Generational Theory Forum: The Fourth Turning Forum: A message board discussing generations and the Strauss Howe generational theory

** 06-Sep-2021 World View: Communistm, Socialism and Fascism

(09-06-2021, 03:51 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: [ -> ]> The right-wing ultra-capitalist regimes of Pinochet's Chile,
> Franco's Spain, and the Greek colonels' regime were all
> plutocratic. Does the theocratic regime in Iran qualify as
> "socialist"? Hitler's "national" socialism turned industrial
> workers into serfs to the benefit of German tycoons. Hitler wanted
> the antithesis of Soviet-style "international" socialism as in the
> Soviet Union at the time. Hitler's "socialism" had no semblance of
> social justice. The Apartheid regime of South Africa was socialism
> for the white minority but dog-eat dog exploitation for everybody
> else (OK, the regime defined Chinese, Koreans, and Japanese as
> "white" if they were investors or administrators).

> To be Stalinism has much in common with fascism, but did the
> Bolsheviks more imitate fascists than the fascists imitated the
> Bolsheviks?

None of these words makes any sense at all. When I was in high
school, after the Army-McCarthy hearings, I discovered that the "z" in
Nazi stood for Socialism, and wondered if Naziism is the same as
Socialism. No, I was told. Naziism was not Socialism. It was
"National Socialism," which was a different thing. And liberal
teachers bent themselves into pretzels explaining the difference
between Socialism and National Socialism.

Is Fascism the same as Naziism? I used to think that the "s" in
Fascism also stood for Socialism, but apparently not, since the word
has an entirely different derivation. Nonetheless, after WW II,
Fascism and Naziism are thought to be similar, or at most that Fascism
is a watered down form of Naziism that keeps the trains running on
time.

Then there's the issue of Communism in China. Mao Zedong's Great Leap
Forward and Cultural Revolution killed tens of millions of innocent
Chinese needlessly, and destroyed and devastated China's economy for
decades, so much so that China still hasn't recovered. Mao Zedong
also completely destroyed the value of Communism, Socialism and
Marxism. So as soon as Mao died, Deng Xiaoping came to power and
implemented the "Opening up and reform" policies, which was a
rejection of Communism, Socialism and Marxism, in support of free
markets.

In the 1980s, another hard-core Communist, Le Duan, died. Truong
Chinh, a political enemy of Le Duan, came to power, and implemented
the Doi Moi market reforms which, once again were a rejection of
Communism, Socialism and Marxism, in support of free markets. This
was highly successful, and turned Vietnam from an economic basket case
to an economic powerhouse.

So China and Vietnam still call themselves "Communist," but they are
no longer communist. I would call them "Fascist."

However, China seems to be returning to the destructive policies of
Mao Zedong, and reimplementing policies to return to the worst forms
of Communism. One of these policies, announced last week, was to
forbid "girlie men" from the entertainment industry. Hahahaha

I can hardly wait to start to see articles from the NY Times saying
that "girlie men" will have to be canceled in America, in sympathy
with the Chinese Communist Party.

** 06-Sep-2021 World View: Intentional sabotage in Afghanistan?

DaKardii Wrote:> Now that all the troops are actually out of Afghanistan, I'm
> second-guessing my previous assertion that the "botching" of the
> withdrawal was part of a plot to create a justification for
> re-intervention. I'm not entirely discounting that possibility,
> but I am second-guessing it.

> Nonetheless, I'll never be convinced that this "botching" was
> anything but intentional. What happened was intentional
> sabotage. Period.

Up until, say, a couple of years ago, I would have thought that
"sabotage" was impossible. But some things have happened that have
opened my mind.

First, there was my book on Vietnam. As you may recall, I concluded,
after months of research involving dozens of sources, that John
F. Kennedy sabotaged the Vietnam war effort. Two major decisions --
first, neutralization of Laos and ceding it to Hanoi, and second,
ousting South Vietnam's strong anti-Communist leader Ngo Dinh Diem,
resulting in Diem's assassination. After these two disastrous
mistakes, the war was lost. This became quite clear in November 1965
at the Battle of Ia Drang, which made it clear how disastrous the
situation was. After months of research, I cannot describe these two
decisions any other way than as intentional sabotage of the Vietnam
War effort by JFK.

In my book, I didn't attempt to delve into JFK's motivations in
sabotaging the Vietnam War effort, other than to suggest that he was
too young to deal with disagreements among the "hawks" and "doves"
that were advising him, who were generally 20 years older than he was
and had a lot more experience.

However, in view of the research and writing I've been doing on the
Democrats and the KKK and how the mass slaughter of blacks in street
violence today is a continuation of the the Democrats' policies as a
continuation of KKK policies today, I see JFK's sabotage of the
Vietnam War effort in a different way.

JFK was a Democrat, and obviously deeply embedded in the Democrat
Party culture that was deeply humiliated and infuriated by losing the
Civil War and having the end of slavery imposed on them. That culture
had spawned the KKK and the Jim Crow laws, and had as its slogan, "The
South will rise again!"

Although President Truman was strongly anti-Communist and created the
Truman Doctrine, Communism became a highly politicized issue in 1954
because of the Army-McCarthy hearings, which were shut down soon after
a Senate Democrat said to Republican Joseph McCarthy "Have you no
sense of decency, sir?" After that, McCarthyism was used synonymously
by Democrats as being anti-Communist.

So JFK became president, and the Vietnam war was forced on him,
probably against his will, because it was another anti-Communist
fight. As I describe in my book, the Vietnam War was pushed on JFK by
the worldwide march of Communism at the time -- the Iron Curtain in
Eastern Europe, the victory of North Korea, and the victory of North
Vietnam. Then, in 1960, there was Fidel Castro's Communist revolution
in Cuba.

So two other factors may have contributed to JFK's desire to sabotage
the Vietnam War effort. One was the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion
in April 1961, which was a losing attempt to defeat Communism in Cuba.
And the other was the Civil Rights Act that Democrats bitterly
opposed, and in fact did not pass until after JFK himself was
assassinated.

So JFK sabotaged the Vietnam war, and did so intentionally.

Now, Joe Biden is in office, and he has adopted one policy after
another to sabotage the United States. These include: open the
border, flood the country with illegal immigrants from 170 countries,
flood the country with Chinese fentanyl and meth, open the prisons,
let violent criminals out of jail, defund the police, destroy black
families, encourage the murder of thousands of young black men by
other black men in Democrat-run cities, close Keystone pipeline then
beg Saudi Arabia for more oil, destroy America's energy independence,
teach racial hatred in school (critical race theory), censor political
opposition, etc.

So now Biden was given the opportunity to destroy the success of
twenty years in Afghanistan, in the same way that JFK was able to
destroy the Vietnam War effort.

So I'm torn between believing that Biden is too stupid and incompetent
to know what's going on, and believing the Biden is in fact quite
competent, and is trying to destroy the United States from within.
I'm leaning more and more to the latter.

In the latter case, DaKardii, you're right that the Afghanistan war
effort was "botched" because of intentional sabotage.

*** 7-Sep-21 World View -- Taliban declares total victory in Afghanistan

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Taliban declares total victory in Afghanistan
  
• Afghanistan view: Biden administration and mainstream media
  
• Afghanistan view: Republicans, Conservatives and Fox News
  
• Afghanistan view: The British, European and BBC view
  
• Afghanistan view: Qatar and Al-Jazeera
  
• Potential flood of refugees into Central Asia and Europe
  
• Pakistan and refugees fleeing Afghan Taliban
  
• Battle of Panjshir Valley
  
• The Taliban, Haqqani Network, Al-Qaeda and ISIS-K
  
• Is this the end of the war in Afghanistan?
  
• Did Joe Biden intentionally sabotage the Afghanistan evacuation?
  
• Will there be a new Afghanistan civil war?
  
• Political fallout
  

****
**** Taliban declares total victory in Afghanistan
****


Women's demonstration in Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan, on 6-Sept (Reuters)

The Taliban have announced that they're in total control of
Afghanistan, now that they've won the last battle, the clash in
Panjshir Valley. It's not clear that this is true. The Taliban have
cut off electricity and communications to the Panjshir Valley, so it's
impossible to read what's going on. I'll discuss the Panjshir Valley
below.

Separately, there's already a potential hostage crisis in progress,
with the Taliban preventing Americans from leaving Mazar-i-Sharif
airport. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is negotiating with the
Taliban to obtain safe passage. But as of this writing, the situation
is unclear.

The situation in Afghanistan is extremely complex. It's very hard to
provide a politically balanced exposition, since the evacuation was
clearly a disaster. Even many Democrats agree. I'm going to quote
from different, sometimes conflicting media sources, in order to sort
the issues out.

****
**** Afghanistan view: Biden administration and mainstream media
****

The view held by president Joe Biden, the Democrats, the
administration and by the left-wing mainstream media (CNN, MSNBC, CBS
news, etc.) is that the Afghanistan problem has now ended, and that
it's time to move on.

Biden says that the evacuation ws an "extraordinary success." He says
that he was handed an existing agreement that the Taliban had made
with former president Donald Trump, and that he had to implement it as
best as he could. He admits that only 90% of the Americans and Afghan
allies had been evacuated, leaving 10% behind, but he says that any
large historical evacuation has always been chaotic and had always
left people behind.

The Biden administration has been downplaying the problem. They
insist that only 100 or 200 Americans are left behind, and many of
those have families in Afghanistan and didn't want to leave.

In fact, the mainstream media are cooperating with the desire of the
administration to turn the page. MSNBC and CNN sometimes aggressively
covered the Afghan evacuation prior to 30-Aug, but since then,
coverage on those channels has fallen off a cliff, and typically the
Afghan was is never even mentioned.

The Biden administration now wants to turn the page back to the $1.3
trillion infrastructure bill that has passed in the Senate, but is
being held up in the house, and the $3.5 trillion "human
infrastructure" bill, which is an ill-defined collection of spending
on Democrat cronies, including labor unions, teachers unions,
debt-ridden Democrat states, and social services organizations.

****
**** Afghanistan view: Republicans, Conservatives and Fox News
****

The decision to "end the war" is overwhelmingly popular, but many
people believe that the evacuation was botched and America was
defeated, betrayed and forced to surrender. In particular, Bagram
airbase should not have been closed as the first act of the
evacuation. The result was that billions of dollars in advanced
American weapons have been left behind, as have hundreds, thousands,
or tens of thousands (depending on the report) of Americans and Afghan
allies have been left behind. Republicans say that people should have
been evacuated first, then weapons, and then Bagram could be closed.

Republicans refer to a newly leaked transcript of a phone call between
Joe Biden and Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani on July 23, when
Biden said, "And there is a need, whether it is true or not, there is
a need to project a different picture." Soon after, Ghani fled the
country.

Many Republicans -- and many Democrats, especially veterans -- say
that Biden not only botched the evacuation but has betrayed America
and the veterans who fought in that war for 20 years, by letting the
Taliban take over as if we were back in 2001.

The Republicans point out that Biden's approval rating has crashed
from 60% a few months ago to 43% now.

A particularly bitter complaint is the number of Americans and Afghan
allies that have been left behind, and mostly ignored, and by the
repeated Administration lies about the number of these. As recently
as August 19 Biden said in an interview, "If there are American
citizens left, we're gonna stay till we get them all out." He said
the same was true of Afghan allies. It's believed that Biden never
had any intention of fulfilling this promise, since he wants to make a
grand "Mission Accomplished!" speech on 11-Sep-2021.

A separate issue for conservatives is that Afghan refugees are coming
into the country without being properly vetted. This subject will be
debated in the coming weeks.

****
**** Afghanistan view: The British, European and BBC view
****

The BBC receives a great deal of funding from NPR, so it normally just
repeats the same Democrat talking points as CNN and MSNBC.

However, this situation is different, because the British and
Europeans also feel completely betrayed. In fact, the mission in
Afghanistan was actually a NATO mission, and Biden made a unilateral
decision without even consulting NATO or any European leaders. So
neither NATO nor the individual countries had time to evacuate their
own troops or their citizens.

The result was that countries like Britain, France, Italy and Germany
each left behind a thousand or more citizens. The future of Nato
itself is in doubt.

Once Kabul fell to the Taliban, and Biden blamed it on the Afghan
government, criticism from Europe was sharp.

Tom Tugendhat, Tory chair of foreign affairs committee said:

<QUOTE>"To see their commander-in-chief [the US president,
Joe Biden] call into question the courage of men I fought with
– to claim that they ran – is shameful. Those who have not fought
for the colours they fly should be careful about criticising those
who have.

I leave the house with one image. In the year that I was
privileged to be the adviser to the governor of Helmand, we opened
girls’ schools. The joy it gave parents to see their little girls
going to school was extraordinary ...

