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Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is part of a group of Congress members pushing for a Green New Deal. (Charles Krupa / AP Photo)

TruthDig.Com, “This Radical Plan to Fund the ‘Green New Deal’ Just Might Work”, 16 Nov 2018:

With what author and activist Naomi Klein calls “galloping momentum,” the “Green New Deal” promoted by Representative-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., appears to be forging a political pathway for solving all of the ills of society and the planet in one fell swoop. Her plan would give a House select committee “a mandate that connects the dots” between energy, transportation, housing, health care, living wages, a jobs guarantee and more. But even to critics on the left, it is merely political theater, because “everyone knows” a program of that scope cannot be funded without a massive redistribution of wealth and slashing of other programs (notably the military), which is not politically feasible.

That may be the case, but Ocasio-Cortez and the 22 representatives joining her in calling for a select committee also are proposing a novel way to fund the program, one that could actually work. The resolution says funding will come primarily from the federal government, “using a combination of the Federal Reserve, a new public bank or system of regional and specialized public banks, public venture funds and such other vehicles or structures that the select committee deems appropriate, in order to ensure that interest and other investment returns generated from public investments made in connection with the Plan will be returned to the treasury, reduce taxpayer burden and allow for more investment.”

A network of public banks could fund the Green New Deal in the same way President Franklin Roosevelt funded the original New Deal. At a time when the banks were bankrupt, he used the publicly owned Reconstruction Finance Corporation as a public infrastructure bank. The Federal Reserve could also fund any program Congress wanted, if mandated to do so. Congress wrote the Federal Reserve Act and can amend it. Or the Treasury itself could do it, without the need to even change any laws. The Constitution authorizes Congress to “coin money” and “regulate the value thereof,” and that power has been delegated to the Treasury. It could mint a few trillion-dollar platinum coins, put them in its bank account and start writing checks against them. What stops legislators from exercising those constitutional powers is simply that “everyone knows” Zimbabwe-style hyperinflation will result. But will it? Compelling historical precedent shows that this need not be the case.

Michael Hudson, professor of economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, has studied the hyperinflation question extensively. He writes that disasters such as Zimbabwe’s fiscal troubles were not due to the government printing money to stimulate the economy. Rather, “Every hyperinflation in history has been caused by foreign debt service collapsing the exchange rate. The problem almost always has resulted from wartime foreign currency strains, not domestic spending.”

As long as workers and materials are available and the money is added in a way that reaches consumers, adding money will create the demand necessary to prompt producers to create more supply. Supply and demand will rise together and prices will remain stable. The reverse is also true. If demand (money) is not increased, supply and gross domestic product (GDP) will not go up. New demand needs to precede new supply.

The Public Bank Option: The Precedent of Roosevelt’s New Deal

Infrastructure projects of the sort proposed in the Green New Deal are “self-funding,” generating resources and fees that can repay the loans. For these loans, advancing funds through a network of publicly owned banks would not require taxpayer money and could actually generate a profit for the government. That was how the original New Deal rebuilt the country in the 1930s at a time when the economy was desperately short of money.

The publicly owned Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) was a remarkable publicly owned credit machine that allowed the government to finance the New Deal and World War II without turning to Congress or the taxpayers for appropriations. First instituted in 1932 by President Herbert Hoover, the RFC was not called an infrastructure bank and was not even a bank, but it served the same basic functions. It was continually enlarged and modified by Roosevelt to meet the crisis of the times, until it became America’s largest corporation and the world’s largest financial organization. Its semi-independent status let it work quickly, allowing New Deal agencies to be financed as the need arose.

The Reconstruction Finance Corporation Act of 1932 provided the financial organization with capital stock of $500 million and the authority to extend credit up to $1.5 billion (subsequently increased several times). The initial capital came from a stock sale to the U.S. Treasury. With those resources, from 1932 to 1957 the RFC loaned or invested more than $40 billion. A small part of this came from its initial capitalization. The rest was borrowed, chiefly from the government itself. Bonds were sold to the Treasury, some of which were then sold to the public, although most were held by the Treasury. All in all, the RFC ended up borrowing a total of $51.3 billion from the Treasury and $3.1 billion from the public.

