The Cosmic Microwave Background and U.S. Sanctions on Russia

Amidst the searching for a foreign 777 aircraft and the shooting at Fort Hood, there has been limited discussion if any regarding the response of Putin to the announcement on the pinprick sanctions Obama has levied against the former Soviet Union.

Though it is not often that I can take concepts of physics and apply them to the maladaptive reasoning and practices of U.S. foreign policy, when I do I try and take complete advantage of it. To start with in Physics, there is a concept called cosmic microwave background and it refers to the radiation in the universe that is around as a consequence of the Big Bang, assuming you accept the Big Bang. Also known as relic radiation, it is the oldest light in the Universe and for our purpose keeps in mind the word ‘relic.”

Now traditionally, the manner in which the U.S. and the west have approached international diplomacy and foreign policy can be compared to as a form of cosmic microwave background. Namely because the manner of our foreign policy and the way in which we practice it is not associated with any give nation (star), yet still it maintains the same background glow and radiation. Applying this to Russia one can assume that Russia is a star like no other, albeit we approach it as if what we enact with respect to Iran, Cuba and Syria for example, and worse, even think it will be just as effective and that as a nation (star) we are sagacious in doing such.

 

Since President Obama announced he would be attempting to pressure Russia via economic sanctions, one would hope he has observed that the practice of saying and doing the same thing regardless of if the light being targeted is from the star, or some other background manifestation is troubling and we all should be able to see such based on Putin’s response. Since Obama’s announcement several things have happened since then.  Not in any particular order, the first is that Russia has indicated that it may counter sanctions with a foreign real estateban for officials in their government. A high level Russian official has asked that the United Russia parliamentary caucus Lower House Committee for Security and Countering Corruption to complete an amendment to an earlier bill that will forbid top level Russian officials, both elected and appointed, to hold foreign bank accounts and possess shares in foreign companies.

In addition to this, after U.S. “to big to fail” bank J.P. Morgan Chase blocked a remittance from the Russian Embassy in Kazakhstan to an insurance agency, Putin ordered the Russian Central Bank (RCB) to start producing a 5 Ruble gold coins “containing .1244 Troy ounces of .900 pure gold” which Russia anticipates would become an alternative (and even worse the standard) for pursuing energy over the dollar and the Euro. This plan also includes the creation of a national payment settlement system completely new and outside of western oligarchical banks that could rival the Society for Worldwide Interbank financial Telecommunications (SWIFT) transactions, of which it is more than plausible that the other BRIC nations will join and applaud. Plus, none of the aforementioned includes the recent oil deal Russia inked with China for an estimated $85 billion or the multi-billion dollar oil for food deal they recently negotiated with Iran

Although I suspect President Obama knew that any mention of economic fiats against Russia would be bring back some push from Russia, I don’t know if he realizes that it will be impossible for him to get complete corporations with the world leaders of the largest national economies. Especially nations such as China, India and Brazil.

First India and Brazil are not interested in helping Washington punish a fellow BRIC member, especially given that India is mad about that little thang with their diplomat in New York and Brazil still fuming about the NSA spying allegations. Not to mention that historically, neither supported the U.S. actions in Libya (albeit they did not vote against it) and despises U.S. actions in Syria. Again, assuming all actions to light are the same, as if we expect other nations to take the same political position of the U.S. on all foreign policy matters.

Even at home, there are a few problems, mainly the fact that ExxonMobil and Russian Energy giant Rosneft are exploring for oil together as part of a $500 billion joint venture in the Artic. Of which Chairman and CEO of Exxon Mobil Rex Tillerson to let Russia be and not try and isolate them with sanctions. Then there is the difficulty the U.S. government finds itself in trying to get Europe to support even tougher sanctions.

Regardless of the prior fact, the point is that the laws of Physics always will defeat man made laws, views, beliefs and policies because they are natural laws and not contrived, Obama need to recognize, his sanctions don’t mean jack, even if he had Germany, Switzerland and Brittan with him, because there will always be a Cosmic Microwave Background in the Universe of international politics and foreign policy.

