Sachs says "[blowing up pagers] shows how our supply chains absolutely are becoming suborned by Western intelligence agencies; Israel does it, the United States does it. We point our finger at China, but we're the ones doing these abuses."
The other day in the WSJ there was an op-ed by Michael Gallagher, the "head of defense for Palantir Technologies", calling for all hands on deck to rebuild the "free-world technology stack", over and against our totalitarian rivals like China, who apparently tricked us into sending our manufacturing overseas and handing over a lot of our IP.
It's a day late and a fiat dollar short, but we've learned our lesson after the Hezbollah pagers blew up.
Gallagher says "America and our allies have the tools to build a shared software-defined manufacturing ecosystem backed by a free-world technology stack. This is the cornerstone of a safer and more prosperous U.S.-led coalition, one that geopolitical swing states will want to join. If we fail, China’s totalitarian technology stack will flourish, ushering in a more fractured and hostile world."
Thankfully, the only liberal democracy in the Middle East with robust LGBTQ protections and carefully monitored elections and secure national borders, is anxious to help the rest of the free world rebuild our technology stack. They recently began sending guys from their Unit 8200 to Silicon Valley to help us develop our cybersecurity; all the best venture capitalists are tapping into this elite human capital. Hopefully, they will also help finance the rebuilding of our stack after somebody blew it up.
My first reaction is "It took an Ivy League study to figure this out?" It must have been government funded - just kidding.
They were JUST A LITTLE BIT SLOW (as in Bob Uecker's "Just a little bit outside" comment in the movie "Major League"). It so happens I was living in Princeton around that time and a couple of years prior to that the CEO of the company I was working for held an employees' meeting. He noted that the company was starting a PAC and urged us to contribute to it because "you can't get 10 minutes of these peoples' (politicans') time for less than a couple hundred thousand Dollars. And the company needs their attention to succeed in its goals.
That actually sounds a lot more like Fascism than Oligarchy. I think Oligarchy can refer to the people in the social class that was/is running things but Fascism/Corporatism now is the real truth about how our government is being run. Take a particular look at the Defense industry but don't limit it to that. And this isn't new - it has been the case since perhaps the latter part of the 19th Century and has only become worse and worse since then.
I don't know Vlahos, but he appears to me to be more of an objective historian, and a classicist, and not a political partisan or particularly a proponent of Left or Right, or Red or Blue, in today's political terms.
To me, and this is my (perhaps overly simplistic) takeaway, he accurately describes political power as a continuing balancing and shifting among the 'demos' (the People), the powerful Few (aristocracies and oligarchies) and powerful leaders or autocrats (often emperors), depending upon circumstances and developments. And autocrats often look to the People for support and partnership against the interests and wishes of oligarchs and aristocrats.
And so we (whether we live in the United States or not) find ourselves today in an American Empire largely in thrall to an Oligarchy...an Aristocracy...of wealth and power tightly held by vested interests. These are, of course, the MIC, Big Tech and Big Pharma, and the Billionaire Class...and its innumerable vassals and puppets in the Deep State, the Israel Lobby, Hollywood, the Ivy League, and the MSM.
And of course in our present day political state the interests of the Oligarchy and the People are increasingly divergent. And as the Princeton paper which Free French linked above suggests, the People are fundamentally powerless. So much for 'our democracy'.
Its also worth noting that the current division among the People is less a division among Red and Blue voters than meets the eye, since Blue voters are not so much opposed to Red as they are simply bought and paid for clients of the Oligarchy. Ask yourself whether a minority voter in Pennsylvania is as much philosophically opposed to, for example, Trump's opposition to the Open Border, as s/he is umbilically attached to the largesse of the Oligarchy...
Humorously, spokespeople for the Oligarchy like Mrs Clinton refer to the interests of the People as threatening 'our democracy', when in fact nothing could be further from the truth. Of course, it is her and her friends' Oligarchy, not 'our democracy' which is actually being threatened. (I do wish Trump and Vance and Musk and Kennedy and Gabbard would pound more relentlessly on this point.)
