[Majorityrights News] Alex Navalny, born 4th June, 1976; died at Yamalo-Nenets penitentiary 16th February, 2024 Posted by Guessedworker on Friday, 16 February 2024 23:43.
[Majorityrights Central] A couple of exchanges on the nature and meaning of Christianity’s origin Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, 25 July 2023 22:19.
[Majorityrights News] Is the Ukrainian counter-offensive for Bakhmut the counter-offensive for Ukraine? Posted by Guessedworker on Thursday, 18 May 2023 18:55.
Oswald Mosley’s 1961 book ‘Mosley: Right or Wrong’ covered almost everything but he couldn’t know that the Soviet Union would collapse, or that the Whites would desert Africa so quickly.
All movements have their books. We had Mosley’s many works, the National Front had John Tyndall’s ‘Six Principles of British Nationalism’, and the National Socialist Movement had ‘The Protocols of the Learned Elder of Zion’, which first appeared in Russia in 1903. It’s supposed to be the minutes of a meeting held by the Jews to plan their conquest of the world. Henry Ford was so impressed by it that he had thousands of copies distributed, but most historians dismiss it as a Tsarist forgery.
Many books and authors are misunderstood. Oswald Spengler’s gloomy forecasts are based on culture. This put him at odds with the Nazis who were obsessed with ‘racial purity’. In fact, he was in the same camp as Nietzsche, Evola, Mosley, Yockey and Dugin, who all rejected strictly biological racism.
Those who dream of a Golden Age with knights in shining armour defended fair damsels, often gravitate to Tolkien with his dwarves and Hobbits. Tolkien once subscribed to ‘Candour’ but that doesn’t prove anything. His strange world of fantasy has got nothing to do with the economic forces driving the modern world. Those who are opposed to plutocracy cannot seek refuge in fantasy.
The ‘Wizard of Oz’ was a landmark film released in 1939, based on the book by Lyman Frank Baum published in 1900. It tells the story of Dorothy and her friends, the Lion, the Scarecrow, and the Tin Man. They follow the Yellow Brick Road to the Emerald City in search of the Wizard of Oz. On their way, they encounter the terrible Witch of the West. At first sight, this is just a children’s story, but Dorothy and her friends were really pilgrims in search of the truth, the Yellow Brick Road was life itself, the Wizard represented Good and the wicked witch Evil. In the end, they discovered: “There’s No Place Like Home”.
Calls for a Universal Basic Income (UBI) have been increasing, most recently as part of the “Green New Deal” introduced by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and supported in the last month by at least 40 members of Congress. A UBI is a monthly payment to all adults with no strings attached, similar to Social Security. Critics say the Green New Deal asks too much of the rich and upper-middle-class taxpayers who will have to pay for it, but taxing the rich is not what the resolution proposes. It says funding would primarily come from the federal government, “using a combination of the Federal Reserve, a new public bank or system of regional and specialized public banks,” among other vehicles.
The Federal Reserve alone could do the job. It could buy “Green” federal bonds with money created on its balance sheet, just as the Fed funded the purchase of $3.7 trillion in bonds in its “quantitative easing” program to save the banks. The Treasury could also do it. The Treasury has the constitutional power to issue coins in any denomination, even trillion dollar coins. What prevents legislators from pursuing those options is the fear of hyperinflation from excess “demand” (spendable income) driving prices up. But in fact the consumer economy is chronically short of spendable income, due to the way money enters the consumer economy. We actually need regular injections of money to avoid a “balance sheet recession” and allow for growth, and a UBI is one way to do it.
The pros and cons of a UBI are hotly debated and have been discussed elsewhere. The point here is to show that it could actually be funded year after year without driving up taxes or prices. New money is continually being added to the money supply, but it is added as debt created privately by banks. (How banks, rather than the government, create most of the money supply today is explained on the Bank of England website here.) A UBI would replace money-created-as-debt with debt-free money—a “debt jubilee” for consumers—while leaving the money supply for the most part unchanged; and to the extent that new money is added, it could create demand needed to fill the gap between actual and potential productivity.
