Labels, Labels, Everywhere!

          Labels, we all seem to love to identify, classify, organize, like collectively we are OCD. We make all sorts of systems to enable us to make connections, to make sure everything is as it should be.  Should is of course a key word, as it points to a trap of perspective. We look out on the world seemingly from a point of isolation, we categorize, included, or exclude based on a framework we rarely if ever question.  The very notion we are human is a boarder, a boundary, it isolates us from feeling a sense of connection to the world we inhabit.  As we have self identified as being different, or other, we have become exactly that.  If I am Jack, and you are not Jack, there is no choice for me but treat you as less important than Jack.  When self is identified as merely a differentiated portion of a greater tapestry, a thread in a fabric the universe, multiverse, god, whatever label works for you. At this point, other becomes self, self becomes other, with the juxtaposition being merely a trick of perception.  As all of our experience is a trick of perception. from our senses being equivalent to input/output devices.  These are all finely tuned to pick up certain frequency ranges, we are than given the framework to make sense, everything around us informs us of what it is, much like a function call in object oriented programming.  We in turn broadcast what we are, and what we expect everything else to be.
        In some teachings of what has been called the fall. When the angels we driven from heaven, where they were driven to was the abyss, the chaos or all potential. Kinda what we think of as space, that perfect balance on the Planck scale that we witness as empty.  Into this nothing, the hierarchy of angels imposed order, bringing into form worlds for themselves to inhabit. Our world is just one of many, The impressing of form on formless is a recurring theme in every tradition, crossing into fundamentals of physics. At the core these are attempting to explain what is essentially a tendency, much like the morphogenic fields expressed in the ideas of Sheldrake. Does this mean we can make up whatever want, mold, and shape as we see fit. In a way yes, in other ways no, it sets up a feedback loop. Where we are created, and creator, our own acceptance of there being other gives the other the power to imprint their conception of us, and how we exist in relation to their conception of self.  As we see the world is how the world presents itself to us, as we are incapable of seeing in any other way.

We make it up as we go along, and cling to it like it's our life raft, some to the point of violent reaction to anything that might alter a world view. We seem to continually look for an out, a way to keep our self importance, our place as the center of all creation, I am the center of my own universe, in that way I am the center of all things, everything radiates out from me, I shape by, and in return am shaped by all things.  I've often said I am as I am because no one else was willing to be me, an odd notion, but not far from the truth. The people around me push me into being portions of self they know exist but are unwilling to express for themselves, for what ever reason.  It does not make me anything of these things, except in relation to that which perceives me as such. What the I is that seems to lurk in, around and through me, you and everything. Well that you have to come to on your own, in your own way. My way is very personal, tied to metaphor, and the logic of chaos, coupled to life long exposure to the logic externalized, to become cold, crunching big data in quantum environment where space/time/energy functions of each other. Be aware, or be awareness itself, devoid of attachment to that observed. The world becomes a much different place.

Jack
aka
PanseyBard    

Warden Cliff explained, Power Generation made simple.

      There are several posts rattling around me, when they stack up like this, they become insistent to be recorded. Almost as if they have concerns with being forgotten, an odd notion when applied to ideas.  So because of that, they are going to come out raw, as they are coming to me, in the flow of moment. The idea speaking through me as it is able to, so that it is reflected as to how I understand it, not a certain limitation of, or insistence on completeness, or even that I am right.
     Many know of the Name Tesla, at least a bit, perhaps even having heard of a Tesla coil. While I have entertained great ideas using coils and the like to set up effective perpetual motion, with no violation of entropy.  The key in that being effective, if the earth stops spinning, we either die, or won't be here in our current form.  While this toroidal shapes, are great, they make complex what is one of the simplest things possible. Giving shape, to create a pathway to guide flow of substance. In other words, create a differential in energy potential, and than exploit it. Or recognize where, and when those already occur, and place your self to take advantage of them.
     The earth is a giant electric dynamo, a huge electric motor, with the creation of electromagnetic fields that go along.  We exist within and between these fields, they have been called many things, from dragon lines, to lay lines, to the meridians of the earth. The names change, the name of the study of them changes. There is an above, and below aspect, with one grid being roughly 60 feet above the earth, and one 60 feet below.  What Tesla was up to, was exploiting this, he put collectors, than created the path of least resistance, to a point on the earths surface. Setting up essentially an huge ac capacitor. This would fire on it's own timing, once you have this you can change the frequency. He was pumping it into the ground, to piggy back on the Schumann resonance in order to provide free electricity for anyone, anywhere, with just sticking a stake into the ground, using what is needed, and grounding the excess back into the earth.  There is much more information on this particular subject, but for me, the important part is the understanding of creating essentially a pressure difference, and exploiting it for power generation.  With the rise of slow release capacitors, it is now possible to take the flash of solar energy at sunrise, and set, where our panels are normally getting over charged with lots of waste. Quick charge the slow release capacitors, and slowly use that charge through the day, or night to steadily charge the system.
    I have a few projects of what is through of as free energy generation, though it's really just self energy generation, which has become frowned upon in the US.

off for now
Jack
aka
PanseyBard 

Do You Have What It Takes!!!! A Love Letter to Humanity

     Humanity vrs Death

This has been the age old question, to conquer the end.  We all face it, we all find our own answers, and we think we have it all figured out.  When your world is black and white, or written in binary this might satisfy.  Like everything else we are, this is just a holdover from previous developmental cycles.  These go back not to when we had words for me to write this down, but back to primordial ooze of single celled organisms.  The universe or God, or as it's coalescing into my essence as panversal is in and of itself conscious, it is structured energy, which is what everything is. Information processing.  As every would be sage, poet, musician, blade of grass, and grain of sand has been telling us forever.  This is a love story, this is a passion play, the stories do not even change, they get rebranded, updated, but for at least the last 6 thousand years we have all learned variations of these same stories.  Oh the names change, characters get makeovers, and  costume changes,  But from the Chinese dragon emperor's, to the Dogon's of the Sahara, the Aboriginals of Australia, down the lines it goes, not in one place but in them all.  We came from the stars, that concept has been twisted around to mean so many things to so many people, from the ubermensch of the aldebaran to Pharaonic gods of Egypt, Right on back to the what we are told is our earliest civilizations in Sumer, and I'm not here to today argue that point.  I do not care when, or where, or actually even who.  I'm a big picture person, I do really well at taking a dispassionate stance and getting as wide a view as possible calling it like I see it.  A valuable skill if you can find work for it, most of my friends just say I think to much, and they are sometimes right.  In taking that position expansive view point, the patterns just kinda pop out, like the rivers in this text if you let your eyes unfocus, and just like that, the information you get from the text is not the same, and that view is not even on whole thought of as particularly useful.  The people are interested in the words, not the rivers, so I learned to see the words like everyone else around me did, only they didn't seem to say the same thing to me as to everyone else.  As a matter of fact they said the same as the rivers, and they were almost all saying the same things.  Even when they seemed disjointed, or unrelated the same words were always there.