And then along comes a potential autocrat, lets call him Donald Trump, who draws and derives his power from the needs and desires of the People and confronts the Oligarchy.
As Vlahos suggests, the confrontation is no longer between traditional Republican and Democrat or Red and Blue (who together constitute the Uniparty, which is, in fact, the Oligarchy) but between the Autocrat (supported by and drawing his power from the People) and the increasingly corrupt, tone deaf, and self-interested Oligarchy.
It is my estimation, and I think Vlahos would agree, that in a confrontation between the Oligarchy and the new Autocrat (supported by the People) it is just a matter of time before the Oligarchy becomes simply too self-interested and disconnected from the wishes of the People...and inevitably falls.
Thanks very much, Cassander, for your great synopsis of Vlahos' theory/paradigm! It does make sense. As does your interpretation of Trump's role in this and your wishes regarding what he would emphasize in his campaign. I couldn't agree with you more and I do have faith in your reasoning in all the things you post at MIH (well earned IMO).
I know I should view these videos and read these papers before shooting off my mouth. Just wish I had more time. But thanks to Mark for all the work he does (and to you in this case), and to people like FreeFrench, I at least have the chance to become better informed as a basis for my opinions. I do appreciate this very much. Thanks again.
So The Economy Now Depends On Stocks Which Depend On Front-Running The Fed... And This Is Fine?
TUESDAY, SEP 24, 2024 - 01:40 PM
Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,
So the entire economy depends on the stock market going up as punters front-run the Fed--and this is not only fine, it's optimal, the best arrangement the world has ever seen. On which ethereal plane is this considered sane, much less optimal?
That the real-world economy--a neofeudal confection featuring a parasitic, predatory Nobility vacuuming up virtually all the gains of the Everything Bubble while the bottom 80% stumble along in debt-serfdom, resigned to serving the top 10% who own 90% of the assets bubbling higher--is teetering on the precipice, clinging to the wealth effect of soaring assets, courtesy of the Federal Reserve, for its lifeline is, well, insane.
Speaking of gaslighting--how many people do you know who call this arrangement by its real name, neofeudalism? No one? How many people are trembling with excitement because every time the Fed cut rates at or near the all-time highs in the stock market, stocks were higher the next year--20 times out of 20? Hundreds? Thousands? A great multitude to be sure.
And this outstanding track record of the Fed stimulating the wealth effect is generating ecstatic euphoria in exactly which cohorts? The bottom 50% who own a single-noise 2.6% of the nation's financial assets? Households paying half their net income in rent? No, the euphoria is limited to the cohort which stands to boost its already gargantuan gains from Fed stimulus--the top 10%.
"That the real-world economy--a neofeudal confection featuring a parasitic, predatory Nobility vacuuming up virtually all the gains of the Everything Bubble while the bottom 80% stumble along..."
Very well put. I am smart enough to understand the truth when I read it (I think). I am not smart enough to predict when all of this financialization and speculation and Hunger Games rapaciousness in the absence of a sound economy is going to implode.
My guesses are that the implosion will come for sure when the general populace (the "80%) can no longer afford to purchase what is needed for the preservation of life - that may happen sooner than any of us think. But given the nature of our consumer economy, the implosion will likely start cascading at the point in time when all "non-essential" goods become unaffordable for the 80%.
A SERIOUS, HUMBLE REQUEST TO THE YOUTH, FROM AN OG.
I urge today's youth--of whatever country--to NEVER GIVE UP the anti-death-cult (i.e., anti-Israel) fight. My generation, in the U.S., helped to destroy South African apartheid. We swarmed the streets of the cities of the U.S., protesting [with VIGOR] against our country's brutal war on the Vietnamese people.
I sometimes think, "I was NOT born to fight all the f*cking time," something I've been doing, virtually non-stop, since April 5th, 1968. I would PREFER to see young people SOLELY committed to THEIR own path to success in this life. Unfortunately, since borders NO LONGER EXIST, if young people are NOT involved, they won't HAVE a future within which to develp themselves.
