“Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.”
James Madison
“It is no coincidence that the century of total war coincided with the century of central banking.”
― Ron Paul, End the Fed
What kind of a pussy votes PRESENT when deciding whether we should go to war? How about some spineless liberal Massachusetts douchebag. See how your multi-millionaire Senators voted. They really care what you think.
Senator Paul lived up to the standards of his Patriot father – DOCTOR NO.
Rand proposed an amendment that said Obama could not unilaterally decide to attack, since the Constitution puts that power in the hands of Congress. It was defeated 14 to 4.
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 09/04/2013 15:40 -0400
Voting Yes:
Voting No:
Present:
By Paul Rosenberg, FreemansPerspective.com
It has to be obvious to almost everyone that the US war machine is trying desperately to get another war going… and – at least for the moment – failing miserably.
Now, it’s entirely possible that they’ll get their war going before this article even reaches you, but still, it’s quite another question whether they can sustain it.
War is a wild beast, of course, and you can never tell what it’ll do once it’s released into the world. But the beast of 2013 seems a bit emaciated and weak.
This situation reminds me of the old set of posters and buttons from the 1970s that asked the question:
What if they gave a war and no one came?
That looks to be the case right now. But that doesn’t mean powerful interests aren’t pushing for it.
The Romans had a phrase that they used for legal analysis: qui bono, which translates to “who benefits?” Clearly, powerful individuals are pushing hard for the US to go to war. Let’s take a look at who these people are.
Politicians
Early 20th century writer Randolph Bourne was ever-so right when he taught us that “war is the health of the state.” In times of peace, the state is commonly resented. After all, they forcibly remove money from the people in their control, and that engenders bad feelings. When terrified by war, however, people are willing to forget about such matters: It is better to be a serf than to be a corpse.
Consider the “great Presidents” – nearly all of them were associated with a war, and probably a big one.
Bankers
I’m talking here about central bankers, not the operator of your local savings and loan.
War requires money, and lots of it. And money comes from central bankers, not from governments or even from simple printing presses. Dollars, yen, euros and the others come from central bankers, and those bankers get a cut of everything they create.
And then, of course, they get interest on those dollars from every business that needs loans for machines to manufacture bullets, uniforms, bombs, portable food, and everything else that goes into “giving a war.”
The Mega-corps
State-connected corporations thrive in time of war. These outfits are addicted to over-sized profits, and the very best tool for obtaining them is war. Nothing else comes close. So, for the sake of their stock prices, they need war and will push in dozens of ways to get it.
The Intelligence Complex
What’s not to like about war for these guys?
More money, worship on the nightly television shows, unlimited power, and no questions asked about your misdeeds… not to mention the segment of womankind that will reward the impressively violent with prompt mating privileges.
The Military Contracting Complex
There are literally thousands of military contracting firms these days, and all of the successful ones are allied with one government agency or another – a military service, a foreign affairs department, a retired general, a politician… someone with pull. It’s the only way to get work in those fields, and it’s also the best way for bureaucrats of the middle and upper levels to get kickbacks.
War funnels immense amounts of money to all levels of the state-corporate complex through this new conduit.
People Who Play On Emotions
Nothing stirs up “rah-rah” emotions better than images of dead people wearing your home team’s uniform. And that’s really good for the many people who cash in on your emotions. That list begins with politicians and continues with Hollywood (TV, movies and games) advertisers, all the people mentioned above, and even religious leaders. The churches of America fill with military rhetoric (and people) in time of war, and ambitious ministers play it up big. (With a few exceptions.)
So, that’s just a general list of people who benefit from war. The interesting thing about this moment is that the Western world – and America in particular – seems weary of the bloody exercise. They’ve had it for more than a decade, and the emotional surge has worn off.
And, it may just be that the terrified Americans who ran to politicians for safety in 2001 have grown up a bit.
Let’s hope so.
[Editor’s Note: Paul Rosenberg is the outside-the-Matrix author of FreemansPerspective.com, a site dedicated to economic freedom, personal independence and privacy. He is also the author of The Great Calendar, a report that breaks down our complex world into an easy-to-understand model. Click here to get your free copy.]
This is Don Stott’s weekly collum from http://www.coloradogold.com
The last two paragraphs are political lambasting Obama.
Where have all the jobs gone? There are a couple of answers, but let’s tae the most obvious one first. Everything, no matter which field of work, has lost jobs over the last few decades. with no exceptions.
When I was young, (many decades ago!), the only self service elevators were in small apartment buildings. All the rest had elevator operators, which were low skilled jobs. but employed many tens of thousands of people. Now, all elevators are automatic, computer controlled, and have no operators. Those jobs are gone. Telephone operators, the same, and now with cell phones, there are no more telephone booths to maintain and empty. Those jobs are gone. Railroads have shed probably 75% of their employees over the last few decades. Trains used to have 5 man crews, and now one or two. Steam locomotives, which I love, were terribly inefficient, required water every hundred miles, boiler washing, coal, 2 men in the cab, and it was impossible to “MU” them. MU means ‘multiple unit,’ and today, if you watch a mile long train, and four or more locomotives, there is only one engineer, who controls all by radio. With steam, there had to be two men in each locomotive. Diesels can go hundreds of miles and even many thousands with no maintenance, water, or fuel. Track maintenance now, is done with multi-million dollar machines which do all the work of the former maintenance of way teams. Those jobs are gone.
The auto industry, has lost hundreds of thousands of jobs, thanks to robots and automation. I have in my garage, a large, metal sign with two fingers pointing up. It advertised Kendall Motor Oil. The two fingers meant that you only had to change your oil every 2,000 miles with Kendall, rather than the customary thousand miles. With synthetics, it’s at least 5,000 miles. Cars required a tune-up every 10,000 miles, but no more. Solid state ignition, and fuel injection, has eliminated tune ups, and engines can go a hundred thousand miles easily, with no maintenance. Cars always start now, whereas with carburetors and ignition points, millions of cars wouldn’t start on cold or wet mornings before those improvements. Auto mechanics by the millions have lost their jobs, and the shade tree mechanic is almost extinct, since it requires a computer to diagnose car troubles now. New automatic transmissions don’t even have drain plugs with which to change the oil. They’re permanently sealed. Auto factories have robots doing the welding, painting, and other jobs. Gas station attendants are long gone, and everyone pumps their own gas, and washes their own windows. Tubeless tires last three times as long as the old belted tires, and tire men by the thousands have lost their jobs. Power steering and brakes, plus old style brakes with shoes, used to have lots of problems. No more. Those jobs are gone. Alternators have replaced generators, so a dead battery is a rare thing now. Cars used to overheat regularly, but no more. No more grease jobs either. Most cars and trucks have no grease nipples now.. More jobs gone. That’s just in the auto industry.
Farmers now have air conditioned cabs, and computer controlled tractors. Farming has become so efficient, that millions of farmers have found their hired hands unnecessary. Tractors are now diesel, and no longer gasoline, which makes them last twice as long. Automatic milking, feeding, watering, and fertilizing have made hired hands out of work.
The computer and internet, have cost millions of jobs. I now wonder what would happen if there were no computers to direct trucks and trains, land airplanes, do accounting, figuring, analysis, selling, and banking. Want to order from a TV ad? No one is there to take your order. It’s all done by computer. Those jobs are gone. Ticketing for shows and travel are done now with computers. Those jobs are gone. The bar code has made cashiering simple, and self service check-out stands in supermarkets and big box stores, have cost potential jobs of probably a million low talented workers.
And now for the jobs lost due to low wage Chinese and Mexican labor. That is now changing, because all the fifty cent an hour jobs created in China, have raised their life styles, and made them get higher wages. The higher wages have destroyed their jobs, and now jobs are now coming back to America. Slowly, but the trend is there. Apple has just built a new factory in America for their products, and Ford has called back 1400 employees for a Detroit factory. There is a clothing company that brags that their clothing is made with all American labor as well as fabrics. Go to allamericanclothing.com. Walmart is now beginning to buy American made merchandise. Mercedes and Toyota, among others, now make many of their cars in America. A recent survey found that a huge majority of Americans won’t mind paying a bit more for merchandise made in America.
