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WHO HELPS THE USURERS TO PLAY THE SHARE MARKET

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Valentin KATASONOV

Economics

Global Atlanticism

Creation of the financial market infrastructure supplying manipulation in these markets for the benefit of the world usurers. Particularly, the question is about a series of institutions on information service of the world usurers. They are:
a) institutions developing appraisal methods and methods of the financial reporting preparation for companies;
b) auditing firms;
c) rating agencies;
d) State statistical services;
e) mass media;
f) universities, research centers and other entities providing the usurers with “independent”  expert appraisal and “studies”.

Controlled by the usurers institutions and departments developing company financial appraisal methods quite often give “presents” to companies and allow them  to falsify  knowingly the data on their assets and liabilities, financial results etc. so that to look “healthy and strong”  or, at least, not “dead”. In fact, the liberalization of accounting and financial reporting systems of companies has been taking place that gives the business extra opportunities for “market manipulation”, and, put simply, for different frauds. 

The profit used to be considered a very concrete indicator giving an idea about the results of the company operation in the conditions of market economy. Generally speaking, this is the difference between incomes and costs of the company. However, today the profit has turned into a very relative concept from an accurate measure. For example, there are profit calculation methods called FIF and LIFO. So, the profit values calculated under these methods differ significantly. Even in the frameworks of the same method it is possible to calculate the profit differently – depending on what the company needs. For example, to avoid taxes it shows zero profit or even losses. To prepare the company for sale or entering the share market, its owners, on the contrary, tend to show the maximum profit. The special expression has appeared: “profit is opinion”. The opinion which depends on the company`s strategy and tactics, more correct on its owners and top - managers.

Interesting article The False Mirrors of the World Economy says on this connection the following:
“If the companies needs to understate the profit, it practically always may from additional expenditure in a legal way which will exist only on paper. If, on the contrary, the company needs to look very profitable, it may use income overpricing methods. For example, some American companies, having concluded a contract, including a fictitious one, immediately take account of only potential incomes of its implementation under calculation of its financial results, though no contractual operations have been executed. Certainly, the skilled auditors can reveal such fraud, but, according to the recent practice, not everyone can resist against temptation to receive good reward for being invisible.”

“Liberalization” of the business financial control has also shown that banks and companies begin manipulation with their assets and liabilities indices, as well as profit using the balances of the “partners”, subsidiaries, second-tier subsidiaries etc. A bright example is corporation Enron which gave their credit and tax liabilities to such “external”, formally “independent” firms which number made up a few thousand. Partly, such situation could be explained by general weakening of financial reporting  requirements on the part of controlling unite, and partly by that the officials controlling different companies took direct or indirect bribes and refused to notice apparent breaches. For example, there were numerous contacts of Ken Lay, the Enron former top-manager, with Paul Walker, the chairman of the Committee on balancing international standards, the former chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve Board who interceded to special “preferences” for Enron corporation.

In 1990s, especially in the second half of the decade, there was a great wave of falsifying of the balance sheets of companies. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung wrote in this connection on 15.8.2002: “Balance sheet fraud: Taiko, Enron, March, World Com, Global Crossing, Xerox. The list of companies which have recently been suspected or already exposed for balance falsifying is very long. Loss of trust immediately mirrors in exchange rates. Many investors recognize that the unmasked frauds are only the top of the iceberg which true sizes threaten not only American but also the whole world economy. Never a week goes by that a new case does not come up.”

Here is an example of “liberalization” of the financial reporting standards connected with the current crisis. Under dictation of the U.S. Ministry of finance, American banks and corporations, the U.S. Committee on balancing international standards in autumn 2008 amended their documents. In particular, the guidelines were given how to appraise according to the “fair value”:  Even if any assets of companies are “absolutely illiquid” (in other words, they have zero price, i.e. they are ordinary “waste”), the companies can resort to special methods of appraisal, and they can calculate a certain “virtual” price of assets on their ground. To look more important, the methods offer using a complicated mathematical apparatus.

