The World WILL end in 2012
June 27, 2009 at 10:07 pm | In History | Leave a CommentTags: 2012, dollar, hyperinflation, mexica, prediction, social collapse
Not as shown in hack director Roland Emmerich’s forthcoming film 2012:
But in a much more serious and historically consistent way. The Mexica people predicted their own demise in the beginning of the sixteenth century, this came true not through brimstone and floods but through an alien invasion that rocked society and brought everything crumbling down.
The world of the Mexica
Today the world is united under one power, just as the world of the Mexica was united under one power residing in Tenochtitlan, that rules without consent of most who live under its power. Any country that tries to resist this rule will either end up like Iraq or in most cases like Zimbabwe.
Any disturbance to the power structure will unleash pent up pressure, just as the arrival of aliens to the world of the Mexica unleashed rebellion:
“Cortés, with up to 500 Spaniards, did not fight alone but with as many as 150,000 or 200,000 allies from Tlaxcala, and eventually other Aztec tributary states. It was not difficult for Cortes to find allies to fight with him, the Aztecs were not generally liked by the neighbouring city-states.”
History of the Aztecs, Wikipedia.
So what could disturb the structure of power in the world? Neither aliens nor religion will do it. Environmental collapse or natural causes have some probability on the long term, but we should not concentrate on either. Let us see if we can learn from history and ask why did the world of the Soviet Union collapse? The answer is economic collapse.
“It is apparent that the quantities of money are increasing in an accelerating fashion. In 1990, the total amount of currency in circulation passed US$1 trillion. Twelve years later, the total amount exceeded US$2 trillion. This doubled again less than six years later in early 2008.”
How Much Money is There?, DollarDaze.org
Doubling in half the time is a characteristic of exponential growth. The next step is a doubling in three years, which means by 2012 the total amount of currency in circulation will pass $8 trillion.
Trillions more is being ‘printed’ by central banks. That money, for now, is being horded by the bank but sooner or later the dam will burst and the money will engulf the whole economy, then there will be no escape from hyperinflation.
Four Graphs
May 15, 2009 at 9:25 pm | In History | Leave a CommentTags: debt, dollar, economy, empire, Federal Reserve, finance, money, trade, United States
The first shows the decline of treasuries held by the Federal Reserve Banks, while their credit has doubled:
This has a serious implication on the soundness of the dollar. The second graph shows the dependence of the US on imported goods and services:
That would is not a problem by itself, but taken in conjunction with the next graph that shows the increase in federal debt held by foreigners:
The conclusion must be ominous.
The last graph shows the death of the last profitable sector in the US, namely the financial sector:
So Much for the Facts
April 26, 2009 at 1:56 pm | In Statistics | Leave a CommentTags: china, facts, forex, gold, reserves
In Beware the Boom! I wrote the following about China’s gold reserves:
China’s official numbers are constant, but gold produced in China is not exported, hence the gold is being accumulated outside the official reserve.
And now we read:
“China, owner of the world’s biggest forex reserves, said Friday its gold reserves had risen to 1,054 tonnes by the end of 2008.
China is now the fifth biggest holder of gold reserves in the world, with only six countries having a holding of more than 1,000 tonnes, Hu Xiaolian, head of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, told Xinhua in an interview. The new figure represents an increase of 454 tonnes from 600 tonnes in 2003, the last time China announced an adjustment of its gold holdings.
The country adjusted its holding of gold reserves twice this century. It raised its holding from 394 tonnes to 500 tonnes in 2001, and to 600 tonnes in 2003, Hu said.”
-China’s gold reserves reach 1,054 tonnes, China Daily
Over the last six years China’s gold reserve has been increasing at a yearly rate of about 10% while all published statistics showed it as a constant. Since 2000 the reserve has increased two-and-a-half times. Even with the latest increase the reserve is still pitiful, equalling about a three-hundredth of an ounce per person. The following table compares that to other countries:
Click to viewThe Difference between Past and Future Labour
April 13, 2009 at 5:39 pm | In History | Leave a CommentTags: barter, dollar, economy, fiat currency, finance, gold, hyperinflation, money, silver
In ancient times people had to perform labour to extract from nature the substances they needed to survive, thus direct labour resulted in direct satisfaction.
