Friday, April 29, 2016

http://data.worldbank.org/sites/default/files/ids-2016-book.pdf

Financial Parasitism of the West

Wednesday, April 27, 2016

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HISTORY OF TRADE

To the 1st century BC
To the 15th century AD
16th - 18th century
     Portugal's eastern trade
     Rivals in the overseas trade
     Trade winds
     Spanish silver
     The Atlantic cod trade
     Dutch trade in the east
     English trade in the east
     The triangular trade
To be completed

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Portugal's eastern trade: 1508-1595
The profitable trade in eastern spices is cornered by the Portuguese in the 16th century to the detriment of Venice, which has previously had a virtual monopoly of these valuable commodities - until now brought overland through India and Arabia, and then across the Mediterranean by the Venetians for distribution in western Europe. By establishing the sea route round the Cape, Portugal can undercut the Venetian trade with its profusion of middlemen. The new route is firmly secured for Portugal by the activities of Afonso de Albuquerque, who takes up his duties as the Portuguese viceroy of India in 1508.

The early explorers up the east Africa coast have left Portugal with bases in Mozambique and Zanzibar. Albuquerque extends this secure route eastwards by capturing and fortifying Hormuz at the mouth of the Persian Gulf in 1514, Goa on the west coast of India in 1510 (where he massacres the entire Muslim population for the effrontery of resisting him) and Malacca, guarding the narrowest channel of the route east, in 1511. The island of Bombay is ceded to the Portuguese in 1534. An early Portuguese presence in Sri Lanka is steadily increased during the century. And in 1557 Portuguese merchants establish a colony on the island of Macao. Goa functions from the start as the capital of Portuguese India.

Rivals in the overseas trade: 1555-1595
With this chain of fortified ports of call, and with no vessels in the Indian Ocean capable of challenging her power at sea, Portugal has a monopoly of the eastern spice trade. Indeed the English, now developing interests of their own in ocean commerce, consider that their only hope of trade with the far east is to find a route north of Russia. One of the first joint-stock enterprises, the Muscovy Companychartered in 1555, results from early efforts to find a northeast passage.

Of the other Atlantic maritime powers, Spain is mainly occupied with its American responsibilities. And the Dutch enjoy a direct benefit from Portugal's trade. Their ships have a monopoly in ferrying the precious eastern cargoes from Lisbon to northern Europe. The situation changes suddenly in 1580, when the Spanish (perennial enemies of the Dutch) occupy Portugal.

The Spanish leave control of the Portuguese empire to Lisbon, but the political change in itself does damage to Portugal's trading interests. Deprived now of their share of the eastern trade, the Dutch resolve to build up a commerce of their own. Like the English, their first instinct is to look for a northeast passage (a task which takes Willem Barents into uncharted waters). But in 1595 they decide that their best course of action is to challenge the Portuguese on the southern route. It is a decision which will lead to major changes in the eastern trade. But in the short term, the greater volume of trade is now being carried out by Spain across the Atlantic.

Trade winds: from the 16th century

The development of ocean travel in the 16th century brings with it an increasing knowledge of wind patterns. The phrase 'trade wind' is ancient. Deriving from an old use of 'trade' to mean a fixed track, it is applied to any wind which follows a predictable course. Since such winds can be of great value to merchant ships making long ocean voyages, the term becomes understood in the 18th century to mean winds which favour trade. The best known trade winds are those in the Atlantic which blow from the northeast in the northern hemisphere and from the southeast south of the equator. This predictable pattern explains why ships sailing between Europe and the Cape take a wide curving course through the Atlantic.


Even more useful as trade winds are the monsoons which blow in the Indian Ocean. Their particular benefit to long-distance merchantmen is a change of direction at different seasons of the year. The northeast monsoon blows from October to March and the southwest monsoon from April to September. East Indiamen therefore schedule their journeys to arrive at their eastern destination before the spring, and to depart for Europe again during the summer.

Spanish silver: 16th century
The wealth of Spain's new colonies in Latin America derives mainly from silver. In 1545 a prodigious source of the metal is discovered at Potosí, in modern Bolivia. This region, high in the Andes, is so rich in both silver and tin that it eventually has as many as 5000 working mines. In 1546, a year after the discovery at Potosí, silver is found at Zacatecas in Mexico. Other major new sources of the metal are found in Mexico in the next few years. At the same time sources of gold are being tapped, though in much less quantity.