From the ecstatic altered state inducing dances of the Whirling  Dervishes, or Tantric sex practices, Yoga, and Breathing techniques, in joyous upliftment of the celebration of life.  On down into the depths of despair, and  tragedy, and depravity.  They all contain at there core I am alive, I am here, shouting into the darkness, longing for or hoping against that return response.  I'm here I see you! This is the most wonderfully terrifying moment for all of us, and in our polarized, 2 dimensional world view of dark versus light we have left room for only 2 options.  Some say it's love/hate, some fight/flight, it doesn't matter what the choices are labeled as, the important part is the limiting of choice.  It's the offer of false simplicity, and simple is easy, and comforting, even at it's worst it's at least predictable. I mean if I only have 2 choices, there is always a 50% chance I'm right.  This is very useful in long term evolution of life. Kill or be killed is valid for much of what we think of as life. The response of nature is always the same, no matter the method used to carry it out, the answer for nature is always, I want to survive.  The fox is in hen house to eat to survive, and we made it nice lunch box, and then killed it when it came to collect the meals we so kindly laid out for it.  We penned in the range animals, and kept all the goodness of their flesh to ourselves. We killed the wolves not because they ate people, like dogs around the food bowl we chased off our rivals.  This existential crisis of just the struggle to survive molded us and shaped us into the most successful predator on the planet bar none.  That being on the top of the food chain looking down on all the lesser species is pretty nice spot, it's good to be the king no doubt.  Being at the top, and staying at the top are not the same, and getting to top means your not what you were when you started.  We celebrate our predatory nature everywhere, from world wars to gold diggers, from pirates to emperors.  The monuments to our depravity know no bounds, from triumphal arches to tombs we proclaim our divine heritage of immortality.  All in the confused attempt to be remembered, to live on, to proclaim our own mastery over all we survey.  This is where our delusions of grandeur really kick in,  We start to believe our own hype, and our success translates into leisure time as we have come to call it.  This is the true mark of a successful predator, how little time they spend on survival. For those fortunate few at the top of the food chain, it's everywhere, this new found leisure time allows for reflection.  Not just to plan the next meal, but more abstract, things not so immediate in the world currently inhabited find the space to become known.  A shift starts to occur, to manage your food, because lets face it, your not as young as you were last year, and well how many times can you chase a rabbit till the thrill gets old.  So we take the tasty stuff, and shape it, bend it to our will, protect it from those who would take it, you know normal human stuff.  At this point we already won, we have no natural predator to contend with, nothing to keep our expansion in check.  As predators though we are ever vigilant, lest some scavenger steal our kill, if we lack a predator we make one up, when we run out decent prey, we move on looking for new places to hunt.  With nothing else left to do we even hunt each other, oh we give it all sorts of reasons, but it always come down to the 2 choices we decided were the only ones we have.  We do it because we want what they have, or we are afraid they will take whats ours.  Having nothing else to contend with, having effectively already won the struggle for day to day survival, ensuring our genetic heritage is continued.  We have time to place ourselves in the cosmic fun house, and the picture is as majestic as it horrifying.  This is when we begin to get that glimpse of our next existential crisis. Having conquered death in an immediate fashion, it becomes a personal struggle, the, but what about me's kick in.  We know our blood will be flowing and pumping even if it's through anothers veins, but still it isn't enough.  The I is screaming in terror, what happens to me, I did all this work to get here, and I'm still going to die. After fighting death for so long, we begin a new battle, now we are after time.  How many years can you cling to life becomes the new game, and being predators we play it with gusto.  In the time game anything not you becomes a greater threat the longer it hangs around,  just like an infection setting in, or how food rots, we start to learn with profound shock, if your not living, your dying.  Or a bit more accurately, when you stop growing, you start dying, even closer, if your not expanding your contracting.  This of course is still only a 2 choice idea, it's still locks us into an illusion of choice.  If the battle is life and death, and answer shouted by everything is always life how do we reconcile this dichotomy.  How can we celebrate the victor in the arena when he dripping in the blood, sweat, and feces of his opponent.  How do we tell our children, that it's not ok to hurt others, and when we decide they are no longer children shove a gun in their hand and tell them to kill their neighbor, or be killed.  No death is not our boogeyman any more, we coax, and torture nature to provide not what we need, or even what we reasonably desire.  We squeeze the golden goose till it bleeds gold, till it's lushest oziest parts are dripping down our chin, staining our silk tie, cotton shirt, lizard skin belt, leather pants, and fur trimmed alligator boots till we puke.  We squeeze the last drop, fish the oceans dry, not out of need, for our needs are modest, we do it because we have been offered no other options.  Consume, or be consumed.  Once our opponents are long dusty, and our glory is fading we miss the good old simpler days, those we overcame taking on status in the telling of our own stories.  Yes we carry our demons with us, and with every passing year they become larger, and our deeds in over coming them more heroic.  We Proclaim it to all Money doesn't grow on trees you know, and the giving tree withers it's leaves stripped bear, it's bark yanked free, it's flesh made pulp and reconstituted so we can make some pretty pictures on it, and call it ours.  I don't hate money, money is an idea, and in the realm of ideas I swim with the sharks.  I've been exposed to the trivium, and quadrivium, pi, phi, and even the Harris curve, our newest choice of curves, a new path to follow, a new star before our eyes.  We build our temples to our creators, where babies cries are shunned. We rip our ugly growths from our own flesh, and call it cancer, and deny it's attachment to our emotions.  Oh make no mistake we have damned ourselves for sure, for in our process of becoming, we have to live with what we've done. This is our state of terror, our splash of liquid light, our stairway to heaven, and highway to hell. Dharma, Karma, Sin, our triplets of story, our mistresses of fate.  Weighing our heart against perfection, the living can not pass, for the living sit in judgment, while the dead just watch it pass. The living write the story down, building, destroying, crafting. Deluding themselves all the while, with pretty little dreams, of I can do no harm.  We label ourselves dogs, and wolves, black widows, snakes, bears and list goes on and on, than we wonder why we kill.  Our own sophistication has become our trap de jour, and I'm crazy enough to be handing out peter pan advice. In our marvel of our own magnificence our march to greater contrast, our rush to ever bigger, bolder, badder.  We circle our wagons, lock down the prison, close the bathroom door, all because we can't stand the smell of our own shit.  I've been eating shit my whole life, there is no possible way for me to deny it, I gave my top teeth eating the shit put in front of me, oh it's lies were so sweet.  The numbing of the mind, of the soul, of the heart, that sweet oblivion of nothingness to take away the anguish of being a pimp or ho.  I'm so tired of eating shit for being me, for seeing things I see, I will always chose my truth over your lies, I have to, it's the only way I can live, and die with myself.

Life eats Life, it's all there is, when you make it all one, we end up eating our own shit, you might think me mad, and that is fine we are all mad here, that is not in question.  The question we are asking is can we live with ourselves, for eating ourselves.  Meat is Murder, and it's all sucking off someone elses tit, we all know these things, they are not new or novel. Don't believe me, well take a look at these. shit burger  it doesn't even matter if it's a hoax, or fact, that it's there.  That we have become so pained by where meat comes from that people have even contemplated this rings alarm bells.  If thats not your speed how about this.

    That is adorable little girl is Taylor Momsen, in the Grinch, many of you know here from a tv show she did that I don't recall. Some know now, as the lead singer of The Pretty Reckless.  For much of America she grew up on their tv screens, I missed that part as I was absorbing myself in other worlds to escape the pain of lying in my bed. While I was distracted by the glitter of the lights in the distance, She went from singing 

Fahoo Fores Dahoo Dores
Welcome Christmas Come this way
Fahoo Fores Dahoo Dores
Welcome Christmas, Christmas day
Welcome, welcome fahoo ramus
Welcome, welcome dahoo damus
Christmas day is in our grasp,
So long as we have hands to clasp

More lyrics http://www.allthelyrics.com/lyrics/dr_seuss/welcome_christmas-lyrics-1146415.html#ixzz3U6AtBZ30

To a lovely young woman who's words I hear on many lips, from many tongues.  Thank you Ms. Momsen, while I do not really do the fan thing, I see you, and your beautiful to me.  This is the price of our denial of nature, this bitter pill is our salvation. In our death spiral of guilt, over all our perceived failures, our pitfalls of loss, we finally give up the ghost. Not because we have to die, because we no longer can take the pain of being alive, and what we have to do to stay that way.

The world devours it's young, Because we like sweets, and babies taste best. It doesn't matter how twisted the appetite. The old say youth is wasted on the young, while the young scream never trust anyone over 30.  The age old struggle, the old lion wants to keep his pride, while the young just wants a piece of tail.  The widow ate her suitor after he dropped of his seed, not from grief hatred or malice, she knows he'll eat the young, cuz it's good to be the king, But not when there can only be one.

