STOCK MARKETS SHIVER AS PAN-ARABIA BROILS

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Pan-Arabia, the whole region comprised of Arab ethnicities and state, is broiling in hot embers of social turmoil. As the turmoil escalates, with civil war as the maximum broiler exemplified by Libya, stock markets tumble and shiver.

We thought the new phenomenon of stock markets insulating themselves from political-military hot fires is the order of the day. It seems this isn’t so, as we see the diverse stock markets shiver and grope for better light with the advent of the Arabian broil.

The Philippine stock exchange, which hit the highest level of 4,400+ points late last year, had since been tumbling down, hitting a low level of 3,700+ points since the Arab broils began with the Tunisian crisis. The previous forecasts of the same stock market breaching the 4,800+ points is mere delusional, it is good material for banters and guffaws.

Sure, the Asian growth wave has been helping to jettison stock markets in Asia to better levels, I have no problem accepting this development. I already wrote notes about the matter and published them recently. But there are X factors that can affect stock markets, inclusive of a possible World War III that will pit the Sunni-Zionist alliance versus the Iran-led Shiite coalition.

To my own amazement, the Arab internal turmoil came, thus brushing aside the probability of a global war. Amazement, as I find myself in league with the pro-democracy younger generations of Arabs. Instead, the turmoil by itself has been affecting financial and capital markets in large measures, and so this for us is the X Factor worth observing.

We were all witness to how a political event—the Red Shirts mass upheaval in Thailand—brought down the Bangkok stock markets to pathetic lows last year. That political event was just confined to Thailand by the way, yet the stock markets of contiguous economies did quiver badly while the turmoil was unfolding.

In Pan-Arabia, the turmoil is region-wide, with Tunisia and Egypt showing the way to ‘regime change’ via people power upheaval or revolution. There is not a single political movement orchestrating the turbulence by the way, and let there be no mistake that the turmoil isn’t susceptible to manipulation by any one political or imperialistic force.

A turbulence so gigantic as to embroil an entire region comprising of almost two (2) dozen states is just too mind boggling for various quarters. Financial and stock analysts could be at a lost at the moment for answers to the puzzles raised by the pan-Arabian turmoil, just as political analysts are at a lost for their equivalence of efficacious tools and forecasts.

So the question that can be raised from the unfolding events in pan-Arabia is: will the turmoil make or brake global stocks altogether? If in case the stock markets will plunge anew from this juncture, will the end of the pan-Arabian crisis put an end to the plunge and bring back the stock markets to new bullish rounds? Or, will the stock markets see the end of them all, and lead to the de-institutionalization of centuries of stock trading?

I am of the opinion that stock markets should be abolished altogether, and forecast many years past that stock markets will crash down to never land in the foreseeable future. That crashing down began in 2007, and a much bigger crash will happen sooner or later. The result of that crash will see the greater justification for abolishing the dirty gambling game of stock trading, and lead to alternative capitalization of enterprises other than stock trading.

So let’s all watch out closely for the unfolding events, and see how they dovetail into the stock trading trends. If ever stock markets will show semblance of growth, this will be only tentative till the last month of 2012 if ever. Stock markets will have no future beyond 2012, rest assured.

[Philippines, 09 March 2011]

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FOOD PRICES UP, SPECULATORS ATTACK ANEW!

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Winds of change are blowing hard on the granite edifices of autocratic regimes in pan-Arabia. As this is happening, financier speculators cashed in on the conflict by playing it up in the petrol spot market, thus raising oil prices to scorching heat levels. More areas of the global economy are under attack by the financier speculators, food & beverage among them.

As gas price in Manila has been rising by the week, so have the prices of food been going up. We are today on a bounty season for fruits here at the tropics—near the equator—yet such commodities’ prices are also moving up abnormally like they were in a situation of scarcity. Grains, vegetables, meat, cooking oil, and other related prime commodities have been accompanying the spurious OPH (oil price hike).

Little do common folks realize the handiwork of greedy speculators in the present inflationary patterns in food on a worldwide range. But that’s the fact, and many times before was it proved beyond doubt that greedy speculators, fronted by dirty operators, have always been busying their hands in reaping mega-profits on food commodities during times of crises.

Fact is, even when there is no crisis—such as crisis in the supply line—the speculators create the situation of crisis by hoarding millions of tons of specific commodities, e.g. rice. The instantaneous effect is the sign given off to traders in the commodities markets to play it up on the trading engagements, and elevating the emotive facet of the matter to the level of panic and near-hysteria.

