Majorityrights News > Category: The American right

Press image above or here for video, Part 4: If we take a historical perspective of ethnonationalists acting in good faith as opposed to that of the empires that were in control of Europe just prior to the World Wars, we can see that it was imperialism, not nationalism, that in fact spawned these wars. If we want to do justice to the homeostatic systemic correction that ethnonationalism affords against runaway liberal internationalism, we need to take advantage of interactive correctability through a more honest historical frame of reference, to locate where ethnonationalism lost homeostatic correctiive reference and became subject to imperial stasis.

That would mean beginning at least at the point where (Germanic) imperialism became a dominant paradigm in and through (central/eastern) Europe, a period issued in by Frederick The Great - when the Polish ethnostate was dissolved, Germanization imposed by the imperial Austro-Hungarian and German/Prussian partitions, while imperial Russia controlled the rest of it.

As far as ethnostatism goes in fact, Germany remained huge following Versailles, retaining a great deal of what is now western Poland, including Breslau (now Wroclaw) and East Prussia, which is now Kaliningrad and parts just south.

We’ll go into the roots of these ethnonational travails, including mistakes on the Polish side, but not focusing there for now, since that’s what you’ve been hearing in the PC of so called WN, in exaggerated form.

Typically disregarded is the Versailles committee’s valid reasoning for areas granted to Poland and of the Sudetenland retained for Czech by the Treaty of St. Germain.

Historical examination will show that Danzig and the Sudetenland (there in green) form a crucial historical frame of ethnonational borders.

Nazi Germany understood this, as Britain’s Daily Telegraph* wrote in 1939:

“Today we realise the truth of Bismarck’s saying that he who possesses the Bohemian chain dominates Europe.

Are we to realise soon the significance of Frederick the Great’s words, “Who rules over the mouth of the Vistula, rules over Poland better than the King of Poland himself”?

Herr Hitler received a birthday gift of the freedom of Danzig. It remains to be seen whether this will involve Danzig’s receiving the “freedom” of Herr Hitler”

Though historically disputed and shifting in demographics, Danzig was occupied by Germans at that time.

In fact, Danzig is ground zero both in the framrwork of World War II and historically, of German / Polish conflict, and international intervention. It is there we need to begin overcoming shallow and mistaken Hitler apologist talk that he just wanted Danzig back -as if it was simply German and rightfully theirs, given to those stubborn Poles, when if fact Poland was merely given a stake in a Danzig made neutral by Versailles for historical and logistical reasons.

Of course these were mere pesky contentions to Hitler, which would one day be made historically incidental when his Plan East was effectively concluded. For the time being, propaganda was necessary to justify this plan and get it underway.

Thus, with regard to allegations made by the Nazis of Polish abuse of German civilians within the the corridor, we absolutely cannot assume the veracity. Even cursory glance at footage of interwar Danzig does not indicate a beleaguered German population under anything like abject duress - on the contrary, it shows as remarkably comfortable and thriving population, commercial well being despite this being during the throes of world wide economic depression.

Whatever cruelties that did in fact come of Polish nationalism toward Germans did not come in a vacuum, as they were responses to having their people and nation subject to cruel repression under the Teutonic Order and Frederick the Great’s Prussia - anti Polinism and programs of Germanification.

Again, its important to note in the abstract, that for whatever grievances the Germans may have had in regard to the response of Polish nationalists in their newly reformed nation upon Versailles, Hitler and Nazism more than made up for it, through policies such as killing 10 times the number of Poles for any German killed by Polish partitions; and retaliations far worse in the overview of their war policy and practice against Poles and Poland - such as the murdering of Polish civilians in the Warsaw ghetto uprising - in far greater number than civilians were killed in the Dresden fire bombing a year later, speaking of more than making up for grievances.

But before we re-animate a German - Polish conflict, as we are ethnonationalists of good will - before adopting the appearance of being motivated to attribute retroactive guilt then - let us reinvoke principle once again.

One of the main reasons why we are confronted with having to deal with this issue of Nazism, so divisive and stigmatic of Whites, is because of PC guilt-tripping of Whites… and a direct backlash against that guilt tripping ...particularly by those among groups not of a perspective where Nazi Germany was directly antagonistic…

And again, there has been much pandering to counter that guilt tripping in order to gain audience and backing among American Whites in particular.

