CU-Boulder-led team finds microbes in extreme environment on South American volcanoes University of Colorado Boulder News
CT scans on children ‘could triple brain cancer risk’ BBC
Industry: Future factories Financial Times
Confessions of a recovering Objectivist Guardian (Ed M)
Spread of ‘baby boxes’ in Europe alarms United Nations Guardian
Hedge Funds Get Squeezed In Mayfair As Offices Become Homes Bloomberg
Eurozone buys itself some time Financial Times. This is a default headline.
Spain’s Blood Wedding, Ireland’s Muted Rage, Europe’s tragedy Yanis Varoufakis
Another Bank Bailout Paul Krugman, New York Times
How to save Spain’s banks – and the eurozone Wolfgang Munchau, Financial Times
Europe’s democracies must not subcontract their destiny to the Bundebank Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, Telegraph
Could Deflation Come to China? Global Economic Intersection
The Macroeconomics of Chinese kleptocracy John Hempton. Read this post in conjunction with the one above.
Wall St to lobby against ‘fiscal cliff’ Financial Times
How the Wisconsin Uprising Got Hijacked Andy Kroll, TomDispatch
Why 2012 Matters New York Review of Books. Wow, this poses the existence of a dichotomy that does not exist. And a clear propaganda tell: Manichean framing.
Germany, Not Greece, Should Exit the Euro Bloomberg
GE Weighs Cuts to Lending Unit Wall Street Journal (Lee S)
Greece Threatens Wall Street Jobs In Third Trading Plunge Bloomberg
Dylan Ratigan Leaving MSNBC New York Times. The timing looks sus (an election year exit for a guy who has been rough on the Administration) but the official story does seem to hang together.
A financial expert says the traditional payment hierarchy has shifted, and that consumers are worried more about their cars and credit cards than their homes. Los Angeles Times. Not exactly news, but read the last para.
There is No Systemic Mortgage Fraud and We Have the Proof Global Economic Intersection. Marketing fail by Netroots Nation, although that appears to be by design (as in lack of livestream).
Fed Colleague Backs Dimon Wall Street Journal. Send nastygrams.
Chinatown buses revolutionized urban transit but had awful safety records, proving not every ingenious idea is good Salon. Lambert: The title might be more accurately restated: “Where libertarianism succeeds and fails.”
* * *
Lambert here:
D – 89 and counting*
“La vie est une tragédie pour celui qui sent, et une comédie pour celui qui pense” –Jean de La Bruyère
This Week with George Stephanopoulos as told to The Bobblespeak Translations. Axelrod: we need an economy built to last – until November anyway Stephanopoulos: you think that’s a winning message?
Montreal. Heavy manners in Montreal on Grand Prix weekend: “Le Devoir tested the rumour that wearing the red square gets you stopped and searched in the metro this weekend. It does.” “It’s an undeclared state of emergency – normal rights have been suspended but without announcement. We’re supposed to just understand it.” “I was then told it was ‘better to shut your mouth when you’re wearing a red square.’ The cop TRUDEAU … then arrested—violently—one passer-by who asked what was going on and refused to identify himself (it’s his right if he’s not suspect of an infraction) and they left with the guy after giving me my ticket.” “Since when is it is considered acceptable for cops to put tape over their badge numbers?” “Always be careful at #manifencours more & more undercover cops. My friend was followed for a good hour yesterday.”
Friday. CEGEP student: “We’re not going to put the movement on hold to appease big business, we’re going to be out in the streets every night until we win. This isn’t just about tuition hikes anymore, it’s about civil rights and social inequality. I could care less about the F1 weekend.” Tourist: “I saw a girl in high heels just get clobbered by police. I mean you’re not gonna tell me she was protesting in high heels.” “In front of a line of police a block away, dozens of the protesters – many of them dressed entirely in black – put on masks and ski goggles as they prepared for a fight.” “When the cops walked too far ahead of the group, a large contingency of marchers noticed and sprinted across the park towards Ste-Catherine. A first attempt had failed: this one didn’t. Metcalfe Street [F1 party and tourist scene] was, as a result, a chaotic scene: police forces just barely managed to contain the crowd and prevent them from reaching their goal, and then pushed them back by flooding the street with pepper spray.” “[T]here’s also nothing like walking for those many hours and kilometers, for the first time during my maple spring-summer stay, with hundreds of “veteran” anarchists–from CLAC [see here], a relatively longtime anarchist organization, and people who’ve been to many a mass mobilization and other mayhem, such as Quebec City during the alter-globalization days–along with lots of new anarchists–many clean-cut students, such as the ones pictured below, walking from the Metro to the 5 p.m. planned disruption of a fancy Grand Prix dinner by anticapitalists/anarchists.”
Saturday. Tourist: “‘It’s like a movie,’ one man said Saturday, as he watched a line of riot police block off a street in Old Montreal.” “28 people were arrested as protesters tried to push into the Crescent Street bar strip, where several Grand Prix parties were being held. … At least four police vehicles were vandalized — including one that was completely flipped over — and at least one business had its windows broken.”
Sunday. “FECQ [not CLASSE, not CLAC] leader Éliane Laberge has announced plans for further demonstrations throughout the summer, not just to protest tuition hikes but also to focus on popular dissatisfaction.” Protester: “I just find it to be a really disgusting display of wealth and excess, which is really insulting in the context of what’s happening right now.” “Hundreds of police officers and sniffer dogs swarmed the underground train line that services the track site on Ste-Hélène Island… after an anti-capitalist group [no doubt CLAC] called for disruptions.” “36 people were arrested at a metro stations across the island, a move that a police spokesperson called a preventative measure. ”
Quebec Liberal Minister of Culture Christine St-Pierre offers storyteller, poet and songwriter Fred Pellerin the Order of Quebec. “Here’s the sting that Christine St-Pierre served up for the poet: “He has the right to wear the red square, everyone has the right to free expression, but we know what the red square means: it means intimidation, violence, and people blocking others from going to school. For us, that’s what it means and for the big, big, big majority of Quebecers, that’s what it means.” Pellerin refuses the award. Ethan Cox: “We are at a moment of great possibility, of great promise. But it is also a moment of great danger. This is our chance to clean up the mess we have made, but if we fail, yet again, we risk the spiral of violence Hedges describes.” “Once the panda released me from his embrace on rue Sainte-Catherine on a recent Saturday night, men at the leather bar across the way waved him over for their chance at a law-breaking hug. (CL)
FL. Alleged, totally, but: “Charlie Crist [R] attempted to run over people while he was intoxicated and operating a golf cart.” And more. Much more. Voting rights: “On June 8, two Florida voters and a voting rights group filed a lawsuit to stop a new attempt by the Florida Secretary of State to purge the voting rolls of certain voters” based on the driver’s license methodology of the purge. “A Herald/Times review of voter information from Florida’s largest counties, however, has identified only six noncitizens as having voted so far.” Corruption: “Adam Putnam R — former congressman, current commissioner of agriculture and widely viewed as the future of Florida politics — became a very rich man in 2005 when taxpayers spent $25.5 million on 2,042 acres of his family’s ranch that had been valued at $5.5 million a year earlier.”