You see the "leaders" we have. Gonzalo Lira, a journalist who LITERALLY sacrificed his very life, dying in a Ukrainian prison, told us the route to INCOMPETENCE that our "leaders" take. I ask you to view Lira's video in which he explained the architecture of incompetence, as I call it:
I have NO IDEA how every aspect of the West's crumbling system can be fixed. I tend to think that it's simply too late. Empires birth; grow; excel; decline, and die. That's were we might be now: DYING, even though the American empire is just 79 years old (1945 to 2024). The scholars say that empires usually last for 250 years, as I recall.
Well, as my dad told my brother and I, "It's YOUR turn now--time for you YOUNG people to fixed this shit."
On September 8th, I had what the doctors told me was a "tiny" stroke. The words "tiny" and "stroke" appear as oxymorons to me. Oh, I had no pain whatsoever. I suddenly couldn't read the first to letters of any word. I'm "okay" now, recovering.
I've been in the fight for justince for 56 solid years of my 74 years on the planet. My wife, who supports my Substack bitching, DOES want me to back up. She'd actually been somewhat warning me that I "spend too much time" tryna "save the world." I guess that, on September 8th, God said, "Who the HELL do you think you ARE??!!" Maybe it's time for me to cool out.
Anyway, I hope young people find a way to clense our world of pirates, politicians, and priests. Good luck!!
God bless you and keep you, Ron. In this world the battle between good and evil never ends. Don't give up the fight. You are on the side of justice, the right side, and you have the only true source of power behind you. Proverbs 15:3: "The eyes of the Lord are everywhere, keeping watch on the wicked and the good."
My only question is “Was the captain (pilot/driver) of the Big Horn navy oiler which ran aground a DEI hire black woman like Kenji Brown Jackson?” 🤪
Sachs says "[blowing up pagers] shows how our supply chains absolutely are becoming suborned by Western intelligence agencies; Israel does it, the United States does it. We point our finger at China, but we're the ones doing these abuses."
The other day in the WSJ there was an op-ed by Michael Gallagher, the "head of defense for Palantir Technologies", calling for all hands on deck to rebuild the "free-world technology stack", over and against our totalitarian rivals like China, who apparently tricked us into sending our manufacturing overseas and handing over a lot of our IP.
It's a day late and a fiat dollar short, but we've learned our lesson after the Hezbollah pagers blew up.
Gallagher says "America and our allies have the tools to build a shared software-defined manufacturing ecosystem backed by a free-world technology stack. This is the cornerstone of a safer and more prosperous U.S.-led coalition, one that geopolitical swing states will want to join. If we fail, China’s totalitarian technology stack will flourish, ushering in a more fractured and hostile world."
Thankfully, the only liberal democracy in the Middle East with robust LGBTQ protections and carefully monitored elections and secure national borders, is anxious to help the rest of the free world rebuild our technology stack. They recently began sending guys from their Unit 8200 to Silicon Valley to help us develop our cybersecurity; all the best venture capitalists are tapping into this elite human capital. Hopefully, they will also help finance the rebuilding of our stack after somebody blew it up.
deinde ludens vomitus
Princeton University did a study in 2014 that concluded the US was no longer a democracy and had become an oligarchy. https://discovery.princeton.edu/2014/11/14/study-casts-doubt-on-fairness-of-u-s-democracy/
My first reaction is "It took an Ivy League study to figure this out?" It must have been government funded - just kidding.
They were JUST A LITTLE BIT SLOW (as in Bob Uecker's "Just a little bit outside" comment in the movie "Major League"). It so happens I was living in Princeton around that time and a couple of years prior to that the CEO of the company I was working for held an employees' meeting. He noted that the company was starting a PAC and urged us to contribute to it because "you can't get 10 minutes of these peoples' (politicans') time for less than a couple hundred thousand Dollars. And the company needs their attention to succeed in its goals.
That actually sounds a lot more like Fascism than Oligarchy. I think Oligarchy can refer to the people in the social class that was/is running things but Fascism/Corporatism now is the real truth about how our government is being run. Take a particular look at the Defense industry but don't limit it to that. And this isn't new - it has been the case since perhaps the latter part of the 19th Century and has only become worse and worse since then.