I love you all, it's just a matter if you can accept the only love I know how give, cuz its a jagged little pill.

listen to the music, not just the beat, pay attention to the story, it's your soul speaking

Make up your own mind

Jack

aka

panseybard

 

Can I Borrow a Ray of Sunshine?

               Holidays For Sale Sentiment Half Off!

In case you haven't figured it out, this will be about emotional transference.  A fancy way of saying emotions about one thing or person, put on another thing or person.  This happens so often, and usually without our being aware we have done it.  Sometimes it's a natural response to repeated experience. Like when a dog beaten by a person in uniform starts barking whenever a person in uniform is around.  This is the same process at play in learning fire burns, you transfer that

experience onto another experience, and avoid the pain.  So far so good, but when you start to proactively use that understanding you get some very creative, if morally questionable results. 

What does this have to do with holidays you might ask?  Well so far I've talked about examples of negative transference, but what about positive.  That is where the holidays come in, when you see a brand use a holiday on the packaging, advertising, and marketing campaigns they are banking on at least some of those pleasant feelings you have will slide on over to them.  Taken to the extreme and you get the diamond market, this might be the most classic marketing example, and one of my personal favorites.  I say favorite with all sarcasm, but the it is amazing, that people were able to take an artificially scarce stone.  Then so completely attach it's value to symbolic for the love between a man and woman.  On top of that, make it a virtually mandatory expense as a part of the marriage rites.  Even people that have read, and already know the scam will turn around a few minutes later, and fall right back under the spell.  

                    Is that Love or Emotional Hijacking?

On a much more intimate and personal level, this same idea started to be taught, with various titles from art of seduction, to the pick up artist.  To be clear, from my perspective there is no way to morally use this kinda of information in this way.  The reason I feel this is simple, it is the same process that happens naturally and honestly when people develop a love relationship. So when someone understands how these work, they no longer work, and if they do work than your being deceptive.

      When two people meet, and the attraction is honest and genuine there is the natural desire to learn everything you can about the other person.  Usually at least early on, the other person is more interesting than we are ourselves.  This real desire to put another before self sets up automatic transference.  When the other person is so rapt in attention to your thoughts, and emotions, it's very easy to see your own feelings reflected back.  This back and forth is the investment of your own emotions into the other, it's the trick of love, that isn't a trick at all till we make it one.

       That is the problem I have in teaching this information as a means of what amounts to conquest. It turns what was one of the most wondrous experiences people can share, and turns it into sales, and

marketing of the most insidious fashion.  When people are taught to use psychological tricks on each other real time, we are on shaky ground.  I am going to single out males because this is primarily being taught to males, with reasons that might be as twisted and messed up as the teaching of it. So if a male with this understanding puts into practice it's not about love, it's about sex.  It is not about the individual woman it is being used on, point of fact it is going to become a numbers game.  So our guy understanding transference, basicly trolls the room, picking out as many possible females to start working.  When a likely prey reveals itself, it's time to move in, separate them from the herd, this is an important step, much easier to work past the defenses of one person, than a group of people.  Once in isolation, the man in question does everything possible to say nothing. The fewer words our fellow says the more likely he is to accomplish his goal.  As I said this is a numbers game, and by the numbers women are far more forgiving as to physical traits than men. Generally it's not the looks of a man that decides if a he is an acceptable mate.  So for our guy, he is not as much working to get her to desire him, as he is trying to not do something stupid to eliminate himself.  This is not as tough as it might seem, being attentive is the foundation.  All it takes is get her to talk about her passions, and lets face it we all like to talk about the things we love.  At this point it's done, the feelings, and passions will be transferred onto our Guy, and all he needs to do is not break the spell.  That is my problem with it, our guy is being taught to be dishonest in order to fulfil natural physical drives we all share. There are no winners in this approach.

            To Worship False Idols

There is much trepidation in the writing and posting of this section, with a great temptation to just leave it off.  Even most that have been right with me so far will recoil from what I am about to write as having already lambasted love, I'm about to slap religion around a bit as well.  Before I do so, I want to again state, this not intended as an offence or attack on anyone or organization.  There are wonders, and horrors to be found in everything.  If for whatever reason you find these ideas over the line, stop reading, label me crazy, and go on with your life.  I won't be offended, or hurt, and neither will you.

    At their core all our religious, and societal structures have through out history strove to do one thing. Unite and focus the energy of a group of people, that are by nature individualistic and resistant to homogenization.  Think of the idea of trying to herd cats, or how wilful toddlers can be, and you have the concept I'm going for.  To accomplish this, they use the idea of dedication to something larger than self.  Secular or Faith based does not matter the outcome is a ideology, with all the trappings positive and negative. So we can have secular saints, zealots of atheism, and holy wars. These are all done the same way, a process almost of deification that is seemingly well understood, and has been for countless ages.  If you haven't figured it out already, I'm talking about how worship

works, how we interact with divinity.  In crafting our ceremonies, rituals, rallies, what have you, there is purpose. The purpose is always the same, to guide the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, to an end.  No matter the end, for good or ill, the dynamics involved are the same, predictable, and exploitable.  Just take a look at the people who have changed the world, they understood theater very well.  Even a historic figure as reviled as  Hitler is known to have trained in oratory skills, his rallies finely tuned works of theater to weave an emotional trance state in the attendees.  A group hypnosis, where the voice of the rational mind is drowned out by the emotional attachments being manipulated.
I know we all like to think we are strong willed individuals that would never get swept up by the sentiments of the crowd.  The truth is the desire to give up our self into the care of something larger than yourself is seemingly fundamental to our make up.  We want to believe, and often so badly we fool ourselves, or make excuses.  Even religion, it has nothing to do with God, it is the exploitation of our own fear of mortality.  If there is a religion that is actually focused on God, and not on man I have yet to become aware of it.  Being human centric they concern themselves with how divinity can assist humans, or what the plan of divinity is for humanity.  They exploit some fairly basic psychological truths, not a one of us can ever live up to our own vision of perfection. So we will always see ourselves as horribly flawed, even when our external response is to project perfection. That the unknown is both exciting and terrifying, something we always want to glimpse, but not get any on us.  The trifecta for religion is an comforting partial truth or outright lie on the fate of those we have lost.  You ever stop to wonder how odd it is to have an intermediary to the ineffable, the unknowable.


in closing there is love enough for everyone, more than we can bear, and if the sun ever stops shining it's love upon us, by the time we realize it, we will already be dead.

as always make up your mind.
Jack
aka
PanseyBard 

   

Beware the Bail In

                 Back to the Spawning Grounds

Going to attempt to keep this brief, much of this I have covered before, though not from this particular angle.  Quickly to give a basic overview of why bail in's are certain to lie ahead, and will be coming to a bank near you.  Our monetary, or currency system can be likened to a pyramid structure.  Though an easier representation is monopoly, unrestrained capitalism is like a monopoly game.  Someone eventually wins, they take control, and ownership of so much, that the game freezes, no money is able to move around.  As anyone who has played monopoly knows, when this happens the game is over, someone won, and everyone else lost.  The pieces go back in the box, and everyone including the winner has to find something else to do.  In america this was well known, and up till recent time regulations were in place to make sure no one could win the game.  You could get ahead of the other players, but a cap was put on how far ahead an individual or group was allowed to get. This was not done to punish the rich, it's to ensure the system continues to function as a whole.  It ensured that if a person reached the top they either stop playing, and just maintain, or fall back into the herd, or they work to close the gap between the bottom and the top. Even if it is purely selfish motivation of coveting personal wealth.