The second image is one that the forever war that has just
reignited could lead to. It is the image of a man whose name I
never knew, carrying a child who had died hours earlier into our
firebase and begging for help. There was nothing we could do. It
was over. That is what defeat looks like; it is when you no longer
have the choice of how to help. This does not need to be defeat,
but at the moment it damn well feels like it."<END QUOTE>

Labor MP Dan Jarvis said the following:

<QUOTE>"Many of us who served in Afghanistan have a deep bond
of affection for the Afghan people, and I had the honour of
serving alongside them in Helmand. We trained together, fought
together and, in some cases, died together. They were our brothers
in arms. I shudder to think where those men are now. Many will be
dead, and I know others now consider themselves to be dead men
walking. Where were we in their hour of need? We were
nowhere. That is shameful, and it will have a very long-lasting
impact on Britain’s reputation right around the
world."<END QUOTE>

Norbert Röttgen, chairman of the German parliament’s foreign relations
committee and a senior member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian
Democrats, said:

<QUOTE>"I say this with a heavy heart and with horror over
what is happening, but the early withdrawal was a serious and
far-reaching miscalculation by the current administration. This
does fundamental damage to the political and moral credibility of
the West."<END QUOTE>

A number of European politicians are discussing the creation of a
European Rapid Reaction Force.

The UK and the EU have said that when the Taliban announce their new
government, there will be "operational engagement" with the new
government, but they will not recognize it until it's "stable."

They are particularly concerned that girls and women "will be erased
from life." The BBC already reports stories of rape, forced
marriages.

****
**** Afghanistan view: Qatar and Al-Jazeera
****

As a Muslim country, Qatar is much more sympathetic to the Taliban
than the West is.

Al-Jazeera has a very different view of the Afghanistan problem:
refugees.

Al-Jazeera is headquartered in Doha, Qatar's capital city, and is
funded by Qatar's monarchy.

Qatar has friendly relations with the Taliban, and Qatar also has
friendly relations with the United States and the West. Qatar hosts a
major American naval base. So I understand that al-Jazeera Arabic has
been cheering for the Taliban. Of course, I watch al-Jazeera English,
which is much more guarded.

Qatar is playing a pivotal role in Afghanistan's relationship with the
United States. The thousands of Americans and Afghans that were
evacuated from Afghanistan were first transited through Doha, before
going on to other destinations. Qatar's government cooperated by
providing hotel rooms and the essentials of food and medical
treatment. The housing planned for the 2022 FIFA World Cup (soccer)
contests next year is being used.

Since 30-Aug, the Qataris have taken on another important role. With
the Americans gone, Kabul's airport was no longer operational for
commercial use. The Qataris and the Turks are sending technicians to
Kabul to make the airport operational. I understand that there's a
dispute about who will operate the airport, once it's operational.

Al-Jazeera has been reporting heavily on the refugee issue.

****
**** Potential flood of refugees into Central Asia and Europe
****

The issue that may be very explosive in 2022 is a potential flood of
hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees. The size of this flood will
depend on the depth of the growing humanitarian disaster and the
growing violence by the Taliban against people in the Tajik, Hazara
and Uzbek ethnic groups that formed the backbone of the Northern
Alliance that fought against the Taliban in the 1990s civil war.

Europeans still have sharp memories of the millions of refugees that
flooded into Europe in 2015 and 2016. Those were mostly Syrian
refugees, but a large percentage were Afghans. Now many Afghan
refugees are once again crossing borders, hoping to find a better life
in the European Union.

The flood of refugees was only slowed in 2016 when the EU reached an
agreement to pay Turkey a great deal of money to host millions of
refugees.

The EU is looking for ways to prevent a new refugee crisis. Greece is
strengthening its border wall with Turkey. EU negotiators are
desperately trying to reach agreements to pay other countries to host
a potential flood of Afghan refugees. Turkey has already said it
wants no more refugees. Central Asian countries -- Tajikistan,
Uzbekistan -- are closing their borders and, so far, are rebuffing EU
offers to pay for housing of refugees.

According to the United Nations, Afghanistan is facing a looming
humanitarian disaster. Even before the evacuation, Afghanistan's
economy was in severe trouble, with a severe drought going on, but now
the economy and the currency are collapsing. In addition, the entire
health system is near collapse. According to a United Nations
spokesman, "One in three Afghans do not know where their next meal
will come from. Nearly half of all children under the age of 5 are
predicted to be acutely malnourished in the next 12 months."

The United Nations has warned that up to half a million Afghans could
flee the country by the end of the year and has called on neighbouring
countries to keep their borders open. The current crisis comes on top
of the 2.2 million Afghan refugees already in neighboring countries
and 3.5 million people forced to flee their homes within Afghanistan's
borders.

The UN says that more than 600,000 Afghans were displaced this year,
80% of which are women and children. But with the growing
humanitarian crisis, it's possible that millions more will become
refugees in the next year.

Other countries are helping out. Uganda, Mexico, Colombia and Rwanda
are temporarily hosting Afghan refugees.

Belarus, arguably the worst country in Europe, is weaponizing
refugees. They're inviting refugees into the country, and then
transporting them across the border into Poland.

****
**** Pakistan and refugees fleeing Afghan Taliban
****

Pakistan's government has denied years of accusations that it was
funding the Afghan Taliban. However, the accusations have really been
directed at Pakistan's extremely powerful intelligence agency, the
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, which is known to fund
terrorist organizations in Afghanistan and India, and to have
protected Osama bin Laden when he was hiding out in Pakistan.

Pakistan was formerly part of the British empire, and so the people in
the government, the agencies, and the élite almost always speak
English. Among rural citizens, Punjabi and Sinhi are most widely
spoken. In Afghanistan, most people speak Dari (Afghan variant of
Persian), while the majority Pashtun ethnic group speak Pashto. So
there is no particular advantage to other ethnic groups besides the
Pashtuns to flee to Pakistan.

Nonetheless, Pakistan is the first country of choice for many
displaced Pakistanis, especially Pashtuns. However, Pakistan has
closed its borders with Afghanistan because it already hosts three
million Afghan refugees and refuses to take more because of its own
ravaged economy.

In 2020, Pakistan and Iran saw the highest numbers of Afghanistan's
refugees and asylum seekers. Almost 1.5 million fled to Pakistan in
2020, while Iran hosted 780,000, according to UNHCR figures.

Furthermore, Pakistan has its own Pakistan Taliban (Tehrik-e-Taliban
or TTP), different than the Afghan Taliban, that has conducted
numerous violent terrorist attacks in Pakistan. The TTP has been
opposed to the Afghan government for the last 20 years, but with the
return of the Taliban government, the TTP is pledging allegiance to
the Afghan Taliban.

According to analyst Walid Phares, the combined Afghan Taliban and TTP
would like would like to take over all of Pakistan. Among other
things, this would give them control of nuclear weapons.

Pakistan's government has expressed concerns that some TTP terrorists
were let out of jail by the Taliban.

****
**** Battle of Panjshir Valley
****

The Taliban leadership promised that once the American forces were
withdrawn, the Taliban would stop fighting and would govern
peacefully. Nobody seriously believes any Taliban promises, but this
one was broken instantly. As soon as the last American left, Taliban
forces moved hundreds of fighters to subdue the Panjshir Valley.

Panjshir Valley has an almost mythical quality. When the Soviet Union
invaded in the 1980s, and when the Taliban attacked during the 1990s,
the Panjshir Valley was not conquered. The people of Panjshir Valley
are Tajiks. The valley itself is surrounded by high mountains, and
there is only one road used as an entrance and one road used as an
exit. The Soviets attacked from the air, but were defeated when their
helicopters were shot down with missiles. In the 1990s, the Taliban
were defeated by blockading the entrance and exit roads. The Panjshir
Valley was supported by the Americans against the Soviets, and by
Central Asians against the Pashtuns.

In the 1990s, Panjshir Valley was the stronghold of the Northern
Alliance, fighting the Taliban. Today, it's the stronghold of the
National Resistance Front of Afghanistan (NRF), once again fighting
against the Taliban.

There have been heavy clashes during the last week between the Taliban
and the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan (NRF) in Panjshir
Valley, with both sides claiming to have the upper hand.

This time, the Taliban have several advantages that they didn't have
during the 1990s. First, they have a huge multi-billion stash of
advanced weaponry that the Americans left behind, and those weapons
are being used to attack the NRF. Second, the NRF does not have any
foreign support, as it did in the past.

The Taliban have already cut off electricity and all communications to
the valley. If the the clashes continue, they can impose a full
siege, depriving the value of food and fuel, crippling their ability
to fight.

****
**** The Taliban, Haqqani Network, Al-Qaeda and ISIS-K
****

Joe Biden said at once point that America had no further interest in
Afghanistan because al-Qaeda was gone. This claim was considered by
almost everyone to be outrageous. It's hard to guess whether that was
a lie, or because he had no idea, but no one ever seriously believed
that al-Qaeda was gone.

Biden's remark was particularly shocking in retrospect, after ISIS-K
caused a massive explosion at Kabul airport, killing 13 American
forces and hundreds of Afghans.

Al-Qaeda is deeply embedded in the Taliban and the Haqqani network,
which has historical ties to Pakistan’s powerful Inter-Services
Intelligence (ISI) spy agency, though Pakistan denies that.

The fear now is that Afghanistan next year will become a cauldron of
international terrorism. The international jihadists networks are
thrilled and excited that the Taliban have humiliated and defeated the
Great Satan, the United States. There have already been reports of
jihadists from Syria and northern Africa going to Afghanistan to join
up with other jihadists and to receive training. This had led a
number of people to conclude that it will be necessary for American
forces to re-enter Afghanistan, possibly next year.

****
**** Is this the end of the war in Afghanistan?
****

When Saigon was evacuated in 1975, it was claimed that the Vietnam War
"was over," something that continues to be believed today, even though
nothing can be further from the truth, as I described in my book
"Vietnam, Buddhism, and the Vietnam War," published earlier this year.

Once Saigon fell to the Communists, the war was completely over for
most Americans. But that wasn't true for the Vietnamese people. They
knew what was going to happen because they'd seen it all before,
especially in 1954 when the evacuation of French forces led to
massacres of Catholics and other "pro-French" civilians in North
Vietnam, forcing almost a million of them to flee to South Vietnam.
Now that the North Vietnamese Communists were going to take over
Saigon, they knew that they would probably have to flee again.

The new Communist government in Saigon acted in a very brutal way,
using policies that they had learned from Communist China. There were
harsh "re-education programs," as there are still in Communist China
today. The peasants had their land taken from them and collectivized
into state farms, as in China's disastrous Great Leap Forward, with
similar results.

North Vietnam sent administrators to Saigon to establish a new regime.
Officials in the defeated government were killed, and hundreds of
thousands of people were sent to concentration camps, ostensibly to
re-educate them to live in a socialist society. A system of
registering the population was instituted to ensure that those whose
families had supported the Second Republic were penalized by denial of
employment, education, and food rations.

There was a massive exodus of refugees, and they became known as the
"Vietnamese Boat People." Experts estimate that up to 1.5 million
refugees escaped but a high estimate of 10 percent died from drowning,
piracy, dehydration, or otherwise never made landfall.

The point of remembering that history of "the end of the Vietnam War"
is that the Vietnam War was not over in 1975, and the Afghanistan war
is not over today.

Afghanistan's last generational crisis war was an extremely bloody,
horrific civil war, in 1991-96. The war was a civil war, fought
between the Pashtuns in southern Afghanistan versus the Northern
Alliance of Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks in northern Afghanistan.

As I've written many times before, the ethnic groups in Afghanistan
are COMPLETELY NON-UNITED and loathe each other. Pashtuns still have
scores to settle with the Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks that formed the
Northern Alliance, especially the Shias. These opposing groups have
fresh memories of the atrocities, torture, rape, beatings,
dismemberments, mutilations, and so forth that the other side
performed on their friends, wives and other family members, and they
have no desire to be friends or to work together. They'd rather kill
each other.

The media-savvy Taliban spokesmen are promising a kinder, gentler
"Taliban 2.0" that will govern wisely and will respect women and
girls, allowing them to go to school and work. That this is nonsense
is made clear by the Vietnam example.

It's even worse, because the North Vietnamese were relatively
disciplined, but the Taliban are a collection of tribes headed by
warlords who may or may not obey the directions of the central
leadership in Kabul. Any one of these tribal warlords might decide to
revert to the harsh, violent practics of "Taliban 1.0," including
brutality and abuse of girls and women.

Furthermore, there are Americans and American allies scattered in
provinces across Afghanistan. Any one of the Americans can be used to
provoke a hostage crisis, even worse than the Iran Hostage Crisis of
1979 that lasted over a year.