Its very much worth watching the Michael Vlahos tape which Mark links to above.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNhZ7MmM_rY
I don't know Vlahos, but he appears to me to be more of an objective historian, and a classicist, and not a political partisan or particularly a proponent of Left or Right, or Red or Blue, in today's political terms.
To me, and this is my (perhaps overly simplistic) takeaway, he accurately describes political power as a continuing balancing and shifting among the 'demos' (the People), the powerful Few (aristocracies and oligarchies) and powerful leaders or autocrats (often emperors), depending upon circumstances and developments. And autocrats often look to the People for support and partnership against the interests and wishes of oligarchs and aristocrats.
And so we (whether we live in the United States or not) find ourselves today in an American Empire largely in thrall to an Oligarchy...an Aristocracy...of wealth and power tightly held by vested interests. These are, of course, the MIC, Big Tech and Big Pharma, and the Billionaire Class...and its innumerable vassals and puppets in the Deep State, the Israel Lobby, Hollywood, the Ivy League, and the MSM.
And of course in our present day political state the interests of the Oligarchy and the People are increasingly divergent. And as the Princeton paper which Free French linked above suggests, the People are fundamentally powerless. So much for 'our democracy'.
Its also worth noting that the current division among the People is less a division among Red and Blue voters than meets the eye, since Blue voters are not so much opposed to Red as they are simply bought and paid for clients of the Oligarchy. Ask yourself whether a minority voter in Pennsylvania is as much philosophically opposed to, for example, Trump's opposition to the Open Border, as s/he is umbilically attached to the largesse of the Oligarchy...
Humorously, spokespeople for the Oligarchy like Mrs Clinton refer to the interests of the People as threatening 'our democracy', when in fact nothing could be further from the truth. Of course, it is her and her friends' Oligarchy, not 'our democracy' which is actually being threatened. (I do wish Trump and Vance and Musk and Kennedy and Gabbard would pound more relentlessly on this point.)
And then along comes a potential autocrat, lets call him Donald Trump, who draws and derives his power from the needs and desires of the People and confronts the Oligarchy.
As Vlahos suggests, the confrontation is no longer between traditional Republican and Democrat or Red and Blue (who together constitute the Uniparty, which is, in fact, the Oligarchy) but between the Autocrat (supported by and drawing his power from the People) and the increasingly corrupt, tone deaf, and self-interested Oligarchy.
It is my estimation, and I think Vlahos would agree, that in a confrontation between the Oligarchy and the new Autocrat (supported by the People) it is just a matter of time before the Oligarchy becomes simply too self-interested and disconnected from the wishes of the People...and inevitably falls.
This, I think, is where we stand today.
Thanks very much, Cassander, for your great synopsis of Vlahos' theory/paradigm! It does make sense. As does your interpretation of Trump's role in this and your wishes regarding what he would emphasize in his campaign. I couldn't agree with you more and I do have faith in your reasoning in all the things you post at MIH (well earned IMO).
I know I should view these videos and read these papers before shooting off my mouth. Just wish I had more time. But thanks to Mark for all the work he does (and to you in this case), and to people like FreeFrench, I at least have the chance to become better informed as a basis for my opinions. I do appreciate this very much. Thanks again.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/so-economy-now-depends-stocks-which-depend-front-running-fed-and-fine
So The Economy Now Depends On Stocks Which Depend On Front-Running The Fed... And This Is Fine?
TUESDAY, SEP 24, 2024 - 01:40 PM
Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,
So the entire economy depends on the stock market going up as punters front-run the Fed--and this is not only fine, it's optimal, the best arrangement the world has ever seen. On which ethereal plane is this considered sane, much less optimal?
That the real-world economy--a neofeudal confection featuring a parasitic, predatory Nobility vacuuming up virtually all the gains of the Everything Bubble while the bottom 80% stumble along in debt-serfdom, resigned to serving the top 10% who own 90% of the assets bubbling higher--is teetering on the precipice, clinging to the wealth effect of soaring assets, courtesy of the Federal Reserve, for its lifeline is, well, insane.
