When you drill down ever deeper you’ll find that Finance does not create value. So when your ability to pay for a home is augmented by favorably financing, watch out!:
“Finance is Not the Economy”
“The real estate, financial system, monopolies, and other rent-extracting ‘toollboth’ privieges are not valued in terms of their contribution to production or living standards, but by how much they can extract from the economy. By classical definition, these rentier payments are not technologically necessary for production, distribution, and consumption. The are not investments in the economy’s productive capacity, but extraction from the surplus it produces.”
““Today’s passivity by the 99 Percent in the face of a rentier counter-Enlightenment
reflects the degree to which voters have come to accept the neoliberal financial and tax system as part of the natural environment, as if there indeed is no alternative.”
Excerpt From: Michael Hudson. “Killing the Host.”
“It was not always this way.
A century ago, two centuries ago, three centuries ago and all the way back to the Bronze Age, almost every society saw finance –that is, debt –as the great destabilizing force. Debt grows exponentially, ultimately enabling creditors to foreclose on the assets of debtors. Creditors end up reducing societies to debt bondage. That is how the Roman Empire ended in serfdom.
About a hundred years ago in America, John Bates Clark and other pro-financial ideologues argued that finance is not external to the economy. They said that it’s not extraneous, it’s part of the economy, just like landlords claim to be part of the economy’s production process, not an overlay to it. This implies that when the financial sector takes more revenue out of the economy as interest, fees or monopoly charges, it’s not merely siphoning it off this revenue from producers; it’s because Wall Street and the One Percent are an inherent and vital part of the economy, adding to GDP. So our economic policy protects finance as if it helps us grow instead of siphoning off our growth.
A year or two ago, Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs said that the reason his firm’s managers are paid more than anybody else is because they’re so productive. The question is, productive of what? The National Income and Product Accounts (NIPA) say that everybody is productive in proportion to the amount of money they make or take. It doesn’t matter whether it’s extractive income or productive income. It doesn’t matter whether it’s made by manufacturing products or simply by taking money from people via the kinds of fraud for which Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Bank of America and others paid tens of millions of dollars in fines for committing. Any way of earning income is considered to be as productive as any other way.
This is a parasite-friendly mentality, because it denies that there’s any such thing as unearned income. It denies that there’s a free lunch. Hence, there seems to be no such thing as economic parasitism. Milton Friedman got famous for promoting this idea that there’s no such thing as a free lunch, but Wall Street knows quite well that from its perspective, the economy is all about how to get a free lunch –and how to get the risks picked up by the government. No wonder they back economists who deny that there’s any exploitation, or any such thing as unearned income!”
Hudson, Michael. J IS FOR JUNK ECONOMICS: A Guide To Reality In An Age Of Deception
interview with Michael Hudson by Eric Draitser was aired on CounterPunch Radio, Episode 19, September 21, 2015.1
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“Ecological corridors also operate in an urban matrix: A test case with garden shrews”
Red-spotted Purple (Limenitis arthemis astyanax) female
Ice Age National Scientific Reserve Unit, Wisconsin, USA
July 6 2020 _F2A0626aaa3
“'Corporate Fraud at Its Worst': J&J Hides Behind Bankruptcy Amid Baby Powder Lawsuits”
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“NAFTA's 6 Negative Effects”
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“NAFTA’s Legacy: Lost Jobs, Lower Wages, Increased Inequality”
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“Copying Nature (Yet Again): What Is Composting, and How Does It Reduce Our Impact on the Environment?”
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COSTCO:
“Factory farms of disease: how industrial chicken production is breeding the next pandemic”
“At least eight types of bird flu, all of which can kill humans, are circulating around the world’s factory farms – and they could be worse than Covid-19”
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Western Conservative network fostering methods perfected in the American beachhead:
“France’s Fascist Pundit Éric Zemmour Is Winning Already”
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We’re toast, the rich are scot free in their bunkers:
“Decades of deregulation have led to the rise of a new class of the super-rich. More than 500,000 people around the world possess more than $30 million each, and half of these live in the United States. Of that latter number, over 700 are billionaires, and they saw their collective wealth increase by $1.8 trillion during the pandemic.
It’s time for rich people to fork over their fair share. The planet is presenting its bill to humanity. Pay up, says Mother Earth, or you’re toast.”
“The Embarrassment of Riches”
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"Means testing is a choice to deprive millions of our neighbors of what they need simply to cope with a budget artificially limited by regressive tax policy," wrote Democratic Reps. Mondaire Jones and Katie Porter.
“Mondaire Jones, Katie Porter Urge Fellow Democrats to Reject Means-Testing Folly”
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"The rise of fast fashion in the United States is supporting an invisible 'salvage market' that sees American clothes waste shipped to faraway countries where it fills marketplaces, clogs up beaches and overwhelms dumps."
“Fast fashion in the U.S. is fueling an environmental disaster in Ghana”
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Jan Wyllie:
“DUFFED UP
The insulation which protects the permafrost is being burned creating a massive feedback loop which pumps more CO2 and methane into the atmosphere.
The duff, with its compact but airy layering, is a superb insulator of frozen ground underneath. Permafrost in these regions is widespread and tens of thousands of years old.
Wildfires across the high north are increasing in frequency and size. They are also transforming landscapes and ecosystems. In addition to being a fuel, duff is a remarkable insulator of underlying frozen ground—so much so that it has been keeping much of subsurface Alaska frozen since the Pleistocene epoch. Each half-inch of thickness keeps the underlying permafrost—ground that remains below freezing for two or more years—about 1 degree Fahrenheit (0.6 degree Celsius) cooler. But if enough duff burns off, the underlying permafrost thaws, turning parts of Alaska into softening, slumping ground. Trees rooted in this thawing ground can tilt at all angles, like haphazard Leaning Towers of Pisa.
In 2015 severe wildfires in interior Alaska burned 5.1 million acres, releasing about nine million metric tons of carbon from standing vegetation—and 154 million tons from the duff, according to Christopher Potter of NASA's Earth Sciences Division. (That calculation includes carbon lost to decomposition and erosion for two subsequent years.) The total amount of CO2 is equal to that emitted by all of California's cars and trucks in 2017.
As more ground thaws, ice in the lower layers of duff melts and drains away, drying the duff farther down, making it more ready to burn deeply. This feedback loop most likely will expand the acres burned, aggravate health for millions of people and make the climate change faster than ever.
“Wildfire Is Transforming Alaska and Amplifying Climate Change
Although conflagrations in lower latitudes get more attention, wildfires across the high north are affecting the planet even more”
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No species has some dormant or latent genetic ability (acquired by experience during the evolution of their physiology) to cope fully with what man is doing artificially to the planet:
“After the UN report’s stark warning last month, it’s never been more obvious we are in trouble. We must act now to combat the climate crisis—before it is too late. WCS strongly advocates for nature-based solutions such as preserving our intact forests and protecting and restoring coastal ecosystems. We know that such solutions are both powerful and cost-effective and will continue to support evidence-based policymaking. Pledge to stand with us as we work with all parties, globally and here at home, to defend against two of the existential threats facing us today: climate change and with it, the irrevocable loss of biodiversity.”
“STAND STRONG FOR OUR CLIMATE. SIGN YOUR NAME NOW.”
July 6 2020 _F2A0626aaa3
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