In this arrangement, the Treasury was therefore the lender, not the borrower. As the self-funding loans were repaid, so were the bonds that were sold to the Treasury, leaving the RFC with a net profit. The financial organization was the lender for thousands of infrastructure and small-business projects that revitalized the economy, and these loans produced a total net income of $690,017,232 on the RFC’s “normal” lending functions (omitting such things as extraordinary grants for wartime). The RFC financed roads, bridges, dams, post offices, universities, electrical power, mortgages, farms and much more, and it funded all this while generating income for the government.

The Central Bank Option: How Japan Is Funding Abenomics with Quantitative Easing

The Federal Reserve is another Green New Deal funding option. The Fed showed what it can do with “quantitative easing” when it created the funds to buy $2.46 trillion in federal debt and $1.77 trillion in mortgage-backed securities, all without inflating consumer prices. The Fed could use the same tool to buy bonds earmarked for a Green New Deal, and because it returns its profits to the Treasury after deducting its costs, the bonds would be nearly interest-free. If they were rolled over from year to year, the government, in effect, would be issuing new money.

This is not just theory. Japan is actually doing it, without creating even the modest 2 percent inflation the government is aiming for. “Abenomics,” the economic agenda of Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, combines central bank quantitative easing with fiscal stimulus (large-scale increases in government spending). Since Abe came into power in 2012, Japan has seen steady economic growth, and its unemployment rate has fallen by nearly half, yet inflation remains very low, at 0.7 percent. Social Security-related expenses accounted for 55 percent of general expenditure in Japan’s 2018 federal budget, and a universal health care insurance system is maintained for all citizens. Nominal GDP is up 11 percent since the end of the first quarter of 2013, a much better record than during the prior two decades of Japanese stagnation, and the Nikkei stock market is at levels not seen since the early 1990s, driven by improved company earnings. Growth remains below targeted levels, but according to Financial Times, this is because fiscal stimulus has actually been too small. While spending with the left hand, the government has been taking the money back with the right, increasing the sales tax from 5 to 8 percent.

Abenomics has been declared a success even by the once-critical International Monetary Fund. After Abe crushed his opponents in 2017, Noah Smith wrote in Bloomberg, “Japan’s long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party has figured out a novel and interesting way to stay in power—govern pragmatically, focus on the economy and give people what they want.” Smith said everyone who wanted a job had one, small and midsize businesses were doing well; and the Bank of Japan’s unprecedented program of monetary easing had provided easy credit for corporate restructuring without generating inflation. Abe had also vowed to make both preschool and college free.

Not that all is idyllic in Japan. Forty percent of Japanese workers lack secure full-time employment and adequate pensions. But the point underscored here is that large-scale digital money-printing by the central bank to buy back the government’s debt, combined with fiscal stimulus by the government (spending on “what the people want”), has not inflated Japanese prices, the alleged concern preventing other countries from doing the same.

Abe’s novel economic program has done more than just stimulate growth. By selling its debt to its own central bank, which returns the interest to the government, the Japanese government has, in effect, been canceling its debt. Until recently, it was doing this at a whopping rate of $720 billion per year. According to fund manager Eric Lonergan in a February 2017 article:

The Bank of Japan is in the process of owning most of the outstanding government debt of Japan (it currently owns around 40%). BOJ holdings are part of the consolidated government balance sheet. So its holdings are in fact the accounting equivalent of a debt cancellation. If I buy back my own mortgage, I don’t have a mortgage.

If the Federal Reserve followed suit and bought 40 percent of the U.S. national debt, it would be holding $8 trillion in federal securities, three times its current holdings from its quantitative easing programs. Yet liquidating a full 40 percent of Japan’s government debt has not triggered price inflation.

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Voice of Europe, “Macron accused of treason by French generals for signing UN Migration Pact”, 14 Dec 2018:

General Antoine Martinez has written the letter signed by ten other generals, an admiral and colonel, and also includes former French Minister of Defense Charles Millon.

They’ve given strong warning that Macron’s signing the U.N. Global Migration Pact strips France of even more sovereignty providing an additional reason for “an already battered people” to “revolt”.

The highly decorated military co-signees assert that the beleaguered Macron is “guilty of a denial of democracy or treason against the nation” for signing the migration pact without putting it to the people.

“The French state is late in coming to realize the impossibility of integrating too many people, in addition to totally different cultures, who have regrouped in the last forty years in areas that no longer submit to the laws of the Republic,” the letter advises, also saying that mass immigration is erasing France’s “civilizational landmarks”.

