SP -- LARRY ROMANOFF -- El fraudulento "experimento" del arroz dorado de la Universidad de Tufts en China

 

El fraudulento "experimento" del arroz dorado de la Universidad de Tufts en China

 

Por Larry Romanoff – 17 de septiembre de 2020

 

ENGLISH  ESPAÑOL

 

El Departamento de Agricultura de los EE.UU. en colaboración con el ejército de los EE.UU. tomaron la Universidad de Tufts como instrumento con el pretexto de realizar unas inocentes investigaciones sobre salud alimentaria, para llevar a cabo un experimento ilegal, deplorable y fraudulento con armas biológicas sobre niños de origen chino sin su consentimiento. Esto es parte de esa historia.

 

Muchos grupos han experimentado con la tecnología de la manipulación genética, insertando ADN foráneo en diferentes  semillas. Hubo un caso en Canadá, en el que un departamento del gobierno descubrió un gen "anticongelante" contenido en la sangre de los peces que viven en las aguas del Ártico y que les permite sobrevivir en aguas de temperaturas inferiores a cero. Los científicos insertaron este gen en varios cultivos de trigo canadienses, lo que permitió que el trigo soportara temperaturas de congelación sin sufrir daños. En otra ocasión, un laboratorio de investigación americano insertó genes de luciérnagas en plantas de tabaco, produciendo un campo de tabaco que brillaba en la oscuridad. Estos ejemplos pueden parecer inofensivos, pero otros lo son mucho menos.

 

El Departamento de Defensa de los EE.UU. ha invertido enormes sumas en investigación dirigida a insertar genes letales en semillas de cultivos modificados genéticamente, incluyendo la viruela, los virus de la gripe aviar y la gripe porcina, la peste, el SIDA y muchos más. Como arma militar, esta ciencia no tiene precio. ¿Por qué involucrarse en una guerra a tiros cuando Monsanto puede venderles arroz, maíz y soja que contienen viruela y el virus H5N1? Una vez que la semilla es cosechada y pasa al suministro de alimentos de la nación podría, en pocas semanas, exterminar al 50% o más de la población sin haber disparado un solo tiro y sin riesgo para el agresor. He visto documentos militares de los EE.UU. que incluso incluían un gráfico de "coste por muerte", demostrando que las semillas son mucho más baratas y efectivas que las bombas en la búsqueda de la dominación militar. En el informe también se señalaba que

 

"Las armas genéticas también pueden ser dispersadas de muchas maneras utilizando insectos o bacterias infectadas por virus o insertadas en semillas modificadas genéticamente, etc. Estas armas son difíciles de detectar e identificar, y un tratamiento o una vacuna puede tardar años en desarrollarse." (1)

EN -- LARRY ROMANOFF -- Nestlé - Murdering With Milk -- October 19, 2020

  

Nestlé - Murdering With Milk

By LARRY ROMANOFF – October 19,2020

 

 Nestlé is one of the four most-boycotted companies in the world, having been subjected to the longest-running worldwide boycott in history, now nearing 50 years. Let's see why. The production and sale of baby milk powder is one of the largest, probably the most profitable, and unquestionably the most criminal, industries in the world today, generating billions in revenue and profits while indirectly causing millions of infant deaths. Nestlé controls 50% or more of that worldwide market. Here is part of the story:

 

 It is not a secret that mothers' breast milk is universally acknowledged as far superior to artificial powdered milk for babies, being naturally sterile and uncontaminated, and containing all the necessary nutrition while, and very importantly, supplying the baby with multiple antibodies that provide immunity against many childhood illnesses and diseases. It is true that almost all mothers are physically able to breastfeed their babies, and a fact that babies that are breastfed become ill much less often than do babies fed with artificial milk powder. Bottle-feeding with artificial milk has been long proven to present increasing dangers where mothers have poor or no access to necessary sterile facilities. UNICEF and many other health groups have stated that about 1.5 million babies die each year from simple ailments like diarrhea, ailments common in babies drinking artificial powdered milk, but that almost never occur with breast-fed babies. The WHO condemned baby milk companies for discouraging breastfeeding, thereby contributing to infant malnutrition and greatly increasing the vulnerability of babies to infections. One UNICEF report stated flatly that "A bottle-fed child is 25 times more likely to die from diarrhea than a breast-fed child where water is unsafe." The WHO and a number of other international organisations claim that "Over 4,000 babies die every day in poor countries because they're not breastfed. That's not conjecture, it's fact." It is also a fact that in most poor nations, infant mortality is at least three times higher with bottle-fed babies than with those who were breast-fed.