                       The Injection Deception

Make no mistake, taxes are wealth redistribution.  Yes we pay taxes ostensibly to pay for public services, and public works projects.  You've likely heard the phrase "time is money", if we use that as a lens to understand taxes, why the highest tax brackets were hit with the highest percentage of tax burden for so long.   Most people have a job, they trade time directly for money, this is the idea of wages.  When you are in a job earning wages, the taxes you pay, can be seen as giving a portion of your time to the state every year.  So in simple terms if you pay 10% of your wages for a year, you spent 10% of your time laboring for government.  Almost like the idea of 36 days, and work for the government for nothing.  So far so good, we all like having nice public services. Like good schools, parks, water, roads, all the obvious things we all use and share.  The issues with this begin to show when a person stops trading time for money, and instead trades someone elses time for money.  This is the idea of income,  it does not have to be exploitive, though when the difference is between wages, and income are forgotten it certainly will be. When you pay rent, or a mortgage any kind of loan, and you are paying it with wages, you can consider the time spent to earn that money as spent working for that person.  As is more then likely apparent to most, you can not physically be in more than one place at the same time, your limited to working one job at a time.  This is not the case for income, in income you can be working all over, all the time, no matter what you are physically doing.

       What does this have to do with you, bail in's, and how close they might be?

Stay with me just a bit longer and it will be clear. If capitalism is like a giant monopoly game, and all monopoly games end the same way, than the governments job in managing a capitalist economy is to make sure no one actually wins.  That is the only way the economy can keep going, if to much money is allowed to be owned by any one player the economy stops.  That is where the taxes come into play, before the reforms in the 80's there was a 75% tax bracket.  This meant that if someone started making so much money that it would hurt the economy, the government would step in and take most of it, and redistribute it  back in the game.  This type of taxation, where the highest earners pay the highest %, is part of the balance to keep the game from ending.  In this set up, the government uses the taxes to provide basic services for everyone, and when it is needed. The government stimulates the economy, by taking money from the rich, and giving it to the poor.  Not in handouts, and welfare, but in public works projects.  It puts them to work, with the rich peoples money, to make new things for everyone to use.  Once the % of earnings paid in taxes inverted with the top earners paying a smaller % than the middle, and low earners. You start cutting off the flow of money to the poorest, and most vulnerable first, though all are eventually affected.  The government ends up taking from the bottom, and middle, and directly handing it to the top.  We saw this in the 2008 event, what followed is exactly what honest economic models predict.  The interest rates, and what normally thought of as safe haven or hedge assets are kept artificially low.  Money printing starts, and stays going non stop, money pours into speculative markets, instead of working it's way through the economy.  This is what measured in currency velocity, it measures how fast money moves through the economy. Along with this comes the high numbers of unemployed, or underemployed.  Though this has been hidden in changing how unemployment is calculated, all you need to do is watch labor participation rates, as more and more are forced out of the system entirely.  As this continues, those that understand how the system works begin to see they are going to lose everything when the system crashes.  They can pull out, or give away most of their money, or lose all of it.  Many of the top earners are doing just that, pulling out, or suggesting the billionaires give away half their money.  George Soros are among the pull out crowd, with Buffet, and Gates in the give away camp.  Both of these are selfishly motivated, do not kid yourself into thinking a multi billionaire giving away large sums of money is kindness.  When Buffet says it's a problem he pays a lower tax % than his secretary it's because he is being altruistic. He understands that if that continues eventually he won't have a secretary at all.  These are the QE money injections, they only kick the can down the road a little bit, till you create so much debt that everyone starts to panic, before that is allowed to happen, they will take currency out of the system.  This is the bail in, it's purpose is to keep a lid on the panic of hyper inflation, I can't say when, only that it will happen, the law to allow it was in the last budget.  

Your Children, Your Choice

               Peter the Pirate

Many of you would most likely see me as suffering from a peter pan complex, and that might be one of the kinder labels tossed in my direction.  While I do not argue the label, there is the inclination to challenge the validity of the mainstream concept of an adult.  Most in making the judgement are not questioning my intelligence, maturity, or understanding.  Often it's quite the opposite, with my analysis, and understanding being valued, and sought.  The seeming disconnect happens from my perspective in large part due to how people define an adult.  So what makes a well adjusted adult human?  Is it being able to conform and fit in, becoming a "successful contributing member of society"?  To a degree this would seem an obvious answer, how could one argue with being a success?  What happens when a culture is sick, is it still the rational choice to become what that culture covets?  This is of course the idea, that being considered sane in an insane society is not a measure of psychological health.  Take a little stroll with me, and maybe, just maybe, you'll find a little bit of the Pan you once were.

                Institutionalized

In the west we are so proud of our institutions, be they educational, financial, religious, the list goes on and on.  We leave off the flip side, prisons, mental hospitals, we do this because in general people have been taught to see the world in terms of polarity.  This of course ignores the fact, these are opposames masquerading as opposites, with the outcome of being institutionalized.

  : to cause (a custom, practice, law, etc.) to become accepted and used by many people : to establish (something) as an institution

: to put (someone, such as a mentally ill person) in an institution

These are connotations of pavlovian conditioning, not education, or child development. Taken to it's extreme the goal of an institution is to become indispensable, and condition those in it to become unable to function without it.  There is ample evidence this has been intentional, of course labeled as conspiracy theory.  Frankly that it has gotten that most dismissive of labels only warrants closer inspection.  Take moment, and look for yourself, Dodd Report, deliberate dumbing down,

or even though I'm leary of Alex Jones. Our much vaunted education system was hijacked long ago to keep a fresh supply of human capital ready for exploitation by the corporate institutions.  We want to believe so badly in basic beneficence of our culture, that we ignore some basic facts.  Entrenched systems of power seek to protect their position. Our leaders are selected from, and by these same institutions.  People say they wish only happiness for their children, or they wish for their child to be the best them they can be. Than they package them off to be institutionalized so they can find their place in society.

              Taking Candy from the Mouths of Babies Mama's

Marketing and Consumerism go hand in glove, like peanut butter, and jelly, and damn have we gotten good at it.  I have no doubt even Edward Bernays would be amazed by the level of sophistication our propaganda has risen to.  I call it propaganda because that is exactly what it is, structuring information to create a desired outcome.  In this case parting someone from some currency in exchange for a product, or service.  As corrupt and shortsighted as this economic model might be on the whole. When directed at children, it might just be a crime against humanity.  An extreme statement to be sure, but one that is not very difficult to back up.  Critical reasoning skills are needed in order to counter the automatic psychological processes exploited by advertisers.  Child development, and psychology experts are employed by organizations who have as their motivation profit. These folks use all their skill and understanding, not to enrich the life of your child.  Nah it's used to know how to make advertising that gets your child to ask for the product in as few as views as possible.  So what you say, my 5 year old does not make the buying decisions in my household.  Only our experts on conditioning have that all worked out as well.  We all have a surrender point, where we will agree to almost anything if only to make something stop.  If you think this is something exploited only in interrogation, just think back to how many times you have caved to repeated pestering by your child.  This is so well understood, even the big media creation outlets, such as disney, or nickelodeon have a nice predictable path set out for your childs idols.  Introducing the faces they will grow up watching, engendering a sense of connection and trust.  Using techniques as having the stars be just older than the audience, exploiting that natural tendency of looking up to those ahead of you.  Transitioning actors with a generation, so as a group ages there is a continuity, and trust is deepened. This is even taken to the point of switching from childrens tv shows to music seemingly just as your teen has seeming grown headphones.  In this obvious industrialized exploitation, and abuse of our young, it's unclear to me what is more disturbing.  That it's happening at all, or that those who are supposed experts on child development, and psychology have raised no moral objections.    

    Judged by Our Hero's

There is a metric often used to understand the health of a culture, as well as where in the development cycle a civilization is.  Who, and what are held in esteem shift as a civilization goes through it's life cycle. When a culture goes into decline, false or trivial accomplishment are celebrated beyond reason.