Later barter developed where people would perform labour and extract from nature more than they needed, afterwards they would exchange their surplus with a different substance extracted by someone else. Thus in this situation past labour was exchanged for past labour.
Later indirect barter through a monetary commodity developed. Now the two people bartering did not have to meet and exchange their goods in one operation, instead surplus goods are exchanged for a monetary commodity, which in turn is exchanged for needed goods. The monetary commodity, like all commodities, represented past labour and it was also the most liquid thus guaranteeing that the second exchange operation will be completed.
Later (much later) gold and silver emerged as the final monetary commodities. The direction of development went towards mined products from the moment they became abundant to fulfil the role of money. The first mined commodity to play that role was salt, which did not need refining.
A British Guinea
A piece of minted gold contain the following labour: labour to discover the gold, labour to mine the gold ore, labour to refine the gold, labour to mint the gold, labour to secure the gold through this process. When one gives up his surplus product for a piece of gold he is exchanging past labour with past labour in monetary form. The new form has many advantages: it does wear out or perish, it is much denser making it easer to store and transport and most importantly it is liquid.
“Gold is the indispensable regulator of debt in society. … Well, we have just tried [bureaucratic regulation of the level of debt] and found that whenever irredeemable promises are to be liquidated by issuing more irredeemable promises, debt proliferates beyond any limit.
…
People wake up and realize that they are surrendering real goods and real services in exchange for irredeemable promises.”-The Anti-Gold Gospel According to Kaletsky by Antal E. Fekete
Now we live in an age where all the developments of the last ten thousand years are being thrown away and replaced by new un-tested gimmicks. We throw away monetary commodities and replace them with fiat currency, but do we really know what we are getting ourselves into?
As I tried to show in The Printing Press is a Harsh Mistress one unit of fiat currency is equivalent to one unit of public debt on the central bank balance sheet. If one accepts a fiat currency then he will not be accepting past labour but instead the promise that future labour will generate enough public income (through tax, excise, et cetera) to service the public debt. Thus selling goods for fiat currency becomes an exchange of past labour for future labour.
Imagine a farmer exchanging his surplus wheat for the hunter’s surplus winter catch. The farmer fulfils his obligation at harvest but has to wait six months for his share. What would happen if the winter’s catch were too low? This is why meat is smoked or cured and exchanged at harvest time. The farmer gets last year’s catch instead of next year’s catch.
The problem with future labour is not only unforeseen circumstances but more importantly is that before generating a surplus enough has to be generated to pay the workers, but since they too are paid with fiat currency this will only increase the amount of future promises. This cycle means that the quantity of money has to increase exponentially at a rate outpacing the economy. As more money is created its exchange value drops, the dollar has lost about 97.7% of its value (gold from $20.67/oz. to $900/oz.) since becoming a fiat currency.
A US Gold Dollar
There is no need to add the phrase “In God We Trust” to coins with intrinsic value because if you have them then your prayers have already been answered by the Almighty.
Look on my Works ye Mighty, and despair!
April 4, 2009 at 10:17 pm | In Statistics | Leave a CommentTags: birth rate, life, Ozymandias, Shelley, social decline, Spengler
“If they cannot be bothered to reproduce, why should any European soldier sacrifice himself for future generations that never will be born?”
-Why Europe chooses extinction by Spengler (hat tip to Fabius)
The following map is taken from Wikipedia and edited by me to emphasise the difference. The map shows the birth rate per country (births/1000 person), I changed the nine colours to three.
The red countries are all dying out, the blue represent the inflection point and the green are the only countries with potential to grow.
It seems that modern western social order is not capable of chewing gum and walking at the same time. Reproduction is a necessary condition in the biological definition of ‘life’; societies that cannot reproduce themselves are dead.
Imperial Cultural Death
March 29, 2009 at 12:29 pm | In History | Leave a CommentTags: Columbine High School, Culture, empire, judgments, media, Neal Stephenson, words
In this post I would like to make a long citation from an essay that has its own Wikipedia page! The essay is about operating systems, but the quote is from a section about culture:
“A huge, rich, nuclear-tipped culture that propagates its core values through media steepage seems like a bad idea. There is an obvious risk of running astray here. Words are the only immutable medium we have, which is why they are the vehicle of choice for extremely important concepts like the Ten Commandments, the Koran, and the Bill of Rights. Unless the messages conveyed by our media are somehow pegged to a fixed, written set of precepts, they can wander all over the place and possibly dump loads of crap into people’s minds.