IA. Extraction: “Iowa Governor Terry Branstad has joined a lawsuit seeking to overturn a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency rule that would gradually reduce mercury and other toxic emissions from power plants. Meanwhile, a group of state attorneys general including Tom Miller of Iowa have asked a U.S. Court of Appeals to uphold the EPA rule.”
IL. Rahm: “How many of his hospital roommates died? Three or five?”
NV. “[Let’s] put a moratorium on questions that begin, “Mr. President… The _____ are saying that ____ and how would you respond?” For example: “Question: What actions are currently being taken by the Department of Justice to confirm every eligible American citizen’s right to vote“?
PA. Extraction: “DEP records show Texas-based Range Resources Corp. was responsible for a stream discharge, a drilling fluid leak and an overturned tanker spilling brine in Amwell — all of which township officials learned about weeks later from workers, Barale said. ‘DEP keeps you in the dark, anyhow. So I don’t have much faith in them.'”
VA. “‘At first the studies were about ‘climate change.’ Then ‘sea level rise.’ Now coastal ‘resilience.’ ‘It’s kind of silly. But the reality is, some of the phrases just really send people screaming. We want to use language that doesn’t alienate people.'”
WI. “Feingold, who retains his rock star status for many of the party faithful, wasn’t at this weekend’s convention, though his organization Progressives United organization had a table set up.” Recall, Kos: “Obama stayed away. … Because he would be embarrassed if he lost. I’ll tell you what. If he shows that he’s going to fight for the things that I care about, I will fight twice as hard for him.” And if he doesn’t? “Then I’ll vote for him.” Why? Extraction: “Department of Natural Resources referred two silica [frac] sand mining companies for prosecution, [the first] since the recent so-called frac sand boom started in the state, according to regional DNR spokesman Ed Culhane.” Walker: “I know in my state our reforms allowed us to protect firefighters, police officers and teachers. That’s not what I think of when I think of big government.” Corruption: “Several sources confirm to TODAY’S TMJ4 that Nancy Evans was escorted from the [house of correction in Franklin]…. [T]he investigation focuses around tens of thousands of dollars that may have been embezzled.” Police: “The day after Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker survived his recall election, hundreds of activists marched in the streets of Milwaukee in non-violent civil disobedience from Pere Marquette Park to City Hall and into the banking district. Police used horses to push the demonstrators from the streets and pinned some of them against walls. Police on horses ripped banners from the demonstrators and chased them.”
Inside Baseball. MoDo: “(Adding insult to injury, the Florida governor had to help make his less studious brother president by shoplifting the Sunshine State in 2000.)” That’s some parenthetical. “Nixon launched and managed five successive and overlapping wars — against the anti-Vietnam War movement, the news media, the Democrats, the justice system and, finally, against history itself. ” Seems familiar. “Jonathan Haidt’s generic statement was, ‘working-class people vote conservative.’ Actually most working-class people don’t vote conservative, but as Cimpian et al. point out, such a statement ‘requires little evidence to be judged true.'” “It will be fascinating to see if liberals, who say they believe in evolution, are able to evolve, adapt, and overcome the forces that reelected Scott Walker and are poised to dump President Obama.” “[I]f the past decade is not proof that there are no circumstances capable of reviving the left in its nineteenth and twentieth-century form, then what would proof be like? (Cf.)”
Jawbs. [“T]he argument [via the “doing fine” flap] is now fully engaged over the relationship between government job loss and the economic crisis.” A little late.
The trail. WalMart Moms: “More than one Richmond participant cited ‘maybe three years isn’t enough’ to turn things around.” Heading toward conventional wisdom: “About 10 battleground states will decide the election, and seven of them have employment levels that beat the U.S. average.” Also heading: “[Obama] has largely has encouraged the dramatic growth in natural gas extraction taking place in PA, OH [swing states] and a few other states” like CO, also a swing state.
Green Party. The Independent Green Party expects to place five nominees on the 2012 ballot for U.S. House.
Romney. “No candidate in the 2012 race adapted more swiftly and effectively [than Romney] to the rise of the super PACs in the wake of US Supreme Court and other rulings that effectively removed any barriers to individual and corporate donations to such so-called independent groups.”
Obama. “Obama, who long ago gave up the ‘hope and change’ message that won him the White House in 2008, is talking about congressional ‘to-do’ lists.” Fired up! Teebee ad, Priorities USA, Bained steel worker: “They promised us healthcare packages, they promised to maintain our retirement program, and those are the first two things that disappeared.” Not like Simpson-Bowles! Axelrod: “From time to time at the White House I would see Holder at meetings, but I rarely spoke to him…. I was very sensitive to the fact… that in the last administration, the political arm of the White House was very active in the Justice Department.” From the sound of that, if I didn’t know better, I’d swear Axelrod was lawyered up. Networks Nation Obama video: “Change is hard, but we’ve seen that it’s possible, as long as you’re willing to keep up that fight, I’ll be right there with you.” Just ask Tom Barrett!
* 89 days ’til the Democratic National Convention feasts on lobsters and champagne on the floor of the Bank of America Stadium, Charlotte, NC. 89 is one of the words censored on the Chinese Internet.
* * *
Antidote du jour. We’ve done armadillos at most once before on this site. They do look like weird prehistoric critters.
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Re. the antidote; I nominate the lowly Armadillo to be the Mascot fot the Republicrat Party.
Reminds me of the Jim Hightower book title: “There’s Nothing in the Middle of the Road but Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos: A Work of Political Subversion”
http://www.amazon.com/Theres-Nothing-Middle-Stripes-Armadillos/dp/0060929499
I’m guessing that’s due to the obvious desire of the armadillo in the video to be left alone to do its business without a camera in its face following it around.
