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Extra! Extra!...
by Maireid Sullivan
2012, updated 2023
Work in progress

"Too little for too many. Too much for too few." - J. F. Sullivan

Introductory overview
The Grid Book
European Economic Community
BRICS Nations
Euro-zone observers speak out
Bank Robbery: The way we create money, and how it damages the world
– "Helicopter money"

"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself–
and you are the easiest person to fool. ... The idea is to try to give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another."
Richard Feynman Cargo Cult Science

Introductory overview

How Europe's most important lesson was gained from Chinese history:
The benefits of taxing land instead of taxing productivity.

by Maireid Sullivan, 2020

"China is the single most extensive and enduring civilization in the world. Its language, in spoken and written form, has been largely unchanged for some four thousand years. Its early history fades into mythology. Back in 2967 BC, Huang-Ti (diHuang) brought the feudal provinces under his control, made them acknowledge him as emperor, and received tributes which were in the form of levies derived from the land."
- Dr Peter Bowman, 2013 lecture: China: 4000 years of taxing land

Learning from Chinese history, collecting 'levies derived from the land' was the key lesson taken up by the French Physiocrats (18/19c), which led to the end of European feudalism.
References for European historical timeline: Confucius of Europe 

Australia was Federated on that "Land Tax" aka "Single Tax" system (income taxes were introduced to fund WWI). Those original laws remain on the Australian constitution. If we were to apply them to all resource extraction, (per Treasury recommendations "Australia's Future Tax System, 2010- on the 100th anniversary of the launch of the ATO), consolidated revenue would be overflowing because we cannot hide what we take from LAND.

Is Australia "looking again to ride Beijing's coat tails"?

Australia's trade clash with China is a lesson in what Beijing's power really means
By International Affairs Analyst Stan Grant
ABC, 22 November 2020
Excerpt:
China's rise has been peaceful. It has joined in a global rules based order: a member of the World Trade Organisation, the World Health Organisation, a permanent five member of the United Nation's Security Council. It is a signatory to global compacts like the Paris Climate Accords and engages in peacekeeping and humanitarian operations. … The view from Beijing is that we are a white Western country, clinging to a world of Western dominance that China does not believe in. . . .

"If you don't tax that value that attaches to land, arising from the general wealth of the economy, the banks get it. . . the financial sector, the banks, are pretty much running the country." – American Economics Professor Michael Hudson, author of Killing the Host, shared observations, regarding the EU constitution, on Ellen Brown’s radio show “It’s Our Money” - August 2015
(Listen or download the full interview).

Ellen Brown: "Is the financial deprivation of entire nations engendering a new level of frustration and political unrest?"

Michael Hudson
"Written into the constitution of the Euro-zone is that only banks should create credit and create it at interest;
- That government should not provide money to the economy;
- Governments should raise their money by selling off the public domain to private investors;
- That government should not provide social services;
- Should not provide infrastructure services.
- That all of these should be privatised and that means building into their price structure interest charges, exorbitant salaries, and economic rent for whatever the privatisers can charge."
01:26

Professor Michael Hudson expounds: EU Voters Turn Against Austerity.
"The US press and newscasts make it appear that Europeans have voted against poor immigrants and foreigners. When they voted against the super-rich, the oligarchy."


Unexpected consequences

No better told than by financial journalist Michael Lewis:
When Irish Eyes Are Crying, March 1, 2011, Vanity Fair

"First Iceland. Then Greece. Now Ireland, which headed for bankruptcy with its own mysterious logic. In 2000, suddenly among the richest people in Europe, the Irish decided to buy their country—from one another. After which their banks and government really screwed them. So where’s the rage?" >>>more

Global Commons?
The earth belongs to everyone, in common - our 'common wealth':
The fruits of the earth are gifts to over eight million species.
However, instead of sharing, we’ve created an unsustainable economic system based on the motto, "There is no such thing as a free lunch" because we have ‘learned’ to define wealth only in economic terms; Endless growth and consumption, affluence and assets in a few hands.

