Socio-Economics History Blog

Socio-Economics & History Commentary

The Sinking of The Cheonan: Another Gulf of Tonkin Incident?!

  • The more you dig into the Cheonan incident, the less it looks like North Korea did it. It was a false flag incident for political gain. Is South Korean president Lee Myung-bak a US lackey? It won’t surprise me. Stephen Gowans presents the evidence against North Korea involvement:
      
    While the South Korean government announced on May 20 that it has overwhelming evidence that one of its warships was sunk by a torpedo fired by a North Korean submarine, there is, in fact, no direct link between North Korea and the sunken ship. And it seems very unlikely that North Korea had anything to do with it.
     
    That’s not my conclusion. It’s the conclusion of Won See-hoon, director of South Korea’s National Intelligence. Won told a South Korean parliamentary committee in early April, less than two weeks after the South Korean warship, the Cheonan, sank in waters off Baengnyeong Island, that there was no evidence linking North Korea to the Cheonan’s sinking. (1)
     
    South Korea’s Defense Minister Kim Tae-young backed him up, pointing out that the Cheonan’s crew had not detected a torpedo (2), while Lee Ki-sik, head of the marine operations office at the South Korean joint chiefs of staff agreed that “No North Korean warships have been detected…(in) the waters where the accident took place.” (3) Notice he said “accident.”
      
    Defense Ministry officials added that they had not detected any North Korean submarines in the area at the time of the incident. (4) According to Lee, “We didn’t detect any movement by North Korean submarines near” the area where the Cheonan went down. (5)
     
    When speculation persisted that the Cheonan had been sunk by a North Korean torpedo, the Defense Ministry called another press conference to reiterate “there was no unusual North Korean activities detected at the time of the disaster.” (6)
     
    A ministry spokesman, Won Tae-jae, told reporters that “With regard to this case, no particular activities by North Korean submarines or semi-submarines…have been verified. I am saying again that there were no activities that could be directly linked to” the Cheonan’s sinking. (7)
     
    Rear Admiral Lee, the head of the marine operations office, added that, “We closely watched the movement of the North’s vessels, including submarines and semi-submersibles, at the time of the sinking. But military did not detect any North Korean submarines near the country’s western sea border.” (8) North Korea has vehemently denied any involvement in the sinking.
     
    So, a North Korean submarine is now said to have fired a torpedo which sank the Cheonan, but in the immediate aftermath of the sinking the South Korean navy detected no North Korean naval vessels, including submarines, in the area. Indeed, immediately following the incident defense minister Lee ruled out a North Korean torpedo attack, noting that a torpedo would have been spotted, and no torpedo had been spotted. (9) The case gets weaker still.
     
    It’s unlikely that a single torpedo could split a 1,200 ton warship in two. Baek Seung-joo, an analyst with the Korea Institute for Defense Analysis says that “If a single torpedo or floating mine causes a naval patrol vessel to split in half and sink, we will have to rewrite our military doctrine.” (10)
     
    The Cheonan sank in shallow, rapidly running, waters, in which it’s virtually impossible for submarines to operate. “Some people are pointing the finger at North Korea,” notes Song Young-moo, a former South Korean navy chief of staff, “but anyone with knowledge about the waters where the shipwreck occurred would not draw that conclusion so easily.” (11)
     
    Contrary to what looks like an improbable North-Korea-torpedo-hypothesis, the evidence points to the Cheonan splitting in two and sinking because it ran aground upon a reef, a real possibility given the shallow waters in which the warship was operating. According to Go Yeong-jae, the South Korean Coast Guard captain who rescued 56 of the stricken warship’s crew, he “received an order …that a naval patrol vessel had run aground in the waters 1.2 miles to the southwest of Baengnyeong Island, and that we were to move there quickly to rescue them.” (12)
     
      ….. to continue reading     click here!
     
