The system inevitably crashes – it’s happened over and over again since the Reagan years each time more serious than the last but that’s not a problem, they can run to the nanny state that they nurtured, ask for a taxpayer bailout, and meanwhile they clutch their copies of Hayek and Milton Friedman … The main architects of the crisis are bigger and richer. Noam Chomsky, lecture 7th June 2011, ‘The Evolving Global Order: Prospects and Opportunities’
Economic success has invariably relied on activist policies that deliberately alter market incentives. Noam Chomsky, lecture London 1993, ‘500 Years of Western Imperialism’
I served seven years as the chair of the Princeton economics department where I had responsibility for major policy decisions, such as whether to serve bagels or doughnuts at the department coffee hour. Ben Bernanke
Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist. Kenneth Boulding, The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth, 1966
The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable. Ezra Solomon, cited Psychology Today March 1984
4Bernard: I don’t think Sir Humphrey understands economics, Prime Minister. He did read Classics, you know.
Jim Hacker: What about Sir Frank? He’s head of the Treasury.
Bernard: Well I’m afraid he's at an even greater disadvantage in understanding economics: he’s an economist. Yes, Prime Minister, A Real Partnership, BBC 1986
Our economy is based on spending billions to persuade people that happiness is buying things, and then insisting that the only way to have a viable economy is to make things for people to buy so they’ll have jobs and get enough money to buy things. Philip Slater
Look around. Oil companies guzzle down the billions in profits. Billionaires pay a lower tax rate than their secretaries, and Wall Street CEOs, the same ones that direct our economy and destroyed millions of jobs still strut around Congress, no shame, demanding favors, and acting like we should thank them. Does anyone here have a problem with that? Elizabeth Warren
The economy might be struggling but one area of business is thriving – the debt business – payday loans and door-to-door lending. Panorama: Undercover: Debt on the Doorstep, BBC 2012
We reveal the real costs of taking out a loan. ibid.
Provident dominate the doorstep-lending market. ibid.
Agents are encouraged to sell more loans. ibid.
We are not going to educate our way out of this [debt] problem ... It’s an economy that is increasingly stacked against them. Tamara Draut
The purpose of the government is to depreciate the money. Celente & Schiff & Paul & Faber & Rogers & Woods, MeltUp: The Beginning of a US Currency Crisis, Ron Paul, 2010
Our currency is not recovering ... Our currency is currently experiencing a Melt-Up ... Wall Street paying out record bonuses ... 39.4 million Americans on food stamps ... The government will pay out more in benefits … ibid.
43% of Americans now have less than 10K saved for retirement. ibid.
Retirement will become a thing of the past ... Social security won’t be there ... Retirees will soon be forced to re-enter the workforce. ibid.
1.2 million temporary workers ... The average federal worker now earns twice as much as the private worker. ibid.
Besides the Department of Energy our country also needs to abolish the Department of Education. ibid.
Inflation is currently that last thought on American minds. ibid.
The Federal Reserve created the real estate bubble. ibid.
They build nothing other than profits. They’re junkies. They’re addicts ... They can’t get enough ... Billionaire bonuses for what? ... Bigger than the GDPs of many nations ... Here’s more money, junky. ibid.
Eventually we will have much higher inflation. ibid. Faber
Gold is the most stable asset the world has ever seen. ibid.
Morgan Stanley wasn’t physically storing their gold at all. ibid.
Real American tax receipts will decline this decade. ibid.
Wholesale food prices have risen six months in a row. ibid.
Right now there are food riots going on in India. ibid.
The last real audit of the US gold reserves took place in 1954. ibid.
The US dollar would have to be devalued 98% for our gold reserves to be worth enough to pay off our national debt. ibid.
You recognise but one rule of commerce; that is (to avail myself of your own terms) to allow free passage and freedom of action to all buyers and sellers whoever they may be. Francois Quesnay
What Mr Rothschild had discovered was the basic principle of power, influence, and control over people as applied to economics. That principle is, When you assume the appearance of power, people soon give it to you.
Mr Rothschild had discovered that currency or deposit loan accounts had the required appearance of power that could be used to induce people (inductance, with people corresponding to a magnetic field) into surrendering their real wealth in exchange for a promise of greater wealth (instead of real compensation). They would put up real collateral in exchange for a loan of promissory notes. Mr Rothschild found that he could issue more notes than he had backing for, so long as he had someone’s stock of gold as a persuader to show his customers.
Mr Rothschild loaned his promissory notes to individuals and to governments. These would create overconfidence. Then he would make money scarce, tighten control of the system, and collect the collateral through the obligation of contracts. The cycle was then repeated. These pressures could be used to ignite a war. Then he would control the availability of currency to determine who would win the war. That government which agreed to give him control of its economic system got his support.
Collection of debts was guaranteed by economic aid to the enemy of the debtor. The profit derived from this economic methodology made Mr Rothschild all the more able to expand his wealth. He found that the public greed would allow currency to be printed by government order beyond the limits (inflation) of backing in precious metal or the production of goods and services.
In this structure, credit, presented as a pure element called ‘currency’, has the appearance of capital, but is in effect negative capital. Hence, it has the appearance of service, but is in fact, indebtedness or debt. It is therefore an economic inductance instead of an economic capacitance, and if balanced in no other way, will be balanced by the negation of population (war, genocide). The total goods and services represent real capital called the gross national product, and currency may be printed up to this level and still represent economic capacitance; but currency printed beyond this level is subtractive, represents the introduction of economic inductance, and constitutes notes of indebtedness.
War is therefore the balancing of the system by killing the true creditors (the public which we have taught to exchange true value for inflated currency) and falling back on whatever is left of the resources of nature and regeneration of those resources.
Mr Rothschild had discovered that currency gave him the power to rearrange the economic structure to his own advantage, to shift economic inductance to those economic positions which would encourage the greatest economic instability and oscillation. Bill Cooper, Top Secret: Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars, Operations Research Technical Manual TM-SW7905.1
The market is driven not by reason or need, but by irrationality and greed. In each new burst of investment workers are taken on, and there is a short boom. When the investment is over, workers are laid off and more goods come on the market at prices they can’t afford. So there is a slump.
This switchback ride from boom to slump has been going on ever since the beginning of capitalism. For thirty years after the Second World War, capitalists started slapping each other on the backs and telling themselves they had overcome the tendency of their system to crisis. But since the mid-1970s the crises have returned with a vengeance. Paul Foot, The Case For Socialism chapter 4
The rise and fall of the ‘business cycle’, capitalism’s ‘booms and slumps’, do not wait to see which government is in office. They follow economic laws over which parliamentary laws have nothing but the remotest control. Governments can shell out money for the unemployed, but only enough to keep them worse off than the very lowest-paid of the employed. They can employ a few, train a few. But no government can alter the rules of a catastrophic economic system.
... The market and the struggle between classes which it creates lay down the priorities for society. If there is full employment, and the trade unions are strong, they fight for decent housing and welfare. This is just as likely to happen under a Tory government as under Labour. Houses, hospitals and schools then get built for the masses, because the employers and the moneylenders can afford them. But when capitalism is in crisis, the battle for every penny intensifies. Unemployment weakens the unions, and it is the employers who feel strong, militant and confident. ibid. ch6