reason; he considered it a weapon in the arsenal of international socialism.

But regardless of whether they do or not, note that even this staunch defender of free trade is observing that free trade is a trojan horse. Therefore, it should be opposed on that basis alone, even by those who genuinely believe it increases national wealth in any and all circumstances.

Distribution is an issue

Free market capitalists might not like it, but the distribution of wealth is a legitimate societal problem and it is only going to get worse:

The rising cash holdings of U.S. corporations is increasingly in the hands of a few U.S. companies, with just five tech firms having grabbed a third of it. And nearly three-quarters of cash held by non-financial U.S. companies is stashed overseas outside the long arm of Uncle Sam.

Apple (AAPL), Microsoft (MSFT), Alphabet (GOOGL), Cisco System (CSCO) and Oracle (ORCL) are sitting on $504 billion, or 30%, of the $1.7 trillion in cash and cash equivalents held by U.S. non-financial companies in 2015, according to an analysis released Friday by ratings agency Moody’s Investors Service.  That’s even more cash concentration in previous years, as these five companies held 27% of cash in 2014 and 25% in 2013. Apple alone is holding more cash and investments than eight of the 10 entire industry sectors.

Corporate America’s rising pile of cash is becoming increasingly important to investors as profit growth and the stock market stalls. The amount of cash held by U.S. companies rose 1.8% in 2015. Unfortunately for U.S. investors, 72% of total cash held by all non-financial U.S. companies is stockpiled outside the U.S., up from 64% in 2014 and 58% in 2013 as companies try to avoid paying U.S. tax rates.

Remember, corporatism is not capitalism. And free trade doesn’t benefit a country if the money collected for its exports never enter it.