Every thing seems to have its peaks and valleys. When something gets outrageous, it self corrects, which is merely basic economics. Housing got so high, thanks as usual to government, it had to go down, and when it got to the obvious bottom, it has started to rise. Gold and silver got to the point where there were so many sellers taking profits, that it corrected, and now is going back up. All tangible things will have to go up, because the presses are running night and day, and as Stott’s Law says, “The more of anything there is, the less they will be worth,” and there are no exceptions to that rule. Gold and silver got so low, that the mines were shutting down, which was an obvious indication that the bottom had been reached. Housing got so low, that prices were far below replacement cost, so that was the bottom. The Obama regime, with all its corruption and excesses, surely have made the Democrats tremble at the next elections. The Presidency and Obamacare has reached an all time low in public opinion, and the situation has to elevate itself with elections next year. We hope so, anyway!
As far as the Presidency going to new, all time lows, check out this fact. The British Monarchy, with the vast land holdings, and pomp and circumstance, costs $57.8 million a year. The Obama White House cost taxpayers $1.4 billion last year. This included $102,000 for a ‘dog handler,’ a $100 million trip to Africa, plus may other vacations costing hundreds of thousands each, many dozens of golf outings, shopping sprees, Michele having 142 staff to keep her ‘well groomed,’ and Obama having the biggest staff (469) under him, of any President in history. Air Force One is running like it a a commercial liner, so often is it used. More government rules, regulations, and spending. The debt has increased $5 trillion in the last 3 1/2 years, under Obama and his Democrats.
I rally do believe, that the liberal Democrats, Obamacare, and Obama and his gang, have so outraged America, that like a pendulum, the peak of stupidity has been reached, and America will vote to take the Senate back and keep the House next year. Even unions hate Obamacare, which was passed without even a single Republican vote. If a war is started in Syria, that will cook the goose of all who voted for it. John Boehner and McCain are idiots. Rand Paul is correct. MYOB. Mind our own business. Ron Paul says the whole gas thing is a false flag, and it may be true. The U.N. inspectors could not determine who did it,. Asser says he wouldn’t kill his own people, and had nothing to do with it. Yesterday, the rebels were found with sarin gas in their possession. In previous columns I urged America not to go into Iraq and Afghanistan. Write or call our Senator or Representative and tell them to vote NO on anything Obama wants.
Our beloved leaders and their insistence on democratizing the world at the point of a few hundred tomahawk missiles has had predictable consequences. West Texas crude oil hit $109 a barrel today, the highest level since February 2012 when we were saber rattling over the imminent threat of Iran. Gas prices breached $3.90 per gallon then and again in September of 2012 when West Texas crude hit only $99 per barrel. The price at the station near my house has jumped by 8 cents in the last few days to $3.71 per gallon. The national price of $3.62 is headed higher. If and when the missiles start flying, the sky is the limit depending on what Syria, Russia and Iran do. There already appears to be a disconnect, as WTI has surged by 23% since April, but national gas prices are only up 4%. Some of this is due to demand destruction as the high prices and declining economy have led to a collapse in vehicle miles driven and fuel usage.
Some of the disconnect may be explained by the price of Brent crude. It is pretty much flat versus last year, while WTI has gone up 12%. The West and Midwest are most influenced by the price of WTI, while the East is impacted by Brent. The price of Brent hit $116 today, up 16% since April. That is close to the one year high reached in February, when U.S. gas prices hit their high for the year of $3.70 per gallon. Last year ended up with the highest average price for a gallon of gas in U.S. history and that was with falling prices from September through December. The average price in 2013 is only slightly lower than 2012 and we are about to experience much higher prices from September through December. Throw in a hurricane or two and we’ll really be partying. Prices in Chicago and Los Angeles are already above $3.90 per gallon.
There is nothing like high energy prices to kick the ass of this economy. We are already in recession, as the consumer is up to their eyeballs in debt and getting gouged by higher taxes, healthcare costs, tuition costs, and food costs. These soaring oil prices will make everything more expensive, as our economy is dependent upon shipping shit by truck. One of the storylines peddled by the MSM has been the fantastic auto recovery. Thank God Obama saved GM!!!
Again we have a disconnect. The number of vehicle miles driven continues to decline. Why would auto sales be soaring if people are driving less and young people can’t afford cars? The chart below makes the point. We’ve got record high energy prices and a decade long decline in miles driven, but somehow we have a booming auto industry. It couldn’t possibly be driven by cheap credit doled out to subprime auto buyers? Obama and his minions at Ally Financial, along with Bennie and his Wall Street cohorts wouldn’t be using those free Bennie bucks to create the illusion of an auto recovery? Would they?
Do you think the auto recovery is sustainable with rising interest rates, rising gas prices, falling stock prices, increasing bad debt on auto loans, and a recession? If you do, I have some prime real estate in Damascus I’d like to sell you.
They will hang whomever suits their purposes in order to preserve and increase their power, control and wealth. First it was Iraq. Then it was Afghanistan. Then Libya. Then Egypt. Now Syria. Next Iran.
First it was Bradley Manning. Then it was Julian Assange. Now it is Edward Snowden. Next it will be you.
http://youtu.be/_ZSS3yxpnFU
THE HANGMAN
By Maurice Ogden
Into our town the hangman came,
smelling of gold and blood and flame.
He paced our bricks with a different air,
and built his frame on the courthouse square.
The scaffold stood by the courthouse side,
only as wide as the door was wide
with a frame as tall, or a little more,
than the capping sill of the courthouse door.
And we wondered whenever we had the time,
Who the criminal? What the crime?
The hangman judged with the yellow twist
of knotted hemp in his busy fist.
And innocent though we were with dread,
we passed those eyes of buckshot lead.
Till one cried, “Hangman, who is he,
for whom you raised the gallows-tree?”
Then a twinkle grew in his buckshot eye
and he gave a riddle instead of reply.
“He who serves me best,” said he
“Shall earn the rope on the gallows-tree.”
And he stepped down and laid his hand
on a man who came from another land.
And we breathed again, for anothers grief
at the hangmans hand, was our relief.
And the gallows frame on the courthouse lawn
by tomorrow’s sun would be struck and gone.
So we gave him way and no one spoke
out of respect for his hangmans cloak.
The next day’s sun looked mildly down
on roof and street in our quiet town;
and stark and black in the morning air
the gallows-tree on the courthouse square.
And the hangman stood at his usual stand
with the yellow hemp in his busy hand.
With his buckshot eye and his jaw like a pike,
and his air so knowing and business-like.
And we cried, “Hangman, have you not done,
yesterday with the alien one?”
Then we fell silent and stood amazed.
“Oh, not for him was the gallows raised.”
He laughed a laugh as he looked at us,
“Do you think I’ve gone to all this fuss,
To hang one man? That’s the thing I do.
To stretch the rope when the rope is new.”
Above our silence a voice cried “Shame!”
and into our midst the hangman came;
to that mans place, “Do you hold,” said he,
“With him that was meat for the gallows-tree?”
He laid his hand on that one’s arm
and we shrank back in quick alarm.
We gave him way, and no one spoke,
out of fear of the hangmans cloak.
That night we saw with dread surprise
the hangmans scaffold had grown in size.
Fed by the blood beneath the chute,
the gallows-tree had taken root.
Now as wide, or a little more
than the steps that led to the courthouse door.
As tall as the writing, or nearly as tall,
half way up on the courthouse wall.
The third he took, we had all heard tell,
was a usurer…, an infidel.
And “What” said the hangman, “Have you to do
with the gallows-bound…, and he a Jew?”