In spring 2009, these “innovations” of the asset accounting and appraising got used by the American banks to show that the “business is not so bad”. In other words, the “illusionists” from the financial world have already learned perfectly how to turn “waste” into “gold” by a wave of a magic wand. Medieval alchemists never ever dreamed of that!

 Shortly about the “objectivity” of “independent” auditor opinions. At the beginning of the current decade, as many remember, there was a large scandal with the American power giant Enron. Over many years this company was falsifying their financial reporting using both legal loopholes and shameless fraud of their investors and business partners. We are going to describe all those methods which were used by the company (particularly – some top- managers), and we will note that their auditor was permanently the world famous Arthur Anderson. Actually, the auditing company was in collusion with Enron, and “took part” in its milliard profits. The Enron scandal appeared fatal for the auditing company: it fell off the edge of the earth.

Schwarz - Luttwak's Coup D'Etat - A Practical Handbook

Schwarz - Luttwak's
Coup D'Etat - A
Practical Handbook

 

From Karl W B Schwarz

kwbschwarz@comcast.net
11-18-5

 

My last update introduced you to Edward Luttwak, a hardliner Zionist with ideas about Israel that many Israelis find harsh and belligerent. Mr. Luttwak actually made the well-known comment about bombing in 1990 or 1991, just before George H.W. Bush attacked Iraq in a set-up of Saddam Hussein. In the same way, George W. Bush pulled a set-up in 2003.   The main point: if you know the Neocons, you will recognize their references. Luttwak, an Israeli citizen, said "we" rather than "the US is going to bomb them into the Stone Age". Take his comments in the context they were probably meant, and you will know where his allegiance lies.   Pay attention to history and learn from it. What started the first Gulf War? What was the true underlying reason? Iraq found out that Kuwait, with the assistance of certain U.S. oil service companies, had installed directional drilled wells from Kuwait, under the Kuwait - Iraq border and were stealing the Iraq oil from the southern fields near Basra. Those companies were siphoning off billions of dollars from the trade in Iraqi oil, or, put another way, committing grand theft to the tune of billions of U.S. dollars. When the issue turned into a diplomatic dispute, our government, through Ambassador April Glaspie, explicitly told Saddam that aggression toward Kuwait to collect on this debt-and stop the theft of Iraqi oil-was of no interest to the United States. Do you see the set-up?   A transcript of that discussion is available at this link: http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/ARTICLE5/april.html   One day while we were looking through 9-11 evidence, I was contacted by a person in the U.S. Foreign Service. Just before Iraq invaded Kuwait to collect on stolen billions, a conference call took place between the United States and Iraq. That call made the "green light" even mo

