Six Relevant Answers to Global Climate Change Questions

1) Is change occurring? How we can be even arguing about this one. The loss of polar ice is so overwhelming that anyone who denies change is occurring is sociopathically political.

2) Is change occurring due to manmade causes? The evidence suggests so. Scientific theory regarding greenhouse gases is valid. As greenhouse gases have increased, the number of large scale natural disasters has increased dramatically over the past 100 years from 73 per decade in the early 1900s to over 2,780 in the last decade, historically unprecedented. Is this as a result of release of combustion gases from fossil fuels that have resulted from captured hydrocarbon over millions of years? Perhaps so….

3) If the trend is not reversed, will it portend dangers for mankind? There is nothing to suggest that the number and intensity of natural disasters will reverse or that climate change will not continue to exponentially change. Once the polar ice caps are gone, their ability to help regulate earth temperatures will be gone as well.

4) Can mankind do something to help reverse the trend? If fossil fuel usage was eliminated worldwide immediately, the accumulating effects of climate change could be slowed, if in fact it is being exacerbated by manmade carbon combustion. However, even if we attempted to utilize all available technologies to replace all existing fossil fuel combustion, the process to replace fossil fuel use would take decades, and in the interim the crisis would continue to heighten.

5) The more important question is will mankind attempt to reverse or even slow the trend? The simple answer is most likely no. Human population is exponentially increasing and combustion will follow and exceed population trends. The Kyoto agreements were highly politicized and created wealth transfer from industrial nations to emerging countries. The politics of carbon cap and trade has attempted to punish last century’s polluters while giving newer polluters carte blanche to take over the helm. Yet, world power is concentrated in the hands of those that wield control of hydrocarbons and no one that has power gives that power up without a fight. No alternatives exist to allow those that currently have the power to keep it if they give up their control of hydrocarbons. Those that hold the hydrocarbon power are unlikely to relinquish it.

6) What then should be the response of the masses? Even if carbon use does not abate, we must support alternative energy development. Press forward for development of alternatives, even if they are currently more expensive than carbon energy. As carbon energy depletes, it will eventually cost more than alternatives. And as the data becomes clearer, if it in fact shows beyond all doubt that hydrocarbon combustion is destroying the ability of the world to support human life, the demand for change will overtake those that control hydrocarbonic power. If the world does not now develop financially sustainable alternatives to hydrocarbon economy, when and if the evidence eventually cries out for immediate change no matter the financial consequences, technology will not be able to meet the need and the world will suffer immensely. If America does not now lead the effort, our economy will be overtaken by those that do.

China’s was a Planned Extraction

As a medical professional, I am interested in the existence of virulent viruses that can infect the body so quickly that the very defenses the body uses to stop the infection kill the body in the process of defense. While the Europeans that came to America were resistant to certain diseases that had existed on their continent for centuries, these same diseases wiped out the indigenous people of North and Central America, killing off as many as 90 percent of their population in just a few short decades. And the world waits for the next pandemic, for which all of mankind has no defenses, to spread across the globe.

In economic terms, the West infected China’s economy with pandemic beginning in 1839, destroying its ability to sustain its citizens and precipitating the death of 40 million in the ensuing years. Ours was an economic pandemic brought about by the forced addiction of China’s population to opium at the point of a gunboat. Our virus was intended to exploit China’s entire population for the benefit of cheap tea and forced reciprocal “fair” trade.

Autoimmunity, another bizarre infliction of the human body, occurs when the body attacks itself, purging perfectly good tissues as if they were foreign invaders. In economic and political terms, China was more intent in the 19th and 20th century to practice autoimmunity upon her own citizens killing over 70 million through 1971 when the Cultural Revolution ended.

The Qing dynasty that had lasted from 1644 began to fail with the Opium wars. Afterwards, the lack of a culturally sustaining strong middle class allowed a series of reforms and violent reactions to reforms leading to successive rebellions which ended in the fall of the dynasty in 1911. From that point, China fell into factions of warlord fighting that ended in a 22 year civil war ending with WWII. Having been helped by the Soviet Union, China emerged as the world’s largest communist state. But these violent swings between reform and rebellion continued through the 1970s.

When China’s leader Mao chose to modernize China within the realm of her communist structure beginning in 1958 with the “Great Leap Forward”, he intended to bring China forward from an agrarian society to an industrial one by placing uneducated farmers in massive scale industrial facilities. The result was a loss of tens of millions of peasants through starvation. Mao temporarily lost power to more liberal elements that began to assert education and capitalism.

To regain power, Mao initiated the Cultural Revolution in 1966 that lasted until his death in 1976. His goal was to enforce socialism in the country by removing capitalist and cultural elements from China and imposing his orthodoxy. He removed party leaders through violent class struggle and inspired China’s youth to form Red Guard groups around the country. The movement then spread to the military and to the party itself.

After his death, Deng Xiaoping, who had been sent off earlier to re-education camps, returned the country to an educated path toward industrialization and modernization. The “Four modernizations” were begun in 1978 and China opened its doors to outside investment in 1979.

Beginning with the West’s gunboat diplomacy that precipitated the fall of China’s long lived dynasty, China ruptured her culture within waves of reforms and rebellions struggling between modernizing to meet the threats of the West and isolating from its decadence. What emerged in 1979 was a perfected structure and strategy intended to rebuild China by drawing the capital of the West to her shores while maintaining her cultural integrity from within.

China had learned from her earlier starts and fits of reforms, her grand failure of the Great Leap Forward, her class struggles of the Cultural Revolution, from forty years of running the largest country in the world through centralized planning of communism, and from observations of Japan’s and ASEAN’s manipulation of the West’s capitalistic and international banking systems to create a perfected strategy that would extract the maximum value of capital from the West onto her shores in the 30 years of the “Great Extraction.”

America’s Asian Military Bases Must be Re-engineered, Resized, and Replaced

As America continues its campaign to subdue threats of militant Islam, cells of Al Qaida are now quietly sitting out the Arab Spring, reducing their threat to the United States even further. Yet our decade long focus on diminishing threats in the Middle East has drawn our attention away from a much greater threat to our national security, that of an escalating and interconnected Asian economy. China’s regional political and economic power now challenges a cornerstone of America’s foreign policy, the regional stability provided by our omnipresent military. Ultimately, a weaker American military role threatens the very security that America’s multinational corporations counted on when they embarked on a historic transfer of wealth from America to the East during the past three decades.