It is key therefore to invoke this antidote to guilt tripping to underscore first of all, that it is history, nobody alive should be made to suffer and pay with their lives and nationhood.

__________________________

* Correction, I had accidentally said, “Daily Mirror.” This quote is actually from a Daily Telegraph article, 5 May 1939.

Audio of Part 3

Hitler and Nazism were Not White Nationalism, Part 3

Thus we have established a first principle of this discourse, a positive tautology that the World Wars are history, the people of today are not to blame and should not be subject to the collective punishment of losing their peoplehood and corresponding nations.

There is a second principle that we will invoke at this point, one which the internet has provided for in spades, but which White Nationalists have not utilized to anything like its full potential.

That is correctability, the correctability of ideas and understanding through interactive participation, whether through comments or speaking directly to people and engaging correction.

To date, what has been imposed as if correction, has largely been World War II revisionism - which tends to be dishonest excuses and apologetics for Nazi imperialism where not outright recitation of Nazi propaganda that could be falsified rather easily if they cared to do it.

Misrepresentation and omissions of important facts can remain if would-be interlocutors are not of good faith, don’t really want to pursue the truth, though Nazi apologetics usually claim the truth as their mission.

On the other hand, taking interactive correctability for granted and expecting the voices of correction to chime-in has left me susceptible to allow oversights to linger, because many would-be WN, who’ve accepted the rightist identity and its own political correctness will not say “boo” and alert me to oversights, especially when calling attention to these matters will call negative attention and shoot holes in their pro-Hitler/Nazi position.

Graudenz, Kulm, Thorn and Bromberg, a would-be occlusive salient. To the south of those cities, Poznan and Gniezno are the cradle of Polish nationhood.

There is a third and ancillary tautology to be invoked which is that for whatever grievances that either side had of the times, they were more than made up for.

We will apply this as a third tautological principle then, after ‘it’s history and nobody had anything to do with it’, and after correctability, that is, the tautology that for whatever complaints of the time, “they more than made up for it in retaliation.”

We will take a critical perspective on grievances and injustices alleged by the Nazi apologists, such as allegations made against Polish nationals and partisans, since those allegations have tended to go uncorrected within the philoNazistic PC of so called White Nationalism.

But we need to circle back to our second principle at this point, which is interactive correctability and the fact that so called WN has not been acting in good faith to call matters to attention, especially when they would reflect badly on Nazi Germany.

In previous discussions of Hitler’s complaints over where Versailles borders were drawn, I have made the claim that there were really only three cities of significance lost by Germany - Poznan, Bromberg and Thorn and one made neutral, Danzig (made neutral, not Polish, as in something the Poles could unilaterally return to Germany as misinformed Hitler apologists often claim they should have); and there were some village areas in the corridor and near the Versailles established border where Germans were caught in Polish territory, and we must add that there were Poles caught in German territory. But though Danzig was at the time occupied by Germans, it was a historically disputed city and a strategic city for all concerned, thus justifiably deemed neutral by Versailles. Cities to the south of the corridor, such as Poznan, Gniezno and Leszno, should not have been considered anything remotely but Polish.

While it is true that in previous discussions of this issue I had neglected to mention two cities of significance in the Polish corridor which were inhabited by Germans, Graudenz and Kulm , known in Polish as Grudziądz and Chelmno, it does not change the thesis.

First of all, circling to principle three (mis-spoke; it is “principle two”, correctability that is invoked here) again, that the comment section has been open and feedback of good will is expected to correct oversights such as that.

More fundamentally, these cities being under German political jurisdiction would only extend the salient that would be formed by Bromberg and Torun to obstruct and potentially occlude crucial strategic and economic sea access for Poland.

In addition, Graudenz and Klum were formed of brutal Teutonic and Prussian imperialism on cities that were originally Polish.

Finally, it is a history that only provides more examples of the enormous toll that the Nazis took against impositions of Polish patriotism in these areas; invoking principle three, that they more than made up for it.