****
**** Did Joe Biden intentionally sabotage the Afghanistan evacuation?
****


Iconic photo of Joe Biden at press conference on 27-Aug, in response to a question (Telegraph)

Up until a few months ago, I would never have believed that any
President of the United States would intentionally sabotage a major
foreign policy effort like the Afghanistan evacuation.

My mind was opened to the possibility by my work on my recent book,
"Vietnam, Buddhism, and the Vietnam War," published earlier this year.
I concluded, after months of research involving dozens of sources,
that John F. Kennedy intentionally sabotaged the Vietnam war effort.
Two major decisions -- first, neutralization of Laos and ceding it to
Hanoi, and second, ousting South Vietnam's strong anti-Communist
leader Ngo Dinh Diem, resulting in Diem's assassination. After these
two disastrous mistakes, the war was lost, as I described in great
detail in my book.

JFK was a Democrat, and obviously deeply embedded in the Democrat
Party culture that was humiliated and infuriated by losing the Civil
War and having the end of slavery imposed on them. That culture had
spawned the KKK and the Jim Crow laws, and had as its slogan, "The
South will rise again!" The Democrats were further humiliated by
proposed Civil Rights legislation that was bitterly opposed by the
Democrats, and did not pass until JFK himself was assassinated.

Although President Truman was strongly anti-Communist and created the
Truman Doctrine, Communism became a highly politicized issue in 1954
because of the Army-McCarthy hearings, which were shut down soon after
a Senate Democrat said to Republican Joseph McCarthy "Have you no
sense of decency, sir?" After that, McCarthyism was used synonymously
by Democrats as being anti-Communist.

So JFK became president, and the Vietnam war was forced on him,
probably against his will, because it was another anti-Communist
fight. As I describe in my book, the Vietnam War was pushed on JFK by
the worldwide march of Communism at the time -- the Iron Curtain in
Eastern Europe, the victory of North Korea, and the victory of North
Vietnam. Then, in 1960, there was Fidel Castro's Communist revolution
in Cuba.

So two other factors may have contributed to JFK's desire to sabotage
the Vietnam War effort. One was the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion
in April 1961, which was a losing attempt to defeat Communism in Cuba.
And the other was the Civil Rights Act that Democrats bitterly
opposed, and in fact did not pass until after JFK himself was
assassinated.

So I've concluded that JFK sabotaged the Vietnam war, and did so
intentionally.

As a child, Joe Biden was in the same Democrat party culture that had
supported ending America with the Civil War. His mentor was Senator
Robert Byrd, who had been a Grand Wizard in the KKK.

Now, Joe Biden is in office, and he has adopted one policy after
another to sabotage the United States. These include: open the
border, flood the country with illegal immigrants from 170 countries,
flood the country with Chinese fentanyl and meth, open the prisons,
let violent criminals out of jail, defund the police, destroy black
families, encourage the murder of thousands of young black men by
other black men in Democrat-run cities, close Keystone pipeline then
beg Saudi Arabia for more oil, destroy America's energy independence,
teach racial hatred in school (critical race theory), censor political
opposition, paying people not to work, etc.

When a policy has unintended consequences, and the unintended
consequences go on for a long time, with no attempt to stop them, then
it's reasonable to conclude that the consequences are intentional.
Many of the above policies have gone on for a long time with no
attempt to repair them. In some cases, further policies have worsened
the "unintended conquences," making it all but certain that they were
"intended consequences."

At this point, there's no doubt that the Biden administration
repeatedly lied and made one decision after another that "botched" the
evacuation effort. Based on JFK's actions, and based on Biden's
actions in other areas, I now believe that the circumstantial evidence
points to intentional sabotage, imitating JFK's sabotage of the
Vietnam war effort.

****
**** Will there be a new Afghanistan civil war?
****

U.S. General Mark Milley is predicting a new civil war because the
Taliban won't "be able to consolidate power and establish governance."
Milley and the other generals have had no idea what's been going on in
Afghanistan for the last 20 years, and this comment indicates that
they still don't.

Milley's observation about the Taliban is correct, but it will not
lead to a civil war, since Afghanistan is in a generational Awakening
era. As I described in my previous article on Afghanistan, we're
going to see the Generational Dynamics Democide Pattern played out.
(See "23-Aug-21 World View -- The Afghanistan catastrophe"
for an explanation.)

This means that there won't be a new civil war, but there will be
continual clashes and brutal treatment by the Taliban of its old
Northern Alliance enemy. The Taliban will use violence, beatings,
rape, and extrajudicial torture and jailing as needed or desired.

Furthermore, because of the undisciplined, tribal nature of the
Taliban, these events, sometimes using American hostages as pawns, are
expected to increase.

The Panjshir Valley clashes are only the beginning. These clashes
will spread and grow, and it's quite possible that Americans left
behind will be used as pawns by either side.

Milley's observations about the Taliban confirm what a number of other
politicians, both Democrat and Republican, have been suggesting --
that it will be necessary for the US to go back into Afghanistan, as
it becomes a crucible of international terrorism.

****
**** Political fallout
****

The Democrats are hoping that the whole Afghanistan catastrophe will
pass quickly from public memory, and they can go back to one
destructive policy after another. If the opposite happens -- that the
situation continues to worsen -- then Biden's presidency will be
untenable. The next two in line - Kamala Harris and Nancy Pelosi --
are just as incompetent as Biden.

Any other president would at least have fired several people after
this debacle. If Biden continues to make decisions destructive to
America, then it will be necessary to find a way, within the
Constitution, to find a way to replace Biden with someone competent to
govern.

John Xenakis is author of: "World View: Vietnam, Buddhism, and the
Vietnam War: How Vietnam became an economic powerhouse after the
Vietnam War" (Generational Theory Book Series, Book 4), March 2021
Paperback: 325 pages, over 200 source references, $13.99 Complete Table of Contents
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1732738645/

John Xenakis is author of: "World View: War Between China and Japan:
Why America Must Be Prepared" (Generational Theory Book Series, Book
2), June 2019, Paperback: 331 pages, with over 200 source references,
$13.99
Complete Table of Contents
https://www.amazon.com/World-View-Betwee...732738637/

John Xenakis is author of: "World View: Iran's Struggle for Supremacy
-- Tehran's Obsession to Redraw the Map of the Middle East"
(Generational Theory Book Series, Book 1), September 2018 Paperback:
153 pages, over 100 source references, $7.00 Complete Table of Contents https://www.amazon.com/World-View-Suprem...732738610/

John Xenakis is author of: "Generational Dynamics Anniversary Edition - Forecasting
America's Destiny",
(Generational Theory Book Series, Book 3), January 2020,
Paperback: 359 pages, $14.99,
Complete Table of Contents
https://www.amazon.com/Generational-Dyna...732738629/

Sources:

• Exclusive: Before Afghan collapse, Biden pressed Ghani to ‘change perception’ (Reuters, 31-Aug-2021)
  
• Excerpts of call between Joe Biden and Ashraf Ghani July 23 (Reuters, 31-Aug-2021)
  
• Mohammed / Afghan interpreter who helped rescue Biden in 2008 left behind after US evacuation, report says (USA Today, 31-Aug-2021)
  
• ‘This is a shame on all of us’: British MPs debate the fall of Kabul (Guardian, London, 18-Aug-2021)
  
• Biden says he’s seen no ‘questioning’ of Afghan policy by allies – despite angry scenes in UK parliament (Independent, London, 20-Aug-2021)
  
• Disbelief and betrayal: Europe reacts to Biden’s Afghanistan ‘miscalculation’ (Politico EU, 17-Aug-2021)
  
• Black unemployment rises in August jobs report despite more job seekers (CNBC, 3-Sep-2021)
  
• Panjshir / 'I have not left Afghanistan,' says resistance leader Amrullah Saleh (Euro News, 3-Sep-2021)
  
• Staggering Costs – U.S. Military Equipment Left Behind In Afghanistan (Forbes, 23-Aug-2021)
  
• Majority of U.S. public favors Afghanistan troop withdrawal; Biden criticized for his handling of situation (Pew Research, 31-Aug-2021)
  
• Two Decades Later, the Enduring Legacy of 9/11 (PewResearch, 2-Sep-2021)
  
• 'Major' humanitarian crisis looms in Afghanistan, as UN convenes fundraising conference (United Nations, 3-Sep-2021)
  
• US wrestles with strategy to sanction Taliban as humanitarian crisis looms over Afghanistan (NY Times, 4-Sep-2021)
  
• UN to seek funds for ‘looming humanitarian catastrophe’ in Afghanistan (NY Post, 4-Sep-2021)
  
• Afghanistan: How many refugees are there and where will they go? (BBC, 1-Sep-2021)
  
• Balochistan / Several soldiers killed in southwestern Pakistan suicide bombing (Al-Jazeera, 5-Sep-2021)
  
• Afghanistan: What rise of Taliban means for Pakistan (BBC, 4-Sep-2021)
  
• Panjshir / Taliban, opposition fight for Afghan holdout province, top U.S. general warns of civil war (Reuters, 5-Sep-2021)
  
• Mazar-i-Sharif airport / Hundreds wait for clearance to leave Afghanistan’s Mazar airport (Al-Jazeera, 6-Sep-2021)

Related Articles:

• The Afghanistan catastrophe (23-Aug-2021)
  
  
• US withdrawal from Afghanistan threatens Central Asia stability (03-May-2021)
  
  
• High farce and tragedy continue in Afghanistan, as Biden announces Sept 11 troop withdrawal (15-Apr-2021)
  
  
• Afghanistan prepares for war, as Nato postpones military withdrawal decision (19-Feb-2021)
  
  
• Chaos grows in Afghanistan as American troops leave in hope of delusional peace plan (18-Jan-2021)
  
  
• US and Taliban to sign laughable 'reduction in violence' agreement in Afghanistan (16-Feb-2020)
  
  
• Why we can never prevail in Afghanistan (16-Dec-2019)
  
  
• ISIS-K suicide bomber kills over 50 in Kabul, Afghanistan, registering to vote (23-Apr-2018)
  
  
• Taliban launches major military operation in Farah province in Afghanistan (16-May-2018)
  
  
• People are shocked! shocked! at Obama's war plan in Afghanistan. (06-Dec-2009)
  

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Afghanistan, Panjshir Valley, Mazar-i-Sharif,
Antony Blinken, Kabul airport, Bagram airbase, Ashraf Ghani,
Britain, EU, Nato, Tom Tugendhat, Dan Jarvis, Norbert Röttgen,
BBC, al-Jazeera, Qatar, Doha, Turkey,
Taliban, al-Qaeda, ISIS Khorasan, ISIS-K, Haqqani Network,
Tajiks, Hazaras, Uzbeks, Northern Alliance,
Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Iran, Persian, Dari, Pashtun, Pashto,
Uganda, Mexico, Colombia, Rwanda, Belarus, Poland,
Pakistan, Inter-Services Intelligence, ISI,
Pakistan Taliban, Tehrik-e-Taliban, TTP, Walid Phares,
Panjshir Valley, National Resistance Front of Afghanistan, NRF,
Vietnam, Saigon, North Vietnam, Vietnamese boat people,
John F. Kennedy, JFK, American Civil War, KKK, Jim Crow laws,
Laos, Ngo Dinh Diem, Civil Rights Act, Joseph McCarthy,
Harry Truman, Truman Doctrine, Iron Curtain,
Korean War, Cuban, Bay of Pigs, Robert Byrd,
fentanyl, Keystone pipeline, critical race theory,
Mark Milley, civil war, Democide Pattern

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John J. Xenakis
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** 11-Sep-2021 World View: Kamala Harris vs Joe Biden

I've stated several times that if Joe Biden steps down, then the next
two in line - Kamala Harris and Nancy Pelosi -- are just as
incompetent as Biden.

That's true in a sense, but this morning as I listened to Kamala
Harris's speech I realized that I was also wrong.

Harris gave an airhead speech about the unity in the country following
9/11/2001. She couldn't help herself from making some snarky
accusations about discrimination against Muslims and Sikhs, but those
were brief. She uttered empty words that said that just as the
country was unified then, unity is important today. It was a mindless
speech saying almost nothing.

But I contrast it to the speeches and statements given by Joe Biden
the last two days on Covid. It's not just that he's mandating that
everyone must be vaccinated, though that has a lot of problems. It's
how he did it. He spoke endlessly about the "an epidemic of the
unvaccinated," by which me meant Republicans, and he criticized the
"cavalier attitudes" of Republican governors who, he said, didn't care
about the deaths of children.

I was particularly struck by the tone of this speech. After the
Afghanistan debacle, Biden's handlers could have fashioned a speech
that was uplifting and unifying. This was a unique opportunity to do
that. Instead, what he said indicated a desire to further divide the
country and destroy it. Biden's presidency will never be "normal,"
because Biden himself will use every opportunity to destroy the
presidency.