At the end of WWII in 1945, the United States placed massive encampments both in Germany and in Japan which later became our forward bases to deter communism during the Cold War. After WWII, the U.S. along with Russia separated Korea into North and South. This action created war in 1950, after which we set up bases along South Korea’s DMZ. America’s dual military Asian front still includes 129 military sites in Japan, three quarters of which are located on the islands of Okinawa, and 117 military sites in South Korea.

America’s placement of troops in Asia, our successful containment of communism, the Soviets distraction in Afghanistan for a decade beginning in 1979, and China’s simultaneous opening of their economy to the West gave American capitalists the relative safety to flood the East with investments. America’s factories throughout Asia coupled with “free trade” policies in the West supported East Asia’s phenomenal growth and strengthened regional political ties that built an economic juggernaut with China at its hub. The subsequent rise of China to preeminence has created a magnet that is drawing Japan and both Koreas toward her future. Their shifting alliances from the West to the East are now building momentum to pull the ground beneath America’s Asian bases out from under us.

A political battle ensued in 2008 in Japan to close the flagship of America’s Japanese military bases, our military complex on the islands of Okinawa. Located 1,800 kilometers southwest of Tokyo, the islands of Okinawa were occupied by 110,000 Japanese forces in a battle toward the end of the WWII that ended in the death of 150,000 of its civilians in the bloodiest battle of the war. Afterward, to the resentment of the Okinawans, the United States built a military complex covering over 20 percent of the main island that continues to house over half of the U.S. military personnel in Japan to this day.

Resentment to America’s occupation of Okinawa has increased over the years and with Japan’s growing ties to the rest of Asia, support for America’s continued military presence is waning. Japan no longer requires our military for defense, now that it supports its own highly advanced self defense force of 250,000 with the sixth largest military budget in the world. Our negative cultural influences in Japan, including crimes, noise, pollution, and our nuclear footprint have also created growing animosity.

In 2008, the progressive wave that swept Barak Obama to power in America also placed Yukio Hatoyama in the seat of power in Japan. Born into a Japanese democratic family dynasty similar to America’s Kennedys, upon his election Prime Minister Hatoyama promised to move Japan away from an American centric focus to strengthen Asian ties. In his short term in office, he stopped support for America’s Afghanistan efforts and warmed relations with both Korea and China, recognizing the East’s future importance to the fate of Japan. One of Hatoyama’s main campaign promises was to close the American bases located in Okinawa. When he was unable to accomplish this critical goal, he resigned in 2009. However, his leadership represented a rising tide among the Japanese people toward the East.

In 1991, Japan opened normalization talks with North Korea by formally apologizing for its occupation from 1910 to 1945. And though Japan’s war crimes still affect her relationship with China, Japan is now China’s largest trading partner. Nonetheless, in August of 2011, China called Japan’s questioning of her “overbearing military build-up” irresponsible. China increased its military spending 12 percent this year to $100 billion. (At this rate of increase, China’s military budget would equal America’s in 15 years)

Like Japan, South Korea has claimed the United States as an ally since WWII. As North Korea has one of the world’s largest standing armies of 1.2 million men as opposed to South Korea’s 700,000, and as North Korea also has a substantial advantage over South Korea in offensive weapons, the United States has continued to be an effective deterrent. Yet South Korea is also becoming weary of our continued military presence.

After having been liberated from Japanese occupation in 1945 and after having repelled China out of its country in 1950, South Korea officially opened ties to Japan in 1965 and to China in 1992. After announcing its sunshine policy in 1998, South Korea significantly advanced its relationship with North Korea and has been re-orienting itself toward reunification of the peninsula ever since. While still an ally of the U.S., South Korea nonetheless has become the most active promoter of strong ties between Asian countries including China. Both countries have been aggressively investing in their mutual neighbor, North Korea. China holds enormous sway with North Korea, as 75 percent of North Korea’s trade is with China alone.

After establishing diplomatic relations in 1992, in just ten short years, South Korea advanced China as its number one trading partner in 2003, surpassing the United States. In 2008, the two countries announced their relationship as a “strategic cooperative partnership.” With South Korea’s aggressive Sino-shift, nationalists within the country are actively questioning America’s involvement. The Korean War is less prominent in their minds and they are resistant to America’s new terrorism focus. Most recently, South Korean citizens have opposed a naval base on the island of Jeju that allegedly will be a transit for U.S. warships opposing China. However, as recent as today, South Korean officials denied that the United States will use the base for an offensive purpose.

China seems to be disciplining South Korea into its fold. Over the past decade, skirmishes between North and South Korea have given each the opportunity to exert their dominance. After multiple provocations by North Korea prodded South Korea to take a more firm military stance in 2008, North Korea sank a South Korean Navy vessel in 2010, prompting the U.S. to hold joint naval exercises with South Korea in the contested waters of the Yellow Sea in response. North Korea then attacked a small South Korean Island in the Yellow Sea.

Instead of siding with South Korea over this incident, China rebuked her. Recognizing her growing interdependence with China, South Korea’s response to China has since been to press even harder for diplomatic and economic relations while giving lip service to the United States of her continuing need for military and diplomatic ties.

Ultimately, the path forward for South Korea, North Korea, and China is clear, albeit potentially rocky. China and South Korea are aiming for $300 billion in bilateral trade within four years and their trade is growing at 22 percent per year. Negotiations toward a free trade agreement are also ongoing. For peace, stability and prosperity of the region, South Korea and China will ultimately build a path through and including North Korea in trilateral agreement, eventually reuniting the two Koreas.

What do Japan and South Korea’s overtures to the rest of Asia mean to the United States? We may find that soon our bases in both countries that we used to extend the strength of our military and to provide political stability that multiplied our economic strength coming out of WWII and that of our trading partners, will no longer be political acceptable to either Japan or Korea. The era of our military proximity to China may end.

Yet we no longer use these bases to contain communist aggression. The Cold War is over and war with China is unlikely in the near term. Maintaining bases in Japan and South Korea as deterrents to war is costly, and bases for counter terrorism in such places as Indonesia, certainly do not call for such a large footprint. Our proximity to China and to a militarized North Korea does present a surprise advantage to any future enemy attack, à la Pearl Harbor. We do still have defense commitments both to South Korea and to Taiwan but what is the size footprint required for those diminishing needs?