We are capable of much more: developing abundance, sustainability, perfecting health, inspiring creative expression, peace, freedom, justice, prosperity, with plenty of resources available for everyone.

"Industrial agriculture has caused us to lose over 90% of our diversity." - Andrew Kimbrell, The Centre for Food Safety



I'm dreaming of a future when "good governance" will provide access to digital 'domains' as part of public services and infrastructure. Imagine the benefits of earnings going into 'consolidated revenues' instead of private hands.

As principal speaker for Harvard's 366th Commencement on May 25, 2017, Mark Zuckerberg made a strong plea for a new social contract:
Transcript and full lecture video: 32:36

"Our generation is going to deal with tens of million of jobs replaced by automation." ... "I'm here to tell you finding your purpose isn't enough. The challenge for our generation is creating a world where everyone has a sense of purpose,"
-
Mark Zuckerberg, The Harvard Gazette May 25, 2017



Economic benefits for everyone: Less suffering, ill health, crime

In other words, only paying "Economic Rent" for private access to land, valued by the cost of publicly funded services and infrastructure surrounding the land =
1. The end of homelessness when banks no longer "mortgage" Land.
2. no need to tax productivity;
3. public services and infrastructure would be fully funded;
4. annual 'consolidated revenues' surpluses fund "Citizen Dividends".


The Grid Book
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"The grid has a history that long predates modernity; it is the most prominent visual structure in Western culture."

The Grid Book
by Hannah B Higgins, MIT Press | January 2009

Description
Excerpt: In The Grid Book, Higgins examines the history of ten grids that changed the world: the brick, the tablet, the gridiron city plan, the map, musical notation, the ledger, the screen, moveable type, the manufactured box, and the net. Charting the evolution of each grid, from the Paleolithic brick of ancient Mesopotamia through the virtual connections of the Internet, Higgins demonstrates that once a grid is invented, it may bend, crumble, or shatter, but its organizing principle never disappears.

The appearance of each grid was a watershed event. Brick, tablet, and city gridiron made possible sturdy housing, the standardization of language, and urban development. Maps, musical notation, financial ledgers, and moveable type promoted the organization of space, music, and time, international trade, and mass literacy. The screen of perspective painting heralded the science of the modern period, classical mechanics, and the screen arts, while the standardization of space made possible by the manufactured box suggested the purified box forms of industrial architecture and visual art. The net, the most ancient grid, made its first appearance in Stone Age Finland; today, the loose but clearly articulated networks of the World Wide Web suggest that we are in the middle of an emergent grid that is reshaping the world, as grids do, in its image.

Chapters:
• Introducing Grids : A Meditation on Mrs. O'Leary
• 1. Brick : 9000 BCE
• 2. Tablet : 3000 BCE
• 3. Gridiron : 2670 BCE
• 4. Map : 120 CE
• 5. Notation : 1025
• 6. Ledger : 1299
• 7. Screen : 1420
• 8. Type : 1454
• 9. Box : 1817
• 10. Network : 1970
• Afterword : Toward Fractional Dimensions ...


European Economic Community
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2023

The Bulwark
has published an informative report on requirements for EU membership - and how member candidate Ukraine is changing their systems to comply.

Is the EU a Bureaucratic Nightmare or a Beacon of Freedom?
Possibly both. Ukraine’s attempt to join will answer the question.
by Tamar Jacoby, 22 June 2023
Excerpt:
The Ukrainian counteroffensive is drawing most of our attention right now. But there’s a second, more subtle, reorganizing of lines happening: the reimagining of Europe as a political community spurred by Ukraine’s impassioned, ideals-driven demands to join.

Very few Americans would use the word “inspiring” to describe the European Union. If we think about the EU at all, most of us share something like the dyspeptic view that prompted many Britons to want out: It’s a many-tentacled, meddlesome regulatory bureaucracy, useful in its way, perhaps, as an economic umbrella. But hardly inspirational.