The Debt Overhang Crippling Economies
The “bank money” composing most of the money in circulation is created only when someone borrows, and today businesses and consumers are burdened with debts that are higher than ever before. In 2018, credit card debt alone exceeded $1 trillion, student debt exceeded $1.5 trillion, auto loan debt exceeded $1.1 trillion, and non-financial corporate debt hit $5.7 trillion. When businesses and individuals pay down old loans rather than taking out new loans, the money supply shrinks, causing a “balance sheet recession.” In that situation, the central bank, rather than removing money from the economy (as the Fed is doing now), needs to add money to fill the gap between debt and the spendable income available to repay it.
Debt always grows faster than the money available to repay it. One problem is the interest, which is not created along with the principal, so more money is always owed back than was created in the original loan. Beyond that, some of the money created as debt is held off the consumer market by “savers” and investors who place it elsewhere, making it unavailable to companies selling their wares and the wage-earners they employ. The result is a debt bubble that continues to grow until it is not sustainable and the system collapses, in the familiar death spiral euphemistically called the “business cycle.” As economist Michael Hudson shows in his 2018 book, “… and Forgive Them Their Debts,” this inevitable debt overhang was corrected historically with periodic “debt jubilees”—debt forgiveness—something he argues we need to do again today.
For governments, a debt jubilee could be effected by allowing the central bank to buy government securities and hold them on its books. For individuals, one way to do it fairly across the board would be with a UBI.
Why a UBI Need Not Be Inflationary
In a 2018 book called “The Road to Debt Bondage: How Banks Create Unpayable Debt,” political economist Derryl Hermanutz proposes a central-bank-issued UBI of $1,000 per month, credited directly to people’s bank accounts. Assuming this payment went to all U.S. residents over 18, or about 250 million people, the outlay would be about $2.5 trillion annually. For people with overdue debt, Hermanutz proposes that it automatically go to pay down those debts. Since money is created as loans and extinguished when they are repaid, that portion of a UBI disbursement would be extinguished along with the debt.
People who were current on their debts could choose whether or not to pay them down, but many would also no doubt go for that option. Hermanutz estimates that roughly half of a UBI payout could be extinguished in this way through mandatory and voluntary loan repayments. That money would not increase the money supply or demand. It would just allow debtors to spend on necessities with debt-free money rather than hocking their futures with unrepayable debt.
Posted by DanielS on Thursday, 27 December 2018 12:00.
Not doing this for free.
Trad News, “FRENCH POLICE THREATEN TO JOIN THE YELLOW VEST PROTESTS”, 25 Dec 2018:
Nobody has suffered more from the Yellow Vest protests that have been rocking France than the French police themselves. Since the demonstrations and riots began several weeks ago, they have been working overtime to contain the chaos and bearing the brunt of the public’s anger.
But now it looks like they have reached breaking point, as the three main police unions have now threatened to join the protests in order to force the government to pay overtime and reverse cuts to the police budget.
On Wednesday, French officials met with police trade union leaders to work out a deal to soothe anger in law enforcement ranks regarding overwork, unpaid overtime and difficult working conditions, Le Monde reported.
But some activists are calling on police to walk out on government negotiations, close down police stations and join the “gilets jaunes”—or yellow vest—protesters with whom they have been facing off since November 17.
Negotiations between three unions—Alliance, UNSA-Police and Unity-SGP-FO—and Interior Minister Christophe Castaner on Tuesday failed to reach a settlement. As talks resumed on Wednesday, France 24 reported that activists were calling on forces across the country to commit to a “slowdown” and only respond to emergencies until the dispute had been settled.
Police have accumulated some 23 million hours of overtime that is yet to be paid. According to The Local France, police union leader Frédéric Lagache explained, “Faced with this irresponsibility [of the government], we are forced to be irresponsible in our actions.”