WORLD

America’s Aristocracy Facing Resistance from American Public Regarding Russia

Eric ZUESSE | 26.02.2016 | 00:00

On February 20th, the anti-Russian propaganda site Newsweekheadlined «How We Can Defeat Putin» and presented an essay from Evelyn Farkas, of the NATO-generated Atlantic Council, but didn’t indicate her being controlled by the same people who control NATO (the US aristocracy). (Newsweek hid her connection to NATO – gave no indication of it.) NATO is run by the North Atlantic Council, and its main PR agencies are the Atlantic Council and the Atlantic Treaty Association, both of which receive funding from international corporations. The head of the Atlantic Council is billionaire Jon M. Huntsman Jr., the former US Presidential candidate, and a member of the Bilderberg organization, which was founded in 1954 to engineer a takeover of national governments’ regulatory abilities and a replacement of national economic regulations by international economic treaties, which will supersede any national authority and will not be answerable to any voters except the controlling stockholders in international corporations. (Bilderberger David Rockefeller then created the Trilateral Commission in 1974, to extend the globally controlling aristocracy to include also Japanese aristocrats, and Huntsman is also a member of that Bilderberg spin-off: he’s a member of the Trilateral Commission’s ruling Executive Committee.) Farkas’s propaganda-piece opened: «Russia poses a geostrategic threat to the United States and our interests. Indeed, earlier this month Defense Secretary Ash Carter listed it first among the threats faced by our nation.» She continued: «The Kremlin’s objectives are clear: 1) Retain Vladimir Putin’s position as the leader of the Russian Federation, preserving the autocratic political system and mafia-style crony economy that together make up ‘Putinism’; 2) restore Russia’s status as a great power; 3) rewrite the international rules and norms to prevent intervention in states to protect citizens; 4) maintain political control of Russia’s geographical periphery; and, if possible, 5) break NATO, the European Union and trans-Atlantic unity». One could turn that around against the United States by saying that we Americans have a depersonalized, institutionalized, form of dictatorship, which doesn’t require continuance of the same person to be in control, but which provides foreign policies that extend little changed from one President to the next, even if the rhetoric differs considerably between individual Presidents, such as it did and does from George W Bush to Barack Obama, with little real difference in policies except this: tortures such as waterboarding might possibly now be actually forbidden here. However, Putin’s international policies have been changing far more than that. (They changed a lot after Obama overthrew the democratically elected and pro-Russian President of Ukraine in February 2014 and instituted a rabidly anti-Russian fascist regime there.) Domestically, Obama continued Bush’s Wall Street bailouts and reduced the prosecutions of white-collar crooks (and also of higher-level «financial fraud»), even lower than was the situation when Bush was the nominal President. Also, the prosecutions of government corruption declined under Obama. This was not the type of «change» that Obama’s voters had been voting for, but it’s what we got. The only scientific study that has been done of whether or not the US is a democracy or instead a dictatorship (rule of the public by an aristocracy, which may or may not have a king or other nominal dictator that rules answerable to that elite but not to any broader public) found that the US, at least since 1980, has been a dictatorship (the authors called it an «oligarchy»). That doesn’t sound much different from what is typically said about Russia, either. The readers of Ms Farkas’s propaganda-article, if one judges by the reader-comments there, were far less damning against Mr Putin than they were against the con-job that had just been delivered to them by Newsweek (and so perhaps that ‘news’ site’s constant ads seeking new subscribers to the site are not producing nearly as much income as are the propaganda-services Newsweek delivers on behalf of their international-corporate advertisers). To read those comments from readers, Americans are getting jaundice from reading America’s propagandistic ‘press’. Here were two typical such comments: «I have been reading and watching western media and Russian media equally. There is no bad guy here in geopolitics. If there is then its the US». Another said: «Meanwhile Putin plays chess Americans play checkers. And the Americans (Obama) are sold as chess players (at least they make themselves believe it) to start with… Now they have propaganda outlets like this one, that want to sell you a 'checkers' play to win the game». Of course, such cynicism is also widespread among Russians, against their own nation’s media. The Newsweek propagandist wrote in her article: «We must be united with our allies and partners worldwide and resolute toward Russian bad behavior». But, what about America’s «bad behavior»: unjustified and catastrophic invasion and destruction of Iraq in 2003, of Libya in 2011, and of Syria in 2013, and Obama’s keeping in power the coup-regime in Honduras that was installed there on 28 June 2009? That’s not very nice, either – and, unlike anything that can be charged against Russia, there’s no NATO-like organization against the United States to have provoked our invasions, as there is with regard to Russia, which had long ago terminated its equivalent, the Warsaw Pact (in 1991). They disbanded theirs; we continued and still continue ours, even though its alleged raison d'être likewise ended in 1991 (and NATO and its propaganda-arms now drown us with propaganda such as Newsweek published here). Clearly, the US is the international aggressor, par excellence, and it needs propagandists – the US press – in order to make the American public fear «Saddam’s WMD» (to invade Iraq in 2003) and «Russian bad behavior» (to attempt a «color revolution» against Russia’s leader, Putin, whose approval-rating among his people is nearly twice as high as Obama’s own – and yet America calls itself a ‘democracy’ that brings ‘democracy’ to places such as Ukraine, Libya, Syria, and Russia). More and more Americans are learning that they’re suckers if they pay for their ’news’ – if they pay their hard-earned money in order to be manipulated by their insatiable corrupting aristocracy. And now, with Chrome’s free Google Translate feature, one can receive the news from the media in every country, immediately translated into English, and thereby get a read not only on America’s propaganda but on that of the countries that the US aristocracy want Americans to overthrow (in overthrows that are becoming a very bad habit of this country, and that drain America’s tax dollars for rotten weaponry and a bloated army but enrich the ‘defense’ contractors that our aristocrats invest so heavily in, so as to conquer the lands they don’t currently control). Americans are increasingly coming to recognize that they’ve been (and are being) had: by ‘their’ government and by ‘their’ ‘free press’, if not by the aristocracy that controls them both.