Orlando used to have a military installation called McCoy Air Force Base, with long runways from which B-52s could take off and reach Cuba, or just about anywhere else, with loads of nukes. But now McCoy has been scrapped and repurposed. It has been absorbed into Orlando’s civilian airport. The long runways are being used to land 747-loads of tourists from Brazil, Italy, Russia and Japan, so that they can come to Disney World and steep in our media for a while.
To traditional cultures, especially word-based ones such as Islam, this is infinitely more threatening than the B-52s ever were. It is obvious, to everyone outside of the United States, that our arch-buzzwords, multiculturalism and diversity, are false fronts that are being used (in many cases unwittingly) to conceal a global trend to eradicate cultural differences. The basic tenet of multiculturalism (or “honoring diversity” or whatever you want to call it) is that people need to stop judging each other-to stop asserting (and, eventually, to stop believing) that this is right and that is wrong, this true and that false, one thing ugly and another thing beautiful, that God exists and has this or that set of qualities.
The lesson most people are taking home from the Twentieth Century is that, in order for a large number of different cultures to coexist peacefully on the globe (or even in a neighborhood) it is necessary for people to suspend judgment in this way. Hence (I would argue) our suspicion of, and hostility towards, all authority figures in modern culture. As David Foster Wallace has explained in his essay “E Unibus Pluram,” this is the fundamental message of television; it is the message that people take home, anyway, after they have steeped in our media long enough. It’s not expressed in these highfalutin terms, of course. It comes through as the presumption that all authority figures-teachers, generals, cops, ministers, politicians-are hypocritical buffoons, and that hip jaded coolness is the only way to be.
The problem is that once you have done away with the ability to make judgments as to right and wrong, true and false, etc., there’s no real culture left. All that remains is clog dancing and macrame. The ability to make judgments, to believe things, is the entire it point of having a culture. I think this is why guys with machine guns sometimes pop up in places like Luxor, and begin pumping bullets into Westerners. They perfectly understand the lesson of McCoy Air Force Base. When their sons come home wearing Chicago Bulls caps with the bills turned sideways, the dads go out of their minds.
The global anti-culture that has been conveyed into every cranny of the world by television is a culture unto itself, and by the standards of great and ancient cultures like Islam and France, it seems grossly inferior, at least at first. The only good thing you can say about it is that it makes world wars and Holocausts less likely–and that is actually a pretty good thing!
The only real problem is that anyone who has no culture, other than this global monoculture, is completely screwed. Anyone who grows up watching TV, never sees any religion or philosophy, is raised in an atmosphere of moral relativism, learns about civics from watching bimbo eruptions on network TV news, and attends a university where postmodernists vie to outdo each other in demolishing traditional notions of truth and quality, is going to come out into the world as one pretty feckless human being. And-again-perhaps the goal of all this is to make us feckless so we won’t nuke each other.
On the other hand, if you are raised within some specific culture, you end up with a basic set of tools that you can use to think about and understand the world. You might use those tools to reject the culture you were raised in, but at least you’ve got some tools.”
-In the Beginning was the Command Line by Neal Stephenson [my emphasis]
I agree with the last quoted paragraph wholeheartedly. My one major objection that instead of trying to telepathically figure out the minds of people on the other side of the world and abbreviating their whole action is a mere reaction to imperial soft-power invasion he should have cited the Columbine High School shootings
That school’s environment was the best example of the non-culture he describes and the shooters were the natural product of that dysfunctional environment. The increase in such incidents in the last decade is only the natural product of cultural decay, a manifestation of the stench of cultural death
His claim that such non-culture is beneficial because it helps people “coexist peacefully” is historically false and has been false since the first empire tried this argument of self-legitimisation-The Romans claimed that their empire secured peace for the Mediterranean world, the so-called Pax Romana.