PT -- LARRY ROMANOFF -- Um Olhar Mais Aprofundado sobre a Privatização -- October 10, 2020

 

 

Um Olhar Mais Aprofundado sobre a Privatização

Por LARRY ROMANOFF – October 10, 2020

ENGLISH  PORTUGUÊS

A privatização é geralmente considerada como a venda da infraestrutura física e social básica de propriedade pública de um país, incluindo aeroportos, ferrovias, geração de eletricidade, portos e assim por diante para empresas privadas, e também incluindo a aquisição da assistência médica e dos sistemas educacionais por empresas privadas com fins lucrativos. Mas, no dicionário dos americanos e de seus amigos banqueiros europeus, a privatização tem um significado ampliado, formando apenas um segmento de um plano geral. Vejamos as partes.

 

A privatização começou, e quase sempre foi executada de mãos dadas com o exército colonial, começando com o do Império Britânico e mais tarde com o dos Estados Unidos. Consistia em uma agressão crua contra as nações mais fracas para permitir que alguns banqueiros europeus e suas empresas multinacionais se apropriassem das cobiçadas riquezas e recursos dessas nações. Escrevi alhures que, no início do século XIX, a United Fruit Company possuía a maior parte da Guatemala, incluindo 70% de todas as terras aráveis, instalações de comunicação, a única ferrovia e o único porto de embarque, e controlava a maioria das exportações do país por meio da propriedade da maioria das grandes corporações. Mesmo assim, o presidente dos Estados Unidos, Coolidge, orquestrou a derrubada do governo da Guatemala quando este se recusou a fazer mais concessões. Esse padrão foi seguido em toda a América Central e do Sul, onde nação após nação viram seus governos substituídos por um ditador brutal financiado pelos EUA, sua infraestrutura roubada, seus recursos saqueados e pilhados, enquanto a população era repetidamente aterrorizada e mantida em abjeta pobreza. No Zaire, os banqueiros e industriais europeus cobiçavam tanto o ouro e os diamantes que usaram a CIA para assassinar outro líder e instalar outro ditador passível de suborno ocidental. As guerras bôeres travadas na África do Sul foram organizadas pelos Rothschilds e outros industriais, usando os militares britânicos para exterminar uma população resistente à colonização e, em seguida, reivindicar os campos de ouro e minas de diamante para si. Todo o lamentável episódio do ópio na China envolveu os judeus Rothschilds, Sassoons e Russells, apoiados pelo poder dos militares britânicos para execução, assim como muitas outras coisas envolvendo a Índia. Pelo menos nos últimos 200 anos, o imperialismo militar produziu enormes lucros e crescimento econômico para os Estados Unidos e incontáveis trilhões em riqueza para um punhado de banqueiros europeus, enquanto mantinha incontáveis nações enterradas na pobreza. Isso foi "privatização" na maior escala que o mundo já viu, envolvendo o roubo em atacado da riqueza e dos recursos das nações mais fracas pela força militar. Duas das farsas mais recentes seguindo esse mesmo padrão são a destruição do Iraque e da Líbia, e pelos mesmos motivos - a 'privatização' dos recursos dessas nações, envolvendo a destruição do país e milhões de mortos, e a "pacificação" da população pelo terrorismo.

SP -- LARRY ROMANOFF -- La Patología de la Competencia Americana -- September 24, 2020

 

          La Patología de la Competencia Americana

Por LARRY ROMANOFF– 24 de Septiembre, 2020

 

"Que el mercado decida" realiza hoy la misma tarea que "Que el rey, la Iglesia o Dios decida" hizo en el pasado.

Los ricos y los poderosos a menudo consiguen lo que quieren haciendo creer a la gente que un poder o una institución superior lo necesita.

Richard D. Wolff

La teoría de los libros de texto sobre economía nos dice que la competencia proporcionará mayores beneficios sociales, pero es lamentablemente escasa en pruebas que justifiquen tal afirmación. El único lugar donde la competencia podría tener valor social es en el caso de un monopolio, donde la empresa dominante abusa de su posición para cobrar precios inflados y ofrecer un servicio deficiente, razón por la cual se desalienta a los monopolios y por la que los gobiernos tienden a disolverlos; los fragmentos resultantes no tienen el mismo poder para abusar de la población. Pero esto no tiene nada que ver con la "competencia" en ningún sentido significativo de la palabra, sino que se relaciona con la tendencia natural de la codicia de los ejecutivos de las empresas a acercarse al infinito a medida que la regulación se acerca a cero. He perdido la fuente de esta cita, pero su contenido es importante:

"Los monopolios o cuasi-monopolios creados por las fusiones y adquisiciones son eficaces sobre todo para exponer al público a los peores excesos del capitalismo, excesos que no han cambiado mucho en los últimos 100 años. En 1911, hablando ante un Comité del Senado, el juez de la Corte Suprema de los Estados Unidos, Louis Brandeis, dijo que las corporaciones americanas lograron prosperar sólo por sus sucias tácticas, y por fijar ilegalmente los precios y comprar o destruir a los competidores. Dijo que con un campo de juego equilibrado, "esos monstruos se derrumbarían". 

La interpretación más común del término "competitivo" es que los productos o servicios sean más o menos equivalentes en términos de precio y valor. Esta filosofía de la competencia supone que cierta cantidad de presión o dificultad nos obligará a crecer y quizás a hacerlo mejor. Si tenemos clientes exigentes, podemos esforzarnos por cumplir sus expectativas mejorando nuestro servicio a un nivel que de otra manera no hubiéramos ofrecido. Si tenemos dos mercados de verduras muy cercanos, los clientes frecuentarán el que consideren más atractivo o que ofrezca la mejor calidad o servicio. En esa medida, se mantienen honestos el uno con el otro y la perspectiva de perder clientes puede servir para mejorar el servicio o mantener precios razonables. Sin embargo, en todas las ciudades de todos los países hay muchas tiendas que ofrecen productos similares o idénticos, pero el servicio y los precios tienden a ser medios. China tiene más de 50 millones de empresas. Si eso no es suficiente competencia, no sé qué sería, pero con toda esta llamada competencia, ¿qué tenemos? Altos precios y un pésimo servicio, así que ¿dónde están los beneficios para los consumidores? La respuesta simple es: no hay ninguno, y la teoría económica de los beneficios de la competencia es un mito de los libros de texto. Pero en cierto sentido, esto es algo menor y no es en absoluto lo que los americanos quieren decir cuando hablan de la competencia, que sólo se relaciona con el logro de la dominación del mercado y la destrucción de otros proveedores en el mercado. 

PT -- LARRY ROMANOFF -- Iniciativa Privada e Bem Nacional -- October 9, 2020

 Por  LARRY ROMANOFF – October 9, 2020

ENGLISH  PORTUGUÊS

É preciso dizer que existem valores maiores na vida do que a eficiência econômica e o capitalismo desregulado. Muitas coisas que fazemos são decididas não pela economia, mas por nossos valores sociais e pessoais, e são feitas por razões humanas não relacionadas à economia ou ao lucro. Se nossas atividades se restringissem à economia, nunca teríamos uma série de coisas que talvez sejam economicamente deficientes, mas úteis, bonitas ou simplesmente divertidas. A infraestrutura física e social de uma nação não são primeiramente, na maioria dos casos nem minimamente, empreendimentos comerciais, nem deveriam ser. A geração de eletricidade, o fornecimento de comunicações universais, um sistema de transporte eficiente são construídos para o bem nacional, e isso é ainda mais verdadeiro para elementos sociais como educação, saúde e sistema de seguridade social. Tudo isso e muito mais são necessidades fundamentais para o bem-estar de uma nação e de seu povo, empreendidas não para enriquecer poucas elites, mas para beneficiar a população. Essas, como a defesa nacional, são responsabilidades básicas de um governo nacional e não devem, de forma alguma, ser vistas como oportunidades comerciais para predadores gananciosos. Ter um Goldman Sachs ou um Blackstone dizendo: "Ei, nós poderíamos ganhar bilhões com isso", não é uma razão para deixá-los fazer isso.

