scientificamerican | First came Martin Shkreli, the brash young pharmaceutical
entrepreneur who raised the price for an AIDS treatment by 5,000
percent. Then, Heather Bresch, the CEO of Mylan, who oversaw the price
hike for its signature Epi-Pen to more than $600 for a twin-pack, though
its active ingredient costs pennies by comparison.
Now a small Virginia company called Kaleo is joining their ranks. It
makes an injector device that is suddenly in demand because of the
nation’s epidemic use of opioids, a class of drugs that includes heavy
painkillers and heroin.
Called Evzio, it is used to deliver naloxone, a life-saving antidote to overdoses of opioids. More than 33,000 people are
believed to have died from such overdoses in 2015. And as demand for
Kaleo’s product has grown, the privately held firm has raised its
twin-pack price to $4,500, from $690 in 2014.
Founded by twin brothers Eric and Evan Edwards, 36, the company first
sought to develop an Epi-Pen competitor, thanks to their own food
allergies.
Now, they’ve taken that model and marketed it for a major public
health crisis. It’s another auto-injector that delivers an inexpensive
medicine.
One difference, though, is that Evzio talks users through the process
as they inject naloxone. The company says the talking device is worth
the price because it can guide anyone to jab an overdose victim
correctly, leave the needle in for the right amount of time and
potentially save his or her life.
According to Food and Drug Administration estimates,
the Kaleo product, which won federal approval in 2014, accounted for
nearly 20 percent of the naloxone dispensed through retail outlets
between 2015 and 2016, and for nearly half of all naloxone products
prescribed to patients between ages 40 and 64—the group that comprises
the bulk of naloxone users.
mishtalk | Total capitulation by Governor Bruce Rauner is in the works. The taxoholics wore him down.
In the emergency session, Rauner has agreed to hike the personal
income tax rate to 4.95% from the current 3.75%. The corporate income
tax rate will rise to 7% from the current 5.25% rate.
For what? Nothing. Reforms are nonexistent.
Another Deadline Come and Gone
Illinois failed to approve a budget today and thus heads into its third fiscal year without one.
A vote has been scheduled for Sunday.
I do not expect your opinion will matter, but in the slim chance I am wrong, Please Email Your Representative voicing displeasure of the tax hike.
The preceding link will find your rep based on your address.
Rule of Nothing
A zombified Rauer has capitulated in every way but the final signing.
Tax hikes have been agreed to with no reforms in return.
Rule of Nothing
In any given political situation, the best outcome one can reasonably expect generally happens when politicians do nothing.
Implied corollary#1: When politicians attempt to fix any problem, they are highly likely to make matters worse.
Corollary #2: Politicians almost never do nothing. It’s why we have a
messed up healthcare system, education system, public pension system,
etc..
zerohedge | S&P warned one month ago will likely result in a humiliating and
unprecedented downgrade of the 5th most populous US state to junk
status.
Then came the begging.
According to Bloomberg, on Friday Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, a Democrat who controls much of the legislative agenda, pleaded with rating companies to "temporarily withhold judgment” as
lawmakers negotiate. “Much work remains to be done,” the Democrat said
on the floor of the House Friday, before the chamber adjourned for the
day. “We’ll get the job done.”
Meanwhile, the state remains without a spending plan, its tax
receipts and outlays mostly on "autopilot", leaving it with a record $15
billion of unpaid bills as it spent over $6 billion more than it
brought in over the past year, and with $800 million in interest on the
unpaid bills alone. The impasse has devastated social-service providers,
shuttering services for the homeless, disabled and poor. The lack of
state aid has wrecked havoc on universities, putting their accreditation
at risk.
However, in a "shocking" development, just hours remaining before the
midnight deadline to pass the Illinois budget, and Illinois' imminent
loss of its investment grade rating, federal judge Joan Lefkow
in Chicago ordered Illinois to come up with hundreds of millions of
dollars it owes in Medicaid payments that state officials say the
government doesn’t have, the Chicago Tribunereported.
Judge Lefkow ordered the state to make $586 million in monthly payments (from the current $160 million) as
well as another $2 billion toward a $3 billion backlog of payments - a
$167 million increase in monthly outlays - the state owes to managed
care organizations that process payments to providers.
While it is no secret that as part of its collapse into the financial
abyss, Illinois has accumulated $15 billion in unpaid bills, the
state's Medicaid recipients had had enough, and went to court asking a
judge to order the state to speed up its payments. On Friday, the court
ruled in their favor. The problem, of course, is that Illinois can no
more afford to pay the outstanding Medicaid bills, than it can to pay any of its $14,711,351,943.90 in overdue bills as of June 30.
The backlog of unpaid claims the state owes to managed-care companies
directly, as well as to the doctors, hospitals, clinics and other
organizations “is crippling these providers and thereby dramatically reducing the Medicaid recipients’ access to health care,” Lefkow said in her ruling
* * *
Friday’s court ruling, which meant that the near-insolvent state must
pay an additional $593 million per month, may have been the straw that
finally broke the Illinois camel's back.
“Friday’s ruling by the U.S. District Court takes the state’s finances from horrific to catastrophic,” Comptroller Susana Mendoza, a Democrat, said in an emailed statement after the ruling.
As a result of the court decision, “payments to the state’s pension
funds; state payroll including legislator pay; General State Aid to
schools and payments to local governments -- in some combination -- will
likely have to be cut.”
WaPo | There is an ongoing terrorist attack
happening in Ohio. It has nothing to do with the Islamic State or
political anarchists. The weapons in this case come in the form of
heroin and other opioids, and the terrorists are the pushers who spread
the deadly poison.
From the Columbus Dispatch
this spring: “At least 4,149 Ohioans died from unintentional drug
overdoses in 2016, a 36 percent leap from just the previous year, when
Ohio had by far the most overdose deaths in the nation. . . . Many
coroners said that 2017’s overdose fatalities are outpacing 2016’s.”
Consider that number — 4,149 overdose deaths in Ohio in one year, more than the number who died on 9/11.
The
worst of the state’s opioid problems are here in southern Ohio. The
Highland County coroner provided our newspaper, the Times-Gazette, with a recap of cases
from 2016 showing at least 16 overdose deaths in this small rural
county. He also pointed to 50 deaths during the year from other causes
where drug use or a history of drug use were present.
Even non-fatal overdoses are taxing local resources. During the first three weeks of May, emergency responders answered calls to at least 18 overdoses
around the county, almost three times as many as during the same period
a year ago. The public information officer for the local fire and
emergency medical services department called it “the new normal.”