The argument does not even work inside the empire itself. War and hostility are natural phenomena of social life, on the other hand: serial killers, mass shootings, child molestation, et cetera are all un-natural phenomena and signs of a society in serious trouble.
The loss of textual (written or verbal) culture and its replacement with a visual culture is actually a phenomenon linked to imperial social decay. Agamemnon had an epic while Pericles had the Acropolis. Moses had the Ten Commandments while Solomon had a temple.
On Georgian Demographics
March 27, 2009 at 1:59 am | In Statistics | Leave a CommentTags: baby boom, birth rate, Caucuses, demographics, economy, Georgia, population
In Long Term Prospects of Georgia I showed that the future for Georgia is to be stuck between a declining hostile Russian north and resurgent hostile Islamic south. Today I will show that Georgia is just as weak internally as it is externally.
The BBC published (and also broadcasted) the following
“The country’s birth rate increased by nearly 20% during 2008 – a rate four times faster than the previous year.
…
He tells me that the jump from 48,000 in 2007 to 57,000 in 2008 can, in part, be explained by the Patriarch’s incentive, but also by the rise in average household incomes.
…
In a country which early last year boasted of having economic growth rates of 7.9% there is little doubt that economic factors may have played a role in bringing on the baby boom.”-Church leader sparks Georgian baby boom, BBC News [my emphasis]
Every line of this article is soaked in dishonesty and false reporting. The “four times faster” is actually the second derivative of a ratio, a meaningless number.
The article claims a “baby boom” prominently in its title even though the birth rate is significantly lower that what a real baby boom would be. A baby boom is defined as births amounting to 2% of the population-in the case of Georgia that would be 90,000 babies, 58% higher than 57,000.
There is no comparison with other countries because even with the jump Georgia’s birth rate still ranks 158 out of 191 countries (see List of countries by birth rate from Wikipedia).
To put the birth rate in context we have to look at other demographical indices:
Birth rate: 10.62 births/1,000 population (2008 est.)
Death rate: 9.51 deaths/1,000 population (2008 est.)
Net migration rate: -4.36 migrants/1,000 population (2008 est.)
Total fertility rate: 1.43 children born/woman-Demographics of Georgia (country), Wikipedia
The birth rate is slightly above the death rate and with a fertility rate so low the population is declining significantly. In reality the net change (birth minus death plus migration) is about negative 3.25 for every one thousand.
The rise in population since the Russian revolution has long since peaked-coinciding with independence-and now it is on a downward trajectory (graph from Wikipedia):
The projected stabilisation is extrapolation of the last few years’ slowing decline, in reality the decline will start accelerating in as the economy declines.
“The former Soviet state’s economy grew more than 12 percent in 2007 on the back of foreign investment attracted by the pro-Western government of President Mikheil Saakashvili.
But a five-day war in August 2008 — when a Russian counter-strike repelled Tbilisi’s assault on the breakaway region of South Ossetia — scared off investors just as the financial crisis was beginning to take hold.
Official figures for 2008 are not yet available, but the government expects GDP growth to have slowed to 1.5 percent last year. The government expects the economy to grow around 2 percent this year.”
-Georgia gets $187 mln IMF tranche to weather crisis, Reuters
Boom or no boom the long-term prospects of Georgia are very bleak.
Reason-able Talk from Zimbabwe
March 24, 2009 at 10:45 am | In History | Leave a CommentTags: Africa, dollarisation, economy, finance, globalisation, hyperinflation, media, money, propaganda, sovereignty, Zimbabwe
In Zimbabwe’s Monetary Policy I wrote the following:
The public in the west has completely accepted the neo-colonial narrative that blacks (and other non-Europeans) are unable to govern themselves, that not only they must adopt western ideologies but also westerners should supervise them. The most corrupt political administrations, currently under investigation, unashamedly talk about ‘teaching’ Africa ‘good governance’!
A Zimbabwean commentator sums up my sentiment when he writes:
“THE overriding principle of global politics as defined by the collective foreign policy of Western elites is centred on the vainglorious assumption that misdeeds are only performed by others while the West is only culpable for inadvertent errors or oversights.
The Western media has no problems portraying to the world the lucidity of the democracy of their own countries while they bestow upon themselves the righteous role of being the custodians of the feelings and emotions of people in far away less developed countries.