And we cried out, “Is this one he
who has served you well and faithfully?”
The hangman smiled, “It’s a clever scheme
to try the strength of the gallows beam.”
The fourth man’s dark accusing song
had scratched our comfort hard and long.
“And what concern,” he gave us back,
“Have you … for the doomed and black?”
The fifth, the sixth, and we cried again,
“Hangman, hangman, is this the man?”
“It’s a trick”, said he, “that we hangman know
for easing the trap when the trap springs slow.”
And so we ceased and asked now more
as the hangman tallied his bloody score.
And sun by sun, and night by night
the gallows grew to monstrous height.
The wings of the scaffold opened wide
until they covered the square from side to side.
And the monster cross beam looking down,
cast its shadow across the town.
Then through the town the hangman came
and called through the empy streets…my name.
I looked at the gallows soaring tall
and thought … there’s no one left at all
for hanging … and so he called to me
to help take down the gallows-tree.
And I went out with right good hope
to the hangmans tree and the hangmans rope.
He smiled at me as I came down
to the courthouse square…through the silent town.
Supple and stretched in his busy hand,
was the yellow twist of hempen strand.
He whistled his tune as he tried the trap
and it sprang down with a ready snap.
Then with a smile of awful command,
He laid his hand upon my hand.
“You tricked me Hangman.” I shouted then,
“That your scaffold was built for other men,
and I’m no henchman of yours.” I cried.
“You lied to me Hangman, foully lied.”
Then a twinkle grew in his buckshot eye,
“Lied to you…tricked you?” He said “Not I…
for I answered straight and told you true.
The scaffold was raised for none but you.”
“For who has served more faithfully?
With your coward’s hope.” said He,
“And where are the others that might have stood
side by your side, in the common good?”
“Dead!” I answered, and amiably
“Murdered,” the Hangman corrected me.
“First the alien … then the Jew.
I did no more than you let me do.”
Beneath the beam that blocked the sky
none before stood so alone as I.
The Hangman then strapped me…with no voice there
to cry “Stay!” … for me in the empty square.
THE BOTTOM LINE: “…I did no more than you let me do.”
Kunstler never fails to amaze. First he turns into a goldbug. Now he is quoting Jim Willie regarding the toppling of our USD hegemony by the Russians, Chinese and other opponents. Next he’ll be quoting Ron Paul and going to NASCAR races.
It seems he doesn’t have as well behaved commenters as TBP.
By Jim Kunstler
After the British parliament put the kibosh on following the American punishment brigade to Syria, and then NATO, and the UN wrinkled their noses at the project, well, that pretty much left President Obama to twist slowly, slowly in the wind — washed, rinsed, and hung out to dry. It looks like a watershed moment in the USA’s increasingly klutzy career as the world’s hall monitor. International power relations are suddenly in flux. A phase change has occurred causing all that was solid a few days ago to melt into liquid.
The Iranians are having a good laugh, for now. Mr. Assad of Syria responded with a beaming smirk. However, any sentient observer can see this region of the world for what it is, a political demolition derby which, left to its own blundering devices, would blow up the whole arena when the last player sputters to a standstill.
First of all, it seems to me that extremists in the Republican-dominated US House of Representatives have been quietly searching for a pretext to impeach President Obama. Committing an overt act of war without congressional approval would have been a good case, legally, despite the fact that executive branch war-making has been absolutely the rule for decades in Washington. The British parliamentary move against the avid David Cameron pretty much begged the question for American legislators. The foggy part is whether they would actually come back to Washington from the fried dough alleys of their state fairs and mount a “debate” about whether it would be a good or bad thing to whack Syria for gassing more than a thousand of its own citizens.
Lately when America mounts a high moral horse about how other nations behave, we have gone into these places and smashed things up, bringing much more death and destruction than we anticipated. The hope is always that some surgical military operation can correct a political illness, but a cruise missile is not exactly a scalpel and once the patient is blown to pieces it is rather hard to patch up the body politic again. You’re just left, as in Iraq and Afghanistan, with a lot of bloody fragments fought over by political rats and cockroaches.
Syria is a real crossroads both for America’s policy in the region and for its position on the world stage. The region is in a state of destructive turmoil that is likely to lead to the further fall of regimes and the breakup of states. Many of these states are figment nations anyway, with boundaries drawn in the 20th century by the winners of the two world wars. The discovery of oil from North Africa to Iran and beyond has been catastrophic for everybody in the world, but most vividly for the exploding populations of these mostly desert states, which could not have supported so many people without the artificial support of petro-money. Now, faced with the specter of peak oil production, the whole region is flying apart from the stress of population overshoot, including countries like Syria which never produced much oil itself.
But the drama over the trade in the oil remaining only becomes more intense. For instance, the position of Saudi Arabia, pretending to sit quietly on the sidelines through all this, is curious. There are rumors, unverified, that the gas incident in Syria happened because Saudi Arabia sent canisters of Sarin to the Syrian rebels, who then mishandled them and gassed their own neighborhood. The world’s recent experience with so-called “intel reports” about weapons has made everybody skeptical of claims made by politicians that a particular country poses a danger to others.
Otherwise, there is a whole other strategic realm of concerns around the petro trade and its financing that is totally off the radar screen of the mainstream media. For instance, the sometimes erratic but brilliant blogger Jim Willie describes the larger struggle of Russia, Iran, China, and other interested parties to displace the US dollar dominance in oil trade — in particular a dollar based on increasingly sketchy US Treasury bonds, which has deformed global banking, roiled currencies, and made the settling of international accounts problematical for everybody else in the world. The opposition to the US, and its client / partner Saudi Arabia, the story goes, would replace the dollar with gold-backed oil trade and a logistical work-around based on a growing pipeline system from Iran and beyond, in Asia, to desperate customers in Europe. The implications are a collapse of the dollar (and the US bond market), a wedge between European and American interests, and a dominant partnership of oil-and-gas rich Russia with China — that is, a major power shift from west-to-east.
Who knows how much of this has informed President Obama’s decision process. The stall in the American whack-attack against Syria may itself be a symptom of the swirling new conditions in world finance and power relations. In any case, a great empire — which we have been — can’t afford to make idle threats. The outcome of the Syria melodrama may be that the US has been knocked down a big step in its ability to project power without terrible consequences to itself.
To posters in the comments section: Do not post YouTube videos. Do not engage in quarrels. Do not make stupid political puns. We are making an effort to combat the trolldom that has reigned here for a while. If you misbehave, you will be kicked off.
Sunday September 1, 2013
President Obama announced this weekend that he has decided to use military force against Syria and would seek authorization from Congress when it returned from its August break. Every Member ought to vote against this reckless and immoral use of the US military. But even if every single Member and Senator votes for another war, it will not make this terrible idea any better because some sort of nod is given to the Constitution along the way.
Besides, the president made it clear that Congressional authorization is superfluous, asserting falsely that he has the authority to act on his own with or without Congress. That Congress allows itself to be treated as window dressing by the imperial president is just astonishing.
The President on Saturday claimed that the alleged chemical attack in Syria on August 21 presented “a serious danger to our national security.” I disagree with the idea that every conflict, every dictator, and every insurgency everywhere in the world is somehow critical to our national security. That is the thinking of an empire, not a republic. It is the kind of thinking that this president shares with his predecessor and it is bankrupting us and destroying our liberties here at home.
According to recent media reports, the military does not have enough money to attack Syria and would have to go to Congress for a supplemental appropriation to carry out the strikes. It seems our empire is at the end of its financial rope. The limited strikes that the president has called for in Syria would cost the US in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey wrote to Congress last month that just the training of Syrian rebels and “limited” missile and air strikes would cost “in the billions” of dollars. We should clearly understand what another war will do to the US economy, not to mention the effects of additional unknown costs such as a spike in fuel costs as oil skyrockets.