There's a certain irony that a large segment of the unvaccinated are
blacks. Blacks are very suspicious of the vaccines because last year,
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris said loudly and repeatedly that they
didn't trust the vaccine and that it was dangerous because it was a
"Trump vaccine." Andrew Cuomo actually said that the development of
vaccine was "bad news" because it had been developed during the Trump
administration. So blacks listened to Biden, Harris and Cuomo, and
they are the "unvaccinated" that Biden is talking about, more than
Republicans.

So while Harris's speech was a weak attempt to unify the country,
Biden's statements were the next in his evil attempts to sow hatred
and divisiveness, and to destroy the country.

As a child, Joe Biden grew up the same Democrat party culture that
fought to destroy America during the Civil War, and which had sought
revenge by creating the KKK and the Jim Crow laws. Biden's mentor
was Senator Robert Byrd, who had been a Grand Wizard in the KKK.

Now, Joe Biden is in office, and he has adopted one policy after
another to sabotage the United States. These include: open the
border, flood the country with illegal immigrants from 170 countries,
flood the country with Chinese fentanyl and meth, open the prisons,
let violent criminals out of jail, defund the police, destroy black
families, encourage the murder of thousands of young black men by
other black men in Democrat-run cities, close the Keystone pipeline
and then beg Saudi Arabia for more oil, destroy America's energy
independence, teach racial hatred in school (critical race theory),
censor political opposition, pay people not to work, etc. These
policies were capped by his disastrous policies in Afghanistan,
withdrawing the army and allowing thousands of Americans and billions
of dollars in advanced weapons to fall into the hands of our jihadist
enemy. These were all intentional acts with intentional consequences
with the objective of reversing the Civil War outcome and destroying
the country.

I've written thousands of articles about all sorts of historical
events, and I know what evil is, because I've seen it over and over,
and I know what fanatics are like, and Biden is definitely a fanatic
and Biden is definitely evil.

So I now see Biden as an evil fanatic pushing the country to disaster,
as a protagonist in a Greek tragedy, who through his own nature pushes
to a climactic catastrophe. There's no doubt in my mind that Biden is
an evil force in what would be a Greek tragedy, but it remains to be
seen whether the climactic catastrophe will be personal, or will be of
the entire country, which is what AOC and many other Democrats want.
I've also seen people on line who follow Joe Biden in his evil and
fanaticism. Unfortunately, there is a great deal of evil and
fanaticism in the world today.

So I've said in the past that if Biden steps down, or is impeached, or
is forced out of office, then Kamala Harris will be just as bad. I'm
now saying that I was wrong about that.

What I'm saying now is that Kamala Harris is a clueless airhead, but
that's MUCH better than the evil hatred and fanaticism of Joe Biden.

And who knows? Maybe Harris will grow into the job and be a decent
president. But she will never be as bad or evil as Joe Biden.

(09-11-2021, 02:16 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: [ -> ]** 11-Sep-2021 World View: Kamala Harris vs Joe Biden

I've stated several times that if Joe Biden steps down, then the next
two in line - Kamala Harris and Nancy Pelosi -- are just as
incompetent as Biden.

Repetition does not make something any more true, as must be said of people who try to convert us into believing that the Earth is flat or that the moon landing was faked on a motion-picture or TV sound-stage. You know how the latter goes: if you look closely behind the screen you might see the set of Green Acres.   

Quote:That's true in a sense, but this morning as I listened to Kamala
Harris's speech I realized that I was also wrong.

Harris gave an airhead speech about the unity in the country following
9/11/2001.  She couldn't help herself from making some snarky
accusations about discrimination against Muslims and Sikhs, but those
were brief.  She uttered empty words that said that just as the
country was unified then, unity is important today.  It was a mindless
speech saying almost nothing.

We have limped along with little unity over the last twenty years. Maybe Donald Trump did not engender the pervasive contempt that he so deserved that Herbert Hoover got ninety or so years ago.

Quote:But I contrast it to the speeches and statements given by Joe Biden
the last two days on Covid.  It's not just that he's mandating that
everyone must be vaccinated, though that has a lot of problems.  It's
how he did it.  He spoke endlessly about the "an epidemic of the
unvaccinated," by which me meant Republicans, and he criticized the
"cavalier attitudes" of Republican governors who, he said, didn't care
about the deaths of children.

If we have a demographic group that gets into inordinate trouble -- let us say alcoholics when they drive cars -- then we have a demographic problem in need of correction. COVID-19 has killed a population of Americans about the size of Boston, El Paso, or Oklahoma City... we have a problem. We lose about 30,000 people to 'vehicle incidents' every year and we spend huge amounts of money to reduce those.   Many of us scream bloody murder about bungled wars. 

If I were a right-wing commentator I would tell people not inoculated to get inoculated so, at the least, they could have a better chance to vote out Democrats and bring about that glorious world of a Christian and Corporate State that creates unimaginable prosperity, but first for people already super-rich, outlaws abortion, and promotes favored superstitions and pseudoscience in K-12 curricula as a norm to 'improve' kids. 

COVID-19 is now disproportionately killing conservatives -- not liberals who trust liberal media, medical science, and statistical evidence.  

Quote:I was particularly struck by the tone of this speech.  After the
Afghanistan debacle, Biden's handlers could have fashioned a speech
that was uplifting and unifying.  This was a unique opportunity to do
that.  Instead, what he said indicated a desire to further divide the
country and destroy it.  Biden's presidency will never be "normal,"
because Biden himself will use every opportunity to destroy the
presidency.

Joe Biden is not the sort to sugar-coat a nasty reality. Trump cut the deal.

Quote:There's a certain irony that a large segment of the unvaccinated are
blacks.  Blacks are very suspicious of the vaccines because last year,
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris said loudly and repeatedly that they
didn't trust the vaccine and that it was dangerous because it was a
"Trump vaccine."  Andrew Cuomo actually said that the development of
vaccine was "bad news" because it had been developed during the Trump
administration.  So blacks listened to Biden, Harris and Cuomo, and
they are the "unvaccinated" that Biden is talking about, more than
Republicans.

Among blacks of low socio-economic status (SES) distrust in institutions is high, much as is so for white people of low SES. Would it have mattered if the successful vaccine had been advanced by some racist pig? 

Ill-educated people, at least if black or white, are vulnerable to rumors. It's usually easy for people of average-to-above to discern whether a rumpr has validity: check it against reliable news sources. "I heard some guy say" is not a valid source.  

Quote:So while Harris's speech was a weak attempt to unify the country,
Biden's statements were the next in his evil attempts to sow hatred
and divisiveness, and to destroy the country.

Yeah, sure... Trump really unified America. 

As a child, Joe Biden grew up the same Democrat party culture that
fought to destroy America during the Civil War, and which had sought
revenge by creating the KKK and the Jim Crow laws.  Biden's mentor
was Senator Robert Byrd, who had been a Grand Wizard in the KKK.

Completely irrelevant.

Quote:Now, Joe Biden is in office, and he has adopted one policy after
another to sabotage the United States.  These include: open the
border, flood the country with illegal immigrants from 170 countries,
flood the country with Chinese fentanyl and meth, open the prisons,
let violent criminals out of jail, defund the police, destroy black
families, encourage the murder of thousands of young black men by
other black men in Democrat-run cities, close the Keystone pipeline
and then beg Saudi Arabia for more oil, destroy America's energy
independence, teach racial hatred in school (critical race theory),
censor political opposition, pay people not to work, etc.  These
policies were capped by his disastrous policies in Afghanistan,
withdrawing the army and allowing thousands of Americans and billions
of dollars in advanced weapons to fall into the hands of our jihadist
enemy.  These were all intentional acts with intentional consequences
with the objective of reversing the Civil War outcome and destroying
the country.

The only people among whom drug use is growing is poor white people. Black people in their sixties and seventies who know what heroin do excoriate it at every possible turn. Heroin was not a problem in Appalachia or the Ozarks in the '60's and '70's.... but it is now.  

Quote:I've written thousands of articles about all sorts of historical
events, and I know what evil is, because I've seen it over and over,
and I know what fanatics are like, and Biden is definitely a fanatic
and Biden is definitely evil.

But I see Donald Trump as evil for introducing a despotic style of governance, for ridiculing  the handicapped and unfortunate, for pushing medical quackery, and for (this should have warned us all) exploitative dealings in business and vile misconduct for women.

Quote:So I now see Biden as an evil fanatic pushing the country to disaster,
as a protagonist in a Greek tragedy, who through his own nature pushes
to a climactic catastrophe.  There's no doubt in my mind that Biden is
an evil force in what would be a Greek tragedy, but it remains to be
seen whether the climactic catastrophe will be personal, or will be of
the entire country, which is what AOC and many other Democrats want.
I've also seen people on line who follow Joe Biden in his evil and
fanaticism.  Unfortunately, there is a great deal of evil and
fanaticism in the world today.

So I've said in the past that if Biden steps down, or is impeached, or
is forced out of office, then Kamala Harris will be just as bad.  I'm
now saying that I was wrong about that.

What I'm saying now is that Kamala Harris is a clueless airhead, but
that's MUCH better than the evil hatred and fanaticism of Joe Biden.

And who knows? Maybe Harris will grow into the job and be a decent
president.  But she will never be as bad or evil as Joe Biden.[/quote]

Joe Biden is a moderate.

** 11-Sep-2021 World View: Joe Biden a moderate ?

(09-11-2021, 02:51 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: [ -> ]> Joe Biden is a moderate.

Joe Biden is an evil, fanatical extremist. I provided a list of
policies that prove this.

If you believe that Biden is a "moderate," then you must have in
mind some list of policies where Biden could have been even
more extreme, but held back because he's a "moderate."

Could you please provide two or three policies where Biden
could have been even more extreme than the policies that I've listed?

** 12-Sep-2021 World View: Covid spread

According to an analyst on Bloomberg TV:

Apparently the virus is going to burn through the entire world,
infecting everyone who isn't vaccinated or immune. The virus is
expected to spread dangerously during the next six months [presumably
during winter in the Northern Hemisphere].

The virus cases go up and down, and they're currently leveling off,
but that's expected to be temporary. It's expected that there will be
further variants that will spread more quickly or be more deadly, or
will be not be controlled by vaccines. The worst case scenario - and
this is rare -- is that the virus will mutate into a variant that
kills a lot of people.

** 12-Sep-2021 World View: North Korea long-range cruise missile tests

North Korea has announced the successful tests of new long-range
cruise missiles.

The missiles are "a strategic weapon of great significance" and flew
1,500 km (930 miles) before hitting their targets and falling into the
country's territorial waters during the tests on Saturday and Sunday,
KCNA said.

Both South Korea and Japan are within range of the new cruise
missiles, and they possibly have a nuclear capability.

North Korea has been out of the headlines recently, and this has given
hope to Pollyannas that North Korea was denuclearizing. As I've been
writing to years, North Korea is absolutely committed to producing
nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles, and failure to do
so would result in the assassination of Kim Jong Un. For an analysis
of the history of North Korea's nuclear development, see the
following:

** 28-Mar-21 World View -- North Korea's ballistic missiles stoke the Denuclearization Delusion
** http://www.generationaldynamics.com/pg/x...tm#e210328


North Korea's new missile is a long-range cruise missile, not a
ballistic missile, so it falls outside of previous agreements.
Nonetheless, it shows that North Korea's missile development is
continuing.

-- N.Korea tests first 'strategic' cruise missile with possible
nuclear capability
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacif...021-09-12/
(Reuters, 12-Sep-2021)

(09-12-2021, 10:39 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: [ -> ]** 12-Sep-2021 World View: Covid spread

According to an analyst on Bloomberg TV:

Apparently the virus is going to burn through the entire world, infecting everyone who isn't vaccinated or immune.  The virus is expected to spread dangerously during the next six months [presumably during winter in the Northern Hemisphere].

The virus cases go up and down, and they're currently leveling off, but that's expected to be temporary.  It's expected that there will be further variants that will spread more quickly or be more deadly, or will be not be controlled by vaccines.  The worst case scenario - and this is rare -- is that the virus will mutate into a variant that kills a lot of people.

We're already at 4.5 Million deaths worldwide and climbing.  I don't think we need to wait for a killer varient,  More than one has already emerged.  One that mandates a new vaccine is the big worry.  We can't get the idiots vaccinated now, and getting them to accept a newer vaccine for more varients is a fools errand ... in this country, at least.

For the totally fractured US, assume the worst.  You'll be less disappointed that way.

** 14-Sep-2021 World View: CPI remains on 2008 path

Update: The 2021 figures have been corrected below.

So here we are again. After months of inflation hysteria, on TV and
in this forum, it now appears that the CPI is leveling off, and not
spiraling up to infinity. How many times have we gone through this
cycle in the last 20 years? Too many to count.