The furious denunciation of the crimes of others is but one specialty of many journalists in the mainstream Western media.”
-Western Double Standards Exposed by Reason Wafawarova, 22 March 2009
Here is the latest example of Western commentary on Zimbabwe’s situation:
“The currency with the never-ending string of zeroes is quickly fading into history, just two months after the latest notes were printed by the inexhaustible central bank. Also disappearing is Zimbabwe’s phenomenal level of hyperinflation, which last year reached a stunning 89.7 sextillion per cent (a number expressed with 21 zeroes), making it the most extreme hyperinflation crisis of any country in modern times.
Zimbabwe’s new coalition government has cracked both problems with an absurdly simple solution: It has abruptly switched to foreign currencies, allowing customers to pay for products with U.S. dollars or South African rand or Botswana pula.
…
Empty shelves have been filled. Prices of staples such as milk and eggs are still twice as expensive as in neighbouring South Africa, but they are half as expensive as they were in January. People are shopping again, and merchants are stocking their inventories again.Those goods are still unaffordable for many people, of course. The unemployment rate is estimated at 94 per cent, wages are often unpaid, and the vast majority of people are dependent on donated food rations.
…
Investors, including Canadians, are watching closely. Toronto-based Caledonia Mining Corp., which suspended production at its Blanket gold mine in Zimbabwe last October, is considering a reopening of the mine within the next few weeks because the new government is promising that producers can export a much higher percentage of their production. The mine could produce up to 40,000 ounces per year.
…
As recently as the early 1990s, Zimbabwe was one of Africa’s leading economies. Its decaying infrastructure could be still be revived, especially if the government is able to halt the invasions of the dwindling white-owned commercial farms that have plagued the agricultural sector for the past nine years.One study has predicted that the country could be self-sufficient in agriculture within a year if the invasions were reversed.”
-How Zimbabwe slew the dragon of hyperinflation, March 23, globeandmail.com [my emphasis]
One: Solving hyperinflation by dollarisation is like curing cancer by taking the patient outside and shooting him execution style. Hyperinflation in Zimbabwe has not been solved; instead Zimbabwe’s new government has relinquished the people’s sovereign right to issue money and opened the country to the barbarians.
Two: Again we must ask the same old question: What good is ‘filled shelved’ if the average consumer cannot afford to buy anything? All over the world workers do not earn enough to consume their own products forcing whole countries to depend on the export sector for growth. Now countries like Germany, Japan, South Korea and China are crashing because the world’s only consumer-market, i.e. the US, has crashed.
Three: Of course there will be foreign investment coming into Zimbabwe, if the unity government holds, and there will be a tremendous boom (relatively speaking). The question is will the economy of Zimbabwe be sound or not. Argentina crashed in 2001, after about two decades of Western-cooked neo-liberal polices, then it followed monetarist receipts and an export-boom followed for a couple of years only for Argentina to come back at exactly where it was eight years ago: at the brink of collapse!
The only thing the policies of the unity government will achieve is to re-connect Zimbabwe to the global system and turn it into another resource-exporting country with no national industry, wealth-accumulation or national currency. Russia, who is still a sovereign country, is crashing because the price of natural resources has crashed and its economy crumbling under the weight of dollar-denominated debts; does anyone believe Zimbabwe will fare better in the globalised economy?
All the world’s trade is currently being harnessed by dollar-hegemony and directed towards the only country on the face of the world that can print as much dollars as it wants: The United States.
Trade, which, like blood, should circularly flow,
Stopp’d in their channels, found its freedom lost:
Thither the wealth of all the world did go,
And seem’d but shipwreck’d on so base a coast.-John Dryden, The Year of Wonders, 1666.
Four: This is what I like to call: Pure Knavery! I tried to put the white-owned farms in Zimbabwe in context in Zimbabwe’s Monetary Policy, this is a very complex subject and has historical roots most western readers not only ignore but also refuse to consider altogether. It suffices to say that white-owned farms were predominantly cash-crop farms growing tobacco for export and not food for the poor of Harare, self-sufficiency can only be achieved by communal farming, an anathema to neo-liberal ideologues-no wonder the world is facing a famine.