  • See also:
      
    Questions Raised Following Cheonan Announcement!
    The Sinking of the Cheonan: We Are Being Lied To!
    Probe Concludes German Made Torpedo Sank South Korea Ship! 

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May 27, 2010 Posted by | GeoPolitics | , , , | 5 Comments

Gerald Celente: Financial Armageddon 2.0!

May 27, 2010 Posted by | Economics | , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off

Top Construction Firm: WTC Destroyed By Controlled Demolition!

Click on image for MP3 interview!

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May 27, 2010 Posted by | GeoPolitics, History | , , , , , | 4 Comments

E.U. Bailout Just Delays Inevitable Sovereign Debt Default!

  • They have kicked the can just a little further down the road. But a little further down the road the Eurozone will be kicking the bucket. Bankruptcy and sovereign debt default is inevitable. Debt restructuring is just another ‘beautiful lie’ for bankruptcy! The Gold Report interviews Roger Wiegand of Trader Tracks’ :
     
    …in this exclusive interview. Roger says the euro at $1.20 is the “line in the sand where big trouble will start. . .and that’s dangerously close.” …
       
    The Gold Report: You put a rather provocative quotation in a recent Trader Tracks. It says: “The destruction of a currency does not follow a straight, predictable course. . .like a cancer, the disease breaks out anew because inflation cannot be cured through monetary and fiscal measures alone; it requires a fundamental change in social and political attitudes and this change usually does not occur until complete monetary chaos forces a change.” The quotation credit reads, “G. Carl Wiegand, ‘The Great Inflation: Germany,’ 1923.” … What do you think of Carl Wiegand’s observation in light of the euro’s troubles and what’s happening in the European Union now?
      ….
    RW: I think the statement was very appropriate for what’s going on in Europe today. We’ve been doing a lot of writing on this lately, and based on latest information Germany has become the engine of Europe. Its share of the huge Euroland rescue package will come to between $154 billion and $185 billion in loan guarantees. It’s going to be mostly German money and savings that was going to have to do it—their credit.
     
    Chopper Ben (Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke), Timmy the G (Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner) and the New York banksters turned up the heat and the German Parliament approved that ridiculous package in mid-May, contrary to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s urging lawmakers to reject the whole deal. They think they can blunder through to help the euro. They cannot. Germany goes down with the rest. I think the German people are very angry about this. They don’t want to be Europe’s paymaster.
     
    I said back in 2003 that Euroland (i.e., the European Union); the European Central Bank and the euro would fail. Now it’s coming true. It’s in writing, seven years ago. I said that because I thought it was ridiculous idea for a group of countries with major cultural differences and languages, disparate economies that don’t match up at all, with their abilities to buy and sell and obtain credit being so different. There was no way to achieve parity to reach a point where they could participate as equal members. Germany is expected to save all its neighbors and it cannot.
     
    TGR: Do you expect to see the return of guilders and schillings, pesetas, francs and marks as one outcome from all of this?
     
    RW: Yep. Absolutely. It won’t happen overnight. It would be too much of a big changeover at once. There may be a “mini-euro,” a higher-quality currency probably established by Germany, running alongside the current euro. I contend that Germany will be the first to bail out of the European Union and abandon the euro. I have said numerous times that the German mark probably would come back, run in parallel with the euro, and eventually the euro would just be cancelled out as a currency in Germany and they would use the old marks.
     
    TGR: And then other former European currencies might follow?
    RW: They very well could. The survivors who still remain in the European Central Bank with the euro may, in fact, try to keep it together. But without the German credit, and with all the problems they’re going to face, I really don’t understand how it can keep going. The debt is just overwhelming. Basically, Italy, Portugal, Spain and Greece are pretty much broke; they have no hope of paying their debt. To my understanding, Spain’s debts are 24 times larger than Greece’s. That’s a pretty big mountain to climb. So yes, I suspect that what would happen is if Germany drops out and they go back to their own old currency, the rest of the countries will, too.
     