This is a deflationary era. What I mean by that is that inflation
will remain low. Furthermore, the high public debt leads to the
second outcome of a deflationary era, namely that it ends with a sharp
deflationary crash.

We're still roughly on the same path as 2008, and not even as high as
2008:

2008:
4.30, 4.03, 3.94, 3.92, 4.18, 4.99,
5.60, 5.38, 4.93, 3.67, 1.06, 0.11

2021: [Corrected]
1.40, 1.68, 2.62, 4.16, 4.99, 5.39,
5.37, 5.25

http://www.generationaldynamics.com/pg/ww2010.i.cpi.htm

Late in 2008, the cpi began falling, and actually turned negative in
2009.

2009:
0.02, 0.23, -0.37, -0.73, -1.27, -1.42,
-2.10, -1.48, -1.29, -0.18, 1.84, 2.72

It's possible that the cpi is about to turn negative again.

** 15-Jun-21 World View -- The hysteria over inflation in a deflationary era
** http://www.generationaldynamics.com/pg/x...tm#e210615


The "experts" have been wrong almost every quarter for 70 quarters.
It looks like the "experts" are wrong again and I've been right.

** 14-Sep-2021 World View: Meaning of inflation

People have absolutely no clue what inflation means. I just heard
someone on tv ranting about inflation, and how food prices are being
pushed up by transportation costs. He was asked how long it would
take for inflation to come down. He said, "Give me a break! Oil is
$70 a barrel. Do you think the Saudis are going to take less? Do you
think Russia is going to take less?"

That is monumental ignorance on what inflation is. He has no idea
what he's talking about.

If the price of oil goes from $60 to $70, then there is inflation that
quarter. But if the price of oil stays at $70, even though that might
be considered a high "inflationary" value, then it's still 0%
inflation in the next quarter.

There's a lot of talk about how the producer price inflation was high,
and that may be true. But if consumers find a way to buy alternative
products and services at lower prices, then the CPI will not rise as
much.

** 14-Sep-2021 World View: Interrogating Antony Blinken

I watched the Senate hearings today interrogating Secretary of State
Antony Blinken.

Blinken was always smooth and oily, lying freely and effortlessly at
every turn.

The Republicans were highly critical of Blinken, and accused him and
the Biden administration of botching the evacuation and lying
constantly about it, with the surrender of Bagram airbase being the
worst mistake.

The Democrats were also highly critical of Blinken, but they put it
into the context of the last 20 years, saying that every
administration has lied to the American people, including Trump, who
signed the surrender agreement with the Taliban in February 2020.

I'm just numb watching this whole thing. I've repeatedly described
the Afghanistan war effort as farcical, starting with Obama's "surge"
in 2009. I described how each action by the Obama and Trump
administrations, including the February 2020 agreement, was based on
fantasy and farce.

The Chairman Senator Menendez (D-NJ) said that we have to get to the
bottom of what happened, so that we won't make the same mistakes.
That statement was just another fantasy and farce. The Biden
administration is probably already planning its next catastrophe.

** 23-Aug-21 World View -- The Afghanistan catastrophe
** http://www.generationaldynamics.com/pg/x...tm#e210823


** 7-Sep-21 World View -- Taliban declares total victory in Afghanistan
** http://www.generationaldynamics.com/pg/x...tm#e210907

** 15-Sep-2021 World View: Milley going rogue

Cool Breeze" Wrote:> John, what do you think of this Milley story?

John Wrote:> ** 14-Sep-2021 World View: Milley story

> From Trump ultra-haters like Woodward and Costa, based on reports
> from ultra-Trump-hating CNN? I'll wait for more evidence.

Guest Wrote:> The Whitehouse and Joint Chiefs are all circling the wagons and
> spinning but not denying. Does this count as more anything?

> https://www.zerohedge.com/political/shou...ieved-duty

• At this afternoon's press conference, Pentagon spokesman John
  Kirby said that if a Joint Chief had a consequential conversation with
  a foreign general, then the President should be informed. However, he
  said that he cannot comment on specific details in the previous
  administration.
  
  
• Bob Woodward, who has a reputation for making things up to sell
  books, claims that Milley thought that Trump was unstable, and so he
  went around the president and had a consequential conversation with
  his Chinese counterpart, wherein he promised that China would be
  forewarned in case of a military threat.
  
  
• According to the reporting, which is somewhat vague, Milley was
  motivated by hysterical screaming by Nancy Pelosi who demanded that
  Milley take the nuclear "football" away from Trump so that he couldn't
  start a nuclear war.
  
  
• As a result, Milley spoke to other Pentagon generals and demanded
  that he be put into the chain of command in case there was a threat of
  a military strike. Milley is an advisor to the president, but is not
  in the chain of command.
  
  
• Trump says that if this story about Milley is actually true, then
  Milley committed treason.
  
  
• There is no evidence at all that Trump was unstable, or that he
  was planning a nuclear strike on China to get even for losing the
  election. That whole concept is completely absurd, and doesn't make
  sense. Trump left office on January 20, without incident.

Woodward, Pelosi and Milley were/are all vitriolic Trump haters, and
Pelosi is a particularly hysterical and unstable Trump hater.
Remember when she tore up Trump's state of the union address as he was
delivering it. Pelosi is a total shithead.

If Woodward and Trump are telling the truth, and Kirby is correct,
then Milley has committed a crime.

In my opinion, the most likely scenario is that Woodward is lying (as
usual) to sell books, or at least took fairly standard events and blew
them way out of proportion for his book, and that Milley showed bad
judgment but did not commit a crime.

*** 16-Sep-21 World View -- China's Evergrande financial crisis threatens China's financial stability

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• China's Evergrande financial crisis threatens China's financial stability
  
• Will there be a government bailout?
  
• China Huarong Asset Management bailout
  
• Generational Dynamics analysis
  
• China's Macau crackdown and contagion to United States
  

****
**** China's Evergrande financial crisis threatens China's financial stability
****


Year to date performance of Chinese stocks, battered by new Chinese regulations in numerous sectors (Reuters)

China Evergrande Group is an enormous real estate construction firm
that has built millions of homes and other structures in China, and
which has expanded into other areas, such electric vehicles, a theme
park, a soccer club, a food company, and other areas. However,
Evergrande is now close to default because of its massive debt, and
its inability to meet its obligations.

China's Evergrande financial crisis has been bubbling for several
months, but reaching a turning point on Monday when the company issued
a statement denying that it was close to bankruptcy, but saying that
it was going to hire financial advisers to explore "all feasible
solutions" to its crisis. However, they would not guarantee that the
company will meet its financial obligations. That announcement
provoked protests at Evergrande offices across the country.

Evergrande appears to me to be a giant Ponzi scheme, where new debt is
incurred to cover old, out of control debts.

So Evergrande as a construction firm has completed nearly 900
commercial, residential, and infrastructure projects. But it has 1.5
million unfinished properties, for which down payments have been
collected, but many of which have stopped construction, for lack of
funding. For years, Evergrande has apparently used down payments for
new homes and projects to fund completion of previously committed
projects, leaving no money for the new projects.

Millions of ordinary homebuyers who made down payments on new home
construction are now facing losing their down payments, and getting no
homes. According to press reports, Evergrande now has about 900
unfinished projects, and there are about 1.2 million people waiting to
move in.

In order to fund its Ponzi scheme, Evergrande for years has been
offering investment opportunities in "wealth management products"
(WMPs), which are offered by many Chinese banks and financial
institutions, and which are are unique components of China's shadow
banking system. A retail investor can invest in a WMP, which
supposedly guarantees a high rate of return, but which is not directly
backed by any solid asset, such as real estate. Evergrande pays the
WMP through profits from its real estate business and by issuing its
own bonds. But if the real estate business is not making profits, and
if its bonds are losing value in the financial markets, then
Evergrande will default on the WMPs.

Every Ponzi scheme depends on an accelerating stream of cash to fund
further sales to meet previous debt obligations. As soon as there's a
slowdown in the incoming stream of cash for any reason, like a
recession or new regulations, then the Ponzi scheme crashes. That
seems to be where Evergrande is now. This means that homebuyers,
lenders, bondholders and retail investors are all subject to some or
all of their investments. According to some reports, bondholders will
lose 75% of their investments.

****
**** Will there be a government bailout?
****

As things stand now, Evergrande is going to collapse, possibly into
bankruptcy but at least into massive restructuring. With millions of
people losing some or all of their investments, this could lead to
China's dreaded "social unrest." Evergrande's headquarters are
located in Shenzhen, which is on the mainland adjacent to Hong Kong,
in southern China which has historically been the crucible of China's
previous massive rebellions, including Mao's Communist Rebellion
(1934-49) and the huge Taiping Rebellion (1854-64). The Chinese
Communists are well aware of this history.

The Beijing government may decide that Evergrande is "too big to
fail," and bail the company out. But Evergrande has publicly
acknowledged $300 billion in debt, and so a bailout would test even
the Communist government's resources.

But it's more complicated than even that. For years, there have been
news stories about ghost cities where entire towns had been built with
homes and stores, all of which remained empty and unoccupied. Many
individuals purchased these homes, not to live in, but as an
investment, hoping to cash in when they finally became occupied and
increased in value. Instead, they're now worth much less than their
original prices, and they're sitting empty, with no hope of occupancy.

Another problem is that if Evergrande defaults, then the entire real
estate market could collapse, as millions of new properties could
possibly come on the market at the same time.

So a bailout might cost China's government considerably more than the
$300 billion in debt.

****
**** China Huarong Asset Management bailout
****

So bailing out the Evergrande Ponzi debt might be too expensive even
for China. Even worse, it may result in contagion. Investors in
other large financial firms with huge exposures might demand similar
bailouts.

It was just last month that Beijing executed a much smaller bailout.
China's Huarong Asset Management announced a $16 billion net loss for
2020. After months of saying nothing, the Chinese Communist
government finally gave in and agreed to a bailout, for fear that a
Huarong bankruptcy could destablize China's financial system.

The way that the bailout would work is that Huarong will issue new
shares to five state-owned companies -- Citic Group, China Insurance
Investment, China Life Asset Management, China Cinda Asset Management
and Sino-Ocean Capital Holding. By purchasing these shares, the five
state-owned companies would provide a huge cash infusion to Huarong.

So if that worked for Huarong, would it also work for Evergrande?
Well, Huarong lost a mere $16 billion, while Evergrande is at least
$300 billion in debt, and possibly much more. So it may not even be
possible.

****
**** Generational Dynamics analysis
****

There are several typical behaviors that generations and populations
exhibit during a generational Crisis era, like the one we've been in
since the beginning of the century. At this time, all the people who
survived the previous generational crisis war (World War II) have all
died or retired, and the new generations in power (Gen-X, Millennials)
have no memory of the lessons learned. They forget the nationalism
and xenophobiat that caused the World War II, and they forget the
profligacy that resulted in the previous major financial crisis
(1929). They say that history doesn't repeat itself but it rhymes,
and we're seeing that now.

I've written much about China's increasing xenophobia and nationalism
directed at Japan and Taiwan, and I won't repeat it here, but I want
to focus on profligacy.

The United States is already %28 trillion in debt, and is
contemplating new legislation that will add $5 trillion more to the
debt. That's absolutely ridiculous, and will result in the worst
financial crisis in the history of the world.

China is also incurring historically high levels of debt, with no end
in sight. At some point there will be a major financial crisis in
China, with tens or even hundreds of million people losing their life
savings as the crisis spreads from company to company.

That will give rise to the Beijing's nightmare scenario, massive
social unrest, possibly turning into rebellion.

****
**** China's Macau crackdown and contagion to United States
****

Macau is similar to Hong Kong in that it is a special administrative
region in southern China. However, Macau is the gambling capital of
Asia, competing against Las Vegas for customers.

On Tuesday, China's regulators announced changes to the gaming law
that would give the government much greater control over the casinos,
and possibly a larger share of the earnings.

You may think that this is an internal Chinese matter, but it's not.
Almost all the casinos are operated by American companies -- Sands
China, Wynn Macau, Galaxy Entertainment, SJM Holdings, Melco
Entertainment and MGM China. And Macau stocks lost a third of their
value, around $14 billion, because investors feared that China would
impose tighter regulations.

This illustrates how tightly interlocked the Chinese and American
companies are, and a global financial crisis in one country will cause
a chain reaction financial crisis in the other.