Detroit Is the Future

One thing for certain, is that in politics, ethics and morality is a sign of cowardice.  They are the dead weights of any autocratic disposition when it comes to profits and financial gain, in particular when buttressed on the backs and hard work of those whom anyone seeking and securing the highest office in these United States of America – the presidency, need to obtain power.

Thus it should come as no surprise, as was the case with presidents before him, that Barack Obama has learned this lesson well.  Since he has taken office, while implementing the same policies of Bush and Clinton before him, U.S. businesses have never had it so good. As we speak, the masses are working harder than ever before, that is if they have a job or if under employed.  The global banking houses and large multi-national corporations have more loot than they can ever use and continue to add more and more each day, whether we are speaking in terms of cash on balance sheets or in terms of their proportion of ownership of the U.S. economy.

I start with Clinton because it was in the 1990s when our service industry began to bloom and our manufacturing base declined, and it may have had its signature moment when he signed into law, with Republican approval, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act (welfare reform) in 1996. Yes, this was the start of the rapid growth of the so-called 1 percent, which Obama has increased more dramatically in economic prosperity in five years than the sixteen combined years of both Bush and Clinton.  It continued when Clinton ended Glass-Stegall, Signed GATT and NAFTA into law and implemented the Commodities Futures Modernization act which not only gave way to new fancy smancy accounting methods but also the mass proliferation of various complex papers based on selling debt.  And with a debt based economy come the obvious, less jobs, less employment, less value in the dollar, a decline in available jobs and an increase in overall poverty.

You see, it isn’t particle physics, but rather the natural result of Keynesian political/economic philosophy that results in what we see in places like Detroit. In simple terms, from this perspective, growth in corporate profits is directly correlated to people being paid less and less. This means that if profits continue to grow for the few, wages will continue to decline for the majority. And as wages continue to decline the US labor market will never ever be able to reach full employment – ever. Namely because companies make their profits by employing as few workers as possible and by transporting what jobs are available abroad to places like India and China.

This is not by accident. As I pen this, we are in a time in which working-age people now make up the majority in U.S. households that rely on food stamps. It used to be the elderly and children. All because government polices produced within the beltway are nothing more that state supported economic theft and terrorism. Policies that over leverage economic gain singularly toward the direction of corrupt plutocrats in the form of capital misallocation courtesy of the Federal Reserve Bank in the form this time of what is called Quantative Easing. In 2012 alone, more than 200 people became billionaires which when added to the more than 1400 billionaires in the US, gives them an estimated $5.4 trillion in combined net worth.

President Obama’s focus on deficit spending doesn’t and will never help the folk who may or may not have voted for him but it does help those whom he appoints to political positions and his other large campaign contributors. The people on Wall Street have access to funding, at a cheap price too given the Federal Reserve Bank’s penchant for hold down interest rates near zero while people who are the heart of America see their rent and food and gas cost steadily rise.  Many call this outcome “internal devaluation,” and is what we have seen abroad in Europe especially in nations like Italy, Greece, Spain  and more recently the Ukraine.

Now if you watch TV or even listened to the President’s State of The Union Address, you probably think it is all good, but that is only because of “newspeak” and selectively telling you what they want you to know.  For example, the only reason they can report that American competitiveness increased by over 10%, is because folks are getting paid less and due to all the benefits and wealth that is counted is what is on the books of big corporations.  They will tell you that  in December that that employment grew by 74,000 jobs and that as a consequence, the unemployment rate went from 7.0% to 6.7%.  But what they won’t say is that to keep up with the new folk entering the work force (which are not counted as unemployed) the nation needs 250,000 jobs just to maintain pace for this group of available workers alone. Or that the same month, the net number of folk with jobs (full-time and part-time) fell by 400,000 to a 35 year low. Then to add insult to injury, they will say that American economic productivity has grown in the area of about 7 percent since 2007, as if that is a good thing, but won’t say that during the same period in China it grew 90 percent.

 These are dire times in America and unfortunately, President Obama and his economic team are not making things any better for the majority of US citizens. What they are doing is developing the middle class in China at the expense of the middle class here for all the jobs that were once middle class (like in Detroit) are now in China. And this is their game, to artificially promote fake progress, while lowering the wages of Americans and growing unemployment, while the rich get richer, because they want a global market place with a global labor pool that they can pick and choose who to pay what.  By doing this, American job seekers will by default have to take lower wages, meaning the middle class is gone and that Detroit, is the future of America.