    TGR: Despite the vote in the German parliament, do you project that Greece and potentially Spain and Portugal will ultimately default on their sovereign debts?
     
    RW: I think they will. There’s no way Greece can pay anything back. They have nothing going for them. They have a tourism industry, but very little manufacturing. I saw a comment the other day that said Greece hadn’t balanced a budget since 1893 or 1898. How in the world they managed that is beyond me.
     
    TGR: So, suppose Greece defaults. And then assume, with Spain and Portugal teetering on the edge, the euro then plummets dramatically unless they start to inflate their way out of it. At what point does everyone abandon the euro and move to safer currencies? Say the U.S. dollar?
     
    RW: There are two big numbers to watch. First would be the euro at $1.20, and that’s dangerously close. Everybody considers $1.20 the line in the sand where big trouble will start; it’s a major, major support number. The other number would be when the euro is at parity with the U.S. dollar, which would be 20 points lower. Keep in mind that one point with the euro is $1,250 the same as the Swiss franc, in currency trading. So, those are the key numbers.
     
    TGR: What happens if the euro goes below that $1.20?
    RW: Everything starts coming apart. Keep in mind, too, the euro and the U.S. dollar are supposedly the two reserve currencies of the world, with the U.S. dollar being dominant at about 80% to 85% of all reserves. The euro has a much smaller position, but it is a pretty big deal. Not all of the European population lives in Euroland, of course, and the Swiss and the Brits (the UK) still use francs and sterling—but also remember that Europe has 850 million people in contrast to 330 million in the U.S.
     
    The Swiss franc, incidentally, trades almost point-for-point with the euro because Eurolanders surround the Swiss. The Swiss don’t want a large disparity between the two currencies to mess up export/import, in comparing prices, and in a variety of domestic things.
      ….
    TGR: You’ve also said you expect major market mayhem before the end of July. Could you describe more specifically what you see, and tell us why?
     
    RW: I am not alone in my forecast. Many others are saying the same thing. Stocks are up about 80% from March of 2009. It’s gotten very peaky. The markets have normal technical shifts. The Lehman meltdown in 2008 hit the market so hard that for 30 to 60 days, nothing seemed to behave normally on the trading cycles and calendar. I expected it to self-correct, but it has not. That period just fell off the trading calendar. Consequently, the old “sell in May and go away” shifted to July.
     
    Our next short-term call is that the big funds will have pushed the market up, sold into strength, taken their profits and be out of the way by Memorial Day weekend. Then the selling begins. It will continue at a very heavy rate probably for one to two months. Six negative events are converging this month and next. First is housing. We can expect another three to five years of falling prices. Some Alt-A loans—not subprime but those based on slightly blemished credits—are going to fail and foreclose. One report said there will be two million of these.
     
    Number two: commercial real estate has hit the wall. Vacancies are climbing. A few months ago, General Growth Properties, the owner of 158 malls, filed for bankruptcy for about $28 billion. That’s in a breakup in court right now. Good shopping centers in the U.S. are in trouble. I have never seen a big mall close, but some people have told me they have seen two of them. That’s a major event in my view. So, commercial real estate, REITs, and the life insurance companies that gave them all the money will take a big hit as related group.
     
    TGR: A lot of shoes dropping here.
    RW: We’re just at number three, the auto business. The only thing that propped it up was all the free cash from the government, “cash for clunkers” and some of the other programs. The spring auto sales that will be reported after Memorial Day won’t be good.
     
    The next hit’s coming when the banks have to report about what’s happening with credit cards on their financial statements. Look for $40 billion in credit card debt to be written off in June and July. That’s not my forecast; I think it may have come from prominent banking analyst Meredith Whitney. That’s number four.
     
    That brings us to number five. Remember the TARP plan, which bailed out the big New York banks? All these banks have done was to gather in cash from the taxpayers, rearrange the balance sheets—the deck chairs on the Titanic—and then march forward saying everything was super duper. And it’s not. I saw Meredith Whitney on a TV show a couple of weeks ago, saying that the bad loans they’re still holding are four times worse than what got them in trouble the last time. That does not bode well.
     