Two of the unions have called for Yellow-Vest-style demonstrations by police officers on Wednesday (Dec 26th), referring to “Act 1,” “Act II” and “Act III,” the same language used by the Yellow Vest demonstrators to refer to their protests. In addition to unpaid overtime, the police unions are also opposed to cuts to the national police budget of around $70.8 million.
Posted by DanielS on Wednesday, 26 December 2018 11:24.
I am not going to watch the video. I’ve already seen enough Islamic beheading videos to have the idea. But “Western Voices” advice may be what some of you need:
Why I Watched the Infamous Murder Video and Why You Should Too
Two young blonde Scandinavian girls thought it would be a good idea to go hiking in Morocco, North Africa. Question: Who or what compelled them to think this was a good idea? This link will give you directions on how to find this horrible, multicultural event. Be warned.
For the last two days, a terrifying and gruesome video has gone viral on the internet. The short clip was recorded by two of the Islamists guilty of raping and murdering two Scandinavian tourists in their twenties.
I was browsing 4chan when a thread caught my attention, the discussion was about the recent murder of two Scandinavian girls in the Moroccan Atlas mountains. There I found the link containing the infamous video, which I decided to watch from start to finish.
Many people won’t be able to watch it and I do not blame them, it was tough to watch it until the end and it left me trembling with anger, but it’s deeply important to see certain terrible facts with our own eyes.
Here is a description of what happens in the video:
- outside, nighttime, phone/flashlight is on, rocky area
- she is laying down on her stomach, pants pulled down
- two Arabs standing over her speaking Arabic
- one begins sawing the back of her neck with a long knife
- she exclaims “ow! ow!” before yelling “MOOOOR!” (Danish for “mother”, she is calling for her mom)
- she tried to roll over which only results in the guy sawing the front of her throat
- blood everywhere now
- the guy filming puts his foot on her face to hold her there
- she meekly reaches up to try and repel the knife wielder sawing through her throat
- moments later her arms go limp as she loses consciousness
- guy continues cutting until her head is off
- carries it over to the tent and throws it on the ground
- one of them spits on the decapitated head
These girls could have been your daughters, sisters, friends.
Ignoring the problems won’t make them go away, this is what “Diversity” will bring to our homelands, fight back. This video must be watched and shared, the murder recorded shows the brutality and hatred these people feel towards us Europeans, their deaths must not be forgotten and must be avenged.
PC culture and Neoliberalism brainwashed people into believing the world is some kind of rainbow heaven where nothing bad ever happens, these two girls believed that lie and DIED for this.
Posted by DanielS on Thursday, 20 December 2018 05:40.
I’ve cringed at some of the commentary made by Jimmy Marr at Majorityrights; and I’ve taken down the more culpable bits when I’ve spotted them. I imagine that he’s still expressing neural pathways of a more desperate time, when there was no internet and nowhere to easily express and converse in criticism of Jewish power and influence.
It’s disappointing that he can’t back off the Nazi perspective and see a more balanced and measured position with regard to Jewry, even if seeing them as comprehensively other.
Some people, like Jimmy, are otherwise very intelligent, sincere and dedicated in their concern for White interests, despite lacking this judgment (there is other recourse than Hitler and Nazism).
Thus, we try to bring them around. But, the fact is, one can become so focused on Jewry that they can lose sight not only of their own interests, but of White interests and problems more broadly. I think back to when Jimmy made a post at Majorityrights which I had to take down. He called it comprehensively, “Poland” - it was a scathing critique of Poland as an “utterly backward and inept country” ...written by a journalist taking no account of the fact that he was visiting Poland during the depression and after Poland had been wiped-off the political map, plundered and exploited for 123 years….
Nevertheless and generally speaking, I want to be conciliatory, including for Whites who have not had time for the internet to correct the years of controlled media, to understand that Hitler and the Nazis were not the only European peoples critical enough of Jewry and seriously concerned to stave off the negative aspects of their power and influence.
