Endeavors Share Discussion Threads

[abc125] 18/6/2011 15:04

Wilson delivers 14 Point speech

The Fourteen Points was a speech delivered by United States President Woodrow Wilson to a joint session of Congress on January 8, 1918. The address was intended to assure the country that the Great War was being fought for a moral cause and for postwar peace in Europe.

[abc125] 18/6/2011 14:40

"Why, my fellow citizens, is there any man here or any woman, let me say is there any child here, who does not know that the seed of war in the modern world is industrial and commercial rivalry? The real reason that the war that we have just finished took place was that Germany was afraid her commercial rivals were going to get the better of her, and' the reason why some nations went into the war against Germany was that they thought Germany would get the commercial advantage of them. The seed of the jealousy, the seed of the deep-seated hatred was hot, successful commercial and industrial rivalry."

"This war, in its inception was a commercial and industrial war. It was not a political war."

President Woodrow Wilson.Speech at the Coliseum in St. Louis, Missouri, on the Peace Treaty and the League of Nations (5 September 1919).


"In most parts of our country men work, not for themselves, not as partners in the old way in which they used to work, but generally as employees,-in a higher or lower grade,-of great corporations. There was a time when corporations played a very minor part in our business affairs, but now they play the chief part, and most men are the servants of corporations."

Woodrow Wilson

[abc125] 18/6/2011 14:22

A. "Open Door Imperialism" Through the 1930s.

Open Door imperialism consisted of using U.S. political power to guarantee access to foreign markets and resources on terms favorable to American corporate interests, without relying on direct political rule. Its central goal was to obtain for U.S. merchandise, in each national market, treatment equal to that afforded any other industrial nation. Most importantly, this entailed active engagement by the U.S. government in breaking down the imperial powers' existing spheres of economic influence or preference. The result, in most cases, was to treat as hostile to U.S. security interests any large-scale attempt at autarky, or any other policy whose effect was to withdraw a major area from the disposal of U.S. corporations.

When the power attempting such policies was an equal, like the British Empire, the U.S. reaction was merely one of measured coolness. When it was perceived as an inferior, like Japan, the U.S. resorted to more forceful measures, as events of the late 1930s indicate. And whatever the degree of equality between advanced nations in their access to Third World markets, it was clear that Third World nations were still to be subordinated to the industrialized West in a collective sense. Indeed, one think that Kautsky had the Open Door in mind in formulating his theory of "ultra-imperialism," in which the developed capitalist nations cooperated to exploit the Third World collectively.

This Open Door system was the direct ancestor of today's neoliberal system, which is falsely called "free trade" in the apologetics of court intellectuals. It depended on active management of the world economy by dominant states, and continuing intervention to police the international economic order and enforce sanctions against states which did not cooperate. Woodrow Wilson, in a 1907 lecture at Columbia University, said:

Since trade ignores national boundaries and the manufacturer insists on having the world as a market, the flag of his nation must follow him, and the doors of the nations which are closed must be battered down.... Concessions obtained by financiers must be safeguarded by ministers of state, even if the sovereignty of unwilling nations be outraged in the process. Colonies must be obtained or planted, in order that no useful corner of the world may be overlooked or left unused. Peace itself becomes a matter of conference and international combinations.

Wilson warned during the 1912 election that "Our industries have expanded to such a point that they will burst their jackets if they cannot find a free [i.e., guaranteed by the state] outlet to the markets of the world."

In a 1914 address to the National Foreign Trade Convention, Secretary of Commerce Redfield followed very nearly the same theme:

...we have learned the lesson now, that our factories are so large that their output at full time is greater than America's market can continuously absorb. We know now that if we will run full time all the time, we must do it by reason of the orders we take from lands beyond the sea. To do less than that means homes in America in which the husbands are without work; to do that means factories that are shut down part of the time.

Under the Open Door system, the state and its loans were to play a central role in the export of capital. The primary purpose of foreign loans, historically, has been to finance the infrastructure which is a prerequisite for the establishment of enterprises in foreign countries. As Edward E. Pratt, chief of the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, said in 1914:

...we can never hope to realize the really big prizes in foreign trade until we are prepared to loan capital to foreign nations and to foreign enterprise. The big prizes... are the public and private developments of large proportions, ...the building of railroads, the construction of public-service plants, the improvement of harbors and docks, ...and many others which demand capital in large amounts.... It is commonly said that trade follows the flag. It is much more truly said that trade follows the investment or the loan.