I agree that any chemical attack, particularly one that kills civilians, is horrible and horrendous. All deaths in war and violence are terrible and should be condemned. But why are a few hundred killed by chemical attack any worse or more deserving of US bombs than the 100,000 already killed in the conflict? Why do these few hundred allegedly killed by Assad count any more than the estimated 1,000 Christians in Syria killed by US allies on the other side? Why is it any worse to be killed by poison gas than to have your head chopped off by the US allied radical Islamists, as has happened to a number of Christian priests and bishops in Syria?
For that matter, why are the few hundred civilians killed in Syria by a chemical weapon any worse than the 2000-3000 who have been killed by Obama’s drone strikes in Pakistan? Does it really make a difference whether a civilian is killed by poison gas or by drone missile or dull knife?
In “The Sociology of Imperialism,” Joseph Schumpeter wrote of the Roman Empire’s suicidal interventionism:
“There was no corner of the known world where some interest was not alleged to be in danger or under actual attack. If the interests were not Roman, they were those of Rome’s allies; and if Rome had no allies, then allies would be invented. When it was utterly impossible to contrive an interest – why, then it was the national honour that had been insulted.”
Sadly, this sounds like a summary of Obama’s speech over the weekend. We are rapidly headed for the same collapse as the Roman Empire if we continue down the president’s war path. What we desperately need is an overwhelming Congressional rejection of the president’s war authorization. Even a favorable vote, however, cannot change the fact that this is a self-destructive and immoral policy.
Submitted by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,
Someone wants to get the United States into a war with Syria very, very badly. Cui bono is an old Latin phrase that is still commonly used, and it roughly means “to whose benefit?” The key to figuring out who is really behind the push for war is to look at who will benefit from that war. If a full-blown war erupts between the United States and Syria, it will not be good for the United States, it will not be good for Israel, it will not be good for Syria, it will not be good for Iran and it will not be good for Hezbollah. The party that stands to benefit the most is Saudi Arabia, and they won’t even be doing any of the fighting.
They have been pouring billions of dollars into the conflict in Syria, but so far they have not been successful in their attempts to overthrow the Assad regime. Now the Saudis are trying to play their trump card – the U.S. military. If the Saudis are successful, they will get to pit the two greatest long-term strategic enemies of Sunni Islam against each other – the U.S. and Israel on one side and Shia Islam on the other. In such a scenario, the more damage that both sides do to each other the happier the Sunnis will be.
There would be other winners from a U.S. war with Syria as well. For example, it is well-known that Qatar wants to run a natural gas pipeline out of the Persian Gulf, through Syria and into Europe. That is why Qatar has also been pouring billions of dollars into the civil war in Syria.
So if it is really Saudi Arabia and Qatar that want to overthrow the Assad regime, why does the United States have to do the fighting?
Someone should ask Barack Obama why it is necessary for the U.S. military to do the dirty work of his Sunni Muslim friends.
Obama is promising that the upcoming attack will only be a “limited military strike” and that we will not be getting into a full-blown war with Syria.
The only way that will work is if Syria, Hezbollah and Iran all sit on their hands and do nothing to respond to the upcoming U.S. attack.
Could that happen?
Maybe.
Let’s hope so.
But if there is a response, and a U.S. naval vessel gets hit, or American blood is spilled, or rockets start raining down on Tel Aviv, the U.S. will then be engaged in a full-blown war.
That is about the last thing that we need right now.
The vast majority of Americans do not want to get embroiled in another war in the Middle East, and even a lot of top military officials are expressing “serious reservations” about attacking Syria according to the Washington Post…
The Obama administration’s plan to launch a military strike against Syria is being received with serious reservations by many in the U.S. military, which is coping with the scars of two lengthy wars and a rapidly contracting budget, according to current and former officers.
Having assumed for months that the United States was unlikely to intervene militarily in Syria, the Defense Department has been thrust onto a war footing that has made many in the armed services uneasy, according to interviews with more than a dozen military officers ranging from captains to a four-star general.
For the United States, there really is no good outcome in Syria.
If we attack and Assad stays in power, that is a bad outcome for the United States.
If we help overthrow the Assad regime, the rebels take control. But they would be even worse than Assad. They have pledged loyalty to al-Qaeda, and they are rabidly anti-American, rabidly anti-Israel and rabidly anti-western.
So why in the world should the United States get involved?
This war would not be good for Israel either. I have seen a number of supposedly pro-Israel websites out there getting very excited about the prospect of war with Syria, but that is a huge mistake.
Syria has already threatened to attack Israeli cities if the U.S. attacks Syria. If Syrian missiles start landing in the heart of Tel Aviv, Israel will respond.
And if any of those missiles have unconventional warheads, Israel will respond by absolutely destroying Damascus.
And of course a missile exchange between Syria and Israel will almost certainly draw Hezbollah into the conflict. And right now Hezbollah has 70,000 rockets aimed at Israel.
If Hezbollah starts launching those rockets, thousands upon thousands of innocent Jewish citizens will be killed.
So all of those “pro-Israel” websites out there that are getting excited about war with Syria should think twice. If you really are “pro-Israel”, you should not want this war. It would not be good for Israel.
If you want to stand with Israel, then stand for peace. This war would not achieve any positive outcomes for Israel. Even if Assad is overthrown, the rebel government that would replace him would be even more anti-Israel than Assad was.
War is hell. Ask anyone that has been in the middle of one. Why would anyone want to see American blood spilled, Israeli blood spilled or Syrian blood spilled?
If the Saudis want this war so badly, they should go and fight it. Everyone knows that the Saudis have been bankrolling the rebels. At this point, even CNN is openly admitting this…
It is an open secret that Saudi Arabia is using Jordan to smuggle weapons into Syria for the rebels. Jordan says it is doing all it can to prevent that and does not want to inflame the situation in Syria.
And Assad certainly knows who is behind the civil war in his country. The following is an excerpt from a recent interview with Assad…
Of course it is well known that countries, such as Saudi Arabia, who hold the purse strings can shape and manipulate them to suit their own interests.
Ideologically, these countries mobilize them through direct or indirect means as extremist tools. If they declare that Muslims must pursue Jihad in Syria, thousands of fighters will respond.
Financially, those who finance and arm such groups can instruct them to carry out acts of terrorism and spread anarchy. The influence over them is synergized when a country such as Saudi Arabia directs them through both the Wahhabi ideology and their financial means.
And shortly after the British Parliament voted against military intervention in Syria, Saudi Arabia raised their level of “defense readiness” from “five” to “two” in a clear sign that they fully expect a war to happen…
Saudi Arabia, a supporter of rebels fighting to topple President Bashar al-Assad, has raised its level of military alertness in anticipation of a possible Western strike in Syria, sources familiar with the matter said on Friday.
The United States has been calling for punitive action against Assad’s government for a suspected poison gas attack on a Damascus suburb on August 21 that killed hundreds of people.
Saudi Arabia’s defense readiness has been raised to “two” from “five”, a Saudi military source who declined to be named told Reuters. “One” is the highest level of alert.
And guess who has been supplying the rebels in Syria with chemical weapons?
According to Associated Press correspondent Dale Gavlak, it has been the Saudis…
Syrian rebels in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta have admitted to Associated Press correspondent Dale Gavlak that they were responsible for last week’s chemical weapons incident which western powers have blamed on Bashar Al-Assad’s forces, revealing that the casualties were the result of an accident caused by rebels mishandling chemical weapons provided to them by Saudi Arabia.
“From numerous interviews with doctors, Ghouta residents, rebel fighters and their families….many believe that certain rebels received chemical weapons via the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and were responsible for carrying out the (deadly) gas attack,” writes Gavlak.
And this is someone that isn’t just fresh out of journalism school. As Paul Joseph Watson noted, “Dale Gavlak’s credibility is very impressive. He has been a Middle East correspondent for the Associated Press for two decades and has also worked for National Public Radio (NPR) and written articles for BBC News.”