Sources:

• Evergrande crisis deepens as protests break out in China (Business Times, Singapore, 13-Sep-2021)
  
• Evergrande Hires Advisers to Resolve Cash Crisis Amid Protests (FinancialPost/Bloomberg, 13-Sep-2021)
  
• Wealth management products / Cover Story: The Lagging Overhaul of China’s $3.9 Trillion Bank WMP Sector (Caixing, 21-Jun-2021)
  
• What Is China Evergrande and Why Is It In Trouble? (Bloomberg, 14-Sep-2021)
  
• Evergrande: Why the Chinese property giant is close to collapse (Deutsche Welle, 15-Sep-2021)
  
• Ponzi / What Would A Restructuring Of Evergrande Look Like? (Forbes, 13-Sep-2021)
  
• Billions blown as Macau casino investors fold amid gambling review (Reuters, 15-Sep-2021)
  
• Factbox: How Macau is revising its multi-billion dollar gaming industry (Reuters, 15-Sep-2021)
  
• Factbox: China crackdown wipes hundreds of billions off top companies' values (Reuters, 13-Sep-2021)
  
• China Huarong announces state bailout alongside $16bn loss (Nikkei, 19-Aug-2021)
  
• Evergrande is such an important real estate developer that China is likely to bail it out: Economist (CNBC-video, 8-Sep-2021)
  
• EU refuses to bail out Montenegro's China loan (EU Observer, 13-Apr-2021)

Related articles:

• Explanation of Price/Earnings ratio and Stock Valuations (28-Aug-2015)
  
  
• The hysteria over inflation in a deflationary era (15-Jun-2021)
  
  
• George Soros speech at Davos marks significant global shift against China (27-Jan-2019)
  
  
• Understanding deflation: Why there's less money in the world today than a month ago. (10-Sep-2007)
  
  
• China's 'Anti-Secession' law infuriates Taiwan (08-Mar-2005)
  
  
• China approaches Civil War (16-Jan-2005)

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, China, Evergrande Group, Ponzi scheme,
Taiping Rebellion
Huarong Asset Management, Citic Group, China Insurance Investment,
China Life Asset Management, China Cinda Asset Management,
Sino-Ocean Capital Holding, Japan, Taiwan, Macau, Las Vegas,
Sands China, Wynn Macau, Galaxy Entertainment,
SJM Holdings, Melco Entertainment, MGM China

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John J. Xenakis
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(09-15-2021, 05:50 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: [ -> ]** 15-Sep-2021 World View: Milley going rogue

Cool Breeze Wrote:>   John, what do you think of this Milley story?

John Wrote:>   ** 14-Sep-2021 World View: Milley story

>   From Trump ultra-haters like Woodward and Costa, based on reports
>   from ultra-Trump-hating CNN?  I'll wait for more evidence.

Guest Wrote:>   The Whitehouse and Joint Chiefs are all circling the wagons and
>   spinning but not denying. Does this count as more anything?

>   https://www.zerohedge.com/political/shou...ieved-duty

• At this afternoon's press conference, Pentagon spokesman John
  Kirby said that if a Joint Chief had a consequential conversation with
  a foreign general, then the President should be informed.  However, he
  said that he cannot comment on specific details in the previous
  administration.
  
  
• Bob Woodward, who has a reputation for making things up to sell
  books, claims that Milley thought that Trump was unstable, and so he
  went around the president and had a consequential conversation with
  his Chinese counterpart, wherein he promised that China would be
  forewarned in case of a military threat.
  
  
• According to the reporting, which is somewhat vague, Milley was
  motivated by hysterical screaming by Nancy Pelosi who demanded that
  Milley take the nuclear "football" away from Trump so that he couldn't
  start a nuclear war.
  
  
• As a result, Milley spoke to other Pentagon generals and demanded
  that he be put into the chain of command in case there was a threat of
  a military strike.  Milley is an advisor to the president, but is not
  in the chain of command.
  
  
• Trump says that if this story about Milley is actually true, then
  Milley committed treason.
  
  
• There is no evidence at all that Trump was unstable, or that he
  was planning a nuclear strike on China to get even for losing the
  election.  That whole concept is completely absurd, and doesn't make
  sense.  Trump left office on January 20, without incident.
  

Woodward, Pelosi and Milley were/are all vitriolic Trump haters, and
Pelosi is a particularly hysterical and unstable Trump hater.
Remember when she tore up Trump's state of the union address as he was
delivering it.  Pelosi is a total shithead.

If Woodward and Trump are telling the truth, and Kirby is correct,
then Milley has committed a crime.

In my opinion, the most likely scenario is that Woodward is lying (as
usual) to sell books, or at least took fairly standard events and blew
them way out of proportion for his book, and that Milley showed bad
judgment but did not commit a crime.

Admiral Wilhelm Canaris is generally recognized in Germany as a hero for thwarting some possible acts of Nazi aggression that would have given the Third Reich transitory advantages that would have been disastrous for the country induced into pro-Nazi acts of aggression. So Germany and Franco's Spain could have cut off Gibraltar... but at the cost of creating a vulnerable ally that would have been easy pickings for the Anglo-American alliance. Let's not even discuss Turkey which eventually declared war on the Third Reich late in the war. Yet his deeds got him executed in the wake of the July 20 plot. Canaris figured it out. 

General Milley thwarted acts of overt aggression that could have started World War III with two nuclear powers as protagonists... and, with Donald Trump extending his term of office illegally, with two dictators with no moral compass. America would have had no meaningful allies. NATO would disintegrate. South Korea would sell out an unreliable USA under a capricious ruler for its survival. Japan -- likewise. Japan does not want Okinawa nuked just because it has a US military base. 

For the millions of dead on both sides, guilt and culpability would be irrelevant. For the rest... I can imagine China cutting some deals. I cannot tell you whether America would have the same sort of government after the fact, but I can imagine Donald Trump getting much the same treatment as Benito Mussolini or Nicolae Ceausescu once the dust settles.

Face it: Donald Trump is erratic and amoral. This is a man without the capacity to bond to anyone. We have never had a President like him, and would that we never have one like him again!  This man has his rhetorical knives out for George W. Bush just like he had them out for Barack Obama -- and John McCain. How can anyone now trust him?

The Uniform Code of Military Justice makes clear that war crimes are absolutely unacceptable, and that anyone who thwarts them will be understood to have full justification after the fact. That is proven in the wake of the field massacre at My Lai. We have never had a situation in modern times in which the US does overt aggression against a political order that does not deserve it (I accept the US invasions of Panama, Grenada, Iraq, and Afghanistan as having some justification). Mistakes can happen, but all in all -- mess with the best and die like the rest. As for the President and top diplomats or military officials, US participation in the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials of the major offenders of such regimes indicates that leadership of FDR and Truman understood they might be signing the death warrants for any future American leader who becomes another Hideki Tojo, Wilhelm Keitel, or Joachim von Ribbentrop. Turning over someone like Ferenc Szalasi, a Nazi puppet ruler of Hungary to Hungary for trial and execution for crimes against humanity suggests what could befall an American.  

...On January 6, the Joint Chiefs of Staff made clear that Donald Trump had been defeated fairly in the 2020 election and would not remain President The Joint Chiefs knew what they were doing. A delusional person should not be in charge of the "nuclear football". 

The military was not going to remove Donald Trump. That role would have been left to the federal marshals.

(09-15-2021, 08:47 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: [ -> ]*** 16-Sep-21 World View -- China's Evergrande financial crisis threatens China's financial stability

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• China's Evergrande financial crisis threatens China's financial stability
  
• Will there be a government bailout?
  
• China Huarong Asset Management bailout
  
• Generational Dynamics analysis
  
• China's Macau crackdown and contagion to United States
  

****
**** China's Evergrande financial crisis threatens China's financial stability
****


Year to date performance of Chinese stocks, battered by new Chinese regulations in numerous sectors (Reuters)

China Evergrande Group is an enormous real estate construction firm
that has built millions of homes and other structures in China, and
which has expanded into other areas, such electric vehicles, a theme
park, a soccer club, a food company, and other areas.  However,
Evergrande is now close to default because of its massive debt, and
its inability to meet its obligations.

The People's Republic is a capitalist system. The fault is that it operates under no moral constraints. A criminal who can turn a profit for a while can do very well for a while, but can also generate a bigger crash. This is nothing new; just look at the Stavisky affair in France in the 1930's in which a shyster pulled off a Madoff-like scheme to bloat illusory assets while pocketing real money. 

Ideally capitalists operate with some measure of moral compass, whether such results from religious devotion or sophisticated philosophy. The first rule is "Do not hurt your customers, whether direct or indirect". People are in prison for a very long time because someone sold bad peanut butter to Kellogg's Keebler division, and Kellogg's took revenge by turning over documents of the transactions and test results on the bad peanut butter to prosecutors. The second is "Do not hurt your investors". Big problems arise when either happens, and the bigger the scale of the harm, the bigger is the damage on a nationwide scale. 

The late arch-conservative economist Friedrich Hayek (1899-1992) recognized all financial bubbles as disasters by nature for devouring assets and precluding other investments. Making large investments in a financial bubble is like putting prime rib before a dog and expecting what leaves the opposite side of the dog to be precious. Financial bubbles do much the same to capital as a dog does to an expensive cut of meat. Shysters have as ravenous appetites for capital as dogs have for meat. The difference is that operators of a bubble are adept at creating the illusion of prosperity in easy money for investors until people get wise to the reality that anything can be overpriced; once the perception is in that the prosperity is an illusion, everything gets recognized as worthless. A panic ensues, as in 1929 or 2008.

Can I fault the Chinese Communist party? Sure -- for destroying the Confucian heritage that created some moral compass from antiquity to Mao's overthrow of the Republic of China, and the repression of foreign bases of morality such as Christianity and Islam* that might serve if Confucian ethical values are not restored. Morality isn't superstition; it is necessity. China now resorts to harsh penalties, typically death, for large-scale ethical lapses in a country that has fewer restraints on greed and deceit than countries with longer-established capitalist systems. Capitalism does not create morality, but a society with free enterprise must have some morality in place lest "free enterprise" simply mean that Enterprise is free to do whatever its owners, investors, and managers want to do to everyone else. 

Aside from criminal triads, Overseas Chinese are generally good people with whom to have dealings. 

Quote:China's Evergrande financial crisis has been bubbling for several
months, but reaching a turning point on Monday when the company issued
a statement denying that it was close to bankruptcy, but saying that
it was going to hire financial advisers to explore "all feasible
solutions" to its crisis.  However, they would not guarantee that the
company will meet its financial obligations.  That announcement
provoked protests at Evergrande offices across the country.

Evergrande appears to me to be a giant Ponzi scheme, where new debt is
incurred to cover old, out of control debts.

All economic bubbles are Ponzi schemes except for not having one arch-shyster like Ponzi, Stavisky, or Madoff on which to lay all the blame. They often have the complicity of high government officials who ride a tide and fail to see the sharks in the event of a wipe-out. It is best that bankers be deputized with the role of guardians of Other People's Money to the extent that bankers are more bureaucrats than entrepreneurs. When bankers become entrepreneurs instead of recyclers of capital, then all Hell breaks loose in the economy.   

Quote:So Evergrande as a construction firm has completed nearly 900
commercial, residential, and infrastructure projects.  But it has 1.5
million unfinished properties, for which down payments have been
collected, but many of which have stopped construction, for lack of
funding.  For years, Evergrande has apparently used down payments for
new homes and projects to fund completion of previously committed
projects, leaving no money for the new projects.

Millions of ordinary homebuyers who made down payments on new home
construction are now facing losing their down payments, and getting no
homes.  According to press reports, Evergrande now has about 900
unfinished projects, and there are about 1.2 million people waiting to
move in.

There's nobody to stop what Robert Ringer calls "LSD deals" in China because leaders have assumed that growth solves all problems. What we have learned in America is that whatever faults exist in a business grow with or even faster than the business. Just because a mathematical simulation looks good does not mean that it is good. Figures don't lie, but liars can figure. At least we have a Judeo-Christian ethic built into our culture to the extent that people who reject the religion still generally cleave to the ethical values. The Maoists destroyed all ethical values as "obsolete" or "superstitious", and the post-Maoists have offered nothing more than carrot and stick -- or should it be more "indulgence" and "firing squad"? 

American banks typically make borrowing a privilege. Everybody seems to have some idea of how to make easy money, but the banks rightly insist that the persons who stand to make the most money take the risk of ruin. Thus, bankers typically demand that borrowers put up more collateral in the event of a failure so that the bank is not hurt, and that borrows put the payment of interest and principal above executive compensation and expansion projects. But such is how things have been structured since the 1930's. Yes, this may have thwarted some innovative new business or two that could have created untold wealth, but it has also done far more to ensure that scatterbrain plans never go beyond the dream of some kid still living in his parents' home, with that kid eventually deciding that it makes more sense to start a career at Wendy's or Wal*Mart -- or perhaps take a hint from second-cousin Pete that meat-cutting or auto-body repair isn't a bad career after all.  