We are in Asia to hold onto the remaining power we gained in WWII, yet China’s political and economic alliances have usurped the protective military measures that once bound the East to America. As China gains economic strength and pressures our commodity and trading relationships, protection of shipping lanes from our major trading partners to the United States will become a critical priority. That priority will likely require, however, a different mix of bases than we currently operate. As we develop a stronger military corridor, in the interim, U.S. interests in South East Asia will be well defended by its allies Philippines, Singapore and Thailand.

While the East Asian region may benefit just as South Korea is now by keeping America as a counterbalance to any potential future China aggression, East Asia will certainly not allow the United States military to pursue any containment policy aimed at slowing China’s growth. America therefore needs to rethink its military role going forward in Asia with an eye on protecting our transplanted manufacturing that is vital to our economic and national security. However, the massive post war forward base mentality that is draining America’s military budget while no longer achieving earlier vital objectives is not in our nation’s best interest.

President Obama has his Modern Day Rasputin in Timothy Geithner

The year was 1917. Embroiled in WWI, Russia was now facing food, fuel, and housing shortages as well as inflation as sons of the middle class were lost on the battle field. Money had lost most of its value. The wealthy had begun to hoard food supplies. Class struggle emerged between the wealthy and the working classes. Strikes and public protests including violent encounters between protesters and authorities increased.

On February 23rd, the women of the city of Petrograd staged a demonstration for bread and peace. The next day, their husbands joined them as a spontaneous demonstration turned violent when the police were no longer able to control the crowds of several hundred thousand protesters.

Russia’s leader, Tsar Nicholas, ordered his troops to quell the crowd but as bullets fired, the troops disbanded and 80,000 crossed lines to join the protesters. As the weeks progressed, a weak provisional government was formed by the banking class, industrialists, land owners, and capitalists who promised democracy and an end to the war. When they did not deliver on their promises in the few months of restless anticipation, Lenin returned to Russia promising bread, land, and a withdrawal of troops, took control of the Bolsheviks and organized a revolutionary coup that swept the Bolsheviks to power.

How could Tsar Nicholas have let Russia that had been ruled by imperialist tsars for the past 300 years, erupt into protest and civil war in 1917 to end forever the rule of Tsars? The answer seemed to foreshadow the edge of the abyss on which America finds itself today. Toward the end of WWI, The ruling capitalist class was intent on continuing its hold of wealth, autocracy, and land ownership. Yet the war strained the imperialist system’s ability to provide the working class a way to feed themselves or to provide fuel to heat their homes. Soldiers meanwhile were kept in battle without provisions to sustain them. Wanting land ownership as a solution, workers struck.

In 1915, two years prior to the collapse of the ruling elite, Tsar Nicholas was influenced by his counsel, Gregory Rasputin, to leave governance to his wife, Tsarina Alexandra, and to go to the war front to take command of his troops. Tsarina Alexandra, Nicholas’s wife, was a strong believer in autocracy and had resisted reform in the years leading up to the war. She now kept at her side, a sinister advisor, Gregory Rasputin, who had acquired through his mystical and hypnotic prowess, complete control of the hysterical Empress.

Through his influence in appointments of ministers, and meetings with hundreds of political patrons on a daily basis, Rasputin kept the tsarist system intact while the middle class suffered immensely. At the height of his influence, the middle class even believed that Rasputin was conspiring with foreign powers to bring down Russia during the war. Rasputin did manage to embezzle massive government funds and divert money to elite of Russia. His influence led to a bitter divide within all classes of the Russian society. The communist opposition led by Lenin claimed that Rasputin turned the Russian Tsar into a wimp.

Ultimately, but too late, the elites of Russia recognized that as a public figure, Rasputin was a detriment to their continued power and they conspired to murder Rasputin to try to stop the tide of middle class resentment. In the end, after Rasputin was murdered, the middle class was spurred to join the communist revolution, and the Tsar’s family was assassinated.

In 2007, the Obama Administration has its own Rasputin in the public figure of Timothy Geithner. His influence over the President has allowed Mr. Geithner to pander to America’s banking class in trade for trashing President Obama’s financial credibility with the American middle class. Yet somehow, President Obama seems hypnotized by this man who refuses to wield his power to save the American economy.

At the pinnacle of the banking class elites’ concentration of wealth in 2007, Mr. Geithner was the President and Chief Executive of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. As the credit crisis erupted, Mr. Geithner influenced Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, to save Bear Stearns, American International Group and Citigroup. Interestingly, as part of the deal, he gave Goldman Sachs, of which treasury Secretary Henry Paulson had just been CEO, a $30 billion interest free loan.

At his confirmation hearing, it was revealed that Geithner allegedly accidently evaded $34 thousand in taxes when his tax software misinterpreted his income. Similarly to Rasputin, Mr. Geithner entered the court of the Obama administration with illicit interpretations of his character.

After taking office in 2009, like Rasputin, Geithner became a trusted advisor to the Obama administration and its chief architect in stabilizing the banking system. Under his influence, Citigroup and the Bank of America were salvaged with billions in no strings attached aid. Mr. Geithner fought David Axelrod who had wanted tougher conditions imposed on Geithner’s former comrade banking institutions.

In March 2009, Geithner announced his rescue plan to buy toxic assets and to provide banks with capital, which eventually became widely unpopular, although it was credited with stopping a banking panic that could have created widespread banking defaults. Some claim that Geithner disparaged the administration when AIG paid out $165 million in bonuses to its employees. Wall Street responded to Geithner’s vague plan by plummeting five percent upon its announcement.

Meanwhile, Suskind’s book, “Confidence Men”, indicates that Geithner stalled when President Obama asked him to prepare a plan to wind down Citibank, similarly to how banks were dismantled in the 1930s. If allegations are true, it would seem that Geithner undermined the President’s authority and protected “too big to fail” bank comrades as an overriding strategy.
As the banking elites returned to financial stability, Mr. Geithner became one of President Obama’s most trusted advisors. Similarly to Rasputin, Geithner’s influence grew as other senior advisors with whom he had clashed left the administration.

In 2010, Geithner argued briefly for the elimination of the tax cut for the rich, only to settle for an extension of benefits for the long term unemployed, results which neither increased employment nor improved the deficit, both of which would have supported the middle class. In the same time period, he lauded over a $2 trillion stimulus and quantitative easing plan that attempted to fix the investments of America’s elite even as the world’s credit imploded to ten times the amount of QE and swallowed it whole.

