From the Summit of the Moral High Ground

Let us take a break from the hustle & bustle loaded to the gills with nastiness and mayhem. Consider some information cookies during the Christmas holiday down time, not without a few lumps of coal. The deceptions are deep; the ranks of dupes are legion; connecting the dots is not so easy. Despite the constant stream of deception and the steady interference by the well-meaning but all too often simpletons in the madding crowd mixed with sheep, the story can be rather extensively told. It takes the new skill of connecting the dots, along with a mental stubbornness mixed with a certain measure of insight. The phrase connecting dots was not heard by the Jackass until a few years ago, from my unusual smart buddy UD in Nevada. His many messages over the years often contain the three words CONNECT THE DOTS. With his help and the guiding hand of numerous suspicious astute colleagues, we have made sense of widely scattered information from the battlefield during the global monetary war....

Immanuel Wallerstein’s highly influential, multi-volume (currently 4 volume) opus, The Modern World-System , is one of this century’s greatest works of social science. An innovative, panoramic reinterpretation of global history, it traces the emergence and development of the modern world from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. In essence it traces the shift of economic hegemony from China to Europe. We get to this at the end Although now a retired academic Wallerstein continues to observe and write from his website . I have long argued that U.S. decline as a hegemonic power began circa 1970 and that a slow decline became a precipitate one during the presidency of George W. Bush. I first started writing about this in 1980 or so. At that time the reaction to this argument, from all political camps, was to reject it as absurd. In the 1990s, quite to the contrary, it was widely believed, again on all sides of the political spectrum, that the United States had reached the hei...

I AM writing in response to the letter from John Henwood (JEP 16 October). I find it encouraging that the debate on the role and nature of our government has been initiated by Mr Henwood and I am broadly supportive of his sentiment and views. It is self-evident that if the government seeks to remove a significant proportion of the disposable income from the population then the amount of money available to spend is reduced. Our government has systematically increased the effective rate of taxation from around 20% in 1980 to somewhere in the region of 45% today. It is no surprise, therefore, that our economy is faltering. Increased regulation has hammered much of Jersey’s industry – first making the tourism industry non-viable and lately rendering the finance industry non-competitive as the cost of complying with an ever increasing bureaucratic burden has escalated exponentially. This started in 1998 with the insistence that all corporate entities prepare accounts. Regulation is also mak...

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such fo...

The 3rd October 2013 was Gandhi's birthday, a day when we celebrate international non-violence day. I like to take a pause and consider the wisdom of one of my chief inspirations, the enlightened soul that is Gandhi. It is easy in the modern world to confuse the basis of personal wealth; the love of money is the root of all evil but it is in the love that you are given freely by your fellow human beings that your true worth is correctly estimated. The most important and most difficult human to love is yourself; and how much more difficult when you place yourself in a position of authority over other humans. When humans places their trust, safety and security in you. This is an onerous task and one that should not be accepted lightly. Perhaps a task that is accepted without sufficient consideration for the consequences and overbearing weight of such a burden. I do not expect you to be perfect so: Every time you make a self-serving decision, every bribe you accept, ever...

The matter of whether or not the leases of the Public Markets are subject to Goods and Services Tax is the subject of the ongoing case before the Royal Court of Jersey. Whilst I am one of the parties I hope to be able to demonstrate the situation and the matters that the Court will have to consider in an objective manner. For simplicity's sake I have not written the full arguments which are now over 400 pages long and hope I have distilled the essence of the matters under consideration. The following shows the importance of determining the capacity and status of all 'persons' be they human being, corporation, trust or similar. The leases of the Public Markets are signed between 'the Department of Public Services and Environment for and on behalf of the Public of the Island of Jersey' and each stallholder. So the first step is to determine who the parties are, who the agents are and who is providing what service and to whom. To me it seems that 'the ...

In 1762 Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote the treatise “ Du contrat social ou, Principes du droit politique ” [Of the Social Contract or, Principles of Political Rights] a seminal work on the organisation of human societies which continues to be the subject of study to this day. However in the intervening two hundred and fifty years there has been significant development in the framework of government and it is these that I look at in this essay. There follows an extract from ‘The Unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America’ (hereinafter referred to as ‘the US Declaration of Independence’). We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Governme...

Many are the myths held so firm by the public. Many are the lies told so boldly by the leaders. Many are the millstones around the neck of the system that is fast losing its momentum. Many are the frauds committed routinely in full view. The entire US system is unraveling, myths exposed, lies contradicted, while the millstones weigh down the financial and economic system. The absent Gold Standard, the invalidity of money, the insolvency of banks, the toxic nature of sovereign debt, the illegitimate money, the intrusive debilitating central bank franchise system, these are grand millstones around the neck of the Western system. The current monetary policy is killing capital, a fact not observed by 5% of working economists, the harlots working closely to policy making. The nation is hurtling quickly toward systemic failure in every conceivable frame of light. A quick review should be revealing of myths, lies, deceptions, and millstones. USDOLLAR AS MONEY The greatest myth of all is t...