Thus, it is no wonder that the Hitler redemptionists didn’t particularly care to take me up on my open offer to correct whatever prior oversights of mine…

No, the Hitler redemptionists, in their claim to be after the truth of history, tend to begin history at or about World War I. And of course, Germany was a sheer victim of the rest of the world, from the Schiff’s backing of the Trotskies, to the Balfour Declaration to the Treaty of Versailles.  But really, to do enthnonationalism justice, we need to go further back in history…

Dinant

The Necessary War

With correction of prior failure to discuss Graudenz and Kulm - now added to surrounding discussion…

As European(White) Nationalists, we all know that the wake of the World Wars has not birthed favorable circumstances for our people. Thus, we are decidedly less satisfied than Max Hastings that a marked separatism from Jewish power and influence was not achieved, its necessity not even understood; and along with that that a pervasive liberalism should have won-out as consequence, potentially auguring the final chapter for Europeans in entirety.

But was it “hubris” for Poland to want its nation back? I rather think not. It’s called ethno-nationalism and it is that which we should support as opposed to internationalism. Germany was still huge after Versailles. On the Polish border, it had lost Posen, Bromberg and Thorn and I need to add Graudenz and Kulm *, while Danzig became neutral. The Max Hastings account introduces yet more discussion of Versailles to make it more understandable as an effort at justice, as it always appeared when looking at the territorial divisions. However, there have been a couple of parties who want me to run strong anti-Polish propaganda.

The large problem with that is that for those of us who view White Nationalist media as our veritable news source now (finding other, anti-White media wholly intolerable), a hypotrophied unanimity with Nazism and its antecedent regime’s military campaigns is what we get: for whatever reasons, but probably because America is so German- American that a “by-golly, Hitler was absolutely right!” perspective is all too convenient (and the most popular and economically supported of any WN perspective) in the wake of Jewish and Neo-liberal destruction; and all the more motivated with guilt trips of World War II being most pressing upon them; their having least perspective on anything but a direct desire to throw guilt trips off as entire fabrication: nuances of perspective and history are cast aside, and ultimately, the unfortunate difficulty they have in seeing our family relations and the more relative and complex justice of the circumstance seeds potential inter-European conflict, if not war. Seeds sown oblivious to the fact that we do not care to lay guilt trips upon them, certainly not subsequent generations, though they go ahead and try to lay guilt trips upon us for events before our fathers lives even. Just as they want it understood that they and their forefathers were not ex-nihilo evil, but had reasons for their wars, so too those of “Allied” descent wish to claim the same.

Yes, there were corrupt forces manipulating the circumstances, but there were also justly reasoned motives. The circumstances were a great deal more complicated and justified from an Allied perspective than The Hitler contingent of WN will ever admit. That’s a problem if you want to treat WN as your media. Because Nazi Germany and Kaiser Germany were not pure and sheer victims, as the salient contingent of WN wish to claim. But so long as their childish and Jewish style of argumentation is what is being served in WN discourse, I am left no choice but to balance things off in the service of truth. There are several sites out there for those who want to take a “Hitler only good everyone else bad” perspective. You will not hear that the German regimes did have choices: Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian and other Nationalisms, even the British, of course, could have been aligned, willing and able to fight Soviet incursions (had done so already in some instances).

Until there are other, or more, WN sites which care for the truth and represent events in the context of their nuance and balance, I must continue to highlight discussions such as that from Max Hastings. In fact, there is much there that one would never hear and learn about if the now standard WN position on several sites - “Germany’s war efforts only good, their people only victims” -  were the only perspective heard; and there is a great deal of intimidation that it be the only perspective heard in WN, to the point where the opposite of PC is in effect, to where it is a veritable taboo to say anything negative about Nazi Germany and its predecessors and anything good about the Allies and their predecessors. In truth, of course, there are many things for Germans to be proud of, and some things to not be so proud of. For some reason, that is too complex a fact for some to cope with. Those of us who are sick of that childish unanimity might find Max Hastings discussion refreshing and informative.