In January 2011, Mr. Geithner asked the Chinese government to stop doing what it had successfully done for thirty years that is to stop managing its economy through currency controls and tariffs. Knowing that China would not bend is will to his words, he also asked China to do what was in its best interest and that of America’s elite, to raise the value of its currency.

Doing so ultimately would harm the American middle class further. Certainly, it would make some American goods more competitive but those goods would be more than offset by the loss of America’s purchasing power. China’s internal demand for commodities and their own finished goods would increase the cost of goods to the American middle class without a material increase in American jobs. However, the move would stabilize investments made by the banking class in China’s factories. Interestingly, Geithner’s father was on the board of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations.

On June 22nd, 2011, Treasury Secretary Geithner told the House Small Business Committee that the Obama administration believed taxes on small business must increase so the administration would not have to “shrink the overall size of government programs.” In a government that borrows 43 cents for every dollar that it spends and that has been growing at seven percent per year without fail, that spends more on our military than all other governments on earth combined, and that spends twice that of any other nation on healthcare per person, whose social net is borrowed, and whose retirement programs are quickly facing insolvency, Mr. Geithner’s solution was to tax the middle class small businesses so that they have even less to hire the 30 million underemployed in our country.

On January 6th, 2011, Mr. Geithner began the spectacle of the debt ceiling with a letter to Congress. As the politics played out in front of the world, Mr. Geithner made the announcement that the government would shut down on August 2nd, 2011, leading to the now infamous brinkmanship politics over the debt ceiling. Without a cogent solution going forward proposed by the administration or agreed to by Congress, Geithner watched America suffer its first credit rating downgrade ever on August 5th.

Now we hear that Mr.Geithner intends to spend more of the Middle Class’s money to prop up the banks of Europe in conjunction with the IMF and the European Central Bank. Geithner allegedly envisions that U.S. financial commitment will be open ended. The EU plan is similar to that used by the U.S. during the financial meltdown of 2008, unlimited lending to prevent the sovereign default of insolvent EU Banks. Mr. Geithner returned from Europe stating that he “scared the crap” out of the EU’s leaders. Understandably, expanding the EU’s lending with support from the U.S. would protect more of the West’s bankers at the expense of the American middle class. However, where does the patience of America’s middle class end?

The middle class of Russia’s patience ended when they could not find employment. Their patience ended as their soldiers were left unattended on the battlefield. Their patience ended when the heating oil for their homes was no longer available. Their patience ended when they no longer could buy bread as their money hyper-inflated. How much more money printing will be required for America’s money to hyper-inflate?

Rasputin controlled Russia’s domestic economy as the Tsar and Tsarina bent to his will to keep extreme capitalism in place even as it collapsed Russia’s middle class. Rasputin was expended too late to save Russia’s capitalists. Mr. Geithner seems bent on filling Rasputin’s modern day shoes.

Without Economic Security, America Has No National Security

A corporation’s mission is to provide profit to their shareholders. Other stakeholders must be satisfied so that they support the corporation, yet America has no law against maximizing profit to the detriment of other stakeholders.

When China opened its doors after 150 years and created special economic zones in which American companies could set up shop as long as they brought their trade secrets and intellectual capital, 40,000 did just that without reprisal from the United States. It certainly was not illegal to do so, and of course, the American consumer was rewarded with somewhat lower prices.

Another stakeholder, Congress, got enormous campaign contributions by China bound corporations, and there certainly isn’t a law against that. In fact, America turns a blind eye to average senate races costing 10 million dollars that have been paid for by our corporations and banks, more than 90 percent of campaign donations. We do not fault our Congress for passing laws to help their corporate constituents nor do we fault our Supreme Court, whose recent ruling on Citizens United gave corporations the unique status of having citizen rights without citizen responsibilities.

By paying the $150 dollar fee to become a corporation, businesses gain property rights that are sacrosanct in America. Corporations can sell property even if it harms others, in most cases. In a very few, such as that is being raised with GE, when a corporation attempts to sell a trade secret or intellectual property that could put our fighting men and women in harm’s way, we stop the sale in the interests of national security. But when 40,000 companies took their intellectual property to China, America did not claim national security.

And why would we have when the China gold rush began in 1979? Our industrial belt had been rusted by international competition and we were told that globalization would bring millions of jobs to America. It did but it took tens of millions more away. We were also told that imported goods would be cheaper than American ones and they are. But the cost of lost jobs, lost wages, less taxes, fewer factories, transferred intellectual property, future GDP growth, trade imbalances, and greater interest on trillions of borrowed debt was way costlier than the savings from Chinese trinkets.

By moving millions of jobs off shore, we gutted regions of collaborating industries like Detroit, Youngstown and Pittsburgh, whose workers, engineers, scientists, and businessmen intermingled to create next generation developments that would grow America’s future prosperity. But can we fault our corporations just because their collective actions cost America millions of future jobs and GDP? No, we cannot for our laws do not even suggest that American corporations should consider our citizenry as stakeholders. And in 2011, America has not yet even considered that our economic security is directly tied to our national security.

Without yet considering how we will support a future war of attrition without domestic factories, our nation has not yet debated our financial security. America now has bulged her budget to 3.4 trillion dollar budget yet collects only 2.2 trillion in federal taxes. We are forced to borrow from the Chinese the very dollars we give them for their trinkets, while keeping 30 million of our citizens underemployed. Our credit rating has finally been lowered because of this folly, and now our Congress is faced with making deep cuts to our budget which may include substantially reducing our military capability.

We have not connected our past decisions to allow our corporations to give millions of intellectual properties to the Chinese in trade for access to their markets and to their cheap labor to our national security. Yet these decisions have in fact lessened our national security, because without economic security, we have no national security.

Could Boycotting GE Embolden America Against Globalization?

After having written extensively about the soulless, profit seeking nature of corporations that house their headquarters and claim “citizenship” within the borders of the United States, you will find no arguments here about the nationality of multinational corporations. Even though the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that corporations which spend $150 to file as “citizens” of the United States are indeed citizens, I would not be so naive as to believe its politically subjective error.