Federal Government Forgets I am a man

This week reminds me of why Martin Luther King, Jr. was in my home town when he met his untimely murder. It was because of the garbage strike, I suspect many folk don’t know about it to even care, or even understand its corollary with today’s US economic crisis.

Ask any Black person, and they will say the economy is growing. They will also say that it is all because of the policies of President Barack Obama. Ask the same folk how the dollar is doing in the world and the present US economic picture for employment prospects, and they will say he is doing his best and that it will take time, or that he is not just the President for Black Americans. But you never hear such pronouncements with respect to Jewish people, Gay or Lesbians or even Hollywood. They get mentioned and African Americans are conveniently left out of the conversation.

Now I am writing about the economic situation America finds itself in but I want to make this lucidly terse - I was objectively as critical about former commanders in chief starting with Regan and I will continue to be until my dying years as long as I can both read and write. But never have I been attacked prior (and I expected to be attacked) by my own folks for pointing out mathematical facts. For I know some uppity progressive, quasi-liberal, libertarian hating black political pundit will take aim and me and ridicule my suppositions, even if they don’t have facts on their side, all to protect the current Teflon President.

Again, proponents blinded by party affiliation will say the economy is growing and will give the President Props and if it is doing bad will blame it on the GOP. I think both are equally responsible but if it is so good, then tell that to the average African American or college student who is under employed or unemployed.

Fact is many recent college graduates are working at coffee shops and tend to be very skilled workers with higher degrees. In addition, each day they are increasingly ending up in lower-skilled jobs that don't really require a degree. This means they are making it even harder for unskilled workers who usually get such jobs out of the work force and yet, the present administration has offered no policy response to deal with this phenomenon. And by the way, the unskilled can be a synonym for the African American worker.

The US Labor Department reports that approximately 280,000 Americans with bachelor’s degrees and 37,000 with advanced degrees were working minimum-wage jobs in 2012 and that the number of college-educated Americans working such jobs has risen 70 percent in the past 10 years ( a figure double the number who worked minimum-wage jobs before the Great Recession).

The reality is that the high-wage, middle-skilled job — the thing that sustained the middle class in the past no longer exist. Although the mantra of the economy is getting better is batted around like a whiffle ball, the math shows us that the U.S. economy is in a bubble inflated by money created out of thin air by the federal reserve, and all of this money, instead of creating jobs, is going into the stock market by already well-off and wealthy folks. And this cannot and will not last. Obama’s approach is just as Regan’s economic approach - “trickle down.” When the Federal Reserve prints new money, it is basically reducing or stealing the value of the dollar (all the money you have in your bank accounts and wallet).

The math shows us that the Federal Reserve Bank is buying approximately $85 billion in assets every month, while at the same time keeping its key interest rate near zero. This does nothing to reduce unemployment or create jobs but rather only serves investors and big wig traders in the various stock and bond markets. This is why corporate profits and Stock prices are up. The question remains, why isn’t anyone hiring?

Fifteen percent of Americans are on food stamps according to the latest USDA report for November 2012. To put it plainly, in America, there are two economies - one for the rich, and the other for everyone else. The number of Americans on food stamps now exceeds the combined populations of "Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming." If one is lucky to have a job, it goes on deaf ears that the average worker’s hourly wages, after accounting for inflation, were nearly 2 percent lower this year than last year, and in total is taking home less than $800 a week.

As it stands one in four of every US citizens that is employed has a job that pays $10 an hour or less and for the first time ever, more than a million public school students in the United States are homeless. To top it all off, the U.S Dollar is losing its status as the world reserve currency. Just last week, five of the top ten economies in the world, decided to no longer use the dollar as an intermediary currency for trade. Last week the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) agreed to set up a development bank to compete with the IMF, indicating it's gearing up to compete in a post-dollar world. In addition, Australia (the world's 12th-ranked economy), China (2nd behind the U.S.), Japan (3rd), Brazil (6th), India (9th), and Russia (10th), have agreed to bypass the dollar in bilateral trade with China.