    And finally, number six was the big surprise—what’s going on in Euroland.
     
    TGR: Yikes. Harmonic convergence turned upside down.
    RW: Yes. Arch Crawford—publisher of Crawford Perspectives and Wall Street’s best-known astrologer, according to Barron’s—has mentioned the date of July 26. He said it’s the worst day astrologically and technologically that he can see on charts in 10,000 years. I asked him at a conference how bad that was and he said, “It’s so bad I can’t imagine what could happen”—you know, World War III, Iran invasion, complete systemic economic crash, or whatever. I am not of the view that something like that will happen, although it could. We don’t know. I just think we’ll have a long, slow sink in the mud, and this is going to be a very hard recession-depression that will continue for another three to five years. So, it’s going to be tough, but keep in mind the fact that in the 1930s, as bad as it was, three out of four people still had a job—so 75% were employed.     

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May 27, 2010 Posted by | Economics | , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off

Secret Clause Reveals Europe Bailout Designed To Destroy Global Economy!

  • The whole Greek bailout is for the banksters not for the people. Private debts have been socialized and dumped onto the people. Instead of bankruptcy and liquidation of banks, their debts have been dumped onto the sheeple. What we have now is the spectre of sovereign debt defaults throughout Europe, UK, Japan and US.
     
  • The intention of the Illuminist money power is an engineered controlled demolition of the entire European, Japanese and finally American economies. Their plans will make things worse while ‘raping’ the sheeple. Their method is always to disguise evil as light! A ginormous economic, financial and monetary tsunami is about to hit the world. My guess is: by Q4 2010, the world will no longer be in delusional denial.
     
    Secret Clause Reveals Europe Bailout Designed To Destroy Global Economy 
    A secret exit clause written into the trillion dollar European bailout agreement will ensure the creation of more debt in Europe, worsening the global economy, decimating nation states and allowing power to be consolidated into fewer super-elite hands. As the Financial Times reports today, the major German newspaper Bild says it has obtained a copy of the bailout agreement and has set about “exposing” a series of secret clauses.
     
    The most revealing of these clauses states that if any country finds it cannot raise funding for the bailout at interest rates below the 5pc charge agreed for Greece, it can opt out of the bail-out altogether, leaving the rest of the eurozone states to pay the difference.
     
    If this happened, a domino effect could ensue, as the London Telegraph’s Ambrose Evans Pritchard explains:
     
    BNP Paribas said this would escalate quickly into a systemic crisis if Spain were in such a position, because the other countries cannot carry an ever-rising burden. The bank warned the euro project itself may start to disintegrate rapidly if these rescue provisions are ever seriously put to the test.
     
    As financial analyst Tyler Durden of Zero Hedge explains, this means bad news for American taxpayers because the U.S. is essentially being used as the engine for global consolidation:
     
    The second Portugal, Spain and Italy are dragged under by the vigilantes, their participation in the $1 trillion bailout ends. And when that happens, the full cost of the bailout will be borne by none other than the “richest” member of the IMF, the United States.
     
    Obviously, the incentive to blow up one’s borrowing costs in this arrangement are huge, now that both Germany and the US have no choice but to bail out each and every dropping domino.
      
    The secret clause essentially creates a huge incentive for weaker eurozone countries to blow up their debts – the agreement creates massive moral hazard. Tyler Durden again:
     
    …the benefit to the first defector is far greater than any downside, with the last to defect left holding the bag on what would basically become a bail out of all of Europe. Many have wondered how arguably intelligent people could come up with a rescue package of Greece in which Greece itself is supposed to contribute to its own bailout. Now we know that this was the ploy all along.
     