There are thoughts on responsibility in World War I which echo very much that of WWII. Thoughts on Versailles foreign to WN discourse. And of course the great taboo in WN, to suggest that a German military could have done anything worth resisting. It was of course noble to burn the library of Leuven (they just had to do that, didn’t they?); to do whatever I am not allowed to speak about to Belgian civilians there, in Dinant and elsewhere, to French and other civilians; in Kalisz as well. No, Germany was always a perfect nation, nobody can say otherwise; if you want to blame anybody, conveniently blame Poland as Hitler and Goebbels suggested, or as Frederick the Great might have proposed of his then vanquished neighbor.

A remiss to not mention Graudenz and Kulm not only for my part but also conveniently “uncorrected” by the Hitler redemptionists in commentary here; probably as it would open a can of worms surrounding these two cities that they’d rather not to go into - though I will go into it in parts three and four of the audio, “Hitler was Not WN.” A remiss for my part to not go into these cities as yet, but not changing the fundamental thesis of The Treaty of Versailles’ reasoning. On the contrary.

The “father of Polish Nationalism” and staunch anti-Semite, Dmowski felt Piłsudski’s pragmatism was naive. They became rivals, but prior to that Dmowski had good things to say about Piłsudski: “He was always the brave boy, son of mother patriotism, dreamer of the liberation of his homeland (...) (...) p. Pilsudski, the intelligent and noble man, and above all a very good Pole” said Roman Dmowski about Piłsudski in 1903.

Polish patriot and military man extraordinaire, with initiatives ranging from the cunning Bezdany train robbery to fund the Polish revolution, to the spectacular victory over the Soviet army at Warsaw, to the audacious re-take of Poznan and surroundings from the Germans in the Greater Poland Uprising.

While it is true that in previous discussions of this issue I had neglected to mention these two cities of significance in the Polish corridor - cities that were inhabited by Germans, Graudzen and Kulm, known in Polish as Grudiaz and Chelmno - this does not change the thesis.

First of all, the comment section has been open and feedback of good will is expected to correct oversights such as that. And how convenient that Hitler redemptionists would not go into matters surrounding these cities.

Further, these cities being German would only extend the salient that would be formed by Bromberg and Torun to obstruct and potentially occlude crucial strategic and economic sea access for Poland.

In addition, Graudzen and Kulm were formed of brutal Tuetonic and Prussian imperialism upon already extant settlements that were originally Polish.

And finally, investigation into the dispute over these cities only reveals yet more examples of the enormous toll that the Nazis took in retaliation to imposition of Polish patriotism in these areas. It’s no wonder that the Hitler redemptionists were less than ardent, didn’t particularly care to take me up on my open offer to correct whatever oversights of mine…

As the colored party retakes the House, Whites begin to vote more as Whites:

...“are headless - explicit though Whites are becoming as they vote more in their group interests, and less divided on issues, we are headless and without leadership and organization.” - ‘No White Guilt’

...let Majorityrights add, that we should all know who that head and leadership is for the time being, and headless of our own, off the rails Whites shall remain in right wing objectivism, acting incidentally in right wing sell out interests, steered in YKW interests, until we finally settle on a White Left ethnonational position, accountable in our relative group interests among, and in, ecological coordination with other Left ethno-nationalisms.  ...and as long as we remain identifying as right wing or even “third position’ (as opposed to White Left ethnonational) we will remain divided on issues and subject to entryism and direction from the YKW.

Part 2 Audio, Hitler was NOT White or any kind of ethnonationalist - and text:

Hitler was Not White Nationalist Part 2. Audio now online.

To commence, we will indicate some of the issues, adding to these issues in the series to come where issues emerge relevant beyond mere detail to be fleshed out and given argumentative support. That is to say, we anticipate an ongoing corrective process.

As we must go into the history, the other side, the side which is subject to a right wing political correctness of its own, needs to be addressed - this quote, alternative media, that sees a niche market in the largest by far White demographics of America - German/Irish - and panders to the fact that they are going to be more susceptible to positive spins on Hitler and Nazi Germany. It is to counter this pandering, that it is necessary to take a corrective postion from an ethnonational standpoint, that does not look upon Hitler and the Nazis as innocent and only acting in accordance to what they should be rightfully entitled.