Even though America expects immigrants wishing to become citizens of the United States to exhibit patriotism for our beloved country, you will find no argument from me that corporations, attributed by our Supreme Court as “citizens”, should exhibit patriotism for our country. Patriotism, a devotion to one’s country, implies that “citizens” experience the love for and focus their attention on the needs of one’s country. For a corporation to be patriotic, it would put the needs of our country on par with the profit desires of its shareholders. Globalization has long since drowned the concept of shared stakeholders, save for one driving force, international shareholder profits.

My motivation for boycotting General Electric is not to punish GE for acting out its nature as a multinational corporation to create profits for its shareholders even when it harms the United States. My motivation for boycotting GE isn’t even to punish Jeffrey Immelt, who accepted President Obama’s appointment to work for American jobs while at the same time directing his corporation to drive jobs out of America. Corporations and their extravagantly paid CEOs act as one instinctual great white shark spreading throughout the world’s oceans, feasting on the most profitable of opportunities. No American boycott could lessen that profit motive, and no boycott could cause GE to have an epiphany of guilt, driving it to express an unnatural corporate patriotism.

My motivation for having America boycott GE is to have America wake up to the true nature of our modern multinational corporations. GE was the quintessential “American Corporation”, the darling of American business during the 1980s and 1990s, presiding over the silent gutting of America as 40,000 factories left our shores for the East. Now that the curtain has been lifted from the Wizard of Oz, we see Jack Welch’s progeny exposed in a lurid, multibillion dollar, one night stand with China, agreeing to a joint venture that not only takes jobs from America, but that competes directly with other American businesses and that gives American intellectual property of direct import to our national security to the Chinese.

By boycotting GE, I would hope that Americans could gain the understanding that corporations are not “citizens” of America and that they have singular profit motivations that do not necessarily align with the security and welfare of our nation. By boycotting GE, I would hope that Americans would challenge those politicians that dare to continue to provide cover for “free trade” and globalization through passage of lobbyist led anti-American legislation. By boycotting GE, I would hope to awaken our regulators to finally act on behalf of our country over the objections of great white sharks of profit that have found America such an easy victim over the past 30 years.

Once America is awakened, we can finally embolden our political leadership to act in the interest of all Americans, to create incentives for these profit motivated monoliths to reinvest in our country, to create a business environment that will help align their interests with those of the United States, and to disincentivize corporations from mindlessly making decisions on behalf of shareholders without cautiously considering America as an important stakeholder in their risk adjusted, profit motive decisions. Boycotting GE is America’s future displayed in effigy.

Will We Let Free Trade Finish Its Gutting of America?

Tariffs have long been both the nemesis and the whipping boy of the advocates of free trade. Whenever America falls into recession, advocates of jobs tout tariffs yet free traders nonetheless target them as enemies of consumers. They point to low cost goods that have helped American consumers during our recessions as a universal benefit. What they cannot show is whether the benefit of low cost goods offsets the millions of American jobs that have been lost as a result of free trade. But if free trade with the East has severely harmed America, free traders have somehow thus far escaped the scathe of America for having put free trade in motion and having failed to reverse direction when their message was proven hurtful to our national security.

A disciplined look at the use of tariffs would show that win-win free trading between nations of equals is indeed helpful to both nations and requires no tariffs. However, that same objective review would show that free trade between dissimilarly wealthy nations allows the less wealthy nation to extract the wealth and jobs of its trading “partner” and when this principle is put on steroids, the less wealthy nation can collapse the wealthier nation.

In the case of America, a lack of tariffs allowed China to create a lending practice of “live filleting”. She stripped the meat of America‘s economy right from our bones without even using western anesthesia. Instead she fed us our own dollars as loans to keep our interest rates down while artificially suppressing her currency to keep her product prices low for our consumers, a unique kind of Eastern financial acupuncture.

She is now setting about to pull the free trade needles from the pressure points of America’s political nervous system, having instructed her credit agency Dagong to start this credit downgrading slippery slope. When she does, we will all feel the stinging pain of a raw economy stripped bare of its future. The higher prices of American goods that we thought we escaped through our addiction to China’s low priced goods were just temporarily delayed through borrowing three billion dollars of debt from China. The price we will now pay for decades of higher interest rates as we struggle to rebuild our economy will more than offset the folly of our “free market” dalliances.

Could American’s rights to own property have combined with free trade to allow China’s gutting of our country? Property rights were as an essential capitalist core of our Constitution as they were for the ancient civilization of Rome. Property rights are critical for the creation of elite’s wealth and without them capitalism cannot exist, globalization cannot thrive, and a nation’s elite cannot transfer the wealth of their country to other nations for personal gain. Therefore property rights allow gutting.

How so? People that own the value of a country, let’s say U.S. capitalists, transplant that value as factories to another country, China, who uses them to create goods for the U.S.. That transplanting of capital transfers competitive advantage to China so that American jobs are lost and America’s middle class loses purchasing power. To buy China’s goods, Americans then borrow dollars from international banks and exchange the dollars for the goods created in China. Because jobs are lost, America’s government loses tax revenue and borrows dollars from China who then loans some of those dollars back to the people through their government. The U.S. government then gives the dollars to government employees who buy more Chinese goods.

Some of the dollars that are given to China are given back to the capitalist who then borrows more dollars from international banks who create those dollars from thin air. The capitalist then uses both the dollars given by China and those created by the banks to transfer them back to China as more factories which displace more American workers.

As this cycle repeats over and over, 40,000 factories are transplanted, 8 million workers are displaced, $3 trillion dollars are borrowed from China by the U.S. government, and $8 trillion dollars are borrowed by the American people from international banks who multiply this $8 trillion into $45 trillion of credit default swaps to extract even more capital from the capitalists to invest even more into factories in China.

In the end, China has a bunch of factories to make goods for their 1.3 billion internal customers and has hegemonic relationships with the world’s commodity suppliers because America no longer has factories that need them. China raises her currency’s value because she now needs her citizens to buy her factory goods and she stops funding America’s deficits so that our interest rates rise. The American government and American middle class are indebted to China and now must pay more interest.

The American capitalist has his net worth sitting along China’s shore in danger of being nationalized when China’s currency raises to the point that American people can no longer afford to buy China’s goods. The international banks have a good amount of value invested in these dangerously leveraged Chinese factories and their financial assets, loans to America’s middle class, are stretched wafer thin by Americans who borrowed more than they could afford and by corporate credit default swaps that also rest on a house of cards of American middle class debt.