Remember that time three (3) years back or so when rice suddenly began to disappear in the retail end of the market in the Philippines. There was a bounty season at that juncture, which came as a shock to me upon knowing from insiders (ground-level traders) that gargantuan hoards of rice were hidden inside many warehouses. President Arroyo then announced to the world that the PH will buy rice from overseas no matter how much the price is.

Of course, the commodities traders (speculative investors) heard the signal well. And voila! Rice prices across continents skyrocketed almost overnight! I even went on to forecast that it the near future, a cartel of sorts will be organized by certain countries to protect themselves versus the attackers. To make my hair rise on ends, hardly a day passed when I published my blog article about the forecast, certain Southeast Asian countries announced the formation precisely of such a rice cartel.

As the conflict situation in pan-Arabia boils up for some time, mark it down that the same coterie of financier speculators will keep on pursuing speculative attacks on certain prime commodities. Let’s not be surprised at all if the major staples—wheat, rice, sorghum, barley, oat, potatoes, yam—will experience inflationary upsets on the retail end over the next forty-five (45) days or so.

I have to prepare myself psychologically for the hyper-criminal speculative attacks this time. During the global rice crisis mentioned, I experienced sudden hypertension attack, as my cardiac condition quickly reacted to the rapidity of the crisis up to the pronouncement of rice cartel formation, rendering my forecasts a 100% mark hit.

So you fellow global citizens better watch out for the unfolding events, so as to prepare yourselves psychologically and financially too.

[Philippines, 08 March 2011]

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CONTINUING BOURSE PLUNGE DOWN NEAR DEPRESSION LEVEL

Bro. Erle Frayne Argonza

Good afternoon, Fellows of Planet Earth!

The planet’s bourses are still plunging as of yesterday (Friday), a day that was dabbed as ‘black Friday’ in Japan which saw the Nikkei plunge by 10%. ‘Bloody Friday’ may be a better term, as the word ‘black’ in ‘black Friday’ could be construed as a racial slur.

This gentleman is among the economists/social scientists in Manila who forecast, way back in the late 1980s yet, that the Western economies led by the USA will experience another horrific depression this decade. We were then following the trends of a yawning gap between the ‘financial economy’ or ‘virtual economy’ and the ‘real economy’ based on the GDP statistics. The American economist Lyndon LaRouche devised a very potent graph of the event which he termed as ‘collapse function’.

As of late 2007, debts in the USA already exceeded the GDP by four (4) times. That means that, in the event of a bubble burst (which came from the realty markets), the economy will come crashing down. It is simply impossible for a $13 Trillion GDP to pay up for debts approximating $50 Trillion last year. In the secondary debt markets, financial derivatives exposures breached the $120 Billion mark in the USA last year, and that all the more exacerbates the weakness and fragility of a $13Trillion economy that simply doesn’t have the money to pay up for ballooning private and public debts.

My own forecast is that the stock market plunge across the globe, which is now in the vogue of a ‘freefall’, will continue till next year yet. At its best, the Dow Jones index reached past 13,000 points about less than a couple of years ago. The same index had already shrunk below 10,000 points at its worst. By next year, the Dow will further shrink by as low as 8,000-8,500 points, the range that actually represents the real value of the entire US economy.

1 Point in the US bourse is equivalent to $1.5 Billion more or less, at its best. A shrunken size would deflate the value to around $1 Billion. At 13,300 points, the Dow index represents a value worth $20 Trillion, which seemingly exceeds the GDP of the entire federation. But that amount is largely speculation, the speculative value exceeding beyond 50% of the real value of the commodity lines traded.

8,500 points in the Dow index would yield, at deflated value, around $8.5 Trilion dollars. That same estimate is the real value of the US economy in GDP terms, per year, as of today. The value of $13 Trillion includes the value of speculation and fiction, on account of the predominance of the ‘virtual economy’.

As I’ve already explained in a previous article, the Bush-Paulson bailout, allocated an amount of $700 Trillion, is a faulty measure to salve the financial ailments of the USA. It follows from the flawed Japanese ‘crisis management’ bailout of huge banks that went in the red last decade, a tragic measure that flattened Japan’s growth to almost zero for around ten years at least. It is a band aid solution to a gargantuan problem that is equivalent to cancer, and everybody knows that band aid doesn’t cure cancer.