Activities that while they may have value, like sports, music, acting, cooking. Become blown to a status usually reserved for royalty.  People that once would have considered a liability regardless of a skill or talent become held as idols.  Style trumps substance, as leaders, and people stop asking is it right, in favor of is it legal, or can I get away with it.  You'd like to imagine we are unique, the greatest nation, of the greatest people to ever grace the earth.  While we do have unique traits, these stages of empire have happened for as long as there have been empires.  The United States of today have far more than the eagle in common with the Roman empire.  Ask yourself how many household names do we have today, that are just famous.  They are not famous for doing anything, they are just famous for being rich, or outrageous.  So while some jump on folks like Charles Barkley for saying he is not a role model, I applaud.  Mr Barkley may be many things, even may be a good role model, but if he is, it has nothing to do with how well he did on the basketball court.

As always make up your own mind

Jack

aka

PanseyBard

Did Christianity Foster the Jewish Banker Stereotype?

               It's all in The Numbers

The Jewish Banker stereotype myth, and the perceived link between money lenders and changers and Judaism is as pervasive as it is seemingly unquestioned.  Of course being religiously linked, you do not have look beyond religious traditions, and dogma to notice where and why.  For right or wrong, and with great misunderstanding of traditions, the very foundations of Christianity paint the Jewish faith as having been corrupted by the money lenders.  Jesus as acknowledged by many works was a rebel, a reformer, or a conservative.  He was devout in his faith, and from his perspective felt the Temple had strayed from the true teachings, and his mission was to restore it.  This is poignantly shown in the money lenders in the Temple story.  In order to paint the picture we need to understand this is not a secular community.  Faith does not just guide what most modern western culture would label as "spiritual" aspects of life.  This is a state based on a Faith, which of course means, the faith governs all aspects, from the most mundane to the most exalted.  That is where the Shemitah needs to be understood.  This essentially governs economic, and production, but it also covers debt remittance between the people.  This idea of economic reset, would have been quite important to member of the house David.  Recorded are many ways in antiquity and modern times of man using clever wording to work around the Shemitah. An example of this would be the creation of a trust to transfer ownership of land to a non-jew for the year, so it can continue to be worked.  Also the use hydroponic greenhouses as they are not in the soil.  The cycles outlined, are in no way random, they show an understanding of compounding interest most lack today.

               Usury The Golden Ticket

 In the pre christian cradle of modern western civilization had it's own ideas on interest. Ranging from an outright condemnation as being against nature by Plato, and Aristotle. To the Greek and Roman laws regulating interest rates on loans.  The early Christian church in the 3rd and 4th centuries already banned interest on loans made by clerics, with some speculation it was already condemned if not banned for laypersons.  By the 11th and 12th centuries charging interest at all was considered a sin.  For those of Jewish faith the church had made different rules, which even by the 1100's allowed for reasonable interest to be charged.  A ban does not eliminate the desire, or need, we have been shown this in modern times with prohibition.  For Jews in the Christian controlled west, The position of money lender, or changer become inadvertently one they could uniquely fill.  This was at a time when Jews in the west were subject to much discrimination, and barred from practicing many professions.  Not until the 1800's does the Holy See acknowledge it as legitimate to charge interest on loans, as well as exact penalties for the failure to live up to the obligations of a loan. As I have discussed often one of the prime motivations for the American Revolution as stated by Franklin was interest on currency creation being charged by the Bank of England.  So for hundreds of years those of Jewish faith were not just allowed, but encouraged to take up a profession regarded as a sin. By the middle 1500's the portrayal of the greedy Jew demanding unreasonable terms is clearly in evidence in works such as The Merchant of Venice.  What had been set up was an exclusive right to the financial services sector of much of early Christian europe. While it being transactions between Jew and Gentile exempted it from the restrictions that apply to transactions between Jew's.

               Distorted into the Modern ERA

Most of this historical basis is before the advent of modern systemically problematic practices such as fiat currency, and fractional reserve banking.  That the modern opposition to world financial structures condem.  Could it be this distortion of history is in part to blame for one of the modern worlds worst crimes against humanity?  If I am honest, these is great discomfort in presenting these links of history, but feel it would be remiss to not at least raise the question.  When WWII is discussed and the how the nazi's came to power the changes in economic policy are largely glossed over or ignored completely. Being rightly overshadowed by horror felt at the depth of the atrocities committed.  Others have done much research into how Hitler came to power, and turned the german economy around through privatization, and banking reform along with clever financing.  This brilliance though belonged not to Hitler, but to Hjalmar Schacht who was forced out of the government before the war began due to opposition to rearmament. Jewish influences were used as a scapegoat for the surrender in WWI.  For a disillusioned profoundly disturbed Hitler returning from the front this was just the outlet needed to serve as a focus.  As we still struggle with ideas of stereotyping in the modern world, it might be worth while to be aware a label sticks long after it's reason for being is forgotten.

As always make up your own mind

Jack

aka

PanseyBard

Tomorrow Tech, Yesterday Drives

       Just Entertainment?

We see many articles proclaiming the dangers of mass media, and I am not here to debate the dubious morals, of propaganda, and advertising.  From Control of information, to marketing to children, the list of possible abuses is undeniable.  Weather it's shaping discourse or public opinion, or revisiting some past triumph or tragedy.  Our modern media will churn out any perspective desired, often with contradictory messages.  When we take into account, the trouble we as humans have in determining reality from fantasy.   In modern times the very notion of what entertainment is, and it's purpose has been lost on the majority.  For most it has become a leisure activity, predicated on the cessation of critical reasoning.  A look at the origins of the idea of entertainment reveal it to be a horse of a different color.

entertain (v.) 

late 15c., "to keep up, maintain, to keep (someone) in a certain frame of mind," from Middle French entretenir, from Old French entretenir "hold together, stick together, support" (12c.), from entre- "among" (from Latin inter; see inter-) + tenir "to hold" (from Latin tenere; see tenet).

Sense of "have a guest" is late 15c.; that of "gratify, amuse" is 1620s. Meaning "to allow (something) to consideration, take into the mind" (of opinions, notions, etc.) is 1610s. Related: Entertained; entertaining.

     What Motivates

None can argue our technological advancement is, and has been expanding at rates we can scarcely keep up with.  Much of this acceleration is easy to understand when you grasp the implications of moore's law in the growth of processing power.  A simplified understanding is to think of all the processing power in the world, and think that it has been, and will continue to double roughly every year. The amazing pace of this advancement is often depicted in our media, hints at what lie just around the corner. Sometimes predicting tech that will not be seen for decades, or longer.  With a look at the possible social, and psychological issues related to the projected advancement taking a central role in the unfolding of the story.  Often having such a forward projected view on technological breakthroughs, does not seem to translate to the motivations of characters.  With all this future tech, and depictions of future abundance, the characters quite often would fit in nicely in a greek comedic tragedy. With even some supposedly brilliant people behaving in manors unbecoming in children, let alone in what are supposed to be intelligent adults.  This seemingly complete lack of anything other than academic or technological intelligence. With this in mind I find myself asking the question, is this a reflection, projection, or some mixture.  Are people so emotionally driven that it washes away any semblance of rational behavior?  Emotions are wonderful, but just as logic devoid of emotion comes to differing conclusions, so too do emotions devoid logic.  Six thousand plus years of history according to established thinking, and we still kill over ideas of god, boarders, and pieces of paper. 

Selection vrs Election

       The Democracy Hype

Much has been made of the potential spread of democracy around the world.  The words Pax Americana, can be heard, and might not be far off.  Democracy has become a catch all media buzz word, generally used to justify some manor of intervention. Which likely looks anything but democratic in nature.  As an American I can not deny the obviously selective nature of our desire for other nations to experience the blessings of democratic rule. The examples of support for "friendly" dictatorships by the United States would be laughable if it weren't so hypocritical.  While media outlets tout the overthrow of one regime as a victory for the people, and blow for democracy. Movements in nations with western friendly dictatorships are in large part ignored, and often these governments are receiving aid, or military backing from the US.  Leaving it painfully obvious, that as a nation we are far more concerned with our perceived national self interest than any notions of self determination, or democracy.  In the US we pride ourself on our right to vote, yet how many feel represented? How many even know how our electoral system works?  Democracy is great, one of the most amazing innovations, but like so many things context plays it's role.

