From Trade War to Hot War (via Global Economic Collapse)
America is in a funk. With their country slipping into an economic and cultural morass and at risk of losing its footing on the global chessboard, Americans find themselves working harder than ever and still falling further and further behind. How can this be?
Flailing for an answer, they find it in the mouth of a politician who tells them he can make America great again! The problem, he tells them, is a trade imbalance. Americans are getting hammered by their foreign competition, the politician says, and they need strong tariffs to save the economy and restore the might of the USA. But these tariffs, it turns out, outrage even friendly nations and provoke retaliatory measures that spiral into an all-out trade war.
2018? Donald Trump?
No. 1930. Senator Reed Smoot.
What? Did they glaze over this one in history class? Gee, I wonder why.
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Peel the onion down a few more layers and Trump’s tariffs serve to stoke inflation and that’s exactly what the banksters said is their bullseye target two years ago in an international banking policy meeting. Then Summers underscored this agenda with several proposed inflation strategies in a Washington Post column. (check ✔)
Ken of Redefininggod has shared his dig of the 1956 Rockefeller Panel Report Prospect for America which suggests when the global governance project nears completion it will be necessary to isolate the US [to force Americans to submit to global authoritarianism]. (check ✔)
Distraction from the big pic. According to Martin Armstrong who consults with global financial bigwigs, to include Chinese central banker and govt policy makers, the bond market is in dangerous territory, about to implode and the $200 trillion in global sovereign debt is the big house of cards that the globalists will use to leverage their reset. Armstrong reports there is a consensus at the highest levels of international banking that a Bretton Woods type meeting will take place in 2021 for the reset [presumably to switch to the IMF SDR or similar vehicle]. (check ✔)
phreedomphile,
Thank for the very intersting take.
Does this Martin Armstrong provide any kind of citable sources?
Please provide the link to his own stuff too.
You’re welcome, Lorenzo.
Armstrong has a website, though there’s a limited amount of information on it. In any case, I believe his perspective provides a different lens that can help expand our real time understanding of what’s going on behind the curtain, though it’s not very deep on the geopolitical front.
Searching business managerial class news such as FT and WSJ, I scan for clues not presented in alt and what Armstrong says reflects the facts on the ground of large capital flows I read about (follow the money!) and those, in turn, show a tremendous level of international coordination in major business and government policy making moves. Hence, the planning for a Bretton Woods type meeting in 2021 makes sense.
A good recent interview of Armstrong with Greg Hunter is in the YT link below with some added spaces. He discusses the points I posted in my comment.
youtube . com/watch?v= DFRuRoqLKZU
Funny, Martin explained in the interview that Trump, who is presented to us as a buffoon and lightening rod figure, is looked upon in the managerial class overseas as a great strategist. (lol) We in Corbett Land know Trump is a theatrical NWO puppet but to hear Armstrong say foreign onlookers understood that Trump was pretending to threaten North Korea with war to provide a public narrative and pretext to bring NK and SK together is amazing and ironic.
All the world is a stage?
https://mises.org/library/how-us-economic-warfare-provoked-japans-attack-pearl-harbor
In June 1940, Henry L. Stimson, who had been secretary of war under William Howard Taft and secretary of state under Herbert Hoover, became secretary of war again. Stimson was a lion of the Anglophile, northeastern upper crust and no friend of the Japanese. In support of the so-called Open Door Policy for China, Stimson favored the use of economic sanctions to obstruct Japan’s advance in Asia. Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau and Interior Secretary Harold Ickes vigorously endorsed this policy. Roosevelt hoped that such sanctions would goad the Japanese into making a rash mistake by launching a war against the United States, which would bring in Germany because Japan and Germany were allied.
…Having broken the Japanese diplomatic code, the American leaders knew, among many other things, what Foreign Minister Teijiro Toyoda had communicated to Ambassador Kichisaburo Nomura on July 31: “Commercial and economic relations between Japan and third countries, led by England and the United States, are gradually becoming so horribly strained that we cannot endure it much longer. Consequently, our Empire, to save its very life, must take measures to secure the raw materials of the South Seas.”
I always I appreciate your point of view, James. But when you quote and harken us back to Mises, claims simply fall apart.
You made a statement that WWII did not get us out of the great depression. And you quoted The Mises Center, which is nothing more than a long march towards economic orthodoxy with the names of slatterns like Milton Friedman (see Chile and the overthrow of Allende and what the Chicago Boys did to Russia and beyond).