Speaking of gaslighting--how many people do you know who call this arrangement by its real name, neofeudalism? No one? How many people are trembling with excitement because every time the Fed cut rates at or near the all-time highs in the stock market, stocks were higher the next year--20 times out of 20? Hundreds? Thousands? A great multitude to be sure.
And this outstanding track record of the Fed stimulating the wealth effect is generating ecstatic euphoria in exactly which cohorts? The bottom 50% who own a single-noise 2.6% of the nation's financial assets? Households paying half their net income in rent? No, the euphoria is limited to the cohort which stands to boost its already gargantuan gains from Fed stimulus--the top 10%.
...
"That the real-world economy--a neofeudal confection featuring a parasitic, predatory Nobility vacuuming up virtually all the gains of the Everything Bubble while the bottom 80% stumble along..."
Very well put. I am smart enough to understand the truth when I read it (I think). I am not smart enough to predict when all of this financialization and speculation and Hunger Games rapaciousness in the absence of a sound economy is going to implode.
My guesses are that the implosion will come for sure when the general populace (the "80%) can no longer afford to purchase what is needed for the preservation of life - that may happen sooner than any of us think. But given the nature of our consumer economy, the implosion will likely start cascading at the point in time when all "non-essential" goods become unaffordable for the 80%.
The point being, of course, that the People not only have no power (see Princeton paper) but have no wealth (as per Charles Hugh Smith).
Enter...
Donald Trump
A SERIOUS, HUMBLE REQUEST TO THE YOUTH, FROM AN OG.
I urge today's youth--of whatever country--to NEVER GIVE UP the anti-death-cult (i.e., anti-Israel) fight. My generation, in the U.S., helped to destroy South African apartheid. We swarmed the streets of the cities of the U.S., protesting [with VIGOR] against our country's brutal war on the Vietnamese people.
I sometimes think, "I was NOT born to fight all the f*cking time," something I've been doing, virtually non-stop, since April 5th, 1968. I would PREFER to see young people SOLELY committed to THEIR own path to success in this life. Unfortunately, since borders NO LONGER EXIST, if young people are NOT involved, they won't HAVE a future within which to develp themselves.
You see the "leaders" we have. Gonzalo Lira, a journalist who LITERALLY sacrificed his very life, dying in a Ukrainian prison, told us the route to INCOMPETENCE that our "leaders" take. I ask you to view Lira's video in which he explained the architecture of incompetence, as I call it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDOa9PW3lnU&t=0s
I have NO IDEA how every aspect of the West's crumbling system can be fixed. I tend to think that it's simply too late. Empires birth; grow; excel; decline, and die. That's were we might be now: DYING, even though the American empire is just 79 years old (1945 to 2024). The scholars say that empires usually last for 250 years, as I recall.
Well, as my dad told my brother and I, "It's YOUR turn now--time for you YOUNG people to fixed this shit."
On September 8th, I had what the doctors told me was a "tiny" stroke. The words "tiny" and "stroke" appear as oxymorons to me. Oh, I had no pain whatsoever. I suddenly couldn't read the first to letters of any word. I'm "okay" now, recovering.
I've been in the fight for justince for 56 solid years of my 74 years on the planet. My wife, who supports my Substack bitching, DOES want me to back up. She'd actually been somewhat warning me that I "spend too much time" tryna "save the world." I guess that, on September 8th, God said, "Who the HELL do you think you ARE??!!" Maybe it's time for me to cool out.
Anyway, I hope young people find a way to clense our world of pirates, politicians, and priests. Good luck!!
God bless you and keep you, Ron. In this world the battle between good and evil never ends. Don't give up the fight. You are on the side of justice, the right side, and you have the only true source of power behind you. Proverbs 15:3: "The eyes of the Lord are everywhere, keeping watch on the wicked and the good."
I’m truly appreciative of your kind words. 😊 Thank you.