That explains the jittery situation of the post-bailout law scenario. Financial traders and investors who still recall well the Japanese fiasco just couldn’t be appeased by a repeat of the same band aid solution, this time to an economy almost three times bigger than Japan’s (in real value). For as long as no strategic solution to the global financial crash is in site, the stock markets will be jittery till next year, and before long we would see both the USA and Europe plunge back to the depression years of the mid-1920s to early 1930s.

Let’s see what will happen to the election fever in the USA. Some liquidity will be produced by the election spending there, and the optimistic pitch created by the electoral situation may somehow drive back the bourses up a bit. That is just a temporary respite from the blazing flames of the crash, rest assured.

[Writ 11 October, 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]

CAPITALISM’S DEMISE: WHAT WENT WRONG?

Erle Frayne Argonza

To all fellow men and women out there who may have deep fondness for the liberal capitalist model of economic adaptation, I hope that you can make some adjustments in your cognitive banks. Capitalism is not a permanent facet of human life, but merely one among various epochs that will come to pass. Only impermanence is sacrosanct in the cosmos, so please refrain from singing hallelujah to a world system that is on its death knell as I articulated in a previous article.

And please refrain from swallowing hook-line-&-sinker the contentious propaganda of Francis Fukuyama about the ‘end of history’, that accordingly history had concluded with the galvanization of liberal capitalism, that history makes no more sense. Fukuyama’s theory is a slapstick narrative of hyper-valuation of the ‘mad economics’ of late capitalism and hypo-statization of reality that has no relation at all to the real in the world out there. Fukuyama had taken as ‘real’ what is actually ‘virtual’, and froze time much like unto a fairy tale of timelessness, of history-less Nietzschean moment that is fit more for infants than for adult humans.

Fukuyama epitomizes the ‘mad economics’ of all those Pied Pipers of the global oligarchy for whom he works, and his discourse is akin to the ‘mad discourse’ so described by the late Michel Foucault. The ‘mad economics’ of Friedman, Hayek, Fukuyama, and all those technocrats who serve as processors and bagmen for the global oligarchy, is precisely symptomatic of that colossal ailment of a world system, and as we all know, madness can never salve ailments but rather hasten the system’s death. Caput! Blow your horns, prepare dirges to this Dead One!

Unless that you yourselves have become maddened by the seemingly infinite monies flowing unto your purses as you are among the beneficiaries of ‘late’ capital, unless that you are indeed now suffering from combined maladies of sociopathy and schizophrenia, unless that sanity had departed from thee forever, please heed the last plea of your own conscience where sanity had retreated: CAPITALISM IS DEAD! No amount of propagandizing, of contorted interpretations, can ever change the course of history at this juncture, as we are all headed for a TOTAL SYSTEM COLLAPSE in the months ahead. Read that please: MONTHS AHEAD, not years ahead.

What went wrong with capitalism? I’m sure all of you fellows knew what went wrong, do I even need to answer that? Your previous thinker mentors, among economists and sociologists, forewarned you all of the forthcoming demise of capitalism, but you paid nary an attention to those brilliant minds as you were so engrossed in your ‘conspicuous consumption’, behaving more like some infantile EATERS or as anthropoids rather than as thinking and spiritually evolving humans. You are all very much human, so please consistently behave like one, and begin by listening to the Inner Voice of your conscience, for that voice is your soul’s.
Let me summarize the diagnostics, forewarnings and/or prophecies of our thinker mentors from the West, and I’d stress WEST because there are some other thinker mentors from the EAST and SOUTH whose peregrinations are so recondite they are not so easily digestible. Let me just stress the WEST as this is what is common to us all. So let me re-echo the thinkers and their theories:

· Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels: The internal contradictions between the private nature of capital (ownership of means of production) and the social nature of production. The ‘crisis of overproduction’ and the ‘law of the falling rate of profit’ are attendant patterns. Social revolution results, then the alternative society will be constructed.

· Max Weber: Industrial capitalism’s granite product, the bureaucracy, led to dehumanization. He never forecast though whether this dehumanizing system can be sustained—but please read between the lines. (His contemporary Emile Durkheim had a similar observation about ‘anomie’ or normless state of urban/industrial society.)

· Thorsten Veblen: The end-phase of industrial capitalism is markedly pathological. ‘Conspicuous consumption’ is the disease of this phase, the toxic behavior from the ruling class that later filtered down to the emerging middle class.

· Joseph Schumpeter: The internal contradiction between the desire for profit and the revolutionary character of innovation. The demise of capitalism will see the possibility of the technical class taking over society and build that alternative system later.