Convoys of Spanish caravels, after delivering to Portobelo the European goods needed in the colonies, carry back to Spain the precious bullion with which the colonists pay for it - together with the 20% of all gold and silver due to the Spanish crown. These treasures attract privateers from northern Europe - meaning privately owned vessels operating, even if informally, on behalf of a government. Their captains are drawn to the Spanish Main (the mainland of Spanish America, where the ships dock) like wasps to a honey pot. Sailors from England, such as Francis Drake, prey on the Spanish fleets in what is effectively a programme of national piracy.

At the Spanish end, all trade has to be channelled through the official Casa de Contratación (House of Trade) established in Seville in 1503. This monopoly brings great wealth to Seville, and an increase in prosperity from this flow of bullion spreads outwards through Europe. The region of Seville, and indeed the whole of Spain, cannot provide all the goods required by the colonists. Raw materials and manufactured goods from far flung regions make their way to Seville for transport to America. Europe in the 16th century is already experiencing, for other reasons, an inflationary pressure. The Spanish bullion has an added effect in pushing prices up.

The Atlantic cod trade: 1497-1583
The voyage of John Cabot in 1497 directs European attention to the rich stocks of fish in the waters around Newfoundland. Soon fishing fleets from the Atlantic nations of Europe are making annual visits to catch cod. They bring with them large supplies of salt. Summer settlements are established, on the coasts of Newfoundland, to process the fish before it is transported back to European markets in the autumn. England plays a leading role in the trade, and in 1583 Humphrey Gilbert formally annexes Newfoundland on behalf of the English queen. It is a claim which does not go undisputed - particularly by France, whose fleets are the main rivals of the English in these waters.

Dutch trade in the east: 1595-1651
The first Dutch expedition round the Cape to the far east, in 1595, is captained by Jan Huyghen van Linschoten, a Netherlands merchant whose only knowledge of the orient comes from trading in Lisbon. The survivors of this journey get back to Holland two years later. They bring valuable cargo. And they have established a trading treaty with the sultan of Bantam, in Java. Their return prompts great excitement. Soon about ten private vessels are setting off each year from the Netherlands to find their fortune in the east. The States General of the newly independent Dutch republic decide that this unlicensed trading activity, in distant and dangerous waters, needs both control and protection.

In 1602 the States General form a Dutch East India Company, with extensive privileges and powers. It is to have a tax-free monopoly of the eastern trade for twenty-one years. It is authorized to build forts, establish colonies, mint coins, and maintain a navy and army as required. With these powers the company takes only a few decades to deprive Portugal of the spice trade. A capital is established at Batavia, in Java, in 1619. The Portuguese are driven out of Malacca by 1641 and from Sri Lanka by 1658. But the main focus of Dutch attention is the Moluccas - the Indonesian islands of which the alternative name, the Spice Islands, declares their central importance in the eastern trade.

The Moluccas are the source of the most valuable spice of all, the clove, coveted for many different purposes - as a flavour in food, as a preservative, as a mild anaesthetic, as an ingredient in perfume, even to mask stinking breath. In pursuit of Moluccan cloves, and also nutmegs, thePortuguese make local treaties as early as 1512. In the early decades of the 17th century the Dutch East India Company gradually excludes the Portuguese from trade in the Moluccas. The Dutch also take on, and oust from the islands, another European nation attempting to get a foothold in the region - the English East India Company.

The Dutch control the trade in cloves with ruthless efficiency. During the 17th century clove trees are eradicated on all the Spice Islands except two - Amboina and Ternate - to limit production and keep prices high. Strict measures are taken to ensure that plants are not exported for propagation elsewhere (a restriction successfully maintained until the late 18th century). The Portuguese never recover their trading strength in the east. But in expelling the English from the Moluccas, the Dutch unwittingly do them a favour. The English East India Company decides to concentrate its efforts on India.