The map drawn by Versailles and the contentions raised by Hitler are central issues to redress thereupon.

Hermeneutic, that is to say, additional historical perspective is necessary to assess the situation and related contentions over the borders set by The Treaty of Versailles and maintained by The Treaty of Saint Germain in the case of the Sudetenland..

And why should the Allies trust the Nazis, why should they sympathize with their claims and why should they not be aggrieved with what happened in WWI? and in prior Prussian / Austrian expansion?

Contra Allied grievances, Hitler’s mindset of Friedrich The Great 2.0 is key.

Ostensibly justifying excuses were used for his imperial aspirations as such, chief among others, an epistemic blunder failing to assess socially corrective human nature in praxis, taking rather a sheer might makes right naturalistic fallacy, that humans are bound sheerly to struggle in nature’s way; a will to power set in motion in this case by false allegations of mass persecution of German civilians and false threat to the German nation to provide pretext for Imperialist and supremacist expansion Eastward.

His defenders frequently lob the straw man that he was being accused of wanting to take over the whole world, when in fact, he did want Europe eastward up to the Urals, which is way more than bad enough considering he was using the guise of his sheer necessity to fight communism; and when, in fact, all nations between Russia and Germany were anti-Soviet.

Of course these nations weren’t perfect either and yes, the Nazis had a number of things correct, in the quote, N/S idea; and it’s nevertheless understandable how people could get wrapped up and go for broke; but it didn’t work and there was much fundamentally wrong about it, it wasn’t just that the Allies were corrupt, that defending Nazi Germany is bad optics for the “normies”, nothing fundamentally wrong other than that the “normies are not ready to quote, “understand” - nevertheless, it’s history now, and we can learn from it.

It might also be said of some people on the Allied side, that they can learn too - for example, like many of us since those times, we’ve projected our own reasonableness onto the YKW as a group - we thought, as our Allied forebears might have thought, that the YKW would be ok if we were ok to them - they’d be fair and deserved a chance. How many of you grew up aware of the J.Q.? Well, now the YKW have had their chance and we are aware that we need to be in separate governance.

WN has a pretty good feel of that now, but not so much representation of views apart from what is for it, a politically correct Nazi sympathetic perspective and the false either or thereof YKW or Hitler 88.

With that said.  Here are some of the topics we are going to address and more:

As we already mentioned, We will be taking a look at historical events which have been distorted by Nazi propaganda.

Events such as the Bromberg “quote bloody Sunday” incident, the Polish/ Slovak border train station take-over by the Poles, the false so called “peace offers” from Hitler to Britain and Poland and why it was valid for the Allies to reject them.

The claim that Hitler only wanted peace with the neighboring Slavic countries, and only wished to get back lands taken from Germany, where a majority of Germans where then living under non-German governments. And so on.

We will also debunk the claims that Hitler and the Nazis were ok with the Slavic peoples and did not see them as subhumans with less right to life.

We will address the Nazi ideology of imperialism, immoral racism and the concept of “might is right” contra healthy nationalism, ethnopluralistic morality and what we view as the right kind of racism.

(Richard McCullochs racial compact and moral racism: http://www.racialcompact.com/ )

We will address the issue of who has had a worse influence in promoting a false, positive idea of the Nazi regime to Americans after the war - George Lincoln Rockwell or William Luther Pierce?

And a great deal more.

The Emperor Hitler wears no mustache

Hitler’s Finances and the Myth of Nazi Anti-Usury Activism

- by Anthony Migchels, Realcurrencies

There is the widespread notion that Hitler was fighting the Money Power and that he was a problem for the Bankers because he created a Usury free economy. But there was no Usury free Third Reich economy. The German taxpayer continued to pay interest over the substantial national debt and commercial banking received interest for its fractional reserve banking based loans, which to a large extent financed the war.

“Our greatest social task is the abolition of interest slavery. This responsibility to abolish interest slavery towers above all other issues of the day. It is the only solution to the greatest problem of our time. The breaking of interest slavery is the most important moral imperative in social terms, it rises in its general significance far beyond all questions of the day, it is the solution of social questions, it is the only way out of the terrible confusion of the time. The abolition of interest slavery will deliver us from ultra-capitalist domination while avoiding both Communist destruction of the human spirit and Capitalist degradation of labour. The abolition of interest slavery opens the way to a truly social economy, by liberating us from the overwhelming domination of money. It opens the way to a state based on creative work and genuine accomplishment.”