Middle America’s debt is in danger of default as it is supported less and less by jobs that are pouring one by one as sand granules through the neck of an hour glass to China. When the last grain of sand needed to keep the cycle going slips through the neck, the Western financial system collapses, China retains the factories with over a billion internal customers, and America’s elite and middle class are left to fight over who will continue to pay the debt and who will escape financial calamity through default.

So when we talk of property rights, we are talking about the rights of a country’s elite and international bankers to create massive capital flow engines to drain the wealth of one civilization to another. Absent government intervention of tariffs and other financial tools or ultimately of war, when wealth differentials exist between civilizations, property rights and banking create the opportunity for wealth differential arbitrage. When nations of relatively equal wealth trade or exchange value through direct foreign investment, free trade creates a marriage of sorts. However, when wealth differential exists, arbitrage can destroy the value of the wealthier nation in favor of the emerging one.

This is the awesome power and the fatal flaw of capitalism when combined with international property rights. In 1871, Europe’s power was transferred to America through this frenzied flaw and they were left with a 20 year depression before recovering. Now it is America’s turn to suffer the flaw of property rights that were cemented in our rule of law by the Supreme Court of the United States. Most of the horses are already out of the barn. That does not mean we shouldn’t dust off a modern version of tariffs to reverse what outward flow remains.

The Holocaust Museum – America’s Voice for Vigilance Against Evil

I visited the Holocaust Museum the last time I was in DC. It was an honest portrayal of the ghastly horror that was inflicted on a people by the most degenerate qualities of humanity.

I took a tour from a survivor who shared with the group in the most humble of ways. What happened during this tour shook my faith in our world a bit. It wasn’t just because I was faced with the reality that mankind can be so demonic to those who allow themselves to be vulnerable to the state that I was so disturbed, although the demonstration of this quality at the museum was quite frank. No, it was that a mother, father and little boy aged 9 that took the tour seemingly quite lamblike were actually wolves reliving the history.

As we walked from exhibit to exhibit, the tour guide took questions and comments from the group. The little boy continued to make me more uncomfortable as he increasingly voiced inappropriate gestures toward the guide. I continued to watch his parents as he blurted out what were obvious slurs and they remained fixed in upright smiles.

At the end of the tour, the group came to the display was of the Nuremburg trials and subsequent hangings and firing squads. The little boy as he witnessed the deadly justice being delivered to the perpetrators of Nazism, screamed out. I thought that the gravity of the museum must have finally gotten to him until I heard him crying to his mother for assurance that this final phase of WWII was a lie.

While the holocaust survivor guide was quite gracious to all under the circumstances, I felt the shock of witnessing this twist of fate. I then watched the little boy’s mom come over to comfort her son as all were disbanding. She leaned over maternally hugging her child and she whispered calmly in an all too clear voice that he was correct, that this last display was the lying propaganda of the Jews.

That night I prayed for Israel, for those that seek her destruction and for those who deny the evil that is part of humanity.

Kyoto Protocols Would Have Accelerated China’s Plan to Reverse-Exploit EurAmerica

In 1978, the year China emerged onto the world stage with its four modernizations, China, a country with four times the population of the United States, had a paltry gross domestic product of $216 billion, less than eight percent of the United States. China exposed her strategy of four modernizations to the world as if to say,”Please invest in China and we will ensure that our workforce is educated, and that our business infrastructure is stable for your investment.” Yet, this openly expressed strategy, that may have seemed to the rest of the world as a difficult but noble goal for China to achieve, was only the tip of China’s Grand Plan, and only the part she wanted the world to see.

EurAmerica’s history with China was one of gunboat diplomacy, exploitation, and forced trading. When China opened her borders again in 1979, EurAmerica’s merchants were enthusiastic to exploit an opportunity once again. Yet, China had not forgotten EurAmerica’s role in the Opium War, the Sino-Japanese War, and the Boxer Rebellion. China would never open her border again to be exploited. When she finally opened her border in 1979, it was from a position of power, deep strategy, and long lived planning that suggested EurAmerica was finally ripe for reverse exploitation. China’s grand plan was to emerge as the 21st century world power.

What boldness of purpose China must have felt as she aligned her nation’s efforts to that decade’s long task. Looking back today on her impossible achievements, one must give pause to the monumental economic goal she set for herself in 1978, indeed greater than America’s technical goal of landing on the moon early in 1961. Yet, with such a miniscule $216 billion GDP and few material assets how could China possibly build her empire to surpass that of the United States?

Through a hybrid statist-capitalist political structure, China would create a conduit through which American businesses would willingly draw down the wealth of Europe and America and transfer it to China in order to share in the prosperity of that wealth transfer. Through the centralized imposition of forced savings on its people, China would provide low cost labor to sell goods at low enough prices to cause EurAmerica to look the other way as their neighbors’ jobs went to China. Through low interest loans, China would entice EurAmerican politicians to spend beyond their means to temporarily ease the pain of EurAmerica as China’s sucked away their life force. These were the basis of her strategy.

Similarly to how a business cycle contains early adopters and late stage laggards, China planned a capital extraction cycle for EurAmerica, in which China would extract capital in multiple phases, each phase having an optimal extraction strategy. First extraction would be through the early adopter “gold rush” investors rushing into China to stake a claim. China would also plan for early majority, late majority and laggard’s capital extraction.

In 1978, China assessed America’s assets:
• America’s most valuable assets were intellectual capital that resulted from 200 years of publicly funded primary and publicly subsidized secondary education
• America’s physical assets included business assets, commercial, and residential real estate worth $7 trillion in addition to public assets of land, buildings, and infrastructure
• America produced 26% of the world’s GDP at $2.8 trillion and consumed a quarter of the world’s goods
• America’s debt was as low as it had been since WWII as a percentage of GDP and its 110 million workers were capable of doubling their loans to provide China more capital
• America’s Baby boomers were entering a peak spending phase followed by peak saving
• America’s constitutional republic allowed a relative few capitalists to control the direction of her economy

By 1978, multinational corporations had steadily grown in number and size for two decades. China’s success depended on corralling MNCs through direct foreign investment to create massive inflows of capital quickly monetized as hard assets and infrastructure.

China would entice merchants to invest by offering access to the future potential purchasing power of its people. However, given China’s low household incomes, market penetration would be low to start. Therefore, to entice the early adopters, China would create special economic zones that provided the perfect investment opportunity of cheap educated labor, loose regulation, low taxation, strengthened business law, and enhanced infrastructure and transportation, in which businesses could produce goods at very low arbitrage costs to sell back to their home countries for high margins.