English trade in the east: 17th century
On the last day of the year 1600 Elizabeth I grants a charter to a 'Company of Merchants trading into the East Indies'. Early voyages prove successful; by 1614 the East India Company owns twenty-four ships. But competition with the Dutch in the spice islands leads to violence, culminating in a massacre of English merchants at Amboina by their Dutch rivals in 1623. This disaster causes the company to concentrate on its interests in India. In 1613 a factory (meaning a secure warehouse for the accumulation of Indian textiles, spices and indigo) has been formally established on the west coast, at Surat. The first English vessel with a cargo of these Indian goods sails from Surat in 1615.

Surat remains the English headquarters on the west coast until it is gradually replaced, between 1672 and 1687, by Bombay (given to Charles II in 1661 as part of the dowry of his Portuguese bride, Catherine of Braganza, and leased by him to the company in 1668). Meanwhile the English are establishing secure footholds on the east coast. Fort St George is begun at Madras in 1640 and is completed in 1644. Calcutta is eventually selected, in 1690, as the best site for a trading station in the Ganges delta; it is fortified, as Fort William, in 1696. By the end of the 17th century the three English presidencies of Bombay, Madras and Calcutta are securely established.

Triangular trade: 18th century
The triangular trade has an economic elegance most attractive to the owners of the slave ships. Each of the three separate journeys making up an expedition is profitable in its own right, with only the 'middle voyage' across the Atlantic involving slaves as cargo. Ships depart from Liverpool or Bristol with items in demand in west Africa - these include firearms, alcohol (particularly rum), cotton goods, metal trinkets and beads. The goods are eagerly awaited by traders in ports around the Gulf of Guinea. These traders have slaves on offer, captured in the African interior and now awaiting transport to America.

With the first exchange of merchandise completed, the slaves are packed into the vessels in appalling conditions for the Atlantic crossing. They are crammed below decks, shackled, badly fed and terrified. It is estimated that as many as twelve million Africans are embarked on this journey during the course of the Atlantic slave trade, and that one in six dies before reaching the West Indies - where the main slave markets on the American side of the ocean are located. The most valuable product of the West Indies, molasses extracted from sugar cane, is purchased for the last leg of the triangle. Back in England the molasses can be transformed into rum. And so it goes on.

This History is as yet incomplete.

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UNIT 15: Early Global Commodities

UNIT CONTENT OVERVIEW

Until the sixteenth century, the world's four main monetary substances were silver, gold, copper, and various shells. Each flowed independently to distinct regional markets on every continent and along much of the world's coastlines. Cowries, gold, and "red gold" (copper) in Africa; shells in South America and the Pacific; and gold and silver in Eurasia all made their way from market to market as mediums of exchange.

Of these substances, it would be the story of silver, as commodity and currency, that would finally create an all-encompassing network of global trade in the sixteenth century. Where did the flow of silver begin and where did it end? What were the powerful economic, demographic, and ecological forces that gave birth to world trade? What were the legacies of these global linkages?

This unit explores these questions by looking at converging forces in sixteenth-century Asia, the Americas, Europe, and Africa, which — taken together — created a global market for silver through maritime trade. Until about 1750, China's demand for silver served as the engine for world trade. Both the Japanese Tokugawa shogunate and the Spanish empire captured a substantial portion of silver profits from mines they controlled. States and individuals profited around the world, further increasing the global demand for commodities. Ships sailed to and from the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Africa, carrying precious cargoes.

By the end of the eighteenth century, however, the silver web had begun to lose its luster. Silver glutted the global market, which led to a decline in its value. This in turn led to a global price inflation, which diminished silver's purchasing power. Indeed, just as the transportation technology of maritime trade had created a vast web of silver markets throughout the world, the same web determined that the fall in silver's value would also be global.

As at least one historian has noted, the fact that Spain's empire owed its financial foundation to China is a forceful reminder that — after about 1571 — much of what passes for local history can only be understood from the perspective of world history. The era of the silver seas found all of humanity in a single vessel. Once connected, the fortunes of continents would remain intertwined.

GLOBAL HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Time Period: 1500-1800

The period 1500-1800 is frequently represented as an era of increasing European global domination. Attention to the conquest of the Americas, the Enlightenment, the Atlantic slave trade, and expansion into Asia and Africa typically reinforce this interpretation. However, recent analyses of this period do not place Europeans at the center of world affairs: they emphasize the importance of large, centralized states in China, West Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and India. Historians now theorize that Europeans served not as dominators, but as intermediaries for commercial goods — including silver, slaves, and manufactured goods — between these various regions. Indeed, they argue that Europeans did not dominate global trade and politics until about 1800.