The pact, which has been protested in the Yellow Vest demonstrations in five countries, was signed by 164 nations, most against the will of the citizens as stated in dozens of country specific petitions, on Monday in Marrakech.

The immensely opposed and disastrous document declares unlimited migration to be treated as a human right and criticism of mass migration to be treated as hate speech.

A “yellow vest” (gilet jaune) protestor holds a sign reading “Dear bourgeois we are deeply sorry to disturb you but could we all live with dignity please ?” on December 8, 2018 near the Arc de Triomphe in Paris./AFP The Nation.

       
        AFP

Populism in its Pure Form

                                                    Photo/AFP

Alain de Benoist

1,025 words

Interview by Nicolas Gauthier

Translated by Greg Johnson

Boulevard Voltaire: For about ten days now, France has been living in the era of the yellow vests, and opinions about it are already piling up. Flash in the pan or groundswell? New Fronde [a series of civil wars in France between 1648 and 1653]? New Jacquerie [a peasant revolt in northern France in 1358]? What is your feeling?

Alain de Benoist: Five years ago, almost to the day, on November 23, 2013, you asked me about the red caps movement. I then drew your attention to the fact that “all protests or uprisings of some magnitude which we are witnessing today are born on the margins, or away from parties and unions, which are obviously no longer capable of embodying or relaying the aspirations of the people.” My conclusion was this: “Just one watchword: red hats everywhere!” Well, here we are: the yellow vests are the red hats everywhere. After years and years of humiliation, impoverishment, and social and cultural exclusion, it is simply the people of France speaking again.

Even if the lower classes and the lower middle classes are the driving force — which gives the movement an extraordinary class dimension — the yellow vests come from different backgrounds; they bring together young and old, peasants and businessmen, as well as office employees, blue-collar workers, and managers. Women as well as men (I think of those septuagenarian pensioners who do not hesitate, despite the cold, to sleep in their cars so that barricades can be held fast, day and night). People who do not care about the Right or the Left, and who for the most part never even participated in politics, but who fight on the basis of what they have in common: the feeling of being treated as second-class citizens by the media caste, considered as conscriptable and exploitable at the mercy of the predatory oligarchy of the rich and powerful, never to be consulted, but always to be deceived; indeed, to be the “scapegoats” (François Bousquet) of France’s dregs, this “peripheral France” that is today undoubtedly the most French in France, but who are nevertheless abandoned to their fate to be victims of unemployment, declining wages, insecurity, relocation, immigration — and after years of patience and suffering, they ended up saying: “That’s enough!” That’s the yellow vests movement. I respect them, I respect them all!

Boulevard Voltaire: What strikes you the most about this movement?

Alain de Benoist: Two things. The first, and the most important, is the spontaneous nature of this movement, because this is what is most frightening to the public authorities, who don’t know to whom they should talk, but also the parties and unions, who discover with astonishment that close to one million men and women can mobilize and unleash a solidarity movement that has rarely been seen (seventy to eighty percent of the public support them) without even having to think of how to appeal to the people. The yellow vests are a perfect example of popular self-organization. No leaders, small or great, neither Caesars nor tribunes — only the people. Populism in its pure form. Not the populism of parties or movements that claim this label, but what Vincent Coussedière called the “populism of the people.” Frondeurs, sans-culottes, communards, it does not matter under which label one wants to place them. The people of the yellow vests have not entrusted anyone to speak for them. They have asserted themselves as a historical subject, and for that, too, they must be approved and supported.

       

The other point that struck me was the incredible hate speech directed against the yellow vests by supporters of the dominant ideology, that sad alliance of laughably affected petty technocrats and the financial markets. “White trash,” “morons,” and “nerds” are the words that are heard most often (to say nothing of “brownshirts”!). Read the letters of the readers of Le Monde, and listen to the moral Left — the kerosene Left — and the well-behaved Right. Until now, they held themselves back, but not anymore. They have now let go, expressing their arrogance and class snobbery in the most obscene manner, as well as their sheer panic at being immediately dismissed by beggars. After the formidable demonstration in Paris, they no longer have the heart to tell those who complain about the price of gas that they only have to buy an electric car (the modern version of “Let them eat cake”!). When the people fill the streets of the capital, they raise the drawbridge! If they express their naked hatred of this popular France — the France of Johnny, the one who “smokes cigarettes and drives diesel” — of the France that is insufficiently diverse, excessively French, those who Macron has described as illiterate, lazy people who want to “fuck in the brothel” — in short, the little people, they know that their days are numbered.