With low cost of goods from special economic zones, early adopter businesses were highly profitable and banks poured investment into China as a result. But, China could not complete her Grand Plan to multiply her GDP 50 times by enticing early adopter investors alone. She had to implement a plan timed to extract maximum dollars from EurAmerica at each phase of her exponential growth.

During the next stage, the early majority stage, China manipulated baby boomers’ peak spending phase:
• China’s low prices secured America’s baby boomers as loyal customers
• Prior to America noticing a substantial loss of jobs, China secured free trade agreements, and mined American businesses for their intellectual capital.
• She reinvested profits back into America’s debt to keep America’s interest rates artificially low in order to spur on higher levels of consumer spending and government borrowing.
• China supported lobbying of America’s mass investment vehicles to fund MNCs. 401Ks and IRAs, created in ‘80and ’81, funneled money through the stock market into MNCs for investment into China.

Then, America was drawn into the late majority stage as America’s baby boomers entered their peak saving years. 401Ks and IRAs artificially fed the stock market frenzy. Baby boomers sensed they knew how to invest in a bubble market that kept rising. With access to low interest rate loans kept low by China’s reinvestment, speculators borrowed money to bet on the rising stock market. America ultimately increased its debt to pump up stock values to build more Chinese factories.

Inevitably, the stock market bubble burst, leaving America’s baby boomers with lower retirement savings. The stock market that seemed destined to go up forever finally reversed rapidly decreasing valuations. However, the debt that had funded its escalation remained.

During the late majority phase:
• More businesses began to invest in China just to remain competitive with businesses that had moved offshore earlier.
• Tens of thousands of businesses transferred factories to China to obtain low cost labor
• Millions of Americans lost jobs
• With a generation of education completed, China now was able to take more advanced jobs as well as factory jobs. America’s bastion of protected, more technically competent jobs was not a bastion after all.
• American retail outlets for Chinese goods grew exponentially
• China continued to loan its excess profits back to the American government to keep interest rates low.
After having lived through the weakness of the stock market, real estate appeared to be the baby boomers’ best retirement savings alternative. In the early stages of the Great Ponsi, housing prices went steadily up. With low interest rates, Americans could now borrow on the value of their homes to continue funding China’s growth. China’s final stages of extraction saw the housing bubble increase beyond what had ever been experienced before.

Even though American jobs were increasingly being driven offshore, the frenzy of increased housing prices allowed additional borrowing from Americans, feeding the China gold rush further. This behavior was not unexpected, following a pattern of historical boom-bust cycles and was part of China’s planning. As a result of the stock bubble and the housing bubble, America’s total debt had risen to over $55 trillion. With such exuberance in the housing market, secondary debt markets participated in credit default swaps to the tune of an additional $42 trillion. China now had extracted close to the maximum of America’s value, leaving America with the corresponding debt.

So China extracted maximum value, first in trade secrets and early adoptive money, then by IRAs and 401Ks, then by stock market and home equity loans, then by 2nd mortgages and housing speculation. China monetized the massive cash flows as quickly as possible, building infrastructure and excess manufacturing capacity, while leaving America holding debt in exchange.

Without any other rising asset values to borrow from, America has tapped out its debt. Having maxed its debt, America can only print money to finance its trade deficits. Without further real debt derived money extraction to give China for infrastructure investment and without a real ability to pay for low cost Chinese goods, America is fast losing her worth to China as an infrastructure vehicle. Recognizing that maximized extraction and rapid monetization of America’s wealth is nearing its end, China is now finalizing the implementation of her strategy, that of pulling out of American debt before other countries that maintain reserve currencies create a run on the dollar.

In thirty short years, China was able to accelerate her GDP from $216 billion to $11 trillion. She amassed reserve capital of $3 trillion. She reversed America’s fortunes from the greatest creditor nation to the greatest debtor nation. She gutted America’s factories while creating the world’s largest manufacturing base in her own country. A measure of output that highly correlates to GDP is energy consumption. In June of this year, 2011, China surpassed the United States as the largest consumer of energy on the planet. While the U.S consumes 19 percent of the world’s energy, China consumes 20.3 percent.

In 1992, the world came together to discuss the impact of climate change resulting from energy consumption. The talks resulted in Kyoto protocols being initially adopted in 1997 that attempted to create a framework for reducing greenhouse emissions. The protocols called for 33 industrialized nations to reduce their greenhouse gases to 1990 levels and then to maintain emissions at those levels. Although it called for emerging countries like China to voluntarily lower levels, it did not require them to be mandated.

Of course, all of the countries who had no requirements to reduce their emissions signed the agreement. The United States, under scrutiny from environmentalists and others did not sign. China did sign. This was an additional strategy perhaps not envisioned in 1978 that nonetheless would have assisted in accelerating America’s slide had we signed.

GDP highly correlates to energy usage. In 1990, America’s real GDP was about $8 trillion as compared to $14 trillion in 2011. Kyoto would have caused America to either:
• Invest billions in the attempt to lower our energy usage per dollar of GDP
• Pay billions to other countries to have them produce less so that we could grow our GDP from $8 to $14 trillion
• Or, maintain our GDP at 8 trillion

In the meantime, China’s GDP in 1990 was $1.3 trillion and has since grown to over $10 trillion. China’s energy use has correspondingly grown as well until the point that this month, she overtook America as the greatest polluter. Kyoto was a grand idea that was doomed from the start because of the flaw that allowed the now greatest polluter to play by different rules. It attempted to cap the economic growth of America while allowing other countries to grow unfettered.

China had a Grand Plan that has been executed with the finesse expected of a centrally planned economy. Kyoto added nicely to that plan. America has been thwarted by China’s plan but now has the ability to reverse course. Given China’s size and growth rate, she will pass us soon if she has not already and her stride will be too great for us to catch her. However, by avoiding traps like Kyoto, and understanding that economic gamesmanship can accomplish a much greater destruction of a nation’s wealth than warfare ever could, perhaps America can once again right its course.

