Thomas_Dankara

joined 2 years ago
 

“Europe is a garden… And the rest of the world… is a jungle. And the jungle could invade the garden. And the gardeners should take care of it”

“The jungle has a strong growth capacity,” so he says “the gardeners have to go to the jungle”

[–] Thomas_Dankara@hexbear.net 0 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Alan Moore always hated capeshit and wrote Watchmen specifically as a deconstruction of it. imo "The Boys" is just Information Age Watchmen.

anyway here's a picture of Mr. Moore himself back in the 80s, when he wrote Watchmen :marx-goth:

[–] Thomas_Dankara@hexbear.net 0 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

3rd world nations: Give us reparations for climate change

1st world nations: Actually it's China's fault because we leveraged our economic hegemony to make them manufacture all the stuff. :soypoint-1::some-controversy::soypoint-2:

 

Twitter

Part 1: https://twitter.com/bidetmarxman/status/1564267348017938434

Part 2: https://twitter.com/bidetmarxman/status/1564268574075940870

Archive

Part 1: https://archive.ph/BqBlW

Part 2: https://archive.ph/fmsQE

Threadreaderapp

Part 1: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1564267348017938434.html

Part 2: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1564268574075940870.html


Text Part 1

It is impossible to understand the current existential threat the US feels from China without first understanding what happened to Japan 37 years ago.

This is the story of the Plaza Accord 🧵

As Japan emerged shattered from WW2, the US was intent on establishing a forward operating base from which to combat communism in Asia. So in the spring of 1949, under allied occupation, Japan joined a US-led system of monetary management known as the Bretton Woods agreement.

The agreement pegged the currencies of the largest economies to the USD, and the USD to gold, establishing the dollar as the global reserve currency. As a concession, the US allowed Japan to peg the yen to dollar at a favorable rate of 360:1, buoying Japan’s export economy.

While initially tolerable, the rapid post-war growth of Japan’s export industry quickly allowed them to outcompete US manufacturing by producing similar quality goods at 1/3rd the price. This led to significant anti-Japan reaction in the US, particularly amongst auto workers. The Bretton Woods Agreement...

As a result of this growth, experts began predicting in the ’70s that Japan could overtake the US as the world’s largest economy by century’s end. This trend only accelerated when the US was hit by the ’73 oil embargo.

https://www.nytimes.com/1970/12/13/archives/the-emerging-japanese-superstate.html

Meanwhile in the US, the costly Vietnam war, high social spending, and growing negative trade balance were all being financed by money printing. But almost as soon as they were printed, these newly minted dollars left the country via the US’s negative balance of trade. As a result of this monetary inflation, it was becoming increasingly clear the USD was overvalued relative to its fixed gold tether and in 1968, this overvaluation manifested as a collapse of the London gold pool, when growing US debts caused a loss of confidence in the dollar.

In 1971, Nixon intervened to address rising inflation by instituting domestic price controls and a blanket 10% import tariff. He also officially ended the direct convertibility of dollars to gold, untethering the dollar and effectively kicking off the fiat currency era.

With the dollar untethered, it could now drift toward its ‘true’ value. In ’73, the USD was again devalued against its official rate as the price of gold continued to rise. Soon after, Japan and the EEC were forced to let their currencies float, ending the Bretton Woods system.

With the USD now in turmoil, the late 70s saw the worst US inflation in decades. When Reagan took office in ’81, inflation had reached a crisis. To get it under control, the Fed increased interest rates to the highest level ever, with the prime rate peaking in Aug ’81 at 20.5%

While this finally brought inflation under control, it came at the expense of dramatic economic slowdown and mass unemployment. What followed was an era of lower interest rates, slashed social spending, regressive taxation, and massive military spending, aka ‘Reaganomics’. Reagan’s policies of military spending while cutting tax revenues resulted in an exploding deficit. This deficit spending combined with the contraction of US exports needed to be financed somehow. And the solution that was chosen was to sell the debt.

As a result of the high interest rates of the early 80s, combined with a flood of new government debt entering the market, demand for USD soared, and between 1980 - 85 the dollar appreciated against the currencies of the next four largest economies by a whopping 50%.

While good news for the cost of imported goods, this strong dollar was disastrous for US exports, and contributed to the further collapse of domestic manufacturing.

But who was buying all this debt?

Japan.

By 1985, capital inflow attracted by these high interest rates meant that Japan owned more US-treasuries than any other country. But why buy only treasuries?

Because after the collapse of Bretton Woods, the US began stipulating that dollars accrued through trade surplus could not be used to buy major American companies, only allowing them to be recycled back into the American economy to purchase debt securities. With this, the USD had finally landed on a foundation seemingly more stable than gold: dollar recycling. This recycling became the way in which the US has been able to maintain both a budget deficit and a balance-of-payments deficit year-over-year, seemingly without consequence.

And while export countries gain a small but stable return from these US securities, they inadvertently finance the cost of surrounding themselves with 800 American military bases, which are then used to break any country that tries to form alternatives to this dollar system. But this system of maintaining the dollar created a new problem: too much indebtedness to one country would pose a strategic threat. And with Japan now the primary debt holder, the US needed to throw a wrench in the engine driving Japan’s growing leverage.

Enter the Plaza Accord Assembling leaders from the top 5 economies in Sept ’85, the Plaza accord was designed to boost US manufacturing and agricultural exports and lower the value of the US Treasury instruments purchased with the trade surpluses held by other countries. At least on paper. But the true aim of the accord was to cripple Japan’s manufacturing-driven economy.

The plan had 2 parts. The 1st part was to decrease the value of the USD, while the 2nd was to deregulate Japan’s economy, loosen monetary policy / liberalize markets, and cut government spending.