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Steve Keen On Austrians Voodoo Economics. Real knowledge, Disequilibrium...

References

[1] Charles Hugh Smith, Central Banks Have Pushed the Middle Class Down into Neofeudal Serfdom.

[2]. Margrit Kennedy, Occupy Money: Creating an Economy Where Everybody Wins, Gabriola Island, BC (Canada): New Society Publishers 2012.

[3] Ellen Brown, Exploring the Public Bank Option.

[4] For a concise and clear exposition of this insidious redistribution from the bottom up see, for example, Charles Hugh Smith, If We Don’t Change the Way Money Is Created and Distributed, We Change Nothing.

[5] Peter Gowan, “The Crisis in the Heartland,” in M. Konings (ed.) The Great Credit Crash, London and New York, Verso 2010: 52.

[6] For more on the unique experience of the Bank of North Dakota see, for example, Ellen Brown, Cutting Wall Street Out.

[7] Interview, as quoted by Public Banking Institute, http://publicbankinginstitute.org/.

[8]. Ellen Brown, It’s the Interest, Stupid! Why Bankers Rule the World.

[9]. Ibid.

[10] Michael Hudson, The Lost Tradition of Biblical Debt Cancellations.

[11] William L. Silber, Why did FDR’s Bank Holiday Succeed?

[12] For a relatively thorough discussion of this issue see, for example, Michael Hudson,Scenarios for Recovery: How to Write Down the Debts and Restructure the Financial System.

Ismael Hossein-zadeh is Professor Emeritus of Economics (Drake University). He is the author ofBeyond Mainstream Explanations of the Financial Crisis (Routledge 2014), The Political Economy of U.S. Militarism (Palgrave–Macmillan 2007), and the Soviet Non-capitalist Development: The Case of Nasser’s Egypt (Praeger Publishers 1989).

Anthony A. Gabb is Associate Professor of Economics at St. John’s University in New York City. 

The original source of this article is Global Research

Washington Consensus

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please helpimprove this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (May 2015)

The Washington Consensus is a set of 10 economic policy prescriptions considered to constitute the "standard" reform package promoted for crisis-wracked developing countries by Washington, D.C.–based institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, and the US Treasury Department.^[1] It was coined in 1989 by English economist John Williamson. The prescriptions encompassed policies in such areas as macroeconomic stabilization, economic opening with respect to both trade and investment, and the expansion of market forces within the domestic economy.

Subsequent to Williamson's use of the terminology, and despite his emphatic opposition, the phrase Washington Consensus has come to be used fairly widely in a second, broader sense, to refer to a more general orientation towards a strongly market-based approach (sometimes described as market fundamentalism or neoliberalism). In emphasizing the magnitude of the difference between the two alternative definitions, Williamson himself has argued (see "Origins of Policy Agenda" and "Broad Sense" below) that his ten original, narrowly defined prescriptions have largely acquired the status of "motherhood and apple pie" (i.e., are broadly taken for granted), whereas the subsequent broader definition, representing a form of neoliberal manifesto, "never enjoyed a consensus [in Washington] or anywhere much else" and can reasonably be said to be dead.