     The Choice We Can't See

To serve as an elected public official can be viewed in many ways, an honor, an act of duty, maybe even a burden. The one thing for the public well-being it would best left not thought of is as a career. By the time a candidate is offered for your consideration, they have already been approved by their party, and in the days of money equals speech, the contributors.  It's not really a surprise than to see that often organizations fund both parties equally.  Call it strategic planning, or corporate governance, the effect is undue influence to put it nicely.  If you did notice, there were many on that list that did not fund both sides, which is just as telling.  When you have only two main political parties as entrenched as and pervasive as in the US, they can not be opposites, they can only be opposames. The parties never leave power, they share power, just changing the distribution. We find ourselves in a the role of child being offered choice as a balm for all the no's in our daily existence.

    Factions

 In an absolute government there can be no... equiponderant parties. The despot is the government. His power suppressing all opposition, maintains his ministers firm in their places. What he has contracted, therefore, through them, he has the power to observe with good faith; and he identifies his own honor and faith with that of his nation." --Thomas Jefferson to John Langdon, 1810. ME 12:377

"Warring against [the principles] of the people,... there is no length to which [the delusion of the people] may not be pushed by a party in possession of the revenues and the legal authorities of the United States, for a short time indeed, but yet long enough to admit much particular mischief. There is no event, therefore, however atrocious which may not be expected." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Smith, 1798. (*) ME 10:56   

Now revisit the idea that our parties never leave power, are backed pretty equally by most major corporate entities, in a nation who's currency is owned/controlled by a what amounts to a private bank.  Our two party system with elections, is seeming to offer less and less of real choice.


As always, make up your own mind
Jack
aka
PansyBard

B Movie Plot? or Hidden History?

          That is Just Ridiculous!

     From nazi's on the moon, zombie nazi's, alien nazi's, one might argue nazi's are more popular now than ever. Who can argue, they do make a bad guy not many would be willing to defend.  In the world of political correctness casting hero's and villains can be a minefield.  Enter the nazi's, a group so heinous, and dripping with the style of threat, and menace, and little to no current public representation.  For most the nazi threat disappeared with the conclusion of WWII, or shortly after, the known truth is much more complicated, and uncomfortable.  One that may not yet have been fully written, let alone fully told.  So what might my personal nazi b movie plot look like?

          Jumping the Shark

     Since I'm going for camp, I figure why hold back, something along the lines of  "Rise of the Alien Nazi's", or "White House Nazi", maybe even "Nazi, Slavers, from Outer Space".  The plethora of conspiracy theories combined with the sad twisted history, are so ripe with possibility.  Why not go for the grand overarching take over the world. It can't be true anyway, right?  Not so fast, some of the most outlandish do have at least partial basis in fact.  While it is true there was a public push, and show trial hanging some high ranking nazi's,  many more nazi's simplely reinvented themselves, with the help of various intelligence agencies.  The US had operation paperclip, operation alsos, and project ticom to grab as many nazi assets as possible. ostensibly to  keep them from the soviets. What of the people that were nazi supporters, or sympathizers that were in the US.  As laid out in much research american supporters of fascism, or Fascism Support Hitler US.  Backed up by a historically forgotten coup attempt, involving names almost everyone would recognize today.  Sprinkle with a dash of Tall White's control America, and we really got a fun story of historical intrigue.

        Tall Tale

     How might a rough outline of this fantastical alternate history farce look?  Well how about we take a look.  Likely we'd flash through some real history leading up to and through the war, slowing briefly to highlight some prominent figures.  Leading to a slow revelation of the alien backing of the nazi's, leading the US not to recruit the nazi's to counter the soviets, but initially to oppose the aliens. Cut to the Byrd mission operation highjump played out as a loss, and agreement to work with the Tall Whites.  This new shadow organization initially made up of portions of the intelligence community, and the military industrial complex, guided by the Tall Whites.  This group has no moral guiding compass easily shown through US foreign assassinations, 1960s era of assassination, or CIA drug involvement.  Of course we have to highlight some of our key players, tying our supposed villains to the cause.  A few well placed dramatically sinister scenes with loads of creative license, linking the Bush family as central players, in not just JFK, but all of the 60's removal of opposition, and various nefarious doings.  Being certain to add in social engineering, hippy movement, and ultimate takeover of media ala operation mockingbird. As if this were not enough, we'd also need to breeze through the economic changes.  So now that America has been taken over by alien nazi's, who is our hero?  Well why not just go all the way with our farce, and make The Bush family also be the hero's, protecting the human race from outright enslavement, or elimination at the hands of the Tall Whites.  Perhaps we make a story where the truth is so bad, that even an ugly lie is preferred.

as ever, make up your own damn mind
Jack
aka
PanseyBard

Is it Money?

This is a United States one dollar bill, it has been, and is many things.  If you have lived on planet Earth over the last couple of hundred years, than this piece of paper has affected your life.
If you have grown up in the United State, you have been told a story of how breaking the grip of monarchy has made you free.  Omitted from this narrative has been the story of the dollar, and how the war for it's control, has created invisible shackles of economic entrapment.  While it is beyond the scope to offer a complete historical account in a blog post.  I will instead hit some high points, and show how our collective misunderstanding of money, currency, and economics has left our continued freedom in doubt.

No More Kings:

    Yes the revolution was fought for the right to self determination. In other words to wrest control of the fledgling colonies from english rule.  This in part involved the physical arm of rule, the King, military of Britain.  Another aspect was the power to create currency, not create money, as I will show later these are not always the same.  The colonies had been using a self created currency to allow for trade amongst themselves, called colonial script, much like the paper money we use today. This had the effect of a healthy growing local economy, it also had the effect of cutting the Bank of England out.  By this time control of the bank of england was not in the hands of the crown, but had already transferred to private hands.  As evidenced by numerous passages from the time, they were well aware that this amounted to a hidden tax on all trade.  A hidden mechanism that ensured the transfer of wealth from the colonies to Bank of England.  As well as ensuring a method of control beyond force of arms, much like a parent might manipulate a child through monetary controls today. Well documented is the victory over the physical control.  When it comes to being governed through control of currency, we lost, so we do not hear about it.  Like any conflict, the history is written by the victors.  Once the physical conflict ended, the economic conflict kicked into high gear.  The First Central Bank of America was chartered in 1791, backed most famously by Alexander Hamilton, and opposed by Thomas Jefferson.

This Means War:

When the charter for the First Bank of America expired in 1811, and fueling the ignition of the War of 1812.  This conflict was fought all over the Globe with many varied participants, it ended in 1815. In 1816 the Second Bank of America was chartered, by James Madison with the promise of controlling inflation that had been created as a result of the the war.  Lasting until it's charter was not renewed by Andrew Jackson, who had denounced it as corrupt.  It's demise in 1836 created what has become known as the "free banking era".  During this time there were only state banks, and without a plan to replace the outgoing central banking authority.  There was nothing in place to ensure economic interests were being protected.  This period culminates in the Civil War, which while it had the effect of ending slavery, a close inspection shows it was not the cause or intent of the conflict. This conflict from a banking perspective culminates with the banking act of 1863. Which set up the national banking system, ending the free banking era.  This framework was exploited repeatedly to push forward the need for a central lender of last resort.  The final push of instability known as the panic of 1907, prompted the push for a lender of last resort.  After the failure of the Aldridge plan, The Federal Reserve Act was adopted in 1913.