It was, however, beyond the resources of individual firms or venture capitalists, or of the decentralized banking system, to raise the sums necessary for these tasks. One purpose of creating a central banking system (the Federal Reserve Act, 1914) was to make possible the large-scale mobilization of investment capital for overseas ventures. Under the New Deal, the mobilization began to take the form of direct state loans.

The state's financial policies, besides promoting the accumulation of capital for foreign investment, also underwrite foreign consumption of U.S. produce. As John Foster Dulles said in 1928, "We must finance our exports by loaning foreigners the where-with-all to pay for them...." These two functions were perfected in the Bretton Woods system after WWII.

[abc125] 16/6/2011 20:14

America: Freedom to Fascism-Full Length Documentary:

[abc125] 15/6/2011 21:41

Barry Ritholtz's pick from todays newspapers.

The most important finance and investing article you will read today is not in the WSJ or FT or the NYT Business section, Its not in Forbes or Fortune or IBD or any other traditional business press.

Its in the Arts section of the NYT, and its about your cognitive deficit when it comes to rationality and the reasoning: Reason Seen More as Weapon Than Path to Truth.

The "argumentative theory of reasoning" posits that "Truth" is irrelevant, and the social functions of debate are what matters:

[abc125] 15/6/2011 19:34

Webster Tarply. The Precedents & The Reality:

[abc125] 15/6/2011 19:04

Peter G Peterson, co-founder of the Blackstone Group set up the charitable trust, the Peterson Foundation which produced the film I.O.U.S.A.

[abc125] 14/6/2011 22:55

Wall Street Journal. A macro view:

[abc125] 14/6/2011 19:32

Free Banking

Free banking is unregulated banking in which those who operate the bank can provide any business system that they wish to. If the market accepts the system, then their enterprise will prosper; if not their enterprise will fail.

Free-banking systems may be based on a gold standard, a gold and silver standard or even a fractional reserve standard. The only standard is what the market will accept. In practice many free-banking systems have apparently practiced a form of private fractional reserve banking that included the ability to issue promissory notes payable in gold, silver (or both) to the bearer.

Such systems often seem to have remained stable even when more notes were issued than gold or silver (or both) in the warehouses. This is because absent state-created economic catastrophes, people did not show up all at once to collect their precious metals. Free banking usually has flourished in environments where the state has little control over the larger financial environment and thus economic catastrophes are not common. Additionally, free-banking clearing houses are usually available to provide banks with additional gold and silver were the banks not able to provide sufficient money metals at a given time.

Vera Smith defines free banking as "A régime where note-issuing banks are allowed to set up in the same way as any other type of business enterprise, so long as they comply with the general company law. The requirement for their establishment is not special conditional authorization from a Government authority, but the ability to raise sufficient capital, and public confidence, to gain acceptance for their notes and ensure the profitability of the undertaking. (-The Rationale of Central Banking and the Free Banking Alternative. Minneapolis, Minn.: Liberty Fund., pp. 169–70))

According to Wikipedia some examples of free banking include:

1. Australia. In the late 19th century, banking in Australia was subject to little regulation. There were four large banks with over 100 branches each, that together had about half of the banking business, and branch banking and deposit banking were much more advanced than other more regulated countries such as the UK and USA.

2. Switzerland. In the 19th Century several Swiss cantons deregulated banking, allowing free entry and issue of notes. Cantons retained jurisdiction over banking until the enactment of the Federal Banking Law of 1881.

3. Scottish Free Banking. This period lasted between 1716 and 1845. The Bank of Scotland, the original Scottish bank charter and The Royal Bank of Scotland, chartered by England, issued competitive currencies. This resulted in a "currency war" in 1727. The result was a cooperative equilibrium, where both banks agreed to accept rival banks' notes in the ordinary course of business.

4. United States. Although the period from 1837 to 1864 in the U.S. is often referred to as the Free Banking Era, the term is something of a misnomer, for it refers not to a general system of "free" banking in the literal sense described previously, but rather to various state banking systems based on so-called "free banking" laws, which, though they made it unnecessary for new entrants to secure charters (each of which was subject to a vote by the state legislature), nonetheless restricted their undertakings in important ways. From 1863 to 1913, [during a period] known as the National Banks Era, state-chartered banks were still operating under a free banking system. Some scholars have found that the system was mostly stable.