This
is all happening around little Hillsboro, a town often compared with
television’s idyllic Mayberry. With the FBI reporting that most heroin enters
the United States from Mexico, and local officials saying that it then
makes its way here through metropolitan drug rings, it’s no wonder that
few people in Hillsboro think President Trump’s border security plans
are extreme.
Like other forms of terrorism, the opioid attack
will have a generational impact, in this case in a foster-care crisis
being left in its wake.
thenews | Terrorism, drugs-for-arms and money laundering are intrinsically
linked and pose a considerable threat to global peace and security. They
destabilise the political and financial stability of many
nation-states. They were accelerated in the wake of 9/11. Militants and
extremists have a nexus with criminal networks involved in dealing drugs
and arms.
Evidence available with intelligence agencies confirms that from
Al-Qaeda to Daesh the real challenge involves the free flow of legal and
illegal funds. Until today, the international community has failed to
sever their financial lifeline.
It is an open secret how the drug trade in post-Taliban Afghanistan
was institutionalised through the puppet regime in Kabul and the
patronising attitude of war lords in many provinces of the country. Once
opium started being processed at a mass scale into morphine and heroin
in Afghanistan, it brought tonnes of money for commanders on the ground.
Since 2004, the controlled democracy in Afghanistan has been playing
into the hands of more sophisticated narco-enriched commanders. It is no
longer a secret that the Taliban – with whom the US and its allies have
always been in negotiation since 2004 – knew how to buy or muscle a
vote which would protect their opium interests in every election.
Even Afghanistan’s neighbours have been making profits from the
windfall: criminal groups from Central Asia, says the UN, have made
profits worth $15.2 billion from the trafficking of opiates in 2015.
Tajikistan is, by far, the worst affected by the drug plague owing to a
combination of history, poverty and geography.
In the late 1990s, the drug trade was believed to be a source of
finance for the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) – a terrorist group
which had bases in Afghanistan and Tajikistan. After the war in
Afghanistan, the IMU lost most of its influence. But the drugs trade
continued with organised criminals taking the place of political or
religious activists. In a survey conducted by the Open Society
Institute, eight out of 10 of those polled said – hardly surprisingly –
that “the main reason to turn to drug trafficking was to make big
money”.
medgadget | Opioids are the most widely prescribed medications to treat moderate
to severe chronic pain. These analgesics are used to manage pain in
cancer patients and also to treat severe constant pain in patients
suffering from terminal illnesses. These are generally administered via
subcutaneous, oral and intramuscular routes; other routes of
administration include nasal insufflations, patient controlled
analgesia, transdermal and oral mucosa routes via lozenges. Opioids can
be classified into three major classes namely, strong agonists
(fentanyl, oxymorphone, and morphine), mild to moderate agonists
(codeine and hydroxycodone), and opioids with mixed receptor reactions
(buprenophrine and pentazocine). Although they form one of the most
widely used analgesic classes, they cause certain adverse effects such
as constipation, nausea, vomiting, sedation, respiratory depression and
others. However, the major concern with this drug class is the high
level of drug abuse observed worldwide, leading to illegal trade of
these drugs worth hundreds of billions of dollars. According to a study
published in the Journal of American Medical Association in April 2011,
the rate of deaths occurring due to the overdose of prescription opioids
has increased substantially in the last decade in the U.S. alone. This
study also indicated that high doses of opioid drugs prescribed for pain
management possessed increased risk of overdose mortality in the
patients.
The leading molecules in this segment that constituted about 65% of
the total opioids market include OxyContin (oxycodone), Nucynta
(tapentadol), Rybix and Ultram (tramadol), Exalgo (hydromorphone),
Ultiva (remifentanil) and fentanyl.The remaining 35% market revenue was
contributed by other generic opioids as well as combination formulations
of NSAIDs with opioids.The actual market scenario for this drug class,
however, could be different due to the strong product pipeline, with two
major entries MoxDuo IR (morphine/oxycodone) and Remoxy (oxycodone) set
to hit the market in 2016. The market entry of these two drugs is
expected to boost growth of the overall opioids market during the
forecast period. The number of patients suffering from chronic pain is
on a constant rise globally. Thus, increasing incidence of chronic pain
conditions will continue to encourage the use of pain management drugs,
thereby driving the opioids market. Doctors usually prescribe medicines
in the initial stages of pain, followed by other treatment options.
Prescription drugs are easy to use and economical and are expected to
support the growth of the opioids market globally.
unz |All over America, I’ve seen posters warning against drugaddictions. In Cheyenne, it’s “METHAMPHETAMINE / Don’t live this tragic story.” A few blocks away, I stepped over used needles on the sidewalk. In Buffalo, it’s an image of a beer bottle and a pill bottle, with “HEROIN
addiction starts here…” Appended to it was a homemade sign, “SHOOT YOUR
LOCAL HEROIN DEALER.” Also in Buffalo, it’s a photo of a seemingly dead
man on the floor, with “Learn how to recognize OPIOID OVERDOSE and SAVE A LIFE.”
In Cleveland, it’s a tagged toe in a morgue, with “DEATH BY HEROIN
OVERDOSE IN CUYAHOGA COUNTY HAS QUADRUPLED,” and this was in 2014,
before the prevalence of fentanyl.
In
2016, Philly had 277 murders and 907 fatal drug overdoses. For 2017,
murders are up 21% and drug deaths, 33%. What’s your town’s drug toll?
A
33-year-old friend admits to popping street-bought Xanax every now and
then to help her sleep. I suspect she’s on various pills, if not heroin,
for she’s always broke and borrowing money. She has a spotty memory,
sporadic hygiene and pinpoint pupils.
At
Friendly, I sat next to my buddy Jeff, who’s in his late 40’s and HIV
positive. Each day, Jeff pops a dozen pills, including Klonopin, a
benzodiazepine that can trigger paranoid or suicidal thoughts, as well
as degrade your memory, judgment and coordination. Mixed with other
substances, particularly alcohol, it can slow your breathing or even
kill you. Jeff is always drinking.
“Jeff, man, you’re always so outgoing, so gregarious, I can’t imagine you having anxieties!”
“That’s
because of the Klonopin, dude. Without it, I’d be a mess. Without it,
I’d be up all night pissed off, you know, about some stupid argument I
had 15 years ago, some fight with a hot dog vendor who gave me ketchup
instead of mustard!”
“That’s serious.”
“Here’s what it looks like,” Jeff showed me some innocent white pills in a yellow bottle. “You want one?”
“No, thanks.”