The Beat Goes On:

Once The United States entered WWI, which had much of it's underpinnings found in the railway running from Iraq, to Germany, redrawing the economic power structure of europe,  The fledgling Federal Reserve became the issuer of the bonds used to finance US participation.  Post WWI, the Fed, was able to cement it's power to create and destroy the nations currency, under the leadership of Paul Warburg.  It proceeded to institute a series of policies creating booms and busts, leading to the crash of 1929.  At this point the United States is effectively bankrupt, the years following known as the Great Depression find their conclusion in 1933 and the New Deal.  This had the effect of holding all future generations responsible for the debts incurred by their parents, and grandparents. This was also when the US began to exit the gold Standard. FDR in 33, making it a crime for US citizens to own and hold gold bullion.  Once the gold had been confiscated the government price for gold was raised to $35 an ounce.  Enter WWII, which of course also, aside from having the highly emotional, and publicized drive of hate. The atmosphere which fostered these attitudes, had roots in the harsh economic penalties placed on Germany with the treaty of Versaille.  Post WWII, at the Bretton Woods conference, the dollar was established as the world reserve currency, with the Federal Reserve guiding international monetary policy in 1944.  The dollar becoming the world reserve currency had the effect of placing a hidden a tax on all trade settled, payable to the Federal Reserve.  This held relatively steady till 1971 when Nixon removed final ties to gold.  In it's place had been engineered what has been called the petrodollar.  The United States had engineered deals with the opec nations, to only accept dollars in exchange for oil.  Thus maintaining the need for all other nations to continue to use dollars to settle international trade.  This final decoupling of the dollar from gold, just solidified the identity crisis paper currency has had forever.

It Never Was Money:

Paper currency, even when backed by real money, never was, and never can be real money.  It is at best a representation of money, and that only while it is directly backed and exchangeable for real money.  Currency is money when it is made out of money, like silver, and gold coins.  In 1974 when Ford lifted the prohibition against American citizens owning, and holding gold bullion.  The minds of the people had already come to think of the paper as the thing with value.  To make things really simple, money is what people turn the currency they do not need for day to day living expenses in to. Currency on the other hand is the accounting tool. It measures how much an economic system owes you, or how much you owe it.  This basic misunderstanding has been used to ensure, the masses remain in perpetual debt, and considering this debt to be wealth.  Understand, this is not about enslavement on an individual basis, how much or little an individual participates is unimportant.  This about dependency on a macro level.  If you want to partake of the benefits of the system you automatically participate in sustaining.  There is a reason gold is considered money, even when it is obviously not currency, and the same can be said of silver, and many other tangible assets.  They hold value over time, and are exchangeable for currency everywhere.  Being key aspects of money, the dollar obviously does not fit, having lost over 90% of it's value since 1913.

Now and Forward:

What are called fiat monetary systems, with interest on currency creation have a mathematical life span.  This kind of system is in essence what is commonly referred to as a ponzi scheme.  It is also the background push behind the infinite growth idea.  The interest attached to every dollar created is a hidden tax, or wealth transfer. As long as the economy as a whole has a growth rate ahead of this interest no one is the wiser.  In 2008 this system reached a mathematical break point,  Interest rates now have to remain at near %0, along with passing around a series of currency printing. The ironic thing being with the suppressed interest rates this new currency does not enter at the bottom. Instead it directly goes into whatever will provide a return. This continues the decoupling of the top from the bottom started in the 80's, as well as lowering the currency velocity.  In the simple terms, this is the time of the monopoly game where 1 person owes everything is only a matter of dice rolls from attaining all the paper.  Alternately if interest rates are allowed to rise even above 3% the US government can no longer afford to borrow the currency it needs to function. Even at 0 interest, anyone can notice the debt has already gone parabolic, doubling in Obama's presidency this is likely to accelerate.  This broken system, will than be offered up as a failed idea, with fiat currency being shelved as evil.  Only nothing will be changed, the alternative gold backed currency will be just that. Gold backed, a representation of money, with debt still attached to it's creation.  Perhaps if done correctly what has been used to secretly enslave, can be used to ensure a move toward ultimate freedom.  

Solutions:

1: Nationalize the Federal Reserve, ownership to be a trust made up of ever citizen of the United States.  It's books to be publicly available, to ensure it's transparency. The fed would still be responsible the management of the currency. As well as the IRS, you still have to pay for services if you desire to have services. This is not as bad as it sounds in an a working system.

2: No interest on currency creation, this is so big it gets it's own.  Currency being different than money is only created by the Federal Reserve.  Money is not created, it's value being intrinsic.

3: End fractional reserve banking practices. This is actually covered in only the Fed creating currency, being in essence a mechanism for creating currency from nothing.

4:  End Corporate personhood, along with currency being considered speech.

5: End Currency speculation, currency is to facilitate, and encourage productivity, and trade.  Speculation only distorts the purchasing power.

These of course are not complete, or do I believe they are the only fixes.  These are small moves that would be steps on the way.

As always make up your own damn mind

Jack

aka

PanseyBard

Fiat Currency, and Greece's EU Exit

           There is much ballyhoo made about the US dollar being backed by nothing but faith.  While it is true there is no material resource, gold, silver or the like acting as backing.  This does not mean it has no backing at all, only that it not resource based.  The truth as is so often the case is stranger than the fiction.  Fiat currencies in general are backed by the governments ability to tax it's citizenry in the future.  This is partially true for the US dollar, but the dollar has another backing, oil.  As I said a resource does not directly back it. Meaning you can not go to your local bank and trade your dollars directly for oil.  What we did was much more insidious, and far less noticeable to the everyday person.  The US made deals with the opec nations to only sell oil in dollars, ensuring the dollar would be in high demand.  Fiat currency is not the real issue at hand, as I've stated many times, if your going to use a currency system fiat is the only way to go.  Resource backed currencies always run the risk of the resource being cornered, altering the value of the currency.  Our problems with the global financial system are more foundational.  Currency creation being held not by the collective, but by private organizations, who than attach interest onto the creation of said currency.  This starts the cycle of fiat currency being treated as a commodity.  This speculation on what is essentially an accounting tool, distorts the real world purchasing power of the currency.  These combine quite nicely with fractional reserve banking, an other distorting effect.  Fiat currencies may be many things, legal tender, banknotes, and the like, one thing it is not is money.
          There is no way for Greece or any other nation within the EU to fix their economic woes while remaining in the union.  What we see taking place across the EU is a direct result of the structural issues of a currency union without a political, and/or a fiscal union accompanying it.  The rise of debt amongst the EU nations being shifted to the troika(EU, ECB, IMF) is about centralization of power. Greece was saddled not with economic relief, but loans, and policies that would ensure the loans could never be repaid. All Greece need do is exit the EU, bring back their own currency being printed by the government, not the privately controlled central bank.  This would allow them to internally jump start the flagging production, as well as lower the prices on Greek exports.  For a real recovery, look to Iceland.  For those saying the Greek's entered the debt, and must pay it, is just propaganda silliness.  We live within a debt based system, and most of these debts never have any reality other than on paper.  Add to that ideas of compounding interest, and debt transfer from private to public, and suddenly they look less and less legitimate.