· Daniel Bell: The ‘post-industrial’ society had already been born right inside capitalism. A distinct modality in itself, post-industrialism will eventually prevail in a system that isn’t capitalist (or money economy) but rather knowledge-based. The ‘service worker’ had arrived on the social landscape, the prototype class of the future.

· Theodore Adorno, Jurgen Habermas, Herbert Marcuse: ‘Late’ capital is characterized by the pervasiveness of ‘instrumental reason’, where reason is used to justify the non-rational (‘madness’ in Foucault’s argot), where state planning/intervention was infused into a system that scorned intervention.

· Alvin Toffler: Both capitalism and socialism are based on hoarding, both are variants of the same industrial society of yesteryears, both are based on ‘2nd wave’ capital-intensive technologies and non-renewable energy sources. The ‘post-industrial’ society is altogether distinct, isn’t based on hoarding, production-consumption (‘prosumer’) is based on ‘3rd wave’ knowledge-intensive technologies and renewable energy sources, knowledge cannot be hoarded.

I need not articulate further, do I? They all converged on one theme: capitalism is transitory, it bred social maladies (alienation, dehumanization, anomie, conspicuous consumption,…), is systemically flawed, and will be dismantled at sometime in the future.

No matter how delimited their theories maybe, as they all proceeded from certain perspectives (they were all ‘paradigm’-based in the jargon of Thomas Kuhn), they all proclaimed—in either tacit or explicit fashion—the coming demise of the system. They weren’t as silly as Fukuyama who popularized seemingly ‘satanic verses’ (distorted precepts) about a non-changing, permanent economic landscape called ‘liberal capitalism’, but were rather so adroit at social forecasting that they saw a vision of the future as they were articulating on their empirical observations of the present society.

So, fellows out there, prepare for the months and years ahead. We are headed towards those stormy months, years, maybe even decades. How the future society will come to shape is not easy to forecast. “Something blurs the Force, darkens our sight of the future,” declared a Jedi Master in the Star Wars cinema fame. Let me end right here.

[Writ 22 August 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila.]

ANOTHER GREAT DEPRESSION COMING AS FINANCIAL SYSTEM ENDS

Bro. Erle Frayne Argonza

Is the global economy moving downward towards a devastating collapse?

If we employ a long-term Kondratieff cycle to model the world economy, we can see that the period beginning in 1935 approximately (when the big market economies US-UK-Germany moved towards another cycle of growth approximately after the Great Depression) should have ended around 1995 approximately, after which comes another great depression.

As early as 1989, ramblings of a global collapse began to murmur in the US economy. Mexico, Japan, Argentina, and other economies followed in the 1990s, while Europe went through a general low-growth trend that was the most sustainable for the continent as a whole. Then came the Asian meltdown of 1997. Then the USA again went through a recession in 2001, a pattern that has been repeated again from 2008 to the present. It seems that the pillars of the world economy couldn’t get out of a short-term crisis without having to crash back to another episode of short-term crisis altogether.

Is it really a ‘short-term’ crisis in the first place? Or is it in fact a ‘systemic crisis’, and that the financial downspin the Northern economic pillars are going through could very well be the terminal phase of a very long cycle of growth that began after the end yet of the Treaty of Westphalia (1648)? That in fact, several long-wave Kondratieff cycles have already passed over since that time, and that finally the system is DEAD in the wood?
Well, not only the financial system but the whole of CAPITALISM is already on its death throes.

Those oligarchs behind the systems now dying won’t see the system they built die down just like that without “bringing down the other houses” with them, it seems. Which means that, right after the terminal phase of the system, another huge, catastrophic war will come, which will later see another Westphalian-type treaty or so that will re-carve the contours of polities into a Post-Westphalian totalitarian technotronic global order.

Below is a briefer from the Executive Intelligence Review that summarizes the issue at hand.

[18 August 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila. Thanks to Executive Intelligence Review database news.]
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End of the Line for Financial System; Bankruptcy Issue Raised

Aug. 10, 2008 (EIRNS)—The death of the financial system was the implicit subject of several articles in the financial press over the weekend, reflecting the way reality is setting in and attitudes are changing.

"Investment banking is dying," was the blunt statement by William Cohan, in a op-ed in today's Washington Post entitled "The End of the Masters of the Universe?" Cohan says that the revenue streams of the investment banks are drying up, and that there is genuine fear in the corridors of power on Wall Street.