Jeff took one out anyway and gave it to the bartender, 42-years-old Lisa. She stashed it away for later.
fmshooter | On Monday, Huffington Post author Kayla Chadwick posted an article
titled “I Don’t Know How To Explain To You That You Should Care About
Other People,” which was essentially an emotional plea without any
constructive argument on why Americans should pay higher taxes as well
as sign up for Obamacare:
If I have to pay a little more with each paycheck to ensure my fellow Americans can access health care? SIGN ME UP.
But if making sure your fellow citizens can afford to eat, get an
education, and go to the doctor isn’t enough of a reason to fund those
things, I have nothing left to say to you.
Well, since Chadwick has no problem telling Americans to pay more for
their healthcare, she should have no problem signing up for an
Obamacare plan herself. It sure appears as if Chadwick is on an
employer-sponsored health insurance plan, as I imagine she would be
singing quite a different tune if she had to “pay her own way” (with or
without subsidies) via the Obamacare exchange.
First, Chadwick can go to the Obamacare exchange to sign up, but of
course, only if it is either A) the “open enrollment” period, or B) she
incurs a “qualifying life event” that would make her eligible to
purchase insurance. If she’s merely switching carriers… no cigar, you
have to wait till the open enrollment period!
theatlantic | Last year, America’s total medical
costs hit a new record of $3.4 trillion, according to the federal
government. That’s about 18 percent of the country’s total GDP, meaning
that one out of every six dollars we spent in 2016 went to health care.
The national doctor bill dwarfs anything else we spend money on,
including food, clothing, housing, or even our mighty military.
If
that $3.4 trillion were spread equally throughout the population, the
bill would come to some $10,350 for every man, woman and child in the
country. But fortunately –for most of us, anyway—the cost of health care
is not equally distributed. Rather, a small number of Americans run up
most of the expense. The biggest medical costs are concentrated on a
fairly small segment of the population—people with one or more chronic
illnesses, plus victims of accidents or violent crime. The cost is so
concentrated, in fact, that an estimated five percent of the population
accounts for 50 percent of total medical costs.
For
the purposes of this project, we’re calling these people The Platinum
Patients—they’ve also been described as “super-utilizers” or “frequent
fliers.”
This concentration of total cost on a
small segment of the total population is reflected in another common
aspect of medical spending: the concentration of treatment, and cost, in
the end of a life span. For most people, the vast majority of all the
health care they’ll ever get comes near the hour of death. Hundreds of
billions of dollars each year are spent treating Americans who are in
the last weeks, or days, of life.
The old Marx Brothers’ joke—“I
wouldn’t dare go to the hospital—people die there all the time”—is
essentially true. Many people die in the hospital—in many cases, just
after they’ve incurred a hugely expensive round of surgery, treatment,
and medication. About one-third of Americans undergo operations in the
last month of life.
If these issues were subject to hard, cold
economic theory, a health-care system would probably distribute spending
differently. The large sums it costs to keep a sedated cancer patient
with dementia alive in a hospital bed from age 94 to 95 could presumably
be directed instead to provide, say, a kidney transplant for a
40-something victim of renal failure, or a young woman who is too
depressed to care for her baby. That money could be used for pre-natal
care for uninsured mothers, setting the stage for both mother and child
to have a healthier and happier life. Or, those funds could be used to
provide health insurance at reasonable cost to the 29 million Americans
who have no health coverage today.
One
famous, or perhaps notorious, advocate of limiting late-in-life medical
spending is former Colorado Gov. Richard Lamm, who was given the
nickname “Governor Gloom” in the 1980’s for his argument that the
elderly have a “duty” to avoid costly care when the end is near. There’s
only so much money available for medical care, Lamm noted, so it ought
to be used in the most efficient way. In the face of bitter criticism,
Lamm stuck to his guns. Just this spring he told the Denver Post: “When I
look at the literature, and there are such things as $93,000 prostate
operations at some stage of prostate cancer that might give two extra
months of life, it is outrageous.”
The problem with these
straightforward economic calculations is that they involve real human
beings who have friends and relatives. That 94-year-old cancer patient,
after all, may have loving children or grandchildren at the bedside;
hardly anybody is willing to let Grandpa die just to save money for the
overall health-care system.
WaPo | Under a plan by a city council member in Ohio, people who dial 911
seeking help for someone who's overdosing on opioids would start hearing
something new from dispatchers: “No.”
In response to the opioid epidemic that swept the nation — including the small city of Middletown,
population 50,000 — council member Dan Picard floated an idea that's
been called more of “a cry of frustration” than a legitimate solution.
At
a council meeting last week, Picard proposed a three-strikes-style
policy for people who repeatedly overdose: Too many overdoses and
authorities wouldn't send an ambulance to resuscitate them.
Picard
told The Washington Post that he sympathizes with anyone who has lost
someone to drug abuse, but said that responding to an ever-increasing
number of overdose calls threatens to bleed his city dry.
“It’s
not a proposal to solve the drug problem,” Picard said this week. “My
proposal is in regard to the financial survivability of our city. If
we’re spending $2 million this year and $4 million next year and $6
million after that, we’re in trouble. We’re going to have to start
laying off. We're going to have to raise taxes.”
gurdjieff | Because literature for Gurdjieff, as for the Sufis, is inextricable from philosophy, it is appropriate in considering Beelzebub’s Tales
to address some fundamental philosophical questions, the answers to
which help put Gurdjieff’s writings into perspective. Among the issues
to be addressed, one of primary importance is to define what constitutes
literature for Gurdjieff, or what, according to his aesthetics,
distinguishes literature from non-literature; art from non-art.
Unraveling this distinction involves comprehending some of
Gurdjieff’s fundamental ideas about human beings and their place in the
world. We have already proposed that Gurdjieff’s primary philosophical
stance is that of Sufism, and his philosophy of art supports this
contention.1 At the core of his
aesthetics is the position that no form of artistic expression possesses
value in itself; no art is appreciable for its intrinsic value alone.
Because of his premises concerning the meaning and purpose of human
existence, all “art” for Gurdjieff, and consequently all literature as
an art-form, must be functional or didactic. The value of an art work
resides in its potentiality to transform or metamorphose the art
appreciator. Insofar as a work of literature, a piece of music, a
painting, or any other potential art form aids humans in the process of
their spiritual evolution, that object or activity earns the designation
“art” for Gurdjieff and possesses what he refers to as “soul.”
Gurdjieff’s use of terminology to espouse his aesthetics and other
branches of his philosophy frequently involves his supplying old terms
with new meanings. Consequently, we are forced when approaching his
writings to temporarily abandon old associations of key words used in
his discussions. Such is the case with the terms “soul,” “objective”
and “subjective,” “conscious” and “unconscious.” “Subjective art,” for
example, in Gurdjieff’s terminology, refers to most of what is commonly
interpreted as art.