              – Gottfried Feder 1919

Where does Hitler’s reputation for anti-Usury activism come from? It was more Nazi propaganda to get him to power than his actual policies after he did. It was not Hitler, but Gottfried Feder who was the anti-Usury man of the Nazi.

Hitler in Mein Kampf:

” For the first time in my life I heard (through Feder, AM) a discussion which dealt with the principles of stock exchange capital and capital which was used for loan activities. After hearing the first lecture delivered by Feder, the idea immediately came into my head that I had found a way to one of the most essential prerequisites for the founding of a new party.

To my mind, Feder’s merit consisted in the ruthless and trenchant way in which he described the double character of the capital engaged in stock exchange and loan transactions, laying bare the fact that this capital is ever and always dependent on the payment of interest.”

And:

“The struggle against international finance capital and loan capital has become one of the most important points in the program on which the German nation has based its fight for economic freedom and independence.”

Point 11 of the NSDAP 25 point program, a manifesto that officially (but not in practice) expressed Nazi policy:

“Abolition of unearned (work and labour) incomes. Breaking of debt (interest)-slavery.”

Hitler put it this way:

“Our financial principle: Finance shall exist for the benefit of the state; the financial magnates shall not form a state within the state. Hence our aim to break the thralldom of interest.

Relief of the state, and hence of the nation, from its indebtedness to the great financial houses, which lend on interest. Nationalization of the Reichsbank and the issuing houses, which lend on interest.”

But as we shall see, Hitler did not implement any serious monetary reform after he came to power. He did make finance completely subservient to the State and, more specifically, rearmament. But he did not nationalize any banks and the Reichsbank was already nationalized by the Weimar Republic by the time he came to power. He did not end interest payments to ‘the issuing houses’, who must have made an uncanny fortune throughout the war. He did nothing to decouple the Stock Exchange from the economy.

Feder was made Secretary of State for Economic Affairs, but was from day one sabotaged by Reichsbank President Hjalmar Schacht and replaced by him in August 1934. It was Schacht who was to manage the Nazi economy, not Feder.

Schacht’s and Hitler’s policies allowed full control of the economy, which was used to maximize production for the sake of war. But it did absolutely nothing to limit in any way massive war profiteering by the financial and industrial classes that brought him to power.

The Reichsmark

The Reichsmark was created 1924 after its predecessor, the Papiermark, had been inflated into oblivion. 1 Reichsmark was 1 Trillion Papiermark. The Reichsmark lasted until 1948, when it was replaced by the Deutsche Mark. So Hitler simply used the monetary system that he inherited from the Weimar Republic. The Reichsmark, like any other banking unit, was lent into circulation. It was a Gold backed unit until 1931, when the depression forced the Reichsbank (the Central Bank) to implement exchange controls, which effectively took Germany off the Gold Standard. A Gold peg remained in place. There were 1, 2 and 5 Reichsmark silver coins.

Hitler inherited the official Weimar 4,5% maximum interest rate. He ruled by decree, but never changed this. In fact, after the Nazi economy began to boom due to heavy spending on rearmament, it seems interest rates were raised to combat inflation. I’ve been unable to find any data on real interest rates during the Nazi era.

Who was Hjalmar Schacht?

Schacht was born in 1877 as the son of an aristocratic family. He joined Dresdner Bank in 1903 and already in 1905 was meeting people like JP Morgan and Theodore Roosevelt. He studied Hebrew to advance his career. In 1908 he joined Freemasonry. He oversaw the financing of Belgian/German trade during WW1 and used his former employer Dresdner Bank for this. This blatant conflict of interest led to his dismissal, but the revolving door was not invented recently and he was taken back by Dresdner Bank after this.

In 1923 he joined the Reichsbank and played a key role in ending the hyperinflation of the day. A little later he was made President of the Reichsbank and remained in this post until 1930. Since at least 1923 he was actively resisting the war reparations that were destroying the German economy and called for resurrection of German power. In 1926 he became involved with the NSDAP and supported their rise to power, although he never became a member.

