Saturday, August 31, 2013

Future historians of war...

...will find this current epoch a curious one with respect to declarations and the communication of intentions...

Two days after he made the Obama administration’s definitive case for attacking Syria, Secretary of State John Kerry will make the case for asking for congressional permission on the Sunday talk shows, a State Department aide said Saturday.

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Syria, Russia, and the U.S.


Let us not forget that the Queen on the board for Russia is Georgia and the pipeline.  This Syrian conflict and resultant clash of weapons systems between Russia and the U.S. is a sideshow.

The E.U. is taking orders from Washington as well it seems.

A showdown with Gazprom risks inflaming relations with Russia just as Putin prepares to host a meeting of leaders from the Group of 20 nations next month in St. Petersburg. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned this month that if the European Union imposes antitrust sanctions against Gazprom, “it will be difficult for the company to operate in markets where it faces open discrimination.”
The “case has the potential to seriously disturb EU-Russia relations,” said Thijs Van de Graaf, a researcher at the Ghent Institute for International Studies in Belgium. “Gazprom is not a normal company in Russia. It does not only give account to its shareholders but also serves political goals.”

Saturday, August 24, 2013

Propaganda

One of the beautiful things about propaganda is enacting policies that would, by use of its original appellation, be anathema.

One of the current examples of this is the usage of "macroprudential policies" that would ostensibly smooth out economic downturns and offer a general panacea to market distortions.  These policies would be carried out by responsible and learned technocrats who understand the massively complex system that is the Global Economy.

But of course these "macroprudential measures are simply re-worded polices for tried and true protectionism in the form of capital controls, currency management, control and Executive Power of Foreign Subsidiaries, and a myriad other policies that States have used since complex societies formed.  The word "macroprudential" itself elicits an atmosphere of control, wisdom, and patience.  Quite brilliant.

I have stated many times on this blog that the Economics profession has devolved into a sort of apologetic faction for the state.  The State declares its intentions, then receives arguments from members of its court.  It performs this role extremely well, and provides propaganda for the State that is well-reasoned and compelling.

And so This Paper making the rounds is having the desired effect.  And of course, would not be presented if it had not been selected to further the current Agenda:  That is, by centralizing more control of global GDP among the G8 states.

A quick question for my readers:  what % of G20 GDP is controlled directly or indirectly by their respective States?  Is the rate of change in that number increasing or decreasing?