Re Future Factories
Aviation is the white elephant in this article. It all has to go by plane to qualifiy as JIT porno, and aviation has about 10 more years of cheap kerosene and ignorable global warning consequences. Where’s the alternative to jet-X for shooting 100 tons at 500 mph across the country?
Clustering of niche suppliers won’t matter because they’ll be working on the prototypes. Once production starts factories in high-wage countries won’t go back to producing in Victorian quantities. Minimal runs, minimal storage, maximal get-that-shit-on-a-plane ASAP.
Get those snakes-in-suits-on-a-plane ASAP.
Actually Motley Fool has been boiling over with spam about the revolutionary future of the 3d printer. Not sure it’s as big a deal as Motley Fool makes it out (Big Wink) but it does sound interesting.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/06/10/vatican-banker-running-scared-gotti-tedeschi-could-turn-whistleblower.html
Keep rocks out of your pockets.
Gotti! Got it? Follow the money and the DNA. Remember Continental Illinois and Silverado.
re: mortgage deliquencies:
current slide from jim bullard, st louis Fed: http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2012/06/05/distressing-mortgage-conditions/tab/slideshow/#slide/7
also see table, p4 of LPS april pdf:
http://www.lpsvcs.com/LPSCorporateInformation/CommunicationCenter/DataReports/MortgageMonitor/201204MortgageMonitor/MortgageMonitorApril2012.pdf
you can see florida still has the highest percentage of non current mortgages at 21.3%, while 13.9% of all mortgages in that state are in foreclosure, followed by mississippi, where 16.8% of homeowners were still not paying on their mortgages as of april…
Slavoj Žižek: ‘Humanity is OK, but 99% of people are boring idiots’
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2012/jun/10/slavoj-zizek-humanity-ok-people-boring?INTCMP=SRCH
Very unwise of Sizek.
he’s got his ‘stalinist’ schtick.. if you’ve seen one talk/read one book, you might want to wait 5 years or so for something new… but his books ARE NOT hard to understand, nor are his ‘sodomy'(deleuze) of hegel and lacan… yeah, he may have enjoyed his symptoms a bit too much, as he is getting madder by the year.. but his honesty is refreshing if such a cliche can be made flesh…
i say ‘hell yeah’ to his complaints about ‘students’ and establishment liberals… these people are intolerable for a whole list of reasons…and i don’t know if 99percent of people are intolerable bores, but it can often seem that way for introverted intellectuals… it’s a half-humorous, subjective qualifier-obviously, as one gets ‘famous’ the public that will approach is going to seem increasingly pathetic with their ridiculous demands/psychic vampirism… playing the fool has always paid and kept one out of the hangman’s noose
“playing the fool has always paid and kept one out of the hangman’s noose”
You might want to read The Praise of Folly. Erasmus gives the European oligarchy a severe beating in this essay, this includes lawyers and medical doctors. It is truly astonishing that the man stayed alive after publishing this essay… in the year 1511.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Praise_of_Folly
http://archive.org/search.php?query=title%3Apraise%20folly%20AND%20creator%3Aerasmus%20AND%20mediatype%3Atexts
read it many years ago… one must maintain subtlety in one’s clowning… praising a top 5 mass-murderer in history may or may not qualify ???
Is this in the ballpark? Daniel Ellsberg on “The Political Uses of Madness”:
just me: So, Ellsberg was Kissoff’s man?
Mmmmm no. In 1968 it was Ellsberg’s job to brief Kissinger, who was Nixon’s incoming national security adviser, and Ellsberg took that opportunity to try to tell Kissinger what he’d learned about the secret clearances Kissinger was about to get:
Plus I remember reading another anecdote where at this important lecture (I think given by Kissinger, don’t have the book or video with me right now) Ellsberg put [Kissinger] on the hot seat by asking him how many deaths he expected by pursuing his policy course. Getting appallingly real. It flustered and angered [Kissinger]. I think it was Kissinger.
Don’t know about now, but the Independent Greens – at least in Virginia- is essentially a third-way/conservative operation. It backed Bloomberg for POTUS this year.
Thanks. The local nuance is hard to capture.
Oh heck, can’t we just say: “below the Mason-Dixon line” when it comes to the ultraconservatives by any name?
Yea, but keep it simple, Dixie will suffice. Dixiecrats. Except the whole Dixie wants a New York Jew for president could be a whole new kind of hope and change.
Dixie loves money above all.
A little local story that seems to offer a strong hint for economists.
http://www.krem.com/news/local/Local-businesses-turn-to-cash-mobs-to-stay-afloat-158298145.html
A boutique was on the edge of failing, so the owner’s friends organized a day of shopping. The revenue was large enough to keep the store running, AND nearby businesses like restaurants have also benefitted in the long run because some of those shoppers got in the habit of shopping in that district.
Moral: People still have discretionary income. We don’t need trillions in stimulus, we just need a sense of security and a reason to spend.
One way of providing the sense of security would be to pay interest on savings. I realize this is a strange radical bizarre wacko sci-fi notion, which has never been tried before in human history, but maybe someone should try it.
A [too-exclusive stockpile of ecological surplus] was on the edge of failing, so the owner’s friends organized a day of [senseless burning of societal resources]. The [bonfire] was large enough to keep the store [warm for the day], AND nearby businesses like restaurants have also [basked in its reflected heat] because some of those shoppers got in the habit of shopping [close to the flames].
Moral: People still have [unjustifiably hoarded societal resources to burn]. We don’t need trillions in stimulus, we just need a [match] and a reason to [torch the place].
Fixed that for ya’.
I hear – vanity – is good kindling for bond fires.
Skippy… the moths do alight.
One way of providing the sense of security would be to pay interest on savings. polistra
The real return on risk-free savings should be no more and no less than zero.
Is the only risk-free borrowing when you borrow from God?
A classic bit of Blutonian borrowing http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJ6xBaZ92uA
Russ Baker put up the Watergate chapters from Family of Secrets, and raised their profile with video talks and podcasts,
http://whowhatwhy.com/2012/05/10/watergate-revelations-the-coup-against-nixon-part-3-of-3/
and whattaya know, the mighty wurlitzer cranked up with Woodward and Bernstein up there, BAD BAD NIXON, and with Parry trying to answer Strauss’ timeless question: Why the fck did they bug that puke Oliver and not me?