But the EU looks different from Ukraine, where the idea of joining is freighted with hope and deeper meaning. In 2013, just as the Brexit debate began in London, pro-Russian Ukrainian president Victor Yanukovych rescinded the country’s application for EU membership, bringing nearly a million people into the streets of Kyiv, shouting “Ukraine is Europe.” Later that winter, more than 100 protesters died for the idea. Today, polls show upward of 90 percent of Ukrainians wanting to join.

For Ukrainians, the EU is a symbol of everything they yearn for as they fight to free themselves from centuries of Russian tyranny. And after 16 months of war, their view is starting to catch on elsewhere in Europe. And so, perhaps this regulatory economic umbrella might become a beacon of democracy. >>>more


BRICS Nations
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BRICS Nations: Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa
"We saw a major shift at the G20 this week." - Nov. 21, 2022
China just SHOCKED the world and the U.S. is in real trouble
Clayton Morris, YouTube- (12:47 Minutes)

Excerpts:
3:20
Alan Greenspan "after he left office":
"Well, you know what's interesting is gold is still significant. I ask myself, if it's a relic of a long history, why is there a trillion dollars held in gold by the world's central banks, plus, the IMF, and all the other financial institutions, if it's worthless and meaningless, why is everybody still holding it?" - Alan Greenspan
...
China
(6:16)
Russia announced that over a dozen countries have now applied for membership to join the BRICS nations - the BRICS nations being Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, who have a currency that is backed by gold. Iran, Argentina, and Algeria have formally applied. Iran, alongside Russia, India and China, is already part of the Eurasian Quad, which is very strong. Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Afghanistan, are extremely interested in becoming members. They are 'mineral rich', Indonesia just applied, in Bali this week.
...
So that means BRICS nations will increasingly be using the Chinese banking infrastructure instead of the US-led IMF and the World Bank. ...
(7:34)
They're going to use gold while the US uses DEBT.
That's right. This is huge.
You're seeing the balance of power shifting from The West, to The East, to a BRICS currency that's backed by gold, and precious minerals ...

Euro-zone observers speak out
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2014
George Soros speaks out

The Tragedy of the European Union
George Soros, March 11, 2014
Despite the considerable perils of this period, George Soros maintains his faith in the European Union as a model of open society.
>>> more

Remarks delivered at the Festival of Economics
George Soros, June 2, 2012, Trento, Italy
EXCERPT

... It took some time for the financial markets to discover that government bonds which had been considered riskless are subject to speculative attack and may actually default; but when they did, risk premiums rose dramatically. This rendered commercial banks whose balance sheets were loaded with those bonds potentially insolvent. And that constituted the two main components of the problem confronting us today: a sovereign debt crisis and a banking crisis which are closely interlinked.

The eurozone is now repeating what had often happened in the global financial system. There is a close parallel between the euro crisis and the international banking crisis that erupted in 1982.

Then the international financial authorities did whatever was necessary to protect the banking system: they inflicted hardship on the periphery in order to protect the center.

Now Germany and the other creditor countries are unknowingly playing the same role. The details differ but the idea is the same: the creditors are in effect shifting the burden of adjustment on to the debtor countries and avoiding their own responsibility for the imbalances.

Interestingly, the terms “center” and “periphery” have crept into usage almost unnoticed.

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What Happened to Greece – and Italy and Spain?
A Christmas Message From America's Rich
by Matt Taibbi
Dec. 22, 2011
Rolling Stone magazine

EXCERPT
. . . Chase “helped” countries like Greece and Italy mask their debt problems for years by selling a similar series of swaps to those governments. The bank then turned around and worked with banks like Goldman Sachs (who were also major purveyors of those swap deals) to create a thing called the iTraxx SovX Western Europe index, which allowed investors to bet against Greek debt.