5. Sweden. Sweden had two periods of free banking, 1830–60 and 1860-1902. Following a bank crisis in 1857, there was a rise in popular support for private banks and private money issuers (especially Stockholm's Enskilda Bank, founded in 1856). A new bank law was adopted by parliament in 1864, deregulating the interest rate. The following decades marked the height of the Swedish free banking era.

DailyBell

[abc125] 14/6/2011 18:58

CIA Director Leon Panetta said in a recent hearing that the US may soon face a cyber attack that would be the equivalent of Pearl Harbor. (See excerpt above.) Pearl Harbor was a huge (possibly false flag) event that convulsed the US and provided a pretext for the US to go to war. We've written several recent articles now suggesting that Western powers-that-be have in mind expanding the wars in Eurasia and Africa.

When the power elite's faux-economies collapse, as they always do, the solution is usually a war of some sort. It is one of the biggest dominant social themes of all. War is the ultimate fear-based promotion – the idea that the state (which is no good at anything else) – can protect and defend citizens from its "enemies." Usually, when one closely examines the situation, the enemies have been made up, at least initially. The Internet has been making war harder to promote.

War runs hand-in-hand with economics. When the economy flatlines, modern warfare is often the answer of those that seek to continue their control of society. Fiat money, the current manifestation of Western economies, is a very effective tool for control and consolidation. But like other forms of price-fixing, it doesn't work over the long term. Western power elites, based out of the City of London, know this. There are over 100 central banks around the world that are coordinated by the secretive BIS and all of them can basically print money at will. Even when there is supposedly public oversight of these banks, there is no oversight.

[abc125] 13/6/2011 19:14

Charlotte Thompson Iserbyt served as the head of policy at the Department of Education during the first administration of Ronald Reagan.

The Miseducation of America Part 1-Full :

[abc125] 13/6/2011 12:12

In 1913, Frederick Gates, Director of Charity for the Rockefeller Foundation wrote: "In our dreams, we have limitless resources, and the people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hand. The present educational conventions fade from our minds; and, unhampered by tradition, we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive folk.

"We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or science.

"We are not to raise up from among them Authors, Orators, Poets or Men of Letters.

"We shall not search for embryo great Artists, Painters, Musicians.

"Nor will we cherish even the humbler ambition to raise up from among them Lawyers, Doctors, Preachers, Politicians, Statesmen, of whom we now have ample supply."

[abc125] 13/6/2011 10:09

Was Carnegie an altruistic benefactor to society in later years? Or simply promoting the aims of big business covertly through tax exempt foundations?

Norman Dodd, Chief congressional Investigator was appointed to the Reece Committee in 1953 to investigate the political activities of tax exempt charitable foundations following revelations that foundations were acting as political organizations. Alger Hiss, President of the Carnegie Foundation had been jailed in 1950 for spying.

The archived minutes of the Carnegie Foundation for International Peace reveal that in 1917 they sent a telegram to President Wilson cautioning him not to end the war too quickly (WW1). The foundation had been formed in 1908 and one of the first topics discussed was 'Is there any means known more effective than war assuming you wish to alter the life of an entire people? And the trustees of the foundation also discussed 'How do we involve the United States in a War?'.

These could be the ramblings of an old man so make of it what you will. The Carnegie foundation is discussed from 12m onwards but it is worth listening to both parts which are an abridged version of a longer interview Dodd gave to Edward G Griffin in 1982.

[abc125] 10/6/2011 10:25

marketoracle

[abc125] 09/6/2011 21:10

"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate."

- Noam Chomsky

[abc125] 08/6/2011 22:03

John Perkins features in the Zeitgeist movie, Addendum:

[abc125] 08/6/2011 21:59

"There are two ways to conquer and enslave a nation. One is by the sword. The other is by debt."

John Adams,1735-1826.

[abc125] 08/6/2011 21:50

John Perkins, a former NSA employee and author of the best selling book 'Confessions of an Economic Hitman' explains how america has managed to expand its empire (non-militarily) by foisting debt onto less developed countries: