Petro Sales

Currency Blindness and the Blindness of the Working Class

It is hard to fight a class war blindfolded.

• There is no such thing as a “petrodollar.”
• There is no such thing as a “global reserve currency.”

Two little eye-drop morsels there to open your eyes a bit today.

The “petrodollar” and “global reserve currency” are right-wing/neoliberal myth-makings, so do not fall for them, they skew discourse and limit people’s imaginations about how the working class can gain real effective power.

Aaron Good Bad Again

Here Aaron is speaking with former spook, John Kiriakou. Mostly good stuff, I recommend listening. Goes way over the heads of, and/or way underneath the radar of, mainstream media.

But I reckon Aaron’s thesis becomes even more hard hitting if he understood monetary systems properly. He takes a normative post-Keynesian–Marxist ideological stance, which might be fine for purposes of some political psychology analysis, but is horrifically 𖨚𖢧ꚶ𖡮𖥣𖦧𖥣 when it comes to monetary systems analysis. With me, in case you wanna know, it is always ꕷꖡꖹꘝꕯꕒ ideas, not 🆂🅃𝑢𝓅ⓘ𝕕 people. People are not their ideas. We do however know people through their ideas, which is deceptive, and a cause of needless hatred.

Don’t de-power the working class. Keeping people in ignorance is de-powering.

Because modern society since forever (way before capitalism) operates a monetary system (the social records of account) if you fail to analysis this system correctly it can skew your political analysis, which is the case here, since Aaron is missing a whole lot of important detail when he ascribes the break-down of Bretton-Woods as the foment of the rise of Neoliberalism — this simplifies what he says, but it is basically what he is saying(?).

Neoliberalism is a long project, which began well before Nixon took the USA out off Bretton-Woods. I see neoliberalism as an academic-facing branch of the deeper deep state network, not overtly tied to the mobs and the criminal underworld and seedy aristocratic overworld. (It probably is, since the wider network is certainly cohesive via ordinary capitalism motives and ideology.) But that’s a topic for another day.

Records of Account Straightened

Today I only want to make the necessary corrections, and leave it to you all to determine what this further implies for Aaron’s thesis, which is essentially a correct thesis.

Do not read this paragraph if you want an unbiased view:
My view is that while Capitalism (exploitation of labour by a privileged owner-class) is a source of so many of our ills, it is not by any means the sole source of most of our ills. “Capitalism” is in a sense an idealist myth, which I would say is set-up to be a convenient target for “the Left” to waste ammo at attacking???!!!! I do think for certain it is vital to have a class critique, and hence a critique of capitalism, but the problem is far worse than normal marxists will say or write about. Aaron’s thesis is the correct critique of capitalism, because it peels away the facade of power, and reveals the true rot.

Also don’t read this one:
I would not claim capitalist structures (bosses “own” the labour hours of the workers) are not most truly horrific. They do cause enormous suffering! Nor would I claim capitalism does not boost the criminal underworld and overworld of the deep state. But what I would say is that these more nefarious elements controlling political economy precede Capitalism qua Marx, by ancient orders of time magnitude.

Also, also, don’t read this one:
The basic injustice is aristocracy, writ large. Capitalism is just a slicker modern form of a nest of diseased flies of aristocrats. So it must be done away with. But Capitalism was not the cause of this nest of flies, it just allowed more of them to breed. Socialists who hate me might say I am not being socialist or revolutionary enough. But I would say I am far more anti-capitalist than they are. I do not need to defend myself though, it is all plain to see if you open your eyes.

One framework that is good, good because it is plain & obvious, is MMT — an understanding the currency is a simple public monopoly & all of the consequences thereof.

“M.M.T.” is a dopey acronym. It is not modern. It is not about just the money. It has theoretical aspects but is primarily descriptive.

The Better Critique of Capitalism

I think I just did this.

So let’s move now to a little critique of Aaron and Kiriakou, which I believe would better inform their critique of prevailing political economy and open up more avenues for interpreting recent political history. Stuff more in line with say Bill Mitchell.

🤑 Fake economics here  from an otherwise terrific social scientist, so disappointing.

USA was not converting to gold since 1930’s. Bretton-Woods was a fixed exchange rate regime, not a gold standard. The “metal” is always a pretense, a form of needless austerity (which is to suppress demand, but in fact also kills people — “Sorry we run out of a rather useless metal so cannot pay for free healthcare...”. The number of certificates for “gold” was so over-subscribed it was a farce (pretense, smoke & mirrors, innocent fraud, etc.) the currency was in fact always fiat with demand driven by coercive tax liabilities. No one seriously desired the gold except rubes, until the French pressed the issue for purely political reasons (it was not the “get their gold”).