Quote: In order to fund its Ponzi scheme, Evergrande for years has been
offering investment opportunities in "wealth management products"
(WMPs), which are offered by many Chinese banks and financial
institutions, and which are are unique components of China's shadow
banking system.  A retail investor can invest in a WMP, which
supposedly guarantees a high rate of return, but which is not directly
backed by any solid asset, such as real estate.  Evergrande pays the
WMP through profits from its real estate business and by issuing its
own bonds.  But if the real estate business is not making profits, and
if its bonds are losing value in the financial markets, then
Evergrande will default on the WMPs

.
Much wisdom is to be found in comedy, and Will Rogers once said that the problem leading to the Great Depression was that people were looking for high returns on capital instead of return of their capital. Evidence of the maturity of a capitalist order is that returns on investment shrink because there aren't so many pressing needs to meet. Sweatshops producing shoes for barefoot peasants and industrial workers can be inordinately profitable, as shoes are not a take-it-or-leave-it proposition. With most technological stuff, all innovations are take-it-or-leave-it propositions. I have a ten-year-old TV set, which is amazingly durable in view of its predecessors. I can hold off on buying one of the newfangled ones with a curved picture screen, all sorts of built-in streaming services, and the like. Most replacements now involve clear improvements as something becomes obsolete in the sense of "lacking support". In effect, you cannot get the latest Disney flick on VHS tape. OK...  the promise of very high returns indicates either illicit quality of the transaction or a fraudulent pitch. Think of lenders in the Double-Zero decade delighted to get people into housing with a loan that they were sure to default... of course in a place of rising real-estate values, so that when (and rarely so much if) the mortgagor defaulted, the lender would have an appreciated asset to resell. We all know how that worked. Housing prices soared much faster than incomes, and eventually the speculative frenzy ends up with no more buyers. Then comes the large-scale panic.       

Quote:Every Ponzi scheme depends on an accelerating stream of cash to fund
further sales to meet previous debt obligations.  As soon as there's a
slowdown in the incoming stream of cash for any reason, like a
recession or new regulations, then the Ponzi scheme crashes.  That
seems to be where Evergrande is now.  This means that homebuyers,
lenders, bondholders and retail investors are all subject to some or
all of their investments.  According to some reports, bondholders will
lose 75% of their investments.

****
**** Will there be a government bailout?
****

As things stand now, Evergrande is going to collapse, possibly into
bankruptcy but at least into massive restructuring.  With millions of
people losing some or all of their investments, this could lead to
China's dreaded "social unrest."  Evergrande's headquarters are
located in Shenzhen, which is on the mainland adjacent to Hong Kong,
in southern China which has historically been the crucible of China's
previous massive rebellions, including Mao's Communist Rebellion
(1934-49) and the huge Taiping Rebellion (1854-64).  The Chinese
Communists are well aware of this history.

The Beijing government may decide that Evergrande is "too big to
fail," and bail the company out.  But Evergrande has publicly
acknowledged $300 billion in debt, and so a bailout would test even
the Communist government's resources.

Too big to fail -- or too corrupt to support? We Americans may find sooner than later that some of the entities that Dubya and Obama deemed Too Big to Fail have become Too Corrupt to Support. Should we ever deem that corporations that hire large numbers of well-educated workers in bureaucracies in which nobody really knows what he is doing except what to do with paperwork Too Corrupt to Support, then we could have some huge problems, not only in people losing jobs and retirement assets vanishing, but also a bunch of overpaid bureaucrats devoid of any tangible skills finding themselves with the time to spend in libraries and lacking the money to pay for cable TV on the Idiot screen  in which they find Marxist-Leninist literature the anodyne instead of going to work for Wendy's or Wal*Mart. Alienated intellectuals (think of the late and unlamented Abimael Guzman), and not laborers, start proletarian revolutions.  There's nothing abstract about hardships that the proles endure, but for the non-proles, life is far more complex as are the causes of their psychic distress.   

Quote:But it's more complicated than even that.  For years, there have been
news stories about ghost cities where entire towns had been built with
homes and stores, all of which remained empty and unoccupied.  Many
individuals purchased these homes, not to live in, but as an
investment, hoping to cash in when they finally became occupied and
increased in value.  Instead, they're now worth much less than their
original prices, and they're sitting empty, with no hope of occupancy.

I wondered about that. Was it some foresight that the PRC had that Overseas Chinese might have to take refuge in China in the event of persecutions? Model minorities, like Jews in Germany, South Asians in Uganda, ethnic Chinese in Indonesia -- or Jews, South Asians, or ethnic Chinese in America -- are especially vulnerable in the event of populist assaults upon high-achieving minorities. We are just lucky so far that such a disaster for us all has yet to happen here. (Mr. Xenakis, there's a fellow named Classic X'er who posts elsewhere who makes much about white identity if not putting it into such words, and fails to realize that the system of which he dreams that treats minorities harshly in the supposed aid of white losers can eventually hurt someone like him). 

Quote:Another problem is that if Evergrande defaults, then the entire real
estate market could collapse, as millions of new properties could
possibly come on the market at the same time.

So a bailout might cost China's government considerably more than the
$300 billion in debt.

****
**** China Huarong Asset Management bailout
****

So bailing out the Evergrande Ponzi debt might be too expensive even
for China.  Even worse, it may result in contagion.  Investors in
other large financial firms with huge exposures might demand similar
bailouts.

It was just last month that Beijing executed a much smaller bailout.
China's Huarong Asset Management announced a $16 billion net loss for
2020.  After months of saying nothing, the Chinese Communist
government finally gave in and agreed to a bailout, for fear that a
Huarong bankruptcy could destabilize China's financial system.

The way that the bailout would work is that Huarong will issue new
shares to five state-owned companies -- Citic Group, China Insurance
Investment, China Life Asset Management, China Cinda Asset Management
and Sino-Ocean Capital Holding.  By purchasing these shares, the five
state-owned companies would provide a huge cash infusion to Huarong.

So if that worked for Huarong, would it also work for Evergrande?
Well, Huarong lost a mere $16 billion, while Evergrande is at least
$300 billion in debt, and possibly much more.  So it may not even be
possible.

Too Big to Fail -- or Too Corrupt to Save? Ay, that's the rub. 

Quote:There are several typical behaviors that generations and populations
exhibit during a generational Crisis era, like the one we've been in
since the beginning of the century.  At this time, all the people who
survived the previous generational crisis war (World War II) have all
died or retired, and the new generations in power (Gen-X, Millennials)
have no memory of the lessons learned.  They forget the nationalism
and xenophobia that caused the World War II, and they forget the
profligacy that resulted in the previous major financial crisis
(1929).  They say that history doesn't repeat itself but it rhymes,
and we're seeing that now.

The best Boomers got the lessons of the Crisis Era seared into them. I can be born ten years after the end of World War II, and the images of that great calamity are seared into my mind. I can draw conclusions, and Nazi ideology or anything resembling it (such as Ku Kluxism, which has become practically the same anti-human $#!+) offends me. All that kept me from thwarting the catastrophic bubble of the Double-Zero decade was that I was in no position in which to stop it. People needed affordable housing, even if it was dreary flats that one might expect in Hong Kong. 

Much of the problem is that we misapply the old lessons. American leaders, political and military, saw an analogue for Communist insurgencies in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos in Nazi aggression instead of consequences of failures of the political and economic orders in those countries. The first refutation is that Commies eventually took over, The second is that Thailand has never become a Commie state. Perfect foresight is a rarity; thus astrologers remain in business.

*The Uigurs are Muslims and not Chinese. .

*** 17-Sep-21 World View -- ANKUS agreement: US and UK will help Australia build nuclear-powered submarine fleet

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• ANKUS agreement: US and UK will help Australia build nuclear-powered submarine fleet
  
• Furious reaction from China
  
• Furious reaction from France
  

****
**** ANKUS agreement: US and UK will help Australia build nuclear-powered submarine fleet
****


Anika Havey, owner of Folklore Cafe in Port Adelaide, where nuclear-powered submarines will be built (Australian Broadcasting)

The US, the UK and Australia have reached a new agreement called the
"AUKUS pact." The US will provide nuclear-power technology to
Australia, and Australia will build a fleet of nuclear-powered
submarines using the technology, with help from the US and UK. The
submarines will be nuclear-powered, but they will not be capable of
launching nuclear weapons. The intention is for eight nuclear-powered
submarines to be built in Adelaide.

The Aukus announcement did not mention China specifically. However,
it referred repeatedly to regional security concerns which they said
had "grown significantly."

Commenting on the agreement, UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said
China was "embarking on one of the biggest military spends in history.
It is growing its navy [and] air force at a huge rate. Obviously it is
engaged in some disputed areas. Our partners in those regions want to
be able to stand their own ground."

The agreement will also provide for industrial cooperation among the
United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom on other key
technologies, including artificial intelligence, cyber, and long-range
precision strike capabilities.

****
**** Furious reaction from China
****

According to China's Foreign Ministry:

<QUOTE>"The nuclear submarine cooperation between the US, the
UK and Australia has seriously undermined regional peace and
stability, intensified the arms race and undermined international
non-proliferation efforts. The export of highly sensitive nuclear
submarine technology to Australia by the US and the UK proves once
again that they are using nuclear exports as a tool for
geopolitical game and adopting double standards. This is extremely
irresponsible."<END QUOTE>

It's always really funny when the Chinese Communist sleazebags accuse
someone of undermining peace and stability, or of being irresponsible.
The Chinese Communists are emulating the Nazis by illegally annexing
the South China Sea, by threatening Taiwan, and by committing
genocide, rape, torture, and other atrocities against millions of
Uighurs.

What the Chinese sleazebags want is to take control of the entire
Indo-Pacific region, without any opposition. The Aukus agreement
is a clear challenge to China's illegal military threats.

****
**** Furious reaction from France
****

The Ankus agreement scraps an existing $90 billion deal that Australia
had with the French shipbuilding firm Naval Group. That agreement
would have had France provide non-nuclear submarine technology for
Australia's submarine fleet.

In an interview, France's furious Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian
said:

<QUOTE>"It's just not done between allies. It's a stab in the back.
This unilateral, brutal, unpredictable decision is very similar to
what Mr Trump used to do. ... We had established a relationship
of trust with Australia and this trust has been betrayed. This is
not the end of the story."<END QUOTE>

France's Defense Ministry added:

<QUOTE>"[Australia's decision] is contrary to the letter and
spirit of the cooperation that prevailed between France and
Australia, based on a relationship of political trust as well as
on the development of a very high-level defence industrial and
technological base in Australia. [Also,] the American choice to
exclude a European ally and partner from a structuring partnership
with Australia, at a time when we are facing unprecedented
challenges in the Indo-Pacific region, whether in terms of our
values or in terms of respect for multilateralism based on the
rule of law, shows a lack of coherence that France can only note
with regret."<END QUOTE>

As far as I can tell, France was going to sell Australia old,
out-of-date diesel-power technology for the new submarine fleet, while
the Aukus agreement sells new nuclear-power technology. I assume
that's the reason that Australia canceled the agreement with France
and went with the Aukus agreement.

Sources:

• Aukus: UK, US and Australia launch pact to counter China (BBC, 16-Sep-2021)
  
• 'Stab in the back': France blasts new UK-US-Australia security pact in Indo-Pacific Access to the comments Comments (Euro News, 16-Sep-2021)
  
• Experts React: The US, UK, and Australia struck a nuclear submarine deal. What does it mean? (Atlantic Council, 15-Sep-2021)
  
• US, UK and Australia agree new Indo-Pacific security pact (Al-Jazeera, 15-Sep-2021)
  
• Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian's Regular Press Conference on September 16, 2021 (Foreign Ministry, China, 16-Sep-2021)
  
• ‘Stab in the back’: French fury as Australia scraps submarine deal (Guardian, London, 16-Sep-2021)
  
• Australia beefs up international defence in US, UK pact as Scott Morrison declares ‘this affects us all’ (Australian AP, 16-Sep-2021)
  
• Adelaide residents react to nuclear submarine move after Naval Group deal scuttled (Australian Broadcasting, 16-Sep-2021)

Related articles:

• China escalates hostility with Australia through threatened coal ban (16-Dec-2020)
  
  
• Australia-China relations become more toxic through boycotts and accusations (28-Nov-2020)
  
  
• Trove of leaked China documents detail jailing of Xinjiang's Muslim Uighurs (18-Nov-2019)
  
  
• Hitler's Force Labor System, 1939-1945 (31-Jul-2019)
  
  
• Australia passes foreign influence laws, targeting China (29-Jun-2018)
  
  
• Australia-China relations in crisis after revelation of Chinese bribery scandal (24-May-2018)
  
  
• New book documents extensive Chinese infiltration into Australia's organizations (26-Feb-2018)
  
  
• Concerns grow over China's covert infiltration into New Zealand's government (16-Feb-2018)
  
  
• China-Australia relations plummet over China's illegal militarization of South China Sea (16-Dec-2017)
  

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Australia, United Kingdom, United States, AUKUS,
China, South China Sea, Taiwan, Uighurs,
France, Naval Group, Jean-Yves Le Drian

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Regarding AUKUS....