A Triumphant Cake for the Return of China’s Empire

When making a cake for a great celebration, the baker uses the same ingredients as when baking a small 10” diameter cake, he just uses a lot more. When the world first saw China stirring up batter, they thought somehow this poor country surely was beginning to make a little 10 “ diameter cake. Now that they see the size of China’s great celebratory cake, some view it as so great that it could feed all of their cake eaters back home five times over. Surely this cake must be too big and therefore China’s baker must be on the verge of closing shop for having so foolishly made such a big cake. For those that still think China’s cake is too big, they just haven’t yet grasped the size of her guest invitation list.

When China began implementing her modernization plans in 1978, she hadn’t planned a 10” diameter cake. She planned a cake for the size of China. And it wasn’t one of those cheap, store bought cakes that we would have expected her to bake given her finances in 1978. It was one fit for a triumphant party celebrating the Empire’s return. In fact, the cake would be so big and would use so many ingredients that parties back home would have to shrink their party plans. The world’s storehouse would not have enough ingredients to throw elaborate parties for both China’s guests and the world’s.

No matter, if there was one thing China learned over 5,000 years, it was how to plan a celebration. China planned her strategy to ensure that on the day of the big celebration, she would have enough ingredients. This certainly meant she would have to manage party conflicts with those back here at home at some point. However, if parties back home didn’t have cake factories to make their cakes, they wouldn’t be able to compete at the appointed hour of China’s celebration, and if they didn’t have cake factories they surely wouldn’t be competing for ingredients at the appointed hour. China would implement her plan to ensure her guests would have their cake. But, she needed to implement first things first.

Reviewing her strengths, China noted she had plenty of baker’s assistants. They simply needed to be trained. She would definitely need more factory space to make the cake and more roads to get the supplies to the factory. And because she didn’t have all needed ingredients in-house, she would have to make arrangements with cake ingredient suppliers to ensure that she would get the ingredients even if others competed for them. Critical to her success, China needed baker’s secrets to make such a great cake. Most importantly, because China had many more bakers than she needed but not enough money or know-how, she would need to trade her strengths for the others.

With strategies set, China set out to implement her plans. She first told all comers that they could build a cake factory in her special cake factory zones, and that they could bake cakes for all of China’s people. With the announcement of this cake bonanza, Bakers came from all over the world for the chance to make cake for China. When asked how big to make the factories, China said to make them ten times larger than they first imagined. The bakers would need access to money and lots of it.

Oddly, While China had such big plans for cake factories, no one in China could afford to buy such magnificent cakes, and no one in China knew how to make them. So if the baker wanted to make cakes in China, the baker would have to teach Chinese baker assistants the secrets to baking a cake. The baker would also have to go back home for bank funding and for free markets to sell the cakes made in China back at home.

Of course, when presented with such a sweet deal, the banker could not pass it up. Together, the baker and the banker convinced everyone back home of the sweet deal from China. China would sell the cake for half the price of home prices so that everyone would be happy. The baker could get a great factory, at least one in China, and had the hope of selling cake to the Chinese some day. The people back home could get a cake that tasted just as good because the baker used his secrets in China to make the cake. Of course the financier back home was happy. Increasingly, cake factories back home seemed to be having trouble selling cakes at twice the price of Chinese cakes, and with cheaper prices and free markets, China cake factories promised great banking returns. The only people that seemed upset were the baker’s old assistants back home who no longer were employed to bake cakes, but no matter, everyone else was happy.

China was happy that her plan was progressing. She would get a grand cake factory that could be used for the great celebration. China could also begin to build relationships with all the worldwide cake ingredient suppliers. She now needed to spread the icing for the next layer of the plan. The baker assistants back home were the ones buying the cakes made by the cake factories in China. If they didn’t have a way to pay for the cakes, all would be lost.

China knew, when planning for her modernization party, that in order to make a cake big enough for the triumphant celebration, she would need so many factories, roads, ingredients, and educated cake bakers that it would take all the expendable money in Europe and America combined to build them. In fact, it would take much of the world’s stock market value and even the equity in people’s homes if she were to be able to throw a truly triumphant party. She needed the baker assistants back home to borrow from their savings, their homes, and their future earnings if the plan was to succeed.

No worries, China had studied capitalist boom-bust cycles of the past. She knew it was very possible for bankers to create the boom once again, in the exact same manner as Europe and America had fallen prey to many times before, and that during the short boom, she could fund her party. Given the opportunity to fund all the cakes in China, bankers back home repeated their very sins of the past. Their patterns had remained predictable for centuries, reacting in a frenzy every time a cake bonanza presented itself. This time they dropped interest rates, made crazy loans, created IRAs and 401 Ks, and escalated not one but three bubbles to draw out as much money as they could to fund as many cake factories as they could in as short a time as they could.

The feeding frenzy occurs because there is only so much time the batter can rise before it falls. When the bubbles finally popped, China had her cake factories, all the baker assistants back home had borrowed more than they could ever pay back, and all the bankers back home had made enough money to live happily ever after.

Now came the appointed hour of the triumphant party for the return of the Empire. By this time, China had been building ingredient relationships unabated, because the bakers back here at home no longer bought baking ingredients. China had built the world’s fastest, largest most efficient ships to bring all the needed ingredients to her shore. She had built massive highways to transport the ingredients to her impressive, massive, modern cake factories. She had educated all her people to fill the ranks of cake bakers. She had saved historic amounts of money from the cheap baked goods she sold to the baking assistants back home and now could buy all the ingredients she needed.

But wait, what about the party back home? Now that it was time for her great celebration, China bought up all the ingredients that were supposed to be for the party back home. The baker’s assistants back home no longer had money to buy cakes, so the Chinese cake factories now could turn their focus inward on their country to bake for the celebration. But really, Chinese cake factories hadn’t any competition for ingredients. The baker’s assistants back home had long lost their knowledge of cake baking. The cake factories had long fallen into disrepair and could no longer be used to make cake. The roads back home were in disrepair. The cake baking schools back home had fallen behind without local businesses to spur them to excellence. The ingredient suppliers had long ago built relationships with China’s bakers and knew where their bread was buttered.

As the triumphant party was being held in China and the great cake was being presented to her party guests, back home all that anyone could do was watch from afar. The bakers had lost their market for cakes back home. Without demand, they could not make the payments on the bank loans and they defaulted. Without sufficient buyers, they turned over their factories to the Chinese. Without customers back home and without money or credit to pay for new cake factories back home, the bakers now became unemployed themselves. The bankers, now without payments on their loans, well they closed up shop as well.