The Voice of Russia has also been reporting on Gavlak’s bombshell findings…
The rebels noted it was a result of an accident caused by rebels mishandling chemical weapons provided to them.
“My son came to me two weeks ago asking what I thought the weapons were that he had been asked to carry,” said Abu Abdel-Moneim, the father of a rebel fighting to unseat Assad, who lives in Ghouta.
As Gavlak reports, Abdel-Moneim said his son and 12 other rebels died in a weapons storage tunnel. The father stated the weapons were provided to rebel forces by a Saudi militant, known as Abu Ayesha, describing them as having a “tube-like structure” while others were like a “huge gas bottle.”
“They didn’t tell us what these arms were or how to use them,” complained a female fighter named ‘K’. “We didn’t know they were chemical weapons. We never imagined they were chemical weapons.”
“When Saudi Prince Bandar gives such weapons to people, he must give them to those who know how to handle and use them,” she warned. She, like other Syrians, do not want to use their full names for fear of retribution.
Gavlak also refers to an article in the UK’s Daily Telegraph about secret Russian-Saudi talks stating that Prince Bandar threatened Russian President Vladimir Putin with terror attacks at next year’s Winter Olympics in Sochi if Russia doesn’t agree to change its stance on Syria.
“Prince Bandar pledged to safeguard Russia’s naval base in Syria if the Assad regime is toppled, but he also hinted at Chechen terrorist attacks on Russia’s Winter Olympics in Sochi if there is no accord,” the article stated.
“I can give you a guarantee to protect the Winter Olympics next year. The Chechen groups that threaten the security of the games are controlled by us,” Saudi Prince allegedly told Vladimir Putin.
Yes, the Saudis were so desperate to get the Russians to stand down and allow an attack on Syria that they actually threatened them. Zero Hedge published some additional details on the meeting between Saudi intelligence chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan and Russian President Vladimir Putin…
Bandar told Putin, “There are many common values and goals that bring us together, most notably the fight against terrorism and extremism all over the world. Russia, the US, the EU and the Saudis agree on promoting and consolidating international peace and security. The terrorist threat is growing in light of the phenomena spawned by the Arab Spring. We have lost some regimes. And what we got in return were terrorist experiences, as evidenced by the experience of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the extremist groups in Libya. … As an example, I can give you a guarantee to protect the Winter Olympics in the city of Sochi on the Black Sea next year. The Chechen groups that threaten the security of the games are controlled by us, and they will not move in the Syrian territory’s direction without coordinating with us. These groups do not scare us. We use them in the face of the Syrian regime but they will have no role or influence in Syria’s political future.”
It is good of the Saudis to admit they control a terrorist organization that “threatens the security” of the Sochi 2014 Olympic games, and that house of Saud uses “in the face of the Syrian regime.” Perhaps the next time there is a bombing in Boston by some Chechen-related terrorists, someone can inquire Saudi Arabia what, if anything, they knew about that.
But the piece de resistance is what happened at the end of the dialogue between the two leaders. It was, in not so many words, a threat by Saudi Arabia aimed squarely at Russia:
As soon as Putin finished his speech, Prince Bandar warned that in light of the course of the talks, things were likely to intensify, especially in the Syrian arena, although he appreciated the Russians’ understanding of Saudi Arabia’s position on Egypt and their readiness to support the Egyptian army despite their fears for Egypt’s future.
The head of the Saudi intelligence services said that the dispute over the approach to the Syrian issue leads to the conclusion that “there is no escape from the military option, because it is the only currently available choice given that the political settlement ended in stalemate. We believe that the Geneva II Conference will be very difficult in light of this raging situation.”
At the end of the meeting, the Russian and Saudi sides agreed to continue talks, provided that the current meeting remained under wraps. This was before one of the two sides leaked it via the Russian press.
Are you starting to get the picture?
The Saudis are absolutely determined to make this war happen, and they expect us to do the fighting.
And Barack Obama plans to go ahead and attack Syria without the support of the American people or the approval of Congress.
According to a new NBC News poll that was just released, nearly 80 percent of all Americans want Congress to approve a strike on Syria before it happens.
And according to Politico, more than 150 members of Congress have already signed letters demanding that Obama get approval from them before attacking Syria…
Already Thursday, more than 150 members of Congress have signaled their opposition to airstrikes on Syria without a congressional vote. House members circulated two separate letters circulated that were sent to the White House demanding a congressional role before military action takes place. One, authored by Rep. Scott Rigell (R-Va.), has more than 150 signatures from Democrats and Republicans. Another, started by Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), is signed by 53 Democrats, though many of them also signed Rigell’s letter.
However, is is clear that he is absolutely determined to attack Syria, and he is not going to let the U.S. Congress – even if they vote against it – or the American people stop him.
Let’s just hope that he doesn’t start World War III in the process.
There were no Al Qaeda terrorists in Iraq before we invaded. Now it’s swarming with Al Qaeda fighters. Libyan dictator Ghaddafi was fighting Al Qaeda. We killed him. Mubarek kept the radical Islamists under control. We deposed him. Assad is fighting Al Qaeda terrorists. We are about to kill him. When will the American people use their fucking brains and see what is going on.
Do you see any resemblance to Orwell’s description of war in his training manual for American democracy?
“In 1984, there is a perpetual war between Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia, the super-states which emerged from the atomic global war. “The book”, The Theory and Practice of Oligarchic Collectivism by Emmanuel Goldstein, explains that each state is so strong it cannot be defeated, even with the combined forces of two super-states—despite changing alliances. To hide such contradictions, history is re-written to explain that the (new) alliance always was so; the populaces accustomed to doublethink accept it. The war is not fought in Oceanian, Eurasian or Eastasian territory but in a disputed zone comprising the sea and land from Tangiers (northern Africa) to Darwin (Australia) to the Arctic. At the start, Oceania and Eastasia are allies combatting Eurasia in northern Africa.
That alliance ends and Oceania allied with Eurasia fights Eastasia, a change which occurred during the Hate Week dedicated to creating patriotic fervour for the Party’s perpetual war. The public are blind to the change; in mid-sentence an orator changes the name of the enemy from “Eurasia” to “Eastasia” without pause. When the public are enraged at noticing that the wrong flags and posters are displayed they tear them down—thus the origin of the idiom “We’ve always been at war with Eastasia”; later the Party claims to have captured Africa.
“The book” explains that the purpose of the unwinnable, perpetual war is to consume human labour and commodities, hence the economy of a super-state cannot support economic equality (a high standard of life) for every citizen. Goldstein also details an Oceanian strategy of attacking enemy cities with atomic rockets before invasion, yet dismisses it as unfeasible and contrary to the war’s purpose; despite the atomic bombing of cities in the 1950s the super-states stopped such warfare lest it imbalance the powers. The military technology in 1984 differs little from that of the Second World War, yet strategic bomber aeroplanes were replaced with Rocket Bombs, Helicopters were heavily used as weapons of war (while they didn’t figure in WW2 in any form but prototypes) and surface combat units have been all but replaced by immense and unsinkable Floating Fortresses, island-like contraptions concentrating the firepower of a whole naval task force in a single, semi-mobile platform (in the novel one is said to have been anchored between Iceland and the Faroe Islands, suggesting a preference for sea lane interdiction and denial).”
http://georgeorwellnovels.com/books/about-nineteen-eighty-four/#The_War
Bonus:
The civil war in Syria started in March 2011. And see this. However, the U.S. has been funding the Syrian opposition since 2006 … and arming the opposition since 2007.
So the American government’s argument that “we must stop Assad because he’s brutally crushing a spontaneous popular uprising” is false. The U.S. started supporting the rebels 5 years before the protests started.
Moreover, reports from mainstream media sources such as the New York Times, (and here), Wall Street Journal, USA Today, CNN, McClatchy (and here), AP, Time, BBC, the Independent, the Telegraph, Agence France-Presse, Asia Times, and the Star (and here) – confirm that supporting the rebels means supporting Al Qaeda and two other terrorist groups. Indeed, the the New York Times has reported that virtually all of the rebel fighters are Al Qaeda terrorists.