AP Themes:

Examines interactions in economy and politics by focusing on the silver trade and its impact on regional economies around the world.
Explores change and continuity because the global trade in silver after 1600 produced profound economic and social changes from China to Europe and the Americas.
Discusses technology, demography, and the environment because the silver trade relied on maritime technologies for its success, and because the brutalities associated with silver mining at Potosí resulted in population losses among indigenous American groups.

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER

Question 1: What caused the creation of the first truly global network of world trade in the sixteenth century?
Question 2: How can historians reconstruct the past by tracing the exchange of particular commodities (such as silver)?
Question 3: How were early commercial patterns altered by the European discovery of silver in the Americas?
Question 4: How did forces and events that originated outside the West cause the "rise of the West"?

THE BIG PICTURE

How is this topic related to Increasing Integration?

In the sixteenth century, the world became linked through networks of global trade for the first time. As a result, its peoples became increasingly integrated in complex ways through labor systems, migration, and new economic relationships.

How is this topic related to Proliferating Difference?

Once a global system of trade was created, the orientation of the world's regions shifted in relation to one another; some central regions became peripheral, and some peripheral regions became central. This reorientation created differences between the world's people based on differing access to key commodities.

Tuesday, April 26, 2016

r garg post

Till 1971 , BIS IMF WTO eg CABAL were on gold backing plus fixed exchange rates ....

From 1971 onwards BIS etc are on non gold backing ..
maybe ..all 195 or so countries are backed by USA treasuries bonds bills .. ,
and mostly flexible Exchange Rates ER eg india Russia , with few countries independently choosing pegged ER eg china , with manipulative pressures by IMF eg japan via plaza accord.

To get back to same system .. The system from 45 to 71 was gold based and managed by usa .

The post 1971 system , some call it bretton woods 2 or jamaica 1972 system ..
This is really shit
With bold blatant usa hegemony .
For pedagogy , there were2 parts , and now 3 parts of jamaica72 system
1. Usa uk eec japan
2.china separate part from 1980 s onwards
3.all other nations , india Russia brazil and about 190 others
Earlier when china s exports were small ,china was part of all other nations.

Part 1 nations , uk usa are predators . eec japan export surplus plus free capital movement .usa can issue bank loans without restriction , uk with strict approval by usa only when uk begs , eec and japan can issue bank loans with us approved m1 m2 etc m being multiple of the usa t bonds purchased by individual nation n1 n2 etc

China can issue bank loans as above , note it has HUGE usa t bonds 4 trillion dlrs , china i think has capital movement restrictions ..i am not sure

Most of Other 190 nations have very nominal net export capability , their trade imbalance is tightly restricted by that nations usa t bond holdings . i think all or most of this 190 group has severe restrictions on capital movement . these countries ability to issue money M3 via bank loans or via deficit financing is also very tightly and blatantly though discreetly . M3 may be needed for infrastructure or for wars or for speculative activity . in india lot of this M3 is used for property mortgage loans . for more needed M3 these 190 nations have to beg for loans with imf conditions from imf or from banks in part1 4 nations .

Ha ha

Eco 103

future unemployment due technology .. for good or bad !

From Mohinder , a great read

In 1998, Kodak had 170,000 employees and sold 85% of all photo paper worldwide.
Within just a few years, their business model disappeared and they got bankrupt.
What happened to Kodak will happen in a lot of industries in the next 10 year - and most people don't see it coming. Did you think in 1998 that 3 years later you would never take pictures on paper film again?
Yet digital cameras were invented in 1975. The first ones only had 10,000 pixels, but followed Moore's law. So as with all exponential technologies, it was a disappointment for a long time, before it became way superiour and got mainstream in only a few short years. It will now happen with Artificial Intelligence, health, autonomous and electric cars, education, 3D printing, agriculture and jobs. Welcome to the 4th Industrial Revolution.
Welcome to the Exponential Age.