President Obama and Geithner’s toxic asset plan has enabled one of the biggest transfer of wealth in history allowing for big banks to transfer their toxic debts from fraudulent activities to the American People. All the banks are doing is redistributing the nation’s wealth to shareholders and their top executives. This what President Obama has done, even with all his flossy rhetoric is assist the wealthy in get richer at everyone else’s expense. All of the monetary and economic policy of the last 3 years has helped the wealthiest and penalized everyone else. Wall Street is good but Main Street isn’t. How can it be when the richest 10% own 98.5% of all financial securities like stocks and bonds?

But for some reason or another, our economic prowess is always, or in most cases obviated by the inability to be critical of the current administration. For it seems as for most black folk, politics involved talking about President Obama and even his policies in the affirmative only, Trayvon Martin or the GOP. I don’t hear any of the TV propagandists of the African American community dare mention the president’s name in the same sentence with growing equity disparities, employment and poverty as a function of race. And you shole wont here nothing asserting that under the Obama administration, crony capitalism has gotten worse. As President, Obama is prosecuting fewer financial crimes than Bush, or his father, Clinton or even Ronald Reagan.

I recall of this as I said, on the week in which one of the greatest men to ever live was killed. King was in Memphis, marching with sanitation workers on strike for a living wage when he was killed. No one remembers the words he stated while delivering a speech a Stanford University a year before his death: “In this America people are poor by the millions. They find themselves perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.” And no one remembers how he frequently spoke about poverty and how that during his time, America had about 40 million people living in poverty. Obama seems to ignore that in America, the richest nation in the world today, there are almost 100 million people who are in poverty.

The sanitation strike in Memphis started because two sanitation workers, Echol Cole and Robert Walker died when they were crushed to death with the garbage and nobody noticed – crushed in the back of a garbage truck because during a sever rain storm, they were not allowed by the city to seek shelter from storms. Why because white folks in Memphis at the time didn’t like or want any of the all black sanitation workers to stop in their neighborhoods. Cole and Walker couldn’t fit inside of the truck, so they crawled in the back where the garbage was placed and a broom fell on the lever which resulted in them being crushed to death with the garbage.

I would wish that folks knew this and would never forget this, for this is where the slogan “I am a man. I am a man, not a piece of garbage" originated. It seems that the Federal Government in all of its aspects seems to forget that African Americans are people and that we are men, not the refuse and waste or cheap labor for the rich.

No strings attached.

Just want to say for the record, yea, I tend to harp on shit, in particular if it is what is on my mind. Butterah you know, such is just the way things are with me. Found out today against my dismay, that folk up on Capitol Hill finna give away some more of my loot. I was against it with Wall Street and I still maintain the same position respect to the automobile industry.

I still don’t get what the bailout will accomplish, but I won’t get into that. Let alone the massive number of Insurance companies purchasing Bank holding companies so they can get some of the loot too. I believe that one cannot rescue a person or institution that wont rescue they self. And a stock market that hit 89k mark over the past few days don’t mean jack to me for there is still no liquidity in the market, world borrowing is down nearly 80% and money still being withdrawn from Hedge fund accounts (1.5 trillion in Hedge funds world wide), tells me that these aint the average folks investing or making calls on stocks. Not to mention yesterday, from a few newspapers alone, I counted more than 12 thousand jobs lost (in one day). Just in Jan. this year the DOW was at 13k, and im posed to be happy with 8.9k?

So today, something new, instead of Alexander Onealing (critisizing), I am gonna offer a few suggestions that I would put in place if I was like a senator, a president or an economist. The first I know can’t occur, but may be used in the future when folks wanna give loot away all willy nilly.