By supporting the rebels, we’re supporting our sworn terrorist enemies.
If there is any doubt about this timeline, please keep in mind that the U.S. and Britain considered attacking Syrians and then blaming it on the Syrian government as an excuse for regime change … 50 years ago (the U.S. just admitted that they did this to Iran) And the U.S. has been planning regime change in Syria for 20 years straight.
Libya’s Gaddafi claimed that the rebels in that country were actually Al Qaeda.
That claim – believe it or not – has been confirmed.
According to a 2007 report by West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center’s center, the Libyan city of Benghazi was one of Al Qaeda’s main headquarters – and bases for sending Al Qaeda fighters into Iraq – prior to the overthrow of Gaddafi: 
“There is no question that al Qaeda’s Libyan franchise, Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, is a part of the opposition,” Bruce Riedel, former CIA officer and a leading expert on terrorism, told Hindustan Times. It has always been Qaddafi’s biggest enemy and its stronghold is Benghazi.
(Incidentally, Gaddafi was on the verge of invading Benghazi in 2011, 4 years after the West Point report cited Benghazi as a hotbed of Al Qaeda terrorists. Gaddafi claimed – rightly it turns out – that Benghazi was an Al Qaeda stronghold and a main source of the Libyan rebellion. But NATO planes stopped him, and protected Benghazi.) Al Qaeda is now largely in control of Libya. Indeed, Al Qaeda flags were flown over the Benghazi courthouse once Gaddafi was toppled. There is a direct connection to Syria. Specifically, CNN, the Telegraph, the Washington Times, and many other mainstream sources confirm that Al Qaeda terrorists from Libya have since flooded into Syria to fight the Assad regime. And the post-Gaddafi Libyan government is also itself a top funder and arms supplier of the Syrian opposition.
The bottom line is that there are no few good guys involved in the Syrian war. The solution is not to bomb the country … or to send more arms to the rebels. The solution is to make sure that less weapons – chemical and conventional – get into that tinder box of a country. And to stay the h@!! out of a conflict which has no bearing on our national security.
By Paul Rosenberg, FreemansPerspective.com
The great golden age is upon us. We haven’t seen it because we’ve been looking at the wrong things and in the wrong directions.
Regardless, it is here. It has been building for some time and it is ready to break out. And it will break out as soon as enough of us start acting in support of the golden age, rather than accepting its delay.
Yes, I know that it doesn’t remotely seem like a golden age is here. We have overwhelming bills, we are working more hours than we can really handle, and we are stressed to the point of illness. Please place this thought aside for a moment; I will explain it below. Before that, I want to give you an idea of what the golden age will be like. It is important for us to look ahead, so we can see where we are going and to make some sense of the current situation.
As I worked on this issue, an old passage from the book of Isaiah kept leaping to mind; it beautifully describes the arrival of a golden age. Here’s the part that relates to us now:
Go through the gates, prepare the way of the people. Cast up, cast up a highway, gather out the stones, lift up a standard for the people.
Regardless of who Isaiah had in mind, this is an excellent summation of what we must do to set our golden age free. So, let’s step outside of the gates – outside of the city – outside of the televised script – and take a fresh look at what lies before us.
What lies before us is an economic boom beyond anything we’ve ever experienced. Please understand, this is not the usual idealistic scenario of happy miracles leaping up once we all start living the “right way.” Everything below is based upon factors that already exist.
This is not “could be.” This is “already here and needs to be released.”
The following list is based upon a very clean scenario: the failure of existing economic and ruling structures in the West, followed by individuals reorganizing on their own. In real life, the changeover will be an uglier process than is depicted here, but it is important to start with as clear a set of images as possible. It’s hard enough to depict the future, without making it complicated.
So, the great boom begins with a collapse of existing systems, similar to the end of Soviet domination in Eastern Europe. Once released, we would begin to encounter these things:
This energy boom will affect far more than just oil and gas; it will make nearly every other product cheaper and therefore more abundant. In addition, it will deprive many of the world’s biggest trouble-makers of easy money from gas and oil. All those billions of petrol-dollars will be transferred to the hands of individuals and private businesses… who have a long track record of behaving much, much better than oil-rich dictators.
If you need crucial services, you will always have to pay the higher rates, but the man who merely needs a filling replaced shouldn’t be forced to pay for a dental surgeon. And the dental surgeon should be able to work his way through school by filling cavities. These changes will not only provide better value, but will open good jobs to many more people. Those who go on to the tops of their fields will still be well-paid and reputation agencies will form to provide the necessary assurances of safety.
Not all will be sweetness and light, however. There will be problems. These problems will be minor compared to the overall benefit, and fairly easily solved, but they will show up.
The first problem area is replacements for “old system” services: roads, firemen, policing. The hardest of these, surprisingly, will be roads. The solution involves nothing more than finding a way to pay the same people who fix the roads now (who will be glad for the work and won’t have to bribe politicians), but people will probably ignore the problem until the roads start to fall apart. Then, in desperation, they’ll cooperate and get them fixed. Insurance companies will probably handle the fire department reorganization. There is plenty of private police protection already, so this will barely be a problem. Projections suggest $30 per month, per house or business, as a base cost level. That’s not much, especially considering that taxes and enforced fees will be absent.
Long-standing problems pertaining to waterways and pollution will remain, but should be no worse under the new arrangements than under the old. The common law, which will endure, dealt with such issues back to medieval times and will continue to do so.
Epidemics sound like a scary problem, but, modern medicine being what it is, this is unlikely. Problems may emerge in a few scattered places and times, but they will exist mostly in the fear-based media.
Mafia groups and street gangs will remain a problem, but less so: there will be no easy profits from drugs and no protection to buy from politicians.
The abandoned elderly, the insane and other sad cases have always been with us, and will continue to be. Charity will increase and these problems will be handled better than they are now, but we should expect a few tragic stories. They, too, are part of the human experience.
Probably the biggest problem will be future shock. Like people emerging from darkened caves into the sun, it will take time for many of us to adjust. Taking responsibility for your own destiny can be frightening. We may have to face the reality of genetic engineering and perhaps near-immortality. There will be great nostalgia for being held in place as part of a larger entity.
In short, we’ll be forced to grow up, and that can be terrifying.
But wouldn’t the results be worth it?
[Editor’s Note: This article is an excerpt from Freeman’s Perspective Issue #17: The Great Golden Age Is Here… Waiting For Us to Grasp It. If you liked what you read, consider taking a risk-free test drive. Not only will you gain immediate access to the rest of this issue (which includes the single greatest force holding us back from living this “Great Boom”), but you’ll also be able to enjoy the entire archive – more than 540 pages of research on topics of importance and inspiration to those looking for freedom in an unfree world. Plus valuable bonus reports and all new issues, as well. Click here to learn more.]
By Paul Rosenberg, FreemansPerspective.com
“The war in Syria has no clear national security connection to the United States and victory by either side will not necessarily bring in to power people friendly to the United States.”
Rand Paul
“If Barack Obama decides to attack the Syrian regime, he has ensured – for the very first time in history – that the United States will be on the same side as al-Qa’ida.”
Robert Fisk
“So what, we’re about to become al-Qaeda’s air force now?”
Dennis Kucinich
“The sole beneficiary of this apparent use of poison gas against civilians in rebel-held territory appears to be the rebels, who have long sought to have us come in and fight their war.”
Pat Buchanan
“The president has no constitutional authority … to take this nation to war … unless we’re attacked or unless there is proof we are about to be attacked. And if he does, if he does, I would move to impeach him.”
Joe Biden – 2007
“The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.”