"We have a banking crisis and an agency crisis and a mortgage crisis and a coming credit card crisis. We've never seen anything like that before. And it all seems to be coming home to roost at the same time. That's never happened either," Charles Geisst, a professor of finance at Manhattan University, told yesterday's Washington Post. He said the Great Depression was the last time the financial markets were hammered by such a variety of factors, adding: "But we did not even have credit cards in the 1930s; there was no such thing as student loans."

The specter of generalized bankruptcy was raised by Yale finance professor Robert J. Shiller in an op-ed in the New York Times. Citing the failure of Bear Stearns and the government measures to bail out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Shiller asks, "What if the next case is worse? No one in government seems to feel a responsibility for warning about such possibilities and formulating a detailed policy for dealing with them." Shiller says that "Bankruptcy law is a good place to start. After all, the dreaded financial meltdown would amount to a wave of bankruptcies.... What would happen to the economy if hedge funds had to liquidate, one after another, in a financial crisis? We need to rethink the theory and practice of bankruptcy, given the new complexities."

Shiller points to the inherent limitations in current bankruptcy laws, which were largely drawn to protect narrow financial interests, and are poorly suited to deal with systemic problems, when a "subsidized system of triage would be needed to identify which companies should be saved, with the main criterion being the possible economic impact of their liquidation."

These comments, taken as a whole, represent the way discussions of the "unthinkable" are beginning to percolate, and converge upon the outlook of Lyndon LaRouche. Shiller's mention of triage by bankruptcy echoes the emergency measures proposed by LaRouche, of putting the financial system itself through bankruptcy, protecting the population with a firewall, and freezing the financial paper while we determine what debts will, and won't, be honored. Whatever Shiller may think about LaRouche's proposals, he is implicitly admitting that the system is finished, and that we must prepare for its demise, making decisions on the basis of the interests of society, and not merely the narrow interests of financial institutions. Reality is setting in, and reality leads inexorably to the policies outlined by LaRouche.

US WATCH: THE ‘VIRTUAL ECONOMY’ WRECKED UNCLE SAM

Bro. Erle Frayne Argonza

So, fellows out there, whatever happened that the once mighty US economy—once contributing to 40% of Gross World Product (GWP)—is now drifting downwards, producing now just 22% of GWP? That the EU would itself catch up with the USA and equally produces 22% of GWP, though EU’s money is bloodily mightier than Uncle Sam’s once mythical Dollar?

As a matter of realistic forecasting, if trends today would continue across the globe, Asia would overshadow both the US and EU, as follows: China will overtake each one of them by 2015; India, by 2022; ASEAN, by 2030.

While the US ‘real economy’ keeps on contracting (and the EU’s stagnates), the Asian economies are still expanding. 100 years ago the Western thinkers Oswald Spengler and Arnold Toynbee already forecast so sharply the ‘decline of the West’, while Daniel Bell foresaw in the 1950s-60s the rise of Asia-Pacific and its overtaking of the US 60 years hence (2005-2015 period). No one listened to them.

If we all recall, in the 1930s the great statesman Franklin Delano Roosevelt launched the ambitious New Deal. This program initiated gigantic growths in the ‘real economy’, solved unemployment, and led to high-growth and high-wage trends for sustained periods. By ‘real’ is meant the most productive sectors, namely: manufacturing/industry, agriculture, infrastructures, S&T, and transportation & communications.

By 1971, with enormous pressures from the financial cartels, the famed ‘gold standard’ was junked, the fixed exchange rate system was likewise junked in favor of ‘floating rate’, and after which serial liberalization of economic sectors and the bureaucracy went on in very radical fashion. This led eventually to the rise of the ‘virtual economy’ led by predatory finance, featuring hedge fund operations and ‘vulture funds’ to salve crisis-ridden financial enclaves more so overseas.

The ‘gambling economy’ based on speculation, conceit, lies, rather than based on the real value of consumable articles of trade, became the dominant modality in the USA. Debts and more debts piled up, since having no debt was moralized as bad behavior. Debs quadrupled in just a few decades, resulting to $5 Trillion worth of debts today.

How can an economy that churns out merely $12+ Trillion a year pay up for debts worth 4 times the GDP? It’s madness, blatant madness! The US economy is largely now a bubble, so gigantic that when it bursts, it can reveal the real flaws behind the ailments, and the weakness of the ‘real economy’ altogether.