Most twentieth-century art in its various forms, according to his
standards, would fall into this category.
But subjective art is not authentic art for him; it is the result of
mechanical, unconscious human activity, and most of humanity is
unconscious according to Gurdjieff. For the same reason, he refers to
subjective art as “soulless” in that it results from little or no
consciousness on the part of the would-be artist. In his introduction
to Meetings with Remarkable Men, he asserts that contemporary civilization is unique in history in its massive production of soulless, pseudo art.
On the other hand, “objective art” is authentic art in that it
results from deliberate, pre-meditated efforts on the part of a
conscious artist. In the act of creation, the true artist avoids or
eliminates any input which is subjective or arbitrary, and the
impression of such art on those who experience it is always definite.
To the degree that objective art is the result of consciousness, it
inherently possesses “soul.” As one example of soulful art, Gurdjieff
cites the paintings of Leonardo da Vinci; as another he refers to the
Taj Mahal. Both constitute objective works of art.
theoccidentalobserver |It
is unfortunate, to say the least, that Black hip-hop scholarship never
mentions the elephant in the room: Jewish control of the music industry.
If hip-hop is, indeed, ethno-politics set to music, if hip-hop has
taken the place of the civil rights movement in the hearts and minds of
Black youth, it is impossible to ignore the historic Black-Jewish
alliance against WASPs. For much of the twentieth century, that
alliance was a constituent element in what Black nationalist Harold
Cruse called the “fateful triangular tension among national
groups…coming to the fore” in the 60s.[28]
It is a truism of American political history that, from the Leo Frank
trial and the founding of the NAACP in the early twentieth century down
to the Black Lives Matter movement, Jewish intellectual-activists have
worked tirelessly to imbue disaffected American Negroes with their own
revolutionary spirit.[29]
Cruse
was himself a Negro member of the American Communist Party. By that
time, Jews had displaced Anglo-Saxons as the vanguard of American
Communism. Unlike WASP Communists, the Jews shaped radical politics in
accordance with “their own national group social ambitions or
individual self-elevation.” Negroes were relegated to the status of a
national minority in the party while Jews were free to pick up or drop
their Jewish identity as it suited them.[30]
This arrangement enabled Jews to become experts on “the Negro
problem.” Not surprisingly, Jewish artists, musicians, and radicals
then became highly visible players in the Civil Rights Movement of the
1950s and 60s. “As a result,” Cruse observes, “the great brainwashing
of Negro radical intellectuals was not achieved by capitalism, or the
capitalistic bourgeoisie, but by Jewish intellectuals in the American
Communist Party.”[31]
In
the contemporary hip-hop community, Jewish leadership has been hidden
behind the corporate veil. Tricia Rose vehemently denounces the
corrupting influence of corporate control on the hip-hop community but
her treatment of the subject obscures the identity of the corporate high
command.[32]
The music industry is absorbed into a vast impersonal system of “White
power,” a matrix whose denizens all routinely swallow the blue pill.
The closest we come to identifying those in charge is when Dyson
criticizes the “White corporate interests” exploiting Black talent.[33]
Jews
are never mentioned in Dyson’s work on hip-hop. Not surprisingly,
Dyson has unimpeachable philo-Semitic credentials. Blacks and Jews, he
believes, are united in common struggles against oppression in White
America. Far be it from him ever to cast Jews as an enemy of Black
folk. On his account, Blacks love Jews and Jews love Blacks.[34] Professor Rose also tip-toes around the issue of Jewish influence in the hip-hop community; The Hip Hop Wars
has no index entry for Jews. Only in passing does Rose name names.
But, when she does identify a few of the corporate heavyweights involved
in the hip-hop community, the elephant moves onto center stage.
In
a chapter on hip-hop’s responsibility for sexist and misogynist lyrics
and imagery, Rose mentions a rare public appearance by leading figures
in the corporate record industry. In their statements “corporate
executives such as Universal chairman Doug Morris, Warner chairman and
chief executive Edgar Bronfman, Sony chairman Andrew Lack, and Viacom
president and CEO Phillipe P. Dauman have defended their role as
distributors of intensely sexist content by subsuming sexism under
artists’ rights to express themselves freely.” Interestingly, in the
same paragraph, Rose urges us to “pull back the veil on the corporate
media’s manipulation of Black male and female artists and the impact
this has on fans and the direction of Black cultural expression.”[35]
Why does she not see fit to mention that the four corporate kingpins
she names are all Jews? The ethno-political fact is that Rose leaves
the corporate veil intact by ascribing blame for the corruption of the
hip-hop community to an abstraction called corporate greed. Rose heads
the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America at Brown
University.[36] How can she not be aware of the stunning success Jews have had in mixing business with ethno-politics?
After
all, a simple Google search on “Jews run hip hop” turns up a wealth of
investigative leads for a researcher eager to see how the “triangular
tension” between Jews, Negroes, and Anglo-Saxons” has accommodated
itself to the new players in American ethno-politics. Black scholars
typically ignore the criticisms of Jewish control commonly made by
rappers and fans.[37]
Traditional Catholics such as E. Michael Jones are also critical of
rap music as “one more manifestation of the behavior which goes along
with the Jewish revolutionary spirit that took over the Black mind
during the course of the 20thcentury.”[38] The Jewish revolutionary spirit has pioneered the techniques of using sex as an instrument of political control.[39] The hip-hop brand of sexuality is no exception.
Bearing
that in mind, it comes as no surprise to learn that hip-hop is deeply
involved “with the multibillion dollar pornographic industry. The strip
club has long been an integral part of both the music video and
business end, but since the start of the new century, there has been a
complete cross-over into pornography.” Orlando Patterson describes
scenes from these productions as “the most degrading and abusive
depictions of women imaginable.”[40]
Small wonder, then, that a Google search for “Jews run pornography”
yields another treasure trove of investigative leads sure to be left
unexplored (for fear of the Jews?) by both Black and White scholars.
FinalCall | Some of our greatest icons, such as Sammy Davis Jr., Billie Holiday,
“Little” Richard (and the list goes on) lived rich, yet died broke while
Jewish managers, accountants, attorneys, business advisors and others
fed their families for years off of their largess. Few entertainers in
the history of Black America have been able to say that their assets and
true net worth were as prominent as their talent and popularity. Sadly,
hip-hop is no different. And while hip-hop has produced a handful of
millionaires, they are like a teardrop in the Pacific Ocean when
compared to the many rappers who, like most Black people, are living
“show-to-show” and “check-to-check.”
Over the years I've had many personal acquaintances who were in the
hip-hop music industry with hit records, global popularity and a healthy
fan base. It always puzzled me the way they struggled financially;
worse than some school teachers or sanitation workers. I watched many of
them try and maintain the image of the rich and powerful, yet couldn't
pay their taxes, child support and in some cases their rent. Popular
hip-hop magazine, XXL, recently published an article titled “Hard Times”
about fiscal problems rappers face that the hip-hop community doesn't
like to talk about. Truth is, most rappers are broke; owing more money
to their record labels than they have in their bank accounts. As a
matter of fact, most contracts for rappers are just as horrible as those
for entertainers in other genres where artists sell millions and
receive pennies while the record companies make out like fat rats. Who
are the owners of these major record companies? Forgive me if I sound
monotonous, but they just happen to be Jewish.
There have been many examples of independent success in hip-hop's
music industry such as Master P (No Limit Records), James Prince
(Rap-a-Lot Records), Luther Campbell (2 Live Records) and others.
However, because none of these outfits had the power to control their
own distribution they were eventually left at the mercy of those who
did. Who are the owners and controllers of the distribution channels
that deliver rap music to the world? You guessed it. They just happen to
be Jewish. Cash Money/Young Money Records, a popular imprint from New
Orleans who houses artists Lil' Wayne, Drake, Nicki Minaj and others
reportedly has one of the last lucrative independent deals in existence,
but still do not control their own distribution. So even those
Black-owned rap labels who appear to be the front-runners are in a
dangerous position.
This opinion editorial is not an effort to weaken the powerful image
of our great hip-hop artists. I love hip-hop. I am part of the hip-hop
generation. This is why I felt the need to write this article. Hip-hop
is leading the youth of the world, but if our artists are under the
inordinate control of those who control their careers then where will
the youth of the world be led? I'm only trying to, as they say in the
streets, “keep it 100.” It's time for rappers to become just as tough
and assertive in the boardroom as they are in the recording booth.
IOL | Johannesburg
- The South African government and President Jacob Zuma have been
caught in the middle of an international wrangle over as much as R2
trillion in US dollars as well as hundreds of tons of gold and at least
six million carats of diamonds in assets belonging to the people of
Libya.
What could be the world’s largest cash pile is stored in palettes at
seven heavily guarded warehouses and bunkers in secret locations between
Joburg and Pretoria.
The Libyan billions have led to a Hawks investigation into possible
violation of exchange controls as well as international interests from
the UN and the US.
It has also led to heightened interest in the local and international
intelligence community as well as the criminal underworld.
Those interested in the Libyan loot include several high-ranking ANC
politicians, several business leaders, a former high court judge and a
number of private companies.
The R2-trillion held in warehouses is separate from several other
billions, believed to be in excess of R260 billion, held legally in four
banks in South Africa.
Other legal assets include hotels in Joburg and Cape Town.
The Sunday Independent has seen official South African government
documents which confirm that at least $179bn in US dollars is kept,
illegally, in storage facilities across Gauteng.
Soon after Muammar Gaddafi’s death in October 2011, the new Libyan
government embarked on a large-scale mission to recover legal assets in
South Africa, the rest of Africa, the US and Europe.
In South Africa, the focus of the Libyans has been on assets brought into the country legally as well as illegally.
thedailybeast | In August 2014, Erik Iskander Goaied formed a company to locate what
he claims is $150 billion or more in U.S. currency, gold, diamonds, and
other assets. This is the loot that Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi had
squirreled away outside of Libya
before he was deposed in 2011. Goaied claims to have a contract with
the Libyan government that lets him keep 10 percent of what he finds,
which means that if he locates even a fraction of the money he insists
is sitting in bank accounts, as well as warehouses, around the world, he
will instantly become a billionaire.
Lots of people have been
looking for this money. The Libyan government has tried for years to
repatriate assets Gaddafi either deposited or laundered outside the
country. Investigators say they think they’ve found much of it already
in banks in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany, and
those funds have been frozen.
Goaied, for his part, insists he
found $12.5 billion of Gaddafi’s cash sitting on pallets in a
Johannesburg airplane hangar a few years ago. And that, Goaied says, is
just a taste of what he can find and bring home to a country that’s been
wracked by civil war and decades of Gaddafi’s corruption. His finder’s
fee will be a comparative pittance.
Libya sorely needs the cash.
The country is arguably a failed state, with rival factions in the
capital, Tripoli, and the eastern city of Tobruk vying for control.
Whoever ends up running Libya will need billions to rebuild the country.
If Goaied were legitimate, he could be Libya’s next hero.
globalresearch |
Gaddafi
was not only the leader of Libya, he had ambitions to free Africa from
the nefarious fangs of the west. Despite being called a dictator and
despot by the west – they do that to anyone who doesn’t submit to
Washington’s rules – he was very much liked by Libyans, by his people.
He had a more than 80% approvalrate by the Libyan people. Libya’s oil
fortune has allowed him to create a social system in his country where
everybody would benefit from their land’s riches – free health care,
free education, including scholarships abroad, modern infrastructure,
top-notch technology in medicine, and more.
Russia TV24: Why the gold dinar would be unacceptable for the western leaders? Or not?
PK: Yes, the gold Dinar was totally
unacceptable for western leaders. It might have devastated the US dollar
hegemony, as well as Europe’s control over the African economy – which
is nothing less than neo-colonization of Africa – in many ways worse
than what happened for the past 400 or 800 years of murderous military
colonization and oppression -which is by the way still ongoing, just
more discretely.
Look
at the Ivory Coast 2010 presidential elections. Theirarguably
‘unelected’ President, Alassane Ouattara (picture on the right), was in a
tie with the people’s candidate, Laurent Gbagbo. Gbagbo said he won the
election and asked for a recount which was denied. Ouattara, a former
IMF staff, was pushed in, basically by ‘recommendation’ of the IMF. He
is the darling of the neoliberal international financial institutions –
and is leading a neocon government – an economy at the service of
western corporations. That’s what they wanted. That’s what they got.
Modern colonization is well alive and thriving. I call this a financial
coup, instigated by foreign financial institutions.
Mr. Laurent Gbagbo
was accused of rape, murder and other atrocities and immediately
transferred to the International Criminal Court (sic-sic) – what
justice? – in The Hague, where he was waiting five years for a trial
which started on 28 January 2016 and is ongoing. On 15 May 2017, it was
extended at the Prosecutor’s request to collect further evidence. This
by all likelihood is just a farce to dupe the public into believing that
he is getting a fair trial. Already in hearings in 2014, Gbagbo was
found guilty of all charges, including murder, rape and other crimes
against humanity. Like Slobodan Milošević, he is an
inconvenient prisoner, or worse would he be as a free man. So, he will
most likely be locked away – and one day commit ‘suicide’ or die from a
‘heart attack’. The classic. That’s how the west does away with
potential witnesses of their atrocious crimes. End of story. Nobody
barks, because the ‘free world’has been made believe by the western
presstitute media that these people are inhuman tyrants. That’s
precisely what the western media’s headlines proclaimed about Muammar
Gaddafi: Death of a Tyrant.
On the other hand, in 2015, Ouattara was “reelected by a landslide”.
That’s what western media say. Colonization under African ‘leadership’.
He is protected by the French army.
—
Back to Libya: Take the specific case of France and West and Central
Africa. The French Central Bank, the Banque de France, backs the West
and Central African Monetary Union’s currency, the CFA franc. The West
African Central Bank, for example, is covered, i.e. controlled, by about
70% of the Banque de France. Banque de France has an almost total
control over the economy of its former West African colonies. No wonder,
Sarkozy, a murderer and war criminal – sorry, it must be said, backed
Hillary’s – also a murderer and war criminal, push for NATO to destroy
the country and kill thousands of Libyans, including Libya’s leader,
Muammar Gaddafi. Hillary’s infamous words: ‘We came we saw he died’. And that she said shamelessly, jokingly, laughing. Would the term human being still apply to such a monster?
Russia TV24: What countries are mostly
interested in the Libyan recovery and why? What are the chances for the
economy of Libya to be repaired?
PK:Well, if anybody should be interested
in Libya’s recovery it would be first the Libyans who are still living
in Libya, because they are now living in a Libya of chaos and high
crime, of mafia-economics, of tyranny by gang leadership. They certainly
have an interest to return to normalcy. North African neighboring
countries should also be interested in restoring order and rebuilding
Libya’s infrastructure and economy, stopping the spill-over of high
crime and terrorism. They have lost an important trading partner.
Of course, the rest of Africa, who have suffered from continuous
colonization of the west, after Gaddafi’s demise, should also be
interested in reestablishing Libya. They know,it will never be the same
Libya that was there to help their economy, to help them prying loose
from the western boots and fangs of exploitation.
foreignpolicyjournal | Though the French-proposed U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973
claimed the no-fly zone implemented over Libya was to protect civilians,
an April 2011 email [archived here] sent to Hillary with the subject line “France’s client and Qaddafi’s gold” tells of less noble ambitions.
The
email identifies French President Nicholas Sarkozy as leading the
attack on Libya with five specific purposes in mind: to obtain Libyan
oil, ensure French influence in the region, increase Sarkozy’s
reputation domestically, assert French military power, and to prevent
Gaddafi’s influence in what is considered “Francophone Africa.”
Most
astounding is the lengthy section delineating the huge threat that
Gaddafi’s gold and silver reserves, estimated at “143 tons of gold, and a
similar amount in silver,” posed to the French franc (CFA) circulating
as a prime African currency. In place of the noble sounding
“Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) doctrine fed to the public, there is
this “confidential” explanation of what was really driving the war
[emphasis mine]:
This gold was
accumulated prior to the current rebellion and was intended to be used
to establish a pan-African currency based on the Libyan golden Dinar.
This plan was designed to provide the Francophone African Countries with
an alternative to the French franc (CFA).
(Source
Comment: According to knowledgeable individuals this quantity of gold
and silver is valued at more than $7 billion. French intelligence
officers discovered this plan shortly after the current rebellion began,
and this was one of the factors that influenced President Nicolas Sarkozy’s decision to commit France to the attack on Libya.)
Though
this internal email aims to summarize the motivating factors driving
France’s (and by implication NATO’s) intervention in Libya, it is
interesting to note that saving civilian lives is conspicuously absent
from the briefing.
Instead, the great fear reported is that Libya
might lead North Africa into a high degree of economic independence with
a new pan-African currency.
French intelligence “discovered” a
Libyan initiative to freely compete with European currency through a
local alternative, and this had to be subverted through military
aggression.
Suddeutsche | Where is Muammar Gaddafi’s money? Rebels pulled the Libyan dictator
from a sewage pipe near his hometown of Sirte on October 20, 2011. He
was bleeding from his head, and rebels and bystanders joined in beating
him and clubbing his groin with a bayonet. Shortly thereafter, this bird
of paradise among African autocrats was dead.
But shortly before
he died, Gaddafi sold a fifth of Libya’s gold reserves, and most of the
proceeds from this sale are still missing. The so-called Panama Papers
could now shed light on the search for this incredible fortune.
Through
a network of cryptic corporate investments, secret front companies and
hidden bank accounts, Gaddafi had managed to set aside a fortune since
the fall of the Libyan king in 1969. Oil had made Libya and, in turn,
Gaddafi, rich. T
theantimedia | The United States’ ability to maintain its influence over the rest of the world has been slowly diminishing. Since the petrodollar was established
in 1971, U.S. currency has monopolized international trade through oil
deals with the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and continuous military interventions.
There is, however, growing opposition to the American standard, and it
gained more support recently when several Gulf states suddenly blockaded Qatar, which they accused of funding terrorism.
Despite the mainstream narrative, there are several other reasons why
Qatar is in the crosshairs. Over the past two years, it conducted over $86 billion worth of transactions in Chinese yuan and has signedother agreements with China that encourage further economic cooperation. Qatar also shares
the world’s largest natural gas field with Iran, giving the two
countries significant regional influence to expand their own trade
deals.
Meanwhile, uncontrollable debt and political divisions in the United States are clear signs of vulnerability. The Chinese and Russians proactively set up alternative financial systems for countries looking to distance themselves from the Federal Reserve. After the IMF accepted
the yuan into its basket of reserve currencies in October of last year,
investors and economists finally started to pay attention. The economic
power held by the Federal Reserve has been key in financing the
American empire, but geopolitical
changes are happening fast. The United States’ reputation has been
tarnished by decades of undeclared wars, mass surveillance, and
catastrophic foreign policy.
qz | A diamond is carbon, one of the most abundant elements on Earth. But
as anyone who has ever shopped for, admired, or worn a diamond can tell
you, there’s a lot more to them than just a tetrahedal crystalline
structure of atoms.
Both physically and culturally, these stones have weight. Diamonds
are romance, love, commitment, legitimacy, achievement. Diamonds are
forever. But why are they so loaded? Sure, they catch the light, but why
do diamonds—rather than, say, emeralds, rubies, tourmalines, or
sapphires—get to be a girl’s best friend and everlasting love?
Why? In a word: marketing.
Who dreamed this up?
Forever is a long time. Yet just 100 years ago, diamonds had only just started to trickle into the popular consumer conscience.
Before then, diamonds from India and Brazil were used as an
adornment, but only by the ruling classes. Then, in 1866, a teenage boy
playing on the Orange River near Hopetown, South Africa found an oddly
hard, shiny stone: the 21.25-carat “Eureka Diamond,” that would set off
an African diamond rush and transform the market. By the late 1880s, two
British mining rivals in South Africa, Cecil Rhodes and Barney Barnato,
flooded the market with diamonds as they tried to outsell each other.
Prices plummeted, and the men recognized that controlling the supply of diamonds
would be the best way to keep prices high. Rhodes took control of
Barnato’s company, and in 1888 established De Beers Consolidated Mines
Limited.
“South Africa must do without her diamond industry,” wrote the Spectator
in February, 1932. “An impoverished world cannot buy its gems; and the
diamond syndicate dare not seek more custom by reducing its prices.
Diamonds would lose half their attraction if they were cheap.
Overproduction of them might spoil the trade for years to come.”
wakingtimes | Diamonds were first discovered 2,500 years ago and were extremely
rare. They were only available to royalty, aristocrats, and the wealthy.
They were originally found in riverbeds in India and Borneo. In the
early eighteenth century, diamond mines were found in Brazil and as the
supply increased the prices dropped.
In 1866, a 15-year-old boy found diamonds on his father’s farm on the
banks of the Orange River in South Africa. Within fifteen years,
African mines became the leading producer of diamonds and the industry
was changed forever.
A mining rush ensued and industrial mining for diamonds had begun.
Cecil Rhodes, an English imperialist, whose thirst for power and
quest to spread the British way of life across the globe stumbled upon
the diamond mine on the De Beers farm and purchased it for a small
price. Rhodes feared that if all these diamonds hit the market, the
prices would crash. His goal was to then control the market by securing
supply. One-by-one, he bought out the other mining companies and founded
De Beers Diamond and Mining Company.
By 1888, Rhodes had control of 90-percent of the diamonds in the
world ensuring there would never be a flood of supply to lower prices.
He also had been named Prime Minister of Cape Colony giving him
political power to enforce laws that would pave the way for Apartheid by
removing natives off their land and into forced labor camps to mine his
diamonds.
The De Beers Company had created a cartel that was based on the
French concept of controlling the copper industry – buying up mines,
restricting supply, and raising prices. A cartel, by definition, is
simply an agreement between competing firms to exclude prices and
exclude entry of a new competitor into the market – illegal in the
United States and United Nations.
De Beers largest competitor, Anglo-American Company, was founded in
1917 by Ernest Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer had stumbled upon massive
amounts of alluvial diamonds (diamonds on top of the earth that did not
need to be mined). Oppenheimer threatened to flood the market with these
diamonds unless he was made chairman of De Beers. And just like that,
the illegal anti-trust monopoly was created with complete control of the
industry. Now that supply was in control, they had to take charge of
the other side of the business equation – demand.
In 1930, a De Beers engineer warned,
“The diamond market is dependent for its smooth
function on the maintenance of the illusion in the minds of the general
public that the diamond is a rare and valuable stone.”
The cartel then set up an office in Hollywood and exchanged valuable
diamonds to producers to put in scenes showing off the diamonds with the
man surprising the woman with the diamond which helped launch the
notion that engagement meant receiving diamonds. They would give to
actresses to flaunt at all public appearances for advertising to the
public.
This followed with the marketing campaign with the simple phrase, “a
diamond is forever.” This trained the public that love is synonymous
with diamonds and people were willing to pay large portion of their
salaries to show love for their significant other.
Furthermore, “A Diamond is Forever” also suggests that there is no
resale value of diamonds. Every woman deserves her own unique diamond to
symbolize your love. This also prevents diamonds from returning to the
market, which again would lower prices.
While this sounds like a brilliant marketing scheme; this false
concept of diamonds are rare and valuable led to millions of lives being
slain, forced manual labor, set up the foundations for apartheid, and
brutal civil wars over the next century.
wikipedia |The De Beers Group of Companies has a leading role in the diamond exploration, diamond mining, diamond retail, diamond trading and industrial diamond manufacturing sectors. The company is currently active in open-pit, large-scale alluvial, coastal and deep sea mining.[2] The company operates in 28 countries and mining takes place in Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Canada. Until the start of the 21st century, De Beers effectively had total control over the diamond market as both a monopoly and monopsony of diamonds.[3]
Opposition has since dismantled the complete monopoly, though De Beers
is still a large shareholder and currently sells approximately 35%[4] of the world's rough diamond production through its Global Sightholder Sales and Auction Sales businesses.[5]
The company was founded in 1888 by British businessman Cecil Rhodes, who was financed by the South African diamond magnate Alfred Beit and the London-based N M Rothschild & Sons bank.[6][7] In 1926, Ernest Oppenheimer, a German immigrant to Britain who had earlier founded mining giant Anglo American plc with American financier J.P. Morgan,[8] was elected to the board of De Beers.[9]
He built and consolidated the company's global monopoly over the
diamond industry until his death in 1957. During this time, he was
involved in a number of controversies, including price fixing, trust behaviour and an allegation of not releasing industrial diamonds for the U.S. war effort during World War II.[10][11]
marketslant | Right now the BitCoin group is running into what we call "floor trader
fear". The voting members are chafing at the idea of scaling their
supply by adding servers and/ or server power. This would disrupt their
own little empires, not unlike the trading floor fearing Globex back in
the day. And so many exchanges held out and protected the floor. And in
the end they died. PHLX, AMEX, COMEX, PCOAST, CSCE, all gone or absorbed
because they were late to adapt new technology and protect their
liquidity pools. If Bitcoin removes power from its voting members
control by demutualizing and uses those proceeds to increase server
power they will likely excel. But Google and Amazon are now playing and
they are all about unlimited server power. Plus they have the eyeballs
already. This is no unlike having the "marketmakers" already trading on a
screen at Globex. The "liquidity pool" ofbuyers and sellers are already
on Amazon and Google. Bitcoin does not have that past "early
adaptors". Remember Palm?
