Tag: corpocracy

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.

The cost of convergence

Target is learning that pursuing social justice objectives is not conducive to business:

Target’s corporate stock has plummeted significantly this week, after a petition to boycott the store crossed 1 million signatures.

The petition and subsequent boycotts are a result of Target’s corporate campaign to open up bathrooms and changing rooms in their stores based on internal gender identity rather than biological anatomy.  The new policy has sparked concern that predators will use the store’s policy to target others, specifically women, by claiming that they feel like a woman on the inside.

Just this week, a biological man was arrested after allegedly secretly filming a woman trying on bathing suits in a Target dressing room in Missouri.

Recent polls have shown that Americans’ feelings towards open-bathroom policies have hardened significantly in the month of April, with support for the open-bathrooms concept falling by more than 20 percentage points.

Amid the turmoil surrounding the new policy and the immediate abuse of it in Missouri, the company’s stock fell from $84.10 per share on April 19 to roughly $79.36 as of Friday morning. That loss of $4.74 per share, if constant, would represent a corporate loss of over $2.5 billion.

As a general rule, people support SJW nonsense in theory considerably more than in any form of practice that will actually affect their own lives. Once there is a cost to virtue-signaling, the average individual will back off. The SJW, on the other hand, will double-down, convinced that the sacrifice proves his superiority.

Convergence at ESPN

It’s no secret that ESPN is fully SJW-converged. But now they’re not even bothering to hide it:

ESPN has fired Curt Schilling over his recent anti-transgender comments on social media.

Schilling, a baseball analyst for ESPN and former Boston Red Sox pitcher, shared a Facebook post this week that lampooned critics of recent laws passed in North Carolina and other states restricting transgender men and women from using the public restrooms that correspond with their gender preferences. Schilling added his own comment to the post, criticizing transgender people.

“A man is a man no matter what they call themselves,” Schilling wrote. “I don’t care what they are, who they sleep with, men’s room was designed for the penis, women’s not so much. Now you need laws telling us differently? Pathetic.”

The original post featured a man in a wig with his breasts exposed, captioned, “LET HIM IN! to the restroom with your daughter or else you’re a narrow-minded, judgmental, unloving racist bigot who needs to die.”

After first announcing Wednesday that it would review Schilling’s comments, ESPN announced later in the day that it had fired him. “ESPN is an inclusive company,” the network said in a statement. “Curt Schilling has been advised that his conduct was unacceptable and his employment with ESPN has been terminated.”

I quit reading ESPN years ago. But they are clearly an excellent demonstration of my Impossibility of SJW Convergence in action, which states: The more an institution converges towards the highest abstract standard of social and distributive justice, the less it is able to perform its primary function. 

ESPN can’t even employ an intelligent Hall-of-Fame commentator to discuss baseball if he doesn’t publicly submit to the SJW Narrative. That is full convergence. Sports is no longer ESPN’s primary function.

Target goes full-tranny

If you’re opposed to the latest SJW Narrative, take Target off your list:

The Target department store chain has jumped into the transgender bathroom debate by declaring that men who claim to be women may use whatever bathroom or changing room they choose.

“Inclusivity is a core belief at Target,” a new company statement reads. “It’s something we celebrate. We stand for equality and equity, and strive to make our guests and team members feel accepted, respected and welcomed in our stores and workplaces every day.”

The retailer added, “We welcome transgender team members and guests to use the restroom or fitting room facility that corresponds with their gender identity.”

“Everyone deserves to feel like they belong,” the statement concluded. “You’ll always be accepted, respected and welcomed at Target.”

Target spokeswoman Molly Snyder added that the policy statement is a public confirmation of its longstanding policy. “It’s just us being very overt in stating it,” she said.

Customers and potential customers almost immediately spoke out against Target’s decision to ignore the biological difference between men and women.

The thing is, there is nothing wrong with unisex bathrooms. In Japan, for example, many of the bathrooms are unisex because space is at a premium and there is only room for one bathroom in many establishments.

But we’re not seeing the elimination of sex-segregated bathrooms, we’re seeing the demonic “five lights” strategy, forcing people to submit to the Narrative and admit to something they know to be untrue.