       

Boulevard Voltaire: We can see how the movement started, but it is not very clear how it will end, supposing, moreover, that it must end. Are there elements in place to allow this revolt to be translated into political terms?

Alain de Benoist: It is not in these terms that the problem arises. We are in the midst of a groundswell that is not about to falter, because it is the objective result of a historical situation that is itself bound to last. The gasoline question was obviously only the last straw that broke the camel’s back, or rather the drop of gasoline that blew up the can. Right away, the real demand was: “Macron, resign!” In the immediate future, the government will use the usual maneuvers: repress, defame, discredit, divide, and wait for it to unravel. It may unravel, but the causes will always be there. With the yellow vests, France has arrived at a pre-revolutionary state. If they radicalize even more, so much the better. If not, this will still have been a major warning sign. It will be worth repeating. In Italy, the Five Star movement, which was also born out of a “day of anger,” is now in power. In France, the final explosion will occur in less than ten years.

Source: http://www.bvoltaire.fr/alain-de-benoist-les-gilets-jaunes-la-revanche-des-ploucs-emissaires/

Around 1000 people participated in the 3-hour-long event outside the Swedish Parliament on Sunday, 2 Dec.

Voice of Europe, “Anti-globalist yellow vests movement ‘conquers’ Europe and spreads to fifth country”, 7 Dec 2018:

The yellow vests movement has spread to its fifth country, Sweden. Starting in France on 17 November, protests of the anti-globalist movement have been seen in Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany.

Now yellow vest demonstrations against the UN Migration Agreement have been announced in Sweden on Saturday and Sunday.

Last Sunday around 1,000 Swedes gathered outside Parliament in Stockholm to demonstrate against Sweden’s signing of the UN Migration Agreement. This weekend, even larger events with more speakers will be held in the same place.

Migration to Sweden is in focus because the whole of society is adversely affected when hundreds of thousands of migrants from the third world are brought into such a small country. However, in the future, other issues may also be addressed.

“The citizens have been informed that the led migration policy is a profit, which it is not”, says one of the speakers, independent journalist and writer Katerina Janouch.

“The issue of Sweden’s signing of the UN Migration Framework is too important to be hidden away. The signing is done behind the people’s backs.”

“There should be a referendum about this. We should not let a reality denying, high-on-power elite decide. It is becoming increasingly apparent that those who govern Sweden, whoever they are, don’t have what’s best for the Swedes in mind.”, she continues. The Swedish resistance movement is inspired by the French, but not a copy of it. The Swedes focus on the issues considered most important for Sweden, while the French focus on their issues.

Another difference is that the Swedes have chosen events with speakers instead of street marches as protest form

Participants have been asked to wear yellow vests and a lot of those are likely to be seen in Sweden this weekend. Protests will also be held in Gothenburg, Malmö and several other cities.

As the yellow vests movement is spreading through Europe protests have been announced in Brussels (Belgium), Amsterdam and Rotterdam (The Netherlands), Stockholm (Sweden), Paris and several German cities.

Most protests are peaceful, but as usual the escalations receive the most mainstream media coverage. Last week protests in Paris and Brussels completely escalated as some violent groups used the protests to attack people and destroy public property. In the Netherlands the protests were peaceful last week and it is expected that they will be peaceful again.

If you are joining one of the protests, make your voice heard, stay safe and protest peaceful. It’s the best way to make a statement and not become demonised as a group by mainstream media.

Voice of Europe, “‘It is time to bring out our inner Vikings’ – Swedes start protesting against mass migration in front of Parliament”, 3 Dec 2018:

Around 1000 people participated in the 3-hour-long event outside the Swedish Parliament on Sunday.

Several speakers participated, including Sweden’s most active and well-known journalist and freedom fighter Katerina Janouch, Reader in Business Administration Jan Tullberg, and lecturer and writer Lennart Matikainen.

Janouch stated that Sweden has gone from being a model country to a country that doesn’t care about its own citizens.