In other words, banks like Chase and Goldman knowingly larded up the nation of Greece with a crippling future debt burden, then turned around and helped the world bet against Greek debt.
...
Just listen to Cooperman, the former Goldman exec from that country club in Boca. According to Cooperman, the rich do contribute to society: Capitalists “are not the scourge that they are too often made out to be” and the wealthy aren’t “a monolithic, selfish and unfeeling lot,” Cooperman wrote. They make products that “fill store shelves at Christmas…” Unbelievable. Merry Christmas, bankers. And good luck getting that message out.
>>> more



1. Bankers Join Billionaires to Debunk ‘Imbecile’ Attack on Top 1%
by Max Abelson
December 20, 2011
Bloomberg
Excerpt: Jamie Dimon, the highest-paid chief executive officer among the heads of the six biggest U.S. banks, turned a question at an investors’ conference in New York this month into an occasion to defend wealth.

“Acting like everyone who’s been successful is bad and because you’re rich you’re bad, I don’t understand it,” the JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) CEO told an audience member who asked about hostility toward bankers. “Sometimes there’s a bad apple, yet we denigrate the whole.”

Dimon, 55, whose 2010 compensation was $23 million, joined billionaires including hedge-fund manager John Paulson and Home Depot Inc. (HD) co-founder Bernard Marcus in using speeches, open letters and television appearances to defend themselves and the richest 1 percent of the population targeted by Occupy Wall Street demonstrators.

If successful businesspeople don’t go public to share their stories and talk about their troubles, “they deserve what they’re going to get,” said Marcus, 82, a founding member of Job Creators Alliance, a Dallas-based nonprofit that develops talking points and op-ed pieces aimed at “shaping the national agenda,” according to the group’s website. He said he isn’t worried that speaking out might make him a target of protesters.

“Who gives a crap about some imbecile?” Marcus said. “Are you kidding me?”
>>>more

2. Wall St. Helped to Mask Debt Fueling Europe’s Crisis
By Louise Story, Landon Thomas Jr. and Nelson D. Schwartz
Feb. 13, 2010
Available on NYT Archived page

Wall Street tactics akin to the ones that fostered subprime mortgages in America have worsened the financial crisis shaking Greece and undermining the euro by enabling European governments to hide their mounting debts.

As worries over Greece rattle world markets, records and interviews show that with Wall Street’s help, the nation engaged in a decade-long effort to skirt European debt limits. One deal created by Goldman Sachs helped obscure billions in debt from the budget overseers in Brussels.

Even as the crisis was nearing the flashpoint, banks were searching for ways to help Greece forestall the day of reckoning. In early November three months before Athens became the epicenter of global financial anxiety a team from Goldman Sachs arrived in the ancient city with a very modern proposition for a government struggling to pay its bills, according to two people who were briefed on the meeting.

The bankers, led by Goldman’s president, Gary D. Cohn, held out a financing instrument that would have pushed debt from Greece’s health care system far into the future, much as when strapped homeowners take out second mortgages to pay off their credit cards.

It had worked before. In 2001, just after Greece was admitted to Europe’s monetary union, Goldman helped the government quietly borrow billions, people familiar with the transaction said. That deal, hidden from public view because it was treated as a currency trade rather than a loan, helped Athens to meet Europe’s deficit rules while continuing to spend beyond its means.

Athens did not pursue the latest Goldman proposal, but with Greece groaning under the weight of its debts and with its richer neighbors vowing to come to its aid, the deals over the last decade are raising questions about Wall Street’s role in the world’s latest financial drama.

As in the American subprime crisis and the implosion of the American International Group, financial derivatives played a role in the run-up of Greek debt. Instruments developed by Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and a wide range of other banks enabled politicians to mask additional borrowing in Greece, Italy and possibly elsewhere.