To cynical liberals and Jewish advocates I say, yes, that’s right - Nazi sympathizers cannot be allowed to believe that they are the only ones who take Jewish power and influence seriously.
While I cringe at some of the utterly tactless statements of Jimmy’s that have been allowed to stand for the sake of being conciliatory in that regard and weening people off of Nazism, I would wish that Jimmy would come around to a more reasoned and balanced position of his own accord - I certainly would not wish him harm like this and I am saddened by it.
I know what it’s like to grow up without a White voice and support network through the internet. To be born into the totally controlled anti-White media (and academia, politics, religion, law and courts, etc) - it is a desperate and enraging nightmare that people who grow up with Internet might not be able to imagine.
Eugene Weekly, “Local Racist Gets Marr’d in Corvallis”, 19 Dec 2018:
“Nazi wannabe Jimmy Marr gets hospitalized after fight, right-wing strikes back online.”
Jimmy Marr was in Corvallis the other night. Apparently, he got in a street fight that I’d like to imagine was a lot like West Side Story — except the Jets this time being portrayed by a wannabe Nazi.
Corvallis Police Department (CPD) said it’s unknown whether Marr was hospitalized due to injuries unrelated to the fight. However, Marr’s supporters have gone on to “dox” (publicly broadcast personal information) those who confronted Marr.
On the other hand, non-racists on Twitter are having a field day with Marr’s medical troubles.
News of the fight and Marr’s hospitalization made headlines across the country from The Oregonian to The Hill. It appears Corvallis alt-weekly The Corvallis Advocate broke the story on social media.
Marr was in Corvallis days after Andrew Oswalt, a graduate student at Oregon State, was sentenced for slapping bumper stickers on members of the activist group Showing Up for Racial Justice. Oswalt was sentenced to serve 40 days at Benton County Jail, three years of supervised probation and a $500 fine. He was found guilty of a felony first-degree intimidation and third-degree criminal mischief.
2:36 AM - Dec 18, 2018
See xanny phantom’s other Tweets
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Marr showed up in Corvallis with his truck — which he usually paints up with white supremacist quotes with swastikas — painted with the statement, “Nazi is just the N-word for white men” along with a partial swastika.
Marr is known for driving the Toyota truck up and down I-5 emblazoned with anything from “Jew lies matter” to “When race loses meaning, family isn’t far behind.” In 2014, Marr stood in front of Springfield High School, playing his bagpipes with woman holding a sign that read, “Diversity is a code word for anti-white” as a parade in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr., marched by.
Then in 2016, Marr tried to interrupt a rally organized by Community Alliance of Lane County (CALC) intended to counter Trumpism and hate. Through loudspeakers from his house, he broadcasted a pro-hate speech that attracted some of the CALC’s supporters to protest in front of his house. Springfield Police Department (SPD) arrived to mediate the situation, which ended with SPD climbing on top of Marr’s house — without a search warrant — to tell him he had to cut the broadcast. Marr was arrested.
So, unsurprisingly, his presence in Corvallis provoked some anger. A CPD crime report said the fight involved multiple people, who have been charged with disorderly conduct. A fundraiser has been organized to pay for their legal fees.
However, it’s uncertain whether Marr was injured from the fight. When police arrived, the report only said officers saw Marr was in need of medical support.
Marr is active on Twitter, where he charmingly goes as @GenocideJimmy. He often Tweets about anti-semitism, white supremacy and bagpipes. While many celebrated his trip to the hospital on Twitter and the Eugene subreddit, Marr’s friends rushed to support the racist.
Describing Marr as a friend, @DoxedMLC doxed those who were detained by CPD, reprimanding them for attacking a “senior citizen.” Combs is best known as the partner of Bethany Sherman, the disgraced owner of OG Analytical who left town after being outed as a racist by Eugene Antifa.