To accomplish the first, Germany agreed to dump a massive portion of its USD foreign reserves, flooding markets with USD and driving the relative value downward. The actual USD surplus that entered the market was less impactful than the implied threat of further intervention.

Almost overnight, the higher relative value of the yen made Japanese exports much less competitive. At the same time, Japanese capital was being incentivized by the US-backed deregulation of the Japanese economy into real estate, the stock market, and even more US treasuries.

The deregulation that followed also led to foreign capital flowing into Japan like a firehose. Tokyo’s stock market index rose 49% in the year after the accords. By 1989, it had risen 300% and Japanese stocks comprised almost half the entire world’s equity market cap. As the newly available cheap credit created by the Bank of Japan congealed within Japan’s real estate sector, a massive asset price bubble began to grow.

In 1987, Washington piled on further to break the back of Japan’s manufacturing base by imposing 100% tariffs on $300 million worth of imports from Japan, effectively blocking them from the US market.

Eventually, Japan’s financialized frenzy had to end. On the eve of 1990, the real-estate and stock market bubbles finally popped, resulting in widespread collapse and sustained stagnation of Japan’s economic growth, beginning a period now known as “the lost decades”.

And while Japanese exports became more expensive overnight, productive capital couldn’t shift as quickly. It took another 5 years after the financial bubble popped before the actual productive output of Japan finally began to sputter.

Where did production shift to? In response to the tariffs, some production, such as Japanese auto manufacturers, relocated to the US, while the rest, particularly electronic goods, moved to China. I

Given that this exact outcome was largely predictable at the outset of the accords, why did Japan agree to so thoroughly subordinate their own economy to US interests?

Because the post-WW2 US occupation of Japan never ended.

(End of part 1. Part 2 won't fit in this post)

[–] Thomas_Dankara@hexbear.net 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I think on a long enough timeline it could be said Gorbachev killed more people than WW2. Because what he really did was he dismantled the nation best equipped to handle climate change, and to help others handle climate change. :doomjak:

[–] Thomas_Dankara@hexbear.net 0 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (3 children)

Gorbachev said in an interview in Turkey in 2000 "My ambition was to liquidate Communism." and establish a "Union of Independent Sovereign Republics" and to basically help America fight China. So he wanted a return of bourgeois nationalism, and a fully capitalist mode of production, but without dissolving the USSR, and with the addition of social democracy, which would rely on imperialism. It was a very naive in my opinion.

[–] Thomas_Dankara@hexbear.net 1 points 2 years ago (5 children)

NO NO NO NO

NOT GOD BLESS AMERICA

GOD DAMN AMERICA

 
[–] Thomas_Dankara@hexbear.net 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

not only do we not guarantee staple foods for all, but supermarkets throw out millions of tons of (barely expired) foods every year and deliberately lock the dumpsters so the homeless can't loot them. There are several foods, like plain yogurt, which have artificially low expiration dates and get thrown out long before they truly expire.

I'll never forget when I worked for a supermarket when I was 20 and was made to throw out an entire garbage bag full of cookies that had been only slightly overcooked by the bakery. They tasted great and were NOT burned. I ate as many as I could on the way to the garbage disposal. Had I not been under the direct eye of management I would have found a way to sneak it to the homeless outside.

 

...interesting

before this

after this

[–] Thomas_Dankara@hexbear.net 1 points 2 years ago

i remember trying to tell my lib grandma some of this stuff, and she constantly just tone policed me. "You should breathe more." "Calm down." "You're talking too fast." "You know you sound really angry right now." "I can't pay attention to what you're saying when you get like this."

This bizarre part of this is I was being very calm, slow, patient, and was taking care to police my own tone. I wasn't actually worked up. It felt like a deliberate strategy of avoidance.

[–] Thomas_Dankara@hexbear.net 1 points 2 years ago (4 children)

i find it tragic that the propaganda is so powerful people were fooled into dying for NATO and neo nazis.

 

https://reddit.com/r/TrueAnon/comments/t97uz9/the_situation_at_large/

obligatory good post deconstructing the otherwise-funny meme:

This kinda shit obfuscates the direct nazi parentage of NATO and the Gladio militants in Ukraine, as well as the Banderite parentage of the Ukrainian Nationalist movement at large.

It's kinda the same with the laser focus on Azov when Banderism is much more pervasive and influential than this one battalion.

Ukraine doesn't just have a handful of fascists mercenaries they work with, the entire conception of Ukrainian nationalism as it exists is wrought with fascism and descended from the movements of literal collaborators in the holocaust. It's also part of a long history of NATO supporting and fostering nazi movements to do its bidding, or being staffed by literal Nazi generals.

[–] Thomas_Dankara@hexbear.net 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

every US president since the invention of fascism is a fascist, and every president before the invention of fascism was a proto-fascist

all the chaos occurring in the Ukraine is the fault of the United States. Putin is the fault of the United States. Zelensky is the fault of the United States. Azov Battalion is the fault of the United States. NATO is the fault of the United States. Anyone who does not take this line is either naive or is a liberal fascist.

You would not have a quasi-fascist like Putin running Russia if it weren't for the fascist neoliberal looting of the former USSR, which was the greatest dream of the fascist Truman doctrine realized. The world as it exists today is the twitching corpse of the cold war, which was won by fascists. The world we live in was created by fascists, is run by fascists, and will be destroyed by fascists.

"Calf cramping?" Ask the liberal fascists about that.

[–] Thomas_Dankara@hexbear.net 0 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

Putin and Zelensky as leaders wouldn't be in power if it weren't for US-led NATO imperialism going back to 1949

Thank every president since Truman for being united in the consensus of walling off the global north and looting the global south