As I understand it, the Aussies paid a very large amount of money to the French and have nothing show for it. The French have-in effect-broken a contract through non-delivery of the (now obsolete) product.

(09-06-2021, 12:44 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: [ -> ]** 06-Sep-2021 World View: Communistm, Socialism and Fascism

(09-06-2021, 03:51 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: [ -> ]>   The right-wing ultra-capitalist regimes of Pinochet's Chile,
>   Franco's Spain, and the Greek colonels' regime were all
>   plutocratic. Does the theocratic regime in Iran qualify as
>   "socialist"? Hitler's "national" socialism turned industrial
>   workers into serfs to the benefit of German tycoons. Hitler wanted
>   the antithesis of Soviet-style "international" socialism as in the
>   Soviet Union at the time. Hitler's "socialism" had no semblance of
>   social justice. The Apartheid regime of South Africa was socialism
>   for the white minority but dog-eat dog exploitation for everybody
>   else (OK, the regime defined Chinese, Koreans, and Japanese as
>   "white" if they were investors or administrators).

>   To be sure Stalinism has much in common with fascism, but did the
>   Bolsheviks more imitate fascists than the fascists imitated the
>   Bolsheviks?

None of these words makes any sense at all.  When I was in high
school, after the Army-McCarthy hearings, I discovered that the "z" in
Nazi stood for Socialism, and wondered if Naziism is the same as
Socialism.  No, I was told.  Naziism was not Socialism.  It was
"National Socialism," which was a different thing.  And liberal
teachers bent themselves into pretzels explaining the difference
between Socialism and National Socialism.

Is Fascism the same as Naziism?  I used to think that the "s" in
Fascism also stood for Socialism, but apparently not, since the word
has an entirely different derivation.  Nonetheless, after WW II,
Fascism and Naziism are thought to be similar, or at most that Fascism
is a watered down form of Naziism that keeps the trains running on
time.

In order of formation of right-wing, anti-human, anti-socialist ideologies:

the second Ku Klux Klan, USA... 1915. Even down to the 45-degree straight-arm salute. (Mussolini and Hitler would adopt a similar salute, except with the right arm instead of the left arm. Clearly a militia. 

Mussolini's Fascisti . Mussolini improvised the ideology and agenda to fit his lust for power. Mussolini is a renegade socialist who found that he could make more money breaking strikes and cracking the heads of militant labor unionists instead of supporting workers. He pretended that patriotism and an industry-based loyalty (in other words, a coal miner had more in common with a coal-mining magnate than with a worker in an auto plant) as the basis of political reality, denying the class struggle that underpins Marxism. 

Hitler's Nazis. There is no evidence that Hitler was ever on the Left, although he managed to merge a pair of cranky right-wing organizations (the German Workers' Party and Julius Streicher's German Socialist Party, both putting nationalism above any call for proletarian solidarity) and form the NSDAP. Yes, it was undeniably nationalist and German by default (it could not fit any other national description), although it did exclude plenty of people who thought they were Germans.. you know, the Jews. What's weird to me is that as a German-American I feel that German Jews would have been my moral and cultural brethren. 

Oddly, Hitler's Nazis derived much or independently adopted much that was so (the violence, the militia, the night-time rallies with plenty of fire, the gaudy symbolism, the newspeak, the Jew-hating, and the racism) of the KKK, except to shun the anti-Catholic rhetoric of the Klan. Today after a century there is little difference between neo-Nazis and the KKK, largely because the more recent KKK groups have abandoned the anti-Catholic rhetoric.   

Quote:Then there's the issue of Communism in China.  Mao Zedong's Great Leap
Forward and Cultural Revolution killed tens of millions of innocent
Chinese needlessly, and destroyed and devastated China's economy for
decades, so much so that China still hasn't recovered.  Mao Zedong
also completely destroyed the value of Communism, Socialism and
Marxism.  So as soon as Mao died, Deng Xiaoping came to power and
implemented the "Opening up and reform" policies, which was a
rejection of Communism, Socialism and Marxism, in support of free
markets.

China was on the brink of starvation in the 1960's and had experienced famines. But it has rejected Mao except on currencies and in political iconography. Mao's image remains on the national currency. (The much-more admirable Sun Yat-Sen would be more appropriate, but that is a different story). The Chinese Communist Party has abandoned socialism without abandoning the dictatorial system. 

Half a loaf is better than none. Democracy does not thrive in places of extreme economic insecurity. This said, if you are going to look for the world median in economic development, then you will find it in China. The famines are over. 

Quote:In the 1980s, another hard-core Communist, Le Duan, died.  Truong
Chinh, a political enemy of Le Duan, came to power, and implemented
the Doi Moi market reforms which, once again were a rejection of
Communism, Socialism and Marxism, in support of free markets.  This
was highly successful, and turned Vietnam from an economic basket case
to an economic powerhouse.

So China and Vietnam still call themselves "Communist," but they are
no longer communist.  I would call them "Fascist."

With that rhetoric you sound almost like a Trotskyite who denounces the "deformed workers' state".

Quote:However, China seems to be returning to the destructive policies of
Mao Zedong, and reimplementing policies to return to the worst forms
of Communism.  One of these policies, announced last week, was to
forbid "girlie men" from the entertainment industry.  Hahahaha

Exaggerated masculinity, including the rejection of anything "sissy" and of course homosexuality, is a common characteristic of fascist ideology. Mao at least said that women hold up half the sky, holding that his socialist ideology would need to treat women as equals. 

It may be ironic, but many women love "girlie men".  I confess to being a "male lesbian" -- exaggerated masculinity -- yuck!

Quote:I can hardly wait to start to see articles from the NY Times saying
that "girlie men" will have to be canceled in America, in sympathy
with the Chinese Communist Party.

That would be reactionary, contrary to every liberal virtue that  the current "Deep State" seems to hold dear. The entertainment media would never go along unless the Government could do extensive censorship.

*** 25-Sep-21 World View -- China Evergrande construction firm heads to default

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• China Evergrande construction firm heads to default
  
• Scrambling to avoid a 'systemic' financial crisis and social unrest
  
• The 'moral hazard' problem
  
• Crypto-currency crackdown
  

****
**** China Evergrande construction firm heads to default
****


An unfinished Evergrande construction project in Taicang, China (Quartz)

Last week, it was clear that China Evergrande Group real estate
construction and retail investment firm was a gargantuan Ponzi scheme
that was headed for default soon, unless the Chinese Communist
government executed an extremely risky bailout. (See "16-Sep-21 World View -- China's Evergrande financial crisis threatens China's financial stability"
)

By Friday, 24-Sept, Evergrande was scheduled to pay $83.5 million in
interest payments on dollar-denominated bonds held by overseas
investors (i.e., non-Chinese). Evergrande missed those payments, but
Evergrade will not be in technical default until a 30-day grace period
has passed.

Evergrande owes another $47.5 million to offshore investors
next week, and $669 million by the end of the year. By the end
of next year, Evergrande has to pay back $7.4 billion, as a
number of bonds mature. All in all, Evergrande has $305 billion
in liabilities.

****
**** Scrambling to avoid a 'systemic' financial crisis and social unrest
****


Evergrande interest payments due, 2021-2024 (Bloomberg)

Beijing cannot save Evergrande, but the Chinese Communist regulators
in have announced that they will henceforth be closely supervising
decisions by Evergrande. They will override international financial
norms and agreements to achieve the political ends of preventing a
"systemic" financial crisis or social unrest.

Under direction from regulators, Evergrande has reportedly made
arrangements with local (Chinese) bondholdhers to delay interest
payments.

Offshore (non-Chinese) bond holders will not be made whole. Current
estimates are that if you hold an Evergrande bond, then you'll receive
only 25% of its value, though that number could fall as time goes on.
However, most offshore bond holders are actually large international
banks, like the Swiss bank UBS, which holds $275.7 million in
Evergrande's bonds.

There is little appetite in Beijing to pay back Western bondholders,
but this is offset by worries that Chinese companies will not have
access to dollar funding in the future. So some accomodation will be
made for Western bondholders.

As for local (Chinese) banks, Beijing has injected billions of
additional yuan into the banking system to prevent "contagion" -- bank
failure resulting from Evergrande failure, in the cases where bank
loans won't be repaid.

Beijing is telling Evergrande to pay off Chinese retail investors
first. The objective is to avoid social unrest.

Beijing is also telling Evergrande to finish up its unfinished homes
under construction, for the same reason. Evergrande is estimated to
have a staggering 1.5 million unfinished properties, for which down
payments have been collected, but many of which have stopped
construction, for lack of funding. Private property developers are
being told to prepare to take over projects left unfinished by
Evergrande.

Evergrande's Ponzi scheme involved using the down payments for new
homes to pay off old debts. Many of these down payments were also
used for risky ventures in electric vehicle manufacturing, bottled
water, football clubs, and amusement parks. So now, many of these
homes are incomplete in ghost cities.

Evergrande is offering a fire sale of unfinished or unoccupied
properties, in order to generate cash. Estimates are that you can get
something for 40% of its market value. However, China's real estate
is in a bubble, and there is a fear that this action will cause
property values generally to fall sharply, causing bankruptcies in
other areas of the economy.

Chinese banks, including Bank of China and China CITIC Bank Corp, are
now closely monitoring their own clients and scrutinizing all loans,
to make sure that no other construction firm is about to fail because
of its own Ponzi scheme. Credit is being eliminated or tightened for
fourth-tier and third-tier cities actoss China. Smaller Chinese
banks are themselves being scrutinized for viability.

****
**** The 'moral hazard' problem
****

Whenever any investors or debtors are bailed out for any reason in any
country, there is always a "moral hazard" problem. This is the
problem that risky or reckless behavior should not be rewarded with a
bailout, since that will encourage others to pursue to risky and
reckless behavior.

According to reports, Chinese regulators do not want to get involved
in any sort of bailout of Evergrande or any of its subsidiaries
until the very last moment, and then only if absolutely necessary.

Most analysts seem to believe that the Chinese Communists will be able
to contain the damage from an Evergrande default, with no systemic
damage to China's economy and no sustained social unrest or
rebellions, although investors outside of China may lose all or almost
all of these investments.

****
**** Crypto-currency crackdown
****

Last week's article described a related matter -- a crackdown on
China's Macau, the capital capital of Asia. I'm told that the purpose
of the crackdown was end Macau's use of money laundering, particularly
the practice by wealth mainlanders of using sending money abroad
through Macau.

This week on Friday, the Chinese Communists announced a crackdeown on
crypto-currencies like Bitcoin. Not only will use of cryto-currencies
be made illegal, but any transactions involving the will be illegal.

Once again, this is apparently a way to prevent money laundering,
particularly when used to send money abroad.

Sources:

• China Evergrande: from ‘controlled demolition’ to near-certain default and state takeover, money managers outline views on unfolding debt crisis (South China Morning Post, Hong Kong, 24-Sep-2021)
  
• Alarmed by Evergrande, China's lenders hold back on new credit for property developers (Reuters, 24-Sep-2021)
  
• China tells Evergrande to avoid near-term dollar bond defaults (Bloomberg, 23-Sep-2021)
  
• S.Korean stocks post weekly decline as Evergrande debt woes continue (Reuters, 24-Sep-2021)
  
• Evergrande Missed Payment Deadline on Global Bonds, According to Reports. (Barrons, 24-Sep-2021)
  
• China Steps In To Ensure Evergrande Funds Used To Complete Housing Project, Not Pay Creditors (ZeroHedge, 24-Sep-2021)
  
• Evergrande Selective Default: Offshore Bondholders 'Run Out Of Hope' (ZeroHedge, 24-Sep-2021)
  
• Evergrande Auto Hasn't Sold A Single Car, But Has Enriched Its Founder (ZeroHedge, 23-Sep-2021)
  
• Dow Turns Lower, Tech Slides As Evergrande Default Saga, Supply Chain Chaos Weigh (TheStreet, 24-Sep-2021)
  
• Evergrande has missed some of its key bond payments. Now what? (Quartz, 24-Sep-2021)
  
• China declares all crypto-currency transactions illegal (BBC, 24-Sep-2021)
  
• China's top regulators ban crypto trading and mining, sending bitcoin tumbling (Reuters, 24-Sep-2021)
  
• UBS Bets on Evergrande Bailout (Finews, 21-Sep-2021)

Related Article:

• China's Evergrande financial crisis threatens China's financial stability (16-Sep-2021)
  

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, China, Evergrande Group, Ponzi scheme,
UBS, moral hazard, Bank of China, CITIC Bank Corp,
Macau, crypto-currencies, Bitcoin

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Phone: 617-864-0010
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