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A while ago I had the pleasure of hearing Sergey Glazyev—economist,
politician, member of the Academy of Sciences, adviser to Pres.
Putin—say something that very much confirmed my own thinking. He said
that anyone who knows mathematics can see that the United States is on
the verge of collapse because its debt has gone exponential. These
aren't words that an American or a European politician can utter in
public, and perhaps not even whisper to their significant other while
lying in bed, because the American eavesdroppers might overhear them,
and then the politician in question would get the Dominique Strauss-Kahn
treatment (whose illustrious career ended when on a visit to the US he
was falsely accused of rape and arrested). And so no European (never
mind American) politician can state the obvious, no matter how obvious
it is.
The Russians have that pretty well figured out by now. Yes, maintaining a
dialogue and cordial directions with the Europeans is important. But it
is well understood that the Europeans are just a bunch of American
puppets with no will or decision-making authority of their own, so why
not talk to the Americans directly? Alas, the Americans too are puppets.
The American officials and politicians are definitely puppets,
controlled by corporate lobbyists and shady oligarchs. But here's a
shocker: these are also puppets—controlled by the simple imperatives of
profitability and wealth preservation, respectively. In fact, it's
puppets all the way down. And what's at the bottom is a giant,
ever-expanding, financial black hole.
Do you like your black hole? If you aren't sure you like it, then let me
ask you some other questions: Do you like the fact that your credit
cards still work, or that you can still keep money in the bank and even
get cash out of an ATM, or that you are either receiving or hope to
eventually receive a pension? Do you like the fact that you can get
useful things—food, gas, airline tickets—for mere pieces of paper with
pictures of dead white men on them? Do you like the fact that you have
internet access, that the lights are on, and that there is water on tap?
Well, if you like these things, then you must also like the financial
black hole, because that's what's making all of these things possible in
spite of your country being bankrupt. Perhaps it's a love-hate
relationship: you love being able to pretend that everything is still OK
even though you know it isn't, and you wish to enjoy a bit more of the
business-as-usual before it all goes to hell, be it for a few more days
or another year or two; but you hate the fact that eventually the black
hole will suck you in, after which point things will definitely... suck.
In the United States, so far the black hole has been sucking in
individual families (although it does sometimes suck in entire cities,
like Detroit, Michigan, or Bakersfield, California, or Camden, New
Jersey). With the help of the fraudulent mortgage racket, it sucks in
houses, and spits them out again encumbered with bad debt. With the help
of the medical industry, it sucks in sick people and spits them out
again, bankrupt. With the help of the higher education racket, it sucks
in hopeful young people, and spits them out as graduates, with worthless
degrees and saddled with mountainous student debt. With the help of the
military-industrial complex, it sucks in just about anything and spits
out corpses, invalids, environmental damage, terrorists and global
instability. And so on.
But the black hole can also suck in entire countries. Right now it's
busy trying to suck in Greece, but it's having a hard time with it,
because Greece is, of all things, a democracy. This has the black hole's
puppets in quite a state at the moment, and starting to clamor for
“regime change” in Greece, so that Greece can be made to capitulate
before the black hole gets hungry.
The way the black hole sucks in entire countries is as follows. If the
black hole doesn't have enough to suck in for a period of time, it gets
hungry and makes the financial markets go into free-fall. The financial
instruments of countries that happen to be farther away from the black
hole—out on the periphery—fall faster. In search of a “safe haven,”
money floods out of these countries and into the “core” countries that
are clustered tightly around the black hole—the US, Germany, Japan and a
few others. The black hole gobbles up this money, but is then hungry
for more. But since the periphery countries are now financially too weak
to resist, they can easily be turned into black hole fodder. This is
done by saddling the country with a foreign debt it can never repay,
then forcing it to keep making payments against this debt by making it a
condition for maintaining a financial lifeline—keeping the banks open,
the ATMs stocked, the lights on and so on. To be able to make the
payments, the country is forced to dismantle its society and economy
through the imposition of austerity, to privatize everything in sight
turning it into collateral for more loans, and to surrender its
sovereignty to some transnational organizations, such as the IMF and the
ECB, which are directly involved in the care and feeding of the black
hole.
Who is in charge of all this? you might ask. If all there is is the
black hole, the puppets charged with its care and feeding, and its
hapless victims, then who is making the decisions? Well, it turns out
that the black hole is sentient. But it is also very, very stupid. And
the way is enforces its will is by destroying the minds of its
puppets—by making them unable to understand certain things. However,
stupidity is a double-edged sword, and in enforcing its will in this
manner the black hole also thwarts its own purpose.
For example, some time ago the black hole happened upon a rather large
item it wanted to suck in, but couldn't. The item is called Russian
Federation. It controls a huge territory that is full of all sorts of
natural resources the black hole would love to turn into loan collateral
and suck in. The problem is that it is full of Russians, who are a
difficult people for the black hole's puppets to deal with. They keep
telling the puppets to please keep their toes on the other side of that
red line over there, and if they don't then click goes the safety on
their guns, precluding further discussion.