So now America is safe again, nobody’s ever going to ever get the crazy notion that the deep state pulled the plug on hapless puppet ruler Richard Milhous Nixon.
I think you’re selling Russ short. He’s well aware of how oligarchal interests are continuing to run the show. He knows that America is far from safe.
http://whowhatwhy.com/2012/02/29/the-jeb-scenario-can-you-say-president-bush-again/
http://whowhatwhy.com/2012/06/03/russ-baker-in-san-francisco/
http://whowhatwhy.com/the-game-that-goes-on-and-on.html
Russ Baker is the burning bush. My point, which was tragically obscured by overflowing sarcasm, is that they did pull the plug on hapless puppet ruler Richard Nixon, and they’re still shouting down all recognition of that fact. It’s doubtless true they’re still in charge. They’re ready to kick out Obama’s plug too if he can no longer gull left-wing dissidents.
Who is “they”?
re “jeb-scenario” link: Bushes are .01% undead. Clinton-Bush shill for Rhodes Trust. Puppet Prezes run War Troops tranche of tripartite Crown Cake: City/D.C./Vatican: for Gold Buggery/War-for-Profit/Religion-for-Mass-Control.
End U.S. diplomatic recognition of Mussolini-made Vatican City as “valid” city-state. Withdraw Wall Street from the City of London (coitus interruptus). End The Opium War in the U.S.A., to starve the idolators of Mars.
I wondered if someone would comment on those tools. Woodward and Bernstein. That obnoxious WaPo memoire of not just Watergate but all of Nixon’s crass, paranoid and obsessive behavior. Still trying to push the cover story. As Chomsky so aptly put it at the time, Nixon was stepping on some very powerful toes.
The WaPo article mentioned too lightly the bit about the Heritage Foundation and Nixon’s desperation to get his hands on documents about LBJ taking us into Vietnam. There is much more to it than that. In fact the WaPo said it was uncertain if Nixon ever achieved obtaining these documents (unspecified docs.) I would love to know if he actually did get them and if so, then armed with good information for a politicians favorite passtime, blackmail, he could have carried out his agenda. Now we will never know what he would have done. Some think he’d have gone all Barry Goldwater; some the opposite.
If I still had the mental energy I would research French and British newspaper headlines of the 70s dealing with Indochina, Hong Kong and China and keep an eye to clues from our other NATO partners about why it was a threat to them if the US and China came together.
So you think the motive may be:
The CIA didn’t want a rapprochement with China and pulled the plug on Nixon?
Plausible.
But the U.S. has benefitted quite nicely from its relations with China over the last 30 years.
I think, around the same time in China, Lin Biao tried to stop Mao.
But Mao stopped him instead.
IMO the China aperture was do-or-die. Both going off the gold standard AND opening China to capitalist trade were essential to the general globalist expansion of Western debt-money after the decline of US oil reserves. This is all happening 1971-72, if I am not mistaken. Western industrialization of China + no gold + peak US oil = not a coincidence.
Peak energy could not be withstood by the Anglo-American imperial monetary system, thus this system needed to expand into China, the last serious unconquered frontier for Western capital, before Russia. Now the global game is at an end.
I don’t see anything sinister about it; to the contrary, it was rather straightforward to those who may have had eyes to see.
Thank you Lidia for providing more context.
I don’t think its “sinister” either. It’s perfectly rational for both countries to agree to this trade partnership and change in gold rules. It has made the American elite quite rich and China seems well positioned right now. Not everyone has benefited though, like American manufacturing, and this Mr. Lin Biao gentleman who died in the classic C.I.A M.O. of a plane crash.
I don’t think Nixon was taken out over China because the people behind a CIA coup probably supported Nixon’s China policy, no?
Nixon was fixin to tell tales out of school, re Viet Nam.
I think a more likely motives are:
1. Build up the bona fides of the Washington Post and the media more generally. Think of where the WaPo would be without Watergate. Or the two star reporters.
The media was very distrusted by the end of the 60s, is my impression. What better way to restore the peoples’ faith in the media than to bring down the president?
But WaPo has long been a perp organization, and the main stomping grounds for the “Washington Set”, the group of insiders and intelligence people that ran publications like WaPo.
Ben Bradlee, the editor at WaPo before what’s her name, was good friends with JFK and was maried to Tony Bradlee who was sisters with Mary Pinchot Meyer. Mary was JFK’s girlfriend and love of his life. Mary was also good friends with Jackie and all Jack, Jacki, Mary, Ben, and Tony hung out quite a bit yachting and shit. There is a new book out about Mary’s murder in 1964 btw, Mary’s Mosaic, where the author (son of intelligence operative) claims the CIA had her killed and Ben Bradlee helped destroy her diary detailing secrets about her and Kennedy.
Anyway, Mary was married to Cord Meyer, a huge CIA guy, who was instrumental in Project Mockingbird and other operations to control the media. Jackie Kennedy was also a journalist and was concerned about the media treatment of the presidency.
Anyway, the *CIA* has influenced/controlled the media since WWI and the WaPo looks like the main perp so one should be very wary of a story coming from two of its reporters. It’s too convenient that the main perp organization in the media is the very publication that brings the president down.
2. to be continued . . .
Wasn’t Premier Kissoff in the most strategic position to get the job done? Cui bono?
Wow. Thanks for the link. This is a totally plausible theory. Lots of information that I still have to digest. Intersting to compare this book to the information from this article in 1972, before Nixon even resigned: http://www.maebrussell.com/Mae%20Brussell%20Articles/Why%20Was%20Martha%20Mitchell%20Kidnapped%20-%201.html
The article goes into the CIA background of the people involved and also alleges that Mitchel’s wife was held against her will in a hotel in L.A. and possibly drugged. At the time the author suspects its a CIA operation and notes the connection many of the actors had to the Kennedy “assassination.”
I’m still unsure of the motive though. Was it to distract the country from Vietnam? Was it to appease the anti-war crowd by giving them Nixon’s head while continuing Nixon’s policies? Was Nixon trying to do his own thing? Was he too liberal?
Btw, I suspect a similar thing happened with the JFK “assassination.” Like Nixon’s Watergate, I think it may have been staged by intelligence operatives. Except I suspect Kennedy was complicit in his own staged “assassination.” http://letsrollforums.com/jfk-murder-staged-event-t23127.html
Maybe Nixon was in on the “uncovering” of Watergate as well. Hell of an acting job if that’s the case . . . he seemed genuinely ticked off.