Software will disrupt most traditional industries in the next 5-10 years.
Uber is just a software tool, they don't own any cars, and are now the biggest taxi company in the world. Airbnb is now the biggest hotel company in the world, although they don't own any properties.

Artificial Intelligence: Computers become exponentially better in understanding the world. This year, a computer beat the best Go player in the world, 10 years earlier than expected. In the US, young lawyers already don't get jobs. Because of IBM Watson, you can get legal advice (so far for more or less basic stuff) within seconds, with 90% accuracy compared with 70% accuracy when done by humans. So if you study law, stop immediately. There will be 90% less laywyers in the future, only specialists will remain.
Watson already helps nurses diagnosing cancer, 4 time more accurate than human nurses. Facebook now has a pattern recognition software that can recognize faces better than humans. In 2030, computers will become more intelligent than humans.

Autonomous cars: In 2018 the first self driving cars will appear for the public. Around 2020, the complete industry will start to be disrupted. You don't want to own a car anymore. You will call a car with your phone, it will show up at your location and drive you to your destination. You will not need to park it, you only pay for the driven distance and can be productive while driving. Our kids will never get a driver's licence and will never own a car. It will change the cities, because we will need 90-95% less cars for that. We can transform former parking space into parks. 1,2 million people die each year in car accidents worldwide. We now have one accident every 100,000km, with autonomous driving that will drop to one accident in 10 million km. That will save a million lifes each year.

Most car companies might become bankrupt. Traditional car companies try the evolutionary approach and just build a better car, while tech companies (Tesla, Apple, Google) will do the revolutionary approach and build a computer on wheels. I spoke to a lot of engineers from Volkswagen and Audi; they are completely terrified of Tesla.

Insurance companies will have massive trouble because without accidents, the insurance will become 100x cheaper. Their car insurance business model will disappear.
Real estate will change. Because if you can work while you commute, people will move further away to live in a more beautiful neighborhood.
Electric cars will become mainstream until 2020. Cities will be less noisy because all cars will run on electric. Electricity will become incredibly cheap and clean: Solar production has been on an exponential curve for 30 years, but you can only now see the impact. Last year, more solar energy was installed worldwide than fossil. The price for solar will drop so much that all coal companies will be out of business by 2025.
With cheap electricity comes cheap and abundant water. Desalination now only needs 2kWh per cubic meter. We don't have scarce water in most places, we only have scarce drinking water. Imagine what will be possible if anyone can have as much clean water as he wants, for nearly no cost.

Health: The Tricorder X price will be announced this year. There will be companies who will build a medical device (called the "Tricorder" from Star Trek) that works with you phone, which takes your retina scan, you blood sample and you breath into it. It then analyses 54 biomarkers that will identify nearly any disease. It will be cheap, so in a few years everyone on this planet will have access to world class medicine, nearly for free.

3D printing: The price of the cheapest 3D printer came down from 18,000$ to 400$ within 10 years. In the same time, it became 100 times faster. All major shoe companies started 3D printing shoes. Spare airplane parts are already 3D printed in remote airports. The space station now has a printer that eliminates the need for the large amout of spare parts they used to have in the past.
At the end of this year, new smartphones will have 3D scanning possibilities. You can then 3D scan your feet and print your perfect shoe at home. In China, they already 3D printed a complete 6-storey office building. By 2027, 10% of everything that's being produced will be 3D printed.

Business opportunities: If you think of a niche you want to go in, ask yourself: "in the future, do you think we will have that?" and if the answer is yes, how can you make that happen sooner? If it doesn't work with your phone, forget the idea. And any idea designed for success in the 20th century is doomed in to failure in the 21st century.

Work: 70-80% of jobs will disappear in the next 20 years. There will be a lot of new jobs, but it is not clear if there will be enough new jobs in such a small time.

Agriculture: There will be a 100$ agricultural robot in the future. Farmers in 3rd world countried can then become managers of their field instead of working all days on their fields. Aeroponics will need much less water. The first petri dish produced veal is now available and will be cheaper than cow produced veal in 2018. Right now, 30% of all agricultural surfaces is used for cows. Imagine if we don't need that space anymore. There are several startups who will bring insect protein to the market shortly. It contains more protein than meat. It will be labeled as "alternative protein source" (because most people still reject the idea of eating insects).