The message to the next President & VP of the USA is to take down that ‘gambling economy’ or ‘virtual economy’ and quickly bring back the powerful ‘real economy’ in place. Failing to do that, Uncle Sam will be faced with many mass out-migrations beyond 2010, as true-blue Americans leave for more stable and promising jobs and businesses offshore. They’ve already began doing that in fact.

[Writ 05 June 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]

US WATCH: IT’S THE ECONOMY!

Bro. Erle Frayne Argonza

The US presidential polls are approaching. The Democrat Party nomination was recently concluded, and there goes the polls.

As an observer of ‘US reality’, I’d candidly say that if there’s anything most worrisome in the US right now, it’s the economy. Without the pejorative ‘stupid’ by the way, I leave that to Bill Clinton’s spin doctors.

Whoever wins, and whoever would be vice president, this tandem of statesmen (hopefully) will have to go about moving heaven and earth to salve the ailing economy. The ailment is not just a structural one that will be resolved with some palliatives.

First of all is the recession. There is no more denying about this fact. The more that the fed and monetary officials would deny information, the greater the amount of suspicion, the greater the legitimacy question. It was good that finally, there was the admission about the sad state of the economy.

Now, folks, most especially you American voters out there, the recession may not be the end of the downspin yet. Watch out, for the recession could well slide into depression. A 6-quarter period of sustained depression (which means a contraction below the established average, or below zero growth) could be the final blow to the long-drawn drift towards the total collapse of the once-mighty US economy.

Look at the signs of the times, Joe! After World War II, the US produced 40% of the Gross World Product or GWP. It’s now down to 22%. The EU, by integrating their economies, produce a similar aggregate of 22% of GWP. The trend is still of a downward drift, including the EU’s, over the years, not an upward lift.

As to what has been causing the downward drift, let’s take those matters slowly in quite chewable fashion. For now, it’s clear to this observer that “it’s the economy” and not the war or parochial sectoral matters such as immigration, gender, more autonomy for states and cities, and so on.

[Writ 05 June 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]

GLOBAL OLIGARCHS AND THE FOOD & ENERGY PRICE HIKES

Bro. Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago

Good afternoon, Fellows on Earth!

As already presented by this writer/analyst in my previous notes and articles, the current state of affairs of the global economy—which featured the inflationary upswings in the food and energy sectors—have a great deal to do with the machinations of the global financiers or oligarchy.

Across the ideological and paradigm streams, there has been the preponderance for speculations by the same financiers and subalterns that have been the main upward driver of prices in oil and food. The very same operators were also responsible for the temporary upswing in the price of the US dollar which remains as the chief legal tender for exchanging oil.

Below is an article from the Executive Intelligence Review that authenticates to a large degree the positions I took so far regarding oil and food.

[Writ 01 July 2008, Quezon City, Manila]

LaRouche: British Are Behind Food and Energy Hyperinflation

June 22, 2008--This release was issued on June 22 by the Lyndon Larouche Political Action Committee (LPAC).
Lyndon LaRouche today forcefully denounced Prince Philip and his fellow genocidalists in the Anglo-Dutch oligarchy, for willfully promoting the food and energy hyperinflation, which threatens to kill billions of people around the globe. "You cannot understand the current hyperinflationary crisis," LaRouche charged, "without first considering Prince Philip and the late Prince Bernhard's stated committment to wipe out 80% of the human population, through a combination of wars, diseases and famine. If Prince Philip, and his slavish followers like Al Gore were to succeed, the population of the planet would be reduced, in the next several generations, to well-under two billion people."

LaRouche was responding to news reports, in the past 24 hours, that the combined food and energy hyperinflation, has created a global national security crisis, threatening the survival of such leading nations as China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Zimbabwe, Morocco, and Egypt. "I warned, months ago, that the food crisis would soon emerge as the number one issue facing every government in the world," LaRouche commented. "The combined shock of $140 a barrel oil and food hyperinflation and shortages, willfully promoted by Anglo-Dutch speculators and their oligarchical backers, has thrown the world into an immediate crisis."

On Sunday, June 22, representatives of the world's leading oil producing and oil consuming countries will meet in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, to consider actions to deal with the crisis. Over 40 nations around the globe have been rocked by food riots and other protests over the hyperinflationary crisis, and the worst shocks, LaRouche warned, are coming during the immediate summer months ahead. "By the time we reach October," LaRouche warned, "the situation will be catastrophic."