I guess Mrs. Mitchell was allegedly held at the Newporter Inn in Newport, CA.
The acting head of the FBI was also staying at this same hotel as the Mitchells 5 days after the Watergate arrests, per the link above.
She told a reporter 5 guards, at least one of them from the Committee to Re-elect Richard Nixon, attacked her and drugged her when she said she was going to tell the press about the dirty tricks.
But evidently she was a drunk, or crazy, or catty, according to the Washintong Set, so she was not believed.
How a drunk would completely make up this story is beyond me. A drunk is not going to remember how or why she got into a scuffle. She is not going to totally make up a different story.
Then it’s suspicious that Nixon and Mitchell evidently met to smooth the incident over and Mae Brussell alleged the two men agreed that Mrs. Mitchell was wrong and covered it up. And we never hear of this story in the MSM again.
WWM, is there anything that happens apart from the CIA? They even controlled “The Paris Review” and the “winners” of the Modern Art sweepstakes for “soft propaganda” purposes. It’s all prop all the time, with murder on the side.
LBR,
I have recently come to see that the tentacles reach far and wide. It’s amazing.
I would have thought myself paranoid if I would have heard myself even 2 years ago.
Now I see that our politics, media, and culture are controlled by an elite.
Btw, I have started to look more into the music connections that you were hip to before.
For instance, I now think Bob Marley is a perp. Ha!
And of course the Beatles . . .
I don’t accept even these revelations about modern art and the Paris Review at face value. We must always be skeptical.
I suspect that simply laundering money may have been a primary motive. And to provide a cover story for operatives. I suspect the third rationale was the ‘soft propaganda’ angle–although I’m open to it being a bigger component. There certainly was a lot of attention paid to popular music.
What I’m starting to get into now is the CIA involvment in the self-help and other new-age movements, like the Esalen Institute or Andrew Cohen. I’m pretty certain the more obvious fascist gurus, like Jim Jones, Charles Manson, Mel Lyman, etc., were intelligence assets/agents.
But anyway re modern art . . . think how effective this is to launder money. I can just throw some paint on paper and then you can give me millions of dollars no questions asked. The goods are easy to transport and it can be done in the open. And think of all the fun we will have making up the cover stories about why the art is so valuable. . . we can also provide cover stories for artists and collectors to travel the world with no questions asked.
Even if this be so, spontaneous recognition of poets and artists dies. It’s all marketing/propaganda all the time. Wholesale abortion of talent not in bed with the CIA and its co-conspirators. American Mediocrity reigns supreme.
Yes indeed. They probably control the means of production entirely. They own the creative houses, production companies, PR companies, etc., and for those artists that break out outside the system, they are systematically hunted down, corralled, and either controlled or eliminated.
I don’t have a firm grasp on the particulars, but it does seem like most musicians are controlled. One simply does not get mass promoted in American kulture these days unless is a made man or woman.
The Jamaican music scene is but one little microcosm of a global controlled-media and it was helpful to dig into the details recently . . .
and it blew me away to think of Marley as a perp.
But one doesn’t end up on mass-produced corproate posters, in college kids dorms all across America, unless one doesn’t threaten power. Marley is yet another musician that is thought of as being political, and even liberal, without any real basis in fact. He is a great diversion for the ruling elite.
In fact, Marley ended up somewhat supporting two right-wing fascists that used or benefited from death squads. He gave legitimacy to Edward Seaga and his U.S.-sponsored death squads like the Jamaican Shower Posse. He also supported Mugabe. He studiously avoided taking any specific left-wing positions, afaik, as did the Beatles and Bob Dylan and many other suppossed liberal stars of the day. The only political position I can find that he really supporterd was legalization of marijuana.
A comment from yesterdays’s links-
Valissa wrote:
“Skippy, there is no science that shows that human beings have the ability to control the temperature of the planet or more specifically to control the current trend of global warming. Whatever happened to pollution as the the real issue here anyway? Personally I more afraid of the supposed solutions proposed for “saving” us from global warming (which almost all smack of pre-disaster capitalism in addition to various UN based and other money and power games) than I am of global warming itself. After all, all the major proposed “solutions” are funded and championed by the very same global elite that has brought us to where we are now. But I understand that other’s feel differently. Pick your poison.”
Thanks for this great point. There are too many people bullying everyone with their global warming evangelism, seemingly without any concern for where that energy will be channeled by TPTB. Remember the carbon-trading scheme Goldman Sachs was (is?) planning at one point. More control and centralization, plus a financial bubble no doubt.
Also I resent non-scientists arrogantly assuming their own intellectual superiority to other non-scientists simply because they’ve pledged fealty and obeisance to institutional science. Why in a time of faltering institutions across the board do they think bureaucratized scientists would be immune from general societal decline? Why wouldn’t they be infected by the same forces of careerism, petty self-advancement, conformity to institutional consensus, etc.
I don’t trust either side of the global warming debate. To officially sign on with either is no different from giving your support to the R’s or the D’s. Your energies to that effect will just be channeled into some big biz/big gov agenda.
This is what you guys tried with tobacco, too. At the bitter end when lies stop working, all the industry asskissers try and make a virtue of ignorance, throwing up your hands in vague born-loser cynicism and hoping everybody goes along. That only works with fetal-tobacco lumpenprole chumps. Go back to the drawing board.
A somewhat related question.
Is second-hand marajuana-smoking dangerous?
Definitely. If you are in their company, “TINA” to polluting lungs and brain.
Should we ban it then?
At least in restaurants and at music concerts.
Rock concerts OK: pollute your brain as you go deaf and don’t know it.
“Hello, is this the FBI?”
“Yes, how can we help you sir?”
“I’m calling to report my neighbor Billy Bob Smith! He is hiding marijuana inside his firewood.”
“Thank you very much for the call, Sir.”
The next day, the FBI agents descend on Billy Bob’s house.
They search the shed where the firewood is kept.
Using axes, they bust open everypiece of wood, but cant find any marijuana.
They swore at Billy Bob and left.
The phone rings at Billy Bob’s house.
Hey, Billy Bob! Did the FBI come?” said his best friend
“Yeah!”
“Did they chop your firewood?” his best friend asked
“Yep.”
“Happy Birthday, Buddy!” his best friend replied
I think you can get your firewood chopped at the airport too these days.
They probably do a betters job too.
If a mind vibrates to fast between points of thought… visually… it seems motionless.