There is an app called "moodies" which can already tell in which mood you are. Until 2020 there will be apps that can tell by your facial expressions if you are lying. Imagine a political debate where it's being displayed when they are telling the truth and when not.

Bitcoin will become mainstream this year and might even become the default reserve currency.

Longevity: Right now, the average life span increases by 3 months per year. Four years ago, the life span used to be 79 years, now it's 80 years. The increase itself is increasing and by 2036, there will be more that one year increase per year. So we all might live for a long long time, probably way more than 100.

Education: The cheapest smartphones are already at 10$ in Africa and Asia. Until 2020, 70% of all humans will own a smartphone. That means, everyone has the same access to world class education. Every child can use Khan academy for everything a child learns at school in First World countries. We have already released our software in Indonesia and will release it in Arabic, Suaheli and Chinese this Summer, because I see an enormous potential. We will give the English app for free, so that children in Africa can become fluent in English within half a year.

he Gods of Money & Their New World Order Project: Endgame Has Begun

December 27, 2013 By davidjones

By RICHARD K. MOORE

Let me issue and control a nation’s money and I care not who writes the laws.
– Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1744-1812), founder of the House of Rothschild

Perhaps the single most important thing to know about power in the world today is that most nations do not have control over their own currencies. Instead privately owned, for-profit central banks – such as the Federal Reserve System in the US – create money out of nothing and then loan it at interest to their respective governments. This is an incredibly profitable scam, but that’s not the worst of it.

Not only do the central banks have the power to create money for free, they also have the power to set interest rates, to decide how much credit is issued, and to decide how much money is put into circulation. With this power central banks can – and do – orchestrate boom and bust cycles, enabling the super-wealthy owners of the banks to profit from investments during the booms, and buy up assets at bargain prices during the busts. And that still isn’t the whole story.

The most profitable of all central bank activities has been the financing of major wars, particularly the two World Wars. When nations are engaged in warfare, with their very survival at stake, the governments stretch their resources to the limit in the competition to prevail. The struggle to get more financing becomes as important as the competition on the battlefield. Moneylenders love a desperate borrower, and vast fortunes have been made by extending credit to both sides in conflicts: the longer a war continues, the more profit for the central bankers.

Centralised Wealth Leads to Centralised Power

Some of the biggest men in the United States are afraid of something. They know there is a power somewhere, so organised, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.
– Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924), 28th President of the United States

Our political systems, based on parties competing to get elected, are inherently prone to corruption. Just as the struggle for financing is important in military campaigns, so is it important in political campaigns. Wealthy donors are able to get special treatment, when it comes to legislation and regulation that affects their business interests. This kind of corruption, however, is only the tip of the iceberg.

A more effective way that wealth translates into power is by the placing of agents – individuals loyal to wealthy backers – into positions of influence and power. For example, when the Rothschilds and Rockefellers joined forces to establish the Federal Reserve, they recruited an unknown professor, Woodrow Wilson, promised to make him President, and secured a return promise that he would sign the Federal Reserve bill when the time came. With their influence over party bosses, their control of newspapers, and unlimited funding, they were able to get Wilson elected. He may have later regretted his bargain with the devil, as suggested in the above quotation.

A more modern example is Obama, who in 2009 was tasked by Henry Kissinger (himself a key agent of the Rockefellers) to create a “new world order.” Like Wilson, Obama appeared out of political nowhere, was rocketed into the Presidency, and proved his loyalty in office. In Obama’s case, this involved promptly turning the White House over to central-banker agents from Wall Street – Timothy Geithner and his buddies. They make the policy; Obama makes the speeches.

This kind of thing has been going on for centuries, first in Europe and later in the US. What began as the placement of a few key agents has evolved over time. What we have now is an international web of control, with key agents placed in political parties, governments and their agencies, the media, corporate boards, intelligence services, and the military. At the centre of the web are the central banking dynasties – the Gods of Money – who remain mostly behind the scenes, pulling the strands of real power.