The monopoly currency issuer does not sell bonds to get their own scorepoints. The bonds are interest rate maintenance (for no useful purpose once you are on a float). ((Not even necessary on fixed exchange rate/peg, since the government still has a policy option to tolerate inflation in order to maintain full employment.)) This serves no useful purpose except basic income but only for people who already have money and in proportion to how much money they already have.

The gold/oil “currency” pretense is exchange: only foreign governments and central banks could present dollars for gold; private convertibility was gone. All this gold/oil “money” was is simple trade, you get $ the other guys gets some commodity. It is a simple sales transaction. But like the drug and sex traffic trade, it can be used and exploited for sure for no damn good at all.

A labour standard occurs when the State exchanges the tax credits for labour, and does not redeem for anything but tax liabilities. (But this has always been the case, though mixed up with other currency issuing policies.) It is not so easy to exploit, since now you are asking real people to be the actual “units” being exchanged, their labour time. This is the proper “labour theory of value” — the monopolist tells you the price. This creates the secondary labour market for those who cannot create the currency by keystrokes. It is in unfair market without State support for private sector labour (a job guarantee would be the minimum base case support for labour).

There is also no such thing as a petrodollar nor a “global reserve currency”. Those are myths fabricated by the power elites — I would argue sometimes not deliberately! But when deliberate and knowing they are control over the ignorant masses, entrenching policies on top of it all that impose austerity on the working class, and ensuring rents trickling up to the rich & powerful, underworld and overworld. The “tax payer” always funds the private sector, not the public sector. Government net spending funds the tax payer.

If you re-analyze Aaron’s basic thesis from this point of view, it is even more sinister and I would claim so it is!

Using Your Imagination — The Consequences

That’s all I need to write I think. I already feel like I preach too much what is plain & obvious. If you take into consideration the above corrections, I think you can gain an even sharper understanding of the deep state and also a better understanding of how to extricate ourselves from it all.

One consequences: the deep state (both over and under worlds) are massive ecological economic drag. They have to go for considered material reasons now just as much for moral reasons, although the moral reasons should have been sufficient!!

The parliamentary representatives who claim they are too scared and fear for their lives if they speak what they know to be the truth are not worthy of political office. It is perhaps harsh to say this, safer in New Zealand of course, but in our day & age we need politicians who are prepared to lose their lives by speaking the truth. (Or lose their livelihood/income/house...) It is also somewhat self-centered to think you are the one great guy who will be the one assassinated.

However, we cannot entirely blame these weak & feckless politicians if they have no support from the mass of the people. What would you do in their shoes?

Wouldn’t you realize it was a fruitless quixotic quest? So would you not first build a massive well-educated (not by fake neoliberal schooling) working class base across the pomo cultural divides that forge only pointless hate and disunity?

The obvious way to support the feckless politicians is through public education ... not of the neoliberal variety. So stop spreading Thatcherite myths like “tax payer funded....”

Oil and Currency

I wanted to stop above, but this episode of American Exception is worth making a note or two on, for a longer write-up some other day.

With an Oil & Currency analysis the political facade(s) and propagandist efforts melt away into plastic cheese and popcorn laughs. (Which is not to say it is not all evil 𝕒𝕗.) The NATO rhetoric that Russia has evil designs on conquering Europe, et cetera, are not only laughable, they are barely deflection. Residual deflection seems to operate effectively still for the proverbial “normies”?

It's about raw power and currency, it’s not about the gold.

But why is it that most media, even Indie media, fail to point out (many of) the real causes of these wars?

Even those who know it is over Oils & Profits (Oils ~ all critical commodities, tomorrow lithium?), seem to me to not advance the deeper truth that trade is always a way for a nation to get what it needs of which it cannot produce domestically. So there is no cause for war. The wars are all due to greed, not due to naïve militarism (imho). They are due to oligarchs refusing to pay a fair price, and of course wanting the capture the profits for themselves, and of course the plutocrat’s “need” to control the upper classes (professionals, academics, investors, capitalists, &c.).

A government never has a need to turn a profit (except socially — social profit, enhanced standards of living &c.) and so may always nationalize essential industries. Failure to nationalize essential industries is a cause of so much suffering. A government never needs to care what price it must pay for importing foreign goods, including oil & food. It has international rights to expect a fair price. But that price may always be paid — this is because even inflation is not a real constraint. That is all.

Overcoming inflation false psychology is largely a matter of MMT education. This, I believe, will not work if the knowledge is hoarded or only available to the well-educated credentialed elites.

When a government fails to nationalize such essential industry or imports, this is a root cause of war, because it out-sources energy supply to the rapacious criminal private sector.

The State sector may have criminogenic elements too, but it at least does not need to engage in piracy. But which Indie media outlets are pointing out this is the case? It is a massively important point to make. For it seems to me this is a critical way to overcome entrenched realpolitik.