In the article you cited, the author claims:
“As Higgs shows, GDP and private investment increased during the early years of the New Deal, but as the 1930s wore on, President Franklin Roosevelt became ever bolder about undermining property rights. This delayed complete recovery. Finally, there was the Great Escape, which occurred after and in spite of World War II, not because of it. Higgs argues that the Great Escape occurred as a result of a partial dismantling of the regulatory infrastructure that had grown up during the Depression and the war; in effect, it was a rediscovery of the market and a new birth of freedom for entrepreneurs and workers.”
What hogwash. The rediscovery of the commodified and corporate dominated free market, we are all told to believe in. Government is bad, uncontrolled monopolies are good. The market is not controlled by governments, it is now free, controlled by large corporations.
This dominant economic trash has now been mainstreamed since 1973 when the corporations, knowing that Mises work would gain them the upper ground ideologically, gave Hayek the Noble Prize. From there it was right into the arms of The Reagan Era and the Bush era (Voodoo economics) and the slime we have now that spills the same beans. Ayn Rand comes to mind.
Even the author of the work you cited states:
“In discussing the Great Duration, Higgs introduces the term “regime uncertainty” to argue that the Roosevelt administration’s aggressive interventions produced considerable uncertainty in the entrepreneurial environment. Investors did not know whether they would enjoy the fruits of their investments. One of my mentors in graduate school, a Keynesian, pointed out once that firms will not produce what they do not expect to sell. I would generalize this to say that they will not invest in what they do not expect to control. The possibility of incurring the costs of an investment without enjoying any of the benefits made private investment much less attractive.”
So,giving investors, mostly large corporations that no one can compete with, incentives and the fruits of their labor (whose labor? You mean the workers or the owners of production?) will trickle down to society.
This myth is an ideological three-card Monty that goes on to this day.
No, what got us out of the Great Depression was not war, it was the organizing of workers by the the Communist Parties, the Socialist Parties all over the world, the anarchists, the CIO in the US and in Europe organized labor and other ‘long hairs, in the world.
Labor organizing brought the US and Europe 25 years of Golden capitalism. Not free markets.
And Russia and China never were communist countries.
weilunion,
You state: “What hogwash. The rediscovery of the commodified and corporate dominated free market, we are all told to believe in. Government is bad, uncontrolled monopolies are good. The market is not controlled by governments, it is now free, controlled by large corporations.”
Are you suggesting that the government is necessary to “control” monopolies?
You state: “No, what got us out of the Great Depression was not war, it was the organizing of workers by the the Communist Parties, the Socialist Parties all over the world, the anarchists, the CIO in the US and in Europe organized labor and other ‘long hairs, in the world.”
Do you have sources to back up this claim?
Organised workers, especially ones of a communist/socialist bent, have a tendency to become part of the ruling monopoly and help oppress their membership on behalf of the ruling classes… this is kinda what happened in the ‘right wing’ National socialist / fascistic model of western Europe and much more so in the “left wing” version of the Eastern Bloc.
The socialist party didnt do so great at running the USSR’s economy, the best eastern Bloc nation economically was prob E.Germany and thats possibly just because it was full of highly educated Germans from before the war.
Duck, Weilunion,
I think you both have parts of a point and I’ll attempt a synthesis between your views.
I strongly suspect that “the 25 years of Golden capitalism” mentioned by Weilunion is (more-or-less) the Bretton Woods period, let’s say 1950-75. I argue that the single most significant aspect of this period, at least in North America and Western Europe, was the redistribution of national income (not wealth, but income).
There are several ways to “measure” (statistically) this phenomenon. Here is a 2015 paper on the issue in the US.
http://www.paecon.net/PAEReview/issue72/Apel72.pdf
Here is a longer more extensive presentation on a larger geographic and historical scale.
http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/capital21c/en/Piketty2014FiguresTables.pdf
I do strongly believe that the degree of organization reached by the unions post-WWII was one of the determining factors in the overall shift of a larger share of national income going towards the bottom 50% of households. However, one of the the main reasons why the unions (of the western hemisphere) were able to achieve such successes was because they were all playing along with the CIA in the Cold War, and were thereby being “rewarded” for their efforts. One extreme case: in 1955 the Austrian federation of labor unions (ÖGB) selected the main leader of the CIA’s Gladio arm in Austria as its chairman. Not only did he keep both positions until ousted (1963), but during the last 18 months he was ALSO appointed interior minister: meet Franz Olah.