When, not if, those behemoths are up and running they will
immediately have an embedded network of both customers AND service
providers at their disposal in the form of search eyeballs (google)
and buyers (Amazon). They will be set up to crush the opposition if
they choose to create their own currency. Imagine Amazon offering
amazon money for amazon purchases. Now imagine them offering 20%
discounts if you use their money. The choices at this point boggle the
mind. Tactical choices thought no longer used will come into play
again. Some examples: Freemium, Coupons, Customer Loyalty, Vertical
Client Integration (P.O.S.), Travelers checks and more.
To be fair, Google has invested in Bitcoin as well. What
smart trader would not hedge himself. But just like Netflix is Amazon's
biggest cloud customer, but will eventually put Netflix out of business
(after NetFlix kills Hollywood's distribution network); So will Google/
Amazon/ Apple attempt to obviate the need for any currency but their
own.
Blockchain is the railroad. Amazon and Google have the
oil. Like Rockefeller before, The railroad will be made "exclusive" to
their products.
paecon | Despite the fact that the goal of capitalists is to accumulate evermore money, the classical
political economists largely took the analysis of money for granted.4
To be sure, from Adam
Smith to Karl Marx, we can certainly find passages on money but two things are of general
note. First, the classical political economists as well as Karl Marx thought gold and silver were
“real” money. In other words, money was understood as “commodity money” and therefore to
expand the money supply meant finding new mines, plundering it from others, or selling
goods or services on the world market to obtain it from others who possessed it. Indeed, a
considerable portion of the history of slavery and colonial violence can be traced back to the
elite concern for acquiring gold and silver (Di Muzio and Robbins, 2016; Graeber, 2012;
Kwarteng, 2014; Vilar, 1986). Second, because gold and silver were thought to be money, the
classics failed to understand the scale or level of credit creation that began with the
institutionalization of the Bank of England in 1694. Many argue that the Bank of England was
inspired by the Bank of Amsterdam and the success of Dutch finance. But this is not the case.
While the Bank of Amsterdam did make loans from time to time, its primary function was to
maintain the quality of the paper notes in circulation that represented coin. Moreover, the
bank was owned by the city, not private social forces as came to be the case with the Bank of
England (Wennerlind, 2011: 69; Vilar, 1986: 206; Zarlenga, 2002: 238ff). Whereas the notes
issued by the Bank of Amsterdam mostly reflected the exact value of gold and silver in the
city’s vault, the Bank of England expanded the English money supply by extending paper
notes as credit (Desan, 2014: 311ff).
The Bank of England’s largest customer was the Crown in Parliament who used the initial
loan of £1,200,000 to finance war with France. Indeed, the main reason why the Royal
Charter was granted to the Bank of England’s 1509 investors was to provide the finance for
organized violence against a dynastic rival (Davies, 2002: 261). The slave trade, colonization
and continuous wars in the next two centuries lead to a mounting and unpayable “national”
debt that solidified the Bank’s role as the government’s permanent debt manager. But the
investors in the Bank of England did not only profit from war and debt, they also benefited
from the interest received on loans to individuals and companies. As Wennerlind
underscores, the Bank of England’s notes became “Europe’s first widely circulating credit
currency” (2011: 109). Theoretically, however, the issued notes remained tethered to a
metallic hoard of silver, and later only gold from 1861 (Davies, 2002: 315). No one knows for
certain how much metal coin backed up the notes in circulation at any one time. In one study,
Rubini argued that the Bank of England had a shifting reserve of silver for all notes in
circulation of about 2.8 percent to 14.2 percent (1970: 696). Another study by Wennerlind
argued that the founder of the Bank, William Paterson, proposed that 15 to 20 percent in
silver for all notes outstanding would suffice to assure sufficient confidence in the Bank of
England (2011: 128).5
This ambiguity and the fact that the Bank of England was privileged by
the government, likely helped the Bank gain confidence among the users of its notes. As long
as citizens thought they could eventually cash in their notes for silver/gold coins, faith in this
system of money creation could continue (Kim, 2011). This uncertainty need not delay us, for
what is definite is that the notes in circulation were of a far higher value than the actual
metallic hoard at the Bank. To sum up this brief history of the world’s first widely circulating
credit currency we can argue that new money was created as loans to customers – primarily
to the British Crown in Parliament and primarily to finance an apparatus of international
violence and Empire.
By the early 19th century, the British politician, Samson Ricardo, realized the absurdity of
granting private social forces the power to create money:
“It is evident therefore that if the Government itself were to be the sole issuer
of paper money instead of borrowing it of the bank, the only difference would
be with respect to interest: the Bank would no longer receive interest and the
government would no longer pay it…It is said that Government could not with
safety be entrusted with the power of issuing paper money – that it would
most certainly abuse it... I propose to place this trust in the hands of three
Commissioners” (Ricardo, 1838: 50).
Ricardo’s proposal that the public take control of new money creation was ignored. In the
1844 Bank Charter Act, the Bank of England was given the exclusive right to issue banknotes
in London. Country banks that were already issuing notes could continue to do so provided
they were outside London (by a 65 mile radius) and backed their notes with some kind of
credible security. Under this Act, the Bank of England was also divided into two distinct units,
the Issue Department and the Banking Department. Davies highlights this important provision
of the Act:
“The Issue Department was to receive from the Banking Department some
£14 million of government securities to back its fiduciary issue of notes, any issue above that [was] to be fully backed by gold and silver, the latter not to
exceed one quarter of the gold” (2002: 315).
Thus, while the Bank of England had the exclusive right to issue banknotes in London, its
ability to create new money appeared to be circumscribed by the new laws. Existing banks
outside of London were also seemingly bounded in their ability to create money. However,
while official note issuance was restricted, this did not stop the Bank of England and other
provincial banks from merely recording new loans on their balance sheets and issuing
cheques to borrowers (Davies, 2002: 317). In other words, the bankers found a convenient
way around the legislation and continued to expand the money supply regardless of gold
reserves which were never publically known anyway. This changed the nature of banking in
Britain and as we shall discuss, its legacy largely remains with us today. With this in mind, we
now move to examine two theories of money creation: the heavily taught fractional reserve
theory known popularly as the money multiplier model and the underappreciated credit
creation theory.
Citizenship, Criticism, and Communism
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April Three
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4/3
43
When 1 = A and 26 = Z
March = 43
What day?
4 to the power of 3 is 64
64th day is March 5
My birthday
March also has 5 letters.
4 x 3 = 12
...
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Covid-19 Preys Upon The Elderly And The Obese
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sciencemag | This spring, after days of flulike symptoms and fever, a man
arrived at the emergency room at the University of Vermont Medical Center.
He ...