BTW humanity does have the power to change climate and the environment, it has done so since agriculture was first utilized. Its just a matter of scale, from then, too now and beyond.
Skippy… the island of Hispaniola is a stark example:
Haiti vs, the Dominican Republic… Western influence… short term profit resource extraction or slave labor manufacturing vs. a resource constrained approach with an eye to future generations.
http://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/map/google_map_haiti.htm
Far from the important pressing issues of the day, a 30-something’s tweets about the .01% clients he services in the Hamptons, even though in at least one case it was a “Career Ending Move”! Think of it as an alternate antidote du jour!
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/twitter_tattler_hrOiDWjYVvLuX59smFEpuL
He should start The Global Mole Report for the 99%.
Or
“How the Wisconsin Uprising Got Hijacked”
could be titled
“How Wisconsin Public Employees Lost Bid To Continue Unimpeded Hijacking Of Taxpayers”
but that would be too long.
(And, of course, somewhat impeded hijacking will continue.)
GFY
Re the John Hempton/Bronte Capital post about the endemic corruption in the Chinese economy, about a week ago Steve Keen put up a piece by Craig Tindale with an almost identical thrust: http://bit.ly/LDy6oj
Success of creationism in South Korea:
http://www.nature.com/news/south-korea-surrenders-to-creationist-demands-1.10773
I hope they will be happy.
Regarding objectivism:
“What’s scary is that so many Americans have not grown out of that mentally puerile phase. Instead, this contingent – now largely comprised of Tea Party radicals – remains mired in her pop philosophy.”
Were it only the so-called “Tea Party radical” that haven’t grown out of this phase!
What do you think neoliberalism is all about?
I mean, sure it’s not as explicit as Objectivism and doesn’t have a vanguard such as Rand but what is really the over-arching message of neoliberal, free-trade horseshit as espoused by EVERY single member of the Western elite?
Oh, that’s right, by utilizing a model in which it is assumed that every human being – sorry, consumer – is always trying to aggrandize their economic potential, a greed model can be constructed that will magically “raise all boats” or whatever bullshit they used to tell us.
Greed may be “good” in Objectivism but greed is – gee, shucks – necessary in the neoliberal mindset.
And since that means everyone is trying to screw everyone else, why neoliberalism gives the rich/elite just as much of a justification for their murderous avarice as does the more blatant objectivism.
Invade sovereign nations, murder their civilians and steal their resources?
Well, someone would have done it someday, right?
Take away life-sustaining services from an entire nation to save the parasitic financiers?
There are always winners and losers in the game of life, son.
Just because the neoliberals aren’t such blatant mouthbreathers as many of the hardcore libertarians shouldn’t hide the fact that their bullshit is just as infantile and non-sensical.
The Randoids are not libertarians; they are fascist poseurs.
Six of one…
One and the same.
I thought Ron Paul and his fellow bots were Randroids?
R.I.P. Habeas Corpus
http://www.emptywheel.net/2012/06/11/scotus-kills-habeas-corpus/#comments
Yes indeed. The Supremes long ago abdicated their responsibility to the consitution. They are no better than common terrorists. They are enforcers for facsists and merely pretend to uphold the egal traditions.
I bet my local drug dealer gang leader is more just than these finks on the Supreme Court. And I’m not kidding.
Notice what a joke constitutional law is. These terrorists in black robes don’t hear the most elemental cases about our constitution, whether the government can hold innocent people for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but they will make a big deal about the Obamacare fight, a fake fight between two competing teams of fascists.
Fuck the Supreme Court. It’s lawless. Unjust. Fascist. They are literally allowing the executive to execute people with drones for simply being in the wrong place . . . .
Seriously, these people are no better than Hitler. Actually, Hitler showed more concern for the laws of war. In any case, these Supremes all need to be impeached.
One has to be fool to think these terrorists care about the constitution. These Supremes are war criminals and prove that American jurisprudence is a joke. They are jokes. Fucking fascist clowns.
That about sums it up.
And anyone who gives the USSC even the slightest bit of respect should be laughed and/or locked up.
Making Roger B. Taney look like good after all those years…
And I see this silly ass liberals are no help . . . they want to impeach the Supreme Court for failing to uphold Obamacare BUT NOT for allowing summary drone executions, indefinite detention, lawless spying, and so much more.
These fucking Democrats are almost as evil as the fascists on the Supreme Court. Actually, there is probably no more dangerous force on Earth than the clueless “liberal” nitwit Democrat and the fascist right-wingers that run this country.
The Democrats enacted right-wing legislation and now are falsely pretending like it’s left-wing legislation and . . . fuck this is so maddening because it’s so obvious but yet here we are . . . always moving rightward.
Democrats are actually more to blame for this than the right-wingers.
Next time you see a well-to-do liberal in a Prius with an Obama bumber sticker, make sure to thank her for bringing fascism to this country. Just think how many kids will get drone bombed to death because her silly ass is fooled by Charltans like Obama.
It’s just so crazy that my liberal neighbor, for instance, a middle-aged, short-haired, gay, liberal woman driving a Prius, supports drone bombing kids and keeping innocent people in cages because they are brown. It just amazes me that people are tricked into supporting such massive violence and if they could see the consequences of their actions I’m sure they would weep at the violence they are supporting.
You fucking evil liberals are killing the World! Stop supporting Democrats!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! They are immoral killers.
You get an amen from this pragnostic.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=pragnostic
+100!
Good stuff Walter.
I’m starting to hate that well-to-do, liberal neighbor of yours, with her Prius and Obama sticker.
If it came down to a matter of life and death, let’s say urban areas were being evacuated and American citizens were being rounded up for detention centers; and I had to choose between trusting my life to the local drug gang leader or that well-to-do Prius driving neighbor or the Supreme Court joker (with his silly black robe), I wouldn’t hesitate, I’d take my chances on the local drug dealer.
i know many of these folks-living in asheville, nc… i just ignore them and know that they are easy meat if we get a mad max collapse… on the other hand, if we get the ‘brazil’ future… i’ll be in trouble!
It ain’t the first time…
Habeas corpus in the United States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habeas_corpus_in_the_United_States
The Suspension Clause of the United States Constitution specifically included the English common law procedure in Article One, Section 9, clause 2, which demands that “The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.”
Habeas corpus does have a history of being suspended when it’s convenient for TPTB to do so.
Kagan is a neocon shill, for shame.