A Poetic Pause (14)
March 23, 2009 at 7:30 pm | In Miscellaneous | Leave a CommentTags: Byron, Conquest of Granada, Hints from Horace, John Dryden, poetry, pun
Though mad Almanzor rhymed in Dryden’s days,
No sing-song Hero rants in modern plays;
Whilst modest Comedy her verse foregoes
For jest and pun in very middling prose.
-Byron
Gender Separate Schools Make the Front-page
March 22, 2009 at 7:02 pm | In History | 1 CommentTags: children, Education, schooling, schools, single-sex schools, society
In How to Reform Schools and Educate People I wrote the following:
Separation of girls and boys is the number one priority of secondary education, without this initial condition whatever system is implemented is doomed to failure. Secondary education was always separate, not only in space but also in style and subject. Only recently has the mixing of adolescent males and females been accepted as ‘normal’, while for centuries these two have been kept apart-for very good reasons.
The Guardian newspaper published the following article on its front-page:
“Girls are far more likely to thrive, get GCSEs and stay in education if they go to a single-sex school, according to new research, which reveals pupils who are struggling academically when they start secondary school reap the biggest rewards of girls-only schooling.
The analysis of the GCSE scores of more than 700,000 girls taught in the state sector concludes that those at girls’ schools consistently made more progress than those in co-ed secondaries.
The fact that pupils with the lowest test scores when they started secondary made the biggest leap in girls’ school will reopen the debate about whether more children should have access to a single-sex education in order to drive up results.
…
However, other leading academics said the research was more conflicting. Alan Smithers, director of education at Buckingham University, said: “We know across the piece that the main variables relating to exam success are pupil characteristics, social background and quality of teacher. There is very little space for gender in the classroom to make a difference. Where it apparently has an effect it relates to other factors, such as the aspirations of the parents who want their daughter educated in a single-sex school. But if this is true it will change our understanding.”
Sue Dunford, headteacher of Southfield School for Girls in Kettering, said: “It’s a question of confidence in the way girls develop. It’s cool to be very good at anything in a girls school – maths, sciences or physics. No one will ask why you’re doing a boys’ subject. Girls who lack confidence can thrive more in girls-only schools. We don’t have boys competing and distracting, so girls can really go for it.”"-Girls do better without boys, study finds, 18 March, The Guardian [my emphasis]
Alan Smithers is talking nonsense, what he says is exactly what the financial wizards of Wall Street said, he closes his eyes and sees only his ‘model’.
The Guardian also had an opinion piece about this story by Anne Perkins:
“Today, single sex schools are best. It’s in the land of pleated skirts and firm but fair women teachers that the best environment, and the best teaching, is found for girls to thrive. But other studies have come down as often in favour of co-education, or at least undermined the claims for the advantages of single-sex teaching by factoring in other circumstances like parental ambition and catchment areas.”
-Kudos in the land of pleated skirts by Anne Perkins [my emphasis]
In my post I wrote:
Schools for girls should be run by stern commanding women who resoundingly suppress the destructive tendencies unleashed by oestrogen. Girls at this age are highly vulnerable and they should be chaperoned and supervised at all times.
Ms. Perkins continue:
“Now if you put boys and girls who have been socialised like this into school together as puberty strikes, then what the girls think the boys think of the girls is likely to be a pretty key part of their self-esteem. And that is what the research finds – that attractiveness to the opposite sex is a much more important element of self-esteem in co-ed schools than in single-sex ones.
In my experience, single-sex schools leave most girls with a freedom to experiment, to be themselves, that might be denied to all but the most confident in co-eds. And even if the iron hand of gender conformity strikes the moment they get to the bus stop, there is at least a rival source of self-esteem from within the classroom.
Girls in single sex schools undoubtedly yearn for male company (and, speaking personally, berate their parents for depriving them of it). But they can escape, anyway during school hours, from being validated by their success in attracting it. “-Kudos in the land of pleated skirts by Anne Perkins [my emphasis]
The problem is exactly that “girls…yearn for male company” at that age, that is exactly the reason they should be kept apart! Like keeping hydrogen and oxygen apart, both elements have of course a ‘yearning’ for each other and if they should come in contact with other an explosion is the only result.