    As we have continued to expose, at the heart of the ongoing centralization of national economies is a further viral spread of economic chaos through which the most powerful can consolidate their control over the globe. The super-elite are essentially siphoning the wealth of every sovereign nation they can lay their hands on, holding the people of those nations to ransom via their elected governments, while slowly draining and using up everything they have.
     
    Exposure and understanding of this agenda and what it means for the masses is key because at the moment the people continue to allow their governments to operate in this system under an illusion that they are working toward some kind of utopian harmonization, when the reality is quite the opposite.

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May 27, 2010 Posted by | Economics | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off

Medvedev Calls on Seoul Not to Allow Escalation on Korean Peninsula! Russia Sends Its Mightiest Warships For Drills in Far East!

© RIA Novosti. Sergey Petrosyan

  • Things are heating up in the Korean peninsula. War rhetoric and preparations on both sides are being ratcheted up. The Cheonan sinking was a false flag event IMO. North Korea do not benefit from this event. Kim Jong Il is a megalomania narcissist. But I doubt even he would want to goto war. He will be wiped out. The Illuminists are setting up the pieces for the coming World War 3! Russia and China are both guarded in their remarks on the ‘findings’ and conclusion that it was a North Korean submarine that launched a torpedo that sank the Cheonan. Their reservations are justified.
     
    Medvedev calls on Seoul not to allow escalation on Korean Peninsula
    Russian President Dmitry Medvedev called on Tuesday on his South Korean counterpart to show restraint and not allow the situation on the Korean peninsula to escalate, the Kremlin press service said. Medvedev spoke with President Lee Myung-bak by telephone about the heightened tensions between Seoul and Pyongyang over the sinking of a South Korean warship in the Yellow Sea on March 26.
     
    An international investigation found that a North Korean submarine had fired a torpedo at the 1,200-ton Cheonan corvette. The vessel sank near the disputed Northern Limit Line causing the loss of 46 lives.
     
    “Both leaders have expressed regret that a number of important inter-Korean projects in the trade and economic spheres, which were drawn up with Russian help several years ago, have not been implemented, and that the general situation has deteriorated to the level of confrontation,” the statement said. The two presidents confirmed that they were ready to continue consultations on all matters relating to the Korean Peninsula.
     
    Russia sends its mightiest warships for drills in Far East
    Flagships of three Russian fleets have united in Russia’s Far East for the large-scale naval exercises in the Sea of Japan in June, a Pacific Fleet spokesman said on Wednesday. The flagship of the Black Sea fleet, the Moskva missile cruiser, arrived at a naval base near Vladivostok on Wednesday and teamed up with the flagship of the Northern Fleet, the Pyotr Veliky nuclear-powered guided-missile cruiser, and the flagship of the Pacific Fleet, the Varyag guided-missile cruiser.
     
    “After the Moskva crew has had a short rest, warships of three Russian fleets will sail to the Sea of Japan to complete combat training tasks and hold naval drills,” the official said. During the exercises, warships of the three Russian fleets will conduct live firing at naval and aerial drones and practice combat interoperability and repelling simulated attacks by hostile submarines and aircraft. Earlier reports indicated that the naval drills would be part of the     Vostok-2010 strategic exercises in Siberia and the Russian Far East in June-July.
     
    The land drills will involve units from the Far Eastern, Siberian and Volga-Urals military districts. The units will practice the deployment of additional troops to strengthen the existing military contingent in the region in case of a potential military conflict. Russia holds Vostok strategic exercises every two years. More than 8,000 troops took part in     Vostok-2008.
     
  • See also:
     
    Questions Raised Following Cheonan Announcement!
    The Sinking of the Cheonan: We Are Being Lied To!
    Probe Concludes German Made Torpedo Sank South Korea Ship!

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May 27, 2010 Posted by | GeoPolitics | , , | Comments Off

Warning: Crash Dead Ahead ! Sell ! Get Liquid. Now!