Re: the Wills piece on the NYRB Blogs – a curious farrago of “plutocrat” ills, salubrious demographic changes (“de-whitening” of the electorate), the usual SCOTUS spectre (further radicalisation via Romney appointments), out-of-control Pentagon funding, yadda-yadda-yadda, blah. But nowhere is a rational case made that Obama can or is willing to lead a progressive challenge to and confrontation of the forces of reaction and “plutocracy”. It simply is assumed. Bad idea. Bad reasoning. Bad reading of contemporary history.
However, Obama as the anti-Romney is all that remains of why 2012 election is critical. Sorry, not persuasive, and not nearly enough reason not to write in Stephen Colbert on the November Presidential ballot.
Sniff, mmmm! Apocrine sweat. Fake MLK will go as he came, on a wave of popular revulsion against irreversible state dereliction and failure. No president in history deserved repudiation more. Let’s hope he takes our fake democracy down with him.
Yawn
“Yet, is Chris himself trying to frame the debate as a battle between good and evil; does he not realize that the Curriculum is driving both sides of the coin?”
http://kulturcritic.wordpress.com/posts/capture-the-flag-just-another-divine-comedy/
Rene, thanks for the link. The Beast in the throes of death. Furious. Dangerous.
It looks like Varoufakis’ love affair with Germany may be coming to an end. The faster we ditch the meme of virtuous lenders and profligate borrowers the better. To get to the bottom of the European banking crisis, a forensic audit of both Southern and Northern banks is needed. It isn’t just Southern bankers who need to be fired (and prosecuted) but their Northern counterparts as well. And I think that is the distance Varoufakis still needs to run. He can see the rot in the South but he hasn’t yet realized that there is every bit of rot, and indeed more, in the Northern financial sector. It just manifests in different ways.
I applaud John Hempton for using kleptocracy to describe China, but he doesn’t seem to get that the US is an even larger one.
I think La Bruyère had it backwards: “La vie est une comédie pour celui qui sent, et une tragédie pour celui qui pense”.
Russ Feingold is your typical Establishment liberal. If you don’t need him, he’s there. If you do need him (as in showing some leadership), he is nowhere to be found.
Jobs are just an election year football. Don’t believe what anyone, Democrat or Republican, has to say about them. Obama and the Democrats ignored job creation for 3 1/2 years. The Republicans invoke them as an excuse to initiate another round of trickledown economics, only calling it this time sending money to “job creators”, i.e. the rich (who, of course, do not create jobs, just as they have not every other time supply side economics has been tried.)
The authorities in Québec are making strategic errors turning protest on a set of rather specific issues into a challenge to the state. But as the protesters are broadening their appeal, the effect is the delegitimation of the authorities themselves. They are becoming the focus and it is not one they can stand. When ordinary Québecois take a real look at these characters, the corruption and crooked deals that they are involved in up to their eyes start to come out. We are seeing the same thing happening in Spain, the cronyism and crimes of the bankers and the politicians. It is not a scrutiny the political elites can withstand.
Hugh, soon the rats will fly from the ship.
Molecular Imaging Finds Link Between Low Dopamine Levels and Aggression
Of course our society greatly restricts drugs if they increase dopamine levels cause, cause, cause, – pleasure is bad!
What is pleasure to one could be suffering to another.
For example, some real men think it’s a pleasure to eat sashimi without soy sauce and wasabi. For others, the fishy smell would be unbearable.
The wonderful world of wasabi
Wasabi growing by the Kawazu River http://www.japantimes.co.jp/images/photos2011/fv20110717a1a.jpg
Wasabi in the wild http://www.rackafracka.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/wasabi-w.jpg
Wasabi ice cream with seaweed bits http://static.flickr.com/111/267008685_dedb23ae4e.jpg (eeeew, gross!)
Some like it hot http://www.cartoonstock.com/lowres/jmp081211l.jpg
Wasabi comes in many forms http://clzimages.com/movie/large/0f/0f_d_62562_0_Wasabi.jpg
Wasabi, the movie got a pretty good review too http://www.allmovie.com/movie/wasabi-v257792/review
Yes, you like amphetamines F. Beard. I like methylenedioxymethamphetamine… it is truly a gift from the Gods!
Yes, the RED PILL does REALLY exist my friends…
A truly great American, Alexander Shulgin.
Phenethylamines I Have Known And Loved:
A Chemical Love Story
By Alexander and Ann Shulgin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Shulgin
I first explored mescaline in the late ’50s, Three-hundred-fifty to 400 milligrams. I learned there was a great deal inside me.
— Alexander Shulgin, LA Times, 1995[7]
He would later write that everything he saw and thought “had been brought about by a fraction of a gram of a white solid, but that in no way whatsoever could it be argued that these memories had been contained within the white solid … I understood that our entire universe is contained in the mind and the spirit. We may choose not to find access to it, we may even deny its existence, but it is indeed there inside us, and there are chemicals that can catalyze its availability.”[6]
Thanks for the link. Was not aware of him.
This is very interesting in conjunction with the fact there were many sex cults and gurus and MKULTRA programs going on in the Bay Area the last few decades . . . up to today.
Who knows what kinds of crazy and sick experimentation they’ve done.
Since I referenced Esalen above I searched and saw that Shulgin was on the guest faculty there in the late 70s . . . at the start of the hot tub diplomacy era.
Tavistock – Esalen – RAND – Stanford – Penn – MIT – Harvard – Adorno/Beatles, etc.
Alexander Shulgin didn’t like Esalen, he was also invited for The Owl Club in SF (?!)
Anyway, having read both his books, I can safely conclude that this man was a recluse scientist and seriously buggered by the DEA and other alphabet soup agencies.
I am very much aligned with your paranoid perspectives on society. Especially since many, many events in the last decade have shown us that the ‘official story’ often is complete BS.
Alexander Shulgin gave us the tools to breakthrough our “conditioning” and our government induced brainwashing and indoctrination.
Thanks for the information Rene.
Having read his books, etc., you have much more information and so I appreciate your perspective.
I too can see how a drug like Ecstasy is a gift. My only concern is that some groups misuse drugs like this. One can open consciousness with these drugs but they can also be used for nefarious goals.
For instance, ecstasy may not be a good thing in a sex cult because it may be used, along with the group conditioning and sex, to condition the members. The acid fascists tried to do this with acid, it seems like. They would screw with your head while on acid.
I understand the drug can be good for marriage counseling and other uses to bring people closer together. I can even see how it can be good to use recreationaly. But it can also be misused.