 

Os proponentes americanos da privatização de infraestrutura tentam argumentar que a motivação ao lucro - em outras palavras, a ganância - de alguma forma sempre produzirá o melhor resultado, mas esse resultado é inevitavelmente o melhor para apenas um pequeno punhado de pessoas, enquanto 99% do bem-estar da população e do país sofrem proporcionalmente. A medida correta da infraestrutura física e social de uma nação é a utilidade pública, não a lucratividade. A medida do sistema de saúde de uma nação é o aumento geral da saúde e do bem-estar das pessoas, não a quantidade de lucro que um Blackstone ou Carlyle pode obter com a propriedade dos hospitais. E para cumprir a responsabilidade pela utilidade pública, o próprio planejamento de toda infraestrutura deve originar-se unicamente das prioridades fundamentais da nação e das necessidades de seu povo, não da ganância de financistas. Este não é um ponto desimportante. Os proponentes da privatização inevitavelmente afirmam que será "mais eficiente", o que apenas significa que eles podem sugar dinheiro público em um processo privado, e ainda dizer que a privatização irá "criar empregos", deliberadamente ignorando que quaisquer empregos criados no setor privado serão mais do que compensados pela perda de empregos no setor público. Como poderia ser diferente? Se transferirmos a limpeza de ruas de um governo municipal para uma empresa privada, então é claro que a empresa privada "criará empregos", mas todos aqueles anteriormente empregados na mesma função pelo governo local estarão agora desempregados e nas listas de seguridade social da cidade.

EN -- LARRY ROMANOFF -- World Map of Privatisation -- October 11, 2020

 

 

World Map of Privatisation

By LARRY ROMANOFF – October 11, 2020

 In my prior articles ‘Private Enterprise and the National Good’ and ‘A further look at Privatisation’, I painted only a small part of the total picture of "privatisation" as it really is, part of a concerted long-term plan to control the world's infrastructure, land, water and food supplies, and to effectively replace nation-states with a group of supra-national banks and multinationals, all owned by the same very small group of European Jewish bankers and industrialists. In order to wake up, what the world needs to see is a map of all the world's nations, with a list for each country of the extent of this so-called privatisation in every area. We need to know, for each nation:

 

•Central Bank - public or private? If private, the names of the ultimate individual beneficial owners

•The names of the ultimate individual owners of the nation's commercial and merchant banks

•The names of the individual owners of the nation's mainstream media, including television, press and book publishing

•A list of the entire physical infrastructure owned by foreign banks and multinationals, and the names of the corporate and ultimate individual owners of these assets. This would include all transportation facilities and communications. It must include all airports, railways, toll highways and bridges, electricity generation, water, natural gas and fuel supplies, and more

•A list of the social infrastructure controlled by foreigners, including health care and education, and the names of the ultimate beneficial owners

•A list of dominant foreign commercial firms and those significant domestic enterprises owned by foreigners, again with links to the ultimate beneficial owners, and with estimates of market share and domination in each industry sector

•A list of the dominant foreign firms in the food industry, and the extent of market domination and control of the nation's food supply, with full ultimate ownership information

•A list of the foreign holdings of arable land and water aquifers, again with links to the ultimate beneficial owners

 

EN -- LARRY ROMANOFF -- China's Anti-Monopoly Policies -- October 10, 2020

 

 

China's Anti-Monopoly Policies

 

By LARRY ROMANOFF – October 10, 2020

 

 

In 2014, due to repeated complaints and alarming suspicions, Chinese authorities undertook an enormous wide-ranging anti-monopoly investigation of the country's auto industry that involved more than 1,000 Chinese and foreign companies including automakers, dealers and suppliers, many of whom were suspected of collusion in price-fixing, price-gouging, other anti-competitive behavior, as well as fraudulent sales, service and warranty terms. A major thrust of the investigation was the illegal fixing of extremely high prices, a focus that would appear to have been well justified since, as soon as news of the investigation broke, dozens of foreign automakers simultaneously engaged in a panic reduction of their auto and parts prices, with Audi and Mercedes instituting reductions of as much as 40% and BMW doing something similar, perhaps hoping by this means to stave off criminal conviction. In fact, virtually all foreign automakers panicked and cut prices heavily when news of the probes became public, knowing full well the honeymoon of breaking all of China's laws with impunity was quickly coming to an end. From the China Daily:

 

 

"Jessica Su, antitrust scholar and Institute of American Studies associate professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said the commission has strong evidence and a legal base to continue its investigations. In the new-car and after-sales markets, the conduct of international automakers may have infringed the antitrust law, including price-fixing, territorial restrictions and customer restrictions. In the after-sales car market, suspected conduct includes exclusive supply, exclusive purchase and excessive pricing of replacement parts, as well as restrictions on the supply of technical information needed for repair and maintenance, she said. "Such behavior mainly comes from car manufacturers suspected of substantially impeding competition and harming consumer welfare. If similar conduct occurred in the United States, European Union, Japan, South Korea and other mature market economies, it would doubtless trigger antitrust investigations".

 

EN -- LARRY ROMANOFF -- A Further Look at Privatisation -- October 10, 2020

 

 

A Further Look at Privatisation

By LARRY ROMANOFF – October 10, 2020

 

 Privatisation is generally considered to mean the selling off to privately-owned companies the basic publicly-owned physical and social infrastructure of a country, including things like airports, railways, electricity generation, ports and so on, and also including the takeover of health care and educational systems by private for-profit firms. But in the dictionary of the Americans and their European banker friends, privatisation has an expanded meaning, the above forming only one segment of an overall plan. Let's look at the pieces.

 

 Privatisation began with, and was almost always executed hand in hand with, the colonial military, beginning with that of the British Empire and latterly that of the US. It consisted of raw aggression against weaker nations to enable a few European bankers and their multinational companies to take ownership of those nations' coveted wealth and resources. I have written elsewhere that early in the 19th century the US United Fruit Company owned most of Guatemala including 70% of all the arable land, the communications facilities, the only railroad and shipping port, and controlled most of the nation's exports through ownership of most major corporations. Yet US President Coolidge orchestrated the overthrow of Guatemala's government when it refused to grant yet more concessions. This pattern was followed throughout Central and South America, where nation after nation saw its government replaced by a brutal US-financed dictator, its infrastructure stolen, its resources looted and plundered, while the population was repeatedly terrorised and maintained in abject poverty. In Zaire, the European bankers and industrialists so coveted the gold and diamonds that they used the CIA to assassinate yet another leader and install yet another dictator amenable to Western bribery. The Boer wars fought in South Africa were arranged by the Rothschilds and other industrialists, using the British military to exterminate a population resistant to colonisation, then claim the gold fields and diamond mines for their own. The entire sorry episode of opium in China involved the Jewish Rothschilds, Sassoons and Russells, backed by the power of the British military for execution, as was much else involving India. For at least the past 200 years, military imperialism produced enormous profits and economic growth for the US and untold trillions in wealth for a handful of European bankers while keeping countless nations buried in poverty. This was 'privatisation' on the largest scale the world has seen, involving the wholesale theft by military force of the wealth and resources of weaker nations. Two of the more recent travesties following this same pattern are the destruction of Iraq and Libya, and for the same reasons - the 'privatisation' of those nations' resources, involving the destruction of the country and millions of casualties, and the "pacification" of the population by terrorism.

 

The Real Economic Problem Is Not The Closedown by Paul Craig Roberts

The Real Economic Problem Is Not The Closedown

April 29, 2020 

The Real Economic Problem Is Not The Closedown

Paul Craig Roberts

What do we make of it all?  I just read an article in the New York Times that reports that President Trump lied and hid from the public the severity of the Covid-19 pandemic https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/28/opinion/coronavirus-trump-coverup.html .  On the other side, I encounter endless Internet rage that Covid-19 is a hoax, that New York city’s hospitals  are empty and no one has died.  It is nothing but a Rothchild-Rockefeller-Bill Gates plot. Perhaps the most stunningly inconsistant claim of all is that it is a bioweapon that is so harmless that there should have been no lockdown.  Why make a harmless bioweapon?  

Where one stands on the closedown depends on where one stands on other issues.  If you are a libertarian, you oppose the closedown because it interferes with your freedom and keeps useless old people alive who cost you payroll tax dollars.  It you are a Trump-hater like the New York Times you blame trump for understating the threat and not closing down soon enough.  If you are a Trump supporter you blame China and expect China to pay for it by forfeiting their trillion dollar holding of US government bonds.  