"There are remedies, even at this late date, to deal with the energy and food hyperinflation," LaRouche continued, "but nothing is going to work unless and until we crush the power of the British oligarchy." LaRouche asked: "Do you really think that Saudi Arabia is going to cooperate, so long as their BAE ties to London remain intact—even if the very survival of the Saudi Royal Family is at stake?"

SPECULATION PESTERS FOOD: U.S. CASE

Bro. Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago

Greedy financiers across the globe made humungous killing in the commodities futures recently, which largely explains the sudden hyper-inflationary price increases in grains. The panic that resulted from the ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’ that food stocks are running out further exacerbated the already volatile situation of the food markets.

The flawed reasoning—that the problem has a great deal to do with the supply side—has been bandied by the paid Pied Pipers of the greedy financiers. This is an old hat lie, and facts about the capital and financial markets belie such cranky rationale for a sector (food) that has been subordinated to predatory finance worldwide.

Below is a case study regarding the subject matter of sky-rocketing food prices on account of speculation, culled from the Executive Intelligence Review. Make your own assessment about the matter.

[Writ 30 June 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]

Speculators Making Killer Profits Off Midwest Flooding While Farmers Can't Sell Grain

June 16, 2008 (EIRNS)—This morning's frantic speculation on the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) opened with corn (December futures) up 19 cents, for a record $8.06 a bushel (contrast to $4 a year ago); and new crop soybeans hit a record $15.53 a bushel (contrast to $8 a year ago). This is the 12th consecutive day for record-setting corn prices on the exchange, occasioned by binge-speculation off the likely destruction of at least 5 million acres (2 million hectares) of crops in the Midwest flood zone, including at least 3 million acres of corn (out of 86 million nationally).

The volume of grain and soy trading contracts is soaring on the CBOT, part of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME). All futures trading has risen 26 percent over the first part of 2008 on the CME, compared to same time 2007 (including non-commodity futures of all kinds). The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the Federal agency which could stop the deadly game, but will not, released a report June 13, showing huge flows of funds going into the corn market. The CFTC report gives specifics on the record volumes of outstanding corn commitments—amounting to paper bushels, the way paper barrels exist in oil speculation. The CFTC says that speculative funds have added 34,732 contracts to their long positions and cut 4,588 contracts from their short positions, putting them net long on 219,041 corn futures contracts. Index funds are now net long on 427,352 contracts.

At the same time, prices are falling for the farmer trying to forward-sell his corn or soybeans to his local buyer. There has been a 12 cent drop in the prices offered to farmers for their corn over the past 24 hours! This comes on top of an average 4 cent a bushel drop in prices to the farmer last week in the Cornbelt, according to a spot check of local grain buyers, by Dow Jones. This farmer price disparity with the exchange prices, reflects not only the physical destruction of shipping and processing infrastructure, but also the fact that whenever prices spike on the Chicago Board of Trade, the local grain elevator or buyer is hit with a margin call, that he now cannot meet. So he is not offering farmers forward-contracts. Many local terminals, strapped for cash, have gone bankrupt, or sold out to the wave of hedge and index funds now on a buying spree for hard infrastructure, with which to further hold and hoard grain. E.g. WhiteBox, based in Minneapolis. The cartel terminals, dominated by Cargill and ADM, started denying forward contacts to purchase farmers' grain months ago, under the principle: protect yourself, screw the farmer. The cartel firms offer the farmer take-it-or-leave-it prices, and terms of delivery.

On top of this, key grain and meat processing facilities are shut down by the flood all over the Midwest, for example, a huge ADM corn-processing plant in Cedar Rapids.

21ST CENTURY’S PLAGUE: COMMODITY SPECULATION

Bro. Erle Frayne Argonza

Speculation, more speculation!

Speculation has driven food prices up, and is now driving gas prices up as well. It is a core feature of the ‘virtual economy’ based on predatory finance, the main game of the global financier oligarchs who are now in practical control of the world’s strategic economic sectors.

Commodity speculation is getting to be a ‘plague of the 21st century’ as claimed by a noblesse gentlaman from Europe, Italian Economics Minister Giulio Tremonti. How to stump out this plague is the greatest challenge facing mankind right now, at a time of recession in the Northern economies, recession that threatens to intensify into a global financial meltdown.

Below is an article from the Executive Intelligence Review that sums up the plague of the century. You may as well participate in the debates on how to curb it and reverse the global trend of financial madness.