But thanks for introducing me to him.
Your welcome, Walter.
Yes, mind altering substances can be abused and have been abused by authorities.
Alexander Shulgin is still alive by the way. Underneath, a particular interesting interview with the great scientist !
Alexander Shulgin: why I discover psychedelic substances;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QD260LPqHKA
“La vie est une tragédie pour celui qui sent, et une comédie pour celui qui pense” – Jean de La Bruyère
For those who don’t understand French, this would be translated as:
“Life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think.”
And as long as we’re quoting French stuff, Lambert, here’s one in the spirit of Walter Wit Man’s comments above (on Supreme Court Justices)
“Plutôt être balayeur que juge” – Gilles Deleuze
(“better to be a street sweeper than a judge”)
I remember being impressed with the smart green uniforms of the street sweepers in Paris a few decades ago . . . and they were actually providing a valuable public service!
Pentagon to soon deploy pint-sized but lethal Switchblade drones http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-kamikaze-drone-20120611,0,3893056.story
Navy drone crashes in Maryland http://edition.cnn.com/2012/06/11/us/maryland-drone-crash/index.html
I wonder how soon a drone will accidentally harm or kill innocent US civilians?
$176 million down the drain.
Intead of paying for one of these flying killing toys we could have provided a new mass transit system for a city. Or provided over 1,000 jobs.
“Don’t be deceived when they tell you things are better now. Even if there’s no poverty to be seen because the poverty’s been hidden. Even if you ever got more wages and could afford to buy more of these new and useless goods which industries foist on you and even if it seems to you that you never had so much, that is only the slogan of those who still have much more than you. Don’t be taken in when they paternally pat you on the shoulder and say that there’s no inequality worth speaking of and no more reason to fight because if you believe them they will be completely in charge in their marble homes and granite banks from which they rob the people of the world under the pretence of bringing them culture. Watch out, for as soon as it pleases them they’ll send you out to protect their gold in wars whose weapons, rapidly developed by servile scientists, will become more and more deadly until they can with a flick of the finger tear a million of you to pieces.”
Jean-Paul Marat (24 May 1743 – 13 July 1793)
Thanks for this SR.
Mais, mais . . . absolument RIEN n’a change!
Calling Leonova BR and Walter Wit Man for intel on who programmed Charlotte Corday to stab Marat in his bathtub.
Ha ha. Good one!
Fun fact: After her public execution, Charlotte Corday’s skull, a rich prize in the head-trading industry of the day, found its way into the hands of a descendant of Napoleon, Princess Marie Bonaparte, who was to become a pioneer psychoanalyst.
Re the Supreme Court, there was a story in the print edition of the NYT last Friday, June 8, which noted that approval of the Supreme Court was at 44%. This represented a fairly linear decline from 66% in the mid-1980s.
So a majority of Americans no longer approve of the Court and think its decisions are politically influenced. I think if Americans actually read the Court’s opinions or knew its history, the disapproval rate would be even higher. But given that most do not, it is still is a ringing indictment of what is often portrayed as the holy of holies of our secular Constitutional religion.
Except for the few years of the Warren Court and a little thereafter, the Court has always been reactionary and on the side of the haves against the have-nots. It was a major defender of slavery. It warred against limits on child labor and labor hours and conditions. It defended Jim Crow and separate but equal. It fought against Roosevelt and the New Deal. And for some years now, it has championed conferring unlimited rights to corporations and powers to the Executive in its war on terror and against its own citizens. It usurped an American Presidential election in Bush v. Gore.
The Court, again except for the period in and around the Warren era, has throughout its history been nothing more than an elite tool to keep the lower orders in check, a black-robed priesthood meant to awe the rubes into believing that they are the embodiment of justice on earth and not the agents and apologists of the looters that they are.
Supreme Court justices can be impeached, correct?
Great torching of the Supine Court, Hugh. These robed high priests are our own contemporary Pharisees, with a shameful and damning history worth wide exposure.
Let’s hope Holder does not attempt to take the district court injunction against the NDAA all the way to this Supine Court. He might, but the ruling against it was so strong and emphatic that overturning it would become a very public spectacle and travesty.
From plantiff’s attorney Carl J Mayer in Hedges v. Obama: US Federal District Court Judge Katherine B. Forrest issued “a preliminary injunction and striking down as unconstitutional a provision of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would have allowed for the indefinite detention of United States citizens in military prisons without trial or counsel.”
[…]
“The most astonishing moment at trial before Judge Forrest was the sound of silence. The government refused to call any witnesses from any of the national security agencies that could have explained why undermining the civil liberties of civilians in this country is necessary to fight terrorism…
[…]
“On June 6, 2012, in another courageous opinion, Judge Forrest denied the Obama administration’s request for reconsideration and made clear that her order is so broad that it applies to every area of the country and by implication protects all journalists and activists in America.
“The battle to restore civil liberties in America has begun.”
http://alethonews.wordpress.com/2012/06/11/judge-forrest-and-the-ndaa/#respond
Re: Germany, Not Greece, Should Exit the Euro Bloomberg
Sounds ridiculously counterintuitive but…
Upon contemplating the potential repercussions as described in the article – the logic of the suggestion becomes more apparent. It would be interesting to see if the Latin Block could actually pull together as a group and force a more pragmatic EU response (from their perspective) to their continuing debt and credit problems.
Now I don’t see handing over more money to Italy, Spain and Greece with fewer strings attached as a true long term solution to the crisis. That would obviuously be nothing more than another can-kicking exercise. Rather, as the author poses, the true solution would be that a demand for a larger debt resolution program might eventually incite Germany to take its bat and ball, go home and withdrawal from the Euro. Now if that were to happen, the subsequent deflation of the Euro WOULD go a long way in resolving the current intractable periphery-nation competitive problems. Side note -it would also be interesting to observe how competitive a newly independent German economy would be while having to deal with the immediately sky-rocketing value of a newly re-activated German DM.
As the article indicates, this might be the best course of action for the EU as a whole, although the same probably could not be said for Germany.
Truth is, I believe that German leadership if faced with this quandry, would be able to read the tea leaves, understand the consequences and ultimately choose not to leave the EURO behind.
Consequently, I would be surprised not to see indicia of this strategy popping up on the European horizon in the near future, simply because it creates leverage for the southern countries in their ongoing negotiations, where they currently otherwise have none.
Kudos to the Bloomberg author for such a keen insight.