In dozens of deals across the Continent, banks provided cash upfront in return for government payments in the future, with those liabilities then left off the books. Greece, for example, traded away the rights to airport fees and lottery proceeds in years to come.
Critics say that such deals, because they are not recorded as loans, mislead investors and regulators about the depth of a country’s liabilities.

Some of the Greek deals were named after figures in Greek mythology. One of them, for instance, was called Aeolos, after the god of the winds. >>>more

3. Banks Bet Greece Defaults on Debt They Helped Hide
By Nelson D. Schwartz and Eric Dash
Feb. 24, 2010
Bets by some of the same banks that helped Greece shroud its mounting debts may actually now be pushing the nation closer to the brink of financial ruin.
Echoing the kind of trades that nearly toppled the American International Group, the increasingly popular insurance against the risk of a Greek default is making it harder for Athens to raise the money it needs to pay its bills, according to traders and money managers.
These contracts, known as credit-default swaps, effectively let banks and hedge funds wager on the financial equivalent of a four-alarm fire: a default by a company or, in the case of Greece, an entire country. If Greece reneges on its debts, traders who own these swaps stand to profit.
“It’s like buying fire insurance on your neighbor’s house ? you create an incentive to burn down the house,” said Philip Gisdakis, head of credit strategy at UniCredit in Munich. >>>more


Bank Robbery
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Bank Robbery:
The way we create money, and how it damages the world

by Ivo Mosley
Triarchy press, 2020

Summary
Our money system is a toxic left-over from a time when theft on a grand scale – war and empire-building – was glorified.

Today, we need to move on from a system that allows and encourages the worst in us (and the worst among us) to prosper.
 
We take the money system for granted.

• We accept that banks have the right to create, rent out and then destroy money.
• We accept that banks have a right to charge us (and our government) interest on this money.
• We accept that the system enhances inequality, drives climate change, degrades our planet, promotes war and conflict, and has always led to eventual disaster.

But why do we accept this manifestly undemocratic money system, which serves only to concentrate power and wealth in the hands of organisations and individuals that have profit – not our collective interests – at heart?

Curious to find the answer, researcher and writer Ivo Mosley set out to uncover – and tell – the story of how money-creation works and how it came to be this way.

Many years in the writing, this book is not an attack on individuals or a rant against bankers. Rather it’s a remarkably clear and comprehensive examination of a system that supports unaccountable and destructive power. It also points the way to the simple reforms that are necessary if we wish to create a more just and equitable world. >>>more

"Helicopter money"
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Helicopter Drop (Helicopter Money):
Economics Examples and Types

By AKHILESH GANTI
Updated January 25, 2021

A helicopter drop is an expansionary fiscal or monetary policy that is financed by an increase in an economy's money supply. It could be an increase in spending or a tax cut, but it involves printing large sums of money and distributing it to the public in order to stimulate the economy. >>>more

The name "helicopter money" was first coined by Milton Friedman in "The Optimum Quantity of Money" (1969), where he included the following parable: "Let us suppose now that one day a helicopter flies over this community and drops an additional $1,000 in bills from the sky, which is, of course, hastily collected by members of the community. Let us suppose further that everyone is convinced that this is a unique event which will never be repeated."

Wikipedia excerpt: Helicopter money is a proposed unconventional monetary policy, sometimes suggested as an alternative to quantitative easing (QE) when the economy is in a liquidity trap(when interest rates near zero and the economy remains in recession). Although the original idea of helicopter money describes central banks making payments directly to individuals, economists have used the term "helicopter money" to refer to a wide range of different policy ideas, including the "permanent" monetization of budget deficits – with the additional element of attempting to shock beliefs about future inflation or nominal GDP growth, in order to change expectations.[1] A second set of policies, closer to the original description of helicopter money, and more innovative in the context of monetary history, involves the central bank making direct transfers to the private sector financed with base money, without the direct involvement of fiscal authorities.[2][3] This has also been called a citizens' dividend or a distribution of future seigniorage.[4] >>> more

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