The Engineering of Transformation

In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.
– Franklin D. Roose

THE GREAT CARBON CREDIT DECEPTION

October 13, 2011 By davidjones

By RICHARD K MOORE—

In an era of economic growth, the dynamics of competition, innovation, and entrepreneurial investment were important elements of the game. In a non-growth era, the game will be based on entirely different dynamics. The mechanisms of production will become relatively static. Instead of corporations competing to innovate, we’ll have production bureaucracies. They’ll be semi-state, semi-private cartels, concerned about budgets and quotas rather than growth, somewhat along the lines of the Soviet model.

We can already see steps being taken to shift the corporate model towards the bureaucratic model, through increased government intervention in economic affairs. In the US for example, with the Wall Street bailouts, the forced restructuring of General Motors, the call for centralised regulation of banking and industry, and the mandating of health insurance coverage, the government is saying that the market is to be superseded by government directives. Not that we should bemoan the demise of exploitive capitalism, but before celebrating we need to understand what it is being replaced with.

In the era of capitalism and growth, the focus of the game was on the production side of the economy. The game was aimed at controlling the means of growth: access to capital. In an era of non-growth, the focus of the game will be on the consumption side of the economy. The game will be aimed at controlling the necessities of life: access to food and energy. Carbon limits and carbon trading provide the mechanisms that will enable the banksters to micromanage the necessities of life on a global scale.For more information on this see my full length article “The Elite Plan for a New World Social Order” in New Dawn 128.

As regards financial budgets, the IMF is doing the micromanaging, using the leverage of debt. For carbon budgets, it will be the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) that will do the micromanaging, using the excuse of global warming. How this will work is explained by the Herald Sun, 10 July 2011, discussing Australia’s new carbon legislation:

“An emissions trading scheme is where the government sets a cap on the total amount of pollution [CO2] that can be released each year. Businesses compete for permits and can trade permits, within that cap. The price can vary but the amount of pollution is fixed. Each year the Government could lower the cap – meaning Australia’s emissions will fall.”

In terms of propaganda, this carbon-credit regime is being sold as a solution to global warming and peak oil. The propaganda campaign has been very successful, and the whole environmental movement has been captured by it. In Copenhagen, demonstrators confronted the police, carrying signs in support of carbon taxes and carbon credits. But in fact the carbon regime has nothing to do with climate or with sustainability. It is all about micromanaging every aspect of our lives, as well as every aspect of the economy.

If the folks who are running things actually cared about sustainability, they’d be investing in efficient mass transit, and they’d be shifting agriculture from petroleum-intensive, water-intensive methods to sustainable methods. Instead they are mandating biofuels and selling us electric cars, which are no more sustainable than standard cars.

As the new global regime is consolidated, the IPCC will dole out a mandatory annual carbon cap to each nation. Each government will then budget out its allocation in some way, as Australia is doing. With smart meters, energy use can be micromanaged all the way down to the number of minutes people spend in showers, or at what temperature people choose to do their laundry.

Whether these kinds of measures will significantly reduce CO2 levels is open to considerable doubt. Creating a tree plantation in the third world can be ‘traded’ for continued emissions, even if a rain forest is cut down to make room for the plantation – and this overall transaction actually increases global CO2 levels. And there will surely be special cases, such as favoured industries, or government and military applications, where exceptions to the cap will be permitted. And in general, enforcement of industrial regulations tends to be notoriously lax.

Although reduction of CO2 levels may be in doubt, there is one thing that is not in doubt: carbon caps will limit access to the necessities of life and will greatly increase the cost of those necessities. Every industry that burns fossil fuels will have an additional cost added: the cost of obtaining carbon permits – by being the highest bidder. Those costs, plus profit margins, will be passed on to the consumer. Fossil alternatives, such as wind power and biofuels, will be only marginally lower in price: it is IPCC-imposed fossil fuel scarcity that will set the price in each market segment, as we already see with world grain prices. All of this will encourage speculative investment in futures markets, which will increase prices still further – and this is already happening with global food prices.

With food prices linked to energy prices, and agriculture land being converted from food production to fuel production, the result can only be a massive increase in third world starvation. Depopulation has long been a stated goal in elite circles, and the Rockefeller dynasty has frequently been involved in eugenics projects of various kinds over the past century. Genocide through imposed poverty is already a model being pursued successfully in Africa, and biofuels are systematically expanding that program.

(