• If you give ANY loot out, don’t ask folks to bring you a plan, you give them your plan with a "take it or leave it” caveat.
• For the Banks and wall street: Mandate they use the money to erase the balance of all outstanding student loans. This would be one way to foster consumer spending.
• As opposed to buying toxic assets and injecting capital, for banks, next time you may consider really attempting to stop home foreclosure rates by buying 35% of are the mortgages in America. You don’t have to purchase the entire mortgage for that will only assist 4 to 5 million of the 50 million across the country. This would make payments manageable, improve equity in said homes. And please just don’t use Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; make them for all home lenders. All one would need is a standard agreement (as the Treasury made with Banks) for people to apply. This would be the best foreclosure mitigation approach from my view.
• Never let the Treasury department be in charge of stimulus or bail out programs because they don’t attach any strings. The Treasury “expects”, not know or has mandated, for banks to start lending and making credit available when in fact they did not state the manner in which funds received will be used. They say they “want” to work with congressional oversight committees and the Comptroller, but didn’t write it in so it is not a prerequisite for getting any of that massive sums of loot.
• Instead of giving money, buy shares in exchange for my loot so these banks can own up to their share of the debt in actual cost.
• If you are doing an infrastructure development/stimulus plan, don’t just focus on Urban areas. Be even handed with rural areas as well. It don’t sit right with me when I give money for Urban development and the bus stops at the end of the city boundary.
• Try and structure economic preparedness in our budgetary policy like they do in India, where the work from the construct of deficit confinement. As such all the do from growth to stimulus to tax efforts are designed to manage deficit growth to 2.5% or less.
• Study some these other stimulus packages being placed on the table around the world. I know China is putting one out worth $581 billion US/ And say study, not copy, because from what I can tell about the Chinese effort – it is lacking and don’t focus on human capital development – a no-no to me. So be sure to invest in human capital, this will increase social spending. One way would be to give 40 to 50 thousand dollar grants to people desiring to attend college for the next 4 to 5 years. Again this is an investment and not a give away. And I would be remised if I did not say jack up the investment in scientific research at the university level as well.

Now these are just a few ways I think we may see this economy swing around, it’s not about top down or trickle down - it is about bottom up. So Mr. Obama, I know your hands are tied, but you got to stop being so politically correct and think outside the box. Don’t be asking for no plans, or waiting for GM to give you no plans, make your own plan folks and tell them fools to break themselves or go home empty handed. Don’t be a pasty and stop shelling out our loot with no strings attached. Five to one the Big three gone roll through this loot and be out of business still before next Spring.

War of the worlds

The lethal attacks last week in Mumbai got me to thinking a little more on the future prospect for peace in Southeastern and central Asia. I have always felt that if there was any chance of a big jump off in the region, it would be the threat garnished by the three nations with nuclear armaments: Israel, India and Pakistan.

Now I know most folks feel that these attacks were the result of a terrorist group that may or may not be affiliated with al Qaeda., but on a lower level, I cannot see such. The Mode of Operandi was almost Navy seal like and seems to have a military feel on the surface for me, but I have not really studied it that in depth. But what I have studied is the history of consternation between India and Pakistan, which for me is the center of what is or may be jumping off in months or years to come.

India has the second fastest growing economy in the world only behind China and historically, has had problems with its Islamic Neighbor with which they share a common border. They have a somewhat lengthy history starting back in 1947 and in the near recent times in 1965 when the Second Kashmir War fought between the two nations over the disputed region of Kashmir. In 1965, India crossed the boarder and attacked Pakistan, which as I have always regarded as a major source of instability since past history informs us that both have threaten to pulverize each other, even if that meant using nuclear weapons.

I don’t want to get to deep on this, however, I would like to offer some food for thought, namely that I feel that the tensions are running deep for these nation states, and since both are very major players in our presupposed war on terror, something may need to be done if we are sincere about stomping out Bin Laden’s folk. What I feel will happen is that Pakistan will begin amassing troops along the border of India, which means they will be taking troops away from its border with Afghanistan and reduce their efforts to rid the region of al Qaeda and the Taliban. India has not seen so much destruction in its financial capital since March 12, 1993, when a series of 15 bombs exploded across the capital, killing 257.

So to make things short, this is a very dangerous situation, and all of this history is the result to me of the British in the region, and over the state of Jammu and Kashmir. H.G. Wells wrote a tale called War of the Worlds and I’m sure many of you have read the story. Although what we see between India and Pakistan doesn’t involve aliens, an alien culture started this via colonialism. Let’s just see how this plays out. Because I wouldn’t be at all surprised if India preemptively attacked their nuclear rival adopting the Bush doctrine for themselves