Mischief on the Zambeze
March 14, 2009 at 5:01 pm | In History | Leave a CommentTags: Africa, Australia, economy, finance, IMF, punitive expedition, sovereignty, Zimbabwe
The latest news from Zimbabwe:
“Zimbabwe badly needs Western donors and foreign investors to rescue its economy but external help will depend on the creation of a democratic government and reforms such as reversing plans for nationalization.
Economists said if the Washington-based IMF really was looking at a package, it would be designed to force a switch from Mugabe policies such as the printing of money and seizure of land that have caused hyperinflation and economic collapse.
“It will be extremely fussy with the conditions,” Harare-based economist John Robertson, who has met previous IMF and World Bank delegations, said. “They will set very tough conditions, which we deserve because we have behaved badly.”"
-Zimbabwe says IMF ready to offer immediate help, Reuters [my emphasis]
The “Western donors” are already on the move:
“Australia ended a long-standing ban on non-humanitarian aid to Zimbabwe Wednesday, saying it wanted to help Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai relieve the suffering of his nation’s people.
…
Australia had repeatedly called on Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe to step down, imposing financial sanctions and travel bans on members of his regime, prohibiting arms sales and cutting defence and ministerial links.”-Australia lifts ban on Zimbabwe aid, AFP [my emphasis]
Australia was more than happy to let the people suffer until they “democratically elected” the candidate wanted by the West.
The IMF delegation to Zimbabwe is the modern day equivalent of a punitive expedition going up the Zambeze river to punish the insolent locals, who thought they could exercise sovereignty in the face of world-dominating imperial rule, helped of course by comprador politicians and self-flagellating economists.
High Treason in Zimbabwe
March 1, 2009 at 1:00 pm | In History | 1 CommentTags: Africa, dollar, dollarisation, economy, finance, gold, hyperinflation, money, treason, Zimbabwe
The newly installed prime minister of Zimbabwe, Morgan Tsvangirai, is the worst kind of traitor; he has just surrendered the sovereign right of the people of Zimbabwe to issue money to the United States:
“Zimbabwe’s prime minister, Morgan Tsvangirai, has taken an important step toward establishing the new power-sharing government’s credibility by fulfilling a commitment to pay the army and other public-sector workers in dollars because the national currency is worthless.”
—Zimbabwe starts paying soldiers in US dollars, 19 Feb, The Guardian
From now on all assets in Zimbabwe will be priced in US dollars:
“Zimbabwe shares, battered by the world’s highest inflation rate and a decade-long recession, may rebound after the stock exchange reopened yesterday from a three- month suspension with listings re-denominated in U.S. dollars.
…
Reopening the exchange was one of the first steps by the coalition government formed last week as part of a power-sharing agreement between Mugabe, 84, and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai.
…
Zimbabwe may be forced to use a combination of the dollar, the rand and other currencies, Tsvangirai said.”—Zimbabwe Stocks May Soar as Bourse Reopens in Dollars, 20 Feb, Bloomberg
Dollarisation of the economy is the worst kind of high treason, because it surrenders one of the most important sovereign rights of the people, giving up parts of the country (as the Germans did at the end of the Great War) is the height of honour compared to it. Even the most inflated fiat currency in the history of the world is preferable to this!
If they have any US dollars (they don’t) they should then send it all to the mint in South Africa and request the following coin:
Every one troy ounce of pure gold would make eight zimbi’s. The low weight and purity would ensure that there is no foreign demand for the coin from investors.
As to the Zimbabwean dollar, they would stop printing it but keep accepting it for public debt and taxes. People will pay the government with dollars while accepting only zimbi’s, very quickly all the dollars will be absorbed and there would be only zimbi’s.
The state can also exchange one zimbi for 4.66 gram of 22K gold (or equivalent), thus putting a 10% seigniorage on the coin; for every thousand coin given to the public the state makes a profit of a hundred zimbi.
The zimbi would have turned the monetary system of Zimbabwe from the weakest on Earth to the only one based on gold, thus ensuring that Zimbabwe becomes the world’s only country with a trustworthy currency. Capital would pour into Zimbabwe from all over the world and its economy would boom. The opposite is now happening:
“Reconstructing Zimbabwe may cost as much as five billion US dollars (four billion euros), Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai said Friday as he opened his hands to neighbouring countries.