F. William Engdahl -- Putin and the ‘Biden Memorial Pipeline’ to China

07.12.2019 Author: F. William Engdahl

Putin and the ‘Biden Memorial Pipeline’ to China

Column: Economics

Region: Russia in the World

In early 2014 Washington staged a blatant coup d’etat in Ukraine breaking the historic relationship with Russia and setting the stage for the subsequent NATO demonization of Russia. The one in charge for the Obama Administration of the Ukraine coup was then-Vice President Joe Biden. Today a bizarre Democrat impeachment attempt aimed at President Donald Trump has curiously enough put the spotlight on the dubious role that Joe Biden played in Ukraine affairs in 2014 and after. That Biden-steered coup had the unintended effect of causing a 180 degree geopolitical pivot of Moscow from West to East. The opening of a massive new gas pipeline now is only one of those unintended consequences.

On December 2, Russian President Vladimir Putin participated in the official opening of the Power of Siberia natural gas pipeline to Asia, servicing the growing China gas market. It met the planned deadline punctually, to the month. This marked the first Russian pipeline gas deliveries to China. In a videolink with China President Xi Jinping, Putin remarked, “This step is bringing Russian-Chinese strategic cooperation in energy to a whole new level.” Xi called it “a milestone project for the bilateral energy cooperation.”

The opening, a huge engineering feat, completes a pipeline through Russia’s Eastern Siberia north of Mongolia to the border with China, running more than 2,200 kilometers across Russia’s east territories. It is the largest gas pipeline project in the world to date.

F. William Engdahl -- China, USA and the Geopolitics of Lithium

China, USA and the Geopolitics of Lithium

By F. William Engdahl

18 November 2019

Image credits: Smnt License: This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license with some rights reserved https://bit.ly/330t1jw

For several years since the global push to develop mass-scale Electric Vehicles, the element Lithium has come intofocus as a strategic metal. Demand is enormous in China, in the EU and in the USA at present, and securing control over lithium supplies is already developing its own geopolitics not unlike that for the control of oil .

China Moves to Secure Sources

For China, which has set major targets to become the world’s largest producer of EVs, developing lithium battery materials is a priority for the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20) period. Though China has its own lithium reserves, recovery is limited, and China has gone to secure lithium mining rights abroad.

In Australia Chinese company Talison Lithium, controlled by Tianqi, mines and owns the world’s largest and highest grade spodumene reserves in Greenbushes, Western Australia near Perth.

Talison Lithium Inc. is the world’s largest primary lithium producer. Their Greenbushes site in Australia produces today some 75% of China’s lithium demands and about forty percent of world demand. This as well as other vital Australian raw materials, has made relations with Australia, traditionally a firm US ally, of strategic importance to Beijing. As well, China has become the largest trade partner for Australia.

However China’s growing economic influence in the Pacific around Australia led Prime Minister Scott Morrison to send a warning message to China not to challenge Australia’s strategic backyard region. In late 2017 Australia, with growing concern over expanding Chinese influence in the region, resumed informal cooperation in what is sometimes called the Quad,with USA, India and Japan, reviving an earlier attempt to check Chinese influence in the South Pacific. Australia has also recently stepped up lending to strategic Pacific island nations to counter China’s lending. All this clearly makes it imperative for China to go global to other sites to secure its lithium in order to become the key player in the emerging EV economy over the coming decade.

As development of electric vehicles became priority in Chinese economic planning, the search for secure lithium turned to Chile,another major source of the lithium. There,China’s Tianqiis amassing a major share of Chile’s Sociedad Quimica Y Minera (SQM), one of the world’s largest lithium producers. If China’s Tianqi succeeds in gaining control of SQM it will change the geopolitics of world lithium control according to mining industry reports.

The global supply of lithium metals, a strategic component of lithium-ion batteries used to power electric vehicles (EVs) is concentrated in a very few countries.