It should also be noted that the unions were not the only ones sponsoring large scale income redistribution (there were also some visionaries like Henry Ford).
However, like all human forms of organizations and associations, the long-term development of unions does not appear to be linear. Despite the fact that in the early decades of their existence organized unions clearly contributed greatly to the “downward” redistribution of national income, it was during the “Golden” years of Capitalism that their overall role/effect started to shift. Since the 1980s, when the major unions basically bowed down before the Friedman-Thatcher-Reagan axis, that’s when I see them as embracing their future as part of the ruling monopoly. This happened much sooner in the eastern bloc, just as Duck pointed out.
I’d love to hear your thoughts!
Hey Lorenzo.c! Thanks for these links – they look immensely interesting! I can’t wait to be able to read them! Good week-end to you!
https://mises.org/library/which-seen-and-which-not-seen
VII. Restrictions
the last 4 links were very cool, thank you.
Way to add more books to my reading list, James! Seriously, all you do is make me realize how little I know about everything and now I have no other choice but to run around and try to (re)educate myself while maintaining some semblance of a normal life… and I can’t thank you enough for it.
Why is “The Man†Winning? Part 2
“The Manâ€, AKA “The Powers That Shouldn’t Beâ€, “The Establishmentâ€, etc.
“He†or “They†appear to be winning. They appear to have been winning for few hundred years, possibly thousands. Question is: Why are “They†winning? Here is No. 2.
2- Teamwork & Leadership
History is full of stories of how man achieved the impossible by working in teams and under purposeful leadership (sometimes good and other time’s evil). But from the days of cave man and all the way to sending satellites to orbit, we worked in teams and under leadership. In fact, none of the great feats were possible without these two ingredients.
“The Man†is able to turn our world on a “dimeâ€, and one example i can give you is “Hollywoodâ€. If you study all the movies that got created since the 1950’s, with rating more than 6 out of 10, you will find over 90% of those movies are helping advance “The Man’s†agenda, and we are paying for those movies 🙂
The best way for us to understand how powerful teamwork and leadership is, is to see how the United States of America has gone through social change directly after WWII, and mainly due to the return of many soldiers who learnt the value of team work and leadership on the battlefield, they learnt leadership from the ground up and truly understood what it means to bond with another human being. That period defined the USA and made it a real superpower.
Off course, this was very bad news for “The Manâ€, as leadership and the ability for people to organize is very dangerous risk. Since then, “The Man†introduced many programs to kill leadership, and one of which is the MBA program, which teaches people that they too can be leaders without understanding the basics (Thanks I shot Santa for that knowledge).
Since then, the word leadership is considered dirty and equal to working for “The Manâ€, and with the help of such disasters as Enron, banks CEO, and Anarchists*, the average man would rather be enslaved than seek to create teams/leadership to get them out of this mess.
I should also note, corruption is one of the tools to kill teamwork and leadership, but I will add corruption as a main tool why “The Man†is winning. Ever noticed why corruption is very selective? (it is in organizations that “The Man†does not care about, but almost none existent in what furthers his cause)
There are people out there that think working individually they can take down the biggest empire this planet have ever known (and I am not talking about the United States of America), when all of history says.. that ain’t gona happen. But…. let us not forget, that some people believe in miracles!..
*With regards to the label “Anarchistsâ€, i don’t know enough about them, but every time i mention the word leadership on this site, i get shot down by people telling me it is against Anarchists!
I don’t associate with any label apart Arab, which is not “raceâ€, but Customs and Tradition
Hello people,
Sorry for the duplicate comment. The first one did not appear (or at least says under review as it usually does) for more than 20 minutes, and that’s why i posted again in short format.
Part 1 of 2
Why is “The Man†Winning? Part 2
“The Manâ€, AKA “The Powers That Shouldn’t Beâ€, “The Establishmentâ€, etc.
“He†or “They†appear to be winning. They appear to have been winning for few hundred years, possibly thousands. Question is: Why are “They†winning? Here is No. 2.
2- Teamwork & Leadership
History is full of stories of how man achieved the impossible by working in teams and under purposeful leadership (sometimes good and other time’s evil). But from the days of cave man and all the way to sending satellites to orbit, we worked in teams and under leadership. In fact, none of the great feats were possible without these two ingredients.