He oversaw the formation of I.G. Farben in the twenties.

Schacht was a member of the Keppler Circle, a small group of businessmen that were at the heart of the Nazi movement and which financed Hitler’s rise to power. Wall Street was very influential in this group and contrary to what many Hitler apologists claim, played a heavy role in both financing him and war profiteering.

Shortly after Hitler came to power he was reinstated as President of the Reichsbank and when he replaced Feder as Reichscommissar for the Economy, he basically gained full control over the economy. This lasted until he was fired in 1939, when the German economy was overheating and Schacht wanted to limit spending on rearmament and was accused of ‘mutiny’ by Hitler.

Banking in Nazi Germany before the war

After becoming President of the Reichsbank, Schacht immediately started implementing policies aiming at giving the State full control of financial markets. This was known as ‘the New Plan’:

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“When higher rates trigger another recession, Trump can point an accusing finger at the central bank, absolving his own policies of liability and underscoring the need for a major overhaul of the Fed.”

Truthdig.com, “Trump’s War on the Fed”, 2 Nov 2018:

October was a brutal month for the stock market. After the Federal Reserve’s eighth interest rate hike, on Sept. 26, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped more than 2,000 points, and the NASDAQ had its worst month in nearly 10 years. After the Dow lost more than 800 points on Oct. 10 and the S&P 500 suffered its first weeklong losing streak since Trump’s election, the president said, “I think the Fed is making a mistake. They are so tight. I think the Fed has gone crazy.” In a later interview on Fox News, he called the Fed’s rate hikes “loco.” And in a Wall Street Journal interview published on Oct. 24, Trump said he thought the biggest risk to the economy was the Federal Reserve, because “interest rates are being raised too quickly.” He also criticized the Fed and its chairman in July and August.

Trump’s criticisms are worrisome to some commentators, who fear he is attempting to manipulate the Fed and its chairman for political gain. Ever since the 1970s, the Fed has declared its independence from government, and presidents are supposed to avoid influencing its decisions. But other Fed watchers think politicians should be allowed to criticize the market manipulations of an apparently out-of-control central bank.

Why the Frontal Attack?

Even if the president’s challenges are a needed check on the Fed, some question whether he is going about it in the right way. Challenging the central bank in public forces it to stick to its guns, because it must maintain its credibility with the markets by showing that its decisions are based on sound economic principles rather than on political influence. If the president really wants the Fed to back off on interest rates, it has been argued, he should do it with a nod and a nudge, not a frontal attack on the Fed’s sanity.

True, but perhaps the president’s goal is not to subtly affect Fed behavior so much as to make it patently obvious who is to blame when the next Great Recession hits. And recession is fairly certain to hit, because higher interest rates almost always trigger recessions. The Fed’s current policy of “quantitative tightening”—tightening or contracting the money supply—is the very definition of recession, a term Wikipedia defines as “a business cycle contraction which results in a general slowdown in economic activity.”

This “business cycle” is not something inevitable, like the weather. It is triggered by the central bank. When the Fed drops interest rates, banks flood the market with “easy money,” allowing speculators to snatch up homes and other assets. When the central bank then raises interest rates, it contracts the amount of money available to spend and to pay down debt. Borrowers go into default and foreclosed homes go on the market at fire-sale prices, again to be snatched up by the monied class. But it is a game of Monopoly that cannot go on forever. According to Elga Bartsch, chief European economist at Morgan Stanley, one more financial cataclysm could be all that it takes for central bank independence to end. “Having been overburdened for a long time, many central banks might just be one more economic downturn or financial crisis away from a full-on political backlash,” she wrote in a note to clients in 2017. “Such a political backlash could call into question one of the long-standing tenets of modern monetary policy making—central bank independence.”

And that may be the president’s endgame. When higher rates trigger another recession, Trump can point an accusing finger at the central bank, absolving his own policies of liability and underscoring the need for a major overhaul of the Fed.

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Civil War in American Judaism /

Synagogue Massacre Aftermath