Barack Obama – 2007
“Starting this fire will be like a spark in a large store of gunpowder, with unclear and unspecified outcomes and consequences”
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
The thought of this asswipe being the most powerful man on earth should scare the living shit out of every thinking person in America. That narrows it down to a few thousand TBP readers. His awful administration of Harvard from 2001 to 2006 lost the school $1.8 billion of school operating funds as he gambled on interest rate swaps and lost. It’s nice to know he has such a fine grasp on interest rates. He will be controlling them for the world in a few short months.
This guy’s resume is like a freaking train wreck. He was one of the architects of repealing Glass Steagall with his butt buddies Bob Rubin and Alan Greenspan. He single-handedly stopped Brooksley Born from putting any regulation into effect over the burgeoning derivatives market in the early 1990s. Thank God letting Wall Street banks combine with investment firms and then allowing them to issue a quadrillion dollars worth of derivatives of mass destruction didn’t have any adverse consequences on our economy.
This is the same boob who was the architect of the $800 billion Obama Porkulus Program, Cash for Clunkers, and the first time home buyer bullshit credit. He is a Keynesian disciple and is more beholden to the Wall Street criminals than Bernanke or Greenspan ever were. The dude was worth $400,000 in the mid 1990’s and now has a net worth as high as $31 million. Since he left the Obama Whitehouse he has been getting paid big bucks by insolvent Too Big to Trust Citigroup. Him and Bobby Rubin must sit up in the executive dining room eating aborted fetus souffle and laughing about all the good old times.
This will be the asshole in charge when the U.S. Titanic sinks into the bitter watery abyss. It will be a different cover next time.
By: Yves Smith
Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com
In early 2012, Summers was lobbying hard to become the head of the World Bank and didn’t get the nod. The fact that he is now under consideration for a bigger job should set alarm bells off. While Paul Krugman weighs in on both, concluding that Yellen would be the better pick, he’s still far kinder to Summers than the Harvard economist deserves.
The big problem with Summers is not his record on deregulation (although that’s bad enough) or his foot-in-mouth remarks about women in math, or for suggesting that African countries would make for good toxic waste dumps. No, it’s his appalling record the one time he was in a leadership position, as president of Harvard. Summers was unquestionably the worst leader in Harvard’s history.
Summers, unduly impressed with his own economic credentials, overruled two successive presidents of Harvard Management Corporation (the in-house fund management operation chock full of well qualified and paid money managers that invest the Harvard endowment). Not content to let the pros have all the fun, Summers insisted on gambling with the university’s operating funds, which are the monies that come in every year (tuition and board payments, government grants, the payments out of the endowment allotted to the annual budget). His risk-taking left the University with over $2 billion in losses and unwind costs and forced wide-spread budget cuts, even down to getting rid of hot breakfasts. The Boston Globe provided an overview:
It happened at least once a year, every year. In a roomful of a dozen Harvard University financial officials, Jack Meyer, the hugely successful head of Harvard’s endowment, and Lawrence Summers, then the school’s president, would face off in a heated debate. The topic: cash and how the university was managing – or mismanaging – its basic operating funds.
Through the first half of this decade, Meyer repeatedly warned Summers and other Harvard officials that the school was being too aggressive with billions of dollars in cash, according to people present for the discussions, investing almost all of it with the endowment’s risky mix of stocks, bonds, hedge funds, and private equity. Meyer’s successor, Mohamed El-Erian, would later sound the same warnings to Summers, and to Harvard financial staff and board members.
“Mohamed was having a heart attack,’’ said one former financial executive….
In the Summers years, from 2001 to 2006, nothing was on auto-pilot. He was the unquestioned commander, a dominating personality with the talent to move a balkanized institution like Harvard, but also a man unafflicted, former colleagues say, with self-doubt in matters of finance.
Now Harvard had put some of its large operating budget at risk in speculative investments starting in the 1980s, but Summers ramped it up to a completely new level. Again from the Globe:
The very thing that the former endowment chiefs had worried about and warned of for so long then came to pass. Amid plunging global markets, Harvard would lose not only 27 percent of its $37 billion endowment in 2008, but $1.8 billion of the general operating cash – or 27 percent of some $6 billion invested. Harvard also would pay $500 million to get out of the interest-rate swaps Summers had entered into, which imploded when rates fell instead of rising. The university would have to issue $1.5 billion in bonds to shore up its cash position, on top of another $1 billion debt sale. And there were layoffs, pay freezes, and deep, university-wide budget cuts
Without overburdening you with detail on the swaps that blew up Summers’ piggy bank (see this Bloomberg story for details), let there be no doubt that Summers signed up to be a chump to Wall Street. As Epicurean Dealmaker remarked when the Bloomberg expose came out (emphasis ours):
Now forward swaps, or forward start swaps—which behave like normal swaps except the offsetting fixed and floating rate payments are scheduled to start at a date certain in the future—by themselves count as little more than rank interest rate speculation, specifically in this instance as a bet that short-term interest rates will rise in the future. They can make a great deal of sense when an issuer intends to sell bonds in the relatively near future and when the issuer wants to hedge against budgetary uncertainty by converting floating rate obligations into fixed rate debt. That being said, I have rarely encountered a corporate client who feels confident enough about both their absolute funding needs and current and impending market conditions to enter into a forward swap starting more than nine months into the future. Entering into a forward start swap for debt you do not intend to issue up to 20 years in the future sounds like either rank hubris or free money for Wall Street swap desks.
So Summers couldn’t keep his ego out of the way, bullied the people around him, ignored the advice of not one but two presidents of Harvard Management, and left a smoldering pile of losses in his wake. And serious adults are prepared to allow someone with so little maturity and such misplaced self confidence to have major sway over much bigger economic decisions?
Summers’ second big problem is the scandal that led to his ouster at Harvard, which was NOT the “women suck at elite math and sciences” remarks. The university has conveniently let that be assumed to be the proximate cause.
In fact, it was Summers’ long-standing relationship with and protection of Andrei Schleifer, a Harvard economics professor, who was at the heart of a corruption scandal where he used his influential role on a Harvard contract advising on Russian privatization to enrich himself and his wife, his chief lieutenant Jonathan Hay, and other cronies. The US government sued Harvard for breach of contract and Shleifer and Hay for fraud and won. This section comes from a terrifically well reported account in Institutional Investor by David McClintick:
The judge determined that Shleifer and Hay were subject to the conflict-of-interest rules and had tried to circumvent them; that Shleifer engaged in apparent self-dealing; that Hay attempted to “launder” $400,000 through his father and girlfriend; that Hay knew the claims he caused to be submitted to AID were false; and that Shleifer and Hay conspired to defraud the U.S. government by submitting false claims.
On August 3, 2005, the parties announced a settlement under which Harvard was required to pay $26.5 million to the U.S. government, Shleifer $2 million and Hay between $1 million and $2 million, depending on his earnings over the next decade. Shleifer was barred from participating in any AID project for two years and Hay for five years. Shleifer and Zimmerman were required by terms of the settlement to take out a $2 million mortgage on their Newton house. None of the defendants acknowledged any liability under the settlement. (Forum Financial also settled its lawsuit against Harvard, Shleifer and Hay under undisclosed terms.
And while Harvard can’t be held singularly responsible for the plutocratic land-grab in Russia, the fact that its project leaders decided to feed at the trough sure didn’t help:
Reinventing Russia was never going to be easy, but Harvard botched a historic opportunity. The failure to reform Russia’s legal system, one of the aid program’s chief goals, left a vacuum that has yet to be filled and impedes the country’s ability to confront economic and financial challenges today.
And while Summers was not responsible for Shleifer getting the contract, he was a booster and later protector of Shleifer:
Summers wasn’t president of Harvard when Shleifer’s mission to Moscow was coming apart. But as a Harvard economics professor in the 1980s, a World Bank and Treasury official in the 1990s, and Harvard’s president since 2001, Summers was positioned uniquely to influence Shleifer’s career path, to shape US aid to Russia and Shleifer’s role in it and even to shield Shleifer after the scandal broke. Though Summers, as Harvard president, recused himself from the school’s handling of the case, he made a point of taking aside Jeremy Knowles, then the dean of the faculty of arts and sciences, and asking him to protect Shleifer.