F. William Engdahl -- China’s Hidden Economic Time Bomb

22.10.2019 Author: F. William Engdahl

China’s Hidden Economic Time Bomb

Column: Economics

Region: Eastern Asia

Country: China

The China government statistical agency just released economic data showing the poorest GDP growth in almost 30 years for China. The problem goes far deeper than recent effects of the US-China trade war or the impact of calamities such as African Swine Fever that have decimated the nation’s pig herds. The underlying far more serious problem is an emerging disaster that few are willing to discuss openly.

Since about 2017 China’s population has begun to feel the real impact of the ill-conceived One Child Policy imposed by the Communist Party in 1979, some 40 years ago. This slow-growing problem, once seen as benefit, is undermining the entire basis of the China Economic Miracle. The question is whether Beijing can make the transition to an ageing population without major social and economic dislocation.

On October 18 the China State Statistics bureau released Third Quarter GDP which came in at 6.0% compared with 6.2% the previous quarter. While there is great skepticism as to how honest the reporting is, the fact the government must announce a slowing growth at all suggests the situation in reality could be far worse.

The true data on China’s economy remain opaque. In December 2018 the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics published its annual transparency survey on the 31 provincial-level regions. The average score was just above 53%. The study concluded, “[Unfortunately,] the general level of transparency in China’s local governments remains poor.”

A more direct indicator of the health of the economy comes from actual trade data. Bloomberg reports that auto sales in China have fallen for the 15th month out of 16 months in September. It’s the “worst slump in a generation”, according to Bloomberg. As well, sales of new homes and apartments in Beijing, Shanghai and other major cities fell dramatically to lows of 2014.

The deeper issue is not the transparency of official economic data. The deeper issue is whether the China Miracle, the remarkable rise from a Third World level backwardness in less than three decades, is entering a structural crisis that will impact not only China’s economy. The recent data on new car sales and new home buying could be an ominous indicator that the China boom years are coming into a drastic slowing with huge consequences not only for China but also for the world.

Golden Era Peaks

Like no other economy in modern history, China’s remarkable economic rise has been facilitated by an extraordinary short-term demographic blessing. That blessing has begun to turn into a curse.

F. William Engdahl -- Fed Make Trump A New Herbert Hoover?

Will Fed Make Trump A NewHerbert Hoover?

By F. William Engdahl
8 October 2019

Image credits: Russ Allison Loar - Downtown Los Angeles 6th Street skid row - Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license with conditions https://bit.ly/31ZBFz9

In recent months US President Trump has pointed repeatedly to his role in making the American economy the “best ever.” But behind the extreme highs of the stock market and the official government unemployment data, the US economy is primed for a 1929-style shock, a financial Tsunami that is more influenced by independent Fed actions than by anything that the White House has done since January 2017. At this point the parallels between one-time Republican President Herbert Hoover who presided over the great stock crash and economic depression that was created then by the Fed policies, and Trump in 2019 are looking ominously similar. It underscores that the real power lies with those who control our money, not elected politicians .

Despite proclamations to the contrary, the true state of the US economy is getting more precarious by the day. The Fed policies of Quantitative Easing and Zero Interest Rate Policy (ZIRP) implemented after the 2008 crash, contrary to claims, did little to directly rebuild the real US economy. Instead it funneled trillions to the very banks responsible for the 2007-8 real estate bubble. That “cheap money” in turn flowed to speculative high-return investment around the world. It created speculative bubbles in emerging market debt in countries like Turkey, Argentina, Brazil and even China. It created huge investment in high-risk debt, so called junk bonds, in the US corporate sector in areas like shale oil ventures or companies like Tesla. The Trump campaign promise of rebuilding America’s decaying infrastructure has gone nowhere and a divided Congress is not about to unite for the good of the nation at this point. The real indicator of the health of the real economy where real people struggle to make ends meet lies in the record levels of debt.

Today, fully a decade after the unprecedented actions of three presidents, the US economy is deeper in debt than ever in its history. And debt is controlled by interest rates, interest rates ultimately in the hands of the Fed. Let’s look at some signs of serious trouble which could easily put the economy in a severe recession by this time in 2020.

Ford Motor, GE

On September 25 the corporate bond debt of Ford Motor Co., who unlike GM refused government nationalization in 2008, has just been downgraded to “junk” status by Moody’s, who said Ford faces “considerable operating and market challenges…” It affects $84 billion in company debt.