“The Man†is able to turn our world on a “dimeâ€, and one example i can give you is “Hollywoodâ€. If you study all the movies that got created since the 1950’s, with rating more than 6 out of 10, you will find over 90% of those movies are helping advance “The Man’s†agenda, and we are paying for those movies 🙂
The best way for us to understand how powerful teamwork and leadership is, is to see how the United States of America has gone through social change directly after WWII, and mainly due to the return of many soldiers who learnt the value of team work and leadership on the battlefield, they learnt leadership from the ground up and truly understood what it means to bond with another human being. That period defined the USA and made it a real superpower.
Part 2 to follow…
Part 2 of 2..
Off course, this was very bad news for “The Manâ€, as leadership and the ability for people to organize is very dangerous risk. Since then, “The Man†introduced many programs to kill leadership, and one of which is the MBA program, which teaches people that they too can be leaders without understanding the basics (Thanks I shot Santa for that knowledge).
Since then, the word leadership is considered dirty and equal to working for “The Manâ€, and with the help of such disasters as Enron, banks CEO, and Anarchists*, the average man would rather be enslaved than seek to create teams/leadership to get them out of this mess.
I should also note, corruption is one of the tools to kill teamwork and leadership, but I will add corruption as a main tool why “The Man†is winning. Ever noticed how corruption is very selective? (it is in organizations that “The Man†does not care about, but almost none existent in what furthers his cause)
There are people out there that think working individually they can take down the biggest empire this planet have ever known (and I am not talking about the United States of America), when all of history says.. that ain’t gona happen. But…. let us not forget, that some people believe in miracles!..
*With regards to the label “Anarchistsâ€, i don’t know enough about them, but every time i mention the word leadership on this site, i get shot down by people telling me it is against Anarchists!
Also, I don’t associate with any label apart from being an Arab, which is not a “race†label, but “Customs and Traditions†(way of life)
Mr. Ryan’s article “Techniques Used to Disrupt 9/11 Questioning” is excellent. In fact, you always link to such interesting things. Thank you!
Is this the next psyop?
Ex-NASA physics professor claims ‘many governments’ have covered up alien encounters
https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/713251/alien-nasa-cover-up-world-ufo-day-space-earth-sighting-2018-news
Well shoot, trade wars. How much fun. Oh well, I’ve got my fishing pole ready for tomorrow. Ain’t no tariff on panfish. JimBob
From an evolutionary pov it is difficult (for me anyway) to avoid facing the possibility that conflict, especially bloody warfare, is an integral component, if not the secretion, of our emergence as a species. I propose the real reason why wars have been such a popular feature of human history is because of their effectiveness in high-grading a population in accordance with the well-established principles of Natural Selection. But instead of passive attrition of the least fit, active attrition of the least aggressive.
If this is the case, then ways of initiating conflict may be built into the system. If they are, free-willed creatures should be able to identify and neutralize them.
Great article by Corbett.
Senator Reed Smoot circa 1930. I did not know. Very interesting!
I have been noticing the trend on the price of oil.
The trend is up. Especially over the last year.
https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/crude-oil
I’m just guessing here…
I bet Trump and Saudi Arabia struck a deal.
Saudi Arabia wants that higher oil price for its IPO of Aramco.
Trump wants higher oil prices for his friends and domestic oil production and trade deficits and the dollar.
And, just to push my monetary knowledge to the limits; let’s not forget raising int. rates by the FED. It’s so nice to not have to listen to them anymore, or to even know what the stock market is doing. JimBob who didn’t catch any bream yesterday at all. Dang chicken livers just fell off the hook. But he will return with pork livers on Sunday. Just saying.
There is no way to compare the US economy post the Crash of 1929 to the euphoric “prosperity” the world thinks there is in America today.
Their desperation was genuine and the Oilgarchs only took advantage of that.
No matter what we choose: They will always manipulate the money supply in order to bring globalism.
Now I can see it clearly: the real Free Markets allow freedom for each country to decide whichever tariff they need at any moment.
Now I am sure that the “Chicago Boys” mentor, Milton Fridman, worked for the Oilgarchs as much as Keynes did.
“Not only individuals must be self-sufficient, but countries too.” It’s sad to see that this freedom resource (tariffs) will be used as the main excuse for the Global Currency Reset. The trap of all traps.
Don’t support the enemy, please!
In this brilliant article, Martin Armstrong explains that this whole story of “free markets” is just the main trap to centralize every single kind of transaction in the hands of the BIS:
https://www.howestreet.com/2018/07/09/did-tariffs-cause-great-depression/
Of course that doesn’t justify Trump’s outrageous lack of diplomacy at dealing with the subject (of course he’s doing that on purpose).