And the protection Shleifer got was considerable:
Knowles tells Institutional Investor that he does not remember Summers’ approaching him about Shleifer… However, not long after Summers says he intervened on the professor’s behalf, Knowles promoted Shleifer from professor of economics to a named chair, the Whipple V.N. Jones professorship.
Shleifer’s legal position changed on June 28, 2004, when Judge Woodlock ruled that he and Hay had conspired to defraud the U.S. government and had violated conflict-of-interest regulations. Still, there was no indication that the Summers administration had initiated disciplinary proceedings. To the contrary, efforts were seemingly made to divert attention from the growing scandal. The message from the top at Harvard was, “No problem — Andrei Shleifer is a star,” says one senior Harvard figure…
One instance was a meeting early in the academic year that began in September 2004, less than two months after the federal court formally adjudicated Shleifer’s liability for conspiring to defraud the U.S. government. A faculty member asked [Dean] Kirby why Harvard should defend a professor who had been found liable for conspiring to commit fraud. The second confrontation came early in the current academic year when another professor asked Kirby why Harvard should pay a settlement of $26.5 million and legal fees estimated at between $10 million and $15 million for legal violations by a single professor and his employee, about which it was unaware. On both occasions Kirby is said to have turned red in the face and angrily cut off discussion.
On at least one other occasion, Summers himself told members of the faculty of arts and sciences that the millions of dollars that Harvard paid in damages did not come from the budget of the faculty of arts and sciences, but didn’t say where the money came from. Those listening inferred he meant that the matter shouldn’t be of concern to the faculty and that they shouldn’t raise it, a curious notion, given that Shleifer was one of their own…
Shleifer has never acknowledged doing anything wrong. Summers has said nothing. And so far as is known, there has been no internal investigation or sanction. “An observer trying to make sense of the University’s position on Shleifer, Ogletree and Tribe is driven to an unhappy conclusion. Defiance seems to be a better way to escape institutional opprobrium than confession and apology. . . . And most of all being a close personal friend of the president probably does one no harm.”
But for the faculty, which had already had frictions with Summers, the Russia scandal was the final straw. Copies of the Institutional Investor article were stuffed in the mailbox of every faculty member the morning of the no-confidence vote that forced Summers’ resignation.
And that’s before we get to Summers’ role in the ouster of Brooksley Born over credit default swaps, and his role as Treasury secretary in supporting the passage of Gramm–Leach–Bliley and the repeal of Glass Steagall (admittedly so shot full of holes at that point as to be close to a dead letter, but still necessary to allow Traveler and Citigroup to merge). Yet Summers has refused to recant any of these actions.
So with this record, it’s hard to watch Paul Krugman yet again tarnish his good reputation endorsing, even in a careful way, a colossally failed proposition like Larry Summers (Krugman put both Yellen and Summers in the “I know and admire” category). Take that back. Summers is your man if you are a banker, looter, or plutocrat.
But given that (per the Ron Suskind book Confidence Men), Obama increasingly couldn’t abide Summers, and Obama wouldn’t nominate Summers for the less influential World Bank position, one has to wonder why his name is suddenly being bruited about as a strong contender for the Fed chair. It may simply be the dint of Summers’ PR efforts.
But I worry another play is afoot. As much as Yellen and Summers are expected to take largely similar postures on monetary policy, Yellen is anticipated to be less of a bank booster than Summers. So Wall Street is likely to be pushing Summers’ candidacy. But the real play may be that the insiders know that Summers won’t hold up well under protracted scrutiny, and at a late date, Timothy Geithner will be pushed to the fore. I can only hope that Geithner (due to his lack of monetary economy chops) won’t be seen as an acceptable alternative, but I would not bet on being so lucky.
I met one of my college buddies for dinner tonight. Paul was in my wedding 23 years ago. We meet a few times per year and catch up. We used to play basketball for hours on end back in our college days. After college we would hit the local bars in his red RX7. We’ve taken different paths, but have reached the same destination – concluding that we’re doomed. We hadn’t met for over a year awhile ago. He was always more outgoing and laid back about life. When we got together two years ago I found out he had bought a doomstead farm in Lancaster County among the Amish. He had also bought a gun. Tonight he told me about his new website:
He has created a website to help people choose a handgun. I think it is a great idea. I know many people on this site are experts when it comes to guns, but us accountants are mostly clueless. With the country spiraling downwards and Obama trying to ban guns, interest among amateurs and first timers is rising. I plan on buying a handgun or two in the near future. I think his site will be a valuable resource for someone looking to buy gun.
He has different categories for:
Beginners
Women
Self Defense
Home Defense
Concealed Carry
Pistols
Revolvers
Check out the site and let me know what you think. If you have suggestions to improve the site, let him know. I know he would like people to post pictures and reviews of their favorite handguns. I’m going to stay on Paul’s good side. I see myself tilling the soil on his farm in the not too distant future after the shit hits the fan.
See. The economy is just fine. Wall Street will be paying themselves record compensation this year with your money. I wonder where Bennie will get a job when he retires from the Fed in January. Any guesses? The bankers are twerking in the Hamptons this week before heading back to their plush offices in NYC next week. I’m sure the country will be put back on course by these titans of finance. We owe them so much for all they do.
Not bad for a small set of TBTF Banks that are still being heavily subsidized by the sacrifice of the public.
But they work really hard, and have a lot of very important expenses with which to maintain their lifestyles.
“When his Golden House was finished in its ruinously prodigal style, Nero would say nothing more about it in way of appreciation except that he could at last begin to live like a human being.” – Suetonius
There is something particularly indecent about a society in which the heavily subsidized, pampered princes of finance can spend more on a redecorating a single office than the average family can afford to spend on the health and education of their family over a lifetime. And this after ruining the national economy by engaging in massive control frauds, for which none have ever been punished.
Winning…
By Stephen Gandel
“The nation’s five biggest banks are on track to pay out $127 billion in total compensation, including at least $23 billion in bonuses, this year. That’s up from the $114 billion the banks shelled out to their employees in 2009. It translates to $149,472 per full-time employee for 2013, and is roughly triple the pay of the average American. The figures come from financial filings and the calculations of a top Wall Street compensation consultant. [That average pay is somewhat misleading because pay is highly skewed to the top. Jesse]
In an article in Tuesday’s New York Times, [Hank] Paulson said he was disappointed by the size of the bonuses banks paid in the wake of the financial crisis and subsequent bailout. The former Treasury Secretary says he was dismayed about the timing of the large 2009 bonuses. He believes the payouts turned the public against the government’s Wall Street bailout, but I don’t think it was ever that popular, bonuses or not…”
Read the rest here.
“Experience should teach us wisdom. Most of the difficulties our Government now encounters and most of the dangers which impend over our Union have sprung from an abandonment of the legitimate objects of Government by our national legislation, and the adoption of such principles as are embodied in this act.
Many of our rich men have not been content with equal protection and equal benefits, but have besought us to make them richer by act of Congress. By attempting to gratify their desires we have in the results of our legislation arrayed section against section, interest against interest, and man against man, in a fearful commotion which threatens to shake the foundations of our Union.
It is time to pause in our career to review our principles, and if possible revive that devoted patriotism and spirit of compromise which distinguished the sages of the Revolution and the fathers of our Union. If we can not at once, in justice to interests vested under improvident legislation, make our Government what it ought to be, we can at least take a stand against all new grants of monopolies and exclusive privileges, against any prostitution of our Government to the advancement of the few at the expense of the many, and in favor of compromise and gradual reform in our code of laws and system of political economy.”
Andrew Jackson, Veto of the Second Bank of the United States
POSTED BY JESSE