This situation calls for negotiation, but the black hole, which, as I
mentioned, is very, very stupid, has just one negotiating tactic. It
makes its demands, and then waits for the other side to capitulate. If
that doesn't work, it applies pressure: imposes sanctions, attacks the
currency, complicates financial transactions, arrests the country's
foreign assets and so on—and waits for the other side to capitulate. And
if that doesn't work either, then the country gets bombed to rubble by
NATO or, if NATO doesn't want to come along, by the US alone. That
generally works, but in the case of Russia it doesn't. But the black
hole, if you recall, is very, very stupid, so it keeps trying anyway. As
it does, the minds of its puppets get really warped, to a point where
they don't understand what's going on at all.
For example, everybody knows by now that pressuring Russia doesn't work:
according to Newton's Third Law, every action produces an equal and
opposite reaction, and Russia is big enough that pushing it doesn't
cause it to move at all—it just causes whoever is pushing it to hurt
themselves. It's like trying to shift the Earth's orbit by jumping off a
chair while keeping your knees locked—which is a good ploy if you are
clamoring for medical attention. In fact, the Russians are rather
grateful for the sanctions, because now they have a reason to finally
get serious about investing in domestic economic development and
self-sufficiency. But the puppets, having had their minds warped by the
black hole, cannot see that, so they just keep pushing, wrecking their
own economies in the process.
Since the sanctions don't work, it is time to exercise the military
option. Doing so requires concocting a casus belli—a reason to go to
war. The black hole does this by hallucinating: Russia invaded
Crimea!—sure, a few hundred years ago, and has been there ever since,
most recently based on an international agreement, but never mind! (Oh,
and legally Crimea was never actually made part of the Ukraine because
Nikita Khrushchev botched the paperwork when handing it over.) OK, never
mind that, but then Russia invades the Ukraine!—on every day that has
the letter “D” in it, but it's very sneaky and withdraws its troops
before anybody can snap a single picture of them there. OK, never mind
that either, but then Russia is poised to invade Estonia, Latvia and
Lithuania, and maybe Poland too. Invade how? You mean like take a bus to
the music festival in Jūrmala? Consider it done, but the festival is
already over and the invading music fans are back home. OK, never mind
that either. But the puppets keep saying “Russian aggression!” over and
over again. It's the brain damage caused by proximity to the black hole.
Look at this poor guy, for instance. He keeps flapping his lower jaw,
going “Russian aggression! Russian aggression!” while trying to
self-soothe by fondling the rump of his imaginary pet cow. God help him.
Back to the real world: the poor puppets are unable to understand that
there is no military option when it comes to Russia: it's a nuclear
power with an excellent strategic deterrent, a well-defended territory,
and no aggressive intentions against anyone. But the puppets, with their
warped minds, cannot see that, and so they pile various kinds of
obsolete military junk along Russia's borders, and are even threatening
to bring into Europe the entirely obsolete Pershing medium-range nuclear
missiles. They are obsolete because the Russians now have the S-300
system with which to shoot them all down. The military option just isn't
going to work, but don't tell that to the puppets—they cannot absorb
such information without sustaining further neurological damage.
Back to Greece: tiny Greece certainly isn't mighty Russia, but it
nevertheless refused to capitulate to the demands of the black hole. It
was asked to completely wreck its society and its economy as a condition
for maintaining its financial lifelines from the IMF and the ECB. Most
inconveniently for the black hole and its puppets, Greece is not some
obscure “third world” country peopled by dark-skinned people you
wouldn't want your daughter to marry, but a European nation that is the
cradle of European civilization and democracy. Greece managed to elect a
government that tried to negotiate in good faith, but the puppets don't
negotiate—they demand, threaten and cause damage until they get their
way—or until their heads explode.
This one will be interesting to watch. If the black hole does succeed in
sucking in Greece, then which country is next? Will it be Italy, Spain
or Portugal? And, as that process continues, at what point will enough
people say that enough is enough? Because when they do, the black hole
will shrivel up. It's not a real black hole that's made up of incredibly
dense matter—so dense that its gravitational field traps even light.
It's a fake black hole, made up of everyone's combined greed. It has
greed at its core, and fear all around it, and it sustains itself by
feeding on fear. If it can continue sucking in people, families and
entire countries, it can keep the greed at its core alive, but if it
can't, then the greed will also turn to fear, and it will shrivel up and
die. And I hope that when it dies all of its brain-damaged puppets will
snap out of it, realize how deluded they have been, and go find
something useful to do—farm sheep, grow vegetables, dig for clams...
DW columnist Frank Sieren
Public demand for gold and silver coins, rounds, and bars suddenly
skyrocketed in mid-June – particularly among first-time customers – to
multiples of earlier demand levels, according to Money Metals Exchange, a
national precious metals dealer in the U.S.