Writ 30 June 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]

Tremonti: Commodity Speculation Is `The Plague of the 21st Century'

June 23, 2008 (EIRNS)—Italian Economics Minister Giulio Tremonti, an outspoken advocate of convening a New Bretton Woods conference, gave a speech in front of a meeting of the Italian trade union CISL, on June 22, calling on the trade unions to join him in the fight against the real causes of oil and food price increases: "international speculation."
According to the daily Il Messaggero, Tremonti called "surrealistic" his own government's plan, which projects a "planned inflation" of 1.7%. The reasons for that, he said, "are two. The first one is technical, the second one is political. The first one, everybody can get by calling the ECB, which demands to set an inflation rate under 2%."

Tremonti gave the real ECB telephone number. "It is wrong to speak about inflation today. For at least the last six months, we should have been talking about speculation. International speculation was first financial speculation and in the past period, after some disasters, focussed on commodities, starting with oil." Therefore, either you fight a local battle, with old methods and old perspectives, or you fight a global fight, where you fight Public Enemy Number One: speculation.

"Speculation is the plague of this century, a specter that we knew would come, but not in this way and not so fast. Inflation can no longer be explained with the simple laws of supply and demand," Tremonti continued. He then attacked the left, because "in the Left camp, there are speculation managers who have been accustomed to smoke cigars and sail on yachts, and therefore the Left does not talk about speculation." The head of the leftist CGIL trade union, Epifani, protested. If what Tremonti says is true, he was asked, why does the government write the draft budget plan based on those figures? The draft, demanded by the EU, "is a surrealistic document of no use," Tremonti said.

The Anglo-Dutch financial oligarchy is realizing that Tremonti is becoming more and more of a threat. That might be the reason why the Financial Times today published a belated review of Tremonti's book Fear and Hope, saying in its headline, "Tremonti's Best-seller on Fear Strikes Chord." The review reports that Tremonti's actions are gaining popularity and support in Italy, and profiles his book from its weakest sides (anti-China, fortress Europe, etc.), but it does say that he calls for "a new, far-reaching Bretton Woods system," for "a strong state" and "deplores the left-wing protest movements of 1968."

GAS PRICES STAY TO SAVE DOLLAR FROM COLLAPSE

Erle Frayne Argonza

Good afternoon from Manila!

Fellows of Planet Earth, better prepare yourself for the eventualities that have become a fact of life: high gas prices, and high food prices. Let me focus here on high gas prices, although gas and food are very much inter-related.

The good news for those workers and businesses that utilize the US dollar for their transactions is that the dollar will be quite strong for a time. My own forecast is that, over the next twelve (12) months at least, the strong dollar stays. The dollar is used to transact oil, remember, so you’d see its strength sustained for a time as oil price hikes will be the ‘event of the moment’ in the short run.

The dollar was actually already in the downward trend, moving rapidly towards a crash from middle of 2007 onwards. The US recession came, confidence in the dollar was low, and so the currency traders desired so strongly to unload as much dollar as they can before it would go up again.

To make things more hair-raising, the global financiers actually wanted the dollar to get crashed like smashed potato. The financiers’ problem last year was: which currency to substitute for the dollar given that Uncle Sam’s currency remains as the international legal tender, thanks to the Bretton Woods agreement that ensured this role for the same currency.

The options eventually narrowed down to just two: the (a) Euro or the (b) pounds sterling. Some quarters among the financiers were for the pounds sterling, and it seemed this dominated financier mindsets last year, though there were insiders who opted for the euro.

The next question was, granted that a currency option war clear, say that the pounds sterling will be the currency of the moment, will the volume of pounds across the globe suffice to make a sweeping decision to dump the dollar? The volume of dollars across the globe is simply gargantuan, it just isn’t that easy to play God with this currency.

Finally, at the end of the day, with speculators playing around to keep gas prices up, the forced decision was for the dollar to stay after all. This is, in fact, a revenge of Uncle Sam on those predatory forces who simply wish to play God with currencies and destroy national economies without compunction, no matter if many poor lives will be dead in their crashing effects.

On the other hand, Anglo-American oil men are having a field day as speculative trading has shifted to their side for some time, and will be so for at least twelve (12) months. The US dollar’s downward spiral has been put on hold for a time, and the said oil men will be happier by many folds in the months ahead as their purses will bloat to Glad Tidings.

Fellows, accept this as a fact of life: oil prices will be up. Prepare your necessary contingency measures as their effects will be upon you.

[11 June 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]