…
Motlanthe said South Africa, chair of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) bloc, had directed regional finance ministers to develop a plan to help Zimbabwe, and again called for sanctions to be lifted.”—Reconstructing Zimbabwe may cost $5bln, 20 Feb, AFP [my emphasis]
They might not have dollars ‘printed’ in the US, but they certainly do have gold mined in Africa:
“The Vice-President of Zimbabwe has been accused of trying to sell millions of dollars in gold nuggets and diamonds in defiance of international sanctions.
Joyce Mujuru used her daughter as a go-between to seek a deal for the gold, according to Firstar, a commodities trader based in Britain, which says that it was approached in November.
…
Firstar claims that Mrs Mujuru’s daughter and Spanish son-in-law, Nyasha and Pedro del Campo, offered to sell 3,700kg of gold for $90 million to Firstar Europe Ltd, a precious metal dealer. At the present market rate, one kilo of gold sells for $30,700 (£21,500). ”—Zimbabwe’s vice-president foiled in 3,600kg gold deal, Times Online
Three tonnes of gold (let’s assume the 700kg pays all the costs) would make 771,803 zimbi’s; instead of using it in their own country they want to send to Europe in exchange of ‘paper’!
Successive Chinese dynasties built and maintained a magnificent wall to protect their empire. The Ming dynasty (an ethnic Han dynasty) maintained this great barrier and improved it to protect itself from the Manchu tribes in the northwest. The tribes were never able to overcome the wall, but a disgruntled general (Wu Sangui) decided to open the gates at Shanhai Pass and let the Manchu tribes enter.
The result was the fall of the Ming dynasty and its replacement by the Qing dynasty, a non-Han dynasty. The Qing changed China in a way that weakened it—they weakened the cultural bonds of society to bolster their domination—and laid it open to the Western powers in the nineteenth century. China has yet to restore its place in the world after four hundred years of one general’s treasonable act. Morgan Tsvangirai has just opened the gates of Zimbabwe for the barbarians.
Hyperinflation and Gold Stocks
December 22, 2008 at 10:22 am | In History | 1 CommentTags: collapse, economy, finance, gold, gold stocks, hyperinflation, miners, mining, society
Introduction
Today I would like to re-visit a subject that I have already covered twice. In When Gold is Worthless and Hyperinflation and Gold Bugs I argued that gold is not really the safe haven that some advertise it to be. My concern here is historical rather than economic, I am not interested in investment or wealth management; what concerns me is society and the ability of the economy to benefit all members of society.
There is a strong egotistical streak hidden behind the mask of Individualism, the predominate philosophy of gold bugs and those interested in preserving their wealth from the approaching hyperinflationary storm. Egotism is a shortsighted stance that eventually costs more at the end than what it promises at the beginning. Those who recognise that the system of fiat money is doomed are duty bound to do something about it, trying to save only themselves by buying gold is an egotistical solution that will fail at the moment it is most needed.
Continue reading Hyperinflation and Gold Stocks…
Recommended Reading (1)
December 16, 2008 at 9:34 am | In Miscellaneous | Leave a CommentTags: Agriculture, articles, backwardation, Bloomberg, contango, decline, famine, farming, food, gold, gold fever, growth, national wealth, population, reading
A seven part series, ‘Recipe for Famine’, on bloomberg.com charts the effects of neo-liberal policy on agriculture in the third world:
- Part 1: Dead Children Linked to Aid Policy in Africa Favoring Americans
- Part 2: How Famine Lurked Behind Vienna Toast Where Joe Cocker Crooned
- Part 3: World Bank’s ‘Wrong Advice’ Left Silos Empty in Poor Countries
- Part 4: Government Bribes in Cameroon Divert Funds From Food Amid Riots
- Part 5: Wasting Enough Rice to Feed 184 Million Is Habit Only Rats Love
- Part 6: Corn Futures Spark Riots as Speculators Take Trading to Limit
- Part 7: Eating Isn’t Option When Minnesota Corn Burns in Houston Cars
‘What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander’ or to paraphrase: ‘What causes famine in poor countries causes famine in rich countries’.
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