Jack
aka
PanseyBard

Living in the Current Sea

         

Toes in the Water

         Once again I'm going to talk about money, and currency, things I find fascinating, frustrating, and generally misunderstood.  Money is anything that stores value, and is widely expungeable, meaning it's easy to trade.  This makes almost any object money of a sort. Currency on the other hand is often not money, Fiat currency is never money, yes I'm saying those pieces of paper people seem so enamoured with are not money, though they are currency. So what does this mean on a practical level?   For many nothing, they will not make the distinction, and will have a confusing relationship

with what has become an essential tool in an increasingly complex global civilization.  Others will quickly grasp the concepts and see myriad ways to apply that understanding for individual advantage. Still others, myself among them come to a rather uncomfortable realization, at the core of many "conspiracy" tale.  Private central banks of issuance in a fiat system have come to own the world.  Crazier still, with how the systems have been set up, future generations taxes have been promised to pay for "borrowing" of the present (I used the quotes there due to borrowing requires something to be transferred).  So the productivity of future generations has been promised as collateral for infinite "borrowing" power in the present.  We hear screams of out of control debt in a system where no currency is ever created except through debt.  There is a valid reason for this, we are in many ways a bipolar system.  On the one hand coldly rational, on the other fluidly emotional.  In pure fiat systems, being backed up by nothing other that acts of faith (laws, continuity of government, that the sun will come up...tomorrow), perception is often more important than the hard figures.  When fiat currency systems reach numbers people start to view as unrealistic, it triggers a cascade collapse. This of course is an emotional event, not a mathematical event. In a purely math sense a fiat system can expand infinitely.  So if debt is the basis of the system, yet to much debt crashes the system, what we have is cleaver tight rope act, of keeping enough debt being retired, or payed off, with a constant supply of new debt being created,  Issues begin when you start to add in ideas of fractional reserves, leverage, interest, and speculation. Before I get on with a visualization of these concepts, lets take a quick stab at some of those issues.

The Waves

          Fractional reserves, and leverage have much in common. Each act as force multipliers to steal a term from military strategy.  In fractional reserve it allows for the lending of thing that do not exist. In simple terms, it lets a bank hold 1 dollar, and lend out 10. In a similar fashion leverage allows 1 dollar to pretend to be 10.  These both create distortions in the Current Sea(more on this later), or economy,  With the bank there is never any risk when using a fractional reserve system.  Banks do not lend any money out, when a loan is created new currency is created, supposedly fractionally backed by bank money.  This newly created currency has a life span of the loan, and it's value is in it's tie to house, or car, business it was originated for.  Leverage distorts the current sea is similar ways by creating an artificial increase in total number of units making up the complete current sea.
Though it does so in a different manor. Using leverage you can take 1 dollar, put it up as your risk, while you use 10 dollars to speculate in some market, or venture.  Leverage is generally a short term loan so to speak. often lasting only the day.  This is tied in to the ideas of margin,  Margin calls have, or the act of calling in all loans due, is how our system has repeatedly transferred real wealth to the banking interests.
         Interest, or usury, especially compounding interest might be the single biggest factor in turning currency from a tool to support the development of humanity, into a tool to enslave it.  As already pointed out if a fiat system our currency has nothing physical backing it, and is only brought into being through creation of debt. This sets up the need for what has become known as the infinite growth paradigm.  Essentially, if you borrow 10 dollars today cuz you need to eat, and promise to pay it back in a week with interest here is a simplified version of what takes place.  You go to a bank, and ask to borrow 10 dollars cuz your hungry, you say you will have more currency in one week, and pay it back in full at that time.  The bank says sure, but, you have to pay us 11 dollars.  The bank than types 10 dollars into a computer letting the current sea know you now have access to this newly created energy.  Ok so at the end of the week you have used the 10 dollars, and go into the bank and hand over 11 dollars just as promised, sounds ok right?  On a closer look this presents many problems.  As soon as those 10 dollars are created, the value, or purchasing power of each existing dollar is reduced. The 1 dollar of interest was never created, so must be taken from somewhere else. This where the enslavement comes in. where that effort it takes you to generate that dollar  is taken from you. In basic theory the interest is the banks "profit", in reality it's much different.  As the dollars did not exist until you asked for them, and you "paid" the loan of those phantom dollars with dollars obtained from another source, be it your work, or a loan from another source, or whatever, the whole 11 dollars is pure "profit" with zero risk, all at the stroke of a few keys.  This also creates a system where all currency is not created equally.  Currency created at lower interest rates becomes much more powerful, and desirable, as it can be used to for speculative purposes with a higher rate of return.  That might seem complex, but really it's fairly simple, if a dollar is created with .10 cents of interest attached to it, or a simple flat 10% interest rate, that dollar starts out with a value of 90 cents. Where a dollar created with .20 cents of interest attached with start out with a true value of .80 cents. Not to tough to see, how these hidden differences in the values of the same currency can  be exploited by those with access and understanding.  Another distortion occurs when the interest rates are manipulated, causing misallocation of currency, along with a changes in the currency velocity. When interest rates are held artificially low, currency pools as the perceived risks of "lending" it outweigh the potential returns, as well as higher returns are easier to find in speculation of growing pools of currency that new real world productive endeavors.  When interest rates are artificially high than the speculative investment moves into making loans. Causing the currency velocity to soar, but increased risk in the nature of the loans made. Many other issues exist in interest being attached to currency creation, just look into the history of usury.
      Lastly, before we take a look at the idea of the "Current Sea"  lets look at at how speculation warps, and distorts our whole economic system.  First off there is a difference between speculative, and productive investment.   Productive investment has real world attachment, and purpose, for example a community coming together to be sure the farmers have enough seed to provide for food needs, or even providing the currency for research and development of new technology, or advancement of medical understanding.  Productive investment carries a risk to the currency invested, but the pay off is not in a return of currency, but produced item, or resource.  The flip to this, speculative investing is purely done with the intent to generate more currency for the investor.
 Productive investment adds to the well being of the whole, multiplying the beneficial effects of new development by pooling the resources of a group, and directing the flow of the "Current Sea".  On the other hand speculative investing is purely done for the purpose of generating more currency for the speculator.  Now it still sometimes provides currency used for productive means, and many productive investments are speculative. The real problems arise when the investing drifts into the purely speculative.  In commodities when there is no actual transfer of possession, and the speculation is purely on paper, it creates distortions in value of products people rely on for daily survival such as food, and water.  When currency itself is allowed to become a speculative commodity, the potential distortion to the purchasing power of the individual units of currency can be catastrophic.  Basically each dollar used to bet on the future value of the dollar distorts the current, and future purchasing power the everyday person uses to sustain their daily lives.  Pure speculative investment is a tax, plain and simple it creates no value, instead stealing value from whatever it infects, kind of a parasite, on the productivity of the whole. So how can these be avoid, while still allowing for the benefits or fiat currency? Just change how currency is viewed and hopefully it becomes evident.

Smooth Sailing

       I've repeatedly used the term "Current Sea" throughout this meandering, but what is meant by it? Our economic system taken in it's entirety is the "Current Sea", with the people, and corporations being the entities, and the currency being the water all depend on and exist in.  Like any body of water it has currents, eddy's, shallows, and hidden depths.  It can be likened to a living sea with all different types of entities all connected and sustained by the sea.  So pretty easy analogy, currency is the water, the life blood, or energy flowing through our "Current Sea" driving the living system that sustains us all. With this depiction in mind, apply some of the distorting ideas, suddenly some of the entities find themselves as fish out of water.  The distorting effects of our current economic systems could be likened to whirlpools, drawing in more and more currency, sucking it away from entities on the edges of the "Current Sea".  In a healthy "Current Sea" the currency flows bringing along with it all each entity needs to thrive.  This relates to the ideas of money, and currency in profound ways, true money becomes a store for currency, but not currency itself.  Currency stays in it's proper place as the life blood of productive endeavor, while money acts as a store house for the future use of

productivity.  Under the rules of the game as we now play, a central bank of issue, combined with a cartel of private banks run the "Current Sea" for the benefit of themselves.  In an ideal system the currency would be managed from the perspective of keeping the "Current Sea" healthy.  In other words keeping the currency as a tool of the people. In this type of system, the entities living in the "Current Sea" naturally direct the flow of the currency, ebbs and flows of industry come back to demand based. The rise and fall of the so called business cycle ceases, to shamelessly steal from those much more perceptive than I, the spice flows.
      I have no degrees in economics, and might be inclined to debate if any such thing is reasonable in relation to what is an admitted pseudoscience.  Our systems have been increasingly complexified in order to obfuscate it's true predatory nature.  If I need more qualification aside from having been a participant for my entire life and being capable of observation, it has yet to been brought to my attention.  I could go on and on, but I think that will have to wait for future posts.


Jack
aka
PanseyBard