  • The DJIA lost all its initial gains and ended lower yesterday. The market is exhibiting extreme weakness. It may retrace a little as it is oversold. But the general trend is down! Paul B Farrell writes:
     
    ‘Game’s in the refrigerator.’ Power’s turning off. Dow sinking below 6,470.
    …. As you stare from high up in the nose-bleed bleachers watching the game, staring at a Dow that not long ago was above 11,000 and heading for 12,000. Now the Dow’s sitting on the bench, ready for the showers, weak after a couple air balls around 10,000. No more timeouts. “This game’s in the refrigerator.”
     
    …A blowout? Will the Dow drop below 9,000 again? Now that it’s broken technical supports, will it drop below 6,470, where the last bull rally started in early 2009? Can you handle the nerve-racking volatility generated by Wall Street’s high-frequency traders playing the game at warp-speed with algorithms making thousands of micro-bets in milliseconds, betting billions daily?
      ….. 
    You remember Biggs: In his book “Wealth, War & Wisdom” he advises his high rollers to prepare for a “breakdown of the civilized infrastructure.” Buy a farm: “Your safe haven must be self-sufficient and capable of growing some kind of food … It should be well-stocked with seed, fertilizer, canned food, wine, medicine, clothes, etc. Think Swiss Family Robinson.” Biggs is not advising small investors on what to do with their 401(k)s. If you’re gambling at Wall Street’s casino, folks, the odds-makers are betting against Biggs. It’s “game over.”
      
    Main Street lost 20% last decade … yet like sheep keep going back
    …. Wall Street won (proof, Goldman’s $100-million-profit trading days and Blankfein’s $68 million bonus) … Main Street’s headed for another losing streak … Congress’ lights are out … the refrigerator door’s closing on financial reforms … the lobbyists are laying some rotten eggs, poisoning capitalism … . and this market’s going into hibernation, with the bears … run, don’t walk, to the exits, folks.”
     
    But will Main Street exit? Will we ever learn? No. The Wall Street casino makes mega-billions for insiders like Blankfein and the Goldman Conspiracy. Yet “The Casino” is still below the 2000 record of 11,722. So after accounting for inflation, Wall Street lost over 20% of Main Street’s 401(k) retirement money between 2000 and 2010. Yes, Wall Street’s a big loser the past decade. Their advice is self-serving. Period.
     
    Given their miserable track record, only a fool would bet with Wall Street. Betting odds are Wall Street will lose another 20% in the next decade from 2010-2020. Yes, today’s market is a “buying opportunity,” but only for Wall Street casino insiders like Biggs, Blankfein and even low-level staffers inside “The Casino.” But not for our 95 million Main Street investors, there’s more pain ahead, this market’s dropping.
     
    Correction? New crash imminent, worse than 2008
    More proof: Earlier economist Gary Shilling said price-to-earnings ratios are at a “nosebleed 22.5 level.” The Dow was around 11,000. Money manager Jeremy Grantham recently said the market’s overvalued 40%. That could mean a collapse to 6,600. Last week in Reuters’ “Markets Could Be Derailed Again,” George Soros echoed a “game over” warning with a “stark warning … that the financial world is on the wrong track and that we may be hurtling towards an even bigger boom and bust than in the credit crisis.”
     
    Now Dow Theory’s Richard Russell is warning the public of an imminent crash: “Sell … get liquid … by the end of this year they won’t recognize the country.”
        
    A bigger meltdown than the credit crisis? Yes, Bush’s team drove America into a ditch. But now Obama and his money men, Summers, Geithner, Bernanke, are digging the hole deeper. Soros says we have not learned “the lessons that markets are inherently unstable.” As a result, “the success in bailing out the system on the previous occasion led to a super-bubble.” Now “we are facing a yet larger bubble.” Worse than 2008?
     