M.L. Combs
@doxedMLC
these #antifa from Corvallis jumped my friend @GenocideJimmy last night and he was hospitalized as a result:https://tinyurl.com/albert-grigorov https://tinyurl.com/ralph-bolger https://tinyurl.com/conor-butler https://tinyurl.com/noah-orduna
please RT to make them all extra popular
4:54 AM - Dec 19, 2018
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co.benton.or.us
72 people are talking about this
Combs’ Tweet thread went on to launch transphobic statements about those who were detained by CPD.
Although many news outlets ran stories about Marr being hospitalized, a truly fake news website called The Goldwater ran the story supporting Marr’s side.
The site is labeled as an extreme right wing and conspiracy news website according to Media Bias/Fact Check.
The site’s story calls Marr “an elderly man” and frames the story as an attack on the elderly. It describes those who confronted Marr as “Antifa” thugs and lists each of their residences, embedding directions via Google Maps.
The story adds that Marr is someone who is attacked by groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) just “for simply noticing too much.” Because of this unnecessary attention, groups like SPLC should share the blame in Marr’s hospitalization, it argues.
Marr’s visit to Corvallis was prefaced with a rather threatening Tweet sent in support of James Fields, who was recently found guilty for driving his car into a crowd of demonstrators, killing Heather Heyer.
Jimmy Marr
@GenocideJimmy
If, like James Fields, you find your car surrounded by a murderous, anti-White mob do not try to escape, try to maximize your body count because as we have seen, the penalty is going to be the same either way.
93
3:02 PM - Dec 8, 2018
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38 people are talking about this
The Twitterverse came back at Marr after the Corvallis incident, mocking him soundly with comments such as “get worse soon motherfucker” and “Give him some weed to ease his pain, oh wait you lost your weed store LMAO. guess he will have to settle for a Hitler cake. I’m gonna go celebrate his “medical event” with a beer, and this koozie. Fuck Jimmy Marr.”
Posted by DanielS on Tuesday, 18 December 2018 06:00.
Occidental Dissent, “Yellow Vests Protest UN Migration Pact In Belgium”, 16 Dec 2018:
I’m starting to think The New York Times was engaging in some wishful thinking about the Yellow Vests movement losing steam. The action has shifted to Belgium:
Sotiri Dimpinoudis @sotiridi Dec 16
#Update: Already 1000 people gathered to protest in #Brussels against the #UN Migration Pact of #Marrakech! More Trains and Cars are expected to arrive in the #Belgian capital!
Céderic@Cederic_V
#Brussels #Belgium approximately 5.500 protesters march against #Marrakech without violence.
Riots broke out AFTERWARDS and should not be associated with the march.
3:04 PM - Dec 16, 2018
Oom Ashii@AshiiK11
Chaos in EU’s capital #Brussels.
Massive protests have erupted in Brussels against adoption of #UNMigrationCompact. Signing of this compact means Belgium has been sold to Globalists.
Protestors have been beaten and arrested.
more of the same
DECEMBER 17, 2018 AT 9:16 AM
UN Migration Pact: The Final Solution to The White Problem. I can’t imagine why there’s been so little MSM coverage about it. Yellow Vests are zeroing in on what really matters.
Sotiri Dimpinoudis@sotiridi
Replying to @sotiridi
#Breaking: Protestors are smashing every window of the European Commission building they can see in their path! To protest against the #UN Migration Pact of #Marrakech in #Belgium!
2:19 PM - Dec 16, 2018
#Update: Picture of the European Commission building in the European district “#Schumanplein” in #Brussels Surrounded by Tear-Gas cloud! To protest against the #UN Migration Pact of #Marrakech in #Belgium!
Sotiri Dimpinoudis
@sotiridi
Replying to @sotiridi
2:20 PM - Dec 16, 2018
Posted by DanielS on Sunday, 16 December 2018 13:39.
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.
Posted by DanielS on Saturday, 08 December 2018 14:02.
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.
Not doing this for free.
Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is part of a group of Congress members pushing for a Green New Deal. (Charles Krupa / AP Photo)