“The billions flow and no one is held accountable. Sweden is run by a bunch of imposters who abuse their power and don’t care about our well-being.”

“Criticism of mass migration may be silenced by the agreement. We must stand up for free speech. It is time to bring out our inner Vikings, to ignore political correctness and become even braver and clearer in how we speak and express ourselves”, she said.

Tullberg mentioned the Dublin Regulation which states that refugees should claim asylum upon arrival in the first safe country – something the Migration Pact clearly ignores.

He also criticised environmental destruction as grounds for asylum, since it basically means that people who neglect and destroy their country’s environment are rewarded rather than punished.

Matikainen argued that the Pact is full of rights – but contains no obligations.

Strangely enough, there were no left-wing counter-protesters present. Perhaps even Antifa have realised that Sweden has major problems. At the end of the demonstration the Swedish national anthem was sung. No Swedish mainstream media has reported the event.

Stasi-Minded Experiments in human pan-mixia

Voice of Europe, “Is Angela Merkel behind the UN Migration Pact? New document sheds light”,  29 Nov 2018:

Germany’s Deception: Internal documents from Germany’s Federal Foreign Office divulge that Angela Merkel’s government has been the main mastermind behind the controversial UN migrant pact.

The document, described by MP Petr Bystron of the populist Alternative for Germany (AfD), reveals that the Federal Foreign Office taking credit for the disastrous UN Migrant Pact, claiming they’ve been working on the agreement since 2016.

The deception runs deep, the Foreign Office having stated that the German government has been behind the Global Compact on Refugees and the Global Compact on Migration, saying that though they are not legally binding, they were both designed to be “politically binding”.

Belgian International Law professor Pierre d’Argent, has explained that the agreement sets up a “legal framework” that can be used by lawyers in interpreting the meaning of the law. “…one can imagine that in some cases before international jurisdictions, lawyers use this pact as a reference tool to try to guide them,” d’Argent said.

Alexander Gauland, Co-leader of Germany’s populist AfD party told Breitbart London:

“It’s becoming glaringly obvious that the German government was trying to deceive the public, and still is. They are trying to retroactively legalise Merkel’s illegal opening of the borders since 2015. If the AfD had not raised the topic of the Global Compact, no one would ever have known about it until it was too late.”

“Now we are discovering that this contract has been in the works for a long time, and on German initiative, no less. However, those responsible never bothered to mention it. For good reason. We will do everything we can to avert this disaster in the making,” he said further.

The US, Austria, Hungary, Poland, Israel, Australia, The Czech Republic, Italy, Slovakia and more have backed out and will not sign the pact.

“We are only responsible to our Austrian population as government officials. Austrian sovereignty has top priority for us, this must be preserved and protected,” Austrian Vice Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache said about pulling out of the pact.

Related at Majorityrights:

UN MIGRANT COMPACT: THE DEATH OF OUR NATIONS

Germany Introduces Forced Integration

Prime Minister of Slovakia, Peter Pellegrini

Voice of Europe, “Slovakia will not support UN migration pact under any circumstances, Prime Minister says”, 25 Nov 2018:

By PAUL DIJKS

“Slovakia will not support this United Nations pact under any circumstances and will not agree with it,” Pellegrini said after the meetings. The Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration is set to be signed in Marrakech in December.

The rejection of the migration pact could pose problems for Pellegrini’s government as Foreign Minister Miroslav Lajcak, who was President of the United Nations General Assembly when the migration pact was adopted, threatened to resign if the government rejects the agreement. Pellegrini has faith that Lajcak will stay even though they are rejecting the pact, “I will do everything I can to keep him in his seat”.

Nordic episode: penchant to confront Augustinian, natural challenges, exposes naive susceptibility to invasive, viz. Manichean species?

An illustrative episode in which:

A Nordic woman expresses her nature to confront the Augustinian (Augustinian devils = natural devils, e.g., the cold), and anthropomorphized as such, indicates her natural inclination’s potential naivete and susceptibility to invasive, human species, particularly those of a more Manichean, trickster nature (Manichean = human, trickster devils, that can change the rules).

Augustinianism would be an evolutionary adaptation by those people confronted primarily with natural challenges (such as in the cold north), while Manicheanism would be an increased evolutionary adaptation by those confronted primarily by inter-tribal challenges (as in the Middle East)

- Observation by DanielS

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