    Yes, the game may be “in the refrigerator,” the lights will go out, but as Soros hints, the electricity may get turned off too. Get it? This may not be a correction. Not even a bear. What’s coming could be worse than the 2000 dot-com crash and the 2008 meltdown combined, a “Super-Bubble” says Soros. And the biggest reason, Nouriel Roubini and Stephen Mihm tell Newsweek, is that “the president’s half-measures won’t fix our failed financial system” because he refuses to “bust up the too-big-to-fail banks.”
     
    Yes, Congress will pass something. But unfortunately, as reported on MSNBC, Senator Dodd, the reform bill’s sponsor, is a turncoat, working overtime with Wall Street lobbyists “to weaken financial reform,” leave us vulnerable to a new, bigger crash in the near future. And Wall Street lobbyists are spending hundreds of millions to kill reform.
     
    ‘White Swans:’ 2000 and 2008 crashes were predictable, next one too
    Recently Roubini was interviewed by Charlie Rose in BusinessWeek. His message confirms the worst. …Rose began by asking, “what have we learned from these crises of capitalism?” Roubini could easily have said, “nothing, we learned nothing.” His actual reply:
     
    “The first lesson is that crises are not ‘black swan’ events … they’re not just random outcomes. They are the result of a buildup of financial and policy vulnerability and mistakes — excessive risk-taking, leverage, debt, and so on.” They are ‘White Swans’ “because these events are predictable. But generation after generation, we seem to forget the past. When there’s a bubble, there’s euphoria. There’s irrational exuberance. Consumers can use their homes like ATM machines. Governments and policy makers are happy because they get reelected. Wall Street makes billions of dollars of profits. Everybody’s delusional.”
     
    Sound familiar? Yes indeed, in “    This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly,” economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff pinpoint the key signal that will blow the whistle and call the game: The “90% ratio of government debt to GDP is a tipping point in economic growth.” For 800 years “you increase it over and beyond a high threshold, and boom!”
     
    ….America’s ratio is now 92%, thanks to Obama’s $1.7 trillion budget, future deficits, exploding debt. Soon, Ka-Booom! Another great nation bites the dust. Depression follows. Goodbye retirement.
     
    Warning: 800 years of history are calling ‘game over’
    ….300 million Americans all just playing their parts in a historical script well-known to historians like Reinhart and Rogoff,     Kevin Phillips, Niall Ferguson and others? The message of “This Time Is Different” is very simple:
     
    “We have been here before. No matter how different the latest financial frenzy or crisis always appears, there are usually remarkable similarities from past experience from other countries and from history. … no country, irrespective of its global importance, appears to be immune to it. The fading memories of borrowers and lenders, policy makers and academics, and the public at large do not seem to improve over time, so the policy lessons on how to ‘avoid’ the next blow-up are at best limited.”
     
    So please listen closely: All the TARP bailouts, stimulus debt and Fed loans won’t work. …. While we prefer the illusion that “this time really is different,” eight centuries of history suggest otherwise:
     
    “The lesson of history, then, is that even as institutions and policy makers improve there will always be a temptation to stretch the limits. … If there is one common theme to the vast range of crises … it is that excessive debt accumulation, whether it be by the government, banks, corporations, or consumers, often poses greater systemic risks than it seems during a boom. … Highly indebted governments, banks, or corporations can seem to be merrily rolling along for an extended period, when bang — confidence collapses, lenders disappear and a crisis hits. … Highly leveraged economies … seldom survive forever … history does point to warnings signs that policy makers can look to access risk — if only they do not become too drunk with their credit bubble-fueled success and say, as their predecessors have for centuries, ‘This time is different’.”
     
    No, “this time” it’s never different. Get it? In the end, it doesn’t matter what happens to the Dodd-Obama financial reforms. The endgame’s never a Black Swan, it’s a very White Swan well known to historians — guaranteed, inevitable and inescapable. This time is never different. The clock’s flashing. …. Think bear, think crash, think end of capitalism, think Great Depression II … This is no buying opportunity, this game’s in the refrigerator, call it.

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May 27, 2010 Posted by | Economics | , , , , , , | Comments Off

   

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