Discussion of the Washington Consensus has long been contentious. Partly this reflects a lack of agreement over what is meant by the term, in face of the contrast between the broader and narrower definitions. But there are also substantive differences involved over the merits and consequences of the various policy prescriptions involved. Some critics take issue, for example, with the original Consensus's emphasis on the opening of developing countries to global markets, and/or with what they see as an excessive focus on strengthening the influence of domestic market forces, arguably at the expense of key functions of the state. For other commentators the issue is more what is missing, including such areas as institution-building and targeted efforts to improve opportunities for the weakest in society. Despite these areas of controversy, a number of developmental institutions and economists (such asJoseph Stiglitz) would by now accept the more general proposition that strategies best work if they are specifically designed to the certain circumstances of the individual countries.

Contents

  [hide] 

• 1History
  • 1.1Original sense: Williamson's Ten Points
  • 1.2Origins of policy agenda
  • 1.3Broad sense
• 2Context
• 3Macroeconomic adjustment
• 4Trade liberalization
• 5Criticism
  • 5.1Anti-globalization movement
  • 5.2Neo-Keynesian criticisms
  • 5.3Proponents of the "European model" and the "Asian way"
• 6Argentina
• 7Subsidies for agriculture
• 8Continuing controversy
• 9Missing elements
• 10Alternative usage vis-a-vis foreign policy
• 11See also
• 12References
• 13Sources
  • 13.1Primary sources
  • 13.2Secondary sources
• 14External links

History[edit]

Original sense: Williamson's Ten Points[edit]

The concept and name of the Washington Consensus were first presented in 1989 by John Williamson, an economist from the Institute for International Economics, an international economic think tank based in Washington, D.C.^[2] Williamson used the term to summarize commonly shared themes among policy advice by Washington-based institutions at the time, such as the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and U.S. Treasury Department, which were believed to be necessary for the recovery of countries in Latin America from the economic and financial crises of the 1980s.^{[citation needed]}

The consensus as originally stated by Williamson included ten broad sets of relatively specific policy recommendations:^[1]

1. Fiscal policy discipline, with avoidance of large fiscal deficits relative to GDP;
2. Redirection of public spending from subsidies ("especially indiscriminate subsidies") toward broad-based provision of key pro-growth, pro-poor services like primary education, primary health care and infrastructure investment;
3. Tax reform, broadening the tax base and adopting moderate marginal tax rates;
4. Interest rates that are market determined and positive (but moderate) in real terms;
5. Competitive exchange rates;
6. Trade liberalization: liberalization of imports, with particular emphasis on elimination of quantitative restrictions (licensing, etc.); any trade protection to be provided by low and relatively uniform tariffs;
7. Liberalization of inward foreign direct investment;
8. Privatization of state enterprises;
9. Deregulation: abolition of regulations that impede market entry or restrict competition, except for those justified on safety, environmental and consumer protection grounds, and prudential oversight of financial institutions;
10. Legal security for property rights.

Origins of policy agenda[edit]

Although Williamson's label of the Washington Consensus draws attention to the role of the Washington-based agencies in promoting the above agenda, a number of authors have stressed that Latin American policy-makers arrived at their own packages of policy reforms primarily based on their own analysis of their countries' situations. Thus, according to Joseph Stanislaw and Daniel Yergin, authors of The Commanding Heights, the policy prescriptions described in the Washington Consensus were "developed in Latin America, by Latin Americans, in response to what was happening both within and outside the region."^[3] Joseph Stiglitz has written that "the Washington Consensus policies were designed to respond to the very real problems in Latin America and made considerable sense" (though Stiglitz has at times been an outspoken critic of IMF policies as applied to developing nations).^[4] In view of the implication conveyed by the term Washington Consensus that the policies were largely external in origin, Stanislaw and Yergin report that the term's creator, John Williamson, has "regretted the term ever since", stating "it is difficult to think of a less diplomatic label."^[3]

A 2010 paper by Nancy Birdsall, Augusto de la Torre, and Felipe Valencia Caicedo likewise suggests that the policies in the original consensus were largely a creation of Latin American politicians and technocrats, with Williamson's role having been to gather the ten points in one place for the first time, rather than to "create" the package of policies.^[5]

In Williamson's own words from 2002:

It is difficult even for the creator of the term to deny that the phrase "Washington Consensus" is a damaged brand name (Naím 2002). Audiences the world over seem to believe that this signifies a set of neoliberal policies that have been imposed on hapless countries by the Washington-based international financial institutions and have led them to crisis and misery. There are people who cannot utter the term without foaming at the mouth.

My own view is of course quite different. The basic ideas that I attempted to summarize in the Washington Consensus have continued to gain wider acceptance over the past decade, to the point where Lula has had to endorse most of them in order to be electable. For the most part they are motherhood and apple pie, which is why they commanded a consensus.^[6]

Broad sense[edit]

Williamson recognizes that the term has commonly been used with a different meaning from his original prescription; he opposes the alternative use of the term, which became common after his initial formulation, to cover a broader market fundamentalism or "neoliberal" agenda.^[7]

I of course never intended my term to imply policies like capital account liberalization (...I quite consciously excluded that), monetarism, supply-side economics, or a minimal state (getting the state out of welfare provision and income redistribution), which I think of as the quintessentially neoliberal ideas. If that is how the term is interpreted, then we can all enjoy its wake, although let us at least have the decency to recognize that these ideas have rarely dominated thought in Washington and certainly never commanded a consensus there or anywhere much else...^[6]

More specifically, Williamson argues that the first three of his ten prescriptions are uncontroversial in the economic community, while recognizing that the others have evoked some controversy. He argues that one of the least controversial prescriptions, the redirection of spending to infrastructure, health care, and education, has often been neglected. He also argues that, while the prescriptions were focused on reducing certain functions of government (e.g., as an owner of productive enterprises), they would also strengthen government's ability to undertake other actions such as supporting education and health. Williamson says that he does not endorse market fundamentalism, and believes that the Consensus prescriptions, if implemented correctly, would benefit the poor.^[8] In a book edited with Pedro-Pablo Kuczynski in 2003, Williamson laid out an expanded reform agenda, emphasizing crisis-proofing of economies, "second-generation" reforms, and policies addressing inequality and social issues (Kuczynski and Williamson, 2003).^{[full citation needed]}

As noted, in spite of Williamson's reservations, the term Washington Consensus has been used more broadly to describe the general shift towards free market policies that followed the displacement of Keynesianism in the 1970s. In this broad sense the Washington Consensus is sometimes considered to have begun at about 1980.^[9][10] Many commentators see the consensus, especially if interpreted in the broader sense of the term, as having been at its strongest during the 1990s. Some have argued that the consensus in this sense ended at the turn of the century, or at least that it became less influential after about the year 2000.^[5][11] More commonly, commentators have suggested that the Consensus in its broader sense survived until the time of the 2008–2009 global financial crisis.^[10] Following the strong intervention undertaken by governments in response to market failures, a number of journalists, politicians and senior officials from global institutions such as the World Bank began saying that the Washington Consensus was dead.^[12][13] These included former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who following the 2009 G-20 London summit, declared "the old Washington Consensus is over".^[14]Williamson was asked by The Washington Post in April 2009 whether he agreed with Gordon Brown that the Washington Consensus was dead. He responded:

It depends on what one means by the Washington Consensus. If one means the ten points that I tried to outline, then clearly it's not right. If one uses the interpretation that a number of people—including Joe Stiglitz, most prominently—have foisted on it, that it is a neoliberal tract, then I think it is right.^[15]

After the 2010 G-20 Seoul summit announced that it had achieved agreement on a Seoul Development Consensus, the Financial Times editorialized that "Its pragmatic and pluralistic view of development is appealing enough. But the document will do little more than drive another nail into the